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Swede-L
food
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Recipe
collections and overall food thoughts
 Date:
Wed, 3 Dec 1997
From: roja@canit.se You can find an extensive Swedish cookbook
online on:
http://www.svd.se/dynamiskt/recept/did_8402822.asp (tyvärr
bara på svenska) Rolf
Back when I was a little tyke, I remember
only having very little food that I can now distinctly recall as Swedish.
One thing was the Ry-Krisp, still found throughout much of the US as one
writer mentioned. Another category was Swedish breads and pastries, particularly
the variations of cardamom coffee bread. I don't know if thuringer sausage
is Swedish or not, but I
My mother continued to make the Christmas Eve dinner until she lost her grip on reality (I don't think there was any relationship). So a few years ago I decided to reinstate the tradition. Now there are few members of the family in the area (Worcester, MA), so I began a Yuletide smorgasbord for whatever relatives I could scrape up and many friends and colleagues. My mother's cookbooks revealed the secrets of her Swedish meatballs, and I had taken up the cardamom bread on my own many years ago and actually passed it on to a Jewish friend who sometimes bakes it for me now. The sausages and herring are still available here. In fact, the sausages can be found year round if you know where to look, but the sill and lutfisk are only available during the holiday season. While I don't think I would want a steady diet of the sausages, I can't imagine having Christmas without. And apparently my friends agree, because no one turns up their nose to them when they come off the stove. Actually, it seems that there is a resurgence of interest in the old Swedish foods here. Last Christmas, one of the primary local grocery stores told me that they had ordered twice as much sausage as in 1995, and they still kept selling out. This was still more than a week before Christmas. Even the herring and lutfisk was sold out. Incidentally, the local producer of the sausage is a good Swedish company by the name of Leroux Meats! And it tastes just like I remember it from years ago.
1. falukorv
Also, dishes that used to be common 'every day' meals but no-one is missing: ölsupa
another interesting food page http://www.sverigeturism.se/smorgasbord/smorgasbord/culture/lifestyle/recipes.html
Lynn Steele skrev:Not gathering flowers. But I am having about forty people coming later on for the traditional "midsommarfest". The maypole [majstång] will be done collectively and I will allow some flowers to be picked in my garden, but not the daisies! Lots of "inlagd sill", of course, fresh strawberries, farsk dillpotatis, and, yes, akvivait and beer, etc. We will dance the traditional stuff around the pole, of course, and neighbors who are not coming over and others will wonder...(I am right in downtown Montreal).
I am curious myself about what kinds of foods are eaten now in Sweden. From what I gather there is a lot of pizza, chinese food and what we might think of as "american" food available now. Is this true?
In Stockholm last spring, I got a kick from the poster outside a Pizza Hut stating, "Enjoy genuine American food!"
When I lived in Sweden a little over 10 years ago, pizza and hamburgers seemed to be the most widely available foods. They also started to have "Mexican food", but, that was the first time in my life I had a burrito with kernels of corn in it. There was also an excellent Chinese retaurant in Uppsala, I think it was called China River and it was across the street from the train station. I have yet to find good quality pankakor in the U.S.A., however (other than at Swedish festivals).
It depends on where you are, of course, but I found pizza & McDonalds (clean!) to be as ubiquitous as in the US. In Stockholm, as any world city, you can have any food from TGI Fridays to Indian/Thai curry, to well, just about anything. Most restaurants offer "Dagens Rätt" (dish of the day) at lunchtime with bread, pickles, etc. Numerous cafés and cafeterias selling light meals & snacks. Swedens version of McD's "Clock" seemed to be common everyhwere I went, but being vegetarian, i did not eat there. :) One food I really enjoyed was filmjölk--similar to Yoggi or Kefir, and found swedish muesli to be quite good. Nice combination! Glögg and various baked goods on a grey January day were nice too. and Coffee, of course! Nice & strong! Having dinner at friends homes was usually a hodgepodge...some traditional swedish food side by side with Coca Cola for example. My only complaint was that Thai/Indian/Korean, etc. food was not authentic. Very bland and toned down a bit since most traditional swedish fare is not spicy. It all balanced out when I tried to convince my ex and some friends that peanut butter and jam made a nice sandwich. I think they were more disgusted by this than I of the infamous lutefisk. |
 Lingon:
finding & cultivating the plant
Question: Would someone give me some info about lingonberry! Can this be grown in the U.S.?? Or?? Response from susan larsson: sure can in zones 2-8. i have it as a groundcover in my garden here in washington [state]. you can read about it on (and probably order it from) the following web site: www.eat-it.com/lingonbe.htm susan (who bought a jar of lingonsylt -lingonberry jam - at the local safeway recently)
Question: At 11:12 AM
12/29/97 -0800, someone wrote:
Response from susan larsson: since i don't fertilize, but do water - i'd go with the gardener. mine are growing in full shade for most of the year (though they get a fair amount of sun in summer when the sun climbs up high enough). also, lingon are a 'three year' plant - you don't see much action at all the first year, you notice a few runners the second year, and the third year you finally see some real expansion to cover ground. to make this swede-l related (well, it is a typical swedish groundcover:-) i think the reason we succeed with it here is our weather is similar to that found in southern sweden - 9 degrees C 10 months of the year, lots of foggy misty stuff, and hot dry summers. susan (looking out the window at the heather in bloom in a garden with many typical swedish plants)
Comment from Patric S. Lundberg:Lingonberry bushes grow under mostly pines and firs in Sweden. As far as I know, pine and fir grow in (or make for) acidic soil. Also, there is often a fair amount of underbrush and moss - my guess is that the soil is airy and/or sandy. You also see some growing in soilfilled cracks on mountain sides - much like the occasional little tree. A lot of fertilizer will make the bush grow but does little for the production of actual berries - my sad little plants are in soil opposite of what I have described, and with ample fertilizing they still have not produced more than a few dozen berries over a four year period. They sit in complete shade in the summer and the winters here in Madison should certainly be sufficiently cold... Lingonberries are, as has been pointed out on the list in the past, related to cranberries (no surprise, really). Patric.
Response from Madeline S. Hengel: They are growing zones divided horizontally across the continent. Minnesota is in zones 2 and 3 I think. I grow little Lingons!!! They're so small at the moment I gave them names. Gustav and Oscar. Maddie :-)
Response from Mark Fagerburg : Finally I get to use my Horticulture degree! The map zones are *just* representative of the *lowest* expected temperature in any given area. They do not account for heat, humidity or amount of cold weather expected. There are several groups including the American Horticultural Society which are making maps that take into account other variables, but I haven't found a web site that shows this. Patric is right that Ligonberries require acid soil, and you can increase the acidity yourself by adding something like Miracid. Keep the plants away from lime, which many people add to lawns. The red color of the plants leafs may also indicate a rust disease (caused by fungi). I can tell you that here in zone 7a in Richmond, Virginia, I can't get the berries to grow, probably because the summers are too hot and humid. Mark Fagerburg (used to be Fagerberg) |
Surströmming
>>> kborei@mail.millikin.edu 06/18/03 05:12PM >>>I’m reading Mark Kurlansky’s Salt (2002), the follow-up to his book Cod - history through the lens of basic food stuffs. I thought the list might find the following interesting, starting on p.137 of the paperback edition: By the sixteenth century, if not earlier, on the Swedish coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, the body of water between Sweden & Finland, a light cure was devised for Baltic herring, and these pickled fish became known as surströmming. The Baltic Sea, a less salty body than the North Sea, has leaner and smaller herring than that the Atlantic and North Sea herring eaten by the British and the Dutch. In Sweden, which has both a North Sea and a Baltic coast, the fish are known by completely different names. A Baltic herring is known as a strömming, and a North Sea herring is called a sill. A number of Baltic languages make this distinction. ... From: "Lil Judd" <knytt@earthlink.net> Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 12:44 AMSimple answer, from someone who doesn't eat it: They drink a lot of alcohol so I guess they just can't smell it at all..... ;-) Best I could come up with...... But fact is that they're often drunk at these parties. Fact is also that many of these parties are held outside so the smell won't be lingering in the houses, but the entire neighborhood can smell it. >>> alexander@backlund-online.info 06/18/03 06:19PM >>>And also, the taste does in no way resemble the smell. >>> paul-svensk@svensson.org 06/18/03 06:19PM >>>I've actually tasted surströmming once, and it was indeed delicious... ...as far as I can remember thru the misty memory induced by the amounts of aquavit I required to be able to stand the smell of my own breath for the remainder of the weekend. I think you've got the onion thing backwards, tho. People up north are the ones who actually like the fish, even the smell; it's us wimpy southrons who have to disguise it. Btw, the northern potatoes, called "Mandel" (almond) for it's shape, come in two appropriately Swedish varieties: blue and yellow. >>> alexander@backlund-online.info 06/18/03 06:25PM >>>True [as to the onion], and much of the remaining smell comes from the onion. >>> Bella1047@aol.com 06/18/03 10:34PM >>>Ahhhhhhhh...just reading about this savory, sweet fishy delicacy brings me back to my Limberger days. If one can eat Limberger, they can eat just about anything! Oh, my dear. The smell still lingers in my mind; imagine the fish? >>> kurt@lists.melmac.se 06/19/03 03:42AM >>>However, the real aficionados drink ... milk (!) with surströmming. Kurt -- not an aficionado >>> richard.johns@wright.edu 06/19/03 07:49AM >>>I spent three months in Sweden last year on a university faculty exchange. During my stay, I kept hearing about this curious dish and finally got the opportunity to taste it at a house party one evening. Here, surströmming was served on flat bread with potatoes, onions, sour cream, and tomatotes. Some ate it as an open-faced sandwich; others ate it with another piece on flat bread on top. I actually enjoyed it. I might not have liked the fish all by itself, but it complimented the other flavors on the sandwich nicely, I thought. I shocked everyone there when I asked for another sandwich. They kept saying, "No, no, you really don't have to do that." But I did actually like it. This was in northern Sweden, by the way, in Umeå. I don't really know how surströmming is served in other parts of the country. >>> rpeter@zianet.com 06/19/03 10:08AM >>>An appropriate thought that Limberger one! I ate the dreaded fishies during my sabbatical at Sveriges Lantsbruks Universitet at their annual (outdoor) fest. I always describe the smell/taste combo of the herring as a cross between Limberger cheese and fish. As a fancier of strong, soft ripened cheeses, I found the herring interesting. Someplace in one of our scrapbooks I "fotobevis" of the event which my Swedish colleagues took since I was the only one of the foreign visitors who actually ate any. >>> indy.mimi@verizon.net 06/19/03 06:46PM >>>To further elaborate upon Karin's story about the origins of surströmming, there was once a person who was given a grant to supply salted herring to the army by the name of Erik Ångerman of Ångermanland, of course...It wasn't accidental that the fish smelled badly because Erik was purposely cutting back on the amount of salt to save costs...When the king found out that Erik was cheating the government, he forced Ångerman to legally change his name to Sursill as part of his sentencing...Sursill is a well known name in northern Sweden tracing back to the middle ages...Several of Erik Sursill's daughters emigrated to Finland and became the matriarchs of some well known Finnish families...And in closing, I am supposedly related to the notorious Erik Sursill on my father's mother's side going back 17 generations...Myth or truth, I really don't know...I got the story from my cousin who lives in Trollhättan and who delves a lot into geneology... Rickard A-son >>> alexander@backlund-online.info 06/19/03 06:55PM >>>>From "Nationalencyklopedin": "surströmming: sill (strömming) som bringats att jäsa efter lätt saltning. Den framställs vid Norrlandskusten, främst på Ulvön, och förpackas i konservburkar, av vilka årets produktion får börja säljas tredje torsdagen i augusti. Surströmmingen är vid sidan av den norska rakørret (syrad öring) en sista relikt i Europa av en i äldre tid i n. Eurasien allmänt använd metod att konservera fisk. På Island behandlade man hajkött på liknande vis. Surströmming var vardagskost för bönderna vid Bottenviken och användes mycket som matsäck vid jakt och resor. Mandelpotatis, hackad lök, gräddfil och tunnbröd är klassiska tillbehör till surströmming.http://www.surstromming.se/ A whole site dedicated to nothing but! Though unfortunately only in Swedish. http://www.escapeartist.com/efam32/swedish.html
A page in English, with pictures, by a non-Swede about his first encounter.
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