English Script Request

I'd like to think I'm better *up on Swedish food than most Irish people [laughs] but... Having lived there for a little bit - I think people's perceptions of Swedish food is largely down to, kind of, what they see in Ikea and, you know, all that sort of stuff and obviously Swedish meat balls.

There is a fantastic food culture over there so it's.. it's erm - but it's always kind of taking those little bits and bringing them home and making them your own, so I think there's definite inspiration when you go to Sweden.

I've lived in Sweden for about, prob(ab)ly six months but we're over, over and back so often pro- pro(ba)bly every two months, erm, to visit my partner's erm, parents, so I ah, I know quite a lot about Swedish food having worked in a restaurant over there.

Well Sweden's kind of culinary year is kind of punctuated with lots of traditions. The massive, big one in the Summer is the kräftskiva, erm, which is the crayfish party, and they have these amazing parties (there's - it's) there's these tacky decorations, everyone wears a hat, erm, and everyone wears a bib, and basically these big bucketloads of crayfish land on the table. They cook the crayfish with a little bit of dill, and a lot of -er- they use (the) the head, the crown of the dill, so it's... it's the one when it starts flowering, they use that as well. Erm, but they... that's the kind of main flavouring, erm, but a little bit of salt and a little bit of sugar, so there's a sweetness to them as well, so... Really, really nice. Basically there's like, twelve people sitting around a table, they're all drinking schnapps... So, they (they) drink the schannps, and they sing these schnapps songs, which is (is so,) that's, I mean, in itself, is just bizarre and very funny.

Even the most - kind of - glamorous and sophisticad women would be kind of - [slurping noise] - suckin' the heads out of these crayfish and... and it's just one of these kind of bizarre situations where you kinda go, well you either (ya, ya, ya can't) - if ya can't beat 'em you've gotta join them. It's a celebration of summer.

When you actually go over there it's a lot different. There's a lot-- kind of-- clean taste, they use a lot more seafood than, than we do and we should be using more over in Ireland. They just seem to use seafood very well and there's things traditionally like gravlack (?) which is a wonderful kind of preserved salmon. Really delicious. And very easy to make as well.

People think it's a complicated recipe but it's very, very simple to make. The Swedes have a great baking culture: Selma, which are these cream buns and, uh, and they do them actually when we do pancakes where I'm from [unintelligible] they usually do these big cream buns as well.
Oh, and another one is the Princess [unintelligible] which is a fantastic kind of cream cake, it's got a sponge on the bottom, cream on the top, and basically it's all covered in this marzipan - pink, bright neon pink marzipan layer with a rose on top, and it's apparently on the princess's favorite kind of cakes.

The restaurant, while I was there, we were working specifically with Swedish traditional Christmas food. So, um, they go all out for their Swedish Christmas food. And it was basically -- you know what a smorgasbord is -- and it's basically a yule board and, um, it's a Christmas themed smorgasbord with lots of traditional dishes. There's salmon and, uh, a little bit different from the Irish kind of way of serving because we always go for, you know, the place of things like that with your turkey and your ham. But they kind of take bits of everything and there's the meatballs, of course, there's little prince (French word? Courves?) which is these little sausages, they're kind of like little frankfurters. And there's a whole load of things, (Swedish word? I don't know?) which I can never say, but it's like a potato dish. Like a creamy potato dish with anchovies oddly enough. Which are more like sprats than actual anchovies. The actual day itself there’s the (Swedish word), which is this kind of, um, mustard ham. Very delicious. There’s this specific dark Christmas red which I think is called (Swedish word) or something like that, but really, really kind of, uh, it’s got like spices in it and it’s a real dark, almost kind of rye kind of bread. Very very nice. And they have slices of that, of the ham – the Christmas ham, with a little bit of mustard.

There's so many traditions, that's the one thing I was really aware of because, you know, Ireland has its traditions but I don't think there is, you know, as strongly kind of celebrated as the Swedish ones and they all go -eh- all out over there. There's a nice coffee culture in the cities and, you know, there's a really fun kind of restaurant trend-y kind of vibe over there.

There is a wonderful sense of fresh foods and I think people have a good sense of healthy food as well over there.