I'd like to think I'm better up on Swedish food than most Irish people, 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 meatballs. There is a fantastic food culture over there so it's, it's, 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 from Sweden.
I've lived in Sweden for about probably 6 months, but we're over and back so often, probably every two months to visit my partner's parents. So, I know quite a lot about Swedish food having worked in a restaurant over there. Well Sweden's kind of culinary year is punctuated with lots of traditions. The massive big one in the summer is the kraftskiva, which is the crayfish party. And they have these amazing parties, there's these tacky decorations, everyone wears a hat, and everyone wears a bib. And basically these big bucket loads of crayfish land on the table. They cook the crayfish with a little bit of dill, and a lot of, they use the head, the crown of dill, so it's when it starts flowering, they use that as well. But they, that's the kind of main flavouring, 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 round a table, they're all drinking schnapps, so they drink the schnapps and they sing these schnapps songs. Which is, so that, I mean, in itself is just bizarre and very funny. Even the most, kind of, glamourous and sophisticated women will be kind of sucking the heads out of these crayfish, and it's just one of these bizarre situations where you kind of go if you can't beat them then you got to join them. It's a celebration of summer.
When you actually go over there it's a lot different. There's a lot more clean tastes and they use a lot more seafood than we do. And we should be using more over in Ireland, but they seem use their seafood very well. And there's things, traditionally, like gravlax which is a wonderful kind of dessert and really delicious. Very easy to make as well. People think it's a complicated recipe, but very, very simple to make.
The Swedes have a great baking culture. Semla, which are these cream buns, and, um, they do them actually around the time where we do pancakes, they do these big cream buns as well. Oh and another one is the Prinsesstårta which is a fantasitc kind of cream cake which has a sponge layer 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 one of the princess's favorite cakes. The restaurant while I was there, we were working specifically with Sweedish traditional Christmas foods so um, they go all out with their swedish christmas foods, there's basically, you know what a smorgasbord is, um, it's basically a julbord, and um, its a Christmas themed smorgasbord with lots of traditional dishes, theres salmon. A little bit different from the Irish kind of way of serving because we always go for the plates things like tha t your turkey and your ham, and they take bits of everything.
And there's... there's the meatballs of course. There's little Prinskorv, which are these little sausages. They're kinda like little frankfurters and - there's a whole load of things like Janssons Frestelse, 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, uh, actual anchovies. The actual day itself, there's the eh - [Julskinka?], which is this kind of mustard ham. Um, very delicious. There's this - em - specfic - em - dark Christmas bread, which is - I think it's called [Svart Libar?] or something like that, em - but really really kind of - eh, it's got like spices in it, and it's a real dark - almost kind of rye kind of bread, but very very nice, and they have slices of that, of 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, a strongly kind of celebrated as the Swedish ones that they all go at - all out for them over there.
There's a nice coffee culture in the cities, and, you know there's a really fun kind of restaurant trendy-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.
