Category: Recipes

Lina put me in charge of the Janssons frestelse (left), a duty which I took very seriously.  It can be a challenge to make a dish you've never tasted -- how will you know if you got it right?  In that situation, the only way to go is to follow the recipe as close to the letter as possible.  But I ran into trouble hunting down Swedish anchovies.



On the left, we have standard Spanish anchovies cured in salt and preserved in olive oil.  On the right, you see Swedish "anchovies", which are not anchovies as we know them, but sprats.  They're cured in a sweet/salty water-based brine that tastes of Swedish spices -- allspice, clove, that kind of thing.  Absolutely not the same thing.

I had to stalk the Swedish anchovy for a day and a half before I found some.  Let no one say I lack persistence:

> 6 train to Wall St.
> IKEA ferry to Red Hook
@ IKEA - Find out they ran out of anchovies an hour before I got there
> IKEA Shuttle to Jay St.
> F train and walk to Eagle Provisions in Park Slope
@ Eagle Provisions - Closed for the night.  DOH!
> Walk home to Sunset Park, where I eat my disappointment in the form of half a roll of Göteborg Singoalla cookies, which I had purchased from IKEA
> Wake up the next morning, play hooky from work to hunt for anchovies, walk back to Eagle
@ Eagle Provisions - no anchovies
> Take the bus to Bierkraft
@ Bierkraft - not open until noon
> Walk to Union Market
@ Union Market - no anchovies
> Walk to Blue Apron Foods
@ Blue Apron Foods - no anchovies. Counter guy suggests Russ & Daughters, though my friend Emil tweeted in reply to my frantic request for advice that they have none this year
> Walk to Brooklyn Larder
@ Brooklyn Larder - they don't open for another half hour, but the guy who answers the door says there are no Swedish anchovies
> 2 to the 1 to Christopher St.
@ Gourmet Garage - no anchovies
@ Murray's - no anchovies
@ The Lobster Place - no anchovies
@ Citarella - no anchovies
> Cab to Gramercy to pick up some keys from my friend Sarah R.
@ Sunflower Diner - we have grapefruit and tea, Sarah suggests I try Schaller & Weber.
> Call Schaller & Weber:

ME: Do you have Swedish anchovies?

GUY: Of course we got Swedish ham.

ME: Not Swedish ham. Swedish ANCHOVIES.

GUY: Hold on.  [Muffled voice] Do we have Swedish anchovies?  ANCHOVIES.  Yeah? [Back into the mouthpiece] Yeah, we got 'em.

ME: Hmph. Alright, thanks.

> With great skepticism, take the 6 train up to 86th St., walk to 86th and 2nd.
@ Schaller & Weber - SUCCESS!  Stacks of anchovies in the refrigerator case, as well as all kinds of Swedish foods.   
> Take 6 train to the N train all the way home, where I reward my hard work with the other half roll of Singoalla cookies.

Here's another recipe adapted from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking (Husmanskonst).  Theories on the dish's etymology vary, but the basic recipe is onions, julienned potatoes, cream and Swedish anchovies.  I was intimidated by the amount of anchovy called for in his recipe, since nobody else seemed to include as much as he.  Even with half the anchovies, the dish tasted plenty saline to me. 

The anchovy liquor and sauteed onions add a unique sweetness to the dish -- again, this is a bit of a level 2 Swedish dish.  It's not for everyone, but I quite liked how the rich cream and gentle sweetness cut the umami sprat flavor.  Also, pretty nifty, you can do as I did and cook it 3/4 of the way through, cool and refrigerate, then travel on the subway with it to your destination, top up with a little cream and bake at 400 for 20 minutes until heated through, finishing with the broiler to brown the top.



 
Jansson's Temptation (Janssons frestelse)
Adapted loosely from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking

4 medium yellow onions
5 large Yukon Gold potatoes
Butter
2 tins of Swedish anchovies
2 cups of heavy cream
salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Peel onions.  Use mandoline to slice onions thinly.  Melt a knob of butter in a pan.  Saute the onions slowly over medium heat until golden brown.
   
3. Peel potatoes.  Use mandoline to julienne the potatoes.
4. When onions have cooked down and are golden brown, add the potatoes, cream and anchovy liquor to the pan.  Taste and season with pepper and a bit of salt if needed.  Stir and let cook over low heat for 5 minutes.
5. Butter a large oval casserole.  Line the bottom of the casserole with half of the potato onion mixture.  Put half of your anchovies on top of the potatoes.  Cover with the remaining potato mixture.  Top with the other half of the anchovies.
6. Bake for 45 minutes until golden brown on top and bubbly.  Alternatively, bake for 30 minutes, then cool and refrigerate, covered in foil.  When ready to serve, bake uncovered in 400 degree oven for 20 minutes, finishing under the broiler at the end to brown the top.  Serve as classic fixin' with meatballs for Christmas Eve dinner.

--


 
For future ref, should you ever be in need of Swedish ingredients for Christmas, save yourself some grief and try Schaller & Weber first.  Fine selection of Abba herring, source for German 25% vinegar, which can be substituted when diluted with one part water for Swedish ättiksprit spirit vinegar (which is 12% acidity).  I like the rather alarming warning at the bottom of the label:

I've never had lussekatter, traditional Christmas Swedish saffron buns, so I had no idea if I had made them right or not.  Luckily, there was a translated recipe in the December Saveur, which came from an Allt om Mat editor, so I knew the recipe would be straightforward and trustworthy.



These buns are very mildly flavored and not very sweet.  They reminded me of Hawaiian bread (do you know what I'm talking about?) which I adored as a kid.  But it didn't really go with dinner -- I suspect it should be a fika treat, something to nosh with coffee either mid-morning or mid-afternoon, before dinner.  It's definitely not a dessert.
 
I tried to follow the recipe closely -- the only deviation I made was to soak the raisins in amaretto overnight -- I love a boozy raisin.

They really need to be baked and eaten day of -- they go stale quite quickly.  But the leftovers made a pretty lovely bread pudding with the addition of almond paste, cardamom, custard, and more raisins.

Lussekatter
adapted from December 2009 Saveur

2 1/4 oz. packages active dry yeast
2 cups whole milk, heated till finger-warm (110 degrees)
2 tsp. saffron, lightly crushed
3/4 cup plus 1 tsp. sugar
6 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
3 eggs
12 Tbsp. unsalted butter, room temp and cut into 1/2" cubes
64 raisins soaked overnight in 1/3 c. amaretto liquer

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, mix together yeast, milk, saffron, and 1 tsp.sugar.  Let sit until foamy, about 10 minutes.  Stir in remaining sugar, flour, salt and 2 eggs.  Mix on low until dough forms and gathers around the paddle.  (I don't have a stand mixer, so I just did this by hand.)
2. Replace paddle with dough hook and add butter.  Knead on medium-high speed until dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl, 8 minutes. 
   
3. Grease a large bowl with butter.  Transfer dough to the greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap.  Let sit in a warm place until double in size, about 1 hour.
4. Divide dough into 32 pieces and roll each piece into an 8" long rope.  Form each rope into an S-shape and then roll each end into a tight spiral.  Place buns 2" apart on parchment-lined baking sheets. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.




5. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Uncover the dough pieces and place a raisin at the center of each of the spirals. 
   
6. Lightly beat remaining egg with 1 Tbsp. water and brush each bun with egg. 
   


7. Bake until buns are golden brown and cooked through, 16 minutes.  Cool for at least 10 minutes.  Serve with strong brewed coffee for fika.

Lussekatter Bread Pudding

Okay, there is no tradition of lussekatter bread pudding in Sweden, as far as I know, but it's a nice way to use up some of those stale buns, and it's quite pretty to boot.  I used some leftover frozen almond paste butter with cardamom, so I'm just going to give you an approximate recipe and you can trust your judgment for the amounts to add.



1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Take 6 stale lussekatter.



2. Slice into 1" pieces.

3. Heat 2 cups of milk with a knob of butter, some grated almond paste and a bit of ground cardamom over low heat until hot but not boiling.

4.  In a large bowl, beat 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk with 1/3 cup of sugar.  While whisking vigorously, pour in a bit of the hot milk mixture.  Once well beaten, add more of the hot milk mixture until it's all well mixed. Add a splash of vanilla extract and, if desired, a splash of amaretto.

5.  Add cut-up lussekatter and some soaked raisins, let the bread soak for a few minutes. 

6. Butter a small 5" x 9" casserole.  Pour soaked bread custard into casserole.  Bake for 30 minutes until top is crisp and golden brown and custard is cooked through.  Serve warm.  Or eat cold from the fridge.  I'm not judging if you're not judging.

I have an orange blossom candle which I've placed on my radiator.  Whenever the heat is on, it releases the slow, lazy smell of desert blooms -- the Orient, powdery and sweet. 

In my dreams, I invite the women of Marjane Satrapi's family over.  They sip strong tea from a samovar, perhaps in glass cups hugged by metal filigree.  The steam rises in double brushstrokes from their thin cups.  I sit on the floor at their feet, knees together, ankles tucked next to one hip. 

I serve these cakes. They are the secret held behind Ilsa Lund's plush lips when Rick Blaine corners her at the bazaar.  They are a pink silk nightgown trimmed with cream lace, pinned to a clothesline.  They are the sillage of an arch-browed woman in seamed stockings, the thin embroidered lines like the continuation of her spine down into the tips of her heels.  They are the inner courtyard of a tiled blue palace, a rose garden where a teenage girl fans her long, wild hair in the grass for a sun bath.

Persian Tea Cakes

The base of this cake is Smitten Kitchen's yellow cake recipe, which I am officially obsessed with.  With cardamom, rosewater, orange and pistachio, they are impossibly feminine and perfumey and delicate. They're perfect with a strong cup of tea.  I used foil cupcake cups, but you could easily use a greased cupcake tin and pop 'em out before icing for prettier presentation. I am in love with them, and I can't wait to show them off again.

CAKES:
2 cups plus 2 tbsp. cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 stick unsalted butter, room temp
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, room temp
1 c. buttermilk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tbsp. rosewater
1 tsp. cardamom seeds, ground in mortar and pestle

ICING:
Juice of 1 orange
1 tsp. orange zest, grated AND chopped fine
2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
1 pinch salt
1/2 c. Turkish pistachios, chopped

EQUIPMENT:
22 cupcake foil cups
Baking sheet

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt together.  Set aside.
3. Beat butter and sugar together. 
   
4. Beat in one egg at a time on low speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl. 
   
5. Add buttermilk, vanilla, rosewater and cardamom.  Beat on low until blended.
   
6. Beat in dry ingredients, a third at a time, until just blended, scraping down the sides of the bowl.
7. Drop cupcake cups onto baking sheet.  Fill cups about 1/3 full.
8. Bake for 23-28 minutes until barely golden brown on top.  Cool completely.

For the icing:

1. Put powdered sugar, grated zest and salt into a bowl.  Add enough orange juice to make a thin, drizzle-able icing.
2. Ice the cupcakes with plenty of orange icing.  Top with chopped pistachios. 
   

--

I submitted these for my office's bake-off today.  Though they came in second place, two of the judges (one of whom was Jim Oseland, EIC of Saveur) said they gave it 10 out of 10, meaning the third judge was my downfall.  DAMMIT!  But, BUT, Jim Oseland said my cake and the olive oil cake (which just happened to be from a Saveur recipe) were his favorites (!).  So take that, pedestrian caramel oat chocolate chip WHATEVER in first place.  Harumph.

Photo from Winnie Yang

These köttbullar were so crazy delicious.  The recipe is from a book called The Art of Home Cooking by Leif Mannerström.  It was a parting gift given to me by my co-workers in Sweden, with reassurances that it is the best husmanskost cookbook out there.  (The Swedish title of the book, by the way, is Husmanskonst, a play on the word husmanskost, which means Swedish home cooking, and konst, which means art.)

The book says, "The following recipe is your chance of making the best meatballs in Sweden."  And brother was not kidding.

Winnie did all the work prepping them -- all I did was help shape and fry.  You can't go wrong with meat fried in tons of butter, but I think the texture was what really made those meatballs great -- crisp on the outside, soft as a cheek and super moist on the inside. 

But there are a few things you wouldn't really know on your own if you just read the recipe cold.  I have a few suggestions:

1. The anchovy liquor referred to in the recipe comes from Swedish anchovies, which are actually sweet sprats, not the salted Italian anchovies in oil.  Winnie used regular anchovies and just melted them down with the browned onions, but if you want to stick to the recipe, you'll have to hunt down Swedish anchovies. You should be able to get them at IKEA.
2. We found that the meatballs fell apart a bit in the frying pan.  I remembered a little later, though, that ground meat in Sweden is ground quite finely; mince comes out of the grinder in strands like thin spaghetti.  For rounder, more shapely meatballs, it might help to ask your butcher to put your meat through a finer grinder an extra round.  Or, you could pulse the meat in the food processor for a minute.
   
3. A nonstick frying pan helps keep the meatballs together.  It's also helpful to deglaze the pan every once in a while to pick up the fond, which wants to stick to your meatballs.  You could probably deglaze with cream to make a cream sauce instead. 
   
4. I think Winnie made the meatballs with half pork, half beef, and they were phenomenal, so that's the balance I included in the recipe.  Original recipe calls for half ground beef, half ground beef-pork mixture, which is a thing in Sweden.  So you could do three parts beef to one part pork instead; find the balance that works for you.   
   

Anyway, you MUST try these!  They went over like gangbusters with the 20 or so people who came to Winnie's Choice Cuts dinner and movie night.  (Details on the dinner here; more pics here.)  The Swedish factor makes it a bit cosmopolitan, but it's really accessible comfort food.  It's also a VERY kid friendly meal.  Meatballs are to Swedish kids as chicken nuggets are to American kids.

One interesting note -- Mannerström adds freshly grated nutmeg to his mash. I bet that's gooood.

Also, if you've never had the pleasure of attending a Choice Cuts event, sign up for her mailing list. The company is always interesting, the food is always delicious and ambitious, and Matt curates an excellent short before the well-chosen main feature.  It's the perfect thing to do on a Sunday night in Brooklyn.

Meatballs a la Lilian
adapted from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking

1 1/2 dl (scant 2/3 cup) milk
1/2 dl (scant 1/4 cup) cream
2 dl (4/5 cup) dried breadcrumbs
2 eggs
1 dl (scant 1/2 cup) water

4 medium-large boiled potatoes (go for floury over waxy)

2 large onions

800 grams (1.75 lbs.) minced beef, ground finely
800 grams (1.75 lbs.) minced pork, ground finely
1 tsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. "anchovy" liquor (or substitute a few anchovy fillets)
4 tbsp. concentrated veal stock
2 tbsp. Kikkoman soy
salt and pepper

butter for frying (at least a stick, maybe two.  Don't be shy)
Water or cream for deglazing

1. Blend the milk, cream, breadcrumbs, egg and water into a loose batter.  Let mixture swell for a while.
2. Mash the potatoes well.  Set aside.
   
3. Peel the onions.  Grate one of them finely, chop the other one finely and fry till golden brown.  (If you substitute anchovy fillets for anchovy liquor, fry the fillets with the onion here.)
4. Blend all the ingredients quickly into a smooth mixture.  Add salt and pepper.  Fry a small dab to test the seasoning.
5. Shape the roundest meatballs you can.  (Helps to have extra hands to shape meatballs here.) 
   
6. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a nonstick or cast iron pan. Fry meatballs in butter till golden brown on the bottom, then roll over and brown on the other side.  Don't crowd the pan or they won't brown correctly.  Try to brown the meatballs all over.  Add another tbsp. of butter for each batch you fry.
   
7. After you've fried a few batches, deglaze the pan with a little water.  You could use the juice to moisten the meatballs, though they don't need the help.
   
8. Serve with mashed potato, pressgurka (quick-pickled cucumber) and lingonberry jam (or cranberry sauce, as Winnie did).  Serves 10.

Pressgurka
adapted from Leif Mannerström's The Art of Home Cooking

1 English seedless cucumber
1 small bunch parsley
salt
pepper

Dressing:
1 dl (scant 1/2 cup) ättiksprit*
3 dl water
2 dl (4/5 cup) caster (superfine) sugar
10-12 slices chili
salt

1. Shave cucumber thinly.  Place on a dish and salt lightly.  Leave for about 15 minutes and then drain well in a colander.  Pat gently with paper towel.
   
2. Chop parsley finely. 
   
3. In a glass bowl, alternate layers of cucumber, parsley and pepper.
4. Mix dressing together, checking for seasoning -- you want sweet and sour.
5. Pour dressing over cucumber.  Sprinkle lots of parsley on top.  Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.
   

*Ättiksprit is a special Swedish 12% strong vinegar.  Heinz distilled white vinegar, by comparison, is 5%.  If you are not as hardcore as Winnie, who brought a giant bottle back with her from Sweden (I'm certainly not that hardcore), I am guessing that you can do 2.5 dl (1 cup) white vinegar and 1.5 dl (scant 2/3 cup) of water instead of the 1 dl ättiksprit and 3 dl water.  Or, check IKEA to see if they carry it.

 

Fried a gazillion meatballs at Winnie's tonight for her Choice Cuts showing of Tillsammans.  Felt nostalgic for socialist Sweden.  Meatball recipe huge success, from translation of Husmanskonst or The Art of Home Cooking.  Will share complicated recipe when I have a moment.  But discovered a few things:

1. Deglazing the meatball pan helps the meatballs to not get stuck to the bottom and fall apart.
2. Carola's tårta really requires the tart red currants to balance the sweetness of the custard.  If I were to make it with banana again (as I did tonight), I would fold some whipped cream into the custard to cut the sweetness a bit and give it a little more body.
3. The fransk chokladkaka from Rosendals Trädgård's cookbook is a recipe I'll have to post, too.  Good with whipped cream, but I miss a crusty top.  The search for the perfect recipe continues. 

Did you have plans today?  Cancel them, because you are going to need the entire day to make these cardamom buns.  I'm serious.  You might be able to read a New Yorker article while you're waiting for the dough to rise, or maybe catch up on an episode of 30 Rock, but this triple-rise dough -- or the homemade almond paste, or the hand-ground cardamom -- will hold you hostage for the next seven hours.  

Also, be warned that this recipe yielded 72 cupcake-sized buns.  72!  But this is good, because you will not want to make them for a long time once you realize how jobbigt (an adjective meaning much hard work) they are, as the Swedes would say.

But oh gentle marzipan sweetness, sultry slow-burn cardamom and rich, salted butter filling!  The pärlsocker (pearl sugar), looking like little crunchy bits of snow melting on a golden brown pillow!  "They're like chips," said La Doug.  It takes an uncommon amount of willpower to eat just one.

These bullar are sturdy yet seductive, never cloying, like a seasoned belly dancer gently stoking a fire you didn't know you had in you, leaving you wanting more.  With coffee for fika, or toasted in the oven in the morning, nothing brings me back to Sweden like this flavor. 

 

 

This recipe is adapted from the beautiful Vete-katten cookbook.  Vete-katten is the unbelievable konditori that was just down the block from my Stockholm office.  This is the second recipe I tried -- the first, from another book, was not nearly as good. The dough requires THREE rises -- the first rise apparently makes the yeast stronger, and the long second and third rises make for a lighter dough.  Or something like that -- my Swedish isn't that good.  

Swedish Cardamom Buns

 

A few tips:
 
1. Use a scale to measure the dry ingredients.  
2. You must use whole cardamom -- not the pods, but the kind that are little black B.B.'s.  And you must hand grind, preferably with a mortar and pestle, so you get some big bits and some tiny bits -- think cracked black pepper.   
3. The recipe calls for 375 grams each of butter and almond paste for the filling. I only used about 3/4 of the filling I made, so I'm cutting down the amount by a little here.
4.  In Sweden, you can get mandelmassa, or 50/50 almond paste, from any grocery store.  I could only find atrocious looking canned crap at my local shop.  I've included a simple recipe for mandelmassa I found online which worked really well and was probably the easiest part of this very long recipe.
5. I also used Doug's mom's rolling technique instead of Vete-katten's, which I didn't really understand through translation.  The picture above features buns wrapped in the Vete-katten method, which is to take a wide strip and wrap it in a knot around your finger.  I much preferred the swirl to dough ratio of Doug's mom's method, detailed (but not pictured) here.   

Translated from the Swedish and adapted to American measurements and ingredients.  I hope you had a good breakfast this morning because you are going to need some energy. 

For the almond paste:
Adapted from CHOW
1 1/2 cups whole raw almonds (make sure they're fresh)
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
5 Tbsp. light corn syrup

1.  Boil water in a medium pot.  Blanch almonds for one minute.  Rinse under cool water.  Squeeze the skins off.
2.  Pulse in a food processor until it's a coarse meal, 20 seconds.
3.  Add powdered sugar.  Pulse again until sugar is blended in.  Add corn syrup and grind until you get a pretty smooth almond paste, 40 seconds.   Set aside. Makes 1 1/2 cups of almond paste. Are you tired?  I hope not.  There are a gajillion more steps.

For the starter dough:

1 block (50g) fresh yeast (or 1 packet dry yeast)
1 cup (250g) finger-warm whole milk (80 degrees F or 26 degrees C)
3 Tbsp. (50g) sugar
12 1/3 oz. (350g) flour

1.  Dissolve yeast in the milk.  Mix in the sugar and flour and work the dough until it's elastic, about 5 minutes in a mixer or 10 minutes by hand.
2.  Cover the dough and let it rise in a warm place until it has doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

For the second rise:

starter dough above
1 cup (250g) whole milk
Scant 1/2 cup (150g) sugar
Scant 1 cup (200g) room temperature salted butter, cut into pieces
2 tsp. (10g) salt
1 1/2 Tbsp. (20g) whole cardamom, coarsely-ground (mortar & pestle work best for this)
26 1/2 oz. (750g) flour
1 egg

1. Mix the starter dough with the rest of the ingredients for the second rise.  Work the dough until it is elastic again, about 15 minutes by hand or 10 minutes in a mixer.  You know the dough is ready when you can stretch it into a thin film without it breaking.
2.  Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes.  Watch some TV.  Grab a magazine.  Maybe grind some more cardamom -- you're gonna need it later.

To make the buns:

Dough above
About 1 1/2 cups (340g) almond paste from above
About 1 1/2 cups (340g) room temperature salted butter
1 1/2 Tbsp. whole cardamom, coarsely ground
2 eggs, beaten
Pearl sugar (pärlsocker), available at European markets like Eagle on 5th Ave. and 17th St. in Brooklyn
Foil cupcake liners
Baking sheets

1.  Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2.  Drop a bunch of foil cupcake liners onto your baking sheets, with about an inch of space between each cup.
3.  Blend almond paste, butter and cardamom in food processor into a light and airy filling.  You can grate the almond paste to make it easier to mix up. 
4.  Divide the dough in half.  Working quickly, roll out one half into a rectangle a bit thinner than 1/4 inch (4mm) thick and 12 inches (30cm) wide.
5.  Spread half the filling over the rectangle.  Starting with the long edge, roll the dough into a tight log.
6.  Using a sharp paring knife, slice through the log in 1/4 inch increments but leaving the last 1/4 inch intact.  Every third cut, slice all the way through the log.  It's like you're making a bunch of pieces of dough in the shape of the letter "E". 
7.  Take the middle slice of each "E" and flip it over so you have a "Y" instead. 
8.  Drop the Y, swirly side up, into a foil cupcake liner.  Don't worry if it's a mess, it'll work itself out in THE NEXT RISE.  Yes, there's still another rise.
9.  Repeat with the other half of the dough, still working quickly.
10.  Brush tops of buns with some egg and sprinkle with the pearl sugar.  Cover with plastic wrap.
11.  Let the buns rise AGAIN for about 45 minutes or until they are double the size. 
12.  Bake in the middle of the oven for 5 minutes.  Then reduce the heat to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) and bake for 10 more minutes until they are golden brown.  Do not overcook or you will have dry buns and you will cry because you worked so very hard all day.

Makes 72 little buns.  If you aren't going to serve them right away, as soon as they are cool, freeze immediately in single layers in Ziploc bags.  Then reheat in the oven any time you are sugen för något söt (craving something sweet), as they say.

Oof, even writing that out made me tired.

In case you haven't ascertained on Twitter (or berated me for not calling on Facebook), I'm in L.A. for a visit with the parents.

My Pau's Asian sauce arsenal is unparalleled. Over the years, the collection of bottles has creeped ever closer to the edge of the counter and stove, multiplying and spreading across the tile like an urban colony of salty sauces in tall glass buildings.  For a few years, the condiments were banished out of sight to a cabinet underneath the sink.  Today, they have reclaimed their proper place in arm's reach, right next to the stove, so you never forget what you've got in stock.  The counter display would probably fill other people with anxiety, but its sprawl comforts me.

This morning, I got a note from a reader who asked me:

"Hi,

My jeans are splattered in fish blood from the broken spine of one particularly tenacious perch. I've got purple splotches on the ass of my jeans where I leaned into a blueberry bush.  My foam and leather sneakers have soaked in some of the bilge water from the boat's bottom.  I am like a mixed media canvas painted by Saltvik, where La Doug's uncle Jonas and aunt Carola live.*



Saltvik is a little Swedish coastal village near Hudiksvall, an almost four hour bus ride north of Stockholm.  Along the highway, the wild archipelago opens out occasionally, flashing its waters between the tall, slender birch trees which dominate the landscape.  The branches hang loose and sparse on the trees' pale limbs, like the thinning, stringy hair of an old woman.





Jonas and Carola live in a picture-perfect Svealand summer house, with a carefully tended garden of flowers and berries and potatoes.  It used to be their summer home, but now they live in Saltvik all year round.  There are neighbors around, but at country distances.

Though they have adult children, Jonas and Carola are lighter on their feet than I am.  Carola jumps through the brush and off the boat with the agility of a teenager.  They are fit and healthy in a very Swedish way, from daily activity like long walks through the country in the morning and evening. 



I get to stay in the unbelievable guest house, a fully-contained apartment with four bunk beds lining the back wall.  The kid in me wants to try all four beds to see which one I'll like best.





Carola and I pick buckets of blueberries by the side of the road.  The land is carpeted in blueberry bushes.  Long clusters of unripe lingonberries are still pale green, touched with rose.  Sweden has a law called allemansrätten, or every man's right, which says that anyone can pole fish and pick berries and mushrooms anywhere, including privately-owned land (to a certain degree).   



We take Jonas and Carola's power boat out and cross the sea to one of the many sparsely populated islands in the Swedish archipelago.  The wind is crisp and cold, but it feels good to be out in the ocean.  At the end of the day, as the rain begins to pockmark the water's surface, we pull dozens of aborrar, perch with fluorescent orange fins, light blue vertical stripes and deep maroon gills, up from nets we've dropped into a little rush-lined bay.  The largest of them becomes dinner.  We steam the 8-inch fillets and serve with a garlic cilantro lime sauce.  Its tender white flesh is moist and firm, juicy and mild, though the skin is quite tough and inedible.  The rest of the aborrar get cleaned and frozen for later.





But my favorite consumption of the weekend is Carola's cake!  It's a masterpiece that couldn't be easier to make. It's perfect for those late summer berries I'll hopefully catch when I get back to New York.  A soft meringue shell is topped with a vanilla custard, fresh redcurrants and blueberries.  I could eat the whole thing in one sitting, easily.

I feel like I don't have enough time to write about all of these brand-new experiences.  I want to write more, remember everything, but then I want to spend my time experiencing more so I have more to remember.  Everything is so exotic to me -- the feeling of a fish in my hands, wriggling and gasping for its life, its belly taut, a half-digested herring stuck in its throat; raking my fingers through the wild blueberry ground cover, catching the tiny orbs in my purple-stained palm; trying desperately to follow dinner conversation in Swedish until my head hurts and I lose all sense of the language.

I hope that when I get back to New York, I can be a tourist in my own life -- to accept every invitation, to not be afraid to hang out with strangers, to be open and brave and willing to tire myself out.  That is allemansrätten, too.

Anyway, it's almost 11am!  I've got to get out of the house.  You should get out of the house, too.  There's a lot of world to see out there.

Carola's rödvinbär tårta

The meringue and custard can both be made ahead of time.  Put plastic wrap directly on your cooled custard so you don't get a custard skin.  Assemble just before serving.

For the meringue shell:

4 egg whites
100 grams ground almonds (7/8 cup)**
1 1/2 dl (2/3 cup) sugar

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).  Whip egg whites hard.  Fold in almonds and sugar.  Draw a 30-cm (12-inch) circle onto a sheet of parchment paper using an overturned plate.  Spread the meringue onto the parchment paper in the circle shape.  Bake in the bottom shelf of the oven for 20-25 minutes until very very light brown and top is no longer glossy.

For the custard:

4 egg yolks
1 dl (scant 1/2 cup) sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla sugar (or vanilla extract)
1 dl (scant 1/2 cup) cream
100 grams (7 tbsp.) butter

Whisk all ingredients except for butter in a small pot.  Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, until custard is thick.  Remove from heat and add butter.  Let cool. 

To assemble:

Beaucoup berries
Meringue
Custard

Top cake with cooled custard.  Top custard with beaucoup berries.  Serve immediately.  Carola suggests something tart, like redcurrants, mixed with wild blueberries.  I am sure it would be just as lovely with whatever berries you have on hand, or fresh peaches.  Serves 8 civilized slices, or 4 slices with 4 second servings.
 

*Did I tell you La Doug is half-Swedish?  Isn't that a fantastic coincidence? Makes me feel that much closer to him.

**Almonds are usually ground with a mandelkvarn, or an almond mill, which is like a hand cranked cheese grater with a vice grip so you can clamp it to the side of your table.  I bought one just to make this cake, but I'm sure you could use a coffee grinder if you don't object to loud electronic devices like I do.

Happy Sweden National Day!  Yesterday's National Day only became an official, no-work holiday about three years ago.  My Swedish friends tell me it wasn't a big deal because it's not like Sweden was celebrating escape from tyranny, since they were always the ones ruling over others.

Sweden is a small country, and despite the fact that their IKEAs have taken over our suburbs, they're unaccustomed to celebrating themselves.  Check out this clip of the country's greatest sports moment in recent history, Sweden's bronze medal in the 1994 World Cup:



Happily, Swedes are plenty good at eating and drinking.  My friend Malin invited me over to celebrate National Day over a kick ass Swedish meal at her house, complete with a variety of snaps (including one lovely fläder-flavored one) and a Sweden v. Denmark football match on TV.  We did a shot for every goal scored -- sadly, the Danes prevailed -- not very nice of them. 

The starter was a stunner -- red onion panna cotta with fresh dill and bleak roe toast.  If you've never had bleak roe, you should see if you can hunt some down -- the roe is tiny and orange, mild and not too salty.



I also had my very first plate of meatballs in Sweden!  Can you believe how long I've held out?  I'm glad I waited for homemade ones.  Köttbullar are to Swedish kids as chicken nuggets are to American kids.  Malin's köttbullar are adult-palate friendly, with tons of pepper and dijon mustard.  I think it's important not to make them too big -- Malin's are about the diameter of a nickel, very dainty.  The gravy is made just by adding water to the browning pan -- genius!

I'm translating and converting her recipe for you here (with the help of Google translate, of course). 



Cutie's Spicy Christmas Meatballs

The Allt om Mat staff used to call Malin "Gullemallan", which means "cutie".  The notes say that the milk and breadcrumbs mixed directly into the meat swells, so you get a solid mixture that's easy to roll, but not dense to eat.  At least I think that's what it says.  Serve with mashed potatoes, lingonberry jam*, sliced mushrooms sauteed in butter, and sweet pickled cucumbers (you can also try this recipe in English).  We finished dinner with a Swedish strawberry parfait -- himmelsk, as they say.  I'm sure these will make an appearance at the Swedish dinner party I'll have to have when I get back to Brooklyn.

1 yellow onion
1 tbsp. butter
1 kg (2.2 lbs.) ground beef, 10% fat
1 egg
2 tbsp. dijon mustard
1 tbsp. salt
1 tsp. white pepper
1 tsp. four-pepper blend, crushed fine
2 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. breadcrumbs
1/2 dl (3 1/3 tbsp.) milk
3 tbsp. butter for frying
2 dl (about a cup) water

1. Mince the onion.  Malin says, "It's very important that the onion is chopped into smithereens! Now I always grate it and then chop it some more. If it's too big pieces the small meatballs will crack." Saute in butter.  Let cool.
2. Mix onion, meat, eggs, mustard, salt, pepper, brown sugar, breadcrumbs and milk.
3. Roll very small meatballs (about the circumference of a nickel).  Wet your hands with some cold water if the meat is sticking to your hands.
4. Melt butter in a frying pan, cast iron or nonstick.  Fry a meatball and taste it.  Fix seasoning as needed.
5. Brown meatballs about 20 at a time on high heat in the butter.  Let them fry until brown on all sides, not too long.  Transfer to a large pot on low heat. 
6. Pour a little water into the frying pan, picking up the fond.  Pour this gravy into the pot with the meatballs.
7. Repeat until all meatballs are browned and all water has become gravy.

*When I first posted, I forgot to include the lingonberry jam.  Malin says, "You must serve the meatballs with lingonberry jam! It is important. :)"