LearnSweden Blog

Julbord at Gondolen

By Per Svangren

From the end of November, most restaurants in Sweden serve Julbord (Christmas smorgasbord). Business people will meet over a Julbord lunch, families will join a family Julbord dinner and companies will invite their personel for Thanks-for-this-year Julbord.

To be sure to have a table you must reserve a long time in advance. Especilly at the most famous restaurants. One of them is Gondolen at Slussen in the center of Stockholm. About a hundred meters up, you find Gondolen after taking Katarinahissen up to the top. One of Swedens most famous chefs, Leif Mannerström is the owner of the restaurant.
This year I had the opportunity to have Julbord there.

This is the manual for eating Julbord. You have to visit the table five times in this order:

1. Herring, potatoes, eggs, cheese and bread.

 
  

2. Salmon, eggs, shrimps, fish

3. Patées and other cold dishes

4. Hot dishes sush as saussage, ham, fish, janssons temptation, meatballs.

5. Desserts

And to drink

Julmust or beer and at the first and fourt taking a snaps.

Wherever you are I hope that you find a Julbord near you. If not it's worth the effort to go and look for one ;)

Mormor's Chocolate Cake Cookies

Every year a well stuffed box, wrapped in brown paper, would arrive at our home from Gotland Sweden,just days before Christmas. In it were lovely knitted items and my grandmother's (mormor) famous chocolate cake cookies.

Mom would immediately grab the wodded up newspaper pieces which had been used as packing material. Diligently ,she would start pressing out the crinkles and creases with her hands and then start reading it. The rest of us would don our new hats and mittens, open the cookie tin and start eating.

From behind her paper mom would start throwing out phrases like,"Get those hats off your heads. You'll get over heated." "Don't eat those cookies, they're for Christmas." "At least save a couple for your father."

Well I'll have you know those cookies never made it till Christmas and my father only got one or two the whole season. He never seemed to mind. Many years later I discovered that my mormor ( mother's mother) had given the recipe to my farmor (father's mother) and she would always make my father his very own private batch. Farmor figured that we had been well supplied by my other grandmother and her "poor baby" needed some of his very own, sort of like a "Mother/Son" secret.

When I was about 12 I went over to my grandmother's to pay a short visit and discovered my father sitting at the kitchen table eating my other grandmother's cookies. Freshly baked "other grand-mother's cookies." I could have called in a cookie crime but I didn't. Instead, I sat down at the table and decided to help "cookie face" aka "Dad", lighten his load. It was at that moment that it became a "Mother/Son/Grand-daughter" secret. Until now, when I'm sharing the fact that not only did I get Mormor's cookies but Farmor's freshly baked cookies. So to off set any bad feelings I'm leaving the recipe here.

Oh and here's a friendly reminder that next week is gnome week. I've been getting so much email. I'm so glad that everyone loves gnomes/Tomtes so much. If you have posted about gnomes on your blogs, leave me a friendly comment here and I'll highlight your blog and link back to you. In the spirit of tomtes and gnomes let's be gnomey together.

Mormor’s Chocolate Cake Cookies

·    1 cup of sugar

·    ½ cup of butter, softened

·    1 egg

·    2 ounces melted unsweetened chocolate (cool)

·    1/3 cup of buttermilk or water

·    1 teaspoon of vanilla

·    1 ¾ cups of all purpose flour

·    ½ teaspoon of baking soda

·    ½ teaspoon salt

·    1 recipe of Chocolate frosting

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix sugar, butter, egg, chocolate, buttermilk and vanilla.  Stir in flour, baking soda,  and salt.

Drop dough by rounded coffee spoonfuls and place about 2 inches apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake until almost no indentation remains when touched, 8 to 10 minutes. Immediately remove from cookie sheet, cool. Frost with Chocolate Frosting.

*Tip*

For evenly baked cookies, I place the cookie sheet, with the cookie dough on it, in the oven for 4 minutes . At that time I turn the cookie sheet and bake for another 8 minutes or until done. If baking two cookie sheets at a time, change the bottom sheet to the top and turn. Change the top sheet to the bottom and turn the cookie sheet for the remainder of the cooking time.

Chocolate Frosting

· 2 squares ( 1 ounce each( of unsweetened chocolate

· 2 tablespoons butter

· ¼ cup of water

· About 2 cups of powdered sugar

Heat chocolate and butter over low heat until melted. Remove from heat; stir in water and powdered sugar.

Once cookies are cool, spread frosting on top and if you want add a walnut for dramatic effect.

It's Baking Week

The second Sunday in Advent always opens with intensive baking. Yesterday morning saw Mimi and I pulling out all of the "special" pans, cookie cutters, and molds to start our holiday baking.

Some items are for decorating. Some are to eat during our Jul celebration but mostly these special treats are to give away to friends.

These aren't ordinary cookies but "fancy" cookies that we only bake during the Jul season. This week we will be highlighting some of our family fun baking moments. It takes everybodies help to pull this off. We often remark that we feel like a bakery. Maybe it's because our humble little kitchen has turned into one.

A little taste

by Per Svangren

 
You don´t have to travel far in France to reach a wine district and when there ,you will find a lot of different wine producers. And then it is just to stop, get in and taste and discuss. Often you will leave with some bottles.
We tasted wine in Champagne, Chablis, Chateaux-Neuf-du-Pape, Bourgone, Provence and Alsace. There was a lot of fine and lovely wine found and the car was very full when we arrived home to Stockholm. So now the celler is quite full with a lot of different types of wine, red, white, rosé and sparkling. To drink now or to save for later consumtion.

French Cuisine

By Per Svangren
 
French food, maybe that is enough. I love French cuisine and during our travels down and home we visited a lot of good restaurants which we found in the Michelin Guide, from one star up to three stars. I will have you know that those visits are more than just eating. It is a show for the ears,eyes, and mouth.

 
Cheese, bread, pasteries, mussles, duck liver, oysters, The list can be long, so I'll just wet your appetite with some photos.

 

 
   

To Champagne

by Per Svangren

 My wife and I  went to France. We went by car from Stockholm, via Denmark, and Germany to big and lovely France. Our goal was to reach the Riviera and La Londe, close to Toulon, where we rented a house for a week. Also there, we would be meeting our children and their boy/girlfriends.
So there will be some blogs about the trip, starting today with Champagne.

The district of Champagne is quite small but contains many vineyards producing the lovely, sparkling white vine that has become so famous that the producers  have problems nowadays to produce enough for all buyers.
We stoped at many vineyards in and around Epernay and tasted and bought a lot of bottles. One of our favourites was Eric Isselée, where we also stayed over  night in a lovely little room in the middle of the wine fields. The sun was shining and it was quite warm when we arrived. So after placing all of things in the room, we took a bottle of cold champagne an sat down in the garden. Surrounded by grape vines we enjoyed the lovely taste of a bottle from Eric Isselée.

 

Farewell to Summer

By Per Svangren

It is well known that I like my food and drink. I love to cook and to present it in an elegant and beautiful way on the plate. I mostly use ingredients that are in season and are locally produced,and organic. Today, on this first day of Autumn, I thought we would take one more look at the lovely dishes from our summer on Gotland. Hejdå summer.

Wisby ice-cream

By Per Svangren

 

Today most ice-cream is produced on a large scale and transported all around the country. Several years ago we had a lot of small ice-cream makers in Sweden and each city had their own ice-cream. Big companies bought them out and then we had just a few ice-cream flavors to choose from.

But on Gotland, you can  still find these small ice-cream makers and Wisby glass (ice-cream) is one of them. In a small shop in the old town you can buy freshly made hard or soft ice-cream.  There are many flavors to choose from. Each container is made from cream and fresh fruits or other tastes.

My favorite is soft ice-cream in a big cone.  If you can´t choose between soft or hard, you can always have a Beslutsångest ( a help to choose). That is both hard ice-cream and soft ice-cream.

I love the ice-cream from Wisby glass and I really like to buy from a small ice cream maker. You know that it's fresh and original. It's a way to shop and eat green at the same time.

The fisherman in Lergrav

By Per Svangren

 

The second restaurant worth visiting in Rute, from The White guide, is a small restaurant or better said café just by the sea in Lergrav.

Just a couple of years ago the small fish shop was owned by a fisherman. Then you could by fresh fish or fantastic already cooked fish dishes. Unfortunately, he passed away,much too early in life.,but the fish shop still lives.

 Now with a new owner and no fresh fish. Here you now can have coffee with fresh baked cakes, hard bread with fried herring or smoked salmon or shrimp. All very fresh and very tasty.

 

And maybe the best of all, the lovely sitting area, indoor or outdoor, where you can enjoy the lovely view of the sea or  all the Raukar (stones in different shapes).

 

 

 

 

New potatoes

Early this year my wife started planting potatoes in old milk carons. In her work room she left them to start growing, 80 inall. These new potatoes, along with all of her other plant seedlings, waited in her work room until it was time to plant them in summer.

During this summer we have been eating from the garden. Potatoes,lettuce, red beets, carrots, tomatoes, strawberries and more.

What could be better than to go out into the garden before I start cooking dinner and fetch exactly what I need? Dig up one or two plants of potatoes, clean them and then boil them together with salt and a bunch of dill weed. Add a little salt and butter and serve together along with herring, salmon or lamb from the grill.