Notes from a Swedish Kitchen by Margareta Schildt Landgren

Author:Margareta Schildt Landgren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: IMM Lifestyle

Summer in Sweden

Swedish summers tend to be short, which is why we Swedes throw ourselves into summer activities and holidays. Many people are known to take four weeks off work and head out to a summer cottage in the countryside. Given that the snow doesn’t melt until June in the north of Sweden, and will start falling again in October, it’s not surprising everyone wants to make the most of the warmth and the light. I went to university in Umeå up in Norrland, the most northerly part of Sweden, and having experienced the winters there I now really appreciate the longer summers far south in Skåne. It has to be pouring with rain and blowing a gale before Swedes will admit defeat and celebrate Midsummer Eve indoors, and the joke goes that it’s only when the schnapps is being diluted by the rain that it’s time to go back inside.

If there is one taste that makes a Swedish summer for me, it has to be dill. This straggly, dull-looking herb rises to kitchen stardom when the time comes for summer food. While Swedes use dill all year round, home-grown dill is ready to be picked at about the same time as the first new potatoes are lifted. Potatoes are almost always cooked with a few sprigs of dill, and then garnished with a dusting of finely chopped dill just before serving. Dill is used in many light summer sauces to go with fish, and in many pickles, too. Later, when autumn begins to creep in at the end of August and it’s time for a crayfish party, the dill will have grown tall and produced its ‘crowns’ of seeds. Crayfish are cooked with great fistfuls of the herb and then decorated with the beautiful heads.

Summer is, of course, berry season. First strawberries, then currants, raspberries, gooseberries and bilberries follow in perfect succession. In the summer I eat berries in some form nearly every day, often just as they are. The most luxurious of all are probably sun-warmed wild strawberries, threaded on a long blade of grass to take with us to the beach. This profusion of berries also stirs a gatherer instinct, as it’s the time to make jam and fruit syrups ready to be enjoyed in the long cold winter. We Swedes pick punnets and punnets of strawberries at pick-your-own farms, and make enough jam to last until the following summer – just perfect with pancakes, waffles, rice pudding or scones.

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