August is crayfish season in the Swedish food calendar. Most Swedes have at least one crayfish party to attend with silly hats, lots of singing and schnapps. But what is on the menu the rest of the year?
August 7 marks the unofficial crayfish premiere in Sweden. Hats on, bottoms up. Photo: Maskot
Much is written about the role of food in Swedish festivals and celebrations; smörgåsbord for Christmas, smörgåsbord for Easter, smörgåsbord for Midsummer. But, to paraphrase the Bible, man cannot live on half-a-dozen party dinners alone. What of the other 300-and-something days that make up a year? What do Swedes subsist on between honeyed hams, numerous types of herring and too much schnapps?
Swedish cuisine has a solid and traditional foundation: husmanskost, essentially home-cooked food or everyday fare. It’s the stuff that generations of Swedes have been weaned on, and, as a cursory glance at any modern crèche menu will tell you, still is.
Yes, Swedes do still eat meatballs, but they're just as likely to eat Thai on a weekday evening. Photo: Emil Larsson / Food From Sweden
Where would the Muppet chef be without his Swedish meatballs? And where would traditional Swedish cuisine be without its blood pudding, fried Baltic herring, salt pork, meat hash, smoked fish and pea soup.
Healthier options
But Sweden is no France, and its food is no sacred cow. At supermarket checkouts nationwide you are just as likely to see Swedes buying Tex-Mex tacos, sushi kits and Thai stir-fries as you are to find them with meatballs or pork chops in their shopping baskets.
Björn Olsson, external communications manager for ICA, the largest food retailer in Sweden, says: “We are seeing more pre-prepared meals being sold, as people have less time to prepare traditional meals. People are also buying healthy foods: low salt, low fat and more fruit and vegetables; everything that traditional Swedish food is not.
Green is gold in Swedish supermarkets - fruit and vegetables are big sellers. Photo: ICA
“Foreign foods, from Thailand and Italy, for example, have grown in popularity during the past three or four years. So much so that we now produce our own separate lines from these countries, and display them in their own dedicated sections in our shops.”
Accessible foods
On its web-based recipe search ICA has categories for recipes from Asia, the Caribbean, China, Cuba, Eastern Europe, France, Greece, India, the Middle East, Mexico, North Africa, Russia and Spain.
Eric Dahlgren, who shops most weeks at his local store in Knivsta, 60 kilometers north of Stockholm, says: “When I was growing up, peppers, if you ever saw them, were only green, fruit meant apples and pears, and an exotic dinner was meat with brown sauce. But my kids are happy to eat food from any part of the world, and we buy most of it right here in our local supermarket.”
Tradition of openness
So what drives this hunger for global cuisine? It could be the result of Swedes’ love of travel and their openness to new experiences. After all kåldolmar, a Swedish classic of minced meat and rice wrapped in green cabbage, is not Swedish at all. King Karl XII introduced the Turkish dish to Sweden sometime in the 18th century.
There is also a growing multiculturalism to take into account. Thai restaurants, kebab shops, Greek restaurants and pizzerias have now spread to every corner of the country. The pizzeria is to Swedish towns and villages what the pub is to the UK: one on every corner.
It’s more likely, though, that it is a combination of the two and Swedes’ lack of a gourmet cuisine to call their own.
New Swedish cuisine gains ground
In the grand scheme of great cuisines, Sweden is more in the league of the UK or The Netherlands than of France, Italy or China.
But what goes around comes around, and traditional Swedish cuisine is as tough as its Viking ancestors. The traditional Swedish sausage, korv, is the only fast food that can give pizza a run for its money. And other traditional foods are resurfacing fast, albeit in new clothes.
Stefan Karlsson of Fond restaurant, Göteborg, says: “Swedish ingredients are pure: grazing game, fish and shellfish from clean, cold waters, mushrooms and berries from the forests, and sweet vegetables from the southern plains of Skåne.”
Karlsson is one of an ever-increasing band of Swedish chefs cooking what he calls new Swedish cuisine.
“People are not interested in old style husmanskost,” he says. “There is an image problem associated with it. People think it is more cosmopolitan to eat foreign foods. But I increasingly find that my customers want old style food done well, with a modern twist, using excellent local ingredients.”
And with Karlsson serving up dishes such as locally caught wild salmon in the shape of gravadlax with maple syrup and roasted lemon brioche, who needs sushi anyway?
Facts
- According to Allt om Stockholm, the leading Stockholm restaurant search engine, there are 33 national cuisines available in the city, not including Swedish.
- In downtown Stockholm, the website lists 37 Swedish restaurants, 17 sushi, 13 Asian, 5 Indian and 4 Lebanese.
- Meatballs appear in one form or another in the national cuisines of Albania, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Holland, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.
- Swedish furniture giant Ikea sells 150 million meatballs a year worldwide.
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Rob Hincks is a British freelance writer and editor living in Sweden, who, when not at his desk, can usually be found at his stove cooking cuisine best described as refusing to fit into any nationality.
The author alone is responsible for the opinions expressed in this article.
Classification: A156ENa
© Photo 1: Maskot
© Photo 2: Emil Larsson / Food From Sweden
© Photo 3: ICA
© Photo 4: David Sanger
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