A taste of Swedish summer Posted by jennie on Aug 3, 2010 in Culture
It is still holiday season in Sweden and I’m doing an excellent job of fully enjoying it, dividing the lazy days between my parents summer house and a boat, hopping around the thousands of islands here on the west coast. Hard times, isn’t it? The sea around here (Skagerack) are practically not tidal at all – half a metre, at the most – which makes the water and the surroundings very accessible. You can basically live right on the sea and there’s never any danger of being caught by tidal waves (read: even I can master a boat!). The weather has been excellent (mostly sunny and around 20-25 degrees), the water has been amazing (21 degrees, warm when you swim all year around) and the food has, as always when spending summers in Sweden, been… well, pretty much the same every day. Let’s put it this way: If you are not a fan of the barbeque, well then you might have a problem.
BBQ season in Sweden kicks off as soon as the days are getting a bit warmer and longer.
By the time we hit midsummer, you can’t walk 
anywhere around dinner time without being surrounded by the lovely smell of barbequed meat and exciting marinades. EVERYONE barbeques, in some apartment blocks you are even aloud to do it on the balcony and pretty much all big blocks of flats have common areas with barbeques. Many public areas has big barbeques that anyone can use and the sales of disposable barbeques are rocketing by this time. Well, you get the picture. Pork meat, sausages, chicken, salmon, vegetables…. anything that can go on the barbeque will go on the barbeque, eaten with new potatoes – only to be found in Sweden between June and August – or a potatoe sallad, a green sallad and a cold sauce of any kind.
The first ten times you dig into this plate of traditional summer food, it’s like heaven. You aaah and mmm throughout the whole meal and it always ends with comments like “Why don’t we do this more often?!” and “There is nothing like a grilled piece of meat!”. Come July, the barbeque meals are not that exciting anymore, but hey, it’s summer and summertime means barbeque time! Once again we light our grills, buy another exciting jar of marinade and eat with a little less aaah but still a bit of mmm.
Come August, the barbeque smells are a lot less frequent. The comments around the dinner table are more subdued and the flyer from the take away pizza place are looking more tempting by the hour. Yesterday, we all hit that point and that is exactly why we are having Calzone, Capricciosa and Margaritha on the menu tonight. And boy I can’t wait.
PS: In between the barbeques, we have been doing some foraging as well. Here are some of our amazing treasures:
What have you been eating this summer? Vad har du ätit i sommar?
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Comments:
Erik NorCal:
This also happens here in Northern Cal where I live. Because our winters are so mild we can begin the bar-b-que season in mid-February. By April or May we are cooking outside all most every night as a way to reduce the heat load in the house. BBQ ribs teriaki chicken and fish, marinated steaks, shish kabobs, it’s all good and i forgot to mention the tomatos which I really long for during the winter but when that’s all you every get every day you get bored. By mid September we are dreaming of stews, macaroni and cheese, shepard’s pie, steaming bowls of split pea soup etc All of these provide warmth and comfort during our winter (Swedish readers can laugh here, it’s ok) but by February we are beginning to think about pulling out the bbq and so it begins again.
PS Will be having a crayfish party in two weeks!
SKÅL!!!
Luke (Sydney):
BBQ..mmm….I better come in summer then 🙂
Daniel:
Your treasures look quite tasty, but I’m not sure what it is. The first one looks like yellow mushrooms and the second one is some sort of crab, I guess. Could you tell us more about what you’ve found? 🙂
jennie:
Erik: Skål indeed!!
Luke: Funny, I was waiting for your comment 🙂
Daniel: Oh sorry! The first one is chanterelles, wild mushrooms, the best of the bunch. THe second picture is of crabs, deep sea crabs that we caught with nets. Amazing wild food, ready to be eaten!
Jan:
You forgot to mention surströmming. Up in the north, served on the large white crisp bread, with small boiled fingerling potatoes, chopped onions and butter—add a cold beer—-heaven!
jennie:
@Jan: Surströmming… I haven’t had a chance to try this classic piece of food, but I would lie if I said the smell made me want to… Maybe I should do it for the blog? And film it aswell? 🙂
The crisp bread, poatoes and beer sounds brill though! 🙂
Hope you get to enjoy alot of surströmming!
Erik Nor Cal:
Oh yes please do a vid on surströmming…not the ….part
Jan:
Unfortunately, I have have searched for surströmming, but I don’t believe that it is exported. From memory of the bulging can lids, I can imagine there is a bit of volatility in moving the product through pressurized environments–e.g., exploding on planes! Heaven only knows that having a burst can anywhere would probably require an evacuation! I do remember this as a summer time event, primarily outside, and at the summer cabin!
Camilla:
@Jan: as a matter of fact surströmming isn’t exported due to high concentrations of environmental toxins. It is alowed to catch and prepare but not export.