How to cook Swedish Crayfish

The other day, Gustaf asked me if I would go down to the lake and fish crayfish with him.  When Gustaf was small, we would often go down to a creek near where we lived and catch crayfish.  We only ever caught a few at a time, mainly for the fun of catching them, rather than for the eating.  So, when he asked me this, I had visions of sitting for hours trying to catch some pesky crayfish by hand, and I politely declined the pleasure.

So the next day, I was quite surprised when he went to pick up his haul of crayfish.  He had obviously moved on in terms of technique because he had laid out a crayfish cage.  He caught a bucket worth, 44 to be exact, of which he threw 10 back because they were too small.

When he proudly and happily came home with his bucket of crayfish, Farfar sprang into action.  He showed Gustaf how to flavor the boiling water.  He added salt, tasting periodically until it was sufficiently salty.  Farfar whipped out a bag of frozen home grown crown dill, which is the flower of a fully grown dill plant and is traditionally used to flavor boiling water for seafood in Sweden. He threw in a few sugar cubes and then pronounced it ready.

After the water was brought to boil, we threw in the crayfish.  "All at once," admonished Farfar, annoyed when I tried to stop the action to take a picture, "otherwise the water cools and the last crayfish don't die immediately."  The crayfish are boiled for a few minutes and then set out to cool in the cooking water. Two days later, we sat down to eat perfectly salty, sweet crayfish.

Here's roughly how we did it, with a rough estimation of the measurements of sugar and salt that Farfar threw in:

About 1 kilo freshwater crayfish (about 25 to 35, depending on size)
2 teaspoons sugar
about 3 liters water
about 1.5 dl salt
6 to 8 heads crown dill

Take a large pot that will generously hold the crayfish and fill with water.  Add salt until the water is as salty as sea water.  Add sugar and crown dill.  Bring the water to a boil.  Add the crayfish. Put the lid on.  Boil for about 7 to 8 minutes.  Take off the stove and set aside with the lid on.  Leave it to cool.  Put the pot in the refrigerator and leave to sit, preferably overnight.  It can keep a few days like this in the refrigerator.

To eat a crayfish, take a crayfish in one hand.  With your fingers, pry up the bodyshell where it hits the tail.  It will come off, leaving the tail attached to the body and legs.  Put your mouth on the naked body and suck the juices.  Trust me, it tastes good.  Check the shell to see if there is some good "butter" in there and eat it.  Pull the body off off the tail.  Flip the tail over and break the shell and pull the tail meat out.  Eat it.  This is the best part.  If the claws are large, you can break the shell with your teeth and pull out the meat. Repeat.

Eat the crayfish cold.  The traditional accompaniments are a cold glass of schnapps and hard bread with cheese. Skål!

Juniper Smoked Scallops

This seems to be the summer when I write about Fäviken, the famous restaurant near Åre in Sweden, even though my one meal there was a couple of years ago.  I just posted the recipe for a meadowsweet cordial that was inspired by Fäviken, and now this. Among the many memorable dishes were the fattest scallops that I have ever seen, served in its shell.  The waitor informed us that they were fresh from Norway, which is less than 50km away.  The next summer after we ate at Fäviken, there were fresh scallops in their shells at the fishmonger.  They were expensive, but we had to try to recreate this dish, or to be more precise, Peter had to recreate the dish, grilling and seafood being part of his manly terrain.

It has become an annual ritual of summer for us to eat these scallops, whenever we can get scallops on the shell at the market, which is not that often.  I had thought about putting it on my blog, but cleaning the scallops is time consuming and a bit much for your average cook, and, in fact, I have never done it, only watched Peter.  This year, Gustaf requested these scallops for his birthday dinner.  We were unable to get the scallops on the shell, so we decided to try make the dish using frozen scallops.  The result was splendid, cheaper, and so so easy.  Now, Faiviken's version, as I recall, was delicate, with just a smidge of butter, and a whisper of smoke.  Peter's version is more. More butter, more smoke.  And I think it is even better than the original.

The dish just requires three ingredients: scallops, butter, and juniper.  Somehow, when the scallops meet the butter and both are infused with the aromatic smoke from the juniper, the results are much much greater than you would believe.  The buttery juices are delectable and must be soaked up in lots of crusty bread or a spoon, if you are greedy.

This recipe is more of a method than an exact science.

Gather an armful of juniper.  This is a common plant, so you probably have a juniper tree growing near you somewhere.  You can identify them by their blueish purple berries which can be picked and used to flavor wild game dishes, a commong flavoring here in Sweden.

Allow 2 to 3 large scallops per person, for a starter, more if you are serving these as your main course.  You can use fresh or frozen, the largest that you can find.  I found mine at the local ICA store in the frozen section, about 30 scallops in one bag.  If you are in the USA, Costco has excellent frozen scallops and I recomend those unless you have a really good trusted fishmonger.

Light an outdoor grill with charcoal.  While the coals are heating, you can prepare the scallops. Get ready copious amounts of butter.

Find a cast iron pan or something that will take the heat of a grill and has some edges to capture the juice. We used a Swedish pancake pan, which has convenient depressions. On a cast iron pan, arrange large splodges of butter--more than you think necessary.  Then double that amount.  Lay the mussels on top of the butter.

When the grill is hot, throw the juniper onto it.  It will start smoking immediately. Alot of smoke. Put the rack down and then put the pan with the mussels on top.  Put the lid on the grill.  Let the mussels cook for a couple of minutes until the butter is melted and slightly bubbling. The mussels will taken on some color from the smoke.


Serve immediately, spooning the juices over the scallops with lots of crusty bread to soak up the flavored buttery juices.  Don't be shy about dipping your bread into any juices that might remain in the pan.  Try not to fight over it.

Foraging: Meadowsweet (Älggräs) Cordial

A couple years ago, I had the pleasure of going to Fäviken, the celebrated restaurant in Northern Sweden near Åre, Sweden's largest ski resort. It was like entering into a winter fairy tale, walking from the candle lit pathway dug out of the snow into the sparsely decorated barn-like interior of the restaurant, where dried mushrooms were hanging, a fire burning, and a bear coat was casually hanging in a corner.  We had brought our two boys along with us and after we had sat us down, the attentive staff informed us that they had prepared a special non-alcoholic drinking menu for the boys.  For each course of the meal, they brought the boys a different drink and made them guess what was in the drink.  Many of the flavors we could guess and were familiar tasting.  But one was competely new to us.  A honey flowery scented drink.  It was delicious but elusive.  What could it be?  They told us it was flavored with meadowsweet, an herb.  I kept this nugget of knowledge in my brain, intending to look up the herb at some point....and this summer, many years after that beautiful Fäviken dinner, the nugget resurfaced and I looked it up.

The scientific name for Meadowsweet is Filipendula ulmaria. In Swedish it is called älggräs. The plant has small white flowers which have a strong distinctive smell like honey and almonds.  The leaves are also fragrant with a different sweet scent with a more grassy note.  The entire plant, incuding the root, has medicinal uses. It is mentioned by Chaucer and was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I to strew in her apartments to keep them smelling sweet.  In the middle ages, it was often called meadwort because its flowers were used to flavor mead and is still used today to flavor beers.

Even more interesting, I found that meadowsweet had been used to make  aspirin!  Like willow, meadowsweet contains pain relieving compounds and in the 1800s, they experimented distilling the chemicals that relieve pain from the plant.  Bayer named this new compound "aspirin" after the old scientific name of meadowsweet which was then called spiraea ulmaria. Later scientists realized that that the drugs they had made from willow were the same as those from meadowsweet, namely salicylic acid.

I found that there are many recipes for meadsweet cordial, so I had to try it.  As has become my routine, I showed the picture of the plant to my son, Gustaf.  He said, "Oh yeah, that's everywhere."  I gave him a look which he understood to mean, "Get me some now".  He ran off and returned ten minutes later with a large handful of flowers.  I smelled them and compared them to the pictures, and voila!  I had meadowsweet.  I rushed to the kitchen and boiled up some sugar water and poured it over the flowers.  I tasted.  It was delicious.  The flavor was flowery and aromatic with very strong almond notes.  It had a slight bitter after taste.  After some research, I determined that this was due to the salicylic acid in the plant and could be minimized by stripping the flowers from the stems.

Yesterday, Gustaf and I went out with a basket and picked a huge bunch of flowers and made the cordial again.  In order to save a lot of work picking out the stems, I recomend that you strip the flowers off stems as you pick.  Even with beautiful bunches of de-stemmed flowers, the cordial may have a bitter after-taste, which you may or may not like, depending on your affinity to bitter flavors. The recipes that I found all instruct you to infuse the flowers overnight.  However, I noticed that immediately after infusing the flowers, the syrup tasted flavorful without any bitterness.  Half an hour later, the flavor was is much stronger but bitter tannin notes popped up.  The resulting drink, once diluted with water, only had mild tannin afternotes.  Even so the next time, I will only let it infuse for 10 minutes before straining out the flowers.   For the final cordial, I added citric acid to give it a sour refreshing taste.  The almond flavor of the flowers alone is lovely, but a little cloying. Many recipes use lemon for this.

The leaves of the meadowsweet plant also make a nice tissane.  I stripped off a couple of leaves and put them in a mug and poured boiling water over it.  After it had infused for two to three minues, I drank it.  It has a clean grassy flavor with a nutty overtone. 

Makes about 2 liters

about 20 handfuls of  de-stemmed meadowsweet flowers
2 liters water

2 kilograms sugar

60 grams citric acid

2 pinches sodium benzoate (2 mililiters)

In a large pot, put in the sugar and the water.  Bring the water to a boil and let cook until all the sugar is fully dissolved.  

Pick over the meadowsweet flowers, making sure you have as little stems as possible.  The stems and leaves of meadowsweet contain salicylic acid, which is a main component in aspirin.  While the amounts in the cordial are not enough to be really medicinal, the stems can make the drink bitter.

Once the sugar is dissolved, take the pot off the stove and add in the meadowsweet flowers, citric acid and the sodium benzoat and stir very well.  The citric acid will give it a pleasant sourness and complexity, which I think is refreshing against the honey almond flavor of the flowers.

The sodium benzoat is a preservative.  You can leave it out, if you like, but then you should either keep the finished saft in the refrigerator or freeze it.  If you do use the sodiumbenzoat, do NOT add it to the water while you are boiling it. This can make your saft very bitter flavored.

Stir the mixture and leave it to sit for 10 to 15 minutes. Strain out the flowers by pouring the mixture through a fine sieve.  I do it first through the finest colander I have, which takes away most of the flowers but leaves some petals.  Then I use a plastic and fabric coffee filter that I bought very cheaply to strain the rest.   Decant into clean, sterilized bottles.  If you have used the preservative, the cordial can stand in the cupboard.  If not, then keep it in the refrigerator or freeze it in baggies.

Note:  While I generally have made cordial and kept it in bottles at room temperature, just lately I have had problems with molding and yeasting.  I have gotten tired of throwing away gorgeous bottles of cordial away, so I have decided to store all my cordial now in the freezer.

To serve, add cold water or fizzy water to taste.  

Foraging: Lambs Quarters (Svinmålla)

Of the many things that I love about Sweden, foraging for edibles ranks on top.  Unlike in the USA, at least where I have lived, the Swedes still maintain bonded to the land and old traditions still live.  Many Swedes have a country home, usually a simple cottage near a lake or in the forest, where they retreat for the holidays.  It is typical to see Swedes hanging out their laundry in the countryside and picking wild flowers in the fields.

Picking mushrooms and wild berries is a favorite activity, beloved by most. There is a satisfaction in the hunt.  An excitement as to what you might find, whether you will return home with your basket empty or full of edible treasure.

Another very typical country activity is making "saft" or cordial during the summer, with whatever might be available in your garden.  Most country houses have a few currant bushes and perhaps a rhubarb plant or gooseberry.  Elderflower trees grow everywhere and elderflower cordial made from the flowers is a traditional marker of summer.

This summer, I found a website called Dags att Plocka (Time to Pick) which will send you a weekly newsletter on what is ready to be foraged.  This week's newsletter discussed a common weed called Lamb's Quarter or Svinmålla, in Swedish.  The Latin name is Chenopodium album.  The newletter intrigued me.  Lamb's quarters were commonly used as a main food item in the middle ages but spinach gradually replaced it.  Lamb's quarter is very nutrious, a good source of vitamins A and C.  It said that in India and other countries, the plant, called bathua, is still cultivated for food and used in curries.  I had to try it.

My son and I went out in the fields nearest to our house to have a look.  We found a plant that looked similar, but we weren't sure because the leaves weren't exactly the same as in the photographs. I showed a picture to my husband.  He said that the last time his father had been to visit us, he had pointed out a whole field of lamb's quarter.  His father had mentioned that it was edible. Eureka! This morning he went out and picked me a basket. Tonight I cooked it for dinner.  It was delicious.  It tastes like a mild spinach.  In fact, if you ate it without knowing what it was, you would think it was spinach.

The plant is quite distinctive because of the shape of the leaves. The entire plant is edible, including the seeds, which are a relation of the very fashionable quinoa.  You can use it in the same manner as you would use spinach.  For dinner, I briefly blanched it with a bit of boiling water, and then I sauteed it with garlic and olive oil. Tommorrow, I plan to use the leftovers in a omelette.  I won't be buying spinach again here in the summer! Why would I when I can have lamb's quarter, fresh, delicious, and free?