(Chronology dispensed with for the time being – I’ve been a bit busy to keep track)
I find my culinary urges change quite markedly as the seasons move from summer into winter and vice versa. With even the slightest hint of bright spring evenings, I’m all for zesty Thai salads and plenty of challenging flavours. At this time of year, though, it’s all about rib-sticking comfort foods and this is where (among other things) a year-long experience of Swedish food comes in handy as a reference point. Like, I imagine, many people of my age, I left home and started fending for myself around the time British supermarkets started to become more cosmopolitan, meaning that my generation was probably the first in a long time to conceive of meals being based around something other than the humble potato. We now have easy access to pasta, rice, noodles, dhal, bulgar wheat, cous-cous and even quinoa… all able to provide a solid, earthy basis for a meal. However, the Swedes can teach us a lot about the comfort food qualities of the potato. You just have to be prepared to throw cardio-vascular caution to the wind, forget your boiled/mashed/baked/roast preconceptions and be liberal with the cow products.
Swedish Comfort Dinner 1
Pytt i panna
Assuming you’ve recently eaten roast pork (any slab of pig meat should do it; even lamb or beef at a push) and have enough left for another meal, take it out of the fridge and cut into 1cm cubes, fat and all. Then grab some spuds. Anything, really, as long as they’re not new potatoes. For a good two-person feed with just enough leftovers for most of tomorrow’s dinner, a kilo should do it. Peel and cut into 1cm cubes. Do the same with two onions. Now heat a large knob of butter and a couple of glugs of oil in a big pan… fry the potato, stirring. I also throw in a teaspoonful of caraway seeds [later edit: a tablespoonful of dill seeds also works!] because I love them with potato (some Swedes may well do the same, but I don’t know for sure).
When the potato is golden, remove it with a slotted spoon (leaving as much oil in the pan as possible) and replace with the onion and meat. When the onion is soft and translucent, return the potato to the pan and heat the whole lot thoroughly. To share my blissful memories of eating this at the school I attended, serve topped with a fried egg and with pickled beetroot on the side.
Swedish Comfort Dinner 2
Jansson’s Frestelse
Or “Johnson’s Temptation”, in translation. I’d go for a bit less potato here, otherwise it overpowers the other ingredients… go for around 700-800g. This one’s a bit more labour intensive; you need to peel and cut the potatoes into little matchsticks about 0.5cm thick and as long as is convenient (mine usually end up being about 3-4cm long). Chop an onion and open a can of anchovy fillets and a small carton of single cream.
Heat a knob of butter and a slug of oil, then fry the potato matchsticks and onion until the potatoes lose their crispness. Add the cream, along with the same amount of milk (using the handy empty cream carton) and a generous grinding of black pepper. Cook the whole lot on a gentle heat for 5-10 mins. Now for the closest this blog entry is going to get to poncy culinary artistry… put half of the potato slop into a large casserole dish, arrange the anchovies evenly over the top, and layer the rest of the potato on top of that. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the whole thing, like the first snow of an idyllic Swedish winter, and bake in the oven (gas 4 or 5) for about 30 mins. Serve with cold ham and pickles.
Oh, and join a gym. You’ll thank me for it in the long run.