This is an article I wrote a couple weeks ago here in Sweden after I ate at a friend of a friend’s family home. I want to share my experience eating in a typical Swedish household. I think you will find as you read that it is not so different from a family dinner in The States...
Tonight we ate at my friend’s house for dinner and I was excited to see what people are eating at home in Sweden. The apartment of my friend’s friend was neat and designed well as is all of Sweden, as it seems. Architecture and the feel of Stockholm is very clean and neat, well designed with advanced technology much like Japan. Japan and Sweden are very similar in this way. The apartment was on a high floor and as we took the elevator up my stomach started the familiar rumblings of the meal to come. As we walked in our hostess (the mother) greeted us with hugs and greetings in English. The Swedish are very good at speaking English and you can easily get around without having to know any Swedish. The apartment was small but spacious and the kitchen was open to the dining area and living room. There were other guests at the dinner that night, our host (the father) is a UFC fighting coach and some of his students were over watching the fight from the night before on television. It was a merry scene and the energy was cozy and welcoming. One of the guys was a fighter from Brazil; he did not speak much English and no Swedish. But he seemed very nice and laughed a lot. He was here to train and fight in Europe for the next 6 months. He seemed to have an interesting story, being from the flavillas in Brazil I learned later from my friend. Another guy was a Swedish fighter and two others were Turkish brothers but were Swedish born. Both brothers are fighters, the younger one a European champion at only 16 years of age. Our host had been a fighter himself but had dove into a pool head first years ago and broke his neck, paralyzing him. He seemed like a funny guy with a dark sense of humor and liked to talk politics. The host and hostess had two teenage sons that made a short silent appearance to eat separately before the rest of us, typical awkward teenage angst. There were 3 pets in the house, a cat with a huge raccoon-like tail and two small dogs. One looked like a Chihuahua mix with large ears and the other was a mutt that looked a bit like an Ewok. The Chihuahua seemed to take a liking to me and sat by me for a good bit of time. The mother said that was extraordinary since he doesn’t often like people.
As the hostess was busy in the kitchen finishing up the preparation for the meal, cutting lettuce for the salad, there was a familiar scent coming from the oven. We had been told lasagna was on the menu and it smelled rich an appetizing. The oven she using was small and looked like a large microwave built into the wall. I had one similar in Japan but hers looked like a larger more expensive version of the one I had. The kitchen spacious but little counter top and the appliances were all tiny, fitting neatly in the wall.
As we sat watching the UFC fight I was getting pretty hungry and I started think about how popular Italian food is worldwide. It seems everywhere you travel or live; Italian-style pasta dishes are commonplace in households. Even in far-off places like Asia, Italian food seems to have its own rhythm somewhere in the pulse of the culinary heartbeat. It is a fairly easy cuisine to make, usually cheap and filling; making it practical and economical for most households. Most importantly, Italian food is delicious!
We finally sat down to eat and the food looked great. I happen to love lasagna and I always think salad or something crisp and fresh is natural accompaniment to a hot pasta dish. The salad was made with romaine and a type of iceberg lettuces, thinly sliced cucumber and a mild feta cheese diced. The salad had no dressing that I could taste, but the cheese gave it its own flavor. The beef lasagna was rich with ricotta and mozzarella cheese in the traditional Bolognese style. The pasta was tasty and had that homemade quality only a mother could produce, the sort of lasagna that you see in the Garfield the cat scarf down in the cartoon, and the salad was a nice compliment and cut the richness of the main dish. Meat and cheese are very expensive in Sweden, meat especially this year because the grain to feed the livestock did not grow well and most of it had to be imported. Most of us drank milk with our meal. I am always curious about milk in other countries, I do not like milk in the States; I find it watery and to have a noticeable aftertaste. I love rich, creamy milks and the milk I had at the dinner was rich and creamy, it did not taste like the low fat variety even though the carton said otherwise. There was not much conversation during dinner, and what conversation there was at the table was in Swedish. My friend translated that most of the conversation was of politics and the fight we had been watching. I am used to these types of situations and have learned to just smile and try not to look too much like a blank chalkboard. For desert, we had brownies that were from a frozen pack and vanilla ice cream. Our hostess apologized for the store-bought desert, which was cute and charming of her. There was no need to apologize however, the brownie was gooey and uber-rich, and the ice cream was light and fluffy, milky. Most of the guys had seconds on the desert.
Moving back into the living room, we finished watching the UFC fight after dinner and quickly left after that. I was a bit surprised to leave so quickly after eating, in the States it might be considered rude to leave so quickly, but no one seemed to mind and our hosts graciously said goodbyes and we made plans for the next time we would have dinner. We asked our chef to make something traditionally Swedish, so I am very excited at the aspect of experiencing what is considered traditional in a Swedish home. All in all it was a good time and glad to have it as my first "family" experience in Sweden and
hopefully I will get into the kitchen with her next time and be able to share her recipes with everyone on this blog!!
Keep eating!!
No comments:
Post a Comment