CFAN 3528

  The kitchen in Swedish Taste Stockholm. Sadly, today was our last night in Stockholm. For our send off dinner, we had our last cooking class at the Swedish Taste kitchen in Stockholm. This class was a lot of fun for me!! I always wanted to be a chef growing up and this class gave us all the chance to make a fancy, four-course meal together. There were a lot of moving parts so we were divided up into groups to do different parts of each course. The four courses were a scallop dish, a steak tartare, a lamb dish, and a rhubarb and strawberry sorbet. My group was making the main dish, the seared lamb with potatoes and roast vegetables. I started off by trimming and searing the lamb with butter, garlic, and thyme, and after that was done I assisted the steak tartare group and cut the steak into small cubes. We all may have been in different groups, but at this point in the trip we all felt like a family and everyone was helping each other and we could all joke as we cooked.  I'm...

Exterior of the Östermalms Saluhall market. Today we started off with a tour of  Östermalms Saluhall  indoor food hall. While our tour guide was a little late, we were still able to see the market before it got too busy. We had the chance to go up to the balconies at the top of the market to see the layout of the whole market and the decorations along the ceiling and walls. I really loved this market because there was so much history behind it, but sadly they are now grappling with how they can continue to keep the market open during tourist off-seasons. The market used to be primarily made up of over 100 individual stalls where vendors could sell their fresh fish and produce to people and they could leave when they used up their stock. The inside of the market has preserved a lot of the original architecture for the stalls, but the decorations along the walls have been redone and restored. Our guide was talking about how the vendors have started to have restaurants and c...

One of the buildings on the KTH Royal Institute of Technology campus. After the talks we saw today I am considering doing a master's degree at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology , which would make me yet another one of Hal's students that have moved to Europe since being in his class... Jokes aside and regardless of if that happens or not, what I loved about class today was that I got to see a college with a strong program in the intersection of what I am interested in. I've been able to study food science and computer science at the U of M, but I haven't seen those combined in a focused way outside of the research I do at the U. KTH has a dedicated research group that is looking at food security and resilience, and they specifically bring in data visualization as an important aspect of their research and methodology. Talking to producers while on this trip has continued to hone my interest in the human side of agriculture and the politics that influence agricultural...

Sign at the entrance to Rosendals Trädgård Today we visited  Rosendals Trädgård  and got to tour their grounds and eat lunch in their orchard. This visit was interesting to me (as every activity as been), but it has continued to be intriguing because we got to hear how they have worked as an organic garden. This whole trip I have been focusing on organic farming processes and the efforts that the producers we visit have put into being sustainable. I loved that we were able to see how the gardens create compost from the material in the gardens that they prune and recovery throughout the year. I've been a part of an engineering project where we designed a composting system, so this was somewhat familiar to me, but it was at a much larger scale than anything I've seen before. We haven't been able to see much of the composting that the other farms and gardens we've visited have had, so it was cool to see how they have divided their composting into many different small bins ...

Today we did a hike with Green Trails  and had a fika in the woods around a campfire. You can see on the left the pot of coffee we brewed over the fire. We also had rolled pieces of bread with cinnamon, sugar, and butter that we toasted on the grate. This was a meaningful experience: we all got to work together to light the fire and could share a cup of coffee and talk in a beautiful forest. Our tour guides talked about how important it is to just spend time with people you care about and take an intentional coffee, or fika, break. I think the intentionality is such a key part of the experience; I feel like in America people will grab coffee but won't have it be an intentional break from what they are doing because they will drink it as they work or commute. Obviously this isn't true for everyone, but it was interesting to hear from the guides about how prominent fikas are in Swedish culture. Pouring the coffee out of the pot with a tree branch as the coffee filter also made i...

Today we did a cruise around the Stockholm Archipelago on the Stromma Brunch Cruise . This cruise was interesting because like the welcome dinner we had, it showcased many traditional Swedish foods at the brunch buffet. Pictured here is a plate of food from the buffet including pickled herring, pasta salad with herring, potato salad with herring, and Swedish meatballs along with bread and some salami and cheese. As you can probably tell, there were a lot of dishes that had pickled or smoked herring in them. Pickled herring is a common Swedish dish and there were many more dishes that had it than I was able to eat while on the boat. What was also interesting to me was the fact that the buffet also had falafels, couscous salad, vegetarian egg rolls, barbecue short-ribs, and chicken wings. It was a strange to see all of these different cuisines mixed together in one buffet, but once again I think it shows that globalization and immigration have moved Swedish cuisine away from an entirely...

Our welcome dinner in Stockholm was at Restaurang Kvarnen : a historically significant Swedish restaurant in Stockholm that has served as a spot for Swedish home cooking since 1908. Like many of the other restaurants that we have been to in Scandinavia, a elderflower based drink was featured on the drink menu. Elderflower is common in the Northern Hemisphere and is used in drinks across Europe. The main feature of the meal was the Swedish meatballs with lingonberries, gravy, and mashed potatoes. These meatballs are an iconic fixture in Sweden and it was a fitting start to our stay here. I thought it was interesting to see the difference between the central dishes in Denmark and Sweden. In Denmark, smørrebrød gave restaurants the ability to plate a piece of bread with a variety of toppings depending on the season and availability of ingredients. It was easy for smørrebrød to become a part of Danish fine dining because it could be made delicate and elaborate. The Swedish meatballs, in c...

Sign at the front of the winery. Today we visited Vejrhøj Winery . We did a tour around their vineyard and learned about how they grow eight different varieties of grapes. What is interesting about this vineyard is that it is not only organic and run by two retired economists , but it is at the forefront of producing grapes that are tolerant of the Danish weather to produce a uniquely Danish product. They grow eight different varieties of grapes: five varieties of green grapes (their main varieties), and three varieties of red grapes as a part of their work to produce red wines in Denmark.  Pictured to the left is one of their many rows of green grapes. I was really interested in how they manage their grapes and keep them organic. The owners are focused on preventing mildew infestations on their grape plants so they use varieties that have been bred to resist mildew and also treat their fields with sulfur twice a year to help prevent mildew. It may seem like there isn't a lot that ...

Entrance to Reffen Market. Going to see the Glass Market  did not prepare me for the incredible variety of cuisines and charming shipping container shops at  Reffen Market .  The whole market is built out of old shipping containers; the entrance to the market is marked by the shipping containers at the front and each of the vendors in the market feature converted shipping containers. Once you enter the market there are seating areas surrounded by the different vendors, giving you the opportunity to explore your different options and eat in the shelter of the containers. What surprised me the most about this market was that the majority of the food offered was from cuisines outside of Scandinavia. The focus in this course has been on New Nordic cuisine and utilizing local ingredients, so it was good to see how immigration and globalization still provides an opportunity for local ingredients to represent the other cultures that exist in Denmark. Culture is a hard thing to d...

Sign outside of the store on the farm with the red organic symbol for Denmark underneath. Today we had the amazing opportunity to talk to the owner of Yunds Have organic farm on Samsø island. It was great to be able to hear about what has to happen for an organic farm to open and what they do as a small scale producer on an island. The discussion was particularly interesting to me because I learned that the Danish standards for what counts as organic has historically been more strict than the EU standards. This particular farm meets not only the EU standards, but also exceeds the standards held by the Danish government.  For example, their free-range chickens have 4-5 times the amount of space compared to the 4 square meters of space required for each chicken by organic regulations. This farm also has two cows that are not yet organic because they were bred and initially raised by an inorganic farm, but according to organic regulations, once these cows have been on the organic fa...

  One of the DIS locations in Copenhagen. Today we had a lecture by Jonatan Leer , held at DIS in Copenhagen. We had an overview on the history of food in Denmark and what the New Nordic  cuisine movement has looked like for the public and specialized restaurants. What interested me most was the comparisons between Minnesota and Denmark; Minnesota and Denmark are comparable in size, but I thought that because Minnesota is a state that is affected by federal policies it would be different than Denmark because they have their own national policies, but it was interesting to hear from Jonatan how much EU policies affect Danish agriculture and cuisine. For example, in my last post I talked about the products that were labeled as 60-90% organic, and this is due to overarching EU policies that dictate what can and cannot be labeled as organic and what makes something organic in the first place. The tension that could occur as a result of Danish farmers and producers not being able...

Today we had the opportunity to explore the Glass Market in Copenhagen! The Glass Market had two glass buildings with food and drink vendors inside, and a fresh produce market between the buildings. There was a broad range of produce available, including specialty mushrooms, mini-potatoes, and passionfruit. We got the fresh strawberries from one of the vendors to go along with our lunch. There were a lot of people at the market looking at the fresh berries that they had. All of the produce that they sell at the market is in-season and grown locally! A lot of products were labeled as organic, or as being 60-90% organic (something I hadn't seen a product being labeled as, but it's possible that local regulations require that products that may not be fully organic be labeled as such). There were also many vegetables that I hadn't ever seen in American markets. Vendors in the buildings also supplied fresh and cured meat and fish products, and different cheeses. The highlight fo...

  A picture of a cocktail made with Vikre gin next to traditional Scandinavian horse carvings.      Our class had the pleasure of talking to Dr. Emily Vikre, co-founder of Vikre Distillery, this past Sunday. Dr. Vikre and her husband started Vikre Distillery with the intent to create the first sustainable distillery in Duluth, Minnesota. Dr. Vikre and her husband have been dedicated to their company and turned it into a zero-waste company that follows the triple bottom line model: Vikre Distillery is committed to the people, the planet, and profit together.       What intrigued me most about their company was how they dealt with acquiring local ingredients in Duluth while also trying to maintain the identity of the liquors they produce. Something that is very important to the Vikre's is that the ingredients they use should be unique and characteristic of not just the Scandinavian tradition they are following, but also the products that grow natur...