Everyone loves 'apply endings

My computer broke. And when I say it broke, it really did it in spectacular fashion. I took it into the Apple store and they told me that it needed a brand new hard drive. Hearing this is hard enough at the best of times but it was coupled with a sickening sucker punch.

When they told me that they couldn't access the information on it at all, it took a few seconds for the cold reality of this to penetrate my psyche. Five years' worth of photographs. 300 music albums. All my documents - every page of notes, every essay, every recipe, every blog entry. All wiped out, somehow disappearing into that incomprehensible Valhalla where documents go to when their host dies. I tried to convince myself that there was a positive side to this but failed miserably. My girlfriend told me that she has never seen me look so ill and she has see me wrestling with the tenacious grip of food- poisoning.

I realised that it was deeply foolish not to have backed anything up, ever, but there I was, ashen faced and feeling sick while all around me gleaming iPods and Macbooks filled the store with their lurid graphics and jolly music.

And then something wondrous happened and whichever god is the god of lost data smiled down upon me. My little iMac, which in computer terms should be drawing a pension round about now, somehow managed to rise, Lazarus like, from the seemingly incurable terminal state in which it had found itself. Not a single lost song, photograph or note.


Which leaves me here sitting in front of freshly formatted computer, almost virginal in its purity, complete with all necessary things which were stored deep within its whirring cogs. And ever so ready to get back on the blogging horse. Oh, and everything is backed up, just in case.

www.justcookit.blogspot.com

Breakfast. Swedish style.

I have a theory. Like the best theories, it is simple and concise and able to spark much debate as to its veracity and plausibility. Perhaps it is little more than the ramblings of a self-confessed gastronome attempting to add a modicum of legitimacy to a burgeoning obsession but I shall, nevertheless, share it with you now as a stimulus to further discussion.

I am willing to hear counter arguments and even consider the possibility that it might be nothing more than utter bunkum, but I have a feeling that a great many of you will agree.

It runs thus: the very best way to begin the process of understanding a new country or culture is not through examining their social structure, rituals, rites of passage or sexual practices. It is by looking at the food that they eat.

I firmly believe that by consuming three meals you can gain a more immediate and precise understanding of wherever you are than by reading any number of guidebooks. Only by sampling the local foods and flavours can you start to scratch the cultural surface and begin to delve deeper into the social miasma that a mere few mouthfuls ago felt so alien.

As a result whenever I find myself somewhere new, it is not the art galleries, museums, guided tours or buildings I am interested in – it is the local food. In the spirit of adventure I try not to be constrained by pre-conceptions or my own short-sighted cultural relativity. Granted there are some things that I would only eat if faced with the possibility of a long, slow and painful death from starvation, but they are few and far between (and for an entirely different post altogether). Now is the time to discover the food of my ancestral land – and what better place to begin than at breakfast.

Breakfast is the cornerstone of cuisine. It sets the day in motion and creates a springboard for whatever follows (usually lunch). It is usually a hurried affair, a far cry from the glory days of breakfast when an aristocratic diner could idle over tea and toast and eggs and bacon all served by the staff from silver platters. A freshly ironed copy of The London Times provided an excuse to avoid conversation aside from a muted commentary on the affairs of the day.

Sadly, I don’t live in an episode of Jeeves and Wooster so have to make do with toast and a large espresso with a glass of juice as a concession to health. But on holiday it is possible to linger over the first meal of the day a little longer, as if you are living in a world of perpetual Sundays (how I wish that were the case).

For some reason that remains elusive to me at this moment, I’d become convinced that the Swedes enjoyed a breakfast consisting mainly of coffee and pastries and so on our first morning – which also happened to be my girlfriends birthday – I confidently marched into a café ready to show off my knowledge of Swedish breakfast practices.

My request for two coffees was met with an approving nod from the chap behind the counter. So far so Scandinavian. My supplementary request for three pastries of his choice was met with a look of mild confusion and a glance at his watch before he shrugged his shoulders and removed a selection of tasty but totally unbreakfast-like items from the huge display. We were presented with a slab of chocolate cake, a glazed raspberry tart and a warm cinnamon roll. The first two were unexpected and came with a frightening amount of whipped cream. The third was more what I had in mind but I was willing to be proved wrong and we merrily tucked into this selection of Swedish breakfast treats.


The cinnamon roll was perfect with strong black coffee (the Swedes are the second biggest coffee consumers in the world, only the Finns neck more of the stuff), warming and steadying . I thought it would be an ideal hangover breakfast, like an edible hug. The others, although tasty, were just wrong at half nine in the morning and left me feeling a little sluggish while my poor digestive system struggled to deal with the cream.

I analysed this breakfast in conjunction with my theory. What did this tell me about the country I was in? Swedes are greedy, have a sweet tooth, aren’t particularly health conscious and most probably skirting a fine line between obesity and morbid obesity. Something was clearly amiss because not one of these conclusions appeared to be true.

I relayed this story to my Swedish mother. ‘Why on earth did you have cake for breakfast?’ she said.
‘Because that’s what they do over there. Isn’t it?’ I replied meekly
‘No, what gave you that idea? If people have cake at all, they wait until about three o’clock. Maybe late morning on a Sunday. And even then it is usually retired women who only do it as an excuse to gossip. Breakfast is usually yoghurt with cereal and fruit.’

This explained a lot. My disappointment at being wrong was offset by my delight that my theory still held water. And that we’d got to eat cake for breakfast, something I recommend everyone try at least once.

www.justcookit.blogspot.com

A gaggle of googlys

It would seem that occasionally the bowler of life feels that it is necessary to send an unpredictable shower of googlys down one's crease just to keep you on your toes (for those of you who do not understand a word of that think of a bowler as a pitcher and a googly as a curveball). Whilst unpleasant, it certainly makes everything a little more interesting. frustrating, but interesting.

My own googly (such a great word to say, two delicious syllables the second of which is an unexpected sound that races out of the mouth after the unctuous first half of the word, almost onomatopoeic. Googly.) arrived full pelt at me last week when my poor iMac finally died after spluttering, coughing and wheezing its way through the last couple of months. It was one of those things that skirted onto the 'to-do' list but was quickly replaced by the unceasing list of domestic tasks that consistently usurped it in importance. Fix computer. No, mow lawn. Fix computer. No, mend the boiler so we can shower. Fix computer. Nope, buy new pane of glass for window that I broke when trying to open it with my shoulder. Fix computer. No, alphabetise book shelf. You get the idea. Anyway, last week it finally breathed its final breath and resolutely refused to turn on, hence the lack of posting and other web based activity.

After having the illogic board and mothership dongle replaced six months ago, it needs to undergo surgery again apparently to put in a new mega quaver or hyper wibble processor. Or something. So, in the mean time my girlfriend's laptop is providing adequate means of getting opnline but I have no access to my precious photos or documents or Photoshop or music or anything that enables me to craft my usual musings or engage in other electronic frivolity.

Normal service will be resumed forthwith. Assuming the frogget drive path can be fixed, of course. In the mean time, have a go at this, it's great.

www.justcookit.blogspot.com

Stockholm is where the heart is

There are no ugly people in Sweden. Nobody is overweight and no-one is badly dressed. Swedes seem to exude an understated grace and style with an effortless and genteel humility not present in cities that are equally modish. Rome immediately springs to mind, which somehow manages to offset its intrinsic panache with a self-congratulatory air. In the formal side of the city, the men all look as if they have been dressed by Ralph Lauren with narrow cut suits and perfectly folded pocket squares. Clean cuts and jutting jaw lines make way for quirky plastic sunglasses and leggings in Södermalm, the beating Boho heart of the city just south of the old town. I imagine it is what the inside of Agyness Deyn’s head looks like, it really is that cool. In between, there is a beautiful clean city with an abnormally low crime rate, few homeless (official figures estimate that there are about two but I managed to count at least six) and a bracing freshness from the clean sea on which the Stockholm archipelago sits. To give you an idea of just how clean this water is, anyone can pitch up with their fishing rod – no licence required – and catch salmon and sea trout which they are free to take home and eat. There are areas of peaceful greenery (over 2/3 of the city is greenbelt and there are a massive 38 parks) where Stockholmites take a lunchtime respite from the buzz of the workplace, there are over 100 museums and art galleries and countless bars. Restaurants serve food from all the far flung corners of the world, hardly surprising considering that the Swedish culinary heritage is somewhat limited, delicious but limited, thanks to the harsh long winters and the inability of the frozen land to yield substantial crops for a vast proportion of the year. It is a liberal, easy-going city where recent immigrants seem to exist happily alongside the Nordic residents.


Can any city be so absolutely utopian? Of course not. All this glorious perfection comes at a price. A painfully, almost prohibitively expensive price. Everything is about 25 per cent more expensive than we would perhaps be used to. It’s like the entire country is a branch of Waitrose. Every time you are presented with a bill there is a frisson of surprise, a thought they may have got it wrong then a realisation of where you actually are resulting in a shrugging of the shoulders and peeling off another wodge of bank notes from a rapidly decreasing stack. But with such effortlessly beautiful people around you begin not to care and almost feel obliged to pay over the odds to compensate for your own inadequacy: ‘sorry for sullying your country, have some more krona.’ Don’t get me wrong, the Swedes are friendly and welcoming but being surrounded by so much blonde hair and well-fitting clothes is certain to bring on a slight self-consciousness in anyone. And I’m even half Swedish so I dread to think how the average Iowan or Japanese tourist must feel.

There will be more of the food later, I just think it is important to contextualise and create a sense of mise en place before launching headfirst into herring and knäckerbröd so this is little more than a gentle introduction and brief summary of our first meal in this Hythlodayian paradise. We had hot dogs. In fact we had four hot dogs. The first was good (a kokt korv – boiled sausage) but lasted approximately four seconds so we had another of those before moving on and venturing towards the old town where we passed another street vendor selling similar wares. For reasons of comparison we chose the grilled variety this time which proved to be far superior. Just to make sure, we had another to galvanize our opinion. I should also add that we had not eaten a thing since 6am that morning and as it was fast approaching 6pm we felt justified in indulging in some vaguely gluttonous behaviour. Somehow, I think the Swedes may not have approved.


www.justcookit.blogspot.com

Rocket Powered Pesto

There are two minor problems facing those who grow their own. The first is the issue that presents itself when faced with a glut. A failure to plan correctly can often leave the hapless gardener with a plethora of peas or a surfeit of strawberries which must then be eaten with every meal resulting in palate fatigue or preserved in some way. This is where pickling, freezing, jamming, smoking, salting and the like come in to their own and allow us to enjoy the fruits (or vegetables, for that matter) of our labour during the months when they are out of season. The second problem that we are discovering is how to look after ones plants whilst you are away for any length of time. After the many hours of care lavished upon them during their short existence, the prospect of returning from holiday to find a parched vegetable garden with the dried and rotting remains of what once were lush, green plants is somewhat depressing. I know that there are intricate irrigation systems involving timers and piping but sadly our budget barely stretches to buying seeds so that was out. I also know that it is possible to ask neighbours but having only recently moved to the area we felt it would be a little presumptive to begin a conversation with the words: ‘lovely to meet you, would you mind awfully watering our vegetable patch twice a day whilst we swan off around a distant European capital city. Thanks.’

As a result we were left with the unproven ‘soak and hope’ strategy for the vegetables that are yet to grace us with produce and the slightly less risky ‘use as much as possible’ strategy for the plants that were currently edible and would fail to survive four days of enforced neglect. Fortunately, this amounted to little more than the rocket, which, after a slow start had grown with a fervent vigour normally only seen with unwelcome and tenacious weeds. There was too much to make a simple salad and so we drew inspiration from a great Italian deli called Limoncello where they stock a tasty selection of pesto.


The plants yielded enough tasty green leaves for four or five generous handfuls which would hopefully make a happy bowlful of fresh green pesto to be dipped into and poured generously over pasta and pizzas for the next couple of days. In addition I grabbed a small handful of Greek basil from a plant that sits on our windowsill (the harsh East Anglian climate appears to be too fickle for the plant to survive outside) to add a hint of that classic taste. Since my first pesto making experience (which can be found here), I’ve insisted that the best way to do it is by hand so I set to work turning the pile of leaves into a finely chopped mass of deliciousness.

Once the rocket and basil were sufficiently decimated and the pile rendered down to about a tenth of its original size I added two cloves of garlic and a scant handful of pine nuts before getting to work with the knife again. By the time they had been incorporated, my wrist was beginning to feel the strain and a deep burn was manifesting itself at the base of my thumb, I guessed that this was a good sign and that it was now time for the parmesan which was grated over in fine, gentle curls – melting into the mass with a soft enthusiasm. With a pesto, the olive oil acts like a glue, bringing the disparate components together as well as adding a tone of its own. It is like a mutual friend at an awkward party that manages to bring out the best in each of the guests, whose presence contributes more than it should. It allows the pesto to transcend its ingredients and take on a completely new characteristic. In short, it is essential and once added, the resultant sauce was a total success: subtle enough to be eaten solely with fresh bread but punchy enough to be stirred into fresh pasta or fried mushrooms at the last minute and served on toasted sourdough which is how I had it for lunch the following day. Definitely one to try again.

This post was written for the June Grow Your Own blogging event, details of which can be found here.
For Limoncello, Cambridge click here (they do mail order)

www.justcookit.blogspot.com