A Swedish Christmas in food
I just came back from spending two weeks in my home country Sweden. Christmas is a big deal over there and we have lots and lots of traditions and many of them are about food. When I was young there was a TV show about food in December and every day of the month there was one food to prepare for the upcoming holiday.
The typical Christmas food is served as a HUGE Smorgasbord with many many dishes, hot and cold and finishes off with a dessert table and home made sweets. It is very heavy on protein and not many vegetable dishes, if there are any they are usually perfected with a big splash of cream. This kinds of Smorgasbords are still served in restaurants around Sweden. My family make smaller version only with foods that we really like, who wants to eat jellied pig trotters anyway….
Above are some of the dishes we had on our Christmas Smorgasbord, all accompanied by beer and aquavit.
From the top left:
Janssons Temptation, potatoes, onion, ansjovis and cream
Smoked Salmon, Gravlax (marinated raw salmon) with a dill mustard sauce, smoked eel (my sons new favorit)
Marinated herrings, some Smorgasbord have 10-15 varieties we had 3, onion, mustard and Allspice.
Baked sugar/salted brined Christmas ham with a mustard blanket.
Mini sausages or Prince sausages, meatballs, brown cabbage and creamed kale.
Cheese platter
Almond tart served with whipped cream and Cloudberries
Saffron buns, eaten all of December often together with mulled wine (Glögg)
Gingerbread house decorated by my kids. For some reason Swedes decorate their houses with M&M.
After two weeks of a lot of eating my family have decided to do at least two weeks of vegetarian dinners. The kids have promised to eat all their veggies…..More about that next week or contact me to find out about more ways to make a healthy start of the year for you and your family!