Where to go in Stockholm: clogs, vikings, single duvets and knackebrod.

Swedish butter knives

Wall of post-it notes commemorating the recent terrorist attack in Stockholm

Stockholm herring boats 

The centre of Stockholm is an architectural mistake: austere, almost Sovietic. A pity as it mars an otherwise beautiful city, doodled with water and the narrow cobbled streets of the old town. But deliberate plainness is part of the Swedish character. They like good materials: rock, wood, wool, slate. The Swedish have a spartan eye for design.
I stayed with my friend, chef Linn Soderstrom, further from the centre, in Bromma. Her building is surrounded by other modern utilitarian apartments. There is no heating; it is recycled power from the household machines in the building, fridges, washing machines. Recycling the rubbish of the apartments is intrinsic to the structure: the food turns into fuel for local buses.

The housing system is complex. Even if you buy privately, you must attend community workforces and are penalised if you don't. You can only get housing via a waiting list. The elegant old flats of the centre have cheaper rent but even in egalitarian Sweden, you need to know someone to get on those lists. Mostly you'll be attributed new impersonal buildings far from the centre.
Sweden is still rather communist. In astrology, it is considered an Aquarian country: with noble ideas of equality and fairness. The minimum wage, which depends on which union or field you are in, tends to be higher than ours and restaurant workers are well paid, working a strict 40 hour week. A chef of 6 years experience wouldn't be paid less than £12 an hour. Swedes famously pay a high percentage of income tax and as a result their lifestyles are better than ours. On the other hand, life is very expensive.
A weird thing I found out about Swedes is they don't use double duvets. Virtually never. Even a couple who are incredibly in love will have two separate single duvets. So in hotel rooms, you'll be given two skinny duvets on a double bed. Maybe they don't like touching each other?
When we think of Sweden we think of sober, disciplined, egalitarian, stylish, genetically blessed people. I've always been obsessed with Vikings. But I wonder about the slow process of transforming their culture from ruthless violent marauding pagan Vikings (although Viking females had more rights than other medieval women) into modern day Swedish people. Are Swedes still Viking?

Where to eat?

I didn't eat everywhere I wanted to try, due to a limited budget. As I said, it ain't cheap. Here are the places I did try which I really enjoyed.

Vete-katten

Fika or coffee time is a Swedish obsession. The pastries at Vete-katten, 'the cat knows',  a rambling, multi-roomed fika house, are superb. I had a cardamom bun, flaky, soft and spiced. Each 'room' has a coffee station with a silver coffee samovar and cups. You can serve yourself as much coffee as you want. Headscarfed waitresses serve your choice of pastry from a counter where you choose. The window is full of big green marzipan cakes 'Prinsesstarta' which are also a Swedish tradition. But I can't stop thinking about that bun.

Sturehof:

Sturehof is a traditional Swedish brasserie, open late and 7 days a week, which serves typical food and drink such as herrings, shellfish, house-baked crispbreads (honey and seeded) plus local Stockholm beer (delicious, clean tasting). The turquoise and brass milk glass ceiling reflects the elegant architecture of the restaurant's late 19th century origins. The late night bar is where Stockholms chefs and kitchen staff hang out after work.  Food was excellent and so was the service.
Why do the Swedes eat so much crisp bread or Knåckebrod as they call it? The reason, according to Linn, stems from the weakness and lack of gluten in their local wheat: it didn't rise when baked. Knåckebrod can last a year, useful during the long winters when nothing grows. Each village has their own style of knåckebrod and people used to bake their own. Some styles have holes in so that they can be threaded through a pole and hung from the rafters over the oven. Whole supermarket aisles are dedicated to different kinds, sizes and shapes of crispbread. We even had it for breakfast. I kind of got into it in the end. Here in the UK, Peter's yard does fantastic Swedish style knåckebrod.

Teatern at Ringens Centre

Teatern ('theatre') is an exciting food court concept where new and adventurous chefs can open street food type stalls. Magnus Nilson of Faviken has a food outlet here. The place looks a bit like a modern Roman-style amphitheatre. Here are a couple of stalls I tried:

Galinas Pizza

Pizza, just like here in Britain, is having a bit of a creative revival. Really good, thin, crispy, wood oven-baked pizzas.

Maximillian Lundin 

This was a fantastic vegan place. I tried a tasty 'hammerburger', a black bean and red rice mushroom burger with side veg.

Hotel At Six

On the ground floor of this art hotel, set in the urban centre of Stockholm, there is a bar (free art books to flick through) chokka with after work hipsters. You can also find a curated vinyl 'listening lounge' with high quality hi-fi.

TAK restaurant

Take a lift to the top where there is a 'raw' bar with DJs where a well-dressed crowd sip on wine and cocktails while gazing through tall wrap-around windows, glass dotted with wintery rain drops, at the sun setting over cranes and rooftops. A couple of floors down from the bar is award-winning chef Frida Ronge's Swedish-Japanese restaurant TAK. We tried to get in but it was booked up, so reserve ahead.

Ostermalms Saluhall:

There are several food markets worth visiting but being Sweden, most of them are indoors. The poshest food market is the modern wood lined 'Saluhall' which has delis, restaurants, sells fish products and high end food.

Nyebroe smorrebrod

I had an open sandwich here. One tiny piece of rye bread with a mound of gravad lax. It was superb. It cost £15. I couldn't afford a drink. I'm sorry Scandinavia but open sandwiches are just bloody silly. The WHOLE point of sandwiches is that the filling is surrounded by two pieces of bread so you can hold it in one hand and play cards with the other. But it was good.

Hotorgshallen food hall

Hotorgshallen is a trip around the world in one interior food hall. I recommend the Finnish shop 'Finska Butiken' which makes gorgous pirogi, a kind of crisp crenellated pastry filled with rice or potato. On top you have a garnish of buttery chopped egg. The falafel stall La Gazelle is also excellent, there is always a bit of a queue. You can buy oysters and other Swedish specialities like the smoked salmon 'cheesecake' below. Prices are lower here.

Sodermalm or 'SoFo'

This is the trendy district in Stockholm with art galleries, restaurants and quirky shops plus a food hall 'Soderhallarna' with an English shop.

Lakritshandel 

This was probably my favourite place in the whole of Stockholm. We went on a Saturday which is sweets day in Sweden. The unprepossessing exterior gives little hint of the wonders within. It's a post office, cornershop and newsagents where you buy your fags and lottery tickets but also a treasure trove of international salty liquorice curated by Lars Tiden. We got off to a fine start because I brought him some South African white chocolate salty liquorice from the English shop. He responded by proferring dozens of tasty salted morsels. Teasingly he offered a taste of the most hard core salty liquorice in the shop:

'Taste this' he whispered gleefully, handing me a white powdery ball.
I choked a little, but manfully continued to chew 'I'd need to work up to that ideally' I responded, not wanting to look like a wimp after all my liquorice boasting.

Lars himself has no taste buds (his partner does the tasting), in fact sweets this strong are probably the only thing he can taste. I bought tubs of ammonium chloride which is the salted liquorice powder, of salted liquorice essential oil (who doesn't want a bath smelling of that?), of tar shampoo from Finland and salty liquorice crisps. He also introduced me to the salty liquorice competition. And there are awards! I tasted the 2017 winning entry Gammelstads by Ulrika Fjellborg who also writes Sci-Fi novels. (Who I want to visit).
Below is her liquorice bar called Super Salty Salmiakki. You cannot buy more than 20 sticks per person.

Urban Deli

Urban Deli bar and restaurant also has an ecological wholefoods style food shop.

Other restaurants worth visiting: 

Rutabaga in the Grand Hotel, led by chef Mathias Dahlgren. Rutabaga is the old name for a 'swede' turnip. Swedes are all the rage in the vegetable world.

Rosendalstradgard, a biodynamic farm to fork restaurant run by British chef Billy White. Also has an artisanal bakery, farmshop and plant shop.
Ekstedt: a 'fire' restaurant, where everything is cooked on wood fires, led by Niklas Ekstad, author of 'Food from the fire'. Linn used to chef here when it had more vegetarian options. With a new head chef, it's very much centred on meat. You can order a fixed tasting menu with 4 options or 6.

Where to visit:

Gamla Stan

The old town is very pretty with cobbled shopping streets leading away from The Royal Palace. Inside I saw an exhibition on Swedish royal family weddings with shoes, dresses, veils. It was all part of the entry price which I thought was a good deal. To see British royal dresses for instance, would cost more. I found the medals display interesting. Even in Sweden, people get medals just for being born royal. I enjoyed seeing the interiors of the palace, the chandeliers, corridors, fireplaces and ticking covered chairs in sober Scandi style. A couple of the rooms have been modernised with a huge wood stove for today's royal family.

I bought red spotty clogs at Kerstin Aldophson. These are hand made wooden clogs which come in a variety of colours for under 30 euros.
Other shops sell mugs and cushions with designs by Elsa Beskow, a famous Swedish children's illustrator.

The Spit Cup or Gay Ring:

In the centre of Stockholm's main train station you'll see a mezzanine 'hole' surrounded by a bannister. This is called either the spit cup (spottkoppen) or the gay ring(borgringen). It's where gay men hang out to pull each other.

Museums:

• I wanted to visit is the new Viking museum Vikingaliv but frustratingly it opened the week after my visit.
• In a similar vein check out ship museum Vasamuseet
• Abba The Museum sounds like a cultural must see.

More shopping:

At Hotorget, there is a fleamarket on Sundays. 

Granit:

This is a stylish homewares shop where I bought giant garlic crusher. You know how most garlic crushers you can only fit in a clove. This one you can fit in a whole bulb. Excellent.

Lagerhaus

More homewares at Lagerhaus. It's a bit like a Swedish version of the Danish chain Tiger. FAirly cheap with good design. I bought some plant holders there.

3rd Annual Swedish Midsummer Supper Club

To enjoy more Swedishness, come to my Swedish midsummer supper club with Linn Soderstrom. This time we will also have Swedish chef Marian Ringborg, who is currently working at Skye Gingell's restaurant Spring. 
This is the third year running we have hosted this. If it's nice it'll be in the garden. We will probably construct a birch Maypole. 
Look: Wear flower crowns or Viking gear if you feel like it.
Food: home cured/smoked salmon, different kinds of herring, Swedish cheeses, berries, crisp breads. Some bbqed food. Strawberry cake. Salty liquorice. Aquavit. Blaabar. All kinds of Scandi yumminess. 
Tickets: £50 (I'm flying chefs over from Sweden).
BYO.
Date: June 21st.
Time: 7.30pm
Where: my place in Kilburn, The Underground Restaurant.
Book at this link: http://www.edibleexperiences.com/p/69/The-Underground-Restaurant/1450001/3rd-annual-Swedish-midsummers-night-meal

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Elotes: Mexican sweet corn recipe

This Mexican street food is quick, easy and delicious. Buy the freshest sweetest corn on the cobs 'elotes' you can find. (I bought Waitrose Super Sweet corn but frozen is also good if corn is out of season). If the corn is in season (September), then peel back the husk to form a handle once you've boiled it.

Elotes recipe

Do you like my sweetcorn inspired manicure?

Serves 4

4 sweet corn on the cobs
300ml sour cream or creme fraiche
100g grated parmesan or cotija Mexican cheese or crumbled feta
A shake of Tajin. This is a ready-made Mexican chilli, lime and salt mix available from mexgrocer.co.uk. You can use it over fruit, with beer, over nuts, over pizza. I love it. I also like this chipotle salt.
or
Chipotle sauce (or sweet paprika if you don't like heat)
1 lime, quartered
Sea salt to taste

In a large pan of boiling salted water, boil the corn cobs until tender (about ten minutes).
Attach forks, skewers or corn on the cob holders to the corn.
Then using the 'handle' to turn the corn, grill it over a flame or under a grill to get it slightly blackened.
Pour the sour cream into a shallow bowl and dip the length of the corn into it.
Sprinkle the parmesan or other cheese over the corn cob.
Shake the Tajin over it or pour a little chilli sauce, add a squeeze of lime and a sprinkle of sea salt to each cob.
Serve immediately (but actually it's also good cold).

My next supper club is the Swedish Midsummer Supper Club on June 21st. Expect Scandinavian pagan high jinks and excellent food. Guest chef: Linn Soderstrom from Sweden. 

Book here

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Cinco de Mayo supper club in pictures

Menu

Hibiscus Salt-rimmed Margarita Cocktail

Elote with Sour cream, Parmesan and Tajin

Pumpkin Seed and Blue Corn Tostadas with Sea Bass Ceviche or Palm Heart Ceviche

Tacos with:

Achiote-marinated Salmon

Garlic Mushrooms

Tofu with Chipotle Salt

Oaxacan Cheese by Gringa Dairy

Red Salsa

Green Salsa

Jalapeno 'Slaw

Sour Cream

Pink Pickled Onions

Guacamole

Zacahuil: Giant Tamale cooked on the Big Green Egg with Butternut Squash, Chipotle and Jitomate sauce, Rajas, Peppers, Wild Garlic and Oaxacan Cheese.

Hibiscus Sorbet in Candied Lime Halves

Sweet Tamales: Chocolate Masa with Forest Fruits.

Tequila Shots: Coffee and Honey by Cazcabel

Mexican ingredients (masa, tortillas, tostadas, achiote paste, tomatillos, avocado leaves, dried chillies, corn husks) from Cool Chile Company

Recipes to follow in next posts.

My next supper club is 21st June, Swedish Midsummer's Supper Club with Linn Soderstrom. 
Tickets here. 

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Britain's last copper tinners

Last week I drove to an industrial estate outside Wimbourne in Dorset to visit Britain's only artisan copper tinner, Sherwood Tinning.

I've always been fascinated with copper as a material, the ability to conduct heat, the warm beauty of the pink and orange glowing metal, even the verdigris patina of unpolished oxidised copper. Astrologically copper is associated with Venus: it's the metal of beauty, an antibacterial, it does not rust and is therefore used at sea. Mixed with slaked lime, copper sulfate is a fungicide known as 'Bordeaux Mixture', useful for growing wine. It conducts heat and electricity par excellence. Although the Earth contains a great deal of copper, much of it cannot be extracted at present. According to the International Copper Association 'An estimated 80% of all copper ever mined is still in use today', a concept I find mind blowing.  It's worth a great deal as a scrap metal. One of my ex's used to search skips for copper tanks (when everybody changed to combination boilers) which were worth about £80 each.

I've done tests cooking with copper: a risotto cooked in a copper pan is noticeably creamier than one cooked in a good quality stainless steel saucepan.
Copper is expensive. I paid £265 for a Mauviel copper sauteuse in Divertimenti. A fortune, but I use it every day so over a lifetime it'll probably work out as 1p a use or something. Copper lasts forever.
Copper pans must be lined with tin on the inside, otherwise your food becomes poisonous with an unpleasant metallic tang. You can cook on unlined copper when making jam, that is fruit with sugar. I have a large copper jamming pan, wide with sloping sides to evaporate the juices quickly, which I bought at a French 'vide-grenier' for 4 euros. According to this site, never put fruit on its own into copper, it will react and become dangerous.
Christine Ferber, who is arguably the best jam maker in the world (I'm not even a jam fan but seriously you have to taste her preserves) always uses copper kettles to make jam.
But for most purposes you'll need to buy tin-lined copper. And every few years those pans will need re-tinning. This is not cheap but it's better value than buying a new copper pan, plus I'm a great believer in repairing things rather than chucking them away. Sherwood Tinning is the only place in Britain that you can get this done. Nick Stevenson runs the small workshop which he has been doing for 32 years. I noticed he has a slight accent: 
'I'm a Romany gypsy', he declared before explaining that several generations of his family had worked with copper and metals, skills passed from father to son. 

'This is a very pre-historic way of crafting metal. We are the last hand-wiped tinners in the UK'.

His clientele is split between private and commercial. The Queen sends her copper pans to Sherwood Tinning, who are a 'by appointment' company, a process that necessitates at least five years service before being granted.

'It's not seasonal this job' says Nick, 'One week we are choc a bloc and can hardly cope and other times you are cleaning your work shop because you have very little to do. You never know.
'Per year we do thousands. At the moment we have about 100 pieces which all came in the last fortnight.'

'When I used to go to hotels and restaurants with my dad, the chef was the king. Nowadays accountants run businesses. Even the royal chef has a budget. Some of my old customers are going to stainless steel. But they are not as good as solid copper pans. Even stainless steel lined copper pans, there is a layer of aluminium because copper does not stick to stainless steel, which means that one layer bubbles up. We can't do anything, the metal has stretched.' 

'You pay a fortune for these things, but copper pans will see you out.'

Do you take a deposit? 

'No'. 

That's very trusting of you. Do some people not collect their pans? 

'Not really. Over the years people have maybe left 10 pans, which I've put in my kitchen.' 

It's not like shoe menders, people not bothering to pick up their shoes. Do you like cooking with copper? 

No I hate it because I don't cook. 

Your wife? 

No it's too much trouble. We use a microwave. (We laugh). I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that.

In his tiny office next to the workshop, I see shelves of enormous hotel pans (large oven tins), rondos (deep wide pans for stews), escargot moulds and frying pans gleaming amongst the grey office gear. Some of them are very old: 

'The Queen once sent me a pan dated 1737' explained Nick 'which is still in use'. I see photographs of Nick with the Queen on his wall. 

I hand him my grubby collection of five copper pans of differing sizes that I bought at a French flea market for 15 euros. It'll cost me almost £200 to get them tinned here. Nick charges by the inch: he measures the diameter and the depth. 

'We've had the same prices for two years now. The flux, the tin, virtually everything we need has gone up in price. I use a company in London, G.W Neil and Sons, but they've been taken over by an American company. Which is a shame. They've put their prices up.

'In this country we used to have a huge tin mining industry...' I say. 

'In Cornwall...' 

'Yes. Poldark.' I guffaw.  

'Never got into that myself' says Nick. 

'Maybe it's a ladies programme?' 

'I've heard rumours they might open up a tin mine in Cornwall. At the moment tin is brought in from China.'

We look around the workshop. The process runs as such:

1. De-greasing: the copper is placed in a tank of caustic soda for up to 48 hours.
2. Cleaning: washed in hot soapy water.
3. Reshaping: it's taken to the work bench where the bottom will be straightened and flattened; rivets tightened, handles strengthened, bumps knocked out.
4. Grinding: the pans are stripped of old tin lining on a grinding wheel with wire wool.
5. Pickling acid: the pans are left in a diluted solution of hydrochloric acid. After this the copper shines.
6. Final wash.
7. Fluxing: the insides of the pan are covered with flux to make the tin adhere to the copper.
8. Tinning: using rods of tin and a blow torch, tin is melted into the insides of the pan.
9. Polishing: the inside is hand-wiped, coming up bright and shiny.

I can't wait to see my flea market copper pans. Nick will even brand my initials on them. 

Nick recommends Mauviel copper pans as the best. Blogger David Lebowitz recently visited the Mauviel factory, read about it here. He's also visited La Mère Poulard the famous Normandy restaurant where omelettes are cooked on a copper pan over a wood fire. Must do that.
The Kitchn has a useful piece on how to clean copper.

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