Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Some clarifications

SOME CLARIFICATIONS

I just want to explain some things a little further to you. Some recipe titles might seem comical or funny to you, but I've translated them straight off in most cases, and I've done that on purpose for entertainment. I've always been like that. 

Milk

When I speak about milk, I always mean regular milk if not otherwise specified. In Sweden, regular milk has a fat content of 3%. 

Fika

The word "fika" is a Swedish word for a very Swedish thing: Coffee with something sweet. It's very normal in Swedish offices or other workplaces to have fika at around 11 in the morning. As people nowadays have become more aware of the overuse of sugar and fat, the sweets have more often turned to a healthier sandwich or even breakfast, but it's still very common with "sweet fika". So if someone invites you for a fika if you're in Sweden, you can expect to have either something healthier with your coffee, or tea, or whatever, or something sweet - or both. So I've put all the sweet baked goods in the category of "fika", more or less.

Coffee cakes

When I call something a "coffee cake", it means that the cake is very enjoyable with coffee, or tea, or some sweet drink. It doesn't necessarily have coffee inside it, but in some cases it does. It's something more or less equivalent to a pound cake.

Falu sausage

In many of my sausage recipes, you will encounter the Falu sausage (see the post about Swedish food history). I don't know if you have any possibility of getting that where you are, but I've found something that might help you to find a substitute: You can use a large sausage of the Frankfurter or Strasbourg type. Picture of the Falu sausage below.






Kassler
You will also find a lot of kassler in my recipes. It's a piece of warm-smoke cured loin of pork, boneless nowadays, juicy and quite salty. It's excellent to use in cooking and it can also be eaten just as it is, with potato salad, or in pasta salads or other salads. Picture below.





Pans

It's difficult for me as a Swede to distinguish between a "casserole" and a "stew". So I've decided to mostly call them "stews". In Swedish, the name is "gryta" for both, which also means "pot" (meaning the pot you cook food in) to further add to the confusion. So I alternate between the word "stew" and the word "pan" (and "pan", "panna" in Swedish, can also mean a baking pan or an oven-proof pan or whichever pan. You'll simply have to bear with me … but if you see the Swedish name of the recipe and it says "gryta" or "panna", you know it's one of those lovely dishes that mostly simmer together in the most charming way to give and take their taste from each other.


I will add more to this post over time, no doubt. Things will occur that will need explaining. Don't be afraid to ask questions, and don't be afraid to leave comments to the recipes you read and/or try out!

Love

Bella






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