Swedish Food Recipes

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Filbunke	Rhubarb   compote	Cooked Norway    Lobsters	Swedish Hash

Submitted Swedish Food Recipes

On this page you have genuine Swedish food recipes submitted by visitors to the site. All recipes have comments from those who have submitted, I also try to analyze them on a historical and cultural level. For a more in depth discussion about Swedish cuisine click this link The recipes are below.

Mother Irma's filbunke
Submitted by Jan from Sweden - my father
(4 servings)

Ingredients:
- 1500 ml unpasteurized whole milk
- 100 ml sour cream (can be replaced by yogurt, or yesterdays batch of filbunke)

Preparation:
Warm the milk to about 80 degrees C. Pour it into bowls you have smeared inside with the sour cream. Cover and put in a coveted ambience slightly colder than room temperature and dark. Leave for at least 12 hours until it stiffens.

Serve with sugar and cinnamon for breakfast. Best served chilled.

Jan's Comment:
When I was about 6 years old I remember my parents rented a little cottage in the archipelago of Stockholm (this is about 1942-43) for the summer holidays. It was a nice break from the asphalt of the city to be able to walk barefoot, fish and swim all day long. Next to us was a farm with cows where we used to buy milk everyday. If there was milk to spare mother used to prepare a filbunke for me, my 3 brothers and my sister. She prepared it in bowls she put in the food cellar over night, it was important to cover because of the rats! I remember we all thought it was a fantastic treat to have cold filbunke on a hot summer day. My mother also used to say that it was no point in preparing it if there was a thunderstorm coming since it would separate the milk.

My comment:
This is a typical Nordic way to prepare milk and a precursor to the filmjölk (which is a form of cultured butter milk) and yogurt in Scandinavian countries. It is hard to date but it is easy to assume it has been around as long as cows have been kept for milk in these countries - that would be a few thousand years. The traditional way to prepare this is with yesterdays filbunke. If you have access to unpasteurized milk I can highly recommend this Swedish food recipe, when served with fresh berries and some sugar it is sublime! 100 years ago this was on every man's table in Sweden, today it has become a rare sight. The expression "Cool as a cucumber" has its translation in Swedish in "Cool as a filbunke".

Ingredients:
- 2-3 stalks of rhubarb
- 200 ml water
- 50 ml white sugar
- 1,5 tbsp potato flour

Preparation:
Rinse and cut rhubarb into two cm pieces.

Boil water with sugar, add the rhubarb and let simmer for 4-5 minutes until Rhubarb softens.

Mix the potato flour with some water and stir in carefully, bring to a boil. When the first bubble shows - Done.

Rhubarb compote is traditionally served hot or cold with cold milk and cinnamon and is an excellent light snack or dessert in the summer season.

Magnus´s (very poetic) Comment:
The pretty yellow cottage sat on a hill in the lush allotment yard. The kitchen window surrounded by roses opened at half past ten on the hot summer morning. Grandad had already passed the great hazel nut tree that grew next to the stone steps up to the house before granny had time to say "Rhubarb compote". This was being served, like most days in the summer season. While granny prepared brunch grandad had time to both raise the flag and inspect the raspberry bushes.

My comment:
Thanks for sharing, I can see this before my very eyes. This is a real favourite Swedish food recipe of mine and is much liked all over Sweden. The rhubarb we use in Swedish food recipes came from Asia during the Middle Ages, it was then very expensive and something only the very rich could enjoy. Today it is cultivated and actually grow in the wild in some places. Rhubarb is slightly poisonous, most of it is in the leaves that you don´t eat - the stalks are mildly poisonous and should therefor not be eaten raw.

Ingredients:
- 5000 ml water
- 200 ml salt
- one bunch of dill umbels (can be substituted by dill seeds in a coffee filter sealed with rubber band)
- 3kg fresh Norway lobsters

Preparation.

Put water, dill and salt in a large cooking pot , heat and let boil for about 5 minutes.
Throw in the Norway lobster and bring to a boil again. When boiling they are done and have to be cooled down, there are two good ways to do this:
1) Either emerge the whole pot in cold water and ice – carefully avoiding any of the cooling water to seep into the pot.
2) Pour the broth into another pot and let the Norway lobster cool down in the open separated on aluminum foil. When the broth has cooled down, put them back in.

Store in fridge for 24 hours before serving. Enjoy!

Fredriks Comment:
During my childhood our family used to spend our summers at 'Ella', a fishing boat we used as our provisonal home. Located in Rönnäng, Bohuslän on the West Coast of Sweden seafood was common on the menu. Whatever we could get from the sea was treasured and made in to several delicious recipes. Fish like cod, mackerel and plaice, fresh from the sea and fried on the aft deck under a lingering afternoon sun - these are really dear memories for me. Crustaceans like lobster (known as the black gold of the sea), shrimp and Norway lobster were also common on our plates. My father, Kenneth, over the years perfected his skills in cooking lobsters to perfection - the meat firm but still succulent and the right amount of salt. From when I was about 20 years old I started with the tradition of inviting my friends to celebrate my birthday during a few days in the late Swedish summer. The highlight of these gatherings was always the Norway lobster party, sometimes we were as many as 15 people, luckily the boat was large and could sleep many people. My dad was always the designated skipper and chef at these parties. If the sea was too rough we just stayed dockside. As it happened, we celebrated in my apartment in Gothenburg on a few occassions. This is when I started to cook the Norway lobster myself, using the strict instructions from my father. Since he passed away preparing the cray fish has become a way for me to connect with him and als a way to pass on his passion and aquired knowledge about how to prepare seafood. Today I can feel some pride in inviting my friends to perfectly cooked cray fish. I have also picked up his habit of preparing broth from shells and carcasses of crustaceans. If he still would have been around I would have loved to invite him over for some Norway lobster and Norway lobster fish soup (which is another Swedish food recipe I might submit).

My Comment:
Thank's for sharing such a nice part of your family history Fredrik, I can´t wait to cook this Swedish food recipe! I guess I will have to substitute the Norway lobster with another crustacean since the Norway lobster is hard to get by in Brazil... This is a very simple yet ingenious recipe. The only spice, umbels of dill, is very typical to Scandinavia and common in many Swedish food recipes.

Ingredients:
- butter for frying
- 100 g diced bacon
- 800 g diced cold boiled potatoes
- 1 chopped yellow onion
- 500 g diced leftover meats
- salt and pepper
- 4 egg
- pickled beetroots
- sweet mustard and ketchup

Preparation.
Cut potatoes and meats in 1 cm pieces. Melt a little of butter in a frying pan and fry the bacon until lightly brown. Add the onion and after a while the potato and the meats. Just fry until everything is brown. Pepper and salt to taste. Fry the eggs and serve with the hash. Pickled beetroots, sweet mustard and ketchup are by many the preferred accompaniments. Beer goes great with this dish.

My Comment:
This dish is real Swedish comfort food, it is a Swedish food recipe most people would eat several times a year. Since it is a leftover dish it would typically be cooked for Monday's lunchbox. There are many varieties of this dish, the most exclusive version includes premium cut beef and raw fried potatoes. It also exists in Denmark, Norway and Finland. I remember my mother used to make this for when I was a kid, I used to love to eat it with lots of ketchup and pickled cucumbers. As I got older this dish was something I could yearn for on Sundays. The fried eggs are by many replaced with raw egg yolk that is poured over the hot food.