Swedish 'Danish' beer

At a social gathering with my work I noticed this gem of dubious labelling: "Dansk Fadøl" (Danish draught beer).

Regarding it's Danishness, I will just say that I have NEVER seen this beer outside of Sweden. And as for a can of 'draught beer'.. well, I guess I don't really need to comment on that.

To be avoided.

Beans - Re-revisited

Before moving to Sweden, I was worried bout the availability of black beans here (having been really disappointed with options last time I looked around for beans in Danish supermarkets).

As it turns out, I needn't have worried at all. The Swedes apparently are much more up on exotic foods than the Danes.

After buying my first bag of black beans in Sweden, I saw just how different beans can be - unlike the black beans I bought in Geneva, these black beans needed only a little over one hour of boiling (after overnight soaking).

Ironically, I might not have to boil dried beans here, as it appears canned beans are again available at a more reasonable price relative to the dried ones...

Milk lids

A majority of dairy products here in Sweden are sold in TetraBrik-containers from TetraPak (not surprising given that TetraPak is indeed a Swedish invention).

Initially we were a little disappointed with the most commonly used carton here: it is not possible to close it again after opening it. While this annoyed me on a practical level because it meant I couldn't shake my favourite breakfast fermented dairy products before pouring them without spray-painting the kitchen, it was more a question of principle for my significant other: more specifically a question of germ control.


As it turns out, there exists a small, cheaply available unitasker to solve the problem. As the picture indicates, the makers (or sellers, anyway) of the product seem to be thinking more in line with Mrs. Throat-Erator.

(Asian) Fish soup

For my birthday this year, Mrs. Throat-Erator gave me dried curry and kaffir lime leaves - and then things got a little hectic, so I didn't have a lot of time to think about ways to use them for a couple of months...

But I thought they might add a nice touch to a fish soup - more specifically, I was thinking of some of the nice Asian fish soups I've tried, which I would like to emulate, so I tried it out.

Ingredients:
- oil
- 4 cloves garlic, crushed
- 2 hot chillies, finely cut
- 2 fillets of pangasius, cut in chunks
- 2 fillets of tilapia, cut in chunks
- 1 onion, diced
- 3 leeks, cut in rings, white and green parts separated.
- 2 L (¹/₂ gallon) fish stock
- 0.5 g^[1] dried curry leaves
- 0.5 g^[2] dried kaffir lime leaves
- 250 g (¹/₂ lb) sunchokes, diced
- 3 tomatoes, diced coarsely
- 24 prawns

A little oil was heated in a large pot, and crushed garlic and finely cut chillies were sautéed for half a minute before adding chunks of fish.

After a couple of minutes, the diced onion and the white leek rings (white rings only) were added and after an additional couple of minutes, the fish stock and the dried leaves were added.

After adding diced sunchokes and large chunks of tomato, the pot was brought to a boil. The heat was reduced, the pot was covered and allowed to simmer for 10 minutes. The prawns and the green leek rings were added, and the pot was brought back to a boil and simmered for a final 5 minutes.

I was very happy with the result - the combination of of chillies, curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves resulted in exactly the fresh kind of taste I was going for, and although perhaps not traditional in Asian cuisine (although I admit I don't know) I thought the sunchokes added a really nice nuance to the flavour.

^[1] As much as you see in the picture..
^[2] ..more than you see in the picture!

Systembolaget - Part II / Swedish Beer - Part I

On my first trip to Systembolaget, I decided to start with the basics and got what I reckoned to be fairly standard, perhaps even classical, Swedish beers.

To be fair, I had only heard of Pripps Blue (a big Swedish brand - infamous amongst some Danes) and Spendrups Old Gold (because I'd seen it sold at Ikea in Switzerland). The rest was based on intuition.

But I like to think I wasn't far off the mark. Most of these were fairly similar pilsners.

Starting on the left, Three Towns (TT) was actually the biggest disappointment to me: very drinkable, but lacking in taste and character and ultimately - to my taste at least - boring. Perhaps a good place to start for those favouring cheap American beer.

Spendrups Old Gold on the other hand was the most extreme in the other direction - although perhaps not as extreme, the first beer it brought to mind was the German king of bitterness: Jever.

The rest of them are much more alike. I got a very favourable first impression of Wisby, bot not so much that I'm sure it really is significantly better than the others. Åbro Sigill is branded as an organic beer, but apart from that I couldn't tell any difference between that and Åbro Original.

If you look closely at the picture, you might notice that Anderssons says "starköl" on the label - although this translates as strong beer, this does not mean it is in a league of its own here (all beers pictured are 4.5-5.2% ABV). Rather it's a curious consequence of the 3.5% ABV limit for supermarket sales: all beers above this limit appear, by definition, to be "starköl" (which is ood to me, having grown up in Denmark where a standard pilsner is 4.6% ABV).