JMT

A general recommendation for people who want good swedish food but at a lower price is to use the much lower lunch prices look for food called husmanskost. The food is also more likely to be close to what a normal swede would call swedish food than the fancier (although very good) meals at Michelin starred restaurants. I do agree with Ericthered, Summer is not a good time for visiting nice restaurants in Stockholm.

Make sure to visit the Riga Central Market, they had a good selection of breads last time (which was years ago) I was there.

Generally there are no good farmers markets in Stockholm. Östermalms saluhall is good but expensive. Hötorgshallen and Hötorget which is located at the intersection of Sveavägen and Kungsgatan have more reasonable prices though some things are outrageously expensive still. Outside on the square you can buy fruit and veggies and through the entrance to the right of the cinema entrance is Hötorgshallen. Don't go on a Sunday. If they are buying fish I'd recommend going into one of the larger supermarkets. They tend to use fresh fish (and smoked fish) as one of the products to get customers to the store. Deer, hare, moose, fowl etc has a crazy markup compared to what you can buy it for in other parts of Sweden though it might still be nice to try it. A nice a pretty cheap place to buy cheese (mainly french and italian) is Winjas at Bergsgatan 24 on Kungsholmen. It looks like the entrance to a garage but the have a good selection of cheese, and also some sausages, pasta etc. Prices are without 12% GST since they are wholesellers as well. Some nice places to have a pickninck is Djurgården, I'd recommend taking bus number 69 to the eastermost part of the island if they want less people around. Drottningholm is also a good place and so is Ulriksdal, which also have a nice café in the park. Bergianska trädgården (a botanical garden) is another good place. The old town is nice but do avoid Västerlångatan which is packed with tourists. If they are going to be staying for a while I'd recommend a trip out into the archipelago. If they will be visiting other places around the Baltic sea and like food markets the biggest one is probably the Riga Central Market, I wished we had a big market like that in Stockholm.

Thanks for the tips, if I really get a craving maybey I'll have to settle for intensly flavoured and use less, the recipe using seems interesting, going to try that.

Does anyone have any recipe of something that tastes like real Bearnaise but with less/no butter? I really like Bearnaise sauce and steak but I am aiming to loose a few kgs and therefore sauces with a bunch of butter/eggyolks or lots of cream etc will have to go for a while. If no one has any I guess I'll just have to experiment a bit.

I used some 50/50 ground beef for burgers last week, well done and very juicy. I like putting minced union and some garlic in mine. Same for meatballs.

You might want to make sure you can get replacement blades or can get them sharpened, some of those skicers have some integral sharpening system I think.

I don't know what the meatballs at IKEA taste like, having gone to school in Sweden I have had some bad run inns with really nasty meatballs for school lunch which seem to contain anything but ground beef so I tend to avoid any premade meatballs, hopefully the ones at IKEA are good ones. The tubed roe is for eating on sandwiches, but the non smoked stuff taste better IMO. Best way to eat it is proabably to mash it up with boiled egg and eat it on flatbread. I wonder if they have Fjällbrynt messmör ( soft whey butter ) I used to love that stuff as a kid but don't really like it anymore. I believe it is rather nutritious though. The swedish mustard has a different profile than french mustard, it is not as sharp and it has a sweeter taste, I prefer it to french mustard for several things. The swedish mustard on big tubes isn't that much fun though. Another thing to check for ( no idea if they have it ) is peasoup, it tends to be packaged in something that looks like a plastic sausage and should be eaten with mustard. Traditionally you eat peasoup with pork bits and mustard on thursdays with pancakes for dessert. Peasoup tends to be a favourite in the swedish army. It is one of those dishes that tends to turn out better cooked for 100 people than in smaller batches. Of course you can make better stuff yourself but the premade stuff isn't that bad, it is really cheap to buy here in sweden but no idea what they charge at ikea if they have it..

Maybe you have to start young, I more or less spent most of my allowence on hard salty licorice when I was young. Most kids tend to like it. Actually most ( or none ) of the salt isn't sodium chloride but ammonium chloride ( salmiak ), so it depends alot on if you like ammonium chloride.

The dark syrup is used for all kinds of bread here, sweetened breads are pretty standard here. A common bread that uses it is Kavring. If you make any sweetened aspiced bread I'd recommend using it. The pearl sugar is used as decoration on pastries, especially on chocolate balls. The sprats are used in Janssons frestelse which is a traditional christmas table food. I don't like it so I don't know the recpie. Otherwise some people but them on eggsandwiches, or mix it with sourcrea and other things for baked potatoes etc. Another thing swedes like with eggs is the caviar ( not the expensive kind ) on tube, I prefer the kinds that are not as sweetened or smoked as Kalles kaviar is. Lots of people like Kalles though. I am not sure what the vinegars were but we do have rasberry vinegar etc, it can be used in sauces etc to meet a wine with a a tone of that fruit. Blueberry soup is really nice preferably warm. I have never made it from blueberries, usually you buy a powder that is quite heavy on sugar that you boil in water. During a 90 km skirace called Wasaloppet that is held each year in Dalarna in memory of Gustav Wasa that drove out Christian the Tyrant this is served. Another one of these powders that is very popular is rose hip soup, I like eating it with cottage cheese. The swedish ciders are usually very sweet and more like softdrinks than french or english cider. If they have any salty licorice you should buy that, it is really yummy.

Sju sorters kakor ( seven kinds of cookies ( or cakes ) ) is probably the most typical swedish pastry book you can find, it's been published over 60 years I have the 88th ed. Most recipies are of the housewife kind, ie not fancy proffesional pastry chef cakes and cookies. I believe the first ed was a collection of the best out of 8000 recipies that people sent in a contest in 1945. Recipies have been changed several times since then from what I understand All recipies are not neccessarily swedish ( there is a brownie recipie for instance ) but many are typical swedish pastries. There seem to be an english version coming out in june, at $12 it's probalbly a good buy. http://www.amazon.com/Swedish-Cakes-Cookie...03782349&sr=1-1

I have a glestain slicer with very large scallops, I like the fact that I have to push things of the blade a lot less. Don't know how their heavily scalloped chef's knives work out, I don't see scallops as bad in any way but probably they arn't that neccesary either, if your chef's knife double as a slicer I think they might be nice to have.

Curry of some sort, or something similar to chicken marengo, if you are in hurry you can basicly just peel the onions, put them in whole and divide the chicken into pieces. Wine, stock ( supermarket stuff if your in a hurry ) lots of onions, some garlic, mushrooms salt and pepper and parsley and good canned tomatoes is really all you need and some meat, I have used it for both chicken and beef, both are good. Boiled potatoes or rice, and some bread on the side. Make the table while it boils slowly, or make it in advance and heat it up and boil some new potatoes.

Question 1 and 2 go together. Lets say you cut 1 kg of meat into cubes and and put those in 1 litre of water salted with 50 g salt, then those pieces of meat should have the same saltiness as 2 kg of cubed meat ( same cubesize of course ) put in 2 litres of water with 100 g salt, assuming both have the same temp. If you salt on the outside of a steak however then I don't think there will be enough time for the salt to diffuse evenly through the meat and you will have a system with a concentration gradient of salt in the meat. Now if you take a steak that is double the mass but has the same shape the surface area will not be doubled but increased by a lower factor than 2. If you assume that the salt penetrates the meat with the same speed ( not really correct as I think the salt would diffuse quicker at higher concentrations ), the outer part of the big steak will be saltier. If you let the salt concentration equilibrate through the steak they will be equally salty however. The diffusion coefficient will most likely be different between different cuts and types of meat. Same for the equilibrium constant between meat and water if you have the meat in salt water. Salt would diffuse much slower through bone than through tissue. As to how large these differences are I can't really say. Looking at it from a practical point of view, trial and error with a bit of common sense will probably be most effective in getting you the saltiness you want.

I don't think tipping a higher percentage in more expensive places necessarily has anything to do with the servers not being able to make a living otherwise. I think it is more along the lines that lots of well off people and people eating at the company expense etc fo to fancy place. My guess is lots of these people tip well so if you want to give a tip that is along the lines of what these people tip go higher than in a normal place, cheaper places don't have as many of these people so waiters are used to getting paid alot less for their work. At least I think that is the logic behind it. The second factor is proabably how much attention you get, in a really fancy place where the waiter is constantly getting you new small dishes, another guy is constantly making sure a few tables have their glasses filled etc, they might put in quite a bit of work divided on very few tables and they might have to share the tip with more people. If the restaurant is just expensive and the second factor don't come into play I see no reason to give a higher percentage tip. Most of the time I probably tip more in cheap places since the waitstaff there would get paid very badly otherwise.