A Swedish Christmas.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

 Oh, CatPoet!

 

This topic is so interesting to me!

 

I have a recipe from a 1970's Betty Crocker (mainstream American Caucasian) cookbook about a St. Lucia Crown. It provides nothing at all on the provenance, but it's a bready yeast concoction with saffron, citron, and candied fruit.

 

If you have any knowledge of where this culinary creation originates, and anything else at all, I would be most appreciative.

 

I also LOVE cats, and desire to know why this is traditional in Sweden.

 

Thank you so much for this thread!

[CatPoet]

I remember that type of saffron bread when I was little, I haven't seen it in years.  The saffron bread came to Sweden around  1600 due to the trade with  Germany. They used to be called  devil cats, due to  the devil around this time ran around spanking children and  good kids got from Jesus  a  sweet bun  coloured yellow to ward of  the Devil .   It wasn't called  lussekatter until 1930 here, it used the old word for Lucia and  the word devil cats was removed from use.

 

So now we use the saffron buns as a  typical winter treat, a  reminder of the sun to come and  it has  become a tradition.

Edited December 10, 2014 by CatPoet (log)

[CatPoet]

 

Time to bake pepparkakor! 

 

 

Time to bring out the Christmas cutters... or not.

 

 

Nice mix of Christmas cutters  and other random cutters I had  and I have 300 of them... yeah OOPS.

 

 

 

 

Baked and done!  YUM!

 

 

 

Then we made some ornaments, to be honest, only one, due to my daughter eating up the candy that goes inside. 

[CatPoet]

 

Today I made sausage, these pictures are not from today, but  2 years ago.  My husband and cameraman had something more important, something for our future.

 

 

I normally buy   bag of about 5 meter sausage skin, well  this is how it should look, yes it is messy but  I have a muscle disease and I or rather hubby clean the kitchen before and after.

But this year I got 4 meters  instead.. so I had a lot left so we made sausage patties for dinner tomorrow.  The sausage is made of pork, lard  ground  fine, then  potato starch, dried ginger, allspice, black pepper, salt, sugar and water  worked in  for  30 minutes.  Made in to sausages . Then packed into  salt and sugar and the blood draw over night and  in the morning washed.  Served boiled with mustard and  it is  really lovely. You will see it at Christmas.

 

 

 

It is Lucia tomorrow!!!   So I made lussekatter and saffransnurror ( Saffron twirls) .  The heroes of the hour is  Sweet yeast,   milk, egg,  ½ gram  saffron steeped  in Tullamore Dew, butter, liquid sugar, salt and flour.

 

 

First you make a starter dough with nearly  all flour and leave it to rise for 1 hour.

 

 

Then you add a mixture of  egg, sugar  ( in my case liquid sugar), butter and saffron.   Add this to the starter dough, feel like you failed and then just keep kneading and kneading and suddenly you have a sticky dough and then you add more flour and then slowly as you knead the dough turns yellow.

 

 

Then you start rolling sausages and then roll them in to wrong turned S and leave them to rise.  They are small,  I prefer to do them  old size, which is small.  from a full dough I get out 40- 45  lussekatter.How ever being me, I divide the dough in half make 20 lussekatter and 20  saffrontwirls. 

 

 

Saffrontwirls,like cinnamon rolls but better, they contain  marzipan , sugar and butter. YUM

 

 

 

The lussekatter gets a raisin in each twirl and  a egg wash  and baked golden.  The  twirls you get to see tomorrow because it is Lucia.   I would have taken more picture but it is hard with sticky hands and as I said my husband is doing very very important stuff at the moment.

 

And now I will just rest and enjoy next week, I need my rest , my body is screaming STOP, lay down woman, play opossum! I think I need to obey or Christmas will be spent , crying in bed, 

Edited December 12, 2014 by CatPoet (log)

[Darienne]

CatPoet, your efforts have really come through for you.   Those finished lussekatter look delicious. 

Such fun to learn of holiday feasts in other lands.  Thank you for all your troubles.   Have a good rest. 

[Smithy]

Thank you very much for posting these photos and commentary, CatPoet. You've earned yourself a much-needed rest! I especially like the lussekatter writeup and photos. :-)

[brucesw]

Do Swedes still eat potato sausage?  A large boiling sausage made with pork, beef and ground potato.   My family, who left Sweden in the 1880s, always had it but when I talked to modern Swedes at the Swedish festival here in Toronto, none of them had heard of it. 

 

We had a store here called Stor, a West Coast-based clone of IKEA, which bought them out in 1992.  I remember on my first visit being thrilled to discover the food market at the new IKEA.  I had been doing genealogy for a dozen years including my Swedish line but knew nothing of Swedish cuisine at the time.   I got my first taste of lingon and crisp breads and rolls, among other things.  One of the things I brought home on that first visit was about a 2# link of potato sausage.  It was surprisingly spicy, something I had not expected from Swedish cuisine, with all the heat coming from black pepper as I recall.  That has been 21-22 years now and I have never seen potato sausage for sale at IKEA again.  

There are a couple of sausage makers in the states that make potatiskorv but I’ve never gotten around to mail ordering any.  Today, searching desperately after reading this thread, I discovered that a local specialty store carries it, Continental Sausage brand.  I had to enlist the owner himself to find it, buried in the bottom of one of the freezers, underneath some bangers or brats or something, but now I have some for my Christmas table.

CatPoet, my thanks to you also for going to the trouble to post this thread. I am always eager to read of Swedish cuisine and I learn such fascinating things from your posts.  I am one quarter Swedish, on my mother’s side, but was never exposed to Swedish foods growing up, other than that her father insisted there must be potatoes on his table at every meal, morning, noon, and night, which he said was Swedish!  He was born in the Upper Michigan Peninsula in the 1890s. His father came from the Brandbo Peninsula in Västmanland as a young man in 1880, heading originally to Chicago which was referred to as the second largest Swedish city in the world at that time while his mother came over as a young child with her family from Västergötland in the 1870s.

I have been looking back over your menu in your first post and I am salivating and looking forward to seeing the final spread.

[brucesw]

Ok.  So some questions.

 

I'm going to be making your red coleslaw but I wonder what Swedish sour cream is like?  Is it like American or more like creme fraiche?

 

And I see you have three mustards on your Julbord.  I'm going to be making a Christmas mustard from Tore Wretman's 1983 English language book on the smörgåsbord and I have senap grov and sås senap & dill from Ikea.  What are your three mustards and how do you use them?  Thanks.

[CatPoet]

 

Good Morning to you and  Merry Lucia and may the sun return.   This was my husband and daughters breakfast,  tomtegröt  ( gnome porrdige) with is like a soft rice pudding,   gingerbreads, saffrontwirls with icing and  lussekatter.  I was as always eating my standard spread, yeah for meds..... NOT. But I got a lussekatt and gingerbread and tea later on.

 

 

If you want recipes of anything I have made, tell me and I post them, I can also get hold of  Värmlandskorv aka potato korv recipe , I have a friends family recipe here.

 

So question time.

 

Sour cream.  Well according to Mrs B, Swedish sour cream taste like  American  and to Mrs L, it taste fresher here  and these  both two lovely ladies who grew up in USA, One is from the Midwest and  the other one from  D.C.  They both move around a lot.

 

Mustard:  Dill and senap sås is eating with gravad lax, smoked salmon both cold and warm smoked and  crab,  Grov senap is  eating with sausages, chicken and  ham or anything you would have mustard on.   My mustard this year is   Honey mustard, this one  has a kick of a mule and sweetness of honey,  we are also going for a mild and creamy mustard and a  coarse mustard ,  it most for the ham and  sausages but we like to have the options.

 

Other fun things   the word Stor in Sweden means big, yes just big.  And IKEA   stuff is either named  after towns , human names or  real Swedish words, like their gift wrap this year is called  winter snuggles  and they have candles called  First moment of love  ( Nykär).

 

I am being dragged of to a Christmas market today.. so more picture will come.

[Kim Shook]

I am enjoying this so much, CatPoet!  How wonderful of you to share this busy time with us.  Thank you so much.

[CatPoet]

I been to the  the Christmas market.  It is a local mansion that host it and  in their old stone barns and  other farm buildings they sell   everything from woolly socks to  rabbit salami.

 

 

In this house most things sold was food , as candied nuts, cheese, olives , sausages and cider and other  goodies.  Sadly my camera didnt like being smoked in the other house, where sold curd cake , ceramics and more food,  so I have no more pictures. But there was  4 or 5 more buildings and it was so cosy, homely and nice. We took it our pace and  it was nice 1 hour well spent then  we both wanted home because we were cold and stiff both us.  Yes my darling neighbour  gave me a ride down to the fair.

 

I got home what I wanted,   Coarse mustard,  mustard pickled herring,  3 sausages for the Christmas table, Christmas sausage,   Rabbit sausage and   Whisky metwurst. 

[patrickamory]

CatPoet, thank you so much for this. I love Scandinavian food, especially the traditional sort, and your posts are fascinating and mouthwatering. Please keep them coming.

[CatPoet]

Patrick,  Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian Christmases are not  a like at all.    Or do you mean  Scandinavia  as in Sweden , Norway,  Denmark, Finland, Åland,  Iceland Faroe Islands?  Yeah, Scandinavia is  such a loose term for us.

 

Oh that reminds me,  I could borrow something from the Finnish  Christmas table so I get more greens!  Thanks!  

Porkkanalaatikko,  carrot bake, lovely and doesnt contain anything any one cant eat!  Well   I do have Finnish roots so why not, even thought that is over 120 years ago.

 

 

[brucesw]

The sausages look so good.  Swedes seem to really be into sausages - I am too, so I guess I inherited it.  I have read of the korv kiosks and I wish we had a few of those around here.  Mostly our sausage makers here are of German, Czech and Cajun extraction.  I'm thinking of adding a third sausage to my table, not that it is needed.  Maybe I will go off-map and add a Cajun crawfish andouille.

I will have to come to Sweden sometime in December.  My third cousin in Stockholm has tried to entice me by sending me pictures including one of a roadside sign for a Julbord but your pictures of the Christmas market seals the deal.  I have been reluctant to commit because at my age the cold will be very hard on me as will the very short days, I think.  If those don't get me over-indulgence at the julbords probably will.

Are you doing vörtlimpa and dopp i grytan?  I made vörtlimpa last year but this year I ordered a loaf from the Swedish Bakery in Chicago.  It is a beautiful and very aromatic loaf.  Is the custom still widely observed in Sweden?

Thanks again for sharing all of this and answering all our questions.

Edited December 14, 2014 by brucesw (log)

[CatPoet]

Oh I will make  vörtlimpa, but my own version minus the  dried Seville orange peels as they have here, I am allergic to those.

 

Dopp i gryta down here is called Doppe and of course I be making that and showing what we do with it.

 

This year we  had a warm winter, no snow yet in  Stockholm  I think.    Stockholm is so far south in Sweden that isnt that harsh nor that dark, compared to my parents   3 hour of sunlight at the moment. I am from the North but I do live in the south, far south, it  a bought the high of Aberdeen Scotland.  So yes it does get dark at 3 in the afternoon but  the houses are warm and there is always good  coffee and tea and something to nibble on.

Edited December 14, 2014 by CatPoet (log)

[patrickamory]

Hi CatPoet, fair enough! Sorry to generalize. I was thinking of some broad similarities in ingredients such as Baltic shrimp, various kinds of herring, meatballs and so on, but of course there are national cuisines and regional variations everywhere. Thanks for the reminder and please keep posting.

[CatPoet]

Patrick, well bunching up a group  of countries that  only 110 years ago stopped being at each other throats isnt a good thing.  

 

Anyway,  I am now  trying to write the last shopping list, checking up what is missing and  what we need.   Shall I add two good cheddars or just one??

[patrickamory]

Two good cheddars of course!

[CatPoet]

I got the  flyers this morning and they have a set of three small cheddars that would be perfect and on special price, so I am aiming for that.

[CatPoet]

 

This what I been doing yesterday and today.,    Naga almonds,  smoked and salted hazelnuts and pork broth, it jelled perfectly,

 

 And here is the sweeties,   gingerbread hearts  and chocolate gingerbreads stars    and on the plate  buckeye, tablets, knäck, , market nougat,  almond bon bons and  Kola ( toffee ).

[CatPoet]

Oh forgot to tell you that the kola is made with  Tates and Lyles black  treacle and  cocoa, which gives it  a really deep  chocolate toffee flavour.   *drool*  I want Christmas here today!

[Smithy]

Those all look wonderful! How do people eat that beautifully jelled pork broth? Spooned onto crackers? I've always been pleased when I got 'pork jelly' or 'duck jello' but never thought to serve it cold.

[CatPoet]

Smithy: that is becoming part of the brawn.  I needed to see if it set and held it shape, which it did. The broth I had  did set but not as strong I wanted too. So tomorrow or Tuesday I am setting the brawn.

[CatPoet]

Did the   brawn today and it set perfectly ! Sadly no pictures because my mobile has problems today, I can take pictures of tree and kids but not food, then it just stops working.   

[CatPoet]

 

Time for  Vörtbröd my way.  Vörtbröd is a typical Christmas loaf with  raisins and bitter orange peel powder, which I cant have so I make it my self and since I cant get hold of malt either, i cook down 2 bottle of porter  and this is what I have,

 

 

In goes the scalded rye and  after that  cloves , ginger and mace and  when it is all combined   I add  wheat flour  ( plain flour)  and knead until I have a firm dough,

 

 

A dough like this one , slowly rising , doesnt it look  good enough to eat as it is?

 

 

Done!!  One loaf has raisins and the other one not, so every one is happy.

 

My husband, kindly   helped me take pictures of this even though he is so tired and  slightly feverish.  Got to love that man. *smile*