It looks a lot like summer now

It is really warm an nice. Today, I was choosing between short trousers and T-shirt or jeans and a shirt. Now, I am always a little conservative so I played it safe, but it was too warm. Tonight, we have dinner on the terasse for the first time with our neighbours and that is something extra. Our Chinese Wisteria is really big this year and will cover one half of the pergola in the end of the summer, but the other part where we have a vine is the less well-off. Our friend, that is winegrowers say that we have to spray it against parasites to make it survive.

The two lemon trees that we thought were dead seem to have survived so perhaps we can get our own slices of lemon for the drinks this year also.

The major event of the week was a 220 year anniversary in Balaruc les Bains at Restaurant La Grand Large. It was our neighbour who became 60, their two friends who became 80. Our neighbours have just came back from a 10 days trip to Vietnam and it was a fantastic experience. One of the other ladies is just planning this summer's sailing in the Mediterranean with her husband who is a dedicated sailor and also 80+.

The food was fantastic as always. I got the absolute best carpaccio of beef I have eaten. They served it with sliced black olives, rings of leeks, generous slices of parmesan cheese, chopped tomatoes with coriander and a fantastic olive oil. As always in Balaruc I just had just a grilled fish. Very tasty and fresh. The other in the party had duck livers and a lot of fresh seafood. When one of the ladies would eat their Razor clam, which is a 15 cm long hard clam in form as a knife. Inside, there is this white animal, looking like a worm. You could see that it was fresh by how the thing tried to run away from the plate when it was released from the shell. Our friend caught it however with the fork and ate it.

When one sits there looking over the sea full of sailing boats eating the most fantastic lunch one feel good but have to think about what this would cost in Sweden. I read in a Gothenburg newspaper that the average price for a main course range between 30-50 Euros in the better restaurants. Here the most expensive four-course lunch was 35 Euro and the second most expensive was 26 euros.

I talked with our Norwegian neighbours today. It is 6 families who have purchased a large house together. Now they are stuck here because of ash-cloud so they had to go back home to Norway in their French mini-bus. They were loading a pallet of wine into the mini-bus to bring home. I wondered how they would be able to pass the Norwegian border with that load. The should however pay duty for it. 50 Norwegian kronor (60 Euros) per bottle including duty, VAT, tax and also some sort but fictitious transport tax that would have been paid by the freighter if they had not brought it home on "own wheels". Since I think they had more than 600 bottles it will be quite a lot.

Swedish Christmas in France

Our daughter and her husband have arrived from Sweden. They brought some typical food that is essential for a Swedish Christmas dinner. For long we did not know if they were coming so we prepared ourselves for a traditional French Christmas dinner with champagne, oysters and Foies Gras, which is also “a bit of all right” as the Irish would say, but our old Swedish traditions are what we prefer at Christmas.

The big day in Sweden is Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day as it is in most parts of of the world. We call it Jul not Christmas as our celebration at mid winter is much older than the Christian holiday. It was actually to get some discipline on the dangerous and ethnocentric Nordic people that the Catholic Church decided that we all should celebrate the birth of Jesus at mid-winter. Historically he was born at a different time of the year. In the Nordic countries we went on celebrating mid-winter with old pagan ceremonies even after we officially were Christian, to much irritation in Rome. Even if we now have forgotten our old pagan traditions, we still call it Jul, which is the same word as the English word Yule and is the old Scandinavian word that we have exported to English; another word is significantly enough “död” that means death.

But back to the table.

In our family the day starts with hot porridge made of round rice, with sugar and cinnamon and milk. An old tradition is that you hide an almond in the porridge and the person who gets the almond will be married during the next year. We drink tea or coffee and most important a slice of dark bread with a thick slice of the Christmas ham (the ham might also be reminiscence from the pagan time when the Nordic Gods in Valhall eat their bore Särimer every day over and over again) with very hot home made mustard. An important thing coming from my wife’s family is that we use the very old cups and saucers from tableware that has been in her family very long. It is Swedish china from Rörstrand and it is called Japan; an enormously over decorated set from the turn of the century (not the last one).

After this quite filling breakfast it will only be coffee and traditional buns with saffron and a ginger sponge cake for lunch.

The dinner is however the big occasion. Again the ham has the most important place, together with red cabbage, hot mustard and the dark bred dunked in the bullion from when we cooked the ham. Our home made meat-balls are also important. I always make cured salmon and our daughter and her husband had brought Swedish herrings that they pickled in a traditional way. They had also brought the ham, as we can not get such ham in France and they baked the dark bread the day before as dark bread is rare in France. The red cabbage is bought at IKEA.

An important thing is the aquavit (snaps) that is spiced in a traditional way. Sometimes you can buy that at IKEA as well, but this year the French customers obviously had liked it too much so it was sold out. I however did it myself. In the end you will find the recipe for Swedish Julsnaps.

We also have cheese and to the honour of our new home country we have foies gras on the table. A couple of small boiled potatoes go with the herring and the cured salmon is accompanied by a special sauce I make.

We drink dark beer with the food and at a number of occasions throughout the dinner we say “Skål” (skol) to each other and have a small glass of snaps.

We actually have quite a few other things as well on the Christmas table, but theses are the essentials.

After dinner we give each other presents and eat some sweets, maybe some of the men smoke a nice cigar from Cuba and if someone feel like it liquors and digestive is served.

JULSNAPS

I bought 90% alcohol at the pharmacy but you can use Absolute Vodka and let it soak a little longer.

Put these spices into a jar and poor over a few decilitres of alcohol.
A piece of cinnamon
A bit of fresh ginger
A few whole cloves
Half a vanilla, cut up so the seeds come out
A few white pepper seed
Dried peels of bitter orange or oranges
Some fresh lemon peels – the yellow
A few seeds of cardamom

If you use 90% alcohol a few days will be enough for it to soak, with normal vodka it takes one or two weeks.

I also put a handful of cumin seeds in a small jar and poor alcohol over it and let that soak the same amount of time.

Poor the spicy alcohol through a fine filter and mix the first with water and Absolut Vodka until you get a good taste and strength. I use these proportions:

15 parts of vodka
5 parts of the first spicy alcohol
5 parts of water (only if you use 90% alcohol above)
and finally
1 part of the cumin alcohol

Be careful with the water; it will make the drink milky if you take too much.

But you have to taste it so you get it “right”.

If you want to chill it put it in the fridge. To your disappointment your “snaps” will go milky, but if you keep it a couple of days in the fridge and again run it through a filter and maybe add some vodka it will be clear again. You can also drink it at cellar temperature and it will keep clear all the time.

CURED SALMON

Buy 1 ½ kilo of best quality fresh salmon side and freeze it for a couple of days. You have to freeze it to get rid of eventually parasites.

Defrost the salmon; take away all bones, cut the side in two so you get two pieces of approximately 25 cm long each. Put the two pieces into a plastic bag and poor the below mixture over it and seal well.

Mix 1 litre of water, 2 dl of salt (NaCl), 2 dl of sugar, 6 tablespoons of coriander seeds (crushed), 1 tablespoon of crushed white pepper and some stalks of fresh dill. Make sure the salt and sugar is well solved in the water. IMPORTANT: Do not use potassium salt (KCl) – if you do that the salmon will be poisonous and you will probably die AND use natural sugar nothing else!

Keep it in the fridge for two days, turn two times a day. Ready to slice in thin slices and serve with the below sauce. If you cure it too long it will be too hard.

THE SAUCE

1 tablespoon of vinegar
1 tablespoon of mustard – sweet hot Amerikan or Swedish style; not French style
1 tablespoon of sugar
¾ dl of a good oil (not olive)
Salt and pepper

Stir it as you would do with a mayonnaise until it is thick. First stir everything but the oil and after add oil in drops while stirring. Mix in the grated peel (the green) from one lime fruit and three tablespoons of chopped dill. Let it mature for a few hours.

Snaps and beer is nice to drink, but if you want to serve the salmon as a separate dish or a starter I would recommend a full bodied Chardonnay to go with it.