An ode to seafood, Swedish seafood that is!
Oh Swedish seafood I love you!
Shrimp, crab and langoustine,
in dill and salt water you stew.
Recipes are not needed, only routine,
to get wonderful taste and the reddish hue.
I love you, Swedish seafood cuisine.
I will start with admitting that I’m biased. Originally Swedish I left Sweden when I was 12 years old, and have never really looked back, except for when it comes to my family and seafood. In my mind there is nothing better than the sweet taste of dill flowers mixed with the saltiness of the ocean. Obviously the most important thing is the produce itself. There are not many places where you can get fresh seafood like in Gothenburg, where the fish mongers buy it at the fish and seafood auction in the early hours of the morning. Usually shrimps are boiled on the trawlers directly, but both crab and langoustine (my personal favourite) is bought alive, same goes for lobster, but the lobster season in Sweden is very short, only a couple of weeks in autumn. If you are not so adventurous, then by all means, buy your seafood from your fish monger of choice ready cooked. But this only works in Sweden, and if you, like me, don’t actually live in Sweden you have to find your own raw (and preferably alive) seafood to cook. I have written down the none-scientific recipe my uncles use when they cook their own seafood. They grew up on Kalvsund, a small island in the northern Gothenburg archipelago, so yes, they know what they are doing.
Non-scientific recipe for cooking langoustines, crab and lobster:
Take water and salt it to the point where you think you might dry up internally when you taste it. Add dill flowers (you can work with dill and or dill seeds if you can’t get ahold of the flowers). Bring it all to a boil, and add a little bit of sugar. Once you are happy with the seasoning of the water, add your seafood of choice. Bring everything to a boil, now the timing is different, but as a rule of thumb; langoustines take about 1 minute, lobster about 6 minutes and crab takes 18 minutes. When time is up, remove the pot from the heat and let the seafood cool with the pot. The best is to put the pot on ice or in cold water. Once cool, taste your seafood, if it is where you want it in terms of seasoning you are good to go. If not leave them in the pot until desired seasoning has been achieved, et voila, that’s it, we’re ready to eat!
Now for eating Swedish seafood, if you are like me you will like it pure, but some like it with mayonnaise. Just serve it up on a big plate and dig in. A secret tip when it comes to shrimp; get a slice of tasty bread, put some salted butter on that and then peel enough shrimp to cover it generously, add a bit of mayonnaise on top, you can thank me later! Don’t forget the aquavit and the singing!
