Friday was midsummer’s eve, probably the most celebrated event in the Swedish calendar. People head to their summer cottages, gather with family and friends, eat herring, drink snaps, sing songs and stay up too late. It ranks fairly low on my list of highlights of the year; way behind wedding anniversary, Christmas and summer holiday, but we had fun anyway, and spent it with a nice bunch of people. Read more » >>
Reindeer meatballs with glazed garlic confit and red cabbage
: Marcus Samuelsson
: Main course
: 4
Swedes have eaten reindeer meat since at least the ninth century B.C. Back then, it was all about hunting, now it’s a proper industry. More than 200,000 reindeer are herded by around 4,500 reindeer owners in the northern third of Sweden. Reindeer husbandry is an old Sami right, and forms the basis of their culture. This recipe uses reindeer meat to give a new touch to traditional Swedish meatballs.
Ingredients
8 pieces of reindeer sirloin, 1 ½ tbs/20 g each
Meatball mix:
1 small red onion, finely chopped
2 tbs breadcrumbs
0,5dl (1¾ oz) cream
2 eggs
300g (10½ oz) ground beef and pork meat
salt and freshly ground pepper
butter, olive oil
Honey-glazed garlic confit:
4 garlics, in cloves and peeled
4 fresh thyme sprigs
1 dl (½ cup) balsamic vinegar
1 dl (½ cup) honey
1 cinnamon stick
butter
salt and freshly ground pepper
Spicy red cabbage:
½ head of red cabbage, finely chopped
1 tsp garam masala
2 small red onions, chopped
1¼dl (0,6 cup) liquid honey
1dl (½ cup) port
fresh thyme
2 tbs demerara sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
salt and freshly ground pepper
oil
Instructions
Reindeer meatballs:
Sauté the onion in butter and leave to cool.
Mix breadcrumbs and cream in a bowl and let it soak for a few minutes. Add first eggs, then onion and the ground meat. Season with salt and pepper.
Cut the reindeer meat into cubes. Envelope each reindeer cube in ground meat to form eight balls. (If there is time, let the meatballs rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.)
Fry the meatballs in oil and butter on medium heat until golden brown, for around 7–8 minutes. Lift them out of the pan and keep them warm.
Honey-glazed garlic confit:
Sauté the garlic cloves in a pan.
Add vinegar, honey, thyme and cinnamon.
Boil on medium heat for around 20 minutes.
Stir in a knob of butter and season with salt and pepper.
Spicy red cabbage:
Pour some oil into a large saucepan. Add the red cabbage, garam masala, red onion, honey, salt, pepper, port, thyme, sugar and cinnamon.
Simmer on low heat for around 40 minutes.
The meatballs can be served out of the frying pan, with cabbage and sauce on the side.
Notes
If you can’t get hold of reindeer meet, just exclude it from the recipe and do “normal” meatballs with only minced meat. The traditional Swedish way of serving meatballs is with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam.
The recipe was created by Marcus Samuelsson. Marcus Samuelsson was born in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia in 1970, and adopted by Swedish parents at the age of three. Set on becoming a chef early on in life, Samuelsson had his breakthrough as chef for well-reputed New York restaurant Aquavit in the mid-1990s with his Scandinavian cooking.
Today, he is involved in several restaurants, among them the Swedish Aquavit restaurant in Stockholm, is a guest professor at Umeå University School of Restaurant and Culinary Arts, and has written several inspiring cook books. Samuelsson was also chosen as guest chef for US President Barack Obama’s first official state dinner.
Our Sundays have been in turmoil in recent weeks. First, I switched our sacred roast chicken for grilled, and now the last of the decent floury-potatoes for roast tatties have all but given up the fight against the armies of new potatoes that swamp the shops this time of year. Read more » >>
This recipe was created by top Swedish pastry chef Magnus Johansson. Magnus Johansson has among other been in charge of the dessert at the Nobel Prize banquet for the last 11 years.
Ingredients
30g (1 oz) fresh yeast
8dl (3½ cups) milk
400g (14 oz) honey
200g (7 oz) rye sourdough
900g (2 lbs) whole wheat flour
500g (1,1 lbs) rye flour
900g ( 2 lbs) wheat flour
30g (1 oz) salt
Instructions
Day 1:
Crumble the yeast into a bowl and dissolve it with the milk.
Mix in the honey and rye sourdough.
Leave the mixture in the fridge over night.
Day 2:
Add the salt and the remaining flour a little at the time and work into an elastic dough.
Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F.
Turn the dough out on a lightly floured surface and roll out thinly. Cut out the “breaks”, or make into “rounds”, and put them on baking sheets lined with greaseproof paper.
Bake in the centre of the oven for 3-4 minutes or until the bread bigin to color, turn them over and bake for another minute.
…is a British writer and editor who moved to Sweden in 2001. A former chef turned food and travel writer, he loves everything about food, but particularly the raw ingredients themselves. When not cooking, eating or thinking about food, he can often be found hanging around in butchers shops, fishmongers and grocery stores; a hobby he can pursue for hours on end. He hopes that writing this blog will take up so much time that it halves his food shopping bills.
