Friends' book club

Yesterday my daughter Disa hosted a meeting of her Friends' book club. They were discussing a 15 years old, but relatively recently translated to English, thriller by a very successful Swedish writer, Henning Mankell: The Man Who Smiled (Mannen som Log). They were mostly Americans in the group, but also a few Swedes, either by birth or - like Disa and me - by citizenship.

Thus the discussion was lively and showed interesting observations of Sweden and Swedes, as described in the book. Unfortunately I can't give more details, as the book is a thriller and a resume of the discussion would give aways the plot and the ending. So let's talk about food Disa made, instead.


Since the book is Swedish and its main character, detective Wallander eats mainly sandwiches throughout the book, Disa served a variety of typical Swedish sandwiches.
There were cheese sandwiches with cucumber on a typical Swedish bread, limpa, purchased at IKEA.


A digression:Limpa is slightly sweet and its sweetness has an interesting origin: during WWII Swedish government came to the conclusion that Swedes were undernourished, so it decreed that all bread baked in Sweden had to have added sugar. More than half a century has passed, the law is no longer, Sweden now has various types of bread, most of them without any sugar, but limpa persisted, although it is by far not as sweet as it used to be even in the seventies, when I immigrated to Sweden and could not abide by Swedish bread. Now I eat it, too, and like it. :-)

Another typical Swedish sandwich is one with a French pate (here a duck pate) and tiny marinated cucumbers, called cornichons, served on a French baguette.
Another digression: In the XIX century Sweden underwent a serious franconization, reflected in its upper and middle class cuisine, franconization of Swedish last names, especially of its middle class, etc.

But the king of Disa's sandwich table was a Sandwich Cake (Smorgastorta) a la Skagen.

Sandwich Cake, of which are many varieties, is a typical Swedish party fare.
This particular one ( a la Skagen) refers to the Danish fishing village turned resort of Skagen, famous not only for its sand beaches but, first and foremost, for its fantastic and unique light, which has always attracted painters from near and far

Summer afternoon at Skagen - a painting by Peter Severin Kroyer

Disa chose this cake, because the main character of the book spends some time in Skagen.... and because it is very, very tasty and very Scandinavian.

Here is a recipe for the Sandwich Cake a la Skagen:

8-10 servings Prepare 24 hrs in advance.

Bread:9 square slices of white bread (you want to find a denser bread rather than fluffy "wonder bread"). Cut all crust off. 3 slices next to each other make one layer

Filling:

3 hard boiled eggs chopped,

1 lb peeled shrimp (pref small salad shrimp)

1/2 c mayonnaise

1/2 c sour cream

2 oz lump fish roe (the red kind)

1/2 c chopped dill

Combine all ingredients in a bowl, mixing it gently with a spoon.

Note about shrimp: the Swedish shrimp are boiled in salty water before they are sold, thus making the taste different from the shrimp sold here. To get the same taste: 1. buy the peel-and-eat shrimp at IKEA (you will need about 1.5 bags and do a lot of peeling) or 2) buy peeled salad shrimp but sprinkle them with salt and let them soak it in over night. If you are at IKEA, you can buy the roe there also in 2.8 oz jars (use rest for garnish.)

Place 1/2 mixture on the first bread layer (it will be "stacked") making sure you have filling out to the edges.Place second row of 3 bread slices on top of the filling. Put remaining 1/2 of filling on top of that bread layer. Cover with the third bread layer.

"Frosting": 1 c sour cream1/2 - 1 c mayonnaise

Stir together until well mixed. "Frost" all sides of the "cake" I take a little less of each and add Greek yogurt, but that's just a taste preference. Makes the frosting a bit tart.

Garnish:Roe (rest from jar), Shrimp (about a cup of shrimp), Dill, Lemon Decorate the sides with dill. Arrange the roe and shrimp as you like on the top. Add lemon 1/2 moons to add color. Alternatively or in addition; smoked salmon "rosettes" can be used as garnish. Refrigerate over night. Take out 30 min before party (depending on room temp) so the "cake" is not cold when eaten. Enjoy!

Another very typical Swedish sandwich creation is ham on a Swedish flat bread with mimosa salad. Yummy!

And my only contribution to the preparation of this feast was to peel 2 kilograms of shrimp!

Cats were banned to the bedroom for the time of the meeting, as they made an awful nuisance of themselves, begging for shrimp leftovers, while I was peeling them, and there was a risk they would do the same to the guests. (Disa commented that I let them get away with anything!)

But they dis not seem to mind at all!

Pan Tadeusz... or how I inadvertently discouraged my daughter from watching Polish movies :-(((

Pan Tadeusz is an epic poem by Adam Mickiewicz, one of the three greatest romantic Polish poets of the early XIX century.

It's whole title is: 'Pan Tadeusz or The Last Foray in Lithuania. A Tale of the Gentry during 1811–1812 in Twelve Books of Verse'.

It is a tragicomical story of the life of Polish gentry in then north-eastern corner of a historical Poland-Lithuania, but already at that time under Russian occupation (and now within the borders of Bielarus, not Lituania and not Poland, since after the World War II the borders of Poland have been moved - by the allies - far to the West, with over one/third of the territory of pre-war Poland lost to the Soviet Union).

Pan Tadeusz invited interesting comparison among its foreign reviewers: an English edition reviewer called it a mix of Don Quixote and Iliada, while a French one called it a combination of El Cid and Three Musketeers.

Pan Tadeusz has everything: a romance

(more than one: serious and comical),

an insurrection against the Russians (tragic)

and a foray of one faction of Polish gentry againts another disputing ownership of a half-ruined castle (tragicomical)

Grzybobranie (Muszroom picking) - painting by Franciszek Kostrzewski.1860
But - perhaps most of all - Pan Tadeusz, the poem, is an expression of nostalgia of Mickiewicz, an involuntary expatriot in Paris, of his longing to the (idealized, despite the bitter criticism) Poland of his childhood and youth.

Thus the poem is full of loving descriptions of everyday life of Polish gentry, of a special way to make coffee, of making bigos, a traditional Polish hunters' stew, a desciption of old Polish expressions of courtesy, typical entertainment (hunting, mushroom picking, formal dinners in the castle and impromptu lunches in the woods.... and praise of the beauty of Polish landscape and even the sky over Poland, full of varying clouds, light and heavy, unlike the - boring, according to Mickiewicz - sky over Italy, which is always blue.

My memory of this poem also lingered mostly on its nostalgia aspects

-- after all, although born about one and a half of century later and under a communist rule, I also spent my early childhood in a "little country manor" like the one in the movie, and used a similar type of horse drawn carriage, like the one Tadeusz uses in the first scene of the movie) not so much on either romance or forays or all doomed Polish insurrections against the Russians

(after all the action of the poem is placed in 1811-1812, where the Napoleon army -- with many, many Polish noblemen as first row volunteers: first to fight, first to be slaughtered -- marched through Poland to fight the Russians, while the final - lets hope! - independence from Russia - save for a 20 years interlude between WWI and WWII - Poland gained first in 1989, that is looooooong, loooooong later).

Pan Tadeusz, the movie by Andrzej Wajda, made in 1999, cuts a lot of these nostalgia parts of the poem to tell its main action story... and yet the movie is both beautiful and satisfying both to Poles and foreigners, and I recommend it wholeheartedly (it is available on Netflix) to all my friends and readers.

Just watch its last scene, a grand Polonaise, as a preview.

While, then, you may ask, watching this movie discouraged my daughter from watching any more Polish movies???

Well, it was my fault. She set it up, choosing the Polish language version without English subtitles... and her Polish, although fine for a brief casual conversation, turned out to be totally inadequate (she left Poland when she was 8 years old) to follow an early XIX century Polish poem.

Knowing that she never studied the history of Poland I explained the historical background of the movie, but failed to notice she had linguistic difficulty.

I found it out when I invited her to watch "Chlopi" ( another Polish historical movie, located in central Poland, in Masovia, near my hometown of Lowicz, and showcasing the rich Polish customs and ethnic costumes of this region)... and she refused.

OK, next time we shall watch Pan Tadeusz - and other Polish movies - with English subtitles.

Easter brunch

Our Easter brunch today consisted, as usual of a mix of traditional Polish and Swedish dishes. First the cold table (above)

According to Swedish tradition we start with a few kinds of herring: (clockwise): dill herring, traditional Swedish and onion herring. It is seved with boiled young potates, caviarm sour cream and egg with caviar, wtrapped in a smoked salmon. After herring come two sorts of salmon: gravlax and smoked salmon with a selection of cheeses.

After that comes ham, fresh veggies and a few kinds of stuffed eggs.

When we were in Chicago two years ago, we visited Polish town there, where Disa found a profusely illustrated book of Polish cuisine. As far as I know she never cooked anything from this book by herself, but anytime I come to visit she picks up this book, points to (too many, in my opinion) pictures and asks: mom, could you do that? and that? and that?

So this Easter I made eggs filled with sausage and clover sprouts (jajka faszerowane masa z serdelka i rzerzucha), King's eggs (jajka po krolewsku), which are first filled with a ham and butter paste and topped with whipped cream with parmesan, and eggs with horseradish and sour cream wrapped in ham cornucopia (jajka z szynka i chrzanem). I though it was more than plenty, but turned out that I forgot to make eggs filled with roqueford and something, so I'll have to make them tomorrow.

Traditionally, after all that we were supposed to have a red beet soup, steamed asparagus, boiled kabanosy and debreciner sausages, and my daughter's favorite Polish dish: pan fried filled eggs (jajka faszerowane smazone), but we had more than enough food already, so a decision was made to serve the other part of Easter brunch for dinner, insted of lamb, that can be eaten tomorrow.

Happy and tasty Easter everybody!

I feel like going postal

I hope my sanity returns someday.

I wish it would return as soon as tomorrow and I would wake up being my old self again: a sane, nonviolent, open minded and openhearted liberal.

But today, if I had a machine gun, I would most likely open fire at a group of locals gathering on the beach under my balcony, enjoying 72 hours of a non-stop beach party with a non-stop obnoxiously loud music.

And totally ignoring my pleas, my helpless cries to turn the music down.

So today I would coldbloodedly mow them all down, men, women and children, to silence that obnoxious noise. And then I would take a nap!

I could not run away from them this weekend, not even for a spell of a silence, because on Thursday I was diagnosed with a bad case of infection and ordered to stay in bed at least till tomorrow. And I am sick like a dog...

I used to like Latin music (I doubt that after this weekend I would ever be able to), I used to like Puertoricans ( again, I am not sure that after this weekend I will ever be able to).

I used to be nonviolent - but today I would kill gladly those inconsiderate monsters on the beach.

And, I am afraid, that after 72 hours of being tortured with increadibly loud Latin music (who cares if good or bad??? 72 hours of Chopin or Bach or Vivaldi would be waaaay too much! especially at that decibel level!) if I ever hear a loud Latin music again, my instinctual reaction would be to want to murder - quickly - anyone who plays it.

Oh, boy, I used to be an open minded liberal - today I am closer to being a racist that I could ever imagine!

Of course it is not the beach goers race, not their skin color that makes me today want to coldbloodedly murder them all - it's their obnoxiousness, their total lack of consideration for people, who live in my building, as well as for people, who might want to enjoy the beach - without having been forced to listen to their choice of music at their chosen level of deafening amount of decibels.

Now I understand first hand at least some of the mechanisms behind the so called "racism" and "racial profiling" - they are likely to have nothing to do with race as such, but are perhaps only an unfortunate result of obnoxious elements of a lifestyle of a group of people, people behaving according to a different set of cultural norms (and now I am being euphemistic - liberal that I usually am).

I hope this weekend - and the beach party outside my windows - will end soon and that I might soon start regaining my sanity.

But are they emancipated enough?

A friend from Sweden called me yesterday, seriously alarmed: her daughter was planning to move to Singapore.

I did not, at first, get the cause of her alarm. Singapore is a vibrant, interesting city. Yes, it is very expensive to live there as an expact, terribly hot, terribly humid and terribly overcrowded, like most cities in Asia, but it is sort of civilized (save for their penal code, with its crudely medieval punishments like caning etc.) and could be fun. So what's the problem?

Her daughter is single... and a corporate executive... a single (heterosexual)female corporate executive.

"Who is she going to date there?" her mother asked me.
"Will she ever have a chance to marry, perhaps have a child, if she lives there"???

Now I understood her concerns.

If her child was a guy, a single male corporate executive, there would be no problem.
He would have plenty of opportunities.
He could date Asian women, be they ambitious corporate executives (there is a growing number of them, there) or old-fashioned (= professionally unacomplished) gals.

Most cultures in Asia - like in Latin America - have that in common: their lack of emancipation. Even a veneer of emancipation, if exists, is still (?) very, very thin.

Not good places for truly emancipated and professionally accomplished women to have a work-life balance, I had to admit.

And no, my friend's concerns have nothing to do with race (at least I hope they don't).
They are all about culture, ingrained, badly traditional culture, defining women as subservient (though sometimes luxurious) appendages of men.

Are there Asian or Latin men emancipated enough to truly appreciate a professionally accomplished woman? Without - subconsciously - expecting her to serve him: put a dinner on the table, make sure that the house is clean, in short to manage the household in addition to managing her job? Instead of equally sharing the household management duties with her?Hmmm. Very, very few, I am afraid.

Such culture clashes are still happening even in Europe and in America, where emancipation often seems only skin deep, despite it being proclaimed for a lot longer than in other parts of the world, so long that it already should be the norm, should feel obvious to all concerned... but, sadly, it is not.

I still remember vividly my own failed attempt at forming a relationship with a cultivated (I thought), highly educated and worldly American. On the surface, we had lot in common: interests, world outlook, wanderlust... but not the level of emancipation.
I could hardly believe my ears, when he proposed... with a disclaimer: he would be the decider. He would give me every consideration, he said, but he would be the decider.
At first I thought it was a joke, so caveman it sounded, and I laughed, amused. But he was serious, a barbarian at heart, despite all his education and his polish of civilization and worldliness.

So what a chance my friend's highly emancipated daughter would have at any personal happiness living in a very nonemancipated culture???