Patience Rewarded

Have been weeks and weeks and weeks in the threnches: in jeans, knee-deep in microwave food, bombarded by constantly buzzing phones, erratic mid-night post-it writing, second and third guessing, strategizing, coffee, more coffee, and printers on the fritz.

And then. Glanced over Huffington Post and the New York Times. Noted they had picked up press-release. Closed computer down, slung bag over shoulder, and buggered off.

Went straight to NK, the oldest and stuffiest of Stockholm departement stores. Picked my way through their eclectic mix of wrinkled ladies eating shrimp, narrow jeaned girls ogling Choos, and haphazardly displayed McQueens to their shoe department.

Sinking onto a pink silk couch, was brought selection of their highest heeled and most uncomfortable shoes. Out of these, chose a small black blunt nosed pair, looking rather like startled Pug dogs on stilts. Completed these with the narrowest of pencil skirts, with dull brass buttons, and a nice edition Fanny Hill. 

Shopping complete, marched over to the old mink infested bar in the cavernous depths of the Opera House. Had myself a nice big glass of nice wine, in solitude. Closed eyes, sniffing ever so often – discreetly - at the million dollar perfumes of leather and pearls about the necks of the florid patrons.

For dinner, I walked across the park to the Stockholm Grand Hotel and the Mattias Dahlgren Matbaren. Crisp bread excellent. Squid sublime. Chocolate dessert: crisp, cold, creamy, hot and slightly bitter.

The view of the quay was a deepening blue, the hulls of the white steamers coming out in relief, and when I wrapped my old faithful black wool coat around me it was with a feeling of certainty – winter won’t go on for ever.

Feast, Famine and Weber

Every morning I set my alarm for a Calvinist seven, planning to get up in time to wash my face and eat breakfast. But every morning I loll in the decidedly heathen arms of the Better Man so long that just plain finding the least dirty skirt takes precedence over food.

Having no time for even the most modest of toasts I arrive at work hungry, where the (enforced) office policy of no eating at desk leaves me no option but to endure this state of things till lunchtime.

Come 12.30, I start considering my option, in the singular – working on the dark side of the moon leaves me to the mercies of the one restaurant available within a fifteen minute walk.

It is a place run on blatantly puritanical principles. Disinterested Alaska Pollok in egg slush, curry-coloured sauces devoid of personality and limpid lasagnes’ turn lunch from much needed break to penitence. Flagellating over watery noodles and grated carrots is a common occurrence, if by flagellation I mean something unpleasant that believers do to curb the flesh.

Or such was the case till Monday, where lo and behold, the horns sounded and the heresies of cauliflower mush were banned. The Stockholm Modern Museum has taken over the joint, introducing the true faith, more Roman, complete with golden chalices of Tom Yum, velvet virgin oils and basil.

And I rejoice not only over the beautifully plated, steaming hot dishes of imagination, flair and flavour. I also give most fervent and specific thanks at the shrine of the Very Reasonably Prized Set Breakfast – I believe it might be St. Scone. Now newly baked bread, scrambled eggs, and blueberry smoothies mark the beginning of my day, instead of a lukewarm glass of watered down water.

Drawback ? But of course, or the composition of this piece would be lacking.

A full stomach is more conducive to long naps than stern labour. As we speak, some lovely Gnocci have taken the place in my heart originally reserved for writing a press release about whatsit. Letting go of the stark eating habits of the Protestant – I also wave goodbye to Spirit of Capitalism.

Which bugs me in so far as it may limit my spending at the Altar that is their varied salad buffet.

Best in Show

Friday: Oysters at Chez Pontus.

My new favourite is a Spanish type, comes in a shell deep as a old-timey tub, and the taste is just the perfect mix of salty sea, the sweet of new sweat, and the bitter of lemon rind.

Saturday: Mini-sausages at Allmäna Galleriet.

Three miniature grilled sausages, gamey, in three equally dinky brioche, hot still, with ketchup made from sun dried tomatoes and a mustard full of big, beautiful seeds. Slivers of deep-fried onion, and a Perrier.

Sunday: Turkey sandwich at Nero.

Turkey, and eggplant dipped in egg, and mozarella, and harsh peppers. Coffee, and raspberry juice.

Saving Friday

Do you also feel the tug of bed early Friday night? Do you also feel washed out, beached, bone-tired, and frazzled. Look no further: I have the cure.

Leaving work, what you want to do, is take a detour into the fanciest perfume store you can find on way from work, and buy a lipstick in the deepest shade of red you can pull off. Trust me – it is probably a lot redder than you thought.

Then, you want to totter a few blocks more and land on a bar stool in a tiled and steeled room. The stool should ideally overlook a bed of ice and a man in an apron. On the bed of ice you wish to find a top of line selection of Oysters, and at hand you want a glass of champagne.

Spend a few hours gossiping to your friend, watching the harried and be-tied order rushes of take-away shells, sipping a second glass, and comparing the beauties of Utah Beach, Spain, the North Sea, and the different French Regions.

By now you should be feeling relaxed enough to apply a second coat of lipstick and mosey on over to the nearest bar, where you will be having a few drinks. They need not be very strong, but the bar needs to be cozy, warm, busy, mahoganied and with an open kitchen that lets you watch the chefs sprinkle and brown.

When the sprinkle and brown, and the mahogany and the chatter, starts to blend at the edges, make for home, and into the arms of a loving man and a huge plate of spaghetti and garlic. You’ll be feeling divine.

Darling Buds

At our favorite, bourbon colored bar, the shellfish dinner turned, spur of the moment, into a steak tartare – pure raw meat, ground till of a softness with the inside of your mouth. I will happily eat the stuff without the condiments, just sneaking a few of the fries that went with the Better Mans Moules gives perfection.

It started to snow, and since it started to snow, as we passed a stand of tulips, I had to buy them, because they were finely tipped, French, and burnt red striped into the white. Which got me thinking about some other flowers, and why I settle for buying them for myself, instead.

One I got from a RAF soldier in Italy. I remember it was pink rose and just in the bud, but my brother tore it up, leaf by leaf, in the back seat of our old cream Citroen.

One was given me by a random old man in a café.

A bunch of long stemmed red roses where bought hastily, I could tell, at the airport, and in my dorm room I did not have a vase, so I put them in a tall glass I borrowed from the other guy I was seeing at the time, it was a green huge plastic cup with a football player on.

A potted sunflower was given to me the night before I left for a two week stint in Paris, and was dead when I got home. So were a lot of other things. But I’d had fun.

Functional Food

They say design for the hell of it is a luxury to be frowned at in times of depression, and that objects and projects alike, when the earth bows deep under ecological threats, should be developed on principles of functionality. (For more on this sad-sack view, please see, for instance, John Thackara). (Or for a more fun-filled but still depressionist report, check out New York Times).

Others, or perhaps the same, do cliff-notes instead of full-on Brontë, interface instead of face-to-face, and build time saving super malls on the outskirts of minimized towns. What kind of a rationale they have developed for getting their rocks off I do not know – I do not want to know,  I do not like these people.

Nothings gets me het up though, as much as people who argue food as fuel. Whether future forward dream of simple pills, instead of escargot-vitello-pudding-and-a-mini-curacoa dinners, or the diphthong that is hash-and-mash microwave dinners, already here. 

Today, in a gesture of defiance against all that is hurried and reheated, I decided to have my breakfast at the Stockholm Grand Hôtel: thinking their starched napkins and glinting silverware, their dinky pastires and surplus sorts of fruit the perfect paddle with which to beat against the current. Also, as luck would have it, it was the setting for my ten o clock appointment.

So what did I eat? What was my gastronomical forefinger to the face of modern times?

The Grand Hôtel breakfast has a 124 variety buffet. I chose a frothy mango smoothie, and filled a plate with passion fruit and pineapple, cinnamon apples and strawberries, crispy bacon and kiwi. I glanced at the sourdough rolls, and the cold cuts, and the home made marmalades and preserves, but chose instead in the end a surprisingly nutty miniature danish and multiple cups of lapsang souchong.

Along with the food, I enjoyed fresh and crisp morning papers, occasionally glancing out at the perfect Prussian blue and steamer white of the docks, sun glinting in copper roofs and ermines against the cold. Sweeping but demure ponytails and aprons of waitstaff, international chitt-chatt of fellow patrons, and a mother-daughter huddle over the design of some jewellery.

Naturally, time passed swiftly, and at the end of the meal, feeling the perfect amount of full, I was in an excellent mood for flirting a barter deal out of my grumpy gentleman business associate. All his complaints of economy (bad) winter (bad) and health (worse) could be met with the sunny smile of a mornings indulgence.

Which shows a snag in my plan of one-upping the modern system. My beautiful, luxurious morning had in fact made me more productive – and with lots of fruits added to my immune system to boot: apples being the most functional of foods.

Which just goes to show I will have to do another manifestation, shortly, perhaps at a cocktail bar.

The Subtle Knife

Well, I just figured what I have been doing wrong all these years. I have been thinking Men intelligent.

Last night, the Better Man took me out for a really nice evening on the town. First we went to a small friendly neighbourhood Brasserie  – all Pierrot checkered walls, mismatched china, artschool waitstaff and lovely simple food fit for a stomach patient.

I had a deliciously coarse meatloaf with crisply browned potatoes, and a dessert named – in a fit of someones ingenuety – Death by Chocolate. It was a three-step-launch rocket of chocolate-banana cupcake, chocolate icecream, a chocolate wafer, all tied nicely together by a chocolate drizzel. All accompanied by a salutary glass of red.

After dinner, we strolled down to the Better Mans local, which sports Wednesday night jazz sessions. Anders Linder 4 Prima was the name of the band, four or five lacivious and leering octagonarians wielding saxophones and other pointy objects with a flourish, playing so hard part of the roof collapsed.

As the last set came to a close, the Better Man hailed a Blonde, tiny woman who came over to our table in a flurry of too much perfume, too much primer, and too many too obvious gestures. She plonked herself down at our table, and from her tinkly winkly conversation it transpired that she and the Better Man are aquainted.

It also transpired, to every man in the bar but the Better one, that she wanted to get a lot more aquainted, with him, as soon as humanly possible without downright felling his girlfriend.

There were strokings of arms. There were playful slaps of shoulder. There were thrusted forth bodyparts. There were displays of feminie whims, fancies, and incoherrent thought. There was even, help me god, batted eyelashes.

Through this display, the Better Man sat - a model of propriety, I thought – holding my hand and feeling up my thigh and nodding in the right places. Boyed up by his perfect behavious, I smiled and chatted.

Unfortunately, I was so little on my guard, as to say, on leaving, what a ridiculous person we’d just met. I was met, to my astonishement, by astonished incomprehension.

He had no idea she had been flirting. He had no idea that she had been drooling. He had no idea she had been anything but perfectly friendly – and added, he had no idea why I thought her stupid.

Which explaines why so many men never realised I was flirting with them. And why, earlier the same night, a none-too-sober gentleman had placed his hand firmly on my ass, no introduction needed.

Meat, meat, more on meat

In Sweden early summer is very much Bon Jovi – living on a prayer, slippery when wet. We all slouch around hoping fervently that each quivering ray would please be the start of some serious heat – rather like early dating, actually, but getting our hopes doused by daily cold showers. Yesterday, The Irish and I decided that we’d had it with rain and squalor. We needed some serious sun, or the next best thing, drinks with tiny umbrellas in them. As a result, we climbed the wooden stairs to the terrace of one of Stockholms few skybars – Gondolen.

My legs were distinctly chilled and grey skirt ballooning, the artists and punters at the surrounding tables were in heavy black and belted macs. There really was nothing for it but to order the most frivoulous and colourful, the most Croisette and white sands drinks on the menu. The Irish had a concoction of puréed rhubarb, vanilla liquor and some sort of sour – I went for a modest double strawberry daquiri.

We sat looking down on the seagulls and the yatches, the traffic and and green copper roofs, sipping our icy potions and rubbing our freezing fingers. A good laugh, yes, but then the clouds over the Baltic started letting out their first fistfuls of pebble size drops. We ran for cover, hopping on a crosstown buss and plonking ourselves down within reach of the biggest, most sizzling grills in Stockholm, a Texas style steakhouse.

First some background. Neither the Irish nor I are Texas size or, usully, Texas minded when it comes to the persual of dead things to throw on the barbe. But it is not like we have never had a bite before. I have worked my way through six course and tasting menus with them best of them, had real life soulfood and polished of big steel trays of Indian and even, but only once, survived a rustic French farmdinner. Goddamit, I am a Swede. I was borught up in close proximity to The Smorgasbord. And the Irish, well, he’s known to handle porridgelike multiple servings of Guiness and still have room for a fish dinner. To sum up, we are no babes in the woods when it comes to devouring. We thought we could handle it. That we would be able to take whatever the grill-manner would throw at us. Little did we know.

We should have known by the appraising gleam in the waiters eye, and the sheer bulk of the rest of him. A massive man in a checkered shirt, his barnyard forehead crossed with veins very much in the fashion of a Dutch countryside run through with winding waterways. He handed us, from gargantuan hands, an unceremonious roll of kitchen paper, filled of our water glasses and dissapeared, leaving us all alone and vulnerable, facing Valhallan dishes. Each of us were given half a side of swine, corncobs, fries and coleslaw. It was an intimidating sight. But we called on our Viking forefathers (I discretely undid the bow at the waist of my Hepburn skirt) and tucked in.

It started out nice and breezy enough, licking heavenly sauce from the exposed bones of the former pig. The meat was tender, perfectly crusted in places. The fries were crisp. I even added some extra salt, little knowing, at that point, that every extra grain would be a later potential stumbling block. After fifteen minutes, conversation halted. After twenty, we wiped our foreheads surrepetitiously. After half an hour, we decided to give dessert a miss. After fortyfive minutes we threw down our weapons, eyes glazed and backs crooked, panting, proclaiming seasefire. On my plate, at that time, were still three quarters of a serving of fries, half a corn cob and a whole coleslaw. But by god, there wasn’t a scrap of meat to pick from the bones. The Irish had gone even further, and finished his beer.

It is a bit of an embarassment, of course, not finishing. I am a firm believer in not eating what is bad or bland and will happy send back the lobster springroll or the primeurs with a withering look and tight lip, should they fail to please me. But this was not the case last night. There was just too much food. It is then that the well-versed eater chooses his battles. And I for one, will pick meat over corn any day. Or at least, the unknown over the everyday. But I suspect not everyone reasons the same.

I have people I call my friends who eat first what they like and know, then filling out the corners with the experimental. I have people who call me their friend who eat the boring stuff first, giving themselves the quirks and salty bits as rewards. Never I say, will I force anyone to eat in that fashion. Food should be about heady enjoyment. Leaving the corn. Shall have to try to remeber that when the kid fills up on tofu.

And also: hats of to Butter On the Endive and The Barbecue Bachelor and all the rest of you devotees picking up the meateater slack out there. Your are doing heroic work!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Champers in PJ:s – the end of an era

Friday night a good friend and I threw our skimpiest LBDs in our overnighters and buggered of to Brussels for a weekend of gossip and smooth goat cheese. Our Girl Friday, Karin, is getting married this coming Saturday, and we thought we should proclaim the end of boozing and schmoozing in style. We all camped out in her tiny bedsit – on top of a karaoke bar – and planned to have our fill of folly and Fernet.

We started out high on the hog, straight out of the taxi from Zaventem airport, throwing back Pimms and cigarettes and loosing ourselves in the thrum of the Brussels jazz festival. Ever onwards, we were soon twirling among the low lights of a young-professional intense, Cuba libre swilling private party. After which, along with her scarily sweet but ambitious Commission friends, we stilted it over to the art deco mahogany depths of Karins favourite grotto like local.

I guess it was here we finally gave in to reality. After a few minutes of propping up the bar and shouting gin tonic at the smouldering barmaid, we took our drinks outside. Chatting is difficult at the volume of a Samba, and instead of working up a pre-marital sweat on the minuscule dance floor, we wanted nice comfy seats and a chance to hear each other out. Standing around and watching the light drizzle turn our sequins to diamonds, we realised that the end of the era had already come and gone.

Previous weekends have been not so much about daytime action as about obscene quantities of dry martinis. Previous weekends have been not so much about constructive analysis of mother-in-law-wrangling techniques (gave Karin the must have tip of the Bewildered Housewife and consider it the single most useful thing I ever gave her) as about rash decisions to end it with some poet or other. Previous weekends have never been about missing the crook of shoulder of the man you love, in a slightly faded t-shirt, but about dancing the night away with lizard like strangers. Previous weekends had been about reckless abandon and cheep wine. But thinking back, we realised that it has been a while since we couldn’t remember our postcodes. Somewhere sneakily along the way, we grew up, and we all had the sense and the flat shoes to show for it.

The realisation that we are no longer the go-go dancers of yore did nothing to dampen the weekend, however. In fact, giving up on the search for a permafrost hangover left us all the more time to actuallt enjoy the city. Which, given horrid pavements and a humid clime, means eating. Belgian cuisine, is of course, atrocious. But as Italians and Thai, French and Lebanese go, they know their business. And then there is the international language of breakfast.

Saturday we spent most of the day in the conservatory of Le Pain Quotitiden, dipping rye in soft boiled eggs and smearing apricot jam on croissants. Coffee, fruit salad and flushing pink ham on the side. In the afternoon, we cleared a space amongst the powders and the glossies for blueberries and strawberries, naturel, wrinkly black olives , crackers and three types of individually pungent cheeses. After a few hours on our backs, drinking champagne from the only clean white wine glasses and discussing the nature vs. nurture of the career mom, we went out for truffel and porchini pasta and a vat of rosé.

Sunday we spent at the penthouse of the concert hall, with a startling view of the silver Brussels sky and skyline. Salmon in the plural – gravad, smoked and cold boiled – crépes fresh from the skillet, mushrooms weighed down with thyme, roast beef bleeding all over the plate and brioche to wipe up the juices; another glass of bubbly, all made for a very nice pelt of the dog. No matter your age, there will be the brassy kinks of honey and sour cream, Marcolini chocolates and the oyster bar. They do beat late morning curries and blistered feet. Oh, and also, there will be friendship.

 

chrystal clear

I went for a meal with my good friend Hanna. We sat down together in plush womblike Le Bar Rouge; where the music is french, the waitresses wear bodycon red silk minis, there are gold tassles on the red suede tables and the food is divine.

It was only to be a quick fix, really, come chat and a bite to eat; then I had to hurry back to the office for an unexpected all nighter. So along with our food we had not a single glass of red, nor white. Instead we drank cool cool water from cut crystal tumblers.

I went for the trois plats, three small dishes each divine in itself. A carpaccio with shredded parmesan, gravelly black pepper and juicy morsels of green olives. An calamari with wafer thin batter and a marjoram intensive mayonaise. An a blade of tuna, rawer than a hand in freezing water, thrown over a fennel and artichoke salad. Hanna had the chili-fest of a burger and I stole a few of her crisp fries.

While we enjoyed our meal and our conversation – focusing mainly on giggles, her sudden departure from her old job, and my ethical qualms about a church wedding - a couple were seated next to us in the feathery intimacy of the red print walls.

The lady wore structured white, the man carefully dishevelled grey. Her nails were like talons, only marginally thinner than her emasciated arms. He studied the menu, she demanded champagne. Then they commenced to order. They were to eat, if memory serves me right, oysters and the shellfish plateu, goose liver and the truffels, the three kinds of cheese and the créme brulée. For her. He had the hambuger.

Hanna and I both noticed, and communicated to each other in the silent language of the raised eyebrow and crooked smile,  that they didn’t seem very up beat. In fact, they were distinctly short of conversation. Not a beep, in fact, passed between them.

This didn’t bother me half as much though, as the silence that continued when their food arrived and they commenced to eat. I eyed them sidelong, poised for the jealousy inducing oohs and ahs with which I assumed they would greet each new salty swallow. But it was not to be. They poked at their food wearing matching his/hers frowns, leaving most plates to be carried out again: ruins of an ancient civilization, torn to shreds by the passing rampaging wild folks.

Well, it struck me, as I watched the oysters shrivel in their pearly graves and the foie gras lie untouched next to its fig, that it really isn’t only a matter of learning. The food thing, that is. She of the snippy mouth clearly knew her pricelist. Possibly also her spicing. But the spirit that needs go with eating - not to mention – the simply physical fact of needing to introduce the foodstuffs into your mouth, she hadn’t grasped. 

Paying ridiculous amounts of money for show offy food is a less common crime, though, than viewing food as simply instrumential. Someone famous said a cynic is he who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. I’d like to paraphrase it by adding: a poor eater is he who knows the nutritional value of everything and the flavour of nothing. Like take this girl in my office – really, take any one of them – they all share the same misconstruction.

Instead of walking to work and buttering a sandwich – they take the tube and eat some can’t believe it isn’t styrofoam substitute. Instead of having a salad of heartcoloured coldcut slivers and parsely-ed potatoes for lunch, they have nutrasweet and cornflakes. Instead of using the blunt knifes at work and cutting up plums, physalis and yellow pears for a late afternoon snack, they have their fourth cups of (again nutrasweeted) pissthin coffee. I bet they could give me the calorific content of any choosen ingredient, but they cannot tell what an onion should smell like when its fried right.

All of which is just sad and has kept me rambling away from the point of this post to the point where I have lost the point. I think it was to be something educational about not putting to many things on your plate, and also, appreciating the fun that happens in ones mouth upon sober eating.