What I miss from Sweden food wise

Having been in Holland for sometime now, there are a few Swedish things that I really miss here in Holland.

• Blodpudding! This sweet dark sausage is made from pig's blood and is served with lingonberry jam. This was served in the canteen at least once a month when I was at school and also at home. I have seen some kind of blood sausage here at Jumbo but I haven't tried it yet, because I don't know how to prepare the Dutch version. Homework for March! A recipe can be seen here
• Sausage! Here they have dried sausage (also delicious, try for example the Frisian dried sausage) and occassionally fresh sausage (also nice). I miss those sausages from all around the world - chorizo, kielbasa, bratworst etc just ready to cook with. 
• Cheesecake from Småland! This cake warmed in the oven and served with raspberry jam is just delicious, if I want this cake here, I have to make it from scratch - maybe also homework for March! A recipe (Swedish) is here
• Pickles! The pickles here just don't taste as good. My quickly pickled cucumber are always very popular at dinners here ^^ I miss the pickled cucumbers and beetroot. 

And a few things I'm happy to live without.

• Falukorv - this disgrace of a sausage. Pale pink, bland and creamy in texture, this was a staple in the canteen, don't try it if in Sweden.
• Expensive bacon - bacon is incredibly expensive in Sweden compared to Holland. And let's face it, bacon makes everything delicious. 

Give me sausages and beer and I'm happy :)

Of course, I could bike down to IKEA and get some nice stuff, but it's the IKEA house brand, which to be honest for some of the products isn't that good. Too bad they stopped stocking Swedish brands a few years ago. 

Swedish Meatballs

Exam week for the boyfriend, so I'm in charge of the cooking. He's been begging me for Köttbullar (meatballs) for ages. There was an action on minced meat at Coop; with 1 kilo minced  meat we have made fried rice with minced meat, bolognese sauce and now lastly Köttbullar. Served with cream sauce, potato slices, brussels sprouts and Swedish cucumber salad (I used the second version today) this is a hearty meal indeed!

Köttbullar, 2 persons extremely full afterwards

2-3 tablespoons bread crumbs

1/2 tablespoon potato flour

75 ml milk

about 350 grams minced meat (beef)

1/2 egg

plenty of salt

plenty of white pepper

plenty of dried majoram

For the cream sauce:

cream

soy

salt

Mix bread crumbs with the potato flour, add the milk and let the mixture swell for about 30 min. If it's still too wet, add some more bread crumbs.

Add the minced meat to the bread mixture. Add egg, salt, white pepper and majoram. 

Mix well until the meat strings have dissolved, giving you a grainy pink paste. If you use beef you can taste now and adjust accordingly if you want otherwise you can do that later.

Put water in a big pan. Bring it to the boil. Make balls out of the meat mixture, if you haven't tasted yet, make a small one and taste it and adjust the seasoning. If the taste is fine, make balls and put them in the boiling water, when they float up, take them out. Let them cool and dry a little. For this amount of meat, it took me two times to cook all the balls.  Have a bowl of cold water near by to wet your hands, then the rolling goes easier.

Put butter and oil in a hot pan and fry the balls until brown.

I had to fry them in two batches. Put some cream in the pan (still with the fat in it), add a little soy, let the cream boil and reduce a little, to thicken the sauce put a little potato flour in a cup, mix with a little bit of water, add this to the sauce in the frying pan. Salt to taste.

This is how I served the Köttbullar:

My plate, don't put the cucumber on the plate, it gets too wet :P

Boyfriends plate, notice the mayonaise ;)

This is not fast food, it takes about 1-2 hours to prepare, but it's worth it. Real Swedish comfort food!

I miss Swedish food!