Mr county governor, dear distinguished guests!
You are at this moment experiencing the Taste
of Blekinge, the taste of the food of the Swedish
Southeast. Does it taste good? (the audience
cried: YES!) Does it taste familiar? (mixed
answers) Well, if you come from our neighbouring
countries across the Baltic sea, you might very
well find the bread, the salmon, the ham and even
the spherical kroppkaka similar to something you
have had on your plate before.
Good food knows no borders and it never has.
But another reason for this kinship of cuisine is
of course the primary products. When you have the
same fish in the sea and the rivers, the same
game in the forest and the same cereal and
vegetables in the field, the result must be
similar. Some inventions are bound to be made,
but if they are good, they will spread into other
countries as fast as a sailing ship from Rostock
to Karlskrona.
I hope it is not considered blasphemy if I
say: "may God bless the potato!"
The troublesome times we in Sweden call the
Pomeranian war, in the early 1760's had the
effect that hundreds of Swedish soldiers, young
men, for the first time learned to appreciate
this earthy tuber called the potato. This
introduction proved to be very lucky for us.
So it is slightly more than two hundred years
ago, the potato first was seen on the dinner
tables of Sweden. Today rural food and indeed the
rural landscape are unthinkable without the
potato.
The real boom emerged when farmers understood
they could easily make vodka, brännvin, out of
the potato. This was in the late 1700's. Since
then the potato has been integrated in our food
culture and 50 years ago I dare say not a day
passed without potatoes on the table, at least
once. Sometimes you might think it went too far,
when we made big potato cakes, with whipped cream
and all.
In the beginning there was bread, bread made
of rye, baked in ovens made of stone. Almost
every author who describes this province of
Blekinge praises the bread - almost as much as
the praise the beauty of the girls of Blekinge.
The bread is heavy and tasty and can be stored
for a long time embedded in the cereals from
which it came. The baking is almost like a
religious ceremony where each step in the
production is followed by the next. You never use
yeast. You keep a small amount of the old dough
since the last time. It contains the absolutely
right kind of micro-organisms to keep the process
going. This way the bread can have an individual
taste, just like any French wine. Each cottage,
each farm, each bakery has its own character put
into the bread. You might very well find dough
that can count its origin several decades ago,
but the bread of course is fresh. When the dough
rises, it is almost like a living creature. But
it will be completed in the hot oven. You make
the fire with dry, very dry wood. When the heat
is at its peak and the wood has become glowing
cinder, then the oven is cleaned out with a
juniper brush and the bread efficiently shovelled
into the oven. It is then baked in the heat that
is contained in the stone for several hours.
The salmon you see on the table is only one of
the many fishes that have kept the people of
Blekinge alive. The poor could seldom have
salmon, of course. But the remains of the salmon
were used for making a tasty soup with
vegetables. Other important fish were cod, eel,
pike and perch, but first and foremost the
herring. The herring, salted, dried, cooked,
smoked, fried. Always at our service, keeping the
poor people alive, giving the rich a tasty entree
that goes along well with vodka, sometimes even
giving great export incomes.
Before I finish let me explain that the ham
with chestnut sauce is an example of the
exquisite taste of the well off naval officers of
the late 18th century. This was a truly gay time
in the city of Karlskrona. The king poured money
into the never-ending project of making this
small island a grand and deterring centre of the
Swedish navy. While the navy crews were preparing
for wartime or maybe reposing after it, the idle
hours were filled with parties, dancing, playing
cards and drinking - and eating of course. This
is the taste of a town where everything that was
available in Stockholm could easily be found. We
even have evidence that shellfish, not very
common in Stockholm at the time, was in fact
transported from Gothenburg on the Swedish
westcoast to Karlskrona in the late 1700's.
Then there is the "kroppkaka", this
spherical dish, made of potatoes and barleycorn
flour with a filling of pork. We consider it very
typical for this part of Sweden, but when I once
ordered something typically Lithuanian in a
restaurant, I got something very similar to the
kroppkaka. I am convinced that this was no
coincidence, good food knows no borders. So
please go on and enjoy the Taste of Blekinge, it
might just be in your taste too!