Category: Nordic Cuisine

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More Terror and Terroir Of Love As We Still Ascend, As We Must Ascend With Dante Alighieri, PJ Harvey, Diotima And Her Ladder, The Supremes, Jacques Lacan, Edgar Allan Poe, Nick Cave, Jaufre Rudel and R.E.M. With A Pour Of Caol Ila And A Slice Of Smoked Eel.

Last I left Love, I considered Nick Cave’s dark turnings of the lover’s call, playing off of Dante’s first sonnet of beatific and cannibalistic vision.  Yet, Dante a few sonnets on in Vita Nuova, also broods on the havoc Love causes, so one might say with Marc Antony in Shake the Spear’s Julius Caesar, “Cry … Continue reading More Terror and Terroir Of Love As We Still Ascend, As We Must Ascend With Dante Alighieri, PJ Harvey, Diotima And Her Ladder, The Supremes, Jacques Lacan, Edgar Allan Poe, Nick Cave, Jaufre Rudel and R.E.M. With A Pour Of Caol Ila And A Slice Of Smoked Eel.

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Musing On The Heart With John Of The Cross, Dante Alighieri, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Sappho And Julia Child. A Most Monstrous and Wondrous Orgy With Recipe.

My devotion to offal, especially heart, has appeared frequently throughout this blog.  Recipes for this great, bloody muscle resurrect my body and spirit, piercing my tongue and thoughts with recipes revealing its divine aroma and taste.  I have worshipped lamb hearts.   I have worshipped smoked reindeer heart. I have smoked a heart myself. I have … Continue reading Musing On The Heart With John Of The Cross, Dante Alighieri, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Sappho And Julia Child. A Most Monstrous and Wondrous Orgy With Recipe.

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Vinter Och Glögg Or Post-Impressionistic Impressions of Ice-Jacketed Branches And Sideboards Or What Happens in Sweden On Christmas Eve.

Winter is here. Frozen, snow-covered branches and needles fill windows round the house.  Winter as my eyes, memory and all those ice-covered roads masquerading as neural networks fashion winter.  Cold on the outside?  Well, then drink a glass of glögg, mulled wine heavy on the allspice, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and on and on. After a … Continue reading Vinter Och Glögg Or Post-Impressionistic Impressions of Ice-Jacketed Branches And Sideboards Or What Happens in Sweden On Christmas Eve.

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Cooking The Bog. Day One.

Think of a community of the living and the dead, mingling together in water, jostling back and forth with each other; bones and flesh, blood and fin, and all sorts of vegetal matter bubbling and foaming, slowly turning into a dense red bog.  In the beginning however, ah, in the beginning, there’s the fishmonger Melanders … Continue reading Cooking The Bog. Day One.

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Arriving In Sweden.

Around 12:30 pm on Monday, October 22 I walk out of the Stockholm Arlanda airport and into the arms of Gabriela and Demian and my new life in Sweden.  Fifty-five years living in the States, the last thirty years in Houston, and now I have “Permanent Resident Status” to live with wife and son a … Continue reading Arriving In Sweden.

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Sausages And Cooking Murder.

Louis Vincent Palliere renders in bright colors the infamous Slaughter of the Suitors” by Odysseus and Telemachus, note those gorgeous capes tripping hues between orange and red. I love cooking sausages.  All sorts of sausage.  Beef, chicken, lamb and pig; andouille, bloedwurst, boudin, bratwurst, chorizo, hot dogs, kielbasa, knackwurst, linguiça, longaniza, merguez, morcilla, saucisson, soppressata,  … Continue reading Sausages And Cooking Murder.

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A Few Thoughts On Soup

Such a sacred tableau in Pablo Picasso’s 1902 painting La Soupe.  There’s a graceful, reverential bow on the part of the mother as she offers a bowl of soup to her daughter, who springs forward, ready to receive sustenance, ready to receive a gift. I love cooking soup.  A small, crafted merging of nature and … Continue reading A Few Thoughts On Soup

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Blood In The Kitchen.

My morning thoughts do not immediately turn to blood, but then I read an article by Katie Macleod which offers a wonderful observation of blood sausage and what we will eat when we’re young and what we will not in Blood for Breakfast is Wasted on the Young.  And then, all my thoughts turn bloody. … Continue reading Blood In The Kitchen.

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The Dinner Guest

Sometimes they arrive without an invitation.  As in Edward Gorey’s masterful The Doubtful Guest, having a door exposes you to knocks and bells beginning a doubtful process of hospitality.  Maybe you had sent an invitation but then forgotten you had, and now as you’ve settled in for a quiet evening with a bowl of leek, … Continue reading The Dinner Guest