Flying Jacob - looks good...
Northern Swedes, we really need to talk. You know I love you and your country. I love my friendly neighbours; I love the public services; I love the work-life balance; I love the gender equality; I love the community spirit. You really are good people - that’s undeniable.
I also know that the vast majority of you didn’t vote for the Sweden Democrats or the Moderates in the last election, so we’ll not speak of this awful government again.
I love living in Norrland so much I have no desire to ever return to the UK, a country still paralyzed by an episode of brainless nostalgia and anti-modernity, and presided over by a political class that continuously plumbs new depths of idiocy.
I want to live in a civilized and forward-looking country. And, despite the current government (oops, sorry!) Sweden is that country. However, if you’ve read this far, you know there’s a ‘but’ coming. And here it is.
Ready?
I love Norrland but some of the food up here is dreadful.
I know, I know, an Englishman criticizing another country’s cuisine. Glass houses and all that. But please consider Flying Jacob, a dish combining chicken and banana, that was invented in the seventies by a man who worked in the air freight industry. How can you possibly justify this abomination? Would you fly in a plane designed by Marcus Samuelsson or Gordon Ramsay?
Then there’s palt. I'm not too sure what palt is made from. You certainly can’t tell from its taste because it doesn’t have any, and its texture is granular and crumbly however long it’s cooked for, whether that’s 20 minutes or a couple of weeks. Obviously, I’ve never eaten insulation, but I imagine it's similar in texture and (lack of) flavor to palt.
Palt. Yum...
However, my twin daughters, displaying the fascination for terrible food that all kids seem to have, love palt, even though they usually smother it with butter to ease the doughy cannonball’s passage down their throats.
I wasn't going to mention surströmming, because surströmming is a national rather than regional food. But there’s something that’s been puzzling me.
There's some surströmming there somewhere...
Lots of my Norrland friends tell me they genuinely enjoy the taste of surströmming. Fair enough. Why then do they hide a tiny sliver of the fish under an avalanche of potato and onions on a piece of tunnbröd? How can they taste the fish under all that other stuff?
If they really loved the hellish flavor they’d be scooping it straight out of the tin, in much the same way as Nalle Puh (Winnie the Pooh) uses his paws to spoon honey out from those big earthenware jars.
However, it's the north's obsession with terrible pizza that upsets me most. It’s not even proper pizza.
Kebab pizza? Hamburger pizza? Banana pizza? Bearnaise sauce over everything? That's pizza for toddlers, not grown-ups.
Ask the ‘chef’ for some extra fresh tomato on your pizza, and they’ll freeze, paralyzed by the rarity of such a request. But ask for an extra mountain of kebab meat or a couple more dollops of creamy sauce, and they'll happily oblige.
A kebab pizza, with a stray slice of tomato.
Sweden has taken Italy’s great gift to the world of food and thoroughly vandalized it. I’m actually a little surprised Sweden’s bastardisation of pizza hasn’t led to a diplomatic incident with Italy.
“Either you guys cut out that kebab and banana shit and start making proper pizzas, or there’s no NATO for you!”
Sometimes tough love is the best love.