Stinking Bishop

Toward the end of the 2005 Wallace & Gromit feature film, Wallace is revived after an accident by the smell of a cheese named Stinking Bishop. To my considerable surprise, this cheese actually exists. And to my delight, it can be mail-ordered worldwide over the internet, along with a very healthy selection of similarly hard-core cheeses, from Teddington Cheese, Middlesex, England!

"Stinking Bishop [...] has a sticky yellow-orange rind and smells of old socks. The paste is soft and creamy, the flavour is delicious and, although full and distinctive, it is not quite as pungent as the odour may imply! At certain times of year the paste becomes firmer and slightly crumbly. The cheese is similar to the famous French Epoisses which has been banned from the public transport system in Paris."

Having 750 grams of Stinking Bishop delivered to my door in the Stockholm suburbs would cost me £42, $83, €63, SEK 560. This translates to SEK 750 per kilogram. A pretty stiff price, but I know people who could and would pay it.

Here's a piece from the Guardian about the maker of the cheese, who was nervous about whether he would be able to meet the increased demand for his product in the wake of the film.

[More blog entries about food, cheese, film,England; mat, ost, film,England.]

Christmas Soft Drink Wars

The traditions and imagery of Anglo-American Christmas are largely Victorian and urban in origin: Dickens's Christmas Carol, C.C. Moore's Santa poem, eggnog, coal-fed fire places and chimneys, etc. These motifs have spread around the world, but they encounter other Christmas traditions along the way, and some prove resistant.

Swedish Christmas carries strong connotations of rural pre-industrial life. Our Santa Claus is actually a mutated version of a protective sprite that used to be the farmer's little helper: tomtegubben, the "old man of the home plot". Our presents, julklappar, "Christmas doorknocks", are the descendants of prank presents tossed through the front door of the farmhouse after a quick knock. We decorate our houses with billygoats and other ornaments made of straw. Our traditional Christmas food is almost entirely based on lo-tech methods of food preservation, with salted, cured and smoked meats and fish. The only vegetables are such as store well (cabbage, apples), or, in the case of kale, grönkål, can be picked all through the winter in the garden as it stands tall over the snow.

The other day, as I was shopping for Christmas food, I found evidence that Swedish Christmas traditions have actually managed to beat the Coca Cola Company.

In Sweden a soft drink is sold at Christmas and Easter that is perceived as a traditional part of the old-time rural Christmas complex. Julmust is dark, very sweet, carbonated, seasoned with malt and a tiny bit of hops -- not enough to give it the bitter edge of beer. It's sort of a caricatured stout for kids. And for years, Coca Cola has tried to muscle in on this seasonal soft-drink market with it's flagship product, a beverage that is actually quite similar to julmust. But they haven't made much headway. Most Swedes perceive Coca Cola as quite incompatible with a traditional Christmas. CC is seen as part of post-war modernity and consumerist culture: it's the opposite of authenticity. Drinking Coke at Christmas would be a bit like erecting a model space shuttle rocket instead of a Christmas tree and playing electronic dance music while the presents are opened.

So what's a poor old soft-drink multinational supposed to do? If you can't beat them, join them.

Since at least 2004, Swedish supermarkets have offered large handsome bottles of Bjäremust brand julmust around Christmas. The label design screams AUTHENTIC, RURAL and OLD TIMEY. Bjäre is a rich agricultural district in Scania, southernmost Sweden, and unmistakeably Scandinavian simply through the name's orthography. And who, you may ask, offers this fine julmust to the authenticity-seeking Christmas celebrant? The Coca Cola Company.

I put the Bjäremust bottle back on the shelf and got some Spendrups, after checking that they hadn't put aspartame in it.

[More blog entries about Christmas, softdrinks, Sweden; julen, julmust.]

Kitchen Ascetism

I have an ascetic side to my mind. Making do with whatever's available and not buying anything unnecessary gives me a deep sense of satisfaction. And I'm a bit of a neat freak (on the macro scale -- never mind dusting). This means that most of the family's leftovers are eaten by me. And you won't see me leave an old pencil lying around on the sidewalk if I see one. Waste not, want not.

But I'm also lazy. (That's part of what drives my ascetism -- I'd rather not have to go to the shops). So I rarely cook anything complicated or time-consuming. And that means that our kitchen cupboards and freezer fill up with opened packages of foodstuffs that take some time to prepare.

I'm now looking at a bit more than two weeks of bachelor life while my wife and daughter are in China, starting tomorrow. Half of the time my son will be with me. And I've set myself a little task: we're going to live off of what's in the cupboards and freezer, not buying any unnecessary food. We'll eat like kings -- I'll just have to make the effort to cook dinners one day in in advance to have them ready for the microwave when I've picked up Junior from school.

When my wife comes home and sees the empty cupboards, she will flip her lid. Empty foodstores is an absolute horror to her. But that's the way I like my stores: echoing voids, clean and neat. I can sit in a corner and nibble contendedly on the last piece of crispbread, washed down with tap water. In control -- no threatening piles of chickpeas and tapioca making any demands on my time.

[More blog entries about food; mat.]

Righteous Noodles

We eat a lot of ramen / instant noodles (Sw. snabbnudlar, "quick noodles") at my place. I used to do it all wrong. For two fieldwork seasons I had ramen for lunch twice a week -- just the contents of the package with water added. How bland, how meagre, how boring! A package of ramen is like a package of spaghetti. It's the base of a meal, not a building kit with everything included.

My wife saved me from bland ramen by letting me in on some ancient Chinese lore. To enjoy the noodles, you need an egg (crack it into the boiling pot, stir it around) and some Chinese cabbage (try kimchi), sesame oil, and don't use all the powdered soup stock in the satchet. That makes for a good and filling meal.

By the way: eating Chinese cabbage raw (as it is served in Swedish school lunch rooms) is like eating potatoes raw. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Soup stock satchets keep building up in our kitchen. I'm thinking of sending them anonymously to friends just to outweird them.

[More blog entries about cooking, food, China; mat, matlagning, Kina.]