Cold climate cuisine
Reindeer is a staple, but game, fish and wild foul also feature. Slow stewing is common, smoking and air-drying meats above roaring tee-pee fires is the norm, and their daily bread consists of an age-old tradition of baking tunnbröd (flat bread) on hot stones. Summer is short and sweet and when you will find hordes of Samis going mad for picking cloudberries and lingonberries with jam in mind – a source a vitamin-C for the dark months and a piquant side for meat.
Swedish Lapland delicacies
Northern Sweden provides a horde of exotic dishes including reindeer carpaccio, fillet of char, moose steak, cloudberry jam, stewed arctic bramble and Sami favourite, smoked reindeer hearts: a delicacy and by-product of their nose-to-tail cooking policy. Chefs in particular idolise the ‘Gold Coast’ from which vendace is fished for its prized golden-orange caviar called Kalix löjrom (Kalix bleak roe) which is a regular on the Nobel dinner menu.
The Gold Coast goes gourmet
One bite into a slim fried Västerbotten cheese and potato cake with a dollop of crème fraîche, lashings of caviar from Kalix with a sprinkling of finely chopped red onion and you’ll understand all the fuss about the Gold Coast, home of Kalix caviar. It’s tastebud-popping good: the savoury bursting bubbles of the caviar, the crunchy sweetness of the red onion and the sublime smoothness of the crème fraÎche - pure magic. And more than the sum of its parts.
Herring feasts
If you are a fan of pungent aged cheeses, then you will appreciate the world’s largest fermented fish (and snaps drinking) celebration on the planet. Herring gourmands meet at the late August Alfta surströmming festival in Northern Sweden to try the Jamie Oliver acclaimed Swedish surströmming. A taste sensation not to be sniffed at.
The Palt coma
You are in Piteå or lunching in the wilderness mid-husky safari. You are about to be served Piteå-Palt (a moreish potato and barley flour dumpling stuffed with tender meat). And this is not a time to worry about whether you are eating too much carbs or not. This is survival eating. But a curiosity you will discover is how amazing local food tastes eaten in its natural environment. Albeit it subzero. It just seems right. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself reaching for another plate of palt. But prepare yourself for the palt coma (a well known condition of passing out after a large portion). Nothing to do with the vodka we’ve been told. They are simply a carb bomb that deliver bliss.
Arctic circle fast food
Whether you are on a snowmobiling expedition or a wildlife spotting horse trek, you will be having a quick al fresco lunch. And that means a traditional ‘souvas’. Souvas is the Swedish Lapland Sami peoples food on-the-go: take some reindeer meat that’s been dry-salted and smoked, fry it and stuff it into tunnbröd, (dense unleavened bread) and finish with a daub of lingonberry sauce. Sami kebab if you will.
Dinner on ice
Fine dining in a teepee? On a frozen river? Camp Brändön is the spot for the way-out-there “Dinner on Ice”. Indeed, it is way out there – the dinner tent is erected several hundred metres out onto a frozen sea. Enjoy a four-course candlelight dinner, Sami songs, and a crackling fire. Enter and exit the teepee in Arctic darkness and depending on the night that’s in it, you could catch the Northern Lights on your lantern lit wander back to land.