mandag den 23. december 2013

Happy sylte without salt

Another danish speciality - raw meat with raw egg yolks and raw onions - eaten on black bread. Its yummy!

(Note to my foreign readers: Sylte is cooked pork meat made into a kind of pie. We eat on christmas with black bread, mustard and marinated beetroots.) 

"I wish I knew a good butcher", said my father in a longing tone of voice, as we drove home from Køge.
"If I knew a good butcher, I would buy a big piece of sylte for the holidays."
I was silent for a long time in the car's dark. But then I decided to say it:
"I'll make you sylte".
"Mother taught me how to make sylte. I can easily make sylte for you".
"Can you really?", my father said - and he sounded happy.

And yes. That I can. I can also make fried herring, pickled herring, chicken salad and curry salad. I can shape small tenderloin steaks, roast fish fillets in hot butter and put rolled seasoned meat in spreads.

All of that, my mother taught me. In the last years before she died, it was a tradition that I did the cooking for the family christmas party on Boxing Day. So the day before, I put my mother in a chair in the kitchen, picked up a nudge from the livingroom that she could rest her legs on. Put a glass of white wine and a bowl of snacks - puff pastries, chips or confectionery - on the table next to her and started cooking. Constant chatting with my mother.

"Mmm, the vinegar should be sweet, but still give a flick of the tongue", she said when I made herring marinade.
"I would put a bit more celery in the chicken salad", she said, when I gave her a tasting-spoon with the salad.

And in between cooking, we talked about nothing and everything. Exchanged old stories, refreshed new stories. Discussed whether we should watch 'Anne of Green Gables' or maybe the 24 episodes of 'Monopoly'. Watching the same series year after year was another of our christmas traditions. In the evening we watched tv and ate marzipan slices.

Sometimes my father stuck his head into the kitchen and said:
"My goodness ... You are talking ..."
And we were. We also laughed a lot. And I think, that Dad liked to putter around in his house and hear the sound of our voices and laughter from the kitchen.

Back then, I loved to cook. I liked to invite my friends to dinner in my apartment and see them sitting around my table, eating something that I had made for them. I got a certain reputation in among my friends good at the pots and pans .

I liked to invite my ex-boyfriend to nice dinners on weekends. And when the sunlight was shining into my kitchen, I was the kind of type, that cooked meat extract and experimented with different types of chutneys, which I proudly saved in my kitchen cupboard. I had a huge shelf with cookbooks and supplemented with food magazines, if they looked good on the front cover.
Food was not just food. It was also relaxation, joy and conversations. Many conversations.

I had a cordless phone which fitted perfect in the hollow of my shoulder, while I stood and stirres in the pots. And very often I had my mother in the other end of the phone. We talked a couple of hours, while I was working in the kitchen.
I asked her for advice. I learned her tricks and tips on cooking and added my own inventions to the list. I had a real chef apron. And it was black.

When my friends came, they sat in the kitchen and entertained me, while I was cooking. Beside from myself, there could be three people in the kitchen - one on the stool in front of the refrigerator (which then had to duck every time, I needed something ) one seated in a chair in the doorway. And one sitting on the small space of the kitchentable next to the sink .

Later I torn down a wall in the kitchen and made it an even better place, som more people could be sitting and talking with me, while I cooked.

I am one of those people who like to keep my hands occupied, while talking. It's as if it 's easier to talk about important things, when the hands are doing something. When hands are working, the tongue loosens ...

I have received much love, much good advice, juicy stories, bits of wisdom and verbally buttkicks, while stirring in a saucepan. And I gave the same to others. The kitchen is a good place to discuss life.

When my mother died, I had been living on fast food for a long time. Usually i swinged by my local pizzeria, when I came home from the hospital in the evening. My consumption of kebab rolls and pizza margharita reached a level, where my pizza man ended up inviting me out - because he thought that I needed to get some decent food ...

And I remember that I made the family's Easter-lunch, the year when my mother had died. I also remember, that there were tears in the chicken salad. Tears in the food makes it way too salty .

Since that time I never really started to cook again. At least not for real. I remember many times, when I was in the kitchen doing this and that. But the deep peace and joy I felt when I was cooking, was replaced with a strange feeling, that I was in a hurry to get it over. I still managed the handicraft to a certain extension. But I didn't bothered anymore. And since I did not have liabilities in the form of children who needed nutritious meals, I no longer used my kitchen as much as I should have done. It was as if my cooking was associated with my mother in a way I did not understand, but I just had to accept.

Today I am a specialist in living on the same kind of food for weeks. When I landed in the jungles of Costa Rica, I lived on scrambled eggs, sliced ​​tomatoes and corn chips for a very long time. Then I found some empanada-like things in the supermarket that I lived on. Sometimes when I felt I had to celebrate something, I made real food .
If I had coffee, sugar and milk for the morning, everything was okay with me . Of course I made sure to make Red an omelette every night. I liked to cook for the dogs, I enjoyed to fuss over them and give them care.

But as I sat in dad's car, I really had to pull myself together to promise him to make sylte. Partly because I know that it will never be quite as good as mom's - for the simple reason that she did not make it and the bare thought of that, will make the sylte tast less better.

On the other hand, I would really like to rediscover the joy of cooking. There is something good, solid and down to earth about making a meal for those you care for. And if you make a decent meal for yourself, it is also a kind of love. It is the opposite of being self-destructive. It is to take care of yourself and do something friendly towards yourself. It is the opposite of living of cigarettes and coffee. And a little healthier ...

And it fits quite good with the fact, that I found a glass of vitamin pills in the bottom of my bag a couple of days ago. I bought it sometime in the summer, when I was sick. Never opened it. But I opened it, when I found it again.

The last few days I have done some small yoga exercises in the morning. I've been drinking more water than usual, and summary summarum - I think that a little cooking could be appropriate .

So now I am beginning where it is most difficult: Making sylte to my father. After my mother's recipe. For Christmas. I hope that it will not be salty. At all ...


I wish you all a very happy and peaceful christmas.