An outdoor dining adventure in Sweden
An invitation to a DIY dining adventure in Sweden
The message travelled down a quiet country road in the Swedish province of Smaland, from the mouth of the chef to the ears of the foragers. We need more yarrow — pass it on.
“There’s a big load over here,” said Dave Martin, a Briton living in Sweden with his wife and toddler. “There’s like a lot, a lot. There are also bees around here.”
Dave stuck an arm into enemy territory, grabbed his prize and deposited the greens in a basket already brimming with salad ingredients. Then he went in again. Our party of five, all participants of the Edible Country initiative, couldn’t let a few stinging insects derail our lunch plans. Plus, we had as much of a right to be here as they did. So, fly aside, bee.
“Being in nature is very much a part of Swedish culture and our childhood,” said Mina Carlsson, who works at Asa Herrgard, the hotel that runs the dining program in Smaland.
“Because of the ‘right to roam,’ we take advantage of the outdoors. We also learn how not to die.”
In Sweden, outdoor access is a constitutional right. The privilege, which dates to the Middle Ages, is as integral to the Swedish lifestyle as universal health care, generous parental leave and pickled herring. Allemansratt, which translates to “everyman’s right,” guarantees the freedom to ramble, even on private lands. The law applies to all types of outdoor recreationists, including foragers, who can collect plant life on most tracts of land, with a few exceptions. Among them: No Peter Rabbit-ing in private gardens or on cultivated parcels, and no venturing within about 70 metres of a private residence. But as long as you follow the edict of “do not disturb or destroy,” you, too, can shop in Sweden’s supermarket without walls.
“We have a long history of picking edible things in nature. One is the freedom to roam, and the other is we had been very poor not so long ago,” said Cathrine Rydstrom, who works for Destination Smaland, the region’s tourism bureau. “Today it is still quite common to go pick berries and mushrooms, even if you can buy them in the market. It’s a thing to do during the weekend and bring fika with you or barbecue.” (Fika is a snack break.)
Edible Country — created by Visit Sweden, the country’s tourism board — is basically allemansratt on a plate. From May through September, adventurous diners can choose among 13 stations (actually, 12-seat picnic tables) around the country and cook a foraged meal in nature. This way, they can experience the freedom-to-roam principle without the post-meal trip to the universal health-care system.
The settings showcase the country’s diverse landscapes, environments and vegetation. You can reserve a seat on a windmill-dotted island in the Stockholm Archipelago. A sea-grass-fringed beach on the Kattegat Sea. A forest overlooking the 19th-century Gota Canal.
If you are impatient for summer’s bounty, fly south to Skane, the southernmost province. If you prefer an Arctic chill even in July (and want to see reindeer and meet Sami herders), head north to Swedish Lapland, which is four to six weeks behind the south’s blooming calendar.
Booking the table is free; so are the recipes on Visit Sweden’s website. Four Michelin-starred chefs from Sweden created menus for the spring and summer harvests, plus one for raw foodies. Since the ingredients vary by geography, each recipe notes the region and also includes a brief overview of the main foraged ingredients. No pictures are included, so try not to confuse “large, triangular and repeatedly fluffy ” leaves with tufts of sheep’s wool.
The reservation comes with just a table; you won’t find a cooking stove or bottle of olive oil stashed in a tree hollow or under a rock. However, participants can choose assistants (living and inanimate) for a fee. Individual hotels and outfitters run the tables, so the prices and inclusions differ by location.
On a July morning, we set off from the front porch of Asa Herrgard, ready to bushwhack for our meal. Several dainty steps later, we arrived at our first foraging spot, a berry patch on the hotel grounds. The bushes popped with gooseberries and red and black currants. We easily filled several wooden bowls.
Our group piled into the back of an ATV piloted by Pontus Sjoholm, the hotel’s chef and our foraging maestro. We bounced along an unpaved road, passing sheep-grazing fields that unspooled toward Lake Asa, which was popular among sauna enthusiasts. We hopped out, baskets in hand, to collect yarrow and lucerne, which tastes like peas.
“We need 20 to 25 clover,” Pontus instructed us, plucking a purple-flowered specimen along the edge of the road.
After we reached our clover quota, I noticed Pontus and Dave squatting in a dense patch of greenery and joined their hunt for fir tips. The season was nearly over for young fir tips, so we had to touchtest a lot of tops.
“If it stings you,” Pontus said, “it’s not good to eat.” Dave’s eyes widened. Pontus corrected himself: if the fir tip tastes bitter.
Picking fruits, nuts and other plant life off trees is not permitted under the freedom-to-roam policy, because of the potential harm to the living organism. However, because we were on the hotel’s property, we could harvest hazelnuts. I gently plucked about a dozen green-fringed cups containing the smooth, white nuts.
The lunch spot was a short hike in. The red spruce picnic table was set, with wildflowers in glass vases, tree trunk placemats, a canopy to catch raindrops and shaggy blue rugs to warm bottoms on benches. Candles in glass jars hung overhead.
Meanwhile, Pontus was deep into cooking. He had lit a fire and gas camping stove and was stirring, cutting, de-stemming, boiling and frying. We pitched in with the prep work, dicing bread, extricating hazelnuts and chopping up juniper berries. After about an hour in the kitchen, we moved over to the dining room for our first course: a salad of lucerne, clover, hazelnuts, yarrow and fried bread cubes. And our second course: pike and parsnips smoked in junipers with potatoes, wild onion, Jerusalem artichokes and a confetti drop of herb salad. And dessert: wild berries drizzled in a homemade caramel sauce.
The food was fresh, bright and pure — no preservatives, no pollution, no faking the seasons.
Over in Arjeplog, the Lapland town about an hour south of the Arctic Circle, Pernilla Lestander, along with her partner Ingemar, run the Edible Country table.
“Your lunch is behind the church,” said Pernilla.
Pernilla and Ingemar have close ties to the land and lakes of Arjeplog. They lead fishing trips and other outdoor excursions throughout the year. In the winter, Ingemar also cuts wood, works as a carpenter and sells fish to the car companies that test their vehicles in the region’s extreme weather.
“You have to do everything if you want to survive here,” he said.
Pernilla placed several laminated cards on the hood of their car and reviewed some of the ingredients we were going to select for lunch.
“You can eat red clover raw in salad, drink it as a tea or fry it with a little butter and salt,” she said.
On the way to the church, we picked some herbs on the road between the Hornavan Hotell and a boat dock. We gathered sorrel, which the couple would cook down into a sauce for the Arctic char, and tufted vetch, which also tastes like peas. Pernilla handed me a sprig to prove her point. We pulled fistfuls of rosebay willow, yarrow and lady’s mantle. “It tastes like the ground,” she said of the latter herb. “Not dirty, earthy.”
For the prickly nettles, Ingemar slid on a glove. Pernilla didn’t have hand protection, so she narrated: “You take the small nettles. The younger, the tastier.”
Pernilla pointed out rowan (“tastes like almond”) and red berries that she dismissed as too sour. “Some people try to make wine with them, but ... no.”
Our picnic table sat on an island in Lake Hornavan, amid an electric-green forest and a sliver of a beach. Arctic char and trout inhabit the country’s deepest lake. Ingemar brought a fishing rod, but he was also realistic and tossed in some
fillets from home, too.
Pernilla filled a pitcher with lake water, which she claimed was cleaner than tap water, and threw in a few birch leaves for a hint of flavour. The water was naturally cold and tasteless, in the best way possible. Ingemar also rinsed our herbs and flowers in the lake. “You have to like nature to live here,” she said. “We try to take care of what we have and be gentle to nature.”
The Washington Post