Skanian culinary adventures

“Forget the roses. It’s time to slow down and smell what’s cooking.” That’s the word from Jesper Aspegren, a journalist lucky enough to carve out another career in food reporting, cooking shows and lectures on Skane cuisine. That’s also the message of Culinary Skane, and the initial twenty-seven restaurants that comprise its network, www.culinaryskane.com. There are many quality restaurants in Skane, but these in particular will make your lips quiver.

“The vanguard of contemporary Skane cuisine is deeply rooted in its past, in the traditions of cooking in the countryside,” says Aspegren. “With that dependable bedrock beneath them, chefs can go in endless imaginative directions.” To ensure that bedrock is solid, Culinary Skane was launched in 2000 as a network that both recognizes restaurants developing unique cuisine built on Skane traditions and to develop a best practices knowledge base to assist in training their chefs and that can be imparted to other restaurants. “And, perhaps most important,” says, Aspegren, “to promote a style and standard of healthy gastronomical pleasure that Swedes and even travelers from afar can take back to their homes, integrate into their lives.”
Americans traveling the deeper south of Sweden might be reminded of Kansas, if Kansas had a beach on three sides and castles. Farming remains very important. Though a small province at the southern tip of a very long country, half of Swedish food production is in Skane. No wonder, the land is a farmer’s dream, with superb soil and the bonus of a bountiful sea. The heat of the summer days is tempered by the surrounding sea that cools the crops. The surrounding waters also bestow a warm micro climate at night. With the long light of summer, conditions combine to grow and ripen fruits and vegetables at a slower pass, bringing forth the very best flavors and nutrients. In turn, the animals fed on the local crops of Sweden’s breadbasket - including highly prized lamb, goose and duck - provide excellent meat. And the cool, un

Aspegren knows something of the way life used to be, having been the first host of that country’s popular Antiques Road Show. But cuisines the network of restaurants champion are anything but rigid conformity to the past. Consider Skanors Gastgifvaregard, a restaurant in a seaside town with two open kitchens serving dishes that are Swedish at their core but highly influenced by France, the Basque region and northern Italy, creating a new array of “international food from Skane.”

Other strong influences blending with Skane’s participating restaurants come from Provence, Asia, the Mediterranean, Tuscany and various regions in Scandinavia.

There is a cornucopia of local ingredients so fresh that carrots and other offerings are often prepared and eaten within a few hours of harvest, and the catch of the day comes right off the boats in nearby fishing villages. Skane rolls out over fifty varieties of tomatoes, and its forests offer up funnel chanterelles and many other tasty fungus. Game is popular, including wild duck, woodcock, wild boar, pheasant, partridge, elk, and fallow and roe deer. You haven’t experienced spuds until you’ve had Skane’s new potatoes.

Chefs from restaurants that meet the criteria of Culinary Skane, including the use of high quality local, seasonal ingredients. They often draw from each other’s expertise, cooking together and exchanging and judging their culinary creations. Some of the restaurants are in larger cities, like Malmo, Helsingborg and Lund, but most are in small villages along the coasts an in the countryside. Some are in located in centuries-old inns and classic hotels, some in more eclectic structures, like an old factory warehouse, a sixteenth century country house, a renaissance manor house or a contemporary structure near Malmo’s Turning Torso.

They also reach out to restaurants outside the network, which include a melting pot of international tastes brought from around the world by immigrant restauranteurs attracted by Skane’s lifestyle and vibrancy.

Spring through Fall, there are over a dozen food and harvest festivals in Skane, contributing to what Aspegren sees as a bountiful potential for Skane becoming a culinary destination for tourists. Combined with plentiful offerings from the arts; numerous sports on land and water, including growing awareness of first rate and unique golf courses; spectacular but uncrowded beaches; famed gardens and hundreds of castles, fortresses and country estates, Skane cuisine becomes not just a fuel to keep the body running between places, but an attraction in itself.

Scanian packages are being developed combining gourmet experiences with pursuits such as golf, walking tours and motorcycle sojourns, with stays in classic surroundings.

“With the increasing pace many people take on, life sometimes seems off its rails,” says Aspegren. “In their rush, people have become disconnected from their cooking traditions, often to the detriment of their health. Culinary Skane reawakens the pleasures of joining with family or friends to prepare and enjoy an unpretentious but delectable meal drawn from Skane’s bounty.”