May

Almost all the snow on the estate has melted, the first spring plants are spiralling upwards and there is nothing better than being outdoors. Luckily, spring arrived early this year and brought with it the wild plants and vegetables we need when the winter stores are almost empty. We have been working hard with moss and lichen for a while, which has been interesting. To summarise, the species that are rich in starch are very underrated for cookery. Iceland moss is particularly pleasant and, after being briefly scalded, has a scent that is reminiscent of freshly harvested black trumpet mushroom and a charmingly bitter mushroom flavour. The ”old man’s beard” lichen has also been fascinating and, thanks to its starch content, it can be made extremely crispy. We are currently serving it with line caught skrei cod from Hitra. Another spring plant is coltsfoot, which is one of my absolute favourite edible plants when it is freshly picked; the stem has the mildest carrot character and the flower tastes of approaching summer and bee’s wax.

I have previously mentioned a calf that I ordered from Kurt; this has now been delivered at ten weeks old. The quality is superb, which is a rarity when it comes to veal in Sweden. Swedish veal is often fairly old, lean and red and is thus not of much interest. The Dutch veal that is so common in Sweden is also uninteresting, but less due to its quality than for the unnatural and repulsive animal husbandry. Kurt’s calf stayed with the milk cows on a fantastically well-run farm, it was milk-fed and then gradually weaned onto other food. By the time the calf was completely weaned, it had just the right weight and was sent for slaughter. Because it had eaten little other than milk and was in good health, the meat is not chalk white, but the pale pink that true veal should be. The carcass weight is around fifty kilos, which gives us perfectly sized cuts of meat.

We will be closed for the first two weeks of May; we have repairs to carry out and we will be installing a new and more powerful heating system in Magasinet, so we can be sure of delivering what we promise even in extremely cold weather. We will be reopening the restaurant on 17 May.