If you're going to Rome because you think Gregory Peck is going to pick your drunk ass up off the street and take you around town on the back of a Vespa, stay home.



If you're going to Rome because you want to wade in the Fontana de Trevi in a black strapless dress with Marcello Mastroianni wrapped around your neck, stay home.


This is me thinking, "I'm going to play Frogger on my bike through this?"

But if your idea of a good time is standing butt cheek to butt cheek with busloads of obese American tourists looking for Vatican City while chasing your wallet down the street and eating mostly Little Italy quality food, by all means, take that road to Rome. 

I got to Rome on Wednesday night and was supposed to leave on Monday morning. I thought I would love it.  I loved the food in Milan.  Wouldn't Rome be even better?  But by Friday, I was like, better eat all the gelati you want because you're probably never coming back.  And on Sunday, I spent the entire morning trying to figure out if there was a way to get back to Stockholm sooner.  When I realized I couldn't get back for less than 500 Euros, I spent the rest of the day just sitting in the cool, quiet apartment hiding from the crowds and doing work. I don't know why I forget that I'm such a misanthrope.  But I don't want to be around that many people ever again.

What I hated:

1. I got swindled by the taxi driver on the way in ("No, it's 70 Euros at night with the tariff, no you gave me 30 Euros, no I need change for this 10 because you owe me five more Euros").  Come on, I am a pretty well-seasoned tourist.  When did I start looking like a sucker? 
   
2. I rented a bike on the first day and nearly got flattened by the INSANE mopeds and drivers and buses; but there wasn't enough room to walk my ride on the sidewalk thanks to the herds of gaping-mouthed Pope tourists.
3. My 85 Euro/night room at Hotel Zara was a total dive. Worse yet was having to hear the tourists at the breakfast room complain about how terrible the breakfast was as they were stuffing their mouths with it.  Two days in a row.
4. I think someone who cleaned my room took my fancy earrings. 
   
5. The food was mostly meh, no better than linguini on Mott St.  WTF?  We are spoiled in New York, people.  
6. The heat! The dry, hot hot heat was such a shock to my body.  It hasn't gone above 65 here in Stockholm.  I packed poorly and sweated buckets through a beleaguered silk dress.
   
7. Did I mention the complete clusterfuck of tourists?  I have lived in New York and London, and I have never seen a tourist situation like this.  At least in New York, all you have to do to avoid the tourists is to stay the hell away from Times Square.  Rome is like 15 different Times Squares.
   

What I loved:

1. Hamming it up with all the friends I met up with there, old and new: Winnie, Francis, Molly, Austin, Jeanne and Joao.  God, I've missed laughing at American jokes.
2. Cooling off, drinking bitter orange soda and a cold cappuccino in the Borghese Gardens with Francis and Molly, reminiscing about our families.
3. Molly and I did an amazing bike tour of Rome with Top Bike Rental, guided by our half-Sardinian, half-Czech, drop-dead gorgeous and knowledgeable guide Giorgia.  We zipped coolly around the cobblestone streets of the city center on the shop's excellent, well-kept hybrids.  About as safe as bicycle riding can get in Rome.  Also very satisfying to plow through the throngs of tourists, breathing in the scent of night-blooming jasmine growing on the alley walls and only stopping into the sites worth seeing.  Giorgia also gave us some excellent food tips.  If you must go to Rome, just go for two days and do the bicycle tour one of those days. 
   
4. The Pantheon.  That thing was built in 146 A.D., and it is one of the most breathtaking things I've ever seen.  And the rain drains into the floor.
   
   
5. Also, the Fontana de Trevi is still a remarkably gorgeous, gaudy thing.  Or it would be if all the freaking tourists weren't completely blocking it.
   



6. The apartment Jeanne, Joao and I got in Celio had the most beautiful view.  Coral buildings, terra cotta roofs, cascades of fuchsia bougainvillea.  It was also in a quiet, calm neighborhood just behind the Colosseum -- well, quiet except for the bumpin Euro disco music the gay bar would play well into the night.
   
   
7. Pizza at Forno Campo de Fiori.  The best.  Pomodoro was amazing, zucchini flower with anchovies and mozz was as good as it sounds.
   
   
8. Volpetti deli and a fruit and veggie market in Testaccio.  Flirt with the old counter guys in white coats, taste some Tuscan prosciutto, get saddled down with bags of Italian goodies.  In fact, my favorite meal was probably the one we had at Winnie, Francis, Molly and Austin's apartment -- noshing on speck, serrano ham, tuscan prosciutto, thumb-sized carciofi, squeaky nubs of mozzarella di bufala and sliced Sicilian tomatoes which Francis dressed in olive oil, salt and pepper.
   
   

Here's a map with more detailed reviews of restaurants. There were a couple of good hits in there, and I ate enough gelati to take a year or two off my life. But I'm telling you, most of the gelati in Rome ain't got nuthin on Il Laboratorio del Gelato.  Green means good, yellow means meh, and red means AVOID.  Click on an icon to read more.  And don't say I never do anything for you.

 
View rome in a larger map

After feeling under the weather in London and totally crapping out in Rome, I'm not too sure about Paris this weekend.  I'm so happy that I'm too broke to leave Sweden for all of June.  Actually, these trips have made me fall in love with Stockholm.  Stockholm is like the sweet boyfriend I've been ignoring -- sure he's not super spontaneous, and he tells jokes I don't get, but he doesn't beat me or cheat on me.

Kladdkaka is not a brownie.



Sure, the ingredients are similar, and the looks are similar, but trust me, they would be in totally different cages at the zoo.

Kladdkaka is a chocolatey, gooey or chewy thing with a crusty top. 

Beyond that, all bets are off.  Some people use flour, some people don't.  Some people use cocoa, some use only bar chocolate.  Some people use a round springform pan, some spread it out in a glass rectangle.  Some serve it with whipped cream, some serve it with ice cream, some serve it with a little sprinkle of powdered sugar.

Best of all, everyone here has their own version.  It's the kind of sweet Swedes seem to always have lying around under a piece of plastic wrap, ready to nosh on. 

"Oh, try a piece of my wife's kladdkaka -- it's the best." 

"Do you want some kladdkaka?  It's a bit dry, maybe have it with a lot of ice cream."

"Oh, I have a recipe.  But it's not a real recipe or anything.  I can write it down for you." 

"Kladdkaka is the one thing I can make that comes out perfect every time."

Kladdkaka recipes vary wildly.  Malin kept her favorite kladdkaka recipe in her purse, a recipe which calls for no flour and a day of refrigeration (!).  My co-worker Sofia knew hers by heart and wrote it up in an e-mail -- a whole recipe with ingredients in about 30 words.  At Kitchen Coup #4 (coming soon), Anja threw one together without measuring anything -- a shake of this, a crumble of that, chop chop chop, poke poke, done!  Anja's, a marvel of crackly top and gooey innards, had a slew of secret ingredients which she wouldn't divulge to the dinner party.

I plan to try a lot of different kladdkaka recipes. We'll start with my variation on Sofia's recipe.  This is not the intense coconut of Mounds or suntan oil.  The silky young coconut gives it a very mild coconut perfume.  Your friends who don't like coconut might even like it.  And if they don't, they can go mooch off someone else's kladdkaka.

If you want to try Sofia's original, classic non-kokos recipe, omit all the coconut stuff, up the sugar to 3 dl and up the butter to 150 grams. 



Kokos Kladdkaka
(which I would call Ko Ko Ko if it didn't have such a terrible meaning in English.)

3 eggs
2.5 dl sugar
125 grams salted butter
25 grams coconut oil*
1 dl flour
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla sugar**
4 tbsp. good quality cocoa
1/2 can young coconut meat*** (don't add the syrup)
Toasted coconut flakes for garnish

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius.  Grease and flour a 30 x 15 cm glass pan.
2. Melt butter and coconut oil together.  Whip eggs and sugar together.  Mix in butter/coconut oil.
3. Mix flour, vanilla, cocoa together.  Add to dry ingredients to liquid and mix well.
4. Add young coconut meat.  Stir into batter to coat.  Pour batter into greased pan.  Top with coconut flakes. 
5. Bake for 35 minutes.  Let cool completely before serving.

*Available in health food stores.
**I'm not sure how much vanilla extract is equal to vanilla sugar.  My best guess is that 1 part extract = three parts vanilla sugar.
***Available in Asian markets.  Can looks like this.

My dear New York friend Francis was in London last week, helping his mum paint the house.  I decided to buy a cheap ticket on RyanAir that would deposit me in London at about noon on Saturday and fly me back to Stockholm at 6 a.m. on Sunday.  I got my friend Helen to come from Copenhagen and make an adventure of it.  I figured we would stay up all night until about 3:30a.m., at which point I'd start making my way to Liverpool St. Station so I could get on the first Stansted Express train available.

What was grandma thinking?

Look, it's not that a 31 year old woman can't do a 12 hour trip to London.  It's just that I can't do that.  Not only that, I don't WANT to do it.  I'll take a hot shower, clean sheets and a comic book over hard partying anyday.


Drinks by the Thames near Millennium Bridge.  Obvs did not exist when I lived there.

But it was super fun to see Francis and Helen, if only for a few hours.  I had all kinds of transportation mishaps, though.  I took the bus to the wrong airport on the way over, but because I am a planner, I had enough time to take the express train back to Stockholm and pick up the correct bus to Skavsta airport.  (Which, incidentally, is like a Barbie doll airport in the middle of a cow patch.)

It's strange because I hadn't been back to London since I lived there twelve years ago.  Twelve years!  I had a miserable time most of the year because I didn't force myself to go out and make friends. 

I did really spend time cooking, though.  I used to go to the Portobello Rd. Market every weekend to pick up vegetables from the loud hawkers, occasionally splurging on a few mushy, tart dolmas from the olive barrel stand. 

On the flight over, I had little flashbacks of my year.  I remember the view from the window of my craptastic apartment on Canfield Gardens off of Finchley Road.  I spent the entire year wondering where the fucking gardens were.  Suddenly, in May, that naked tree I'd been resenting all year clothed itself in lush green foliage.  And I was on my way back home to California.

I remember the big pots of sauce I would make from fresh tomatoes, breaking them down over low heat until they liquefied.  Or the spot on my roommate's carpet where the one space heater we shared melted the thin pink rug underneath it, branding it with a black waffle shape.

The weird thing is that when I got to London on Saturday morning, not a thing was familiar.  Not a thing.  Okay, maybe the Royal National Theatre I remembered.  And Waterloo Bridge.  But Francis took me to Borough Market, the oldest food market in London, for my first time.  How could I have never gone there the entire year I was in London?  I'd never even been near the London Bridge tube station.



Francis and I walked around the Tate Modern, which had not yet opened the last time was in London.  TWELVE YEARS AGO.  (How did I get to be old enough to say shit like that?)

After meeting up with Helen and her friend Ia, we strolled through Covent Garden.  The only corner I remember was a Nike store that used to be a Shelley's (probably a decade ago).  I also had vague memories of a Buffalo shoe store on that street.  (Do any of you even remember those?  They were these horrific platform sneakers in pastel colors popularized by the Spice Girls.  THE SPICE GIRLS.  And of course I wanted a pair.  Good God.)

Wound up in a dusty old sherry pub called Gordon's on yet another street I didn't recognize, just off of the Strand, the street my university was on.  Seriously, what did I do that whole year?  I have no idea.  I didn't drink, I remember that.  Maybe all I did was stay in the house and cook.  Am I going to come back to Stockholm in a dozen years and realize that I never left the house here either? 

Dinner with Francis's sister Rosie and her husband Julian was at the Eagle, the original gastropub near Exmouth Market (another street I'd never seen).  (Tart boquerones, sweet colored peppers with raisins and pine nuts, grilled sardines on crusty bread with chili jam, roasted tomatoes and arugula.)  I totally copped out of staying up all night and wound up crashing in Helen's hotel room.  Before midnight.  So much for partying til the break of dawn.

The next morning, the cab company I had called the night before told me they had no cabs.  My underground travelcard had run out, so I couldn't take a night bus.  And it's not as easy to get a cab in London at that hour as it would be in Manhattan.

I waited for a bit and finally got a guy in a black cab, who then tried to convince me that the Stansted Express wasn't running.  He said he'd take me to Stansted for 18 quid (even though it's usually 100 quid, he said).  When I told him I didn't have the cash, he offered to take me to a cash machine.  He kept asking me where I was from, talking about some girls from Ohio he drove to the airport last weekend.  

At which point I was like, look, I have to see for myself if the train is running, because the website said it would.  And he dropped me off at Liverpool St., and guess the fuck what?  Station fully open, train totally running, first train leaving at 4:10, just as the website said.  I thought the black cab drivers were the trustworthy ones.  Innocence lost.

The lesson of this story -- no more weekend dashes for grandma.  Next time I try a cockamamie stunt like that, can one of you please check me back into the nursing home?

I will say that when I got back, I really felt relieved to be home.  Home!  This place is home now! 

I've managed to cook in four Swedish kitchens now.  It's hard to document the kitchen coups because I'm always fussing over the food.  But I'll try to give you some snapshots.

----

The guests:
The editor
The style writer
The musician
The nurse
A 9 yr old
A 4 yr old
A 2 yr old

The kitchen: an eat-in family kitchen, mostly white, with tall ceilings and a short green Smeg refrigerator.  Induction stove, 4 burners.  Big empty slot under the counter, currently the 4 yr old and 2 yr old's favorite hiding place, soon to be the slot for the new mini-dishwasher.  A silver lamp arches widely over the kitchen table like a shiny basketball in mid-toss.  The table is set with a pair of white Tripp Trapps, the Scandinavian high chair of choice. 
 
The coup: Six sea bream halves.  Bones-in, skin-on.  They have no heads, and yet they stare back at me, gray, dull.  What now, boss?

The plan: Chinese-style steamed fish.  I try to put the sea bream on a plate.  But the plate will not fit in the steaming pot.  I try another plate.  And another pot.  And another plate.  And another pan.  The editor and the style writer are pulling out kitchen cupboard keys, unlocking cabinets, climbing onto chairs.  "We always think we have too much stuff." 

We borrow a bigger pot from a neighbor.  But the editor and style writer's kitchen has an induction stove, and the pot refuses to heat up.  I put my All-Clad underneath the borrowed pot.  Like magic, the induction burner lights up.

The guests will arrive soon.  I am dubious.  The fish is going to put up a fight, I know it.  I stuff the fish with ginger, cilantro, dainty straws of Chinese celery, to shut it up. 

Gentle steam, check.  Steaming plate raised up from the bottom of the pan with the help of a little bowl, check.  Lid on, check.  Make note of the time plus ten minutes.  Go!

The guests have arrived.  The 4 year old and 2 year old are ready to eat.  It's past their dinnertime.  They start up on rice cooker rice doused in soy sauce.  We start to eat the other dishes, which have been ready to go. 

I check on the fish.  Done?  Hm, done around the edges.  But -- dammit! -- raw inside, the wan, translucent color of disappointment.  Shit.  Well, we'll let it go.  I turn the heat up.

The rest of the courses pass.  Chicken green curry over somen is pleasantly creamy and starchy, if a bit undersalted.  The pork larb is excellent, made chili-free for the kids and chili-ful for the adults.  The water spinach with bean sauce is reliable.

Oh the fish!

We are at rolling boil.  The steam is angry.  It shoots out of the sides of the lid like the ears of a dragon.  The fillets are now decidedly opaque, strands of white protein leaking into the steam puddle.  I scrape the soggy ginger off and pour the soy sauce-sesame oil-julienned ginger over it.

Overdone.  Overdone overdone overdone.  FAIL. 

Nobody else seems to notice.  The 9 year old has actually cleaned her plate completely.  She is totally fascinated by me, the Asian lady cooking exotic food and speaking only in English, a language she has not yet mastered.  She asks her mom to whisper English to her so she can talk to me.  "Where are you from?"  "How old are you?"  and even stranger, "You're skinny."  I protest that I'm fat, but then I think, what kind of message are you sending?  So I switch tactics and tell her that she's pretty and lagom, which I use to mean that she's just right, but I'm probably not using the word correctly.

The conversation floats around me.  The musician offers to get more wine at his apartment down the street.  The editor asks for the recipe for the pork larb.  I smile, I laugh, but inside I shake my fist at the fish and vow to avenge my failure.

Name: Malin Eriksson
 
Occupation: Editor for the Swedish food magazine Allt om Mat - All About Food
 
Neighborhood: Sickla, Stockholm, Sweden
 
Relationship status: Living together with Tomas, another Luleåbo in exile.
 
What did you eat today?

I had a great breakfast with cooked Italian ham, Danish rye bread, OJ and coffee. For lunch, I had six Danish smørrebrød made by a famous (in Denmark) chef named Adam Aamann-Christensen. They were small and delightful and he is very cute! Now I'm looking forward to a big beer tasting real soon here at work! The dinner is a secret but I have high hopes, cause there's another great chef in our kitchen, making it right now.
 
What do you never eat?

Oysters. They make me sick, unfortunately. I hope I'm never served eyes from sheep, or any animal. I don't want to eat eyes.
 
Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Mousse of artichoke, perfect on crostinis with a fresh basil leave on top. One of my many favorite snacks! I love snacks.
 
What is your favorite kitchen item?

My Kyocera knifes. They have ceramic blades and break easily but man! Are they sharp!
 
Where do you eat out most frequently?

Vietnamese restaurant Noodle House, Korean restaurant Arirang, and Thai restaurant Korat. They are all great! [Malin just took me to Noodle House.  We ordered her favorite, these little silver dollar rice flour pancakes topped with shrimp, peanuts and cilantro that were squishalicious.  Me hongry.  --Ed.]
 
World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

Probably something as boring but tasty as spaghetti Bolognese.. You can't go wrong with that!

Malin is one of the dear people saving me from loneliness.  She makes excellent crostini.

"S is for Sad...
...and for the mysterious appetite that often surges in us when our hearts seem breaking and our lives too bleakly empty. Like every other physical phenomenon, there is good reason for this hunger, if we will be blunt enough to recognize it."

--M. F. K. Fisher, An Alphabet for Gourmets

I wish I had my M. F. K. books with me.  I know she was married three times and had lots of lovers, but I also know she understood what it was to be a bachelorette -- how peaceful it can be, how lonely it can be. Who understood the effects of a full stomach on an empty heart better than she?  Those moments of self-clarity were butterflies she pushed pins through and put on display.

Remember back in March when I asked you for help making my apartment feel like home?  Little did I know, my subconscious was already hard at work answering that very question.

What does home mean to me?  As I'm sure you could have guessed, it's not about the furnishings:



It's not about the bedroom or books, despite the fact that I miss M. F. K.:



It's not about toiletries:



It's not about clothing:
 


It is now and always will be about the kitchen, and my almost pathological need to comfort myself with quantities of food.  The rest of the apartment looks like a hotel I've moved into for the week.  But the kitchen, the sweet little kitchen with shelves that are the perfect height and depth -- the kitchen looks like the home of someone who's been collecting condiments for years.









When you learn to carry recipes in your hands, your heart, and your palate, you can always create a sense of home for yourself.  And as long as you can be flexible with ingredients, you can do so anywhere in the world.  What a comfort the kitchen continues to be for me. 

I'm so grateful to my Pau for teaching me love through food.  But I'm also grateful to the friends I have made dinner with -- to Miho for teaching me how to make gyoza; to Helen for teaching me to make bread; to La Doug for teaching me to swim in butter; to everyone I've ever watched from and learned from in the warmest room in the house.

In my head, I've invited M. F. K. over for to share a bachelorette's meal of romaine salad with hard-boiled eggs and herbs snipped from my windowsill plants.  I'd serve it with a homemade Danish bun, sliced cheese and a glass of cold white wine straight from the refrigerator.  Or we could have a simple tomato sauce filled out with canned borlotti beans and blanched broccoli over penne, spruced up with cubes of fresh mozzarella.  Or a gigantic bowl of cold glass noodle salad with shrimp, lots of lime juice and cilantro.  I'd carry the kitchen table out to the main room, prop the window open with a piece of wood, and light a couple of tealights.  We'd sit in the squeaky wooden chairs, two ladies alone together, listening to Blossom Dearie sing "Manhattan" and watching the sun set and set and set into the Stockholm spring night.

Saw Star Trek this week.  It was probably the first movie I've seen in the theater in over a year. 

Phone convo with La Doug:

DOUG: I saw Star Trek this morning.

ME: Ooh, I saw it too!

DOUG: You did?!

ME: Yeah, I got tickets to the premiere here through work.

DOUG: What'd you think?

ME: I loved it.  It was so American.  Made me really nostalgic.

DOUG: Argh, wasn't it so fun?  You know who's my new crush?  Chekhov.  Wasn't he so adorable?

ME: Really?  I was totally hot for Spock.  Of course.  The emotionless limp fish.

DOUG: [laughing] Girl, you gotta call [MY THERAPIST'S NAME REDACTED] for that one.

Commenter Janet asks:

How late is the sunset now?

The view from my window at 9pm on Wednesday night.  All the light is disconcerting. It's hard to go to bed, and it's hard to sleep deeply in the morning.  I wind up eating dinner at 9:00pm because my body is confused and not hungry til then. 

The light has been coming on hard and fast.  The idea that the days will continue to get longer until about June 20 really boggles my mind.  I wonder if the descent into winter is just as rapid.

This is what the spice rack looks like to everyone else:



And this is what it looks like to me: 



Shit, what's "bay leaf" in Swedish?

Name: Hannah

Occupation: School

Neighborhood: Ekerö

Relationship status: Single

What did you eat today?

Breakfast, which was Weetabix with sliced banana and milk and an orange. For lunch I had a mix-up with tuna, cottage cheese, avocado and tomatoes served with wheatberry and salad. It's that kind of dish a restaurant in Sweden would name "Health dish", but it was really good! And for afternoon snack, I ate a cake which my grandmother had made.

What do you never eat?

Hmm... I don't really know, but maybe fried food? Don't like it at all.

Complete this sentence:  In my refrigerator, you can always find:

Well, though I don't have a refrigerator for my ow.n I guess I can tell what you always find in my family's: Milk & sour milk (something really Swedish!). [For you non-Swedes, that's filmjölk, and it's like kefir with a different funk. --Ed.] Because if you have that you can at least eat breakfast!

What is your favorite kitchen item?

I don't know... maybe a really good knife? At least that's what I use most frequently.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

In school I guess? But that doesn't count! I don't eat out very frequent, and when I do I like to try different places. But maybe SoFo Café at Söder, Stockholm.

World ends tomorrow.  What would you like for your last meal?

A dessert with really much dark chocolate and berries. Yum! And a cup of coffee.