Born in the vibrant city of Singapore with a unique Eurasian blend of Portuguese and Chinese heritage, my journey has taken me from the bustling streets of Singapore to the serene and open landscapes of Sweden. My educational pursuits in Singapore culminated at tertiary level with two separate Master degrees, after which I embarked on a new adventure in 2002, moving to Sweden. In Sweden, I pursued with deep interest, the knowledge field of applied linguistics, particularly corpus linguistics research methods, earning a doctoral degree from one of northern Europe’s largest universities, the University of Gothenburg. I currently work as Project Manager, focusing on EU and international projects, at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, at the Division of Bioeconomy and Health, Department of Agriculture and Food. My office is located in Mölndal municipality. Mölndal, known also as the Valley of Mills, is located about ten minutes by bus ride from the city center of Gothenburg to the south. If you’re ever traveling south from Gothenburg to Malmö, whether by train or car, you will likely come by Mölndal municipality. In these pages at cmariec.com, you’ll find my lifestyle musings on culinary and travel adventures from Singapore to Sweden, and from when I lived and worked the Arctic City of Tromsø (2018 to mid-2022). SINGAPORE | SWEDEN | NORTHERN NORWAY Life in Singapore Pursued all academic interests in Singapore, of which the post-graduate years were founded in two separate disciplines. In 2000, graduated with two separate Masters Degrees: (i) Master of Science in Information Studies at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore (ii) Master of Arts in the English Language at the National University of Singapore (NUS). In 1999, represented the Republic of Singapore at the Miss Universe Pageant in Trinidad and Tobago. With this came a variety of film, educational TV, media, and ambassadorial work for the Singapore Tourism Board. Life in Sweden In 2002, moved from Singapore to Sweden in order to pursue a PhD in Gothenburg, where a number of international corporate head offices were located that all had a substantial business presence in Singapore and also Asia in general. In 2009, graduated with a PhD in applied critical linguistics from the faculty of humanities at the University of Gothenburg, with a cross-disciplinary thesis entitled, Swedish management in Singapore: a discourse analysis study, looking particularly into the concepts of assimilation, integration and hierarchy, at top management levels of Swedish-Asian corporations in Singapore. 2013, as research fellow at the Centre for International Business Studies (CIBS), School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, researching the future implications of increasing Asian-Swedish cooperation within the field of international business. The project is entitled Gothenburg in Asia, Asia in Gothenburg, funded by the Anna Ahrenberg Foundation. The project is aligned with the 400 years anniversary of the city of Gothenburg in 2021, and falls under the broad category of Kunskap Göteborg 2021 initiated by city representatives of Gothenburg, Göteborg & Co, University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology. 2015, was granted the Flexit post-doctoral scholarship by Bank of Sweden Tercentennary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, RJ) for a three year project together with the Swedish-Swiss multinational enterprise ABB. From 2015-17, the research will take place at ABB Corporate Research Sweden HQ in Västerås, and at CIBS during 2017-18. The research focus of the project is how new technologies are perceived and accepted by users and customers, using linguistic methods of data analysis. More information can be found at RJ’s website, at Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) Felxit 2015. Life in Northern Norway (2018-2022) 2018, late summer. I acquired new work as Market Scientist at Nofima. Having moved to the county of Troms in August, I’m currently enjoying myself, exploring the island city of Tromsø. From the 1900s, this city became known as Paris of the North due to how the people of Tromsø were exceptionally stylish and sophisticated in contrast to the fishing village preconception that many might have of a city located in the Arctic Circle. In my years in Sweden, I have known Sweden to be called the land of the midnight sun. During the long summer mights, it was beautiful to sit and watch the sun’s languid pendulation between east and west, touching the horizon out at sea before going up again. Northern Norway takes this languid pendulation of the sun to the extreme. It is not only known as the land of the midnight sun, but it is also the land of polar nights and the northern lights. This is my new adventure. And in these lifestyle blog pages, you’ll find my personal thoughts, insights and musings. Cheryl Marie Cordeiro | PhD MSc MA ACADEMIC REFLECTIONS | CV LIFESTYLE BLOG

A walk through Pasar Badung, Denpasar, Bali

Along the side streets towards Pasar Badung in Denpasar, off Jl. Gajah Mada, you’ll find a small curry shop passionately preparing the foundational ingredients to many local dishes.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

The daily trading activities in Southeast-Asia (SE-Asia) are still focused around the centrally located wet markets. Located as they often are at traditional crossroads of land and waterways, they are the natural center of the community with space for religious ceremonies as well as today, offering convenient parking lots for cars and mopeds. Around these markets are also the arteries of the supply chain of all kinds of supplies that will go into the products offered at the market.

Pasar Badung in Denpasar, Bali’s capital, is one of the largest wet markets on the island with four storeys of goods that range from ready cooked food sold just outside the building, to fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, preserved foods, spices, cakes, buns, biscuits, up to and including almost all items for the kitchen and household should you need them.

Clothing for men, women and children can be found on the upper floors of the market. Perhaps in close comparison in terms of array of and combination of goods sold would be that found in the heart of Chinatown or Little India in modern Singapore, though true wet markets now tend to have a space of their own these days.
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At the west end of the Lesser Sunda Islands

The trade winds blow cool in the mornings in the tropics of Sanur, Bali, where the full flavoured smaller apple banana variety is abundant and pleasantly enough included in abundance in the breakfast buffet.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

It took five security checks through the various airports from Scandinavia to Indonesia and though it has been about ten years since the Kuta bombing in Bali, security on the tourist island remains tight, the islanders looking apologetic for yet another security check even at the roadside. Considering the peaceful island’s serene philosophy and religion that is 80% Hindu with visible Buddhist influence, and that the small island’s main livelihood is tourism, one feels a tinge of sombre even as tropical sun rays streak across azure skies in this beautiful and untainted Southeast-Asian island paradise.
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Weekday chill at Mälar Paviljongen, Stockholm

Mälar Paviljongen, the café and bar, has also its own cozy flower garden filled with various pots of herbs that lightly scent the air.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2012

Just about 20 minutes walk from Stockholm’s T-Centralen or central station, along Norr Mälarstrand is this cozy, part floating on water café, restaurant and bar that lets you enjoy the sunset in Stockholm to the sounds of cool lounge.
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Rock Cookie – a pebbly variation for the Swedish summer

These ‘rock cookies’ were made lightly compressed in paper cupcake forms.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2012

My first encounter with the Rock Cookie – if it wasn’t also the first thing I learnt to bake – was actually in Singapore in a cooking class in the all girl Convent in which I grew up.

The name of the cookie derives from the appearance of the cookie itself, the roughened shape resembling a rock. In line with going back to basics and using the simplest of ingredients, the original recipe for this cookie contains just five ingredients – flour, sugar, eggs, raisins and a pinch of baking powder.

Traditionally, butter and sugar are beaten till smooth in consistency, eggs added into the mixture and then flour and baking powder, with raisins following last. The cookies are then spooned onto baking sheets, with not too much fuss about the form of it, since part of its charm was for them to look artfully misshapened.

What I’ve done here in this variation of mine was to cut in the butter into the flour, drizzle sugar thereafter without having the sugar thoroughly mixed into the dough, leave out the baking powder instead adding a pinch of sea-salt. This mixture was then lightly pressed into paper cupcake forms and baked for about 15 minutes on 175C, where the melting butter and sugar are left to naturally bind the mixture together whilst baking.

What results is a light crumbly version of the original Rock Cookie, the surface shape of the cookie resembling pebbles on sand.

The ingredients are:

300g plain flour
120g butter
80g brown sugar (add more if you wish for the cookies to be sweeter)
2 eggs
pinch of salt
80g raisin

The cupcake forms help keep the shape of the cookies if you need to transport them to a picnic outdoors. Otherwise, they can just well be removed from the paper forms and served as is, with coffee to that Swedish summer’s afternoon.

Enjoy!

Just apple Apfelstrudel

Filled with just apples and cinnamon, Apfelstrudel.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

Apples are generally a late summer harvest in Scandinavia, where in west coast Sweden, Signe Tillisch and the Red Ingrid Marie are varieties that can be found in plenty of home gardens.

There are many recipes to apfelstrudel in cookbooks and the internet on what goes into such an excellent creation, where finding your favourite combination of recipes for your perfect strudel is a matter of search and retrieve at your fingertips. This here is mostly a photo blog on the making of apfelstrudel with, just apples.

The trick to Phyllo pastry is to get it paper-thin. This here is almost there, with more stretching of the dough to come.

I contemplated between using puff pastry or phyllo pastry, where in this making of apple strudel, I tried with phyllo. It was a single large sheet of unleavened flour dough that was subsequently rolled around the apples to create layers.

The apple sauce was made with at least two varieties of Swedish apples. On top of the apple sauce, some green Granny Smiths dusted over with cinnamon.

A cheese cloth or linen helps in the rolling.

Brushing over with butter, to help in the browning.

Vents, to help in the baking and the decorative look of the strudel.

Once baked and out of the oven, a dusting over of icing sugar.

For afternoon tea.

This strudel was baked for about 45 minutes in a Bertazzoni at c. 175C. I wanted time enough for the cut apples to soften and the apple sauce a little of a smother over the phyllo when served.

A completely different palate of taste compared to the phyllo pastries for triangularly shaped curry puffs back in Singapore, but there again it was those curry puffs, these days sold only in spsecific coffeeshops in Singapore, that had first led to my love of phyllo pastries, the result of which was this prelapsarian apfelstrudel.

Early summer in vintage

In the early summer sun.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

It was in 2010 that Marc Jacobs brought nostalgia with hints of the 70s back into fashion, hot on the runways. Today in 2012, the the flavour of the 70s are still in on the runways from Diesel to Halston, whilst Louis Vuitton Fall 2012 makes romantic the long train voyages of the 1920s in reminiscence of a time that was in reality, filled with great uncertainty – such is the magic of fashion, to take viewers into a completely different world, even if briefly.
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From west Sweden to northwest Italy: Swedish Mussel soup with a touch of Italian Vermentino from Liguria

Creamy west Swedish blue mussel soup laced with Vermentino an Italian white wine – a toast and celebration of the friendly relations between Sweden and Italy – whether at a Swedish Royal gala dinner for trade or in more politically shared interests regarding developments in the Middle East organized at the Second Aspen Bosphorus Dialogue Conference by the Aspen Institute Italia, 2-3 March 2012.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

It was after work and I had my mind on the topics covered at a recent seminar held at the Aspen Institute Italia on Leadership, Globalization and the Quest for Common Values held earlier in March 2012 in beautiful and panoramic Cernobbio nonetheless, where ideas were exchanged on leadership for the twenty-first century. Just 40 km north of Milan, Cernobbio is the city that is home to the luxury hotel Villa d’Este that sits along the shores of Lake Como. The city was also host to a seminar that allowed for various interpretations to be heard on the complexities of leadership in the modern, globalized world and how tensions in leadership could be addressed.

Half absent in mind at the wet market, I scanned flittingly over the different types of raw seafood that west Sweden is so well known for when my eyes came to settle on some very lovely blue mussels.
Continue reading “From west Sweden to northwest Italy: Swedish Mussel soup with a touch of Italian Vermentino from Liguria”

Swedish west coast winds that set sails luffing!

Wearing mostly vintage. Arden B. knitted top, vintage nautical belt and white cotton skirt with hand embroidered florals, also vintage.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

Windy! Typical at this time of year along the Swedish west coast, though nowhere near warm…The glow of the sun – thoroughly inviting!
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A personal luxury – Raspberry Cardamom ice-cream

The first ice-cream of the household for 2012 in Spring – Raspberry Cardamom.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

If there ever were a reflected change in values from one generation to the next, in my life, I can find no better example than that of the attitude towards cooking.

In the hierarchic familial structure of the Asian society, the activity of cooking was invariably bound to the social pecking order in the family. Either the eldest, the youngest or the ‘least favoured’ of children was often given the task of cooking for, the usually, large family. Cooking could also be parceled out as a kind of punishment to children, to be ‘kitchen bound’, instead of being allowed to go outdoors to play with your friends after school or worse, on weekends.
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From ground up – the basics of cream and olivine

Long, smooth and in the intense colour of the gem olivine – extra virgin olive oil from Marina Colonna of Italy, over fresh basil, Langherino and cherry tomatoes.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012

The idea of a ‘fantastic meal’ often conjures images of a decadently large dish of warm, juicy cuts of meat with an appropriate full bodied red wine.

But take this plate of sun ripened cherry tomatoes laid with a generous slice of Langherino from Piedmont Italy, a cow and goat milk cheese that matures into a creamy softness. On top of the cheese in golden olivine, an award winning olive oil from Marina Colonna. Continue reading “From ground up – the basics of cream and olivine”