Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Apple banana crumble served with vanilla sauce.
Photo © J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2010

With very hot weather in Sweden comes tropical rainstorms that makes headlines in the news, a raging wind and a pouring of warm luscious drops of water from the skies with which the Swedish westcoast borders on inability to cope. But that’s Sweden.

Being one of the few individuals now living here to have grown up in tropical rainstorms, I revel in such weather and thought this sticky, molten fruit dessert served with a thick vanilla cream sauce would put everyone at home back in their comfort zone again.

This apple and banana crumble or cobble, that had found its way both to Singapore and Sweden, has its roots in cottage country Britain, during WWII actually when pastry rations were restricted to make proper pies. Actually the word ‘cobble’ would be right at home in Sweden too in describing this dessert since it calls to mind the narrow cobblestoned pavements that once was carriageway for horses of both Gothenburg’s and Stockholm’s Gamlestan / Gamla Stan.

Apples and bananas, chopped, drizzled with dark syrup.

I started out making this dessert back in secondary school in my teens, with only flour and butter for the crumble on top, but these days, I make them with rolled oats in combination with flour and butter on top because the resulting texture of crisp, baked to a deep golden brown coupled with the smooth melt of warm caramelized fruit on the tongue eludes sensory description.
Continue reading “Apple banana crumble – a warm dessert for a cold day” →

Home made elderberry sorbet topped with frozen raspberries.
Photo © J E Nilsson for CMC 2010

When summer finally arrives in Scandinavia and Northern Europe it hits all of us as a great event that somehow needs to be dealt with and celebrated. The dishes gets lighter, are often served cold and more efforts are put into deserts that might even develop into a full meal, and lets admit it, might end up as the meal itself since it turns out so delicious you start with it, and then you get too full to eat anything more.

I have many favourite ice cream parlors in Sweden as well as in Singapore but occasionally it is fun to see how far you can get on your own with all natural ingredients and a few minutes of efforts.

This is how to make the above sorbet with no special machinery or very complicated ingredients.
Continue reading “Trying your hands at homemade ice-cream sorbet” →

Nothing can bring out the flavours of sun warmed fully ripened strawberries, fresh from the field than sugar and full fat cream.
Photo © J E Nilsson for CMC 2010

Sometimes it occurs to me in these days of sophisticated cooking, when so often, food gets over the top complicated to make, to think back on how our grandmothers did it. They had all the responsibilities of running a large household while hordes of toddlers ran around their feet. Still they managed to cook and offer their families good meals, often delicious and in the process creating culinary traditions that would live for generations. In that spirit I’d like to remind you about the easiest of them all, a Scandinavian summer classic, offering culinary sensations of unsurpassed quality.

No gourmet chef could ever top this – fully ripened strawberries fresh from the field, drizzled with sugar and savoured with full fat cream.

My take on a Swedish meat classic, in Nordic summer’s evening light.
Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson for CMC 2010

Strangely enough the most common meat dinner in Sweden – at least in the mind of the Swedes themselves – would be a French slice of beef or an entrecôte, with fries on the side. But how did it come to be like this in the land of elks and the Midnight Sun?

Well contrary to Singapore, Sweden does not really have a tradition of eating out on a daily basis. In Singapore one would eat out three times in a day (and then some inbetween) without thinking about it, but in Sweden eating out has always been a little bit of an event where people are more likely than not to dress up a bit and expect something out of the ordinary. The up side of this is that this attitude from bygone days until now had helped create a ready market for gourmet cooking and fine dining, which in turn, had helped skyrocket Swedish culinary art to world fame. 

However in 1954 the ‘French Bistro’ was introduced into the Swedish food scene by Chef Yves Fitoussy at the newly opened restaurant Cassi in Stockholm. Here the open bar kitchen was introduced where steaks could be fried very quickly in front of the guests and served instantly over the counter, and with French Fries – also a novelty at the time – on the side. The impact was tremendous.
Continue reading “Entrecôte a la Suede” →