A European wine odyssey at Passion för Mat 2013

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With Zdenka and Martino (pictured) Oliboni of Italian Wine Bar.
When I asked which Amarone they thought should I have for the evening, the bottle I had in hand was politely removed and replaced with this bottle of Villa Crine Amarone Classico 2008.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Sunday 3 March was the last day of the Gothenburg Passion for Food Festival 2013. The winding down hours, or the final rush, depending on your disposition, found me at the Italian Wine Bar with Martino, his wife Zdenka and their colleagues. Trade fairs, as much as they are for marketing and doing business is for me a meeting point to catch up with old friends and make new ones. In these closing hours I had just one thing left on my wish list, a glass of Amarone.

Seeing that Zdenka and Martino were busy, I began browsing their assortment of red wines. But I didn’t have long to ponder my choice since as soon as they spotted me, various bottles were promptly brought forward and just as long lost friends, we picked up chatting from where we left off last year.

The Italian Wine Bar

The Italian Wine Bar they represent is an Italian company they own jointly with the purpose of introducing a little piece of Italy to Sweden. They source wine, beer, grappa and various delicatessen (such as panforte from Antica Pasticceria Masoni) from their local friends and neighbours in Tuscany, just in-between Florence and Siena which is a pretty significant place in the regional history. In fact Eva and Gino Vettese live within viewing distance from San Gimignano, which I had the pleasure to visit just a few years ago. Their own olive oil is also sold via the Italian Wine Bar. It is fun to notice that what I was looking at today was specifically that kind of olive oil I was advocating already by then:

When it comes to olive oil, there are different qualities beyond “virgin” and “cold pressed” oils. What you want is something better than extra virgin olive oil in flavour. The oil to look out for is from those that hand pick their olives and have them pressed on a daily basis. Although this kind of quality olive oil is difficult to source

With their minuscule yearly harvest, it was no hard decision to pick up a few bottles at once.
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Lesvos olive oil: from the Aegean Islands to the Swedish west coast

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro and Lambriní Theodossious (right)
at the Passion for Food Festival 2013 in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

What I love about traveling is the adventures and the new experiences that come with it. My favourite souvenirs are new food ideas, and where possible, I love bringing home local produce of the region coupled with recipes of places I’ve visited and of dishes I loved. Eventually I will also synthesize the experience, mix and match with things I already know and make the experience my own.

Meeting with Lambriní Theodossious who owns her own olive plantation on the islands of Lesvos in Greece at the Passion for Food Festival 2013 in Gothenburg, Sweden, was another one of those wonderfully unexpected experiences. She brings her efforts of love in the form of dark bottles of unadulterated olive oil which she produces herself with some help of local farm hands, from Greece to Sweden. Its called the Todora Olive Oil, named after her grandmother Theodora.
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“Enjoying good food with open senses” – a Fredrikssons approach to marmalades

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“[A]tt nyfiket njuta av god mat”. With Christer and Mona Fredriksson of Fredrikssons Marmalde, who have their base on the east coast of Sweden, at Öland.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Naturally there are different things that people say they ‘cannot live without’, but one of the first things I do at these Food Festivals, is to walk right up to Mona and Christer Fredriksson and their stand with quality marmalades from Öland, and bag a generous helping of jars to last – if not till next year – so at least a couple of months into the summer.

It was also fun but not entirely unexpected to hear that the jams and chutneys from Fredrikssons made it to the recent Nobel festivities, the Nobel Night Cap 2012 in Stockholm.

Business processes are sustainable with use of the highest grade raw produce available.

An absolute favourite, the Apple and Calvados marmalade.

Their home and plant is in Kalmar County, at the island of Öland, located almost directly across Sweden, from Gothenburg at the Swedish east coast.

Standing at this fair with the Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg, resting at the quay just outside, I can’t help thinking of how connected things are in this world. It was just a few years ago since I visited the Kalmar Nyckel ship replica that docks in Wilmington, USA. The Kalmar Nyckel was a pioneering emigrant ship that left from this very place to the New World in 1638, leaving its passengers there to establish the first permanent European settlement, the Colony of New Sweden in present-day Wilmington, Delaware.

A somewhat unrelated jump in thoughts perhaps, but now marmalade from Kalmar is nevertheless delivered to the quay side, where the Götheborg III Ship lays bundled prior to high summer season, for us to pick up at will with no complicated sailing involved at all. See here the wonders of modern trade.

A nice bottle of wine, some good cheese and my favourite choice of marmalade and I think I’m pretty much set for a perfect evening with friends, or a good book.

Link: Kalmar Nyckel ships replica, Wilmington

Highlights from Passion för Mat 2013, March 1-3, Gothenburg, Sweden

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Finally the long awaited Gothenburg food festival Passion för Mat (Passion for Food Festival) has opened and is currently ongoing from 1-3 March 2013 at Eriksbergshallen, Gothenburg.

Being invited to bypass the crowds on the opening day, we had the pleasure of joining the exhibitors in the early morning hours as they put in the last touches at their stands. As with previous years, we completely enjoyed strolling around the market area on our own, making new culinary discoveries and meeting with old, as well as new friends.

Last year, in 2012 Sweden’s Minister of Agriculture, Eskil Erlandsson, named Gothenburg the Culinary Capital of Sweden 2012 in recognition of its rich natural produce, not the least because of its long time focus in various seafood, but also because of the many new various food companies specializing in high quality and gourmet food from all over the world setting up businesses here. Being an internationally small city, its culinary footprint is quite large with several Guide Michelin star chefs and quite some significant prize winnings and notifications at global food events (ref. Gothenburg Culinary Team).

Below, some picture highlights from the first day of this food festival.

At Eriksberg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Having a relaxed morning coffee at Hotel 11, to the sounds of Vivaldi’s L’Estro Armonico, Op. 3, Concerto No. 8 in A minor for two violins and strings, RV 522.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Jonas Wickstrand of Öckero Fisk explaining the flavours of this tray of smoked salmon paté hors d’oeuvres or tapas.

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A village of Walden huts

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Innovate. Procreate.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

In a recent round-table session, the concept of ‘ideas’ was discussed and the question of whether ideas could in fact be stolen, and if so – is that a bad thing – was debated.

Two related thoughts were put forth. The first was from Henry D. Thoreau’s book Walden (1854).

“Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.” (p. 343)

The other was Matt Ridley’s, The Rational Optimist (Review by Salinas), presented in his TedTalk (July 2010):

“It’s the interchange of ideas, the meeting and mating of ideas… that is accelerating the rate of innovation.”

The arguments simmered down to that while Thoreau’s Walden bravely postulated that we should not be afraid of being open to whole continents of new thoughts, the information society makes it possible for us to create whole villages of Walden huts, where the assumption is that the more open environment for the sharing of information and ideas, the better for all.
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Malted oat cookies and the concept of Flow

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Malted oat cookies.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Sunday afternoons are the perfect occasions for reflection and relaxation and my favourite occupation at such times is to bake something. Maybe to enjoy with the afternoon fika at home or maybe to share with my office colleages by Monday depending on the amount of damage control needed to let the remainder look good.

Today my thoughts as always covered a wide circle, making pit stops at such seemingly disparate topics as the ASEAN countries free world trade negotiations, the ongoing election in Italy and the joint Volvo Geely research centre that is being planned, ongoing events that in part shape the world we are all living in.

The common denominator was the question of human innovation and motivation, as covered by Professor of innovation knowledge, Bengt Järrehult in a recent article. As I see it, nothing is given and we are all part of the process in which we all create the future together, step by step and by our own choices.
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The Cordero | Cordeiro affinity to islands

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Do You Sleep?
Text and Photo © A Neikter Nilsson, JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Judging from the numerous books launched by Eurasian authors on their heritage and family history, it seems that the Eurasian community in Singapore has a general strong interest in research on genealogy, which in itself makes for interesting study due to a mixture of cultures, ethnicities and even traditions in cuisine.

The Portuguese with their sense of inherent adventure, had close ties to the East India trades already in the early 1600s. It is probably these factors in combination that landed the Cordero / Cordeiro family in East Asia in the first place. The genealogy of the Cordeiros can be traced from the highlands of Andalusia in Spain during the Medieval times, to the autonomous archipelago of the Azores of Portugal (ca. 1600ff), right through to Macau (ca. 1800ff) and then to Singapore during the early 1900s. To that extent, one could argue that the Cordeiros have flown flags of many colours, the most prominent (for the older generations of the family) being the vibrant colours of Portugal.
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There is [increasingly] no spoon

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“De río arriba Guayas” (upstream of the Guayas River) is where these Arríba chocolate bars originate. Ecuador’s lowlands produce some of the richest cacao on the globe, an heirloom of sorts for the country. Grown only in Ecuador, these chocolate bars are a seamless confluence of floral notes and fruits, jasmine and orange, just barely laced with a smoked earthen timber.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Admittedly, I like broad sweeps and this is going to be one of the broader that I take. But please bear with me. We’ll eventually be back to the chocolate. Promise.

First we will need to go back a little bit in time to a scene in the 1999 movie, The Matrix, where a little boy flexes a spoon, bending it at will. He then looks up and says, “There is no spoon”.

Now, that is a point of view I will try to demonstrate that is increasingly worth being considered.
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