In from the rain

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro in Donna Karen

Making it in through the front door just barely, from the sudden downpour.
Photos JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro Nilsson © 2011

Tropical storms, the kind with flashes of lightning and deep rolls of thunder is common in the equatorial region from where I come from, but not all that common in Scandinavia, in particular along the Swedish west coast.

But today was one such day here in Sweden, with dramatic dark clouds, the low rumble of thunder that comforts and discomforts at the same time, and warm fat drops of rain that drench through clothes, thoroughly wetting the skin.

I managed barely to escape the rain stepping in through the door just when the first large drops of water fell.
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Processes behind a Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

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Hazelnuts

Hazelnuts… the beginning of some decadent comfort in the kitchen.
Photos JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro Nilsson © 2011

In the overlapping realm of academia and education management, time to reflect on daily activities and events, makes a large part of the learning process. Whether on your own or in a group, this time aside is specifically to encourage the exchange and innovation of ideas. And for me, I find spending time in the kitchen, in the process of cooking – chopping, pounding, stirring – most therapeutic and self-pertaining to the extent that it gives me that much needed reflection time, sometimes admittedly, at the cost of the final dish. But in academia, it works.

It’s weekend and the household would decidedly look more inviting with a few jars of chocolate hazelnut spread complementing the dark oiled kitchen counter. And in the midst of chopping, grinding, melting and stirring some of the most decadent chocolate bars into a smooth molten concoction, I pondered the varying values management in organizations through glasses tinted Swedish blue and yellow.
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Swedish west coast Harbour Festival, Donsö 2011

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Donsö Hamnfest 2011.

The perfect weekend thing to do – picking up both old and new finds at the annual Donsö Harbour Festival in the Swedish west coast archipelago of Gothenburg.
Photos JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro Nilsson © 2011

There’s a distinct feel in the air in the past week that the summer that has lingered through the months of July and now August, is beginning to wind down. Though the air is still warm, there’s a chill in the evening breeze that indicate the cold weather that is to come from end of November, carrying on with the months thereafter.

So what better time of the year than right now to celebrate with a little Harbour Festival at Donsö, in the Southern Archipelago of Gothenburg?

Just about 16 km south of the city of Gothenburg, Donsö is one of the larger islands. With its about 1,500 inhabitants, Donsö is a lively community with a bustling business of shipping and ship owning and whatever services else needed to keep a modern business community going. While it is today a part of the Gothenburg municipality of Sweden, until 1974 it was a municipality of its own together with Styrsö and the neighboring islands in the archipelago.
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Audrey Kawasaki’s She, and the third aspect…

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It is difficult to put to words, the emotions that surface from within when viewing Audrey Kawasaki’s work. I can’t help but see parallels of her work to Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s pre-Raphaelite art, whose art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism – Bocca Baciata (1859) for example.

For those unfamiliar with Kawasaki, she is an LA based artist influenced by both manga comics and the Art Nouveau scene in which she grew up. The figures she paints captures and personifies an inner Lolita. Often a girl, She expresses a haunting and sensual melancholy that is sometimes avertive and sometimes daring.

I thought it marginally humourous to find that heavily pensive part of myself being reflected, even personified, in Kawasaki’s works. Admittedly, I am by far not as sultry as that She in Kawasaki’s works, still the renditions of Her gave me a interesting insight into the third aspect of a portrait, that of the Model who can often times be overlooked in the process of Interpretation, while that of the Artist and the Viewer is often taken for granted.
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A Frangelico Chocolate Fudge Cake and a sunset, at the Swedish west coast, 2011

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Frangelico Chocolate Fudge Cake

A Chocolate Fudge Cake laced with Frangelico.
JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro Nilsson © 2011

It is during the last weeks of July to mid-August in the southwest of Sweden that people can experience the full warmth of the summer sun. The sea water is warm and the hours of daylight stretches long into the late evenings and gives enough light to go for that evening swim, just before sunset around half past nine in the evening.
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Swedish west coast inspirations in ceramic form

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro Vävra Keramik II 098

Sitting with some of my favourite items made by Helen Kainert at her boutique studio, Vävra Keramik that is located just before Marstrand along the Swedish westcoast.
JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro Nilsson © 2011

Driving along the Swedish westcoast in the area of Kungälv towards Marstrand from Gothenburg, a red house with two flags at its door post with a friendly sign that said ‘pottery works’ loomed large, and we couldn’t help but pull into its sand filled driveway to check-out the creative assortment of ceramic pottery works inside, meeting with owner and artist herself, Helen Kainert.
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In the footsteps of Anna Ancher and Marie Krøyer at Skagen, 2011

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Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Skagen 2011

At the very, very northernmost point of Denmark is Grenen, the point where the two
seas of Skagerrak and Kattegatt meet. Here you can literary stand with one foot in each sea.
JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro Nilsson © 2011

In a landscape of muted pastels that continued to appeal even under the grey of the rain clouds hovering above, I felt it was surprisingly heavy and tiring to walk in the shifting sand of the long beach that led up to Grenen. An aspect that might not be immediately apparent when just looking at the famous paintings by Peder Severin Krøyer of the Skagen Painters that have Grenen as a theme, just north of the northernmost fishing village Skagen at the very tip of the Danish peninsula.

Krøyer was probably the most well known of the artists that lived and worked here from the late 1870s until the turn of the century, and it is his paintings too, amongst all Skagen artists, that attract me most. In fact, a reproduction of one of his most famous paintings, Hip Hip Hurra!, of a summer party held in Michael Ancher’s garden in 1884, adorns one of our guest room walls at home. Ancher belonged to Krøyer’s circle of artist friends, though with a different temperament altogether.
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Conversations over Pulut Serikaya

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Kuih Seri Muka, Pulut Serikaya or Kuih Salat

Depending on your heritage, this kueh / kuih is known as Pulut Serikaya (Straits Chinese – Nonya), Kuih Seri Muka (Malaysian) or Kuih Salat (Indonesian). It’s a two layered dessert common in Southeast Asian cuisine, made of coconut milk custard that’s flavoured with screwpine leaves known as ‘kaya’, atop glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk. Sweet and creamy in consistency.
JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro Nilsson © 2011

Low summer sun on the horizon… in the kitchen along the Swedish Westcoast… sitting on some pandan leaves is a bit of Pulut Serikaya, cooled and sliced from its earlier steaming in the day.

If someone had told me that one day, I would be putting Nonya desserts such as this one on the table made with what feels like little effort, I would not have believed them. But then again, I never thought I would end up in Sweden either, ABBA being the only thing Swedish I knew of when growing up in Singapore.

From a Swedish or indeed a general western perspective, this small delicate delight is a complete unknown, from ingredients that are just barely available except through specialist Asian food stores in the big cities, to its history and tradition. Yet most anyone – given the chance to try it – sways to its alluring fragrance, and to place it with more familiar Nordic desserts, find themselves thinking of it as textured ice cream or warm pudding (if eaten immediately after steaming) for lack of closer references.

Today’s small afternoon tea treat of this kueh is the result of years of dialogue in the kitchen with my mother. From extracting the green juices of fresh pandan leaves to the making of kaya over a firewood stove, and pouring the custard over white polished glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk… the smell of it all coming together in the kitchen was pure heaven!

Through conversations with my mother, come information that in time turns to knowledge, maturing farther in time to a certain wisdom. Today’s tip from her was simple… “Next time you do this, don’t put so much coconut milk to the pulut.”

I smiled, looked at her over the now empty plate, and nodded.

A litte bit of sunshine …

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Rulltårta with red currants.

Spending summer in Sweden. A traditional Swedish rulltårta,
with red currants from the garden for a rainy summer’s afternoon.
JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro Nilsson © 2011

Coming from the tropics and having been in Sweden for almost a decade, I’ve known Swedish summers to have their own personalities. Right now, outside my window, the month of July in Sweden is rainy and cold. The weather report confirms too that after today, there will be … more rain.
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