Gothenburg’s Chocolate and Délicatesse Festival, 2009

Posted on by cheryl

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Chocolate Fair 2009, Gothenburg, Sweden

At the chocolate fair, with some of the best nougat in hand.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson, Cheryl Marie Cordeiro-Nilsson 2009

If there was anything that could make me get out of bed early on a rainy Saturday morning, this would be it – Gothenburg’s Chocolate and Délicatesse Festival 2009!

It was not just the thought of free chocolate samples at this event that spurred me into action on this soggy morning, but of living and breathing the life and sharing the space of chocolate connoisseurs, even for a few hours, made my day.

Upon arrival at the Göteborgs City Museum, where the event was held, I realized that Swedes loved their chocolates. Almost half of the city of Gothenburg thought the same as I – to get in first – where not even wind and rain would keep them away from this divine manna. The queue to the entrance ran almost 200m, right past Tyska Kyrkan, the German Church that stood beside this museum, touching the tip of Gustaf Adolfs Torg along Norra Hamngatan.

Göteborgs choklad och delikatess festival 2009

The crowd.

The event hall that spanned one and a half floors of the museum, seemed stiflingly inadequate and compact for this event. Cold and near freezing outdoors, the crowd turned warm very quickly when indoors. Still, having grown up tropical, I was surprised to see some people literally turning to ice-cream eating to keep cool, the queue to the lone ice-cream vendor rivaling the queues of the more attractive chocolate stalls.

Baileys truffle, Gothenburg chocolate and delicatess festival 2009

Truffles in all forms imaginable. Anyone for a Bailey’s?
at Jeanna Kanold who together with her four daughters are Flickorna Kanold (The Kanold Girls)

The most spectacular view at the event was the vast exhibit of chocolate truffles. The stalls had bite-sized morsels so colourful, the candied sight simply took your breath away! I found myself standing in front of Kanolds for example, just absorbing the artistry of work, and whatever fillings of the truffle seemed secondary; after all, truffles have been around since 1895 (created by M. Dufour in France) and are more or less made with a ganache center coated in chocolate or cocoa powder that is usually spherical, conical, square or curved shape. But soon, the taste test came along and the perspective is shifted when you begin to decide which of these precious heaven-filled small packages you’d like to bring home, the ones with cream, caramel, nuts, berries, nougat, fudge, toffee, mint, liquor etc. The choice to make was mind-boggling!
Continue reading “Gothenburg’s Chocolate and Délicatesse Festival, 2009” →

Quizás Grand Cru: single variety cocoa beans from the Venezuelan amazon

Posted on by cheryl

Quizás Grand Cru Indigena Amazonia Venezuela, 72% caco Beschle chocolatier, Swiss handmade

Quizás Grand Cru, Swiss Beschle chocolate made from cocoa beans grown in the indigenous regions of the Venezuelan amazon. It contains only 3 ingredients – cocoa mass (72%), cocoa butter and cane sugar.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson, Cheryl Marie Cordeiro-Nilsson 2009

The Gothenburg Chocolate and Delikatess Festival 2009 held recently gave us the opportunity to sample literally hundreds of varieties of chocolates and truffles. We came home with some of our favourites, like this bar of Quizás Grand Cru. This chocolate bar is the result of a Swiss German joint venture of the famous chocolatiers Basel Beschle, and the project developers / Latin America specialists Pascal Wirth and Niklaus Blumer.

Quizás Grand Cru, Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Swiss Chocolate with single region cocoa beans

Quizás No 2 (72%) Premier Cru Single Origin / Ocumare de la costa Venezuela.

Quizás produce more such chocolate bars made of rare, single bean varieties and single area cocoas, including their Quizás No. 1 (74%) Premier Cru Criollo Porcellana, Criollo Zulia Venezuela and their Quizás No. 2 (72%) Premier Cru Single Origin, Ocumare de la costa Venezuela.

With the world of chocolatiers dreaming up ever more fantasmic chocolate confections in all varieties of flavours mixed into the cocoa (think fruits, nuts, nougat to liquor), it was an about turn to realize that these chocolate bars, when striped down to their bare essentials – single beans from a single region, with only the 3 ingredients of cocoa mass, cocoa butter and cane sugar – could jolt your tastebuds into realizing what gourmet chocolate really is.

Wool basic in grey

Posted on by cheryl

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, tailored wool pencil dress in brown-grey

In a tailored wool pencil dress with a broad open collar, reminescent of Dior of the mid-1900s. Accessories are a fur hat from Canada, a Chanel 2.55 flap bag, a gold and diamond bear brooch, a gold bracelet, Karen Millen stilettos and Chanel No. 19.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson 2009

It was just about two to three generations ago in Singapore, when my grandmother was in her twenties, that women tended to sew their own clothes. How beautiful your outfit eventually became, depended much upon your sewing skills.

Many of my grandmother’s friends would not only sew their own traditional outfits such as cheongsams and kebayas, but made their own accessories too, from floral hair pins to beaded shoes. Those who did not acquire tailoring skills of their own usually had their dresses or outfits made by relatives and friends who could. As things were at the time of pre-WWII, it was much more economical to know how to make your own clothes than to purchase them in the shops.

Eventually social values shifted in Singapore as in the rest of the world and women no longer needed to sew for themselves. Still, I grew up with my mother making a lot of my day dresses, both sewn and crocheted, and come an important event such as wedding dinners for example, we often visited a seamstress with a dress idea roughly sketched on paper.

Today tailored dresses, a once inexpensive and natural phenomena, is becoming a luxury. Still, when the opportunity arises, I find absolute delight in choosing textiles for a new skirt or dress, and drawing a design of an outfit that I miss in my wardrobe.

This pencil dress is one of two new arrivals from the seamstress. It makes for good, basic officewear for the cooler autumn and winter months that is just ahead of us. The material is wool and the dress, whose long and lean cutting is vintage inspired, has been designed so that it would keep the core of the body warm, with three quarter sleeves (so I can accessorize with bracelets / bangles), skirt to the calves, kick pleat to the back instead of an open slit and fully lined on the inside. Added to the outfit is a fabric buckle belt, made in the same material as the dress.

Wool basic in herringbone

Posted on by cheryl

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, tailored wool pencil dress in charcoal grey, boatneck, Roberto Cavalli shoes

In a tailored wool pencil dress in charcoal grey, with Roberto Cavalli black patent shoes, vintage Trifari silvertone earrings and Cartier white gold ring.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson 2009

Here’s the second tailored wool pencil dress, but in herringbone dark grey. Same features as the wool dress in stone grey, with three-quarter sleeves, calf-length pencil skirt and lined on the inside. This dress however, features a simple boatneck and a tie waist belt made in the same fabric as the dress.

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, officewear, custom-made wool pencil dress in charcoal grey, boatneck

As mentioned above, I do love tailoring outfits when given the chance because a lot of what I get out of it is the process of creation, to see a rough sketch of an outfit turn not only real, but into something you can wear! I admit my fair share of disasters when it comes to tailored clothing, mostly because of the wrong choice of material. A lack of understanding of the properties of a fabric for example can cost the brilliancy of its design. But when everything goes right and the result is as you desired, then the feeling in this process is nothing short of a small success.

On the other hand, I could tell about one of my greatest tailoring disasters…

When visiting China you are often pounced upon by persistent tailors, wanting to create whole new outfits for you or at least shirts for your husband. A few years ago we actually gave in to one of these offers. I fell in love with some very dazzling silk fabrics and chose to have a traditional Shanghai style cheongsam made. The measurements were taken and on the very last day of our stay, a last fitting was made with me standing up and the tailor nipping, tucking, pinching and putting in needles all along the sides, from top to bottom. I must say I can’t complain about the attention or quality of workmanship, but that I should have tried to move some in the dress too, didn’t occur to me at the time.

Back home and after unpacking, I tried on the dress again and realized that the fitting was indeed “perfect”. It sat as if painted on me and I know now what shrink wrapping not only looks like, but feels like when wearing. I swear, if I had eaten an egg, that would have made me look pregnant. After a few years of the dress sitting in the wardrobe, I silently sold it off to one of those two-dimensional Asian model friends of mine who could actually wear it.

Doktorspromotion 2009, University of Gothenburg

Posted on by cheryl

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Doktorspromovering 2009, PhD graduation ceremony, University of Gothenburg, Svenska Mässan

On stage, halfway through the ceremony. I’m seated third row from the back, in a white dress. Deans and faculty leaders of the University of Gothenburg (GU) are seated at the front of the stage, in the respective faculty colours and gowns.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson, David Neikter Nilsson, Anders Lindström 2009

The 30th of October, 2009 was the University of Gothenburg’s annual prize giving and doctoral awards ceremony and gala event. It was wonderful to have these grey autumn days lit by people dressed up in formal attire, tailcoats mandatory for all men receiving awards that evening, and all women in long dresses or ball gowns. Everyone looked smart and regal.

For this event, I wore the full length, white crochet dress that my mother had made for me more than a decade ago. It was meant for my college prom night, so I was 18 years old when I wore this dress the first time.
Continue reading “Doktorspromotion 2009, University of Gothenburg” →

Entrecôte á l’automne Suédoise

Posted on by cheryl

entrecote_dish, Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Entrecôte with baked tomatoes, fried mushrooms, potato gratin and parsley butter.
Photo for CMC © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2009

It’s during autumn in Sweden that you realize that the epitome ‘Land of the Midnight Sun’ is only valid during the short summers. During the winter, everything turns pretty much into the ‘land of the midday sun glimpse’, if at all, because autumn and winter days are often punctuated with stretches of dark grey, gloom and rain. So there isn’t much else to delight in during these days, except a hearty meal of your favourite cut of steak!

With logs burning in the woodstove and with a flip of a switch to turn on the lights, the kitchen is as warm and as bright as we could wish for. And we went about preparing the meat.

There are numerous recipes to be had over the internet with regards to preparing meat, most with detailed instructions, so here is an outline of our version.

In order of preparation.

1. Cut and put out the meat in room temperature. It cooks better if it hasn’t been previously refrigerated so that it is colder on the inside than the outside. Personally I think meat turns more flavourful if it is salted about 50 minutes before it goes into the pot, more or less.

2. Prepare parsley butter.

parsley butter, Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Mix butter with chopped parsley.

We store our own parsley form the summer ready to use, in the freezer. Add some lemon juice, some Worchester sauce, salt and white pepper. Mix and refrigerate until serving.

Pages: 1 2

Reflections from days at the Division of Information Studies (DIS), NTU in Singapore

Posted on by cheryl

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

It was at the end of 1990s that I was doing my MSc in Information Studies at NTU, graduating in 2000.
Photo by JE Nilsson, 2009.

My academic career has taken me through several institutes of education, and the Division of Information Studies (DIS) at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore (NTU) has been one of them.

It was a part-time Master of Science course that I took with NTU, while pursuing my Master of Arts at NUS full-time. The schedule was gruelling but nonetheless manageable, with mornings through afternoons spent at NUS, and evenings spent at NTU. I thought it all fine, till exam period came along and it became darkly humorous at one point, when I found myself sitting for papers in the mornings at NUS and evenings, at NTU!

Perhaps it was that I spent mostly evenings at NTU, when the greater student population would have gone home or be back at their hostels that I found the place generally more relaxing than my time at NUS. The long corridors of the NTU wings seemed to help sort your thoughts as you walked to and from classes, pondering the day’s lectures or simply unwinding as you stepped away from the lecture hall.

As I’m now looking to pursue new research projects, I realize that my research interests have always been cross-disciplinary in nature. That I found myself wanting to learn about information management (at NTU) whilst majoring in the English language (at NUS) was just the beginning of it! These days, it’s linguistics, organization science and information management that draws my attention.

With NTU being in the top 1% of the world’s universities (together with Swedish universities such as Lund and Uppsala) it was not surprising that DIS at NTU has put into practice the use of social media, such as its blog, as a medium of contact and social networking and also giving it a place in the education system.

To Prof. Chris Khoo, Head of DIS, NTU: Thank You for updates and contacts!

Cheryl

Triumph’s Street Triple in matt graphite

Posted on by cheryl

Triumph Street Triple R, Cheryl Marie Cordeiro-Nilsson, Sweden

On the 2009 Triumph Street Triple.
Photos © Jan-Erik Nilsson, Cheryl M. Cordeiro-Nilsson, Adrian Cordeiro for CMC, 2009

I grew up with having bikes around me, where as far as I could remember, I was hopping on and off a bike, to and from school mostly, with my dad in the rider’s seat.

The pictures below were taken in the early 1980s, in the East of Singapore. They show my brother and I on my dad’s Suzuki GP 100A, taking turns to be in the front seat of the bike. It wasn’t a big bike at all, but it was a stretch for the both of us, to reach its front handles!

And when I turned 18, encouraged by my dad, I went out and acquired both my car and bike licenses. I took the lessons simultaneously and the bike license came to me just two week after I received my driver license for cars.

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, Suzuki ca 1980s in Singapore

On darling little turquoise tanked Suzuki GP 100A. Small, fast and fun to ride, this bike’s an absolute classic in today’s auto world. Both my brother and I grew up to love bikes as more than a means of transportation. My brother has had several Hondas in the 750 cc range, both to himself and shared with my dad.

Continue reading “Triumph’s Street Triple in matt graphite” →

Swedish autumn classic dish – Kalops

Posted on by cheryl

kalops Swedish staple in autumn

Kalops, a classic Swedish autumn dish
A solid meat stew that fills you with energy to ward off the autumn chill.
Serve with potatoes, pickled root beets and a tall glass of beer.
Photo: Cheryl Marie Cordeiro for CMC © 2009

Living in Sweden, in Northern Europe makes you change your habits with the seasons and when the days get shorter and the leaves turn yellow, orange and brown and start dressing up the grass lawn in all kinds of colours, you start thinking about more hearty foods that warms the core of your body. Autumn is also harvest time for all kinds of vegetable roots and the livestock that had been grassing outdoors all summer are also now starting to fill up the meat counters in the supermarkets.

A traditional autumn dish in Sweden that is rather simple to make is kalops. Its a full flavoured, meaty beef stew that would feel completely at home in an Indian restaurant if it wasn’t for the spices that are different in Sweden.

Here are the ingredients if you feel like trying. Serves four persons as a single dish.

Heat up a large and deep pot with a dollop of butter and let two diced and sliced onions simmer.
Cut up about 1 kg (2 lbs) beef (marrowbone) in comfortable bite sized cubes.
Add about 10 allspice seeds and 2-3 bay leafs.
Add 1 meat cube if you like and if so, no extra salt in needed.
Add 1/2 liter of water mixed with 3 tbs wheat flower to thicken the sauce. Halfway through the cooking time, add two carrots cut up in thick slices.
Simmer under lid on slow heat. When the onions are mostly dissolved the stew is ready (about 1-1,5 hour).

This old fashioned dish just gets richer and better with longer cooking time. In many Swedish cookbooks, they also recommend that you let this dish sit for a few hours before serving. Overnight sitting is best.

Enjoy!

In The New Eurasian, Singapore, Oct-Dec 2009

Posted on by cheryl

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro in The New Eurasian Oct-Dec 2009

In The New Eurasian, October to December 2009.

Cheryl_Marie_Cordeiro_TNE1

The New Eurasian: People

A truly multi-cultural perspective

Cheryl Marie Cordeiro, former beauty queen, and current academic – has this year graduated with a PhD from the University of Gothenberg in Sweden with a thesis that compares the management styles between her adopted country, Sweden, where she is a PR, and her native Singapore.

“I came to notice that there were many foreigners coming to Singapore to set up and run Asian market head offices. Among those were many Swedish organisations. Based on Singapore’s financial and economic strength, it was apparent that these foreign companies were part of what made Singapore a successful business hub,” she said.

Her curiosity led her to get in touch with businessman Jan-Erik Nilsson, who lived in Sweden. As one of the founders of the East-Indiaman Gotheborg III ship project, it was Jan-Erik who encouraged her research plans. In 2002, she left Singapore for Sweden to begin her doctoral studies. Four years later, she and Jan-Erik married.

The talented Eurasian has a BA (Hons) from the National University of Singapore and graduated in 2000 with two separate masters degrees: an MA in English Language from NUS and an MSc in Information Studies from Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

As if she wasn’t busy enough with her studies during her undergrad days, she also took time to represent Singapore at the International Miss Universe Pageant in Trinidad and Tobago in 1999. Around that time, she also appeared as an actress in the MediaCorp TV’s series Brand New Towkay. But her passion for academic research never waned, and she returned to academia.

She hopes her thesis Swedish management in Singapore: a discourse analysis study will help Swedish executives doing business in Singapore to better understand the culture here and will also “show how different cultural backgrounds can make or break any cross-national deal, however brilliant things look on paper”.

As well as her academic life Cheryl, who speaks Swedish and Mandarin in addition to English, keeps a fusion blog on her Northern European experiences, writing on fashion, food, travel and lifestyle.

———oOo———

Thank you, to the Eurasian Association of Singapore, for a wonderful write-up and an update on Eurasians around the world. The October to December 2009 issue of The New Eurasian is out, and personally, I’m already looking forward to the New Year’s Eve Maquerade Soiree! For more information on October to December’s upcoming events, please visit the EA’s website.