The new Swedish National culinary senior team

There is a new era and transformation here when it comes to the Swedish national culinary team, when you consider the achievements made by the previous team one can understand the pressure on this all new senior team.

Sweden as a nation that will always rock the culinary scene and the new guys will definitely keep up the good reputation of Swedish gastronomy.

For the first time we also manage to have 3 female chefs on board and that is another way of do things in a modern world.(I am for an all female team as well)

All you teams out there, you are warned.

Monocular Gastronomy in Serbia is tha thing

Monocular gastronomy is for many people a strange word and something that they do not rely to on a daily basis but many chefs know about it and many are also curios of the effect that they can provide to the food.

Me and my compadre Douglas did just that by packing our bags with some kilos of white powder (I wonder what would happened if the custom checked our bags!) and travelled to Serbia’s capital Belgrade to execute some days of magic with native chefs.

This is a true fantastic experience just realising how people react when they se things for the first time, I am spoiled in this matter being able so work with this for many years.

Chefs is Serbia are improving in fast pace and we are trying to help them even more by doing this kind of master classes, great way of bonding with fellow chefs.

Thanks to METRO they have a state of the art training centre that I am very jealous of (we have nothing like this in Sweden) and this will bring great success to the culinary market in the Balkan region.

Thanks guys for taking so good care of us and thanks to Slobodan Zoric for the pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

12x8 = 2:a gången gillt av Christina Unic

 Un voyage gastronomique Mars 23, 2013

Som passiv food AND wine junkie har jag varit en passionerad medresenär till min make under flera år. Numer befinner sig min man till stora delen på andra sidan köket och tar endast del av det färdiga resultatet på antingnen en restaurang eller vid en tävlingsarena någonstans i världen. Dragans växande behov och önskan av att få laga mat under press igen har tilltagit och efter en del funderade föddes följdaktligen idén: 12x8.

12x8 innebär egentligen att vi bjuder in, och vid varje tillfälle får 12 personer plats runt bordet (först till kvarn tillämpas). Under kvällen bjuds dessa gäster på 8 rätter. Lördagen den 23 mars genomfördes den andra kvällen. Dragan är vid rodret i vårt allt för lilla kök och skapar magi på det som känns minuter och sekunder. Jag försöker enligt alla novisers rädsla ha kontroll på gästerna ute i vår “matsal”. Runt bordet sitter 12 personer som egentligen inte känner varandra särskilt mycket, men lämnar bordet i slutet på kvällen med många nya bekantskaper. Jag vill inte här avslöja för mycket av menyerna om det är så att du skulle vilja bli vår nästa gäst utan låter några bilder visa lite av underhållningen från denna kväll.

Jag hoppas och tror att vi med små “babysteps” snart kan lyckas att sätta Viken på Skånes gourmetkarta.
Hjärtligt tack till alla som deltagit tills nu och you rock darling!

Food from Serbia

I was visiting Belgrade the capital of Serbia during the Easter holydays for some chef training in moneculär gastronomy with my friend Douglas but I will get back to that later, lets talk about Serbian food instead.

The traditional cuisine in Serbia must be some of the more refined in the eastern world, a great mix of Arabic, Byzantine, Slavic and Greek background with a typical twist of its own, way to go.

Food is refined in its own way, not at all European is sense of plating’s and decoration, instead very simple and old fashion but my god let me tell you about the packet flavours instead, you cant beat this, I promise.

Everybody who travels to Serbia is always amazed of the produce in the markets (especially in season) and it is a rich land of goody’s that grows here, the problem is still the meat, due to the traditions of not to hang the beef long enough to make it tender, try not to eat the steak in restaurants (kafanas)  I hope that this will change and we hade some great talks about this.

The rich wine and drinking culture are some of the finest with rakija, Loza or Sljivovica with and before every meal and the Serbian wines need some writing of its own, let me get back to that.

I will sum up to invite you all to visit some of the most fantastic countries in Europe and If you need some advise or guidance do not hesitate to contact me.

Let’s end up with some food pictures and party as there is no tomorrow the Serbian way.

Are wine buyers stupid?

The latest thing on the Swedish monopoly seems to be realising crap wines with so called famous people on the label.

Who the hell are letting this stupidity to go on! No normal person or wine buyer will fall for this cheep trick but this is how the Swedish monopoly treats its customers,

Selling shit wines in nice card box/plastic bags forces the Swedes to buy this, the average price on 1 litre of wine is about 5 € how strange is that?

Cheep wine in box makes people drink more due to fact that you do not notice how much you consume, is this a way to make people drink less? I don’t think so.

What is your opinion out there?

 

PS. this picture is from my favo cava

Why to buy cheep Cava? no reason

Selling cheap Spanish Cava is not doing anything good for all the great producers in the DO CAVA and I understand the frustration among the high quality producers whose aim is to on top of the bubbly world.

One of the leading producers Raventos who started the uprising among the producers says that he wants the cava to change its appellation guidelines to favour quality, but my question are, is his cava great and of best quality? I do not thing so.

The new name would be Conca Del Rui Anoia and forms a very small area in Penedes, will you remember this name?

All the new ideas is not bad at all and one of the things is To increase the period on the lees from today’s 9 months to minimum 18 months is great and well needed for better result.

To lower the yield and to set this to 10 000 kg /ha is good but why not keep the chardonnay and pinot noir as a grape varieties? This I do not get.

I wish Mr Albet who is the current chairman of the DO Penedes the best of luck to solve this issue.

If you want good Cava you should try Cavas Torello (do not confuse it with Agusti Torello)

Recaredo all the wines, some of Gramona top wines and also Castell D`Age who make fantastic cava.

Ten years and still in Love

Some great things have happened to me in the last few weeks, first of all I meet my wife Christina 10 years ago and we will celebrate this in a special way (secret)

The second thing is that my sommelier buddy’s in Sweden voted me in as their vice president of the Swedish sommelier association, thanks guys for your trust in me.

Serbia will have a visit soon from me and my chef friend Douglas, we will do workshop in molecular gastronomy for chefs at Metro centar in Belgrade.

 

My love in life Christina

I would like to thank you for being so understanding with me and all the patience that you show to me everyday even on my dark days.

Without you I am nothing and we are a great couple that can achieve anything that we want.

You are truly the moon in my universe, the star on my sky and I will love you forever.

//D