Swedish Pancakes

June 5, 2020

Growing up as a vegetarian in a Swedish-American household, my favorite part of Swedish cooking was always the pastries and the snacks (as an adult, I've learned to love beets and dill, too). My Mormor (Mother's Mother) came to Sweden from Finland at 16 and was a great cook, but very traditional. When we would go over for lunch, she would throw up her hands and say, "I don't know what to cook you vegetarians!" So when I or my other vegetarian cousin were there, she would always make the same thing for lunch: onion soup with toasted bread and cheese, and pancakes with ice cream and lingonberry jam. We had no complaints. We would eat the food in her kitchen, with the light hanging low above the table, amongst all her eclectic art, and always finish with strong coffee and picking at the bowl of candy on the table.

A few years ago, while visiting, I asked her for her french onion soup recipe. When I was astounded by the amount of butter in it, she shrugged and said: "Well, it's 6 big onions, too!" A little sign on her front door warned all visitors: "Lead me not into temptation, because I find it myself." Though her vegetarian lunch specialty was, allegedly, born out of not knowing how to make anything else, I think she loved spoiling us as adults with ice cream for lunch.

I was lucky to have recorded an oral history interview with her last time I was in Sweden before she passed away unexpectedly. On that day, I went with my mom and Aunt to her apartment and sat in the living room with her as they re-painted her kitchen chairs where we ate all those pancakes. Her birthday would have been April 25th, and I listened to the interview and heard the background noise of their fumbling around her small kitchen on a hot day, maneuvering around freshly painted chairs and interrupting us once to unsuccessfully try to close the door. She was a fierce feminist, a lover of poetry and music, proudly working class, and a collector of many things. When she passed away, my mom and Aunt returned to the same apartment where they had painted chairs a few years before to clean out her records, her collection of owl figurines, her years of accumulated postcards and photographs. They oscillated between crying and cursing their mom for leaving so much behind in her tiny apartment for them to contend with.

Now, I have been unexpectedly quarantined in New Orleans instead of New York City, where I live. The warm weather coming so early makes my summer soul come alive, and makes me think of my favorite time of year: summertime in Sweden, celebrating midsummer, biking around Stockholm, visiting my grandma, going out to my family's cabin in the archipelago, where we bake big batches of cinnamon and cardamom rolls and take them out on the boat with a big thermos of coffee, find a rock to sun on for the afternoon, and fika (drink coffee and talk).

I've been lucky this quarantine to be with a small group of dear friends in a house with a big yard, a nice kitchen, and a mutual love of cooking and food. I am usually a maker of fresh savory things and elaborate salads, but, at times, I love invoking my Mormor and her love of butter. A few weeks ago, I attempted to make cardamom buns with sourdough starter instead of yeast, which is out everywhere. The result was breadier than usual, but the unmistakable feeling of biting into a cardamom bun, followed by strong black coffee sitting in the sun, was there. I made these pancakes a few weeks ago for lunch (as you eat them in Sweden) to share with my housemates and ate them with beet salad instead of ice cream. As with all things Swedish, it made me painfully nostalgic for a place I've never lived, made me pine for endless summer days and a never-setting sun, and made me think of sitting under that low-hanging light in my grandma's apartment, waiting for the ice cream to thaw and the coffee to brew.

3 dl (~1.25 cups) flour, 6 dl (~2.5 cups) milk, 3 eggs, Dash of salt, 2 tablespoons butter

Mix dry ingredients with half of the milk. Mix in the rest of the milk and the eggs, and let it sit about 15 minutes. Melt the butter in a hot pan and pour in batter to cover the bottom with a thin layer, flip once. Serve with jam and ice cream, for lunch.

Sabine is a roving woman, a biker, a baker, a print-maker, and a weird aunt. She can't wait until she can make all her friends an elaborate meal again.