God Jul

Or Merry Christmas.
It’s that time of the year again, but in this part of the world it’s not a holiday even though Xmas seems to be a comercial event here with people giving crappy gifts to eachother in the office.
At least the Swedish Trade Council had Lucia celebrations here, albeit on the 14th instead of the 13th, but it was pretty good none the less. Supposedly this is the 7th year running and this year they’d even got some girls from a choir in Sweden adding to the school kids that normaly sing at the event.
Lussebullarna weren’t exactly great, a bit dry and flavourless, but the ham sandwhiches were good and I think Brenda must’ve had at least half a dozen…
They also served Glögg, but again it wasn’t all that. Some things just aren’t the same as back home. Oh and there was meatballs as well, but I gave those a miss.
I tried to make some Vörtbröd in the bread machine I got about a month or so ago, but without half of the ingredients available here, it’s still a working project.
However, I found that you can use Korean orange tea, which is sort of like a bitter marmelade instead of Pomerans, but I think I added too much both times as the bread got a bit too strong flavour from it. I’m going to try and get some Vört next time a friend of mine here makes beer and boil it down and see how that goes, this time I used some dark beer which worked ok but doesn’t give it as much flavour. I added a whole bunch of spices instead of Julmust, but you just don’t get quite the same flavour, but it’s close. Mix in some cloves, ginger, cinnamon, ground up caraway seeds and some cardemom and you’re at least half way there.
I had some rye flour I got in HK and I mixed 1/4 rye with 3/4 bread flour to make up the fact that I don’t have rågsikt and that worked really well as the texture was very close to the real deal.
So if you’re stuck in a part of the world were you can’t get some of the bits you need for making Vörbröd, maybe you’ve got some tips here of what you can try using instead.
Apart from that it didn’t turn out to be a lot of christmas food being made, although I made a nice roast that we shared with some friends on Sunday, as I have no idea were you could get an uncooked ham from here, as the cuts of meat here are quite different from anywhere else I’ve been.
Anyhow, all the best to each and everyone that reads this blog 😀