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RECIPES

How to make crunchy Swedish winter salad

Still in a food coma after the holidays? Culinary writer John Duxbury shares his favourite recipe for a Swedish winter salad, which uses raw kale to create a lovely light meal full of flavour.

Published: 8 January 2016 07:00 CET

How to make crunchy Swedish winter salad

Green kale salad with toasted hazelnuts. Photo: John Duxbury

Summary

Serves: 4

Preparation: 5 minutes

Cooking: 15 minutes

Ingredients

40 g (3 tbsp) blanched hazelnuts

200 g (8 cups) kale leaves

2 tbsp fresh lemon juice

3 tbsp good quality olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

100 g (½ cup) raisins (or black grapes, halved)

40 g (1 ¾ oz) Västerbottensost (a traditional Swedish cheese. If you can't find it, use Parmesan or Pecorino cheese instead)

Method

1. Pre-heat an oven to 180C.

2. Spread the whole hazelnuts, in a single layer, evenly over a baking tray. Roast in the oven for about 15 minutes, until the hazelnuts are a nice golden brown colour.

3. Meanwhile, discard the stems of the kale, chop or tear the leaves and place in a large bowl.

4. Add the lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper. Massage the leaves with your fingers for 3-5 minutes, until they are tenderized. Taste to check that they are no longer bitter.

5. Add the raisins, toss thoroughly and transfer to a serving dish.

6. Roughly crush the toasted hazelnuts and add to the salad.

7. Shave the cheese and add to the salad. Serve immediately, although it does keep well for an hour or two.

Tips

– Kale can be blanched to use in a salad, but we recommend massaging it instead between your fingers for a few minutes to break down the tough cellulose structure. You will notice it is happening as the kale will go a darker shade of green and will shrink a bit. If you taste it, you will find it is no longer bitter.

– Use the recipe above as a starting point, adapting it to what is seasonal and readily available. For instance, add some blanched stem broccoli and apple instead of the raisins and cheese.

– For a little more colour, add pomegranate kernels.

– Massaged kale also goes well with dried cranberries and roasted cashew nuts. For 200 g of kale, roast 60 g of cashew nuts for 10-15 minutes and add to kale with 60 g of dried cranberries.

Recipe courtesy of John Duxbury, editor and founder of Swedish Food.

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

The Local’s guide to tipping in Sweden is clear: tip for good service if you want to, but don’t feel the pressure: where servers in the US, for instance, rely on tips to live, waiters in Sweden have collectively bargained salaries with long vacations and generous benefits.

SEE ALSO: What’s the tipping etiquette in Sweden?

But there are signs that this is changing, and the change is being accelerated by card machines. Now, many machines offer three preset gratuity percentages, usually starting with five percent and going up to fifteen or twenty. Previously they just asked the customer to fill in the total amount they wanted to pay.

This subtle change to a user interface sends a not-so-subtle message to customers: that tipping is expected and that most people are probably doing it. The button for not tipping is either a large-lettered ‘No Tip’ or a more subtle ‘Fortsätt’ or ‘Continue’ (it turns out you can continue without selecting a tip amount, but it’s not immediately clear to the user).

I’ll confess, when I was first presented with this I was mildly irked: I usually tip if I’ve had table service, but waiting staff are treated as professionals and paid properly, guaranteed by deals with unions; menu prices are correspondingly high. The tip was a genuine token of appreciation.

But when I tweeted something to this effect (a tweet that went strangely viral), the responses I got made me think. Many people pointed out that the restaurant trade in Sweden is under enormous pressure, with rising costs, the after-effects of Covid and difficulties recruiting. And as Sweden has become more cosmopolitain, adding ten percent to the bill comes naturally to many.

Boulebar, a restaurant and bar chain with branches around Sweden and Denmark, had a longstanding policy of not accepting tips at all, reasoning that they were outdated and put diners in an uncomfortable position. But in 2021 CEO Henrik Kruse decided to change tack:

“It was a purely financial decision. We were under pressure due to Covid, and we had to keep wages down, so bringing back tips was the solution,” he said, adding that he has a collective agreement and staff also get a union bargained salary, before tips.

Yet for Kruse the new machines, with their pre-set tipping percentages, take things too far:

“We don’t use it, because it makes it even clearer that you’re asking for money. The guest should feel free not to tip. It’s more important for us that the guest feels free to tell people they’re satisfied.”

But for those restaurants that have adopted the new interfaces, the effect has been dramatic. Card processing company Kassacentralen, which was one of the first to launch this feature in Sweden, told Svenska Dagbladet this week that the feature had led to tips for the average establishment doubling, with some places seeing them rise six-fold.

Even unions are relaxed about tipping these days, perhaps understanding that they’re a significant extra income for their members. Union representatives have often in the past spoken out against tipping, arguing that the practice is demeaning to staff and that tips were spread unevenly, with staff in cafés or fast food joints getting nothing at all. But when I called the Swedish Hotel and Restaurant Union (HRF), a spokesman said that the union had no view on the practice, and it was a matter for staff, business owners and customers to decide.

So is tipping now expected in Sweden? The old advice probably still stands; waiters are still not as reliant on tips as staff in many other countries, so a lavish tip is not necessary. But as Swedes start to tip more generously, you might stick out if you leave nothing at all.

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