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RECIPE

Recipe: Roast partridge with chanterelle sauce

Want to eat like a Nobel Laureate or royalty? Try Swedish food writer John Duxbury's recipe for roast partridge, a dish that has been served at Nobel Banquets in the past.

Published: 3 February 2017 06:59 CET
Recipe: Roast partridge with chanterelle sauce
Roast partridge with chanterelle sauce. Photo: John Duxbury

Summary

Serves: 2

Preparation: 10 minutes

Cooking: 60 minutes

Ingredients

20-30g (1oz) dried chanterelles (girolles)

1tbsp vegetable oil

50g (3-4 tbsp) unsalted butter

2 partridges            

salt and freshly ground pepper

180 ml medium-dry white wine

1 tbsp white wine vinegar

300ml good quality chicken stock

pinch sugar

2 tbsp cream

1 tbsp cornflour (corn starch)

1 medium shallot , finely diced

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 220°C (425°F, gas 7, fan 190°C).

2. Add the mushrooms to a saucepan, cover with water, bring to the boil and then simmer gently for 15 minutes. Drain and discard the water. Dry the mushrooms on kitchen paper.

3. Heat the oil and half the butter in an ovenproof pan until foaming and a nutty brown colour. Lightly season the birds then brown them all over.

4. Roast the birds for 13 minutes, turning them and basting them with the buttery juices twice.

5. Remove the birds from the pan and place on a warm plate, breast side down. Cover loosely with foil and keep warm for 10 minutes.

6. Carve the birds, removing the legs and then the breasts. Cover the carved meat with foil and keep warm.

7. Roughly chop the carcass and put in a saucepan. Add the white wine and vinegar and bring to the boil. Boil rapidly until almost all the wine has evaporated (about 5 minutes).

8. Add the stock and sugar and bring back to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

9. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a warm saucepan. Add the cream.

10. Mix the cornflour with a little water and add to the sauce. Bring back to a gentle simmer, stirring steadily. Taste and add more cream or seasoning if desired, then keep warm.

11. Add the remaining butter to a frying pan and heat until foaming. Add the shallot and sauté for a minute.

12. Add the chanterelles and toss quickly over a high heat for 3 minutes. Season well.

13. Add half the chanterelles to the sauce and keep the others warm. Have a final taste of the sauce and adjust as necessary.

14. To serve, place the legs on the plates and then place the breasts on top. Distribute the reserved chanterelles round the partridge and then spoon over a little of the hot sauce. Serve the rest of the sauce separately.

Tips

– Chanterelle mushrooms (Cantharellus cibarius) are also called golden chanterelle or girolle mushrooms. Dried chanterelles can be bought at specialist shops and online.

– This dish works well with dried chanterelles, but is even better with good quality fresh mushrooms. If you are lucky enough to find some good fresh chanterelles use 100 g (4 oz) or more instead of the dried mushrooms listed below. However, it is better to use dried mushrooms than poor quality fresh chanterelles, which tend to become slimy and difficult to clean.

– The liquid from rehydrating dried chanterelles tends to be bitter and should be discarded. The water from rehydrating other dried mushrooms is normally very well flavoured and should be filtered, to remove any grit, and then kept for use when making a stock or gravy.

– It makes carving the birds easier if the wishbone is removed before the birds are cooked. This is easy to do: lift the skin from the neck end and feel around for the small V-shaped wishbone, cut round it with a small sharp knife, then grasp it with your hand and pull it out firmly, taking care not to damage the meat.

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

FOOD AND DRINK

OPINION: Are tips in Sweden becoming the norm?

Should you tip in Sweden? Habits are changing fast thanks to new technology and a hard-pressed restaurant trade, writes James Savage.

Published: 5 April 2024 13:59 CEST
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. 

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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