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Recipe: How to make Swedish Salmon in saffron sauce

Swedish food writer John Duxbury provides some inspiration with his simple recipe for delicious salmon in saffron sauce.

Published: 20 April 2018 06:59 CEST

Recipe: How to make Swedish Salmon in saffron sauce

Salmon in saffron sauce with potatoes and lettuce. Photo: Swedish Food

Both salmon and saffron are popular in Sweden and as a result there are numerous recipes for salmon with saffron sauce, but this version, adapted from Mat Magasinet (The Food Magazine), is one of the easiest!

Mat Magasinet recommend serving lax i saffranssås with potatis och stekt gemsallad (potato and fried gem lettuce, as shown above), which I thought worked well, but it would also go well with rice and a side salad.

Summary

Serves: 4
Level: Very Easy
Preparation: 5 minutes
Cooking: 10 minutes
Total: 15 minutes

Tips

• Ask your fish monger to skin and cube the salmon for you.

• If preferred, the sauce and salmon can be cooked separately with the fillet cut into individual portions: melt 1-2 tablespoons of butter in a pan, add the salmon skin-side down, season with salt, pepper and lemon juice, fry for 2-3 minutes, then turn the salmon over and fry for a further 1-2 minutes until cooked through. Remove from the pan and keep warm.

• To fry gem lettuce, simply quarter them lengthways and fry in a tablespoon or so of olive oil for about 5 minutes, turning regularly to brown evenly.

Ingredients

500 g (1¼ lb) salmon fillets

200 g (7 oz) cherry tomatoes

200 ml (¾-1 cup) half fat créme fraîche

200 ml (¾- cup) water

1 tbsp tomato purée

0.2 g saffron, half a packet

1 tbsp cornflour (corn starch)

1 fish stock cube

salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 tbsp finely chopped dill

Method

1. Cube the salmon and halve the tomatoes.

2. Mix the créme fraîche, water, tomato purée, saffron and cornflour in a saucepan. Crumble in the fish stock cube and then bring the mixture to the boil.

3. Add the salmon and tomatoes and let simmer gently for 5 minutes with a lid on the saucepan.

4. Season to taste with salt and pepper and then stir in the finely chopped dill just before serving.

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

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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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