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Swedish recipe: quick and healthy redcurrant smoothie

Food writer John Duxbury shares his recipe for redcurrant smoothie with The Local.

Published: 1 June 2018 09:54 CEST

Swedish recipe: quick and healthy redcurrant smoothie

A perfect summer smoothie. Photo: John Duxbury/Swedish Food

Smoothies are a wonderful addition to a breakfast with two big additional attractions: they are so quick to make and they are super healthy.

Smoothies have become quite trendy and so they are popular with young people. You might find that children who might curl their noses up at eating redcurrants will enjoy a redcurrant smoothie! As they are so easy to make even quite young children can enjoy coming up with their own crazy combinations.

Tips

– You can make smoothies all year round by using frozen fruit, in which case omit the ice.

– Smoothies usually use bananas as a base because they add natural creaminess, texture and sweetness. If you are making smoothies for someone allergic to bananas, on a low glycaemic diet or wanting to avoid hybrid fruit you can substitute mangoes, papaya or peaches

– If you don’t like the taste of honey substitute sugar or sweetener.

– If you prefer a colder smoothie, place the ice cubes in the blender with the fruit and yoghurt.

– Experiment with different fruits!

Ingredients

240 g redcurrants, fresh or frozen

1 small banana, peeled

5 tbp cranberry or redcurrant cordial

240 ml low-fat yoghurt

honey or sugar, optional

ice cubes, if using fresh redcurrants

Method

1. Remove any stalks from the redcurrants.

2. Place the redcurrants, banana, cordial and yoghurt in a blender and blend on high speed for a minute or two.

3. Taste and add honey or sugar if desired.

4. Place some ice cubes in a tall glass and then top up with smoothie

Recipe published 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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