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SWEDISH FOOD

Recipe: How to make Swedish fish soup with wild garlic

Swedish food writer John Duxbury's recipe for fish soup with wild garlic is perfect for a warm lunch on a cold March day.

Published: 10 March 2017 06:59 CET
Recipe: How to make Swedish fish soup with wild garlic
Fish soup with wild garlic, Swedish style. Photo: John Duxbury/Swedish foos

Fisk soppa med ramslök och morötter (fish soup with wild garlic and carrots) is a filling soup and so it makes a tasty and attractive main course for lunch.

The recipe is based on one I came across in Mannerströms Fisk, a book by Leif Mannerström, probably Sweden’s best known chef and surely one of Sweden’s oldest working chefs (he was born in 1940). He has run several restaurants, written many books and is currently a regular television judge on Sveriges mästerkock (Sweden’s Master Chef) and Sveriges yngsta mästerkock (Sweden’s Young Master Chef). Both programmes can be seen online on Sweden’s TV4 channel.

Summary

Serves: 4

Level: Easy

Preparation: 10 minutes

Cooking: 25 minutes

TOTAL: 35 minutes

Tips

• Leif recommends using stenbitsfilé (cat fish fillets), which can be bought online, at least in the UK. (As my fishmonger never stocks catfish I normally ask for a bag of mixed white fish, such as cod, pollack or haddock, instead.)

• Wild garlic (also known as ramsons) can be picked from March until June, depending on where you live. If wild garlic is out of season, use chives instead.

The bunch above weighed 90 grams.

• Pick a medium sized bunch as shown, avoiding any very large leaves as they tend to be bitter.

• If you plan to freeze the soup do so before adding the fish. (I freeze it in 300 ml whipping cream tubs.) To serve, defrost the soup, gently reheat and serve with freshly cooked fish. Garnish with chives if wild garlic is no longer in season.

• The soup is superb with some good white sourdough. For our recipe click here.

Ingredients

4   small carrots
600 g (1¼ lb) skinless white fish pieces
2 tbsp   oil
1   onion, finely diced
100 g (4 oz) celeriac, peeled and diced
150 g (6 oz) floury potato, peeled and diced
600 ml (2½ cups) fish stock
1 tbsp   white wine vinegar
2   fresh bay leaves
300 ml (1¼ cups) whipping cream
90 g (1 bunch) wild garlic leaves
    salt and pepper

Method

1. Peel the carrots and slice thinly with a potato peeler. Put them in a bowl of cold water and leave them to soak.

2. Cut the fish into 1 cm x 1 cm (½” x ½”) pieces and set aside.

3. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and fry the diced onion, celeriac and potato for about 5 minutes, until softened but not browned.

4. Add the fish stock, vinegar and bay leaves and simmer for 10-15 minutes until the vegetables are soft.

5. Add the cream and bring the mixture back to a gentle simmer.

6. Add the wild garlic, but reserve a few small leaves to use as a garnish. Simmer for a minute or so until wilted and then liquidise the mixture.

7. Sieve the mixture into saucepan. Season to taste with salt, pepper and possibly a little more vinegar. Keep warm.

8. Boil up a saucepan of lightly salted water. Add the fish and leave it to simmer for 2-3 minutes.

9. Divide the fish between 4 deep soup bowls and add the reserved carrot slices.

10. Whisk the soup so it is nice and foamy and pour over the fish. Garnish with the reserved wild garlic leaves.

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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