Lingon

Lingonberries are very similar to cranberries. Smaller, but the flavor is about the same. I can’t taste the difference. Picking lingon is much easier too, but cranberries can be mass cultivated. The pickings were pretty slim around here, so we bought two buckets at the market.

Most go into plastic bags and into the freezer which is all full now.

Some make jam. My favorite is raw mashed lingon (rårörda lingon). Just mix in some sweetener and mash. This keeps well in the food cellar in jars that are not even sealed. Cranberries contain their own preservative. They also have many health benifits.

Lingonberries

The summer and fall have been very dry this year. In fact, the weather is still very summery. Forraging for mushrooms and berries in the woods is not very good now, but our neighbor has been in Finland for a couple of weeks picking lingonberries and brought us home a bucket.

They just need a bit of cleaning.

Then packaged and put into the freezer or made into presserves.

Lingon or Vaccinium vitis-idaea are very much like cranberries – they taste very much the same but are smaller, juicier and much easier to pick in large quantities. We use lots and lots throughout the year.

Raw lingon

Raw Blended Lingon (rårörda lingon)

We don’t use up all the lingonberries we pick in the fall, but freeze them in to make jams, jellies, relish and many other things throughout the year. My favorite is raw blended lingon.

It is so easy to make too. Just take out a package of lingonberries from the freezer or the local supermarket (cranberries can be substituted). Let them thaw out. Add sweetener – here we used raw sugar – to taste. Then use a stick blender to make a fine sauce. No cooking. It keeps for a long time in the refrigerator if you can keep from eating it up all at once.

Raw blended lingon go very well with almost any dish from oatmeal porridge to reindeer meat.

Sautéed reindeer

We have a lot of day-after holidays in Sweden, but the second day of New Year is not one. That didn’t stop us from having a festive dinner yesterday evening. We don’t eat much meat at all, so sautéed reindeer is a real treat. Renskav, as it is called here, is a traditional dish from the north and is highly recommended by Börje Salming.

What you need:
– shaved reindeer meat
– onions
– fresh or rehydrated chanterelles
– lingonberries
– oil
– soy sauce
– cream
– salt and pepper
– iron pot

Do this:
– sauté sliced onions in oil
– add and sauté reindeer meat till brown
– add water and let simmer ca 20 min.
– add chanterelles
– let simmer 10 min. more
– add lingonberries
– add salt, pepper, soy sauce and cream
– simmer about 5 min. until done

Serve with mashed potatos, salad, pickles and lingonberry sauce (rårörda lingon). Beer, hardtack and butter are also necessary accessories. Traditionally we have cucumber pickles, but yesterday it was lactic pickled carrots on the plate.

You can also substitute another natural meat such as venison or moose for the reindeer meat. It must be thinly sliced for the full effect.