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How to host a Swedish Midsummer Dinner

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Last year we went of a break to Stockholm and instantly fell in love with the city and the country. One thing we learnt about on our trip was the Swedish traditions surrounding Midsummer. On our return home we decided that it would be fun to have a go at a Swedish Midsummer party ourselves. We had our first attempt last year and we enjoyed it so much we did it again this year. This is how we created our perfect Swedish midsummer dinner:

History

Midsummer’s Eve is the traditional holiday to mark the start of the short Swedish summer season, involving getting back to nature and celebrating the countryside. It is one of the lightest nights of the year and was thought to be magical. Although summer solstace falls on the 20th or 21st of June, the ever-organised Swedes celebrate on friday between 19th and 25th June. It is a public holiday and most take the opportunity to get our of the city and get back to nature. Traditional activities involve creating and dancing around a maypole, collecting wild flowers and eating the first strawberries of the season. Traditionally unmarried girls would go out and collect seven varieties of wild flowers, it was said that if they slept with these under their pillows they’d dream of their future husbands.

Food

A Swedish party needs Swedish food. Not having developed a taste for the traditional pickled herring we opted to go for a meal of gravadlax followed but meatballs. Gravadlax is salmon, cured in salt and dill, we served this with a mustard and dill sauce and some rye bread. For the main course Calum made Scandinavian style meatballs from scratch and served with a potatoes salad, a beetroot salad and a cucumber salad. We had some lingonberry jam and a cream sauce gravy.

For desert Calum made a Strawberry Cream Cake. This is a midsummer classic that includes layers of sponge, strawberries and cream. We followed this recipe but there are plenty of variations to choose from. After the gorgeous cake we had a selection of nordic cheeses including Herrgardsost, Ädelost and Prästost severed with some Scandinavian style crisp breads.

Drinks

A bit of researched suggested that Sweden is more of a beer drinking country than a wine one so we served up ice cold larger. But after a bit more further research and talking to the good people at the Swedish grocery store we decided we needed some Aquavit. We opted to go with a bottle of Lysholm Linie Aquavit (which we subsequently discovered was Norwegian, but we’ll gloss over that fact). This aquavit is fascinating, after the potato based spirit is distilled and flavoured with some herbs and spices it is placed in old sherry casts. These casts are then loaded onto the back of a ship and go for a trip around the world, crossing the equator twice. Each bottle has a code on it so you can see where your bottle stopped off on the way. To accompany our aquavit we tried our hand at some Swedish drinking songs, with limited success!

Decor

In Sweden they create garlands and raise a floral maypole (despite midsummer falling in June) whist we didn’t go full out and create our own maypole we did pay honour with filling old jars full of flowers. We got some Ammi visage from our local florist, it has very similar flowers to Cow Parsley and looked great with our blue and white scheme. We got our plates, glasses, lanterns and napkin (repurposed tea towels) from Ikea, and found some vintage cutlery and a lace table runner to complete the scheme.

Resources

Ikea www.ikea.com
Scandinavian Kitchen www.scandiaviankitchen.co.uk
The Official Swedish guide to Midsummer www.sweden.se

We loved hosting these dinners and we had a great time both this year and last. We now think this Swedish midsummer tradition will become one we keep up in the years to come. Do you think of this summer celebration, let us know your thoughts in then comments.

29th June 2016

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Cocktail of the Week | French 75

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Orchard Blog

During our recent trip to France we took the opportunity to immerse ourselves in some of the delights that comes from France, mainly the food and drink. We indulged in the delights of fresh croissants, cheese, daily baguettes, ratatouille and the many wines! In one of the towns we visited, Saumur, they produce a sparking wine known as Cremant du Loire. They also have a sparking red sparkling that is a very interesting and, if you ever get the chance, you should try it! We found a particular favourite Cremant du Loire from the Ackerman Winery on a previous trip and got the opportunity to visit their caves (pronounced like calves). The winery started in 1811 by a self-taught Belgian man called Jean-Baptise Ackerman, who found that the soil in the area great for growing grapes and the caves carved out for the building stone to be perfect for making and storing the sparkling wine.

Given we were experiencing all things French, we decided that our cocktail of the week should be inspired by this trip and settled on a French 75, or in French; a Soixante Quinze! (Yes, the French have a very odd numbering system!). The drink is known to date back to World War I and was created at the New York Bar in Paris. It was further developed into the drink we know today over the 1920s. The drinks original combination included calvados, gin, grenadine and absinthe, as well as the champagne, and was said to have such a kick that it felt like you had been shelled by the French 75 field gun! I think I will give that experience a miss! It became popular in the 1940s after appearing in in a few films, most notably Casablanca.

For this weeks cocktail, you will need:

Champagne Flute
Measure of gin
½ measure of lemon juice
Your choice of sparking white/champagne
Tsp of sugar

To prepare the cocktail, place the glasses in the fridge to cool them down. Take the gin, lemon juice and teaspoon of sugar and put them in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake well before straining the mix into the cooled champagne glasses. Fill the rest of the glass with the sparkling wine and stir gently.

There you have the soixante qunize! A simple and refreshing drink that is perfect as an aperitif!

23rd June 2016

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Cocktail of the Week | Elderflower Martini

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Inspiration for cocktail of the week comes from a few places. At the minute it is mainly the garden. In Rich’s parents garden there is a fantastic elder tree that has recently gone into flower and it now covered in white elderflowers. We tend to use elderflower in a few things, oh alright, mainly drinks! We wanted to try something that would give us a good flavour of the elderflower and little else. The best thing for that was to have an Elderflower Martini!

There is no record of where a martini first came to life, but there are a fair few versions that are similar to what we know as a martini. It is thought that the brand Martini did some successful marketing in the 1860s and ended up with the drink named after them. I think I prefer the theory that the cocktail was first created by a bartender in the town of Martinez and the drink named after the town. Regardless of the source, it became a very popular drink in the USA during the 1920s prohibition due to the ease of manufacturing illegal gin. To settle any argument, a classic martini contains gin! The vodka martini first appeared in the 1930s and were popularised by James Bond. Also, on no account should a gin martini be shaken!

For this week’s cocktail, you will need:

½ Measure of Elderflower Liqueur
Teaspoon of dry vermouth
2 measures of gin

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and add the vermouth. Shake to cool the vermouth and pour into the glass. If you prefer a drier martini, you can do what Winston Churchill did and face France and bow before adding the gin. Swirl the vermouth in the glass to coat the surfaces. Add the elderflower liqueur. Then and some ice to a clean cocktail shaker pour in the gin and stir. Once the gin is sufficiently cooled, pour it into the glass. You can then garnish how you like, as we used elderflower, we chose not to add a garnish.

There you have it, the elderflower martini. Now sit back, enjoy and if you need it drier, do what Winston would have done and tip the glass to France.

16th June 2016

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Cocktail of the Week | Raspberry Collins

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Orchard Blog

This week we dived into the drinks cabinet to try find a bottle that was nearly finished to create our cocktail of the week. It is tough all this cocktail drinking! It is however, quite fun learning about cocktails and we will continue with the hardship of creating and sampling drinks from our random collection of spirits for you. Who knows, we might actually get good at this. In the drinks cabinet we found a bottle of Absolut Raspberry Vodka that was nearly finished. We did little bit of research to see if there was anything we could use it for and we came across the Raspberry Collins. This drink comes from the ‘Collins’ cocktail family and there appears to be many relations in this family. We will have to try these in the future.

For this weeks cocktail, you will need:

1 measure of simple syrup
1/2 measure of fresh lemon juice
2 measures raspberry vodka
soda water
raspberries

Firstly, if you have not made a syrup before it really is simple. To make ours, we add 300 grams of sugar 60 ml of water, place it over heat and stir until it is a clear liquid. As it cools it will come a thick liquid.

To prepare the drink, start by adding some ice to a tall glass, add the syrup, lemon juice and vodka to the glass and stir well to mix them together. Fill the rest of the glass with soda water and garnish with a few raspberries. That’s it, you now have a Raspberry Collins.

The drink is refreshing and very easy to make. You can make this in a jug quite easily by multiplying the ingredients for number of people you are making it for. Perfect for an evening of drinks in the garden with friends. It will certainly be on our repertoire of cocktails in future.

9th June 2016

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Cocktail of the Week | Old Fashioned

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For this week’s cocktail of the week, we delved into the history books again for a very classic cocktail, the Old Fashioned. This cocktail is probably one of the oldest recorded in the history books. Its recorded history possibly dates back to 1806 in one form or another. Depending on your chosen source, it appears to have a very mixed history; from a gentlemen’s club in Kentucky to The Waldorf Astoria in New York. The only thing for certain is that you can tell it is old, the glass it is traditionally served in, the ‘old fashioned glass’, is named after the drink!

For this historic drink, you will need;

Whiskey (a bourbon or rye one)
Ice cubes
Orange twist
Cocktail cherry
Sugar cubes
Angostura bitters
Plain water

To prepare the drink, take the old fashioned glass, if you don’t have one a low ball or tumbler will suffice, and place the sugar cube in the glass. Add two dashes of Angostura bitters, saturating the sugar and then add a dash of water. Using a muddle, muddle the ingredients together until the sugar is dissolved. Next, pour the whiskey into a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake to cool the whiskey and then pour over the sugar in the glass. To serve, garnish with an orange twist and cocktail cherry. We didn’t have any oranges so couldn’t add the twist. Instead we relied on the cocktail cherries to garnish the drink.

You can imagine the appeal of the Old Fashioned cocktail in the 1800’s or early part of the 19th Century. A cold, sweetened whiskey would have been a pleasant drink to have on a hot afternoon. We would be very happy to be in New York, sitting at the bar of the Waldorf Astoria enjoying this drink, but there again, who wouldn’t!

2nd June 2016

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Cocktail of the Week | Strawberry Mojito

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With the weather getting warmer we decided that it would be a good time to start putting the summer cocktails to the test. Whilst a traditional mojito hails from Cuba, we thought we would try out a mojito with a summer fruit that is a British favourite, the strawberry. I am not sure what Ernest Hemingway would make of this (a classic mojito was rumoured to be his favourite drink), I can only assume he would approve.

For this week’s cocktail, You will need;

The juice from one lime
2 teaspoons of sugar syrup
1/2 lime cut into quarters (the other half for garnish)
6 strawberries (one for garnish)
Mint (plus a sprig for garnish)
1 measure of rum
Soda water
Ice

The basics of this Strawberry Mojito is the same as a classic mojito, with a few strawberries thrown in during the muddling stage. To start, you will need to mix the half lime, strawberries, mint and 2 teaspoons of sugar syrup. Using a muddle, apply pressure to all the ingredients to mix them together. You should be able to remove the lime juice and pulp, along with turning the strawberries into a mush. If you don’t have a muddle, would can use the back of a spoon.

In a glass put some ice, add in a measure of white rum, the juice from a lime and pour in some of the muddled juice. We used a sieve to remove the bits from the juice. Fill the rest of the glass with soda water and garnish with the remaining lime, strawberry and mint.

You are now ready to sit back and enjoy the Cocktail of the Week. You just need to pretend that you are enjoying the warm evening sunshine, sat on the beach in Havana, sipping a refreshing citrus flavoured Strawberry Mojito. Not the easiest of things to do whilst sat in a Surrey garden on an average spring day, but worth a go!

26th May 2016

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How to Throw a Tiki Party

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For Calum’s Birthday in August 2015 we celebrated by hosting a Tiki party in Rich’s folks garden. Calum hasn’t had a proper birthday party since he was a kid so we decided to go all out and we set to planning our slice of Polynesia in Surrey, England. This is what we got up to:

Invites

First things first, you can’t have a party without guests so Rich quickly got on with designing some invites (we will seize on any excuse to do proper invites)! After a bit of research into Tiki design, he chose bright tropical colours, tiki god graphics and 1950s style typefaces to give a mid-century tiki bar vibe. To match the invites, Rich designed a bar menu, food menu and a ‘tiki bar’ sign. In for a penny……

Tiki Bar

What would a tiki party be without a tiki bar? After a bit of searching we found a source of free used pallets (thanks to Rich’s Dad), we then spent an afternoon pulling them apart and reusing the wood to make our bar, the centrepiece for our garden decorations. Not bad for the price of a few nails and a couple of hours?

Essentially the bar is made up of three pallets, one across the front, and two half pallets on either side, with the extra wood used where needed. We made sure the bar was sturdy enough and even had the forethought to put in a shelf under the bar to hide all the extra bottle and juice cartons out of sight.

Decorations

How do you turn an English country garden into a slice of Polynesia? Well Pineapples are a must, and we searched local charity shops for anything that was remotely tropical! We then added in some brightly coloured ceramics (including some awesome tiki mugs we found on amazon). We found some paper honeycomb pineapples, and some paper garlands from Tiger – a brilliant source for party supplies and low cost homewares – finally adding in some other bits and pieces we already had to complete the look.

One thing that can really add atmosphere in a evening party is the right lighting. We found some cool Tiki Lanterns to place around the garden for that Luau feel, and hung some low cost paper lanterns with LED lights for the trees and around the bar. For a tropical scent we placed a dozen of Yankee Candles’ Pineapple Cilantro scented tea lights around the garden in jam jars. We recently invested in some festoon lighting from Lights4Fun, and finished off with getting some Christmas lights out of storage and stringing these across the garden. Once the sun set the whole effect was something quite magical!

Cocktails

For us it isn’t a party if you don’t have a signature cocktails or two (or in this case 4). We had a couple of drinks dispensers to make life easier, who wants to spend the whole evening mixing cocktails? But we did get to use my cool mason jar style cocktail mixer for Hema (a bargain at just £3) to mix a couple of Blue Hawaiians just to get the party started! Calum came up with a Polynesian Punch of his own invention, and we also found a recipe for an appropriately tiki sounding cocktail ‘The Voodoo” – Dark rum, red vermouth, fresh lime and apple juice. We severed Pineapple Lemonade as a non-alcoholic option.

As much as we love a cocktails or two, they are not for everyone. To make sure the beer drinkers amongst our friends didn’t feel left out we got in some Kona Brewing Company beers all the way from Hawaii. We had Fire Rock Pale Ale, Big Wave Golden Ale and Longboard Island Lager to choose from.

Food

The menu was Calum’s doing, and what a good job he did! We had plenty of Sushi (bought in, we’re not stupid!), Hawaiian sliders (mini burger with a pineapple on top), a prawn platter, cheese and pineapple and his pièce de résistance – 24 hour cooked Pulled Pork in a BBQ sauce.

Lastly it wouldn’t be a birthday party if there wasn’t cake, we are very grateful to our friend and Neighbour MJ for his Tiki cake extravaganza (there are no other words for it apart from extravaganza) The cake was ridiculously awesome and tasted delicious too! Thanks MJ!

We had an amazing evening and thank you to all our friends that came along, it was great to catch up. A couple of sore heads the next day, but we are already planning our next party!

This tiki party blog originally appeared in Rich’s graphic design blog, but we though it is more in keeping here!

25th May 2016

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Cocktail of the Week | Classic Gin & Tonic

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Let’s be honest a G&T is only borderline a cocktail. Having said that we both have strong feelings about what makes the perfect gin and tonic so we thought we’d include it:

1 measure Gin
3 measure Tonic
Lemon to garnish
Ice

So let’s start with the basics. First things first, the gin. Gin has had a renaissance recently, and there are hundreds to choose from all with slightly different tastes depending on the botanicals they use. Everyone will have their favourite brand, ours is Tanquerey. To our minds this is a most gin-y of the gins, the juniper flavour being suitable strong and it having a bit of citrus edge.

Secondly you need to have good tonic, there is nothing worse than a G&T with flat tonic water. Our Tonic of choice is Fevertree, but failing that schweppes is fine. Buy your tonic in individual bottles or cans, that way you get the freshest, sparkliest tonic for your drink.

You need lots of ice, at least 4 ice cubes, and we opt of the classic lemon as a garnish as lime can be a bit overpowering in it’s flavour.

And there we have it, our perfect Gin & Tonic.

19th May 2016

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Cocktail of the Week | Rhubarb Fizz

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In the back of our cocktail cabinet we found a bottle of Chase’s Rhubarb Vodka as it is Rhubarb season we thought we might try and use it in our Cocktail of the week – Rhubarb Fizz!

1 tbsp Rhubarb Syrup (see recipe below)
½ Measure Rhubarb Vodka
Sparking Wine

To make the Rhubarb Syrup you will need 4 stems of rhubarb, 300ml water and 250g of caster sugar. Slice the rhubarb into small chunks, place this in a heavy bottomed pan with the water and sugar. Bring to the boil and then turn down to simmer for about 20 minutes, occasionally stirring. Once the syrup has thickened you will need to sieve out the solids using a fine sieve or a muslin cloth and collect the very pretty liquid for use in the cocktail.

Put the rhubarb syrop and the vodka in the bottom of a champagne flute and then fill with cold sparking wine. Enjoy!

12th May 2016

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Cocktail of the Week | Perfect Pimm’s

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Our cocktail of the week is a good old fashioned Pimm’s No1 Cup. The first Pimm’s of the season is a sure sigh Summer is on it’s way. It is a pretty simple recipe: