Herring

Stockholm, December 9, 2015—

THE PLATE YOU SEE in this rather crowded photo holds the special of the day: Solare med dillsmür och potatspuré, which is to say, fried herring with dill butter and potato purée. There is also a heap of lingonberry confit, of course, and a spray of dill, and a quarter of a lemon on the side. This was a very late lunch, and stood for dinner as well; and it was consumed in a splendidly old-fashioned café in the Royal Opera House, a room which had not changed, said our waiter, since it was built, in 1904. The room was fairly empty by the time we sat down; just a few very distinguished-looking men, one eating alone, others in twos and threes, speaking alternately Swedish, English, and French — perhaps they were in town for the Nobel awards; I don't know.

The herring was really quite delicious; this seemed like a perfect dish for a bracing afternoon. My companion had meat balls with pickled cucumbers and, of course, lingonberry confit: she let me taste the meat, and it was also very nice indeed, even better than Ikea's meat balls, and I have to confess that I like Ikea's meat balls. This was a fine place to rest for an hour. I recommend it highly.

Vitt vin: "Les Volets," Domaine Boutinot (Gascogne), nv: crisp, lean, good match to the herring

•Operabaren, Karl XII:S torg, Box 1616, Stockholm; 08-676 58 00
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

First Swedish dinner

Stockholm, Sweden, December 8, 2015—

WELL, FIRST ONE in thirty-five years, at any rate. And I'm not sure this particular place has changed in that time.

Oh, it's undoubtedly relatively new — this part of the city, Hammarby, is quite new: blocks and blocks of identical apartment buildings, many storeys high, with offices or occasionally shops on the street level. I'm sure this was formerly a working dockside enclave, but it's a new century, resting on a very different economy; from San Francisco's Mission Bay to here in Hammarby, clean lines and technology have displaced steam locomotives and stevedores.

But this place was nothing but nostalgia: smallish dining rooms; chandeliers; mismatched comfortable chairs (some of them — hoorah! — armchairs); candles; stemware.

And then the food came.

We'd ordered moderately: chicken breast for the Contessa; pappardelle "with Italian cheese" for me. But the plates!

My pasta was hidden, as you see, under green asparagus and arugula, and involved also leeks, mushrooms, cream, and a haze of nutmeg. The Italian Cheese was a cows-milk tomino of some kind; it had been dusted in panko and then baked. Faced with such a thing one sets prejudice aside and plunges into the local culture. We didn't come here to eat as we do in Italy.

So why did I order pappardelle? The alternatives were simply too hard to figure out, given lack of sleep and the minuscule quasi-elegant script on the menu. And I wanted to eat light. Oh well.

A toy shepherd at one end of our dining room, and an equally polite little bulldog wandering among the tables — the house dog, I suppose. I have to say that while I dislike dogs in general in the USA I do like the custom of well-behaved little dogs participating in the European urban life.

We didn't even mind the frequent bursts of song from another dining room, where a group of twenty or so were seated at a long table — a Christmas party, no doubt — most of them men, and all of them well versed in drinking songs. Good voices ameliorate enthusiasm. We'll probably encounter more of that, too.

Pinot grigio by the glass

•Hemma Hos Kaj, Hammarby Kaj 18, Stockholm, Sweden; 08-4466560
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Any port

December 7, 2015—

WELL, YOU TAKE your salad where you find it, and we have to have salad. The Contessa looked online to see where we'd find it. Not many choices: chain-resto "Mexican" or dubious Chinese. We opted, of course, since all such decisions must be consensus, for the former.

The house salad turned out to be huge. Lettuce, of course, of which she rejected only one leaf. Tomatos: where'd they get them? Nice sweet onions. A slice of cucumber. (We'll be eating lots of cucumber in the next couple of weeks.)

A fair amount of cheese, cheap processed cheese, but still. Vinaigrette.

No bread! Oh well, there's

Beer: Belgian White, on tap

•Chili's, Oakland International Airport
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Cleaning out the refrigerator

Eastside Road, December 6, 2015—

IT HAPPENS, every now and then: the refrigerator must be cleared out. And the freezer. There were only a half-dozen of those delicious Padron peppers viable, out of perhaps four times that many; I bought them at least a couple of weeks ago, and forgot them in the icebox, excuse me, rerigerator.

The sausage — from Franco Dunn, of course — it was in the freezer; one always like to have a sausage or two or half a dozen on hand, and they do keep reasonably well for a month or so in the freezer. People say you can't freeze fat: I beg to differ.

The carrots, no idea. They keep too, of course. Carrots and other root vegetables; cabbages and other coles; apples; potatoes — they'll keep, if you know how to keep them; that's how humanity survived ten thousand years of winters, after all.

The mashed potatoes? The last of Thanksgiving. (The turkey carcass turned into stock overnight.)

Green salad, of course; and the last of the pumpkin pie and hard sauce. And leftover wines:

Sauvignon blanc; Petite sirah, Preston of Dry Creek, 2014 and 2014

☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

One more time

Eastside Road, December 5, 2015—

YES, IT'S THAT Thanksgiving dinner once again, cold turkey sliced off the carcass, some sliced fennel tonight, the mashed potatoes nicely fried into a "pancake", and obligatory cranberry sauce. And I am thankful.

Petite sirah, Preston of Dry Creek, 2013

☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Mexican

December 4, 2015—

NO DOUBT OUR LAST dinner for some time in a Mexican restaurant tonight, with the neighbors down the hill. I was so engaged in conversation and in getting up to close the damn door bozos left open behind them in spite of the chilly night that I clean forgot to take notes or photos, but I can tell you I had a delicious mole with carnitas, very dark, fragrant, spicy, and rich; and we had delicious guacamole, and my beverage was a mezcal Margarita, smoky and powerful.

•Agave Mexican Restaurant, 1063 Vine Street, Healdsburg; 707-433-2411

☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants

Steak and salad

Eastside Road, December 3, 2015—

WE HAVE MANY REASONS to be grateful for our neighbors, the Neighbors Down the Hill; and among them their recommendation of this delightful way to address the quotidian problem What's For Dinner.

Even the occasional visitor to this blog will have gathered that we frequently dine in restaurants. We do this partly for business reasons, of course, but we also enjoy restaurants, for both their kitchen skills and their menus. We stick pretty much to a basic repertory at home; we like the quiet jolts of new combinations restaurants can provide.

Neighbor told us of a discovery: prefabricated meals, ordered from the Internet, sourced and shipped by a firm nearly a hundred miles south; all you need to do is the actual cooking. Tonight's dinner was Sirloin steak and apple-walnut salad, and while it didn't save Cook a lot of time in the kitchen it kept her out of the grocery stores, and that — especially when you live a few miles from town — is a blessing.

And the dinner was both delicious and sound. I won't go into details; you'll figure them out from the photo and the recipe-card that came in the package. All the ingredients are organic and sustainable, and all we had to provide was the salt, pepper, and olive oil.

I complimented Cook on her dinner, as I try always to remember to do, and then asked how much it cost. Oh, she said, about twenty-five dollars, maybe less. In any restaurant it would have been twice that, and in many restaurants it would not have been so skilfully prepared!

Petite sirah, Preston of Dry Creek, 2013: big but not dumb, substantial, fruity, a fine steak wine

• Sun Basket, www.sunbasket.com
☛Restaurants visited in 2015 are listed at Eatingday's Restaurants