Swedish meatballs: A classic dish for the Grand Tour

Because this Friday is Midsummer Night's Eve in Sweden, I decided this week would be a great time to teach and learn more about Sweden during my son's and my Grand Tour summer project. Obviously I know a lot about Sweden, having spent much of my childhood and some early adulthood there, but it's always valuable to approach your own country or city as though you were a tourist and knew nothing about the place. You can often learn things that you never knew before. And it can be a lot of fun.

So I started doing some planning and research, trying to figure out what to serve for Midsummer, but also what we were going to eat throughout the week. Swedish meatballs were one obvious choice (who doesn't think of Swedish meatballs when they hear the words "Swedish food"?). 

Now, Swedish meatballs is one of those dishes that every cook does in his or her own way. Similarities exist among them all (they are all recognizably Swedish meatballs), but each recipe has its own tweak. In some cases, meatballs are served with a creamy brown sauce, as I have done here. Some people prefer a thin beef broth with some chopped onions. And sometimes the meatballs aren't served with any kind of sauce at all, which is usually the case at a smorgasbord (cleaner to snag one with a toothpick that way).

And the accompaniments vary a bit as well. Boiled potatoes are definitely typical. (By the way, I learned a nice tip about adding dill to the cooking water from this Swedish food blog.) Many serve their meatballs with lingonberry sauce, which is very good. But I usually prefer to serve mine either with pickled beets or with Swedish cucumber salad. The acidity of the pickles combines so well with the richness of the sauce.

Most Swedish meatball recipes start with a mix of ground beef and ground pork, but I don't see any reason to get too hung up on that. If you've only got some ground beef, use that. Heck, I am sure that the addition of ground lamb would be tasty too.

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground pork     
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 egg
• about 1/4 cup bread crumbs
• 1 chopped onion
• 2 tsps salt
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 1 Tbsp dried parsley (or 1-2 Tbsp chopped fresh, if you have it)
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1-1 1/2 cup beef broth or stock 
• 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup heavy cream or half-and-half
• Additional parsley, salt, and pepper to flavor the sauce

Instructions

1. Combine the ground meats, egg, bread crumbs, onion, salt, pepper, and parsley in a bowl. Have a plate ready to receive the prepared meatballs. 
2. With clean, bare hands, knead the ingredients in the bowl until they are just evenly incorporated. There should be no major clumps of ingredients, but you don't want to overdo it either. 
3. Roll the meatballs by picking up about one heaped tablespoon of the meat mixture (or thereabouts) and rolling it between your hands until it comes together into a ball. Once again, don't overdo this step. They don't have to be perfect and the more you work them the drier the meatball will be. Make sure your meatballs are pretty even in size.  
4. Continue rolling until you have run out of meat mixture, and you have a plate full of meatballs. 
5. When you have finished rolling your meatballs, heat the butter in a large pan over medium high heat. When the butter is foamy and starting to brown a bit, add half the meatballs to the pan. Roll them around from time to time, cooking them until they are brown all around and no longer pink in the middle (check by cutting one of them open). (Should take about 10 minutes.) 
6. Remove the first batch from the pan (either set these aside for another time and purpose, such as a meatball sandwich, or add them back to the sauce at the end). Repeat the cooking process for the second batch of meatballs. 
7. When the second batch is cooked through, add two tablespoons of all-purpose flour to the pan. Roll the meatballs in the flour until it soaks up the grease in the pan and let it cook for a minute or two. (This is probably weird, but I love the smell of hot flour in a pan.) 
8. Add the beef stock and the vinegar. Lower the heat if it boils up too fast. Let the sauce cook until it's quite thick. If it gets too thick, just add a little more broth or cream. 
9. Lower the heat and add the cream or half-and-half to the sauce. Taste the sauce and add salt, pepper, and parsley as needed. Add the first batch of meatballs back in at this point if desired and incorporate them into the sauce. Serve with potatoes and pickled beets, Swedish cucumber salad, or lingonberry sauce (if you can find it).      

So what is this thing called authenticity?

The idea of authenticity has been worming its way around my mind ever since I read Todd Kliman's article, "The Problem of Authenticity," in issue 1 of The Lucky Peach. I suppose the article resonated because authenticity has been a byword in my family for many years. The article made me realize I don't actually have a verbal definition of the term; basically, it's one of those gut-feeling, I-know-it-when-I-see-it kinds of things.

And I can't tell if I am comfortable with that or not. On the one hand, if you don't have a specific definition of a thing, you can make all kinds of exceptions that undermine the integrity of the thing, stretching its "truthiness" (to steal a term from Stephen Colbert) to the breaking point. On the other hand, you can make all kinds of exceptions that allow the thing to grow, to take into itself new perspectives. So, I don't know where to come down on defining authenticity.

Kliman addresses three questions regarding authenticity in food:

• "For one thing, how the hell do you define it?
• "For another, where the hell do you find it?
• "And another, having found it, how do you know that it's, in fact, it?"

And he presents some examples that show what a tricky problem this actually is, such as the now less authentic bagels made in New York City (where once they were made entirely by hand, now they are stamped out by machine), or the wide range of how to define a gumbo in New Orleans, or the "right" ways to make Szechuan food or Neapolitan pizzas. Some places have strict regulations that define specific dishes to ensure that tradition is not lost. (To be honest, I also see some defensiveness against encroaching pop culture in such regulation too, but that's another story.)

Authenticity in food is an interesting topic because it mirrors and illustrates changes in culture. I was an anthropology major in college, and one topic that came up a lot was this idea of culture loss--that people the world over are losing their traditions to adapt to a new world order of internationalism. That sodas and televisions and t-shirts are now found in the remotest areas of the world and are destroying traditional ways of life. That languages are being lost as the last speakers die off. And, yes, it is sad, it is awful because there is so much to learn from what is being lost. And yet, and yet, isn't that the way of the world? We think of these cultures and these particular dishes as coming down to us fully formed, sacrosanct, but they too evolved. Cultures adapt to changes in local conditions and have always done so.

In the same way, people have taken their food traditions to new places and adapted them to what's available. Is it inauthentic to change something you grew up with to suit your tastes and the ingredients you can get your hands on? Is it inauthentic to drop the stuff you never really liked anyway? Is it authentic to cling unyielding to old ways and traditional ingredients? There are foods I'd never make if I had to make them the way they are supposed to be made. I simply don't have the patience to make pesto using a mortar and pestle. I don't have the arm strength and coordination to make mayo without a food processor. I make Swedish meatballs with whatever ground meat I happen to have on hand, not the specific blend of beef and pork that's typical (except chicken, I don't think I'd ever use ground chicken for Swedish meatballs). Traditional dishes have to be open to adaptation, to the creativity and the imagination of the cook, to the ingredients that are available. The way a person makes food reflects his or her family history, personal history, the season, the location. It's a complex palimpsest of layer upon layer of thoughts, feelings, images, tastes, scents, and memories partially smudged and aged until no single influence is perfectly in focus. And really, isn't it more interesting that way?

So where do I finally come to rest on the topic of authenticity? I guess it comes down to the words of a pompous old fool of a character: "This above all: to thine own self be true." But I also suspect that my thoughts and feelings about the topic will evolve.  

(And if you didn't read my review of The Lucky Peach, here it is.)

UPDATE 6/7/12: Here's another take on authenticity in food. Francis Lam and Eddie Huang discuss the fairness of other chefs taking on other cultures' food. It's kind of a long discussion, but it raises a lot of issues.