The Pub - Discuss Anything

[Vesper 30,224]

https://psyche.co/ideas/our-internal-clocks-could-be-key-for-preserving-mental-health

Circadian rhythms often seem ‘out of time’ in bipolar disorder. Scientists are exploring what goes wrong and how to help

There are rhythms all around us, and inside us.

People have had a sense of rhythm in the natural world for a long time. Three centuries ago, the biologist Carl Linnaeus knew that flowers had rhythms: at certain times of day, they open their buds, and at other times they close them. And he knew that flowers differed from each other. So he proposed the idea of a ‘flower clock’ – a garden laid thoughtfully according to each flower’s rhythm. He could step into such a garden and know the time: autumnal hawkbit opens by 7 am, scarlet pimpernel by 8 am, and so on.

While the scientific understanding of how biological time is made and measured is fairly new, biological clocks themselves are very old, at least 2 billion years or so. Biology runs at many timescales, some very short and others very long. And, in between, there’s a special, 24-hour timescale, matching the daily cycle of light and dark.

The early days on Earth were unpredictable and dangerous, so being able to tell time would be a special gift. It would allow an organism to anticipate regular changes in the environment and to allocate physiology and behaviour – foraging, mating, socialising, resting – to certain daily periods, when they were most beneficial to staying alive. Fortuitously, early life developed a basic biological clock: two cycling proteins that could ‘flip’ like an hourglass to measure 24-hour circadian time. (‘Circadian’ comes from the Latin circa, or ‘around’, and dies, ‘day’.)

The evolution of the circadian clock caught on. Billions of years later, we can find them inside almost every living thing. And inside billions of our cells, serving a variety of crucial functions. Today, scientists are discovering that these circadian clocks may also be critical for preserving mental health.

In humans, the control room of the circadian system is the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a bundle of neurons in the brain’s hypothalamus. This nucleus is tiny, but it has an outsized impact on our physiology, behaviour, health and wellbeing. It forms the central ‘pacemaker’ of our circadian biology, and its rhythms drum out the body’s loudest 24-hour beat. It is not the only one playing: inside the brain are other clocks that oscillate rhythmically and govern the daily timing of processes like mood, alertness and appetite. Beyond the skull lie other peripheral clocks – in the heart, liver, stomach, bones and within individual cells – that organise the goings-on of the rest of the body. Each oscillates to 24-hour rhythms, coordinating the timing of processes essential to each organ. But up in the control room sits the central pacemaker, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a conductor orchestrating a symphony of rhythms.

How does the suprachiasmatic nucleus tell time? It has something to do with its Latin name. The suprachiasmatic nucleus is a bundle of cells (nucleus) sitting atop (supra) the optic chasm (chiasm), where the major nerves from our eyes cross. This affords it special backroom access to information about light coming to the brain from the eyes. Light and darkness are what the circadian system evolved to pay closest attention to. For our circadian clocks are like an old-time clock that needs to be ‘set’ each day, and it is light that primarily sets the time. Like an old-time clock, our circadian clocks can also come out of time – because they are created that way, because they develop that way, or because we disrupt them that way.

There is a growing sense that some illnesses may be caused, in part, by a mosaic of problems with circadian clocks. In particular, some scientists and clinicians think that bipolar disorder – which affects tens of millions of people worldwide – might be a ‘body clock disorder’.

Bipolar disorder refers to a family of chronic mental disorders characterised by abnormalities in energy, movement, thinking and mood. These abnormalities are most salient during periods when motor activity, energy and mood go way ‘up’ (during mania or hypomania) or way ‘down’ (during depression). Many people misunderstand what bipolar disorder is. Bipolar disorder is not ‘moodiness’; it is not all ‘psychological’ (though it has psychological effects); and it certainly does not mean ‘two personalities’. Bipolar disorder is biological, and it manifests in patterns and levels of activity, mood and energy that most of us will never experience.

The causes of bipolar disorder are tricky to pin down. Scientists know that bipolar disorder has a major genetic component. But what else is going on in the brain and the rest of the body? A myriad of causes have been hypothesised based on abnormalities in inflammatory processes, insulin signalling, mitochondria and oxidative stress, among others. Some scientists view bipolar disorder as a ‘multi-system’ illness, wherein many parts of the body are affected. This suggests that something has potentially gone awry in a biological control room, such as the one in the circadian system.

The notion that bipolar disorder is connected to the circadian system was proposed more than 40 years ago. But we now have new measurement tools and a fresh appreciation of the embeddedness of body clocks in physical and mental life. Those early circadian hypotheses continue to bloom, with the large constellation of observations suggesting that many people with bipolar disorder have clocks that are more fragile and sensitive to becoming dysregulated. It is worth acknowledging that some people with depressive and psychotic disorders also have body clock dysfunction. But bipolar disorder has been studied the most in this context, and its phenomenology and biology point more strongly to a circadian mechanism.

For people with bipolar disorder, changes in sleep are one of the most consistent signals that a person is headed towards a major episode of mania or depression, and sleep disruptions (like staying up much later than usual) can trigger an episode. A good clinician will help someone with bipolar disorder be monk-like about protecting their sleep and their rhythms – for example, by encouraging regular morning sunlight exposure, avoiding afternoon caffeine, and setting boundaries around sleep or wake times. People with bipolar disorder are much more likely to be evening types (‘night owls’), preferring a later timing of sleep, wake, eating and activity. This matters because some treatments for mood disorders don’t work as well for night owls.

When scientists study people inside chronobiology labs, they find that the biological rhythms of those with bipolar disorder are often different from the average person’s. Rhythms of melatonin, the ‘darkness hormone’, are often delayed and dampened, as are rhythms of core body temperature. Such differences are important because they tell us that parts of the internal world of people with bipolar disorder seem ‘out of time’ with the light-dark cycle. These dampened rhythms are more easily disrupted, which can cause poor sleep and potentially trigger major mood episodes. People with bipolar disorder may also have rhythms that are too early, rather than delayed. And a small study found that some people have rhythms that cycle between being delayed and being early as they cycle between being depressed and manic. It’s not clear how common this is. But it begins to paint a picture (blurry still) of a dynamic link between illness states and circadian rhythms.

Some circadian abnormalities are passed down within the families of people with bipolar disorder, which suggests that part of the link between bipolar disorder and circadian rhythms might be caused by genetic factors. When I and other researchers have tracked people over time, we’ve seen that when the offspring of people with bipolar disorder are more likely night owls, they are more likely to eventually develop bipolar disorder themselves. Changes in sleep can be seen early in childhood, many years before the onset of the disorder among those at high familial risk. But problems with sleep and the sleep-wake cycle appear in other mental disorders, too – whether due to the same or different reasons as bipolar disorder, we don’t know for sure. So, predicting who will go on to develop which disorder, if any disorder at all, is still very hard.

Abnormal circadian clocks are not, however, just a notable feature of bipolar disorder. They are also relevant to how these disorders are treated clinically, which includes – but goes well beyond – the precautions about sleep that I mentioned earlier.

For more than 20 years, clinicians have harnessed light and dark as therapeutic tools for managing bipolar disorder. One circadian tool, bright light therapy – in which a person sits before a special-made bright screen for a period of time each day – can improve the symptoms of the depressed phase of bipolar disorder. There are several hypotheses as to how this works. Light may cause changes in the activity of mood circuits in the brain, which has been demonstrated in animal models but not yet in humans. Or, bright light may help set the timing of the central circadian clock, which improves sleep and makes it easier to manage other symptoms. And if circadian dysregulation is itself a cause of the mood episode, it could be that stabilisation of the clock by regularly timed bright light may correct the mood episode too.

At the other end of the spectrum is dark therapy, which has its roots in the observation that people with mania can ‘deactivate’ down toward more normal levels of activity, energy and mood after a period of rest in the dark. It joined the 21st century with the discovery of special cells that form a critical node of the circadian system. These cells lie in the retina, but they don’t help us see. Rather, they observe the qualities of light from the outside world and communicate this information to the central circadian clock, informing its guess about the time of day. These cells are most sensitive to short wavelength light, what we perceive as ‘blue’. An innovation in dark therapy came with the idea that blocking blue light could give the brain’s circadian clock the impression that it is night, not day.

Modern dark therapy now uses amber-coloured ‘blue-blocking glasses’ for this purpose, and it has been shown in some trials to improve symptoms in people hospitalised with mania, such as increasing sleep efficiency and reducing motor activity during sleep. As with bright light therapy, we don’t know quite how this works. It might stabilise circadian rhythms in people whose rhythms are fragile, or it might eliminate the activating properties of light, to which some people with bipolar disorder may be hypersensitive.

Smart hospitals are experimenting with the idea of ‘circadian-friendly’ lighting on their wards. These special systems seek harmony between the positive effects of daylight and the negative effects of electric light at night. They ramp up the ‘blue-ness’ of light during the day and deplete it at night, a pattern that our circadian clock evolved to expect on our 24-hour planet. A recent trial of circadian-friendly lighting in a psychiatric unit showed improvements in sleep, circadian rhythms and clinical severity.

The story of circadian clocks is ancient, and they touch almost every aspect of our nature. Now, we are gathering evidence that it is possible to improve mental illness by harmonising with these natural rhythms. Time will tell whether this can help prevent these illnesses, too. Until then, it can’t hurt for each of us – including those who might be at increased risk of mental illness – to implement practices in our lives to keep our clocks strong. Be active during the day, both physically and socially, seek out the sun, and be a little monk-like about your sleep. Keep your days bright and your nights dark.

[NikkiCFC 8,336]

I can't help it. I'm night owl last 10 plus years. 

[Vesper 30,224]

The ways Sugar Babies navigate two roles: lover and employee

https://psyche.co/ideas/the-ways-sugar-babies-navigate-two-roles-lover-and-employee

‘Sugaring’ involves the commodification of romance – presenting a puzzle of love, labour and autonomy for those involved

When we think about romance, we often believe it exists outside the commercial landscape. From pop-song lyrics to cheesy catchphrases printed on mugs and cushions, this sentiment is expressed in tidy, well-known statements: ‘Money can’t buy you love’, ‘True love is priceless’, ‘The best things in life (love, companions, partnership) are free.’ Yet, just a quick glance at history proves to us that this isn’t really true. In fact, romance and commerce have long been intertwined.

Throughout history and across various cultures, the practice of older, more financially affluent individuals compensating younger, more attractive companions for their time and attention has been observed. If we stretch our gaze far back into history, for instance, to ancient Greece towards the end of the Archaic period (around 800-480 BCE), the custom of pederasty emerged. This was a socially recognised romantic relationship between an older male (erastes) and a younger male (eromenos), typically in his teens. Bringing the lens closer to modernity, in the early 20th century United States, the practice known as ‘treating’ emerged, where working-class women, often shop clerks in department stores, would offer companionship or sexual favours to male shoppers in exchange for meals, entertainment and gifts. Today, the same old story, whereby care and affection are commodities, is being retold, only with new language and social infrastructure to guide it.

In 2006, the US entrepreneur Brandon Wade launched the dating platform SeekingArrangement (now officially known as Seeking.com, it shifted in 2022 to a regular dating site). Unlike other online dating sites, it catered to a niche user group: primarily older, affluent men seeking young, beautiful women. Here, the two can find a symbiotic relationship wherein the older man, referred to as the Sugar Daddy, can provide mentorship, rent coverage, network connections, and often weekly or monthly payment plans known as ‘allowances’. In exchange, the younger woman, referred to as the Sugar Baby, offers emotional, intellectual and often (but not always) sexual services. This phenomenon, informally known as ‘sugaring’, stands out as a unique aspect of modern life, straddling the line between what appears to be an authentic romantic relationship and a transactional arrangement.

Often, the two participants’ lives are entangled, spending nights at each other’s homes, going out for dinners or travelling together. To some degree, they build their lives around each other. Encapsulated within this relationship is a shared understanding that the flow of gifts and money will not stop. That this emotional, material and sexual economy is not a haphazard occurrence but an intrinsic agreement, essential for the survival of the dynamic. Together there is a collaborative blurring of what is bought, what is sold, what is performed labour, and what is an authentic action. The two lovers take on a dual role as both romantic partners and employer/employee.

The amorphous nature of sugaring has the potential to leave participants in a state of purgatory

From the Sugar Daddy’s perspective, this dynamic seems optimal – a sure way to secure consistent emotional and sensual investment in a cultural landscape riddled with loneliness. This is particularly poignant for many older men who feel engulfed by the demands of corporate capitalism, its knock-on effect of isolation, and the silo mentality that hegemonic masculinity produces. Conversely, sugaring is also beneficial because it provides financial compensation for emotional labour – the labour of validating others’ feelings, mediating their temper and alleviating their worries. All of which women have been historically overworked and undercompensated for.

At first glance, the commodification of romance seems straightforward. However, it becomes increasingly complex when we begin to examine the foundations of romance as a form of work. Specifically, what happens when one’s job is to perform as an authentic romantic partner – as the terms ‘perform’ and ‘authentic’ stand in direct polarity to one another. The amorphous nature of sugaring has the potential to leave many participants in a state of purgatory – straddling the authentic domain of dating, romance, and even love – as well as monetisation, income and labour. As a result, sugaring prompts a murky understanding of where one stands in relation to the other, when they are ‘clocked in or out’ of their job, what is contractually agreed upon, and what is monetarily ensured. All of which are questions any labourer within modernity deserves a clear answer to.

To answer these questions, I spent four months conducting semi-structured interviews with self-identifying Sugar Babies who either have had, or currently do have a relationship with a Sugar Daddy. While not all, many interviewees stated sugaring to be their primary source of income. It dictates their spending habits, rent agreements and savings accounts. However, since sugaring is also posed as a relationship, it can, like all romantic affairs, be terminated at a moment’s notice – similar to a breakup. This ending may take many forms, whether it be a lengthy, emotionally drawn-out breakup, a discussion over dinner, a quick call or text, or even a hasty ghosting. This leaves the Sugar Baby to reconcile both the loss of consistent income and the loss of a romantic partner – one whom they may have spent weeks, months or years getting to know.

With this volatility, there is also the issue of financial consistency. Lilah, a 22-year-old Sugar Baby from Canada mentioned during our Zoom call that often, in sugar relationships, conversations around payments take place early on. This allows both parties to understand what they stand to gain and provide before any emotional or sexual investment begins. However, this conversation is best understood as a loosely defined contract, relying on trust and mutual respect rather than written word or legal binding.

In contrast, within the mainstream workforce, workers are given clearly defined contracts outlining what is demanded and owed. Additionally, workers are granted annual reviews, prompting requests for raises to match inflation or reflect one’s growing commitment to the company. Sugaring, however, is far more informal. Renegotiation may feel inherently unromantic. Legal entitlement to compensation falls between the cracks. Lilah recalls certain moments when the monthly allowance would have been $200 less than what was originally agreed upon. Despite this breach of agreement, addressing the issue felt daunting, as it involved navigating a difficult conversation about trusting a romantic partner to uphold their word, as well as a worker’s right to fair compensation.

While the loosely defined nature of sugaring contracts can pose risks to financial stability, it also offers certain freedoms and autonomy. For example, Sugar Babies are free from the demands of traditional jobs that require them to show up at a desk every day, work a nine-to-five schedule, perform repetitive tasks, and spend hours on Zoom calls or in meetings. Jessa, a 25-year-old Sugar Baby from Australia, mentioned during our conversation that this freedom over her schedule was what initially attracted her to the practice. As someone with health concerns, she couldn’t always rely on mainstream jobs to provide the time off she needed for rest and recovery.

However, Jessa also noted that this freedom from conventional work demands often transforms into another form of restriction. Some Sugar Daddies expect extreme flexibility, requiring her to be available at a moment’s notice for trips or evening events. This reflects what scholars have termed the ‘autonomy paradox’, where individuals who appear to have significant freedom or independence in their personal or professional lives actually experience hidden forms of constraint or control.

Sugaring reminds us that love, labour, authenticity and compensation have always been intricately interwoven

In formal work settings, this is most commonly found among freelancers or ‘work from home’ employees who struggle to set boundaries, enforcing the end of the workday and the beginning of their personal time. Sugar Babies, too, are subjected to this, with open, sprawling days to explore the world, yet always with a red string tying them back to their partner. The evolution of technology only catalyses this – wifi, texting, FaceTime and social media platforms prompt Sugar Babies to be always available, always ‘on’, for their quasi-boss-meets-romantic partner. There are no out-of-office hours, no end of shift. If we reframe romance as a profession, it can quickly resemble a 24/7 occupation. From this, a type of ‘fictional freedom’ is born – barring Sugar Babies from the ability to set their own schedules, book time off, and step away from their duties.

Again and again, the phenomenon of sugaring raises the question of what happens when work and romance become inherently entangled – not in the sense of a whirlwind office romance, but in a more evolved form where a longstanding romantic relationship is itself a profession. Increasingly, social scripts have been written to distinguish the public sector from the private. In the public domain, we leave our homes or remote lives to engage in work, labour and finances, participating in acts of commodification, consumption and purchase. Connected to this we have come to believe that ‘on the other end of the spectrum’ is the private domain – comprising the home, family, and intimate relationships, which are acquired through abstract concepts like kindness, tenderness and intimacy, rather than bought or sold.

However, perhaps it’s time for us to reconsider how the two are continuously folding in on one another, bending to each other’s will and influencing their foundational nature. Sugaring does this for us. It sheds light on corners of the world where romance and commerce explicitly blur together, reminding us that themes such as love, labour, authenticity and compensation have always been, and continue to be, intricately interwoven – a far more slippery and arresting truth than we have previously been comfortable with.

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

11 minutes ago, Vesper said:

If we stretch our gaze far back into history, for instance, to ancient Greece towards the end of the Archaic period (around 800-480 BCE), the custom of pederasty emerged. This was a socially recognised romantic relationship between an older male (erastes) and a younger male (eromenos), typically in his teens.

And guaranteed the filthy pederasts were commies

[Vesper 30,224]

Why Do Americans Want to Dress Like Swedes?

The Stockholm fashion label Toteme has a no-nonsense, “pragmatic” look — and a lot of fans in New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/style/toteme-sweden-nyfw.html

The Toteme founders Elin Kling and Karl Lindman in Stockholm in August. Credit...David B. Torch for The New York Times

 

Toteme, the fashion label, is not a word. But it comes from one.

“I had the idea of ‘Totem,’” said Karl Lindman, who co-founded the company 10 years ago with his wife, Elin Kling. They married the same year.

“One of the meanings of the word ‘totem’ — and there are a lot — is a symbol for the like-minded,” Mr. Lindman, 42, said.

But Ms. Kling, 41, thought the name sounded too “masculine.” She was making clothes for women. So she suggested adding an “e,” elongating and softening the pronunciation. The addition also gave symmetry to a square-shaped monogram that Mr. Lindman, then the design director of Interview magazine, had been developing.

“It’s our take on the word,” he said. As I sat across from the couple at a long wooden table in the backyard of their Hamptons, N.Y., home, I wondered if there was a Swedish word for “totem.” Mr. Lindman paused for a moment: “It’s the same.”

Mr. Lindman and Ms. Kling are both Swedish, based in Stockholm, but they come to Long Island every July. Their shingled home in Amagansett, purchased about three years ago, is as close as you can get to the beach without living on it.

Yet they should not be confused for Hamptons types; they are walking advertisements for Toteme, a brand often referred to in fashion media as “minimalist.” That word makes Ms. Kling wrinkle her nose.

“To me, it’s more about strength,” she said. “Pragmatic.”

“It’s not wrong to say that sweet Swedish fashion has been quite minimal and utilitarian and practical in the past,” Mr. Lindman added. “That being our heritage is something that we embrace. But we’re not doing it only for the sake of it. We’re designing clothes that make sense for you and your life, and they tend to be quite minimal.”

Toteme is built around what fashion people call “elevated basics”: classic silhouettes in rich textiles, with just a touch of design. Like a nice blazer, somewhere between sleek and oversize, made from a fabric blend described on Toteme’s website as having “a spongy hand feel.” (It costs $980.) They are not reinventing the wheel, but they are dressing the wheel in a way that makes her feel composed, smart and secure in her style. Can an outfit be punctual?

Maybe if it’s Swedish. When I arrived at their Amagansett home exactly one minute before our scheduled meeting, the first remark Mr. Lindman made was that my timing was “very Swedish.”

The couple really is very Swedish: humble and hospitable, only dryly funny, with light hair, high foreheads, blue eyes — more blue when they have their summer tans — and two children, ages 6 and 9, who were seen but not heard.

They have an office in Stockholm with about 150 people, as well as employees in London and New York. Yet Toteme has found much of its success in the United States, the label’s “focus market,” Mr. Lindman said. On Sept. 10, when they open a boutique on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, four of their 15 stores will operate in the United States. These American stores are the largest and best-performing, according to the company.

Sales in the United States have quadrupled in the last three years, a spokeswoman said. The company’s global revenue was $150 million last year.

“It does incredible in the U.S.,” confirmed Alison Loehnis, the interim chief executive and president of Yoox Net-a-Porter, which has stocked Toteme since its first collection. (In those early days, the only place you could buy Toteme online was Net-a-Porter.) “I would not say in any way it is a specifically American aesthetic, but the fact that it resonates so keenly and in the biggest market, it doesn’t shock me.”

So it made some sense that Toteme chose to join the New York Fashion Week calendar this season. On Tuesday, it will present a summer collection of mostly black and white pieces meant for “high summer in the city,” Ms. Kling said. (Forget the Hamptons, although I did spot one lemony yellow look in the lineup during a preview with the designer on Zoom.)

Ms. Kling herself prefers to dress in black during the summer. She finds it looks more “sharp and elegant” than the typical colorful sundress.

“I like to wear a white dress in November and a black dress in July,” she said. When she’s not wearing Toteme, her uniform is a Charvet shirt, vintage Levi’s and Cartier jewelry.

Ms. Kling, a former fashion blogger and magazine editor, was already living in New York when she met a fellow expat, Mr. Lindman. As they built Toteme, she would focus on design, and he on packaging.

“Sweden is quite an equal country,” she said. “The women are quite independent. But I have to say, I also feel the same way in New York.”

Her goal has been to make “clothes for the working woman,” she said: “There needs to be a reality, a simplicity.” Ms. Kling and her husband often talk about how they’re more interested in style than fashion.

“I think they’re underplaying themselves,” said Camilla Nickerson, an influential stylist who is working on Toteme’s New York runway show, and who was “immediately inspired” by Ms. Kling.

“She has an uncompromising and quietly assertive sense of design,” Ms. Nickerson said. “That’s what women need right now.”

While the couple founded the company here, they returned to Stockholm in 2016 to find a “sense of purpose," Mr. Lindman said. In the Swedish capital, he said, “people are sort of happier with what they’ve got.” It has been easier to retain employees and build a long-term business there.

They call Toteme their third child, and people sometimes ask whether working together ever complicates their marriage.

“For most people, it’s complicated to organize a trip or a renovation because suddenly you have to work together,” Mr. Lindman said. “For us, that’s our default mode. When we don’t have a project to work on, we’re like, ‘What are we going to talk about?’”

In the early days of the company, Toteme struggled to get the attention of department stores. (Wholesale today represents about 50 percent of sales; Nordstrom is their largest account in the United States.) Streetwear and logos were more trendy than “quiet luxury” at the time.

“We never had a strategy of ‘let’s conquer America’ or ‘let’s go to France,’” Mr. Lindman said. (The brand’s first runway show was held in Paris in January.)

But over the years, certain pieces, like a T-lock bag with a curved handle, have exploded in popularity in cities outside of Stockholm. Toteme has sold more than 30,000 of these purses, the company said, in different variations. A wool jacket with a built-in scarf, priced at $1,130 was once called a “worldwide phenomenon.”

The founders’ reaction to these viral moments is, of course, very Swedish: “For good and bad, we don’t really celebrate any success,” Mr. Lindman said. “We’re always sort of like, ‘What could we have done better?’”

Still, it is a success that these pieces are not yet passé to customers. The scarf jacket was released two years ago, which might as well be seven in fashion years. Yet Ms. Loehnis, the Yoox Net-a-Porter president, said new versions of the scarf coat remained Toteme’s top seller on the Net-a-Porter site.

“It’s also our most engaged kind of fashion-forward customers who are buying it,” Ms. Loehnis said.

Which may explain why I recently came across a box of matches that said, in capital letters on one side, “The Row & Khaite & Toteme.” The matchboxes were made by Jess Graves, who writes The Love List, a popular shopping Substack, as a kind of inside joke for her fashionista readers. These are the brands that excite them — Toteme because of how particularly unexciting it can be.

“They really know who their customer is,” Ms. Graves said during a dinner for her newsletter in New York last week. “I hate to use the term, but I think it’s the ‘quiet luxury’ girl. It’s the girl who likes to build a wardrobe of items that last a long time.”

“I mean, these shoes are cool,” Ms. Graves continued, pointing to the sharp square-toe Phoebe Philo heels she was wearing, “but they’re going to look stupid in two years.”

[Vesper 30,224]

My Life In Booze: Stephen Cronk

Food & Drink

 

/

 11-09-2024

---

Stephen Cronk is co-founder and president of Maison Mirabeau – the Provençal rosé brand you see in all the right places. We asked the veteran winemaker about his own favourite drinks, bars and boozers.

 

https://slman.com/life/food-drink/my-life-in-booze-stephen-cronk

 

THE GUARD'S BAR & LOUNGE AT THE OWO

 

The first drink I ever enjoyed was a pint of bitter. I snuck out of school one evening when I was about 16, and some of the older kids treated me to a classic warm, flat English beer. That sparked my love for beer, which eventually led to a love of wine. Like most people, I drink more selectively these days – I want to really enjoy the moment.

I could talk about my favourite wines for hours, but some of the best these days are the sustainable ones. A friend of mine makes an incredible chenin blanc from Anjou called Domaine Belargus – I love a Ronceray white as it’s so elegant. This one has notes of peach and pear, but also a fresh salinity. Close to our vineyard in Provence is a young regenerative farmer in Bandol, making a great red called For My Dad. It’s made of mainly grenache and mourvedre grapes. The fruit is so present and it’s gorgeous and silky, reminiscent of a balmy evening in the South of France. I also have to give my own regeneratively farmed rosé, La Réserve, a little plug, because, even if I am biased, I love every moment when I drink it. I love rosé because it quenches your thirst and cleanses the palate.

But sometimes, only a beer hits the spot. We have a great microbrewery in our village in Provence called La Tuf, so that’s my go-to. When I’m London I love drinking London Pride from Fuller’s Brewery. When it comes to beer and wine – and also cocktails – a good drink is all about balance. Anything that’s out of balance will be a disappointment and you’ll be wondering what’s missing or not right. And I love flavours that surprise, something that makes you stop and think ‘wow’ as you sip is fantastic.

I’m a big fan of both champagne and English sparkling wine. I’ve been sampling some great English sparklers, including Blanc de Noir from our friends over at Coates and Seely, as well as the delicious White Cliffs Blanc de Blancs from the Simpson’s family-run wine estate in Kent. My wife Jeany and I work with a small champagne house in France called Philipponnat, which makes an awesome rosé cuvée, as well as a delicious reserve with zero dosage if you like your champagne ultra-dry.

The Connaught

 

When I’m at home, I like to make gin palomas using our Mirabeau Rosé Gin. Made from grapes, it’s refreshing, light and perfect for warmer days. To make it, fill a large wine glass with ice. Then add in a double measure of gin (50ml), a simple measure of fresh grapefruit juice (30ml), the juice of half a lime, and a tablespoon of agave syrup. Give it a gentle stir and top up with soda. I like to decorate it with a large pink grapefruit peel – give it a slight twist before adding to the drink to express some essential oils. You could even add a sprig of rosemary.

The most memorable cocktail I’ve ever had was a negroni at Mr Fogg’s Residence in Mayfair. It was my first ever negroni and it couldn’t have been in a better bar. To me, a good bar must have a high-quality cocktail list, great ambience, and friendly people behind it. It’s a special moment when you watch someone make your drink. I’ll always have a quick chat with the barman to ask about their inspiration and pick up any at-home tips.

If I’m out with my mates, I order a pint of real ale or a Guinness. I also love a cold weissbier, ideally with some Bavarian sausages, which reminds me of the amazing wedding breakfast we had the day after we got married many years ago.

When I have friends over, I like to serve rosé from a magnum because it’s fun and more impactful. Nothing is more special than sharing a bottle with the people you love. I proposed to my wife Jeany over rosé, so even before we were making it, it had a special place in our lives.

My favourite spirit brand is Oban. It’s such a classic and you get the quality whisky you pay for. I also rate Sapling Spirits and Discarded Spirits for their dedication to sustainability and commitment to making a positive change. Of course, the drinks are great too.

La Tuf

The most expensive drink I’ve ever ordered was a bottle of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon. We were at a very nice steak restaurant in Dallas and… I wasn’t paying! So yes, it was definitely worth it. And the strangest drink I’ve ever had was a cocktail made with mezcal infused with worms. I’ve been told the worms add a silk texture to the finished product. It was indeed a very tasty drink. 

One of my favourite pubs is The Orange in Pimlico. It’s a Cubitt House establishment so you can trust everything will be spot on, from the cool interiors to the food and its selection of beers. For a special occasion, The Connaught Bar is awesome, as is the new The Guard's Bar & Lounge at the OWO, where we have a cocktail on the list. We like to pop in for a glass of wine, followed by some small plates at St John which is near our home.

I still love a well-made G&T with a good-quality gin. I pop the gin in the freezer and use the classic Fever-Tree Indian Tonic. It’s so refreshing and is easy to make when you come home after a long day. I add a slice of citrus, rosemary sprig and lots of ice. When I’m not drinking, I like Mother Root, an alcohol-free aperitif, which is great with a large wedge of lemon and sparkling water.

Every at-home bar should have a good bottle of gin and a scotch whisky. Also, a nice bottle of vermouth – I like Vault – and some good bitters like Luxardo. That’s all you need to make good, easy drinks. My dream bar would have Richard Brendon glasses. All his glassware is top of the game, and I love the wine glasses he made with Jancis Robinson. They convinced me that nice glasses make a real difference to the experience.

I try not to have too many hangovers these days. The secret is to stop drinking a little earlier and to have some food. But if it’s a big night, a sachet of electrolytes with plenty of water before I go to bed helps curb a hangover. That and some scrambled egg on sourdough, with a strong coffee when I wake up to blow off the cobwebs.

Visit MaisonMirabeau.com

 

The Connaught

 

 

SHOP STEPHEN'S FAVOURITES BELOW

[Vesper 30,224]

Spinning the night self

After years of insomnia, I threw off the effort to sleep and embraced the peculiar openness I found in the darkest hours

https://aeon.co/essays/tender-and-creative-is-the-night-on-the-benefits-of-insomnia

I wake up, faintly groggy with sleep, and try to guess the time. Midnight is surprisingly noisy, with a steady stream of traffic bringing people home from the West End in London, while 3am carries a curiously muffled sound, and 4:10am is when the first aeroplane skims my house with its familiar whine of descent. As my ears strain into the darkness, I sense the soft silence of 3am. Once I would have groaned, cursed and plugged the (largely ineffectual) sound of gently lapping waves into my ears. But, tonight, I listen to the emptiness for a few pleasurable moments, then I reach for my notebook and a candle.

I’ve had insomnia for 25 years. Three years ago, after a series of bereavements, I stopped battling my sleeplessness. Instead, I decided to investigate my night brain, to explore the curious effects of darkness on my mind. I’d long felt slightly altered at night, but now I wondered whether darkness and sleeplessness might have gifts to give: instead of berating myself, perhaps I could make use of my subtly changed brain.

I’m not the first person to notice a shift in thoughts and emotions after dark. ‘Why does one feel so different at night?’ asks Katherine Mansfield in her short story ‘At the Bay’ (1921). Mansfield herself became more and more fearful after dark, often barricading herself into her apartment by pushing all the furniture against the front door. And yet, later in life, insomniac nights became one of her most creative times, as she confided to her journal:

It often happens to me now that when I lie down to sleep at night, instead of getting drowsy, I feel more wakeful and I … begin to live over either scenes from real life or imaginary scenes … they are marvellously vivid.

Mansfield referred to her nocturnal imagination as the ‘consolation prize’ for her insomnia.

Around the same time, Virginia Woolf was pondering her own feelings of ‘irresponsibility’ that struck when the lights went down. She too recognised that night rendered us ‘no longer quite ourselves’. After completing each of her books, Woolf was plagued by insomnia – which she made use of to plot out her next novel. ‘I make it up in bed at night,’ she explained of her most inventive novel, Orlando (1928). Night was also a time of epiphany: after protracted struggles with her novel The Years (1937), Woolf’s dramatic breakthrough came ‘owing to the sudden rush of two wakeful nights’ when she was finally able to ‘see the end’. A few years later, the writer Dorothy Richardson noted that, around midnight, ‘she grew steady and cool … it was herself, the nearest most intimate self she had known.’ In her fictionalised autobiography, Pilgrimage (1915-38), Richardson’s alter-ego Miriam finds her most authentic, radical and original self in the solitude of her wakeful nights. For Richardson, reading and writing when she should have been sleeping were acts of resistance, acts that revealed herself to herself, undistracted by the detritus of daylight.

My night-awakenings began during my first pregnancy. Ten years later – with four children and several years of working across time zones under my belt – a full night of sleep in a single stretch had become a rarity. Most nights, I woke between 2am and 4am, tossed and turned for an hour, then read until I drifted back for a (short) sleep before the alarm went off. I invested in sleep aids: melatonin, weighted blankets, eye masks, sleep-inducing supplements, oils, mattresses, pillows, sheets, pills, apps, bed socks. I experimented with various sleep hygiene routines proposed by ‘experts’. To no avail.

The latest statistics suggest that one in six of us cannot get to sleep, or stay asleep, a figure that is higher for women. At the last count, 8 per cent were taking sleep medication and 11 per cent were regularly splashing out on sleep aids. In 2019, the global market for sleep products was valued at $74.3 billion. Experts predict it will be worth $125 billion by 2031. Frightening, and sometimes misleading, stories appear regularly in the media linking poor sleep to obesity, heart disease, dementia and premature death.

A historical perspective offers us some help here. Sleep deprivation is nothing new: women have always been responsible for night-nursing multiple (often sick or dying) children, elderly relatives and animals; wash days often started at 3am; mattresses were thick with lice; winter nights were ice-cold. Like us, our ancestors suffered from many of the same physiological disruptions now linked to poor sleep, from menstrual and pregnancy cramping to the fluctuating progesterone and oestrogen of the menopause. Like us, they routinely experienced the stresses and anxieties now known to disrupt sleep.

I put away my sleep aids and let my grieving brain lean into the dark nights

Published and unpublished letters and journals show that, for centuries, many women embraced nocturne, finding within it a time of solitude and creativity. The literary critic Greg Johnson in 1990 noted that female writers seemed to have a peculiar talent for making ‘creative profit’ from their insomniac nights. He is right, and not just about writers. Over eight months of wakeful nights, the artist Louise Bourgeois produced her Insomnia Drawings (1994-95), a series of 220 sketches. The Insomnia Drawings were immediately snapped up by the Daros Collection in Switzerland, making instant ‘creative profit’ for Bourgeois, who also credited their production with easing 50 frustrating years of nocturnal tossing and turning. Lee Krasner’s ‘night journey’ paintings, made between 1959 and 1962 in the wake of two bereavements, are now among her most valuable and coveted. Meanwhile, Sylvia Plath wrote Ariel (1965), her most brilliant and acclaimed poetry collection, ‘in the blue dawns, all to myself, secret and quiet.’ Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Margaret Thatcher used the sleeping hours to increase the volume of their (arguably bold) output. Enheduanna watched the stars and produced the poetry that made her literature’s earliest known author. And Vera Rubin discovered dark matter, later saying of these wide-awake and alone nights at the telescope: ‘There was just nothing as interesting in my life as watching the stars every night.’

I call these women my Night Spinners.

Several years ago, when I lost loved ones, my flimsy sleep disintegrated and I lost all appetite for battle. Inspired by aeons of Night Spinners, I put away my sleep aids and let my grieving brain lean into the dark nights. When I woke (which could be any time between midnight and 4am), I got up and wrote, drew, watched the stars. I slept outside (night after night), went for long walks, swam in lunar-light, and taught myself the constellations and the phases of the Moon. I tracked and surveyed glow worms and moths. I watched badgers, and followed the call of owls and nightingales. I discovered a mesmerising nocturnal world.

My nocturnal mind was different. Why did I feel both more fearful and more tranquil? Why was I more inclined to fret and fume? To behave with greater recklessness? Why did images, ideas, memories so often collide in a curious collage of colour and novelty? Writing problems I encountered during the day found solutions as I ambled round the darkened house, peering at the night sky from every passing window. In the middle of sleepless nights, my mind felt less logical, less methodical. My grip on assessing and prioritising less assured. But in return, my inner critic fell silent. Ideas and thoughts meandered, melded and merged. I refused to pass judgment, but in the morning, when I looked afresh at whatever I’d written in the night, I often liked it.

From the work of chronobiologists, we know that our bodies – our blood, breath, bones, saliva and skeletal muscle – change at night. Breast cancer cells divide more quickly. Muscles weaken. Our fat cells, kidneys and intestines become slow and sluggish. Blood pressure drops. Appetites fade. Our temperature falls. Many of these changes appear to be tied not to sleep but to darkness. Scientists are beginning to understand that our brains are also altered at night, most notably as they cycle through a series of sleep stages. As I researched the Night Spinners, a pioneering study called ‘The Mind After Midnight’ (2022) appeared in my email inbox.

According to its authors (a group of eminent sleep scientists in the US), as hormones rise and fall, so the brain shape-shifts. The researchers had noted a greater risk of suicide, self-harm and other ‘risky’ behaviours among depressed people awake at night. They weren’t sure why this happened but suggested a few possible explanations. Was it an evolutionary adaptation designed to keep us vigilant and ready for action at a time when we were once most at risk of predation? Was it a result of synaptic saturation, whereby the brain rests in readiness for another day and so can’t function with its usual deftness and clarity? Was it because of altered hormones – rising melatonin, falling cortisol, dawn-peaking dopamine? Or was it because of the quietening of a vital neural network responsible for executive function, for managing our thoughts, actions and emotions – and known collectively as the prefrontal cortex? The prefrontal cortex (sometimes called our command and control centre, and thought to be the most highly evolved brain region) is very sensitive to sleep and sleep deprivation. Researchers speculate that it takes a restorative break at night – leaving us fractionally less rational, less organised and a little more at the whim of our emotions.

A resting prefrontal cortex might also explain why studies indicate that we are more likely to feel enraged and fearful at night. Or why reformed gamblers, drinkers and smokers are more likely to succumb to old temptations. Or why the celebrated writer Jean Rhys – who frequently wrote at, and about, night – was described by her biographer as ‘a lap-dog’ by day and ‘a wolf’ by night. Rhys liked to rise at a ‘wolfish’ 3am and ‘smoke one cigarette after another’, describing this dark hour as ‘the best part of the day’, when her thoughts were subtly altered. At night, it seems, the filter between us and the outside world is fractionally thinner and frailer. It’s not that our emotions change, but that our ability to control changes. We experience the world more viscerally: the highs are higher and the lows are lower.

The pioneering 15th-century feminist Laura Cereta had subversive ideas as she wrote through the night

This nocturnal rawness and instability could be due to insufficient sleep: when Japanese researchers used MRI to investigate, they found that blood flow between the amygdala (sometimes called the brain’s emotional HQ and our threat-detection hub) and the prefrontal cortex slows down when we don’t get enough sleep. In other words, our night brain could be partly explained by insufficient delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the prefrontal cortex. The researcher Andrew Tubbs – co-author of ‘The Mind After Midnight’ study – thinks that sleep deprivation might act as fuel for the night imagination. Tubbs told me that sleeplessness ‘can increase connectivity between disparate brain regions … as some brain regions become exhausted, [neural] connectivity increases so that other brain parts can compensate.’ He speculates that, as the brain is nudged into processing information ‘in unusual ways, it throws up novel and unusual ideas.’

Studies also suggest that, in women, the prefrontal cortex is larger and more active than in men. Might some women find it easier to free themselves, after dark, from the constraints of their diurnally active brains? Could this explain why Joan Mitchell’s paintings changed dramatically when she began night painting? Or why the pioneering 15th-century feminist Laura Cereta had such subversive ideas as she wrote through the night? Both women certainly thought so – Mitchell continued to paint at night for the rest of her life, while Cereta maintained that her ‘sweet night vigils’ were responsible for the ‘red-hot anger [that] lays bare a heart and mind long muzzled by silence.’

Nightly hormonal change may also affect our insomniac minds, colouring our emotions and perceptions. For instance, scientists now think that dopamine may be both a hormone of creativity and connected to light/dark cycles. When the anthropologist Polly Wiessner studied the Kalahari Bush people, she noticed that the way in which people communicated shifted after dark, becoming more imaginative, evocative and symbolic when gathered around a fire at night. We don’t know whether the speculated evening peaking of dopamine receptors contributed, but Wiessner noticed the way in which this linguistic shift contributed to greater empathy and more tolerance. I too noticed how, awake at night, I often felt more receptive, compassionate and open-minded. Things I might have brushed aside or considered unduly esoteric by day took on a new poignancy and possibility.

As I embraced sleeplessness, I became aware of the calming effects of scanning the night sky. In 2001, the psychologist William Kelly noticed that many of his students found great pleasure in star-gazing. It seemed to yield a subtly altered state of mind, and Kelly decided to investigate. Over the next decade, he ran a series of experiments, finding that people who enjoyed looking upwards into starry darkness also exhibited greater curiosity, were more open to new experiences, and more inclined to think fantastical thoughts. They were also more likely to wholeheartedly engage with whatever grabbed their interest, to mull over unusual ideas and fantastical possibilities, to seek out novel sensations. Kelly coined the term ‘noctcaelador’, a mash-up of the Latin nocturnus meaning ‘night-time’, caelum meaning ‘sky’, and adorare meaning ‘to adore’.

In 2016, together with his colleague Don Daughtry, Kelly carried out another study. He had an inkling that night sky-watching might also be connected to more lateral thought: his survey of 233 students suggested he was right. Did looking star-wards loosen the imagination, he wondered, or were creative people just more likely to gaze upwards at night? Kelly also wondered whether there might be a third variable influencing the relationship between star-gazing and creativity. Today, awe scientists think that looking at the night sky induces a sense of profound wonder, capable of lowering blood pressure, reducing inflammation, and increasing levels of oxytocin. These scientists might say that Kelly’s ‘third variable’ was a feeling of awe sparked by observing the constellations. But I think Kelly was on to something that goes beyond awe, that he had stumbled on the Night Self – the version of ourselves wired for nocturne.

I needed to retrain my fearful night brain via a steady process of habituation

I discovered another behavioural trait of my Night Self: the psychological effects of an absence of light. We know that women are more affected by darkness. Many of my friends cannot sleep alone in an empty house, let alone take a solitary walk, at night. Studies show that one in two women feels unsafe walking alone after dark, even in a busy public place. Being in darkness frightens many of us. With a less active prefrontal cortex to talk down our fears, wide-eyed nights can balloon into occasions of terror in which we douse ourselves in artificial light, to feel safer.

Fear impedes the workings of our more imaginative and reflective night brain, but several studies have already linked the rise in breast and prostate cancer with excessive night light. Other conditions are being linked to bright nocturnal illumination – depression, anxiety, psychosis, bipolar disorder. Some researchers point the finger at the blue-rich LED lights that have now largely replaced all the earlier incandescent (and less blue-rich) bulbs. I decided that if I was to benefit creatively from my sleepless nights with my health intact, I needed to retrain my fearful night brain via a steady process of habituation. On ever lengthier night walks, I paid close attention to my shifting senses and to my nocturnal amplified sense of sound and smell. Studies suggest that even our olfactory bulb is governed by circadian rhythms, growing more acute after dark.

I grew to love my wakeful nights. All that remained was to rid myself of the fear of an early death – as threatened by endless headlines. The Night Spinners reminded me that premature death wasn’t inevitable: lifelong insomniac Louise Bourgeois lived dementia-free until the age of 98; Proust’s night-working housekeeper, Céleste Albaret, lived until 92; and sleepless star-gazer Caroline Herschel was a healthy 97 when she died in 1848. It helped too that new research trickled out questioning the age-old assumptions. As one longitudinal study stated: ‘In women, mortality was not associated with insomnia and short sleep duration.’ I was not about to die from my broken nights – I was free to enjoy them! Men, however, may need to be a little more circumspect. More research is needed, but early studies indicate that women might be more metabolically resilient to short or broken nights.

To be clear, like any sleep-deprived person, I longed for a luxurious night of uninterrupted slumber. But, as I became acquainted with the gifts of darkness, so my sleep slowly returned. Leaning into my Night Self, being in a darkness that few of us experience in our light-saturated world, provided an antidote to today’s stress-inducing sleep zealotry as well as to my own fear of the dark. I still have runs of splintered sleep, but I no longer let them disturb me. I’ve learnt that a 20-minute power walk reboots my weary brain as well as a nap, that yoga nidra is almost as restful as sleep, and that reflecting when I should be sleeping might be good for my brain. Best of all, I have a fat notebook of night-ish lyrics and poems, the sorts of writings my sensible Day Self would never countenance. One day I might use them for my own ‘creative profit’.

[Vesper 30,224]

Johnnie Walker sheds 300 grams to make "world's lightest" glass whisky bottle

https://www.dezeen.com/2024/09/13/johnnie-walker-worlds-lightest-glass-whisky-bottle-design/

Beverage company Diageo has produced what it believes is the world's lightest standard-sized glass spirits bottle for its Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra whisky, launching next week at the London Design Festival.

Where a typical 700-millilitre bottle spirits bottle weighs around 500 grams, the special-edition Johnnie Walker bottle weighs just 180 grams without a lid, and was made in a quest to reduce the carbon emissions from packaging.

The hand-blown bottle has an adapted teardrop shape, with a rounded bottom and concave neck, but at the same time it echos aspects of Diageo's recognisable Johnnie Walker bottles in its slightly squared-off sides and shoulder.

Diageo global design director Jeremy Lindley told Dezeen that the project was born out of an ideation session on the future of luxury, where the team identified an emerging trend prizing lightness and sustainability over extravagance.

"We thought, what if our luxury products, instead of being in the heaviest glass, they were in the lightest and they celebrated beauty and delicacy?" he said.

His team then pursued a "test-and-learn" approach to develop the bottle, working with glassblowers to explore what shapes and techniques allowed for the use of the least amount of glass without the object breaking.

The artisans advised that the most effective strategy would be to follow the natural, balloon-like shape the glass takes when it comes out of the furnace and is acted on by gravity.

This creates a more even distribution of glass that counters the weakness in standard moulded glass bottles – that extra material has to be used in order to compensate for where the glass is thinnest.

This weak point is where the base meets the edge, forming a right angle, and because the material can't be precision-targetted to fill just that particular spot in a mould, the quantity of glass used overall has to be increased.

"You have to make glass thick enough to be strong enough at its thinnest point, and you can't control where glass goes in a mould," said Lindley.

"Most glass bottles are heavier than they need to be in nine-tenths of the shape in order to be strong enough at the weakest point."

From this starting point, Lindley's team worked to gently modify the shape to evoke the standard Johnnie Walker bottle, eventually moving to technical analysis and 3D modelling, and partnering with Turkish glass company Şişecam to get to the finished hand-blown product.

Throughout, the rounded teardrop base remained a non-negotiable for lightness. Lindley says the bottle can still stand up, but not reliably so – hence the development of a protective bamboo "cage" for the bottle's presentation.

Bamboo was chosen as a renewable material that is both strong and light – added to the 180-gram bottle, the packaging still doesn't outweigh a standard glass bottle.

It also scores better on Diageo's internal carbon impact assessment, as most of the carbon emissions from glass packaging are created in its production in high-heat furnaces, rather than through transport or other means.

The company says that, based on calculations by British Glass, every gram of glass reduction means over half a gram less carbon emissions in production.

The lightweight bottle needs to be handmade and hand-filled, so it is not currently a solution at scale, but Lindley says Diageo is applying lessons from the project to its mass-produced bottles.

It is also allowing royalty-free use of its patent so that other companies can apply and learn from the same process.

Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra is being released in a limited edition of 888 sold at £1,000, and will be launched at the London Design Festival with an installation called Liquid Light by Marshmallow Laser Feast at the Old Selfridges Hotel in Marylebone.

Lindley will also host three technical briefings on the project at the same location during the week.

Other events at this year's festival include an exhibition exploring the meaning of the term "well-made" and the multi-storey, plant-filled Vert installation by Stefan Diez.

Lindley's briefings will take place at Liquid Light on Tuesday 17 September at 12pm, Wednesday 18 September at 3pm and Thursday 19 September at 1pm. See our London Design Festival 2024 guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

 

[NikkiCFC 8,336]

Fair to say Bulgarian princess is a fan of Mickey Rourke. 👏 

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

Costing 150m to pedestrianise Oxford Street - so they've never heard of No Entry signs then

[Vesper 30,224]

[Vesper 30,224]

Comfort food recipes from Hari Beavis, Gen Z’s new favourite chef

Salmon curry? Chicken lasagne? The TikTok star shares her versions of classic dishes

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/hari-beaver-recipes-country-comfort-food-r75ss6xdl

Your Le Creuset cast iron pot is on the stove, you’ve started having soup for lunch and the last thing you googled was “hearty casserole recipes”. It’s official: cosy food season is here.

One person who is very pleased with its arrival is the food writer Hari Beavis, author of the cookbook Country Comfort, published this month and already a bestseller. Autumn is when she is in her element. “My cooking is comfort food for the soul,” she explains. “I love the kind of meals I make at this time of year: the slow-cooked one-pots, the butter bean stews and meaty ragus.”

Beavis, 25, lives in a middle-of-nowhere part of the Warwickshire countryside with her fiancé, a five-minute drive from where her mum lives with an adopted family of rescue chickens, dogs, horses and, at one time, even a donkey. Beavis was raised on rich cosy meals that got her through short cold days and long dark evenings. “We lived in the middle of the countryside and were always too far away from anywhere so we always cooked at home,” she says.

Every generation has a chef they look to for comforting, cuddly meals, be it Jamie Oliver and his pasta dishes or Nigella and her liberal portions of carb-rich food. For Gen Z Beavis is quickly becoming the go-to inspiration for feelgood soul food. The self-taught cook has 260,000 Instagram followers and double that number on TikTok, where videos of her cooking classic meals from French onion soup to honey mustard chicken, rich stews and lavishly cheesy lasagnes rack up hundreds of thousands of views.

“Lots of the recipes you find, like my steak sandwich, are inspired by the food we’d eat after going for a walk in the country and winding up at a pub,” Beavis explains. “Or because we were so far away from any restaurants that could deliver, we cooked lots of ‘fake-aways’ ourselves.”

As well as comforting classics and pasta dishes, Country Comfort is filled with recipes that suit busy lives — there’s a one-pan salmon curry and a “Can’t Be Bothered to Cook Chilli Noodles” dish made from instant noodles and store cupboard staples such as peanut butter and soy sauce.

Comfort food doesn’t just mean soothing for the body but the mind too, which Beavis discovered in her early twenties when she found herself in what she describes as a “pretty rough patch with my mental health. My parents were getting divorced and I had a bit of a rough break-up,” she explains. “I started to make food that felt like a cuddle in a bowl. My escape has always been through cooking.”

Beavis resonates most, she says, with “people going through a bit of a tough time” who “want to eat something that will make them feel restored”. With mental wellbeing being a priority for Gen Z, it’s no surprise that a large chunk of Beavis’s followers are a similar age to her. “Slowing down and relaxing is a form of self-care and you can do that through cooking by putting your phone down and concentrating on what you are doing and who you are with. Making a meal is my way of looking after someone.”

One-pan salmon curry

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 large salmon fillets, cut into large cubes
• 2 red onions, peeled and finely diced
• 8 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• ½ tsp paprika
• 2.5cm piece of fresh ginger, finely minced
• 1 chilli, finely chopped
• 4-5 tbsp tomato purée
• 400ml tin coconut milk
• 2 handfuls of fresh spinach (about 60g)
• 100g tomatoes
• 2 tbsp ground almonds
• Salt and pepper

Method

1. Heat the oil in the large saucepan over a medium-high heat, add the diced salmon and sear for a minute or two, then remove from the pan and set aside.
2. Add the onion and garlic to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes until soft, then throw in all the spices (including the ginger and chilli) and cook for a couple of minutes longer. Stir in the tomato puree and coconut milk, then add the spinach and tomatoes and cook for a couple of minutes until the spinach is wilted.
3. Add the ground almonds and return the salmon to the pan, then cover with a lid and cook for 5 min. Serve with rice and sprinkle in fresh coriander.

Chicken lasagne

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 onions, peeled and finely sliced
• 3 skinless and boneless chicken breasts, cut into strips
• 2 peppers, deseeded and sliced
• 2 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 400g tin red kidney beans, drained
• 400g tin tomatoes
• 8-10 lasagne sheets
• 100g mature cheddar cheese, grated
• Sliced jalapeños
• Salt and pepper

For the bechamel sauce

• 50g butter
• 1 tbsp plain flour
• 250g cream cheese
• 100-200ml milk

Method

1. Add the olive oil to the frying pan and place over a medium heat. Soften the onions, then add the chicken. When it’s partly cooked, add the peppers and spices, season with salt and pepper and cook until the chicken is cooked through. Add the kidney beans and tinned tomatoes, mix and leave to simmer while you make the bechamel sauce.
2. To make the bechamel, melt the butter in a separate saucepan over a low heat, whisk in the flour and when it forms a paste add the cream cheese a little at a time until you get a thick mixture. Next, add the milk a little at a time, whisking continuously, until you get a lovely thick sauce (you may not need all of the milk).
3. To build the layers, start with some of the chicken and pepper mixture, spreading a layer of it in the bottom of the baking dish, then add a layer of lasagne sheets and spread them with a thin layer of the bechamel. Add a layer of cheddar and repeat this layering process until you have run out of ingredients. Finish with some jalapeños on top to give it a little kick. Pop it in the oven for 15 min until the cheese starts to bubble and turn golden brown.

Baked garlic and parsley crumb halibut bites

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 70g breadcrumbs
• 70g parmesan cheese, finely grated
• A handful of chopped parsley
• 6 garlic cloves, peeled and grated
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 halibut fillets, cut into bite-sized pieces
• Lemon wedges, to serve
• Basmati rice or rustic new potatoes, to serve (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160C fan/gas 4 and line a baking tray with baking parchment. Mix the breadcrumbs, parmesan, parsley, garlic, salt and pepper in a bowl.
2. Roll the halibut pieces in the breadcrumb mixture to coat (for extra crispiness, do this process twice) and place on the lined baking tray.
3. Bake the bites in the oven for 10-15 min until those breadcrumbs are golden and crispy.
4. Serve with lemon wedges and buttery new potatoes or rice.

Chicken chilli con carne

Serves 4

Ingredients

• Good drizzle of olive oil
• 1 red onion, peeled and diced
• 6 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
• 6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into small bite-sized chunks or strips
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 2 tsp paprika
• Pinch of dried chilli flakes
• 300ml chicken stock
• 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 400g tin kidney beans
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp crushed black pepper

Method

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan or frying pan over a medium heat, add the onion and garlic and cook for a couple of minutes until soft, then throw in the chicken and cook until browned. Sprinkle in all the spices and continue to cook until the chicken is cooked through.
2. Add the chicken stock, chopped tomatoes and tomato puree, stir, bring to a simmer, then add the kidney beans and simmer for 15 min until the sauce reduces slightly – when it gets to the consistency you want, you’re ready to serve.

‘Can’t be bothered to cook’ chilli noodles

Serves 1

Ingredients

• 120g dried wheat noodles
• 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
• 1 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 tbsp smooth peanut butter
• ½ tsp finely chopped fresh chilli (or substitute the olive oil for chilli oil)
• ¼ tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• ½ tsp light brown sugar

To serve

• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1 tsp finely chopped fresh coriander
• 1 spring onion, trimmed and finely chopped
• 1 tsp white sesame seeds

Method

1. Cook the noodles according to the packet instructions and drain.
2. Put the frying pan over a medium heat and add the sesame oil, ginger, garlic, peanut butter, chilli, turmeric, soy sauce and brown sugar. Mix until the sugar has dissolved, throw in the cooked, drained noodles and stir to coat them in the sauce. If it’s a little thick, add a little bit of water, if it’s too watery just keep cooking until you get the sauce to the consistency that you like.
3. To serve, pop the noodles in a bowl and finish with the lime juice, chopped coriander, spring onions and sesame seeds.

Chickpea and spinach curry

Serves 2

Ingredients

• A drizzle of olive oil
• 1 white onion, peeled and finely diced
• 6 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
• 2.5cm piece of fresh red chilli, finely chopped, plus extra slices to garnish
• 2.5cm piece of ginger, finely chopped
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp salt
• Pinch of dried chilli flakes
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 400g tin chickpeas
• 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 400g tin coconut milk
• 100g fresh spinach
• Rice, to serve
• 1 lime, halved, to serve

Method

1. Heat the oil in the deep frying pan over a medium heat, add the onion, garlic, chilli and ginger and cook for 5 min until softened, then throw in the cumin, coriander, paprika, salt and chilli flakes. Stir, then add the tomato puree and the chickpeas, tomatoes and coconut milk. Mix until you have a nice sauce then throw in your spinach. Cook for 5 min, until the spinach has wilted and the sauce has thickened to your liking.
2. Serve with fluffy rice and lime halves to squeeze over.

‘Man flu’ chicken soup

Serves 6

Ingredients

• Chicken cooking juices (optional)
• 2 red onions, peeled and finely diced
• 4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1-2cm pieces
• 3 leeks, trimmed and cut into 1-2cm pieces
• 1 bulb of garlic, cloves peeled and finely chopped
• 300-400g shredded cooked chicken
• 1-2 tsp freshly chopped herbs (rosemary/sage/thyme)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 litre chicken stock
• 100g peas
• Bread and butter, to serve

Method

1. If you have any chicken cooking juices, put them in the large saucepan. Add the diced onion, carrots, leeks and garlic, and cook over a medium heat for about 20 min, until everything is soft and almost falling apart on its own.
2. Add the chicken, the sprigs of thyme, salt and pepper. Add the chicken stock, cover and simmer for about 10 min, to allow the flavours to infuse and ensure those vegetables are soft and succulent. Add the peas and simmer for 2 more min.
3. Blend the soup if you want. However, I love to leave it so it’s almost like a chicken broth. Serve in a bowl with a hearty portion of bread and butter.

Recipes extracted from Country Comfort by Hari Beavis (Quarto £26). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members

Edited September 21, 2024 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,224]

Puttanesca-style salmon traybake

If you make the tomato anchovy oil a day ahead, you can then delight in the fact that a midweek supper can be on the table within 20 minutes. The fuss-free cooking method — all hail the traybake! — plus the dialled-up flavours — all hail puttanesca! — makes such a winning combination.

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 200g fine green beans, trimmed
• 6 spring onions, cut widthways into thirds
• 200g mixed cherry tomatoes, halved
• 6 salmon fillets, skin on (about 720g)
• Salt and black pepper

For the tomato anchovy oil

• 85ml olive oil
• 8 anchovies, finely chopped
• 2½ tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tsp chilli flakes
• 2 tsp coriander seeds, lightly bashed in a mortar
• 8 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
• 2 preserved lemons, flesh and pips discarded, skin finely chopped
• 2 tsp maple syrup

For the salsa

• 60g pitted Kalamata olives, halved
• 60g capers, roughly chopped
• 1 preserved lemon, flesh and pips discarded, skin thinly sliced
• 10g basil leaves, roughly chopped
• 10g parsley leaves, roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tsp lemon juice

Method

1. First make the tomato anchovy oil. Put the oil, anchovies and tomato paste into a small sauté pan and place on a medium heat. Once the mixture starts to simmer, cook for 5 min, stirring from time to time. Add the chilli flakes and coriander seeds and cook for another minute, until fragrant. Remove from the heat and add the garlic, preserved lemon and maple syrup. Stir to combine, then set aside to cool.

2. Preheat the oven to 220C fan/gas 9. Place the beans, spring onions and tomatoes on a large parchment-lined baking tray. Drizzle over 3 tablespoons of the tomato anchovy oil, along with ¼ teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. Toss to combine and place in the oven for 12–13 min, until the beans and tomatoes are starting to soften and take on a little colour. Meanwhile, arrange the salmon on a plate and, using a spoon, drizzle the remaining tomato anchovy oil (as well as all the solids) evenly over the fillets. Once the beans and tomatoes have had their time in the oven, nestle the salmon fillets among them and bake for a further 8 min. Set aside for 5 min, out of the oven, to rest.

3. While the salmon is baking, mix all the ingredients for the salsa in a small bowl and season with a good grind of pepper. Spoon half the salsa over the salmon and serve the fish warm (or at room temperature, which works just as well), with the rest of the salsa in a bowl on the side.

 

Chicken with Steph’s spice

Steph was a Jamaican chef Helen worked with many years ago in Melbourne. A lot of time has passed since the recipe for Steph’s roasted jerk-spiced meats was handed on — passed around the kitchen, scribbled down on a scrap of paper — but it’s been with Helen ever since. Recipes, like postcards, flying around the world with the scent of a place on one side, scribbled greetings on the other. We served the chicken with a simple slaw made with half a small cabbage and a quarter of a pineapple, both thinly sliced, some freshly flaked coconut, sliced jalapeño, spring onion, coriander and mint. It’s dressed with olive oil, lime juice and maple syrup.

Serves 4, with rice and salad

Ingredients

• 1 tsp whole allspice berries (aka pimento)
• 2 bay leaves, roughly torn
• 1½ tsp hot chilli powder
• 1½ tsp paprika
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp mixed spice (the sweet one, like pumpkin spice)
• 25g light soft brown sugar
• 1½ tbsp runny honey
• 1-2 green jalapeño chillies, finely chopped
• 1-2 red Scotch bonnet (habanero) chillies, finely chopped
• 1 small red onion, cut into 1cm dice
• 2 spring onions, finely chopped
• 50ml olive oil
• 1kg chicken thighs, bone in, skin on
• 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
• Salt

Method

1. Put the allspice and bay leaves into a dry pan and toast them for 1–2 min, until the bay leaves have blistered. Using a pestle and mortar, crush to a powder, then tip into a large bowl along with all the remaining ingredients apart from the chicken and vinegar. Add 1 teaspoon of salt, mix well to combine, then add the chicken. Massage well, so that all the thighs are coated, then keep in the fridge, covered, for at least 6 hours (or overnight).

2. Half an hour before you are going to cook the chicken, take it out of the fridge, add the vinegar and toss to combine. Preheat the oven to 180C fan/gas 6.

3. Spread the chicken out on a large parchment-lined baking tray, skin side up. Bake for about 45 min, rotating the tray halfway through, until crisp and golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 10 min before serving.

 

Cheeseball lemon rice with chilli butter

There’s something really reassuring about a rice traybake. Add the right amount of water, seal the dish well, pop it into the oven, and forget about it. This is as comforting and delicious as you’d expect cheesy, briny, chilli-butter-doused rice to be. It’s the perfect side to something simple like a roast chicken, or else can be eaten as a main with some wilted greens.

The rice wants to be eaten fresh out of the oven but can be taken up to the point just before the hot water and aromatics are added, if you want to get ahead.

Serves 6

Ingredients

• 8 cloves
• 6 cardamom pods, bashed
• 1 lemon, skin shaved into strips, then juiced to get 2 tbsp
• 125g ricotta
• 150g feta, crumbled
• 125g hard mozzarella, grated
• 25g parmesan, grated
• 1 egg, beaten
• 400g basmati rice, rinsed and drained well
• 75g pitted green olives, cut in half
• 100g unsalted butter
• ½ tsp chilli flakes
• ¾ tsp Aleppo chilli flakes
• ½ tsp sumac
• 5 spring onions, sliced on the diagonal into 1cm pieces
• Salt

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200C fan/gas 7.

2. Pour 750ml of water into a medium saucepan and add the cloves, cardamom pods, lemon strips and 1½ teaspoons of salt. Place on a medium-high heat, bring to a simmer, then remove from the heat.

3. Put the four cheeses and the egg into a medium bowl and mix well. Using your hands, divide the mixture into 12 portions and roll them roughly into balls, approximately 40g each. They don’t need to be perfect, as they will spread once in the rice.

4. Scatter the rice on the bottom of a high-sided baking tray or dish, 24cm x 32cm (or a 28cm ovenproof sauté pan, for which you have a lid), and scatter over the olives. Pour over the hot water and aromatics. Shake the tray gently to spread the rice evenly, then deposit the cheese balls in the rice. Cover the tray tightly with foil (or lid) to keep the steam in, and bake for 25 min. Remove from the oven and leave to settle, covered, for 10 min.

5. While the rice is resting, melt the butter in a medium saucepan on a medium heat. Add the chilli flakes, Aleppo flakes and sumac and cook for 2–3 min. Add the spring onions and cook for a further 20 seconds. Remove from the heat, add the lemon juice and set aside.

6. Uncover the rice and spoon the chilli butter all over just before serving.

[Vesper 30,224]

 

[Vesper 30,224]

4 Recipes From One Of London’s Buzziest Restaurants

---

Irish chef Max Rocha opened Café Cecilia in east London in 2021. Named after Rocha’s grandmother, the café serves dishes inspired by the food he grew up with in Ireland and everything he learnt during stints at legendary restaurants like the River Café, Spring and St John Bread & Wine. Now, Max has compiled some of his most popular recipes into the Café Cecilia Cookbook. To mark its release today, he’s shared some of his favourites…

 

https://slman.com/life/food-drink/recipes/4-recipes-from-one-of-londons-buzziest-restaurants

 

 

Potato Rosti, Anchovy & Egg

 

 

Ingredients

150g of butter

2 large Maris Piper potatoes (about 500g in total), peeled & grated (don’t place in water)

10g of plain flour

50g of sage, finely chopped

4 eggs

30ml of sunflower oil

Salt & pepper

To serve

12 good-quality salted anchovies

 

Method

Step 1

Start by clarifying the butter. Melt the butter in a heavy pan over a low heat, then use a spoon to skim off the foam as it rises to the surface. Carefully pour the yellow liquid underneath into a bowl, leaving any milky solids in the pan.

Step 2

Put the grated potatoes into a clean dish cloth, then twist and squeeze until the excess liquid is removed. Tip into a bowl, add the flour, sage and eggs, then season with salt and pepper and mix.

Step 3

Preheat the oven to 180°C Fan/Gas Mark 4.

Step 4

Heat a quarter of the clarified butter in a cast iron frying pan over low- medium heat and when it’s hot, add a quarter of the rosti mix. Pat the mixture down with a flat spatula, then cook for 3 minutes without moving it. When you have a nice golden colour underneath, carefully turn the rosti over using the spatula and repeat on the other side. Once a good golden-brown colour, the rosti should be cooked. Transfer to a large ovenproof plate and repeat with the remaining mixture and clarified butter.

Step 5

When all the rostis are cooked, place them in the oven to warm while you fry the eggs to your liking. In the restaurant we cook them sunny side up, so heat a little sunflower oil in the frying pan, crack the eggs into it and cook for 3 minutes, or until the white is completely set.

Step 6

Place 1 warm rosti on each of 4 plates, then top each one with a fried egg and 3 anchovies. Finish with a grinding of black pepper.

 

Poached Trout With Courgette Fritti 

Serves

2

 

Ingredients

2 × 180g boneless trout fillets

500ml of fish stock, at room temperature

Neutral-flavoured oil, for deep-frying

2 romanesco (or regular green) courgettes

1 quantity of fritti batter

Salt

For the fritti batter

2 egg whites

200g of plain flour

30ml of olive oil

300ml of cold sparkling water

To serve

2 tbsp of lemon mayonnaise or aioli

 

Method

Step 1

Prepare the batter just before you want to coat your ingredients. In a clean, dry bowl, whisk the egg whites with a hand-held electric mixer (beater) until they form soft peaks. Put the flour and oil into a large bowl, then slowly whisk in the sparkling (seltzer) water with a balloon whisk until it reaches a double (heavy) cream consistency, then fold in the egg whites just before coating your ingredients. The batter will keep in the fridge for 5 hours but not with egg whites. So if you don’t want to use it straight away, don’t add the whites and just add them before using it.

Step 2

Put the trout fillets into a pan with the stock, then bring to a simmer and cook for about 9 minutes, or until the fish is cooked through and the flesh flakes.

Step 3

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a deep fryer or deep, heavy pan to 180°C, or until a cube of bread browns in 30 seconds.

Step 4

When the trout is nearly cooked, cut the courgettes into matchsticks to resemble thin fries (think McDonald’s). Put the sticks into a bowl and coat with the batter.

Step 5

Working in batches, carefully lower the sticks into the hot oil one at a time and deep-fry for about 3 minutes until golden (after 2 minutes, use a pair of tongs to move the fritti around so they don’t stick together). Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a plate lined with paper towels. Repeat with the remaining courgette sticks, then sprinkle with salt.

Step 6

Remove and discard the skin from the trout fillets, then place on 2 plates, add a tablespoon of lemon mayonnaise or aioli to each and serve with the courgette fritti on the side.

 

Deep-Fried Bread & Butter Pudding With Cold Custard

Serves

5

 

Ingredients

6 plain brioche buns, halved

4 eggs

370ml of milk

180g of caster sugar, plus extra for dusting

370ml of single cream

Sunflower oil, for deep-frying

1 quantity of custard, chilled, to serve

For the custard:

330ml of milk

330ml of double cream

1 vanilla bean, split lengthways & seeds scraped

160g of egg yolks (9-10 eggs)

170g of caster sugar

 

Method

Step 1

To make the custard, pour the milk and cream into a pan, then add the vanilla bean and seeds and heat to just before boiling. Meanwhile, fill a large bowl with ice and set another heatproof bowl or container on top. Put the egg yolks and sugar into a heatproof bowl and whisk together until combined. Slowly pour a large ladleful of the warm mixture over the egg yolks and sugar, whisking constantly so it does not curdle, then return the mixture to the pan and cook over a medium-low heat, stirring slowly with a rubber spatula, until it reaches 83°C on a sugar thermometer. Remove from the heat, then immediately pass through a chinois sieve into the bowl set over the ice bath and leave to cool. When cool, cover and place in the fridge until you need to use it. Keep in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.

Step 2

Line the bottom and sides of a 900g loaf pan with baking paper, then lay the bun halves on top of each other in the pan.

Step 3

In a bowl, beat together the eggs, milk, sugar and cream, then pour over the bread so everything is submerged. Cover with cling film and place in the fridge overnight.

Step 4

The next day, preheat the oven to 180°C Fan/Gas Mark 4. Remove the cling film and bake the pudding for 45 minutes, then leave to cool. When cool, cover with another piece of baking paper and cut a piece of cardboard to put on top of the pudding in the pan. Add something heavy on top, like a food can, to press the pudding and chill in the fridge overnight.

Step 5

The next day, turn the pudding out onto a clean work counter and cut into 5 thick slices. Put enough sugar into a shallow bowl for coating the slices after they have been deep-fried.

Step 6

Heat the oil in a deep fryer or deep, heavy pan to 180°C, or until a cube of bread browns in 30 seconds. Carefully lower 2 slices of pudding at a time into the hot oil and deep-fry for 4 minutes on each side, or until golden brown on the outside and warm on the inside. Remove with a fish slice and drain on a plate lined with paper towels for a few seconds, then coat the slices in sugar on all sides.

Step 7

To serve, pour the cold custard into 5 serving bowls, then top with the warm bread and butter pudding.

 

Poached Pear & Chocolate Sauce 

Poached Pear & Chocolate Sauce 

Serves

2

 

Ingredients

Peel of 1 orange, cut into strips

Peel of 1 lemon, cut into strips

1 sprig of rosemary

1 cinnamon stick

200g of caster sugar

2 conference pears, left whole with stalks left intact, and peeled

For the chocolate sauce:

35g of unsweetened cocoa powder

55g of caster sugar

10g of butter

 

Method

Step 1

Put the citrus peel, rosemary, cinnamon stick and sugar into a pan, cover with water and bring just to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 12 minutes to let the flavours infuse. Add the pears and simmer for 20-30 minutes until soft but still holding their shape.

Step 2

Just before serving, make the chocolate sauce. Put the cocoa powder, sugar and 110ml of water into a pan and bring to a simmer, whisking constantly until combined. Remove the pan from the heat, then whisk in the butter until incorporated and the sauce is glossy.

Step 3

To serve, cut across the bottom of each pear to create a flat edge so they can stand upright. Divide the warm chocolate sauce between 2 plates, then place the pears on top and serve immediately.

 

Café Cecilia Cookbook

https://www.waterstones.com/book/caf-cecilia-cookbook/max-rocha/diana-henry/9781838668600

[Vesper 30,224]

Fairies dance as autumn arrives in Sweden

Rosersberg, north of Stockholm.

Low-lying mist like in the picture, of the kind that usually appears on late summer or grey autumn days, is called älvdans in Swedish: fairy dance.

Today we know that this kind of mist is caused by moist air condensing and forming droplets that float, typically over meadows or still water.

But in times gone by, people in Scandinavia believed the cause was fairies gathering to dance and casting their spells.

Edited September 27, 2024 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,224]

UK’s worst night out? Costly, crime-ridden London

Club owners, tourists and students complain of an ‘early city’ where bars close long before the night is over

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/arts/article/london-worst-night-out-uk-cost-of-living-crime-alcohol-0gdkw2c0b

A rainy night in Soho. London has fewer venues open past 2am than any other major city surveyed

GUILHEM BAKER FOR THE TIMES

It is 1am on Thursday night in Soho, central London, and the cacophony of music and drunken chatter from the clubs has already died down. Bar managers are shuttering doors as men sitting in pink, fluffy rickshaws wait for the final revellers to start making their way home.

“In New York right now, I could find an open bar in a second,” says George Johnson, 30, who works in the live music business. “London’s an early city now. Everything is shut by 1am.”

London was once a world-class nightlife destination but it now has fewer venues open past 2am than any other major British city.

The Times analysed the closing times of hundreds of pubs, nightclubs and bars in the 12 biggest British cities. London ranked the lowest, with less than 6 per cent of venues open after 2am on Friday and Saturday.

 

Even on Friday and Saturday nights, less than a quarter of London’s venues open past midnight. In Edinburgh, on the other hand, 44 per cent of venues close after midnight at the weekends, with more than 8 per cent open post-2am.

London is one of eight cities in which less than 10 per cent of late-night venues are open past 2am, joining smaller cities such as Sheffield, Bristol and Brighton.

The capital has long lost its reputation for being a 24-hour city. Data collated by the Night-Time Industries Association (NTIA) found that between March 2020 and December 2023 more than 3,000 night economy businesses closed in Greater London — the steepest fall for any English region.

While London’s “night tsar”, Amy Lamé, did facilitate the reopening of techno club Fabric, she has repeatedly come under fire for the lack of perceived action in preventing other venue closures, despite her hefty annual salary and regular overseas trips.

Michael Kill, chief executive of the NTIA, said people are simply not staying out as late as they used to, primarily because they have “less disposable income, and concerns about infrastructure and the ability to get home after midnight”.

In Manchester, the birthplace of Oasis and The Stone Roses, nightlife is thriving compared with London, with 14.5 per cent and 15.8 per cent of bars and clubs open after 2am on Friday and Saturday, respectively.

Sacha Lord, the city’s night-time economy adviser, said new transport and infrastructure developments mean the city “feels very buoyant at the moment”.

In 2018, he asked the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham: “How can we call Manchester a 24-hour party city when we do not have 24-hour transport?” Two of the city’s busiest bus routes now run all night, which, along with the May opening of the Co-op Live music arena — with 23,500 seats, the biggest in Europe — has led to renewed confidence in Manchester’s nightlife.

But Lord acknowledged that bars were struggling with “midweek footfall dying away” because of the soaring cost of living.

“Students, rather than paying £3 to get in on a Tuesday night and then stay there until 2 or 3am at the bar, are going to Sainsbury’s and buying a bottle of vodka and having a house party instead,” he said.

Lord is expected to take up an independent national night-time adviser position, in addition to his current role, to feed into policy for the sector across the UK.

Jeremy Joseph, 57, owned three venues in London and one in Manchester before pressures on the industry forced him to close down his London nightclub G-A-Y Late and franchise his Manchester club.

“Spend per head has dropped dramatically,” he explained. “Venues are now competing against supermarkets, because they’re cheaper.”

Joseph’s remaining establishments — G-A-Y Bar and Heaven — are serving the same number of customers as ever, he says, but he now opens on Wednesdays to try to make up for the decreased spending.

Rob Huysinga, 29, the founder of Bubba Oasis, which operates bars in Islington and Clapham, has said sales “start to drop off” from 2am.

He plans to open two more bars next year, but said he’s adapting to become less “reliant on the late-night economy”. About 75 per cent of his venues’ revenue comes from alcohol sales but he is focusing more on bolstering other revenue streams, such as selling coffee and fresh juice, and offering yoga events, hot-desk working space and alcohol-free DJ nights.

“We are going towards a world that is more health-conscious and this will ultimately impact the late-night economy,” Huysinga said.

Gino Knarren, 28, and Ailish Mathee, 21, who were on holiday in Edinburgh from the Netherlands, outside Cabaret Voltaire on Blair Street

EUAN CHERRY FOR THE TIMES

Combined with higher rent and energy costs, low customer spending spells trouble for London’s once-vibrant nightlife scene. Kill said: “The reality is, it is 30 per cent to 40 per cent more expensive to operate compared to pre-Covid.”

A producer at Powerhauss Cabaret who uses the stage name Shard O’Nay was partying at Louche Soho on Thursday. She said she had seen first-hand how many venues were “closing” and “cancelling gigs”.

“People cannot afford to go on nights out because they have to plan their meals and other financial needs,” the 26-year-old said. “Whereas a night out was a staple of the weekend before, now it’s such a luxury.”

Shard O’Nay, 26, centre, is a producer at Powerhauss Cabaret

GUILHEM BAKER FOR THE TIMES

In Edinburgh, a cheap night out is easier to come by. Just before midnight on a Friday, a queue of punters snaked out the entrance of the Why Not club. Inside, the venue offered shots of tequila for £1.75 as part of its Filthy Fridays promotion — a magnet for local students.

Edinburgh University students Erica Knox and Agnetha Kempe, both 18, said they would be there until closing at 3am.

“I love going out in Edinburgh,” Knox said. “It’s quite civilised. You see the police driving around everywhere so you feel quite safe, and everything being open late gives the city a good vibe.”

In London, crime has become a major problem for business-owners and customers alike. Kill said the risk of “sexual harassment and petty theft”, particularly in crowded areas such as Soho, deterred people as there was “no CCTV” and “not enough police on the street to ensure these things are not happening”.

Two visitors to Soho on Thursday night, 18-year-old students Lauren Gold and Frankie Smith, said they preferred house parties, as the streets felt dangerous and Ubers were increasingly “expensive and hard to come by”.

Edinburgh University students Erica Knox and Agnetha Kempe, both 18, planned to stay out drinking until 3am

EUAN CHERRY FOR THE TIMES

The crime levels also frightened them, they said, as a group of men with hoods and masks covering their faces rode past on e-bikes. Down the road, a toothless man was spitting at passers-by and threatening them with a wine glass full of urine.

“This strange vibe puts off girls as unless you’re going out in a group, you don’t feel as comfortable or safe,” Gold said.

Milad, 27, works in a 24-hour off-licence in the heart of Soho. He estimated that between five and ten people came into the shop every day asking employees to call 999 or pull CCTV footage because their phone had been stolen.

The level of crime in London is frightening, said 18-year-old friends Lauren Gold, left, and Frankie Smith, right

GUILHEM BAKER FOR THE TIMES

Westminster’s entire CCTV system was scrapped by the council in 2016. Since taking control of the borough in 2022, Labour has installed 100 public-realm CCTV cameras to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour.

Joseph employs 35 security personnel across his venues on a Saturday. Despite paying the late-night levy, which requires premises serving alcohol after midnight to contribute money for policing, he said it can take 40 minutes to get through on 999 on a Saturday night.

Rowdy behaviour also upsets local residents. Venues are already required to prevent public nuisance, including excessive noise, outside venues under the 2003 Licensing Act. But a small number of resident complaints can lead to costly licence reviews.

The Compton Arms, famed as a favourite of George Orwell, almost closed after resident complaints prompted Islington council to review its licence and enforce a noise abatement notice. Some venues report spending thousands on legal fees to fight these licensing reviews.

Milad, 27, works at a 24-hour convenience store. He said as many as ten customers a day complain of having had their phone stolen

GUILHEM BAKER FOR THE TIMES

 

Ben Rosen, 19, and Lilli, 21, at Jazz After Dark, which employed Amy Winehouse before she shot to fame

GUILHEM BAKER FOR THE TIMES

Joseph’s solution was to purchase the two flats adjacent to Heaven. “The law favours residents,” he said. “Heaven has been there for 45 years, yet somebody could move into the area and affect our business.”

Huysinga said: “On the face of it, it seems really fun operating party spots, but there is a lot the outside world doesn’t see.”

Lilli, a 21-year-old Leeds University graduate, prays that Soho’s nightlife will weather the storm, and partying until the sun rises will not become a thing of the past. “If pubs and nice bars stayed open later, I’d be there,” she said.

[Vesper 30,224]

Delicious soup recipes for autumn — butternut squash, chicken noodle and more

 

Try these easy and tasty ways to zhuzh up the ultimate comfort food

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/food-drink/article/soup-recipes-butternut-squash-lentil-chicken-noodle-parsnip-px8pqcqh7

Whipping up soup is one of the things to look forward to as the season changes. It’s a bowl of nourishment, a quick and easy supper or a comfort when you’re feeling poorly. Nigella Lawson agrees, saying: “Soup is universal and also preciously intimate: to offer a bowl or mug of soup to someone is an act of cosiness and connection.” That’s why she is supporting a new book called Soup for Good, a collection of delicious recipes from a food-focused social enterprise called Cook for Good, established by Karen Mattison and Robinne Collie, and based on the Priory Green housing estate in King’s Cross, London. The organisation started by offering free cooking classes, training and community meals, and before long established a weekly soup café.

The Soup for Good community recipes are easy to make but definitely represent an upgrade if you usually make tomato or leek and potato. They are zhuzhed up with ingredients such as aromatic lentils, curried parsnip and Thai chicken. Their tip for a really good soup is to always start with the backbone: a good stock. Homemade versions are even better (recipe below) — they’re free of sugar and yeast, and will allow you to control the levels of salt. Lawson says: “For me, soup sums up all that I love about cooking: it’s adaptable, resourceful in its ability to turn bits and pieces into a meal that’s sustaining, comforting and uplifting, and the possibilities and variety are boundless.”

Try to use a wide pot or casserole dish and to caramelise your vegetables before adding the stock, which will maximise the flavour. Cream in soup might not be to your taste but a bit of healthy fat helps to achieve the smooth texture. Cooking your vegetables initially with butter or adding a dollop of yoghurt at the end will help. The best thing about soup is that you can make a tasty meal without blowing the budget: a £15 stick blender will be your best friend.

 

Cauliflower and coconut soup

Serves 4–6

Ingredients

• 1 onion
• 1 garlic clove
• 750g cauliflower
• 100g butter or coconut oil
• 500 ml vegetable stock
• 1 × 400g tin coconut milk
• 150g double cream or coconut cream
• Salt and pepper

For the garnish

• 50g butter or coconut oil
• 125g cauliflower (florets only)
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp nigella seeds
• 50g flaked or desiccated coconut

Method

1. Peel and finely chop the onion and garlic. Remove all the outer leaves from the cauliflower (you don’t need the leaves for the soup but they are delicious steamed or roasted with garlic and oil). Cut the florets and stalk into 3-4 cm pieces.
2. Set a large saucepan or shallow casserole pan on a medium heat. Add 75g of butter, followed by the onion and garlic, and sauté for about 8 min until soft but not coloured. Next, add the cauliflower pieces, vegetable stock and coconut milk. Stir and bring to the boil and then simmer until the cauliflower is tender, about 20 min.
3. Take the soup off the heat and add the remaining butter or coconut oil and the cream. Stir well and then blend until really smooth. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed.
4. To make the garnish, chop the remaining cauliflower into small 1-2cm pieces. Place 50g of butter into a frying pan on a high heat. When frothy, add the cauliflower pieces, cumin seeds, nigella seeds and coconut. Cook until golden brown and aromatic.
5. To serve, heat the soup until piping hot. Decant into bowls and sprinkle with the cauliflower, coconut and seeds, and drizzle over any remaining butter from the pan.

Aromatic lentil soup

Serves 6

Ingredients

• 1 onion
• 2 mild red chillies
• 1 tomato
• 200g red lentils
• 2 garlic cloves
• A small thumb of ginger
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp black mustard seeds
• 1 tsp Baharat or Lebanese 7-spice
• ½ tsp ground turmeric
• 1 litre vegetable stock
• 1 × 400ml tin coconut milk
• 1 lemon
• Salt and pepper

Method

1. Finely chop the onion. Deseed and finely chop the chillies. Dice the tomato into small cubes. Wash and drain the lentils. Peel and finely grate the garlic and the ginger to make a paste.
2. Set a large saucepan or shallow casserole pan on a medium heat. Coat with a thin layer of the oil. Add the mustard seeds and fry for 2 min until they start to pop. Stir in the onion, garlic, ginger, chillies, Baharat/7-spice and turmeric. Sauté until the onion begins to turn light brown. Add in the diced tomato and sauté until they soften. Add the lentils, coconut milk, vegetable stock and a good pinch of salt, and simmer over a medium heat for 20-25 min until thickened and the lentils are cooked. Add the juice from the lemon, starting with the juice of half and then adding more to taste. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
3. To serve, either blend the soup or leave it as it is for more texture. Garnish with your choice of tasty toppings.

Curried parsnip soup

Serves 4–6

Ingredients

• 2 onions
• 4 garlic cloves
• 2 apples (Gala is our favourite variety)
• 750g parsnips
• A small thumb of ginger (approx. 5 cm)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• ½ tsp turmeric
• 1 litre vegetable stock
• 1 × 400ml tin coconut milk
• ½ lime
• 20g fresh coriander
• Salt and pepper

Method

1. Peel and finely chop the onions and garlic. Peel, core and roughly chop the apples. Peel and roughly chop the parsnips. Peel and finely grate the ginger.
2. Put a large saucepan or shallow casserole pan over a medium heat. Add the oil along with the onion. Sauté for 3-4 min, stirring constantly, until the onion starts to soften. Add the garlic, ginger, curry powder, ground coriander, turmeric and apple. Lower the heat and sauté for a further 5-6 min until golden and fragrant.
3. Add the parsnips, vegetable stock and a good pinch of salt. Stir well. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer on a low heat until the parsnips are very tender, about 15 min.
4. Blend the mixture until very smooth. Juice the lime and add the lime juice along with the coconut milk. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed. Finely chop the coriander and use it to garnish the soup.

 

Thai chicken noodle soup

Serves 4 – 6

Ingredients

• 1 onion
• 3 garlic cloves
• 3 carrots
• 1 red pepper
• 3 large skinless, boneless chicken breasts
• 150g rice noodles
• ½ lime
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 4 tbsp red curry paste
• 1 litre chicken stock
• 500ml coconut milk
• ½ tsp ground black pepper
• 20g fresh coriander
• ¾ tsp chilli flakes
• Salt and pepper

Method

1. Peel and finely chop the onion and garlic. Peel and cut the carrots into 1cm cubes. Halve the red pepper, remove the stem and seeds, and cut into 1 cm cubes. Cut the chicken breasts into 1 cm cubes. Break up the rice noodles. Juice the lime.
2. Set a large saucepan or shallow casserole pan on a medium heat. Add the oil, followed by the onion, carrot and red pepper, and sauté for 3-4 min, stirring constantly. Add the chicken and mix well. Add the garlic and curry paste. Cook until the chicken is just cooked, about 3-4 min. Mix in the stock and coconut milk. Season with a little salt and pepper. Bring the soup to the boil and let it cook for a further 5 min.
3. Finely chop the coriander and set aside for garnish. Add the broken noodles to the soup and bring back to the boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 3 min. Test for the balance of flavours and add chilli flakes and lime juice to taste. Season with salt and pepper as needed. Serve the soup warm. Finish with the chopped coriander.

 

Roasted butternut squash

Serves 6

Ingredients

• 1 large butternut squash
• 1 large carrot
• 2 tbsp olive oil, for roasting
• 1 onion
• 2 tbsp olive oil, for sautéing
• 1 leek
• 1.25 litres vegetable stock
• Salt and pepper

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190C/gas 5. Wash, halve and deseed the butternut squash. There’s no need to peel it! Cut into 3cm chunks. Wash and roughly chop the carrot. Put the butternut squash and carrot cubes in a large bowl and mix well with the 3 tablespoons of olive oil for roasting. Season with plenty of salt and pepper. Line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper. Arrange the butternut squash and carrot on the baking tray in an even single layer. Cook in the oven until tender, about 20 min.
2. Peel and dice the onion. Set a large saucepan or shallow casserole pan over a medium heat. Add the remaining olive oil along with the diced onion. Gently cook — you’re not wanting colour but just a slow cook so keep the heat low — and stir regularly.
3. Wash the leek and thinly slice. Add to the pan to sauté along with the onion. Once tender, add the roasted butternut squash and carrot. Pour in the stock and mix well. Bring the pan to the boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook until the vegetables are soft, about 25 min.
4. When the vegetables are soft, blend the soup until smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve piping hot.

Emergency chicken noodle soup

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

• 1 onion
• 1 garlic clove
• 2 carrots
• 1 celery stick
• 350g cooked chicken (we recommend thigh meat)
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 bay leaf
• 1.75 litres chicken stock
• 250g medium egg noodles
• Salt and pepper

Method

1. Peel and finely chop the onion and garlic. Peel and cut the carrots into 1 cm cubes. Cut the celery into 1 cm cubes. Slice the cooked chicken into 2 cm pieces.
2. Place a large saucepan or shallow casserole pan on a medium heat and add the butter and oil. Add the onion, carrot and celery, and sauté for 5 min or until starting to soften. Stir in the garlic and bay leaf. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for a further minute.
3. Add the stock to the pan. Bring to the boil and then stir in the chicken. Bring back to the boil and simmer for a further 2 min. Add the noodles to the pan and cook until they are al dente, about 3 min. Remove the bay leaf and season to taste.

Soup for Good is published by Cook for Good. £25 (amazon.co.uk)

 

[Vesper 30,224]

What does the Swedish food agency think we should be eating more or less of?

https://www.thelocal.se/20240930/what-does-the-swedish-food-agency-think-we-should-be-eating-more-or-less-of/

Sweden’s food agency is due to present new dietary guidelines at the beginning of next year, but it has already published a sneak peek. What does it want us to change about our diets?

What should we be eating more of?

Similarly to its current recommendations, the agency wants Swedes to eat at least 500 grams of vegetables, fruits and berries a day – more if possible – with a large proportion of this consisting of fibrous vegetables, like root vegetables, cabbage and alliums. 

It describes this as “five fist-sized portions”, which could, for example, include adding grated carrot or lentils into a bolognese sauce, or adding berries to your morning yoghurt. Frozen fruit and vegetables can also be included in this total.

Adults currently eat around 270 grams of vegetables, fruits and berries a day, dropping to 200 grams for children, so the recommendations are almost double current consumption.

This doesn’t include potatoes, although the agency describes potatoes as “good food”. Legumes, like lentils and beans aren’t included in this 500 gram total either: the advice there is to eat them “often, preferably every day”.

Swedes in general do not consume many legumes at all – the median consumption for adults is estimated to be 0 grams, rising to 5 grams for children, and only 25 percent of Swedes eat more than 15 grams of legumes a day.

The agency hopes that these recommendations will lead to Swedes eating 50 percent more legumes, vegetables, root vegetables, fruits, nuts and berries in 2035.

As far as grains, like wheat, oats and rye, are concerned, Swedes are most likely to consume these as bread, with adults eating around 80 grams of bread a day while children eat around 100 grams.

Bread is also the leading source of wholegrains for most Swedes, representing 50 percent of adults’ wholegrain intake, dropping to 30 percent for children.

Other common sources of wholegrains are porridge, cereal, rice and other grains.

Currently, adults only eat around 40 grams of wholegrain foods per day, while children eat around 27 grams. The agency wants to see consumption double between 2021 and 2035.

The food agency wants Swedes to eat fish and other seafood two to three times a week. This doesn’t just include fresh fish, but also food like prawns, crayfish and mussels, as well as preserved fish products such as herring or tinned fish. 

Currently, only 40 percent of adults and 10 percent of children eat enough fish and seafood to meet the Nordic Nutritional Guidelines’ 300 gram-per-week target.

The average consumption for adults is around 220 grams a week, while children eat around 130 grams.

The agency hopes to see this figure increase by 20 percent by 2035.

What does it want us to cut down on?

The agency wants Swedes to eat less high-energy, unhealthy foods, like sweets, chocolate, cakes and, most of all, sugary drinks. It wants to see current consumption halved by 2035.

“If you eat well otherwise, then it’s not dangerous to eat food like this occasionally,” it says, while recommending that you think more carefully about when and where you eat this type of food.

This includes, for example, choosing healthier alternatives if you order take out, which contain more vegetables, wholegrains, fish, beans or lentils, and drinking water instead of sugary drinks.

Adults currently eat around 100 grams of sweets, like ice cream, cakes, desserts and drinks, a day, while children eat roughly double this, 220 grams a day.

“This number is however likely to be higher in reality, as respondents are likely to underreport their consumption of foods considered to be unhealthy,” the agency says.

Swedes’ meat consumption is also under fire, with the agency recommending just 350 grams of red meat and processed meats a week, down from its previous 500 gram recommendation.

The agency estimates that adults currently eat around 511 grams of red meat a week, and it wants to see this cut by 30 percent by 2035.

Women are currently the group most likely to eat less than the new guidelines per week, with 37 percent estimated to eat 350 grams of red meat or less.

The agency estimates that only 15 percent of men, 17 percent of girls and 4 percent of boys eat enough to meet the new guidelines.

“Boys in upper secondary school eat the most meat and processed meats, while women eat the least,” the agency says.

Finally, the agency also wants Swedes to cut down on salt – 20 percent less by 2035. Currently, adults eat anywhere between 8 and 11 grams of salt a day, while children eat around 8.

Most of that comes from meat and sausages (both fresh sausages as well as products like salami, which are preserved), as well as bread. For children and young people, pasta and pizza are common sources of salt.

Under new recommendations, salt should be limited to 6 grams a day at most, preferably iodised. The agency estimates that over three quarters of the population currently eats more than this.

[Vesper 30,224]

When did Swedes get so crazy about cinnamon?

https://www.thelocal.se/20240930/when-did-swedes-get-so-crazy-about-cinnamon

It's not just kanelbullar, Swedes put great spoonfuls of cinnamon in their porridge, in apple crumbles, in glögg wine, and even use it to jazz up their matjessill herring. What's the history of Swedes' love affair with the spice?

It certainly doesn't go back as far as the Vikings.

While they ate a lot of porridge and would have had a soupy stew constantly on the go on the fire, all the evidence suggests these lacked salt, sugar and certainly cinnamon or other spices.

"We have no evidence of spices being imported to anywhere in Scandinavia at that time. There's no written evidence and there's no physical evidence [from archeological digs]," Daniel Serra, a culinary historian, told The Local.

"They find herbs. They find juniper berries, mustard seeds, definitely. But there's no evidence of exotic spices." 

Serra is sceptical of suggestions that the Swedes who travelled to Constantinople to serve as mercenaries in the Varangian Guard would have brought spices back with them on their return. 

"You would need an audience that knows what it is," he says. "You would be spending all your savings on bringing home these spices that nobody would understand, whereas if you bring home silk fabric, gold or silver, people will know what it's about." 

Spices like cinnamon and cumin were, however, certainly available during the Viking period in the bigger cities of Germany and northern France, but they appear to have stopped there. 

"One of the earliest evidence for spices is the description of a market in Mainz by an Arab cumin merchant, who finds spices, but then he goes on to Hedeby, which is in the south of Denmark, and says only that the food is terrible. So I think there was a clear demarcation line." 

Cinnamon comes to Sweden  

The earliest written evidence of cinnamon being used in Sweden appears in a recipe for the mulled beer Saint Bridget of Sweden, known as heliga Birgitta, served to guests at the funeral of her father in 1328, when half a kilogram of the expensive spice was used. 

"There are two main reasons for serving cinnamon here," Serra says of the use of cinnamon in the funeral beer. "It's to show your status, because it was an expensive import, to show that you're part of the continental European food culture, and it also has medical properties."

Bridget of Sweden's father, Birger Persson, was governor of Uppland and one of the richest men in Sweden. "Next to the king, he was the most potent, powerful man in Sweden at the time. So when he dies, she has to do something extraordinary." 

But cinnamon had probably begun to become available to the elites in Sweden fifty or a hundred years before this. It is included as an ingredient in several recipes in Libellus de arte coquinaria, The Little Book of Culinary Arts, a cookbook attributed to the Danish cleric Henrik Harpestræng, the Canon of Roskilde Cathedral, who died in 1244. 

"What he includes in the cookbook is a cameline sauce, which is based on vinegar and cinnamon with some herbs to it. I think there's mint and parsley," Serra says. "You would have had small morsels of meat and dipped your food into the sauce. There's also one where you make a bread pudding with saffron and some cinnamon sprinkled on top of that, but as a sort of savory side dish." 

The Salsor Dominorum sauce in the book, used for wild game pickling, features a mix of cloves, black pepper, cinnammon, nutmeg, ginger and cardamom: a similar mix to that used nowadays in the pepparkakor biscuits Swedes serve at Christmas. 

A portrait of Bridget of Sweden by Hermann Rode, taken from Svenska folket genom tiderna. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

From rich merchants to ordinary people

It was not until well into the 13th century, when the Hanseatic League began to increase trade with Sweden, that the spice began to be used more widely, although it remained a luxury. 

"In the Renaissance, you have a rising middle class who want to show off that they are part of the elite, so you start getting these cookbooks and you also have luxury laws around Europe, which say 'if you are a peasant or you are a merchant, you can't have these spices'," Serra says. 

The use of spices like cinnamon then slowly spread from the very wealthy to become something ordinary people would use to mark big celebrations. "It trickles down to become festive food, for Christmas or for festive occasions." 

Spices only began to come to Sweden in large quantites with the advent of the East India trade in the 18th century. The Swedish East India Company, founded in Gothenburg in 1731, brought spices and also sugar to Sweden in large quantities for the first time. 

Cakes and kanelbullar 

Cinnamon was initially used in savoury dishes. It was only when sugar began to be produced at plantations in the US and Caribbean and imported to Europe in large quantities that cinnamon began to be used in cakes and desserts, and it wasn't until sugarbeet began to be planted in Sweden the late 19th century that sugar became a commodity available to almost everyone. 

"The first recipe we have for a sweet cinnamon dish in Sweden is from mid-16th century, and it is written by one of the last Catholic bishops of Sweden," Serra told us. "It's for a tart or cake including eggs, sugar, cream, cinnamon and ginger, which he said was made in Sweden for noble women when they were feeling unwell." 

The bishop was in exile, and the recipe, Serra says, was part of a book aimed at showing the Catholic world why Sweden was special and so encouraging them to intervene and return it to Catholic rule.

It wasn't until the middle of the 19th century that cafés serving Viennese-style patisserie started to become established in Sweden. The kanelbulle, or cinnamon roll, appears to have arrived or originated in Sweden on the west coast, in and around Gothenburg. 

According to the website Högtider och traditioner, the earliest recorded written mention of kanelbullar comes in 1857, when there's an advertisement for "saffron and cinnamon rolls" in the local newspaper in Åmål, on the west coast of Lake Vänern. In 1868, there's a similar announcement in the Göteborgs-Posten newspaper. 

The now ubiquitous bun does not appear to have arrived in Stockholm until decades later, with the first mentions in Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet not coming until 1925. 

The real explosion, however, came when rationing was lifted at the end of the Second World War. The first edition of Vår Kokbok, Sweden's classic collection of home recipes, contained a recipe for kanelbullar, helping to turn them into the Swedish staple they are today.