Edible Tales from the Storytelling Chef: Part I

It would be remiss to describe Fredrik Johnsson as first and foremost a chef. More accurately, the Swede is a gastronomic storyteller and his dishes delightfully-evocative tales. Each ingredient is a nuanced character with a unique role to play and its own microcosmic backstory.

“Usually all my ideas are born from ingredients that come from a certain place and season. And then all of the things that come with it like feelings, temperature, surroundings, or memories.”

This sentiment can certainly be used to describe Fredrik’s Japanese-inspired take on the Swedish classic svamptoast (that’s mushrooms on toast to the rest of us). A favourite comfort food in Scandinavia, the outward simplicity of Fredrik’s adaptation disguises a richness of cultural and seasonal significance.

“Instead of the regular nighttime snack of a chanterelle sandwich, which is really common in Sweden, I used a broth that is much more seasonal in this colder climate and time of year,” he explains. “It’s a warming evening snack.”

It looks wonderfully autumnal, with the umber brown broth, amber-headed mushrooms, and the rich yellow yolk. Adhering to his mantra that “time and place matter”, Fredrik uses eggs he purchased from a farm on the West Coast of Sweden. The hens that laid the eggs were fed on a diet of sprouted peas and lentils rather than the commonly-used fish meal, and it truly comes through in the flavour.

“I think this really shines in the flavour of the eggs. So I made a broth of chanterelles and peaso (miso made from Swedish yellow peas). It’s an umami bomb with the egg, peaso broth and chanterelles. Deep and complex, together with a small spoon of the peaso paste under the pan-fried egg.”

It’s a unique crossover, somewhere between ramen and mushrooms and toast. Yet even with the Japanese influence, it’s an essentially Swedish story told using locally-grown ingredients. Created anywhere else, the dish wouldn’t taste exactly as it does when we sit down to eat it in central Sweden on a late-summer day. That doesn’t make it impossible to recreate, says Fredrik, it just means the creator should adapt the flavours to match their own surroundings.

“Seaweed or kombu or kelp would also be really tasty with the broth. But, most importantly, you have to add something else that connects the flavour with life.”

Words by Sophie Miskiw. Photography by Johan Ståhlberg.