The crayfish party

It is Day 3 of the CAS programme and we are bound for lake Långhalsen in Sörmland for a spot of crayfishing and crayfish eating.

Lake Långhalsen in Sörmland.

We are sitting on the bus, coming from our last eating and drinking activity and our Sörmland guide Pernilla Nordström, prepares us for the evening’s crayfishing expedition (and eating and drinking activities, obviously) as we meander through the country lanes of Sörmland — “There’s a lot of sucking and squeezing involved” she says.

Seriously?

Did she say sucking?

And squeezing?

Is there any particular technique we can practise?

Like this?

Can I take pictures?

The things I do for the CAS

There are worried faces around the bus as Pernilla goes into detail; “You have to learn the technique of how to get the crayfish tail off; the claws off; and then there’s the sucking”.

Here, Pernilla makes a sucking sound into the microphone like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. It is rather effective. I must practice in advance. Maybe I can do it while we are waiting for the little buggers to crawl into our cages.

I am admittedly getting nervous as I have already sustained an injury from a langoustine at Mathias Dahlgren’s Matbaren the other night. I am still sore. And I need my other fingers to type.

“There will be singing”. And of course, schnapps drinking. Merely to accommodate the “hard liquor songs”, she explains. But of course. We are in Sweden! How can one sing without schnapps? Is that why ABBA were so mellow?

Setting off for a spot of crayfishing and we mean business.

It is sunset. We hike to the Långhalsen lakeshore, eat windfall apples en route, spot mushrooms, and down a glass of glögg with blue cheese and pepparkakor (ginger biscuits). You know, just in case we had started to burn calories accidentally. Such is the plight of a journalist on a press trip. We need our brains to be firing on all cylinders (of aquavit and Swedish beer and ice wine).

Our enthusiasm for catching crayfish is uncontainable.

We climb into the rowing boats and on to the raft and drift off towards the crayfish catching cages that have been dropped earlier that afternoon. The plastic traps are raised by rope, and the unsuspecting crayfish lobbed into a bucket. Done. Crayfishing is quite easy.

Ha! It's dinner time!

We row back, and descend upon the kitchens of Rosenhanska Magazinet.

Rosenhanska Magazinet

This is how food journalists approach dinner.

"I'm a little crayfish spiky and stout; Here's my claw and here's my pout". (There was beer in the cooking stock)

There is wearing of bibs and donning of hats. The schnapps and songfest begins. There is no turning back. We break backs, tails, claws and suck, suck, suck and then sing, sing, sing.