Sailor’s Beef and When Lice Picked Mayors

Swedish Entree

SAILOR’S BEEF
(sjömansbiff)

INGREDIENTS

1¼ pounds round steak (½” thick or 8 slices)
2 yellow onions
1½ pounds brown potatoes
1½ tablespoons butter (1½ tablespoons more later)
½ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
1 bay leaf
1 cup beef broth
12 ounces dark beer
1 teaspoon parsley

SPECIAL UTENSIL

kitchen mallet
casserole dish

makes 8 bowls

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Pound steak slices until they are ¼” thick. Cut onions into thin slices. Peel and cut potatoes into THICK slices. Add 1½ tablespoons butter and onion slices to large pan. Sauté for 5 minutes on medium-high heat or until onion softens. Remove onions and set aside. Add 1½ tablespoons butter and steak slices to large pan. Sauté for 5 minutes on medium-high heat or until steak slices brown on both sides.

Add an initial layer of potato slices to casserole dish. Add steak slice. Add a layer of onion slices, then a layer of potato slices. Add some pepper and salt. Repeat steak/onion/potato sequence until all steak slices are used. (Note: there should be an equal amount of potatoes, onion, pepper, and salt above each steak slice. The topmost layer should be potatoes.) Add bay leaf. Pour beef broth and beer over top layer. Sprinkle parsley on top.

Cover and bake in oven at 375 degrees for about 1 hour or until meat is tender.

TIDBITS

1) There’s a museum in Stockholm, Sweden that houses a ship, the Vassa, that sunk in the 1600s. The shp didn’t get very far, sinking in the town’s harbor on its maiden voyage.

2) There is not, however, a muesli museum. I love how muesli museum is so alliterative.

3) But there is a Mooseum in Alabama. It’s Alabama’s only children’s museum to extol the cattle industry. And it’s interactive. Are there more children’s interactive cattle museums?

6) Swedes interact with cattle by eating hamburgers. Ketchup goes well with burgers . Swedes consume more ketchup per capita than any other nation.

7) Ystad, Sweden hosts the Cow Bingo festival. A cow gets led to a 9-by-9 field of squares. You bet on one of the 81 squares. If the cow poops on your square, you win. Watch out Las Vegas!

8) Sweden had a thirty-day February in 1712. Any cow born on February 30, 1712 would never have had another birthday.

9) Cows aren’t the only important critters in Sweden. Heck no! For years, the medieval town of Hurdenburg let a specially selected louse pick its mayor. If the louse crawled into your bread and stayed there, you were the town’s new leader.

10) Town chroniclers are frustatingly mute on how the Hurdenburgers picked the louse that would anoint their mayor. Maybe they had a better political system than our current one.

11) But maybe not. Maybe the louse-selecting system could have been corrupted. After all, any man wishing to be mayor could have stuffed his beard with all sorts of louse delicacies. That certainly given the candidate an advantage over his rivals.

12) Also, the system is inherently unfair to those civic-minded individuals who can’t grow a beard.

13) Today we vote to select our mayors, senators, and president.

14) Voting is not without its faults. It’s long, expensive, and prone to deceiving partisans ads on T.V..

15) The louse, however, cannot be influenced money, no matter how many millions you have.

16) The louse picks the mayor, etc., within minutes, a vast improvement over our apparently never-ending electioneering.

16) But way back when, Sweden’s Queen Christina, had a miniature cannon made, which fired tiny cannonballs at fleas. Resentful at this royal treatment to its insect brethren, lice everywhere immediately forever gave up all political participation.

17) Lice still like to crawl into people’s beards. Old habits die hard.

18) Drinking coffee is a fun habit. Swedes drink more of the caffeinated beverage than any other people.

18) If you ever go to Sweden for its ketchup and coffee, don’t forget to sample the country’s surströmming, fermented herring. The first day for selling this dish is the third Thursday in August. So mark your calendars and start planning that vacation.

– Chef Paul