A year ago during my stay in Sweden a friend told me about a strange Swedish culinary specialty called surströmming

Surströmming means fermented Baltic herring and is supposed to have a quite foul stench. And then all this talk about some airlines banning surströmming because stirred my curiosity: I have bought a can and brought it home to Slovenia. There it lied in the fridge. History became legend, legend became myth and for almost a year, the Can passed out of all knowledge (the effects of the recent LOTR marathon ... I apologize ;) ).

Well after almost a year I have decided that I should at least open the can while it is still OK ... so I have made a surströmming party ... probably the first one in Slovenia. The climax was of course the opening of the can (done properly in a bowl of water) which turned out to be a disappointment as far as smell is concerned. From what my Swedish friend told me I have assumed that surströmming belongs almost to the category of bio hazard materials. Yet the stench was bad but not that strong ... I could have easily have opened the can on our backyard ... not on some remote location in the middle of the forest.

So the smell was a disappointment but the content of the can was disgusting in any other aspect. No offense to gourmands who cherish this "delicacy" ... but we have left almost the whole content of the can in the forest.

[ surstromming.jpg ]