Kräftskiva!

As we call the legendary Swedish crayfish parties.

Around this time of the year people in Sweden like to fish out fiercely armed and armored crustaceans from rivers and lakes, boil them with crown dill, dress up in silly hats, drink lots of seasoned moonshine, sing songs and painstakingly disembowel the poor critters.

In other words: have a general good time.

We decided to have our own little private kräftskiva. As long as we don't have to boil them alive ourselves, and don't have to wear the silly hats (ok, we just forgot to buy/make them this year), it's really nice!

As you have probably guessed by now, crayfish is a must-have, as is the snaps (but I don't think that counts, as it is a must-have for any Swedish seasonal party). Other than that, it's nice to have Västerbottenpaj (a pie made with Västerbotten cheese), bread, salad, beer and lots of wet wipes.


Västerbottenpaj

As we decided not to boil our own crayfish and buy ready made pie, the only thing we really made for this (ok, we didn't distill our own snaps or brew our own beer, or grow our own salad, but you know what I mean) was the bread. Now crayfish needs a special bread, and Jan Hedh recommends a variant of Zopf, shaped like a crayfish and seasoned with dill. Basically just add some dill (we used frozen, but crown should work better) during kneading, shape it like a crayfish and sprinkle chili powder (for the color, we used Ancho style) and dill seeds on top before baking.

Now all you need to do is figure out how to get inside the shells of the main theme... for us it comes naturally after years of practice, and we meant to shoot a “Crayfish anatomy 101” photo series for you, but decided to enjoy ourselves instead. We'll happily answer any questions you might have in the commentary section though.


Can you tell which one's bread and which one's real?