April 29, 2011: The Swedish Cultural Center held its second Annual Pea Soup Challenge.
Last year's pea soup challenge pitted one Swede named Gunnar vs another Swede named Gunnar (see the story on Seattle Weekly here, with some interesting - and slightly grim! - backstory on the history of pea soup in Sweden: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/voracious/2010/01/one_pea_soup_to_rule_them_all.php). This year, the contest went cross-cultural, with Pat McMonagle challenging last year's winning Gunnar (Wallin) with an Irish pea soup.
I first visited with Gunnar Wallin in the main kitchen at the Swedish cultural center.
Gunnar, a retired Boeing engineer, had taken a particularly engineer-y approach to his method of scaling his recipe to the large number of servings he need for the event: he calculated it out via graph paper.
Some of Gunnar's ingredients. I asked if he prefers any specific brands of bouillon or spices, but he doesn't necessarily have preferences for those ingredients. The yellow peas, however, he gets only from a Scandinavian food source like Ikea or Scandinavian Specialties. Want to try it yourself? See page six of this Swedish Cultural Center newsletter for Gunnar's recipe! http://www.swedishculturalcenter.org/newsletters/2010/february2010.pdf
Gunnar showed me the medal he won at the inaugural challenge last year.
Gunnar with his volunteer sous chef John.
The ham is used whole, at first, to flavor the soup, and then removed, chopped and added back to the soup. Here sous chef John does some of the chopping.
Ham bone bouquet.
Gunnar's tool to help with chopping all of those onions!
Birgitta contributed to the meal, too. Here is her Spicy Mustard (Skånsk Senap). It's delicious! You can spread it on bread or crispbread, and I also saw some attendees stirring a little into their soup.
Crispbread (Knäckebröd).
After checking out the reigning champ, I then headed down to the challenger's kitchen. Along the way, Swedish Cultural Center Executive Director Kristine Leander pointed out these giant tubs of delicious ligonberry compote. The center puts on a pancake breakfast most months, and they use multiple tubs - probably half of what's shown here - in just one breakfast. (If you haven't been to one of their breakfasts, check it out! Fun for everyone with food and music, and it's a bargain. http://swedishculturalcenter.org/Events/pancake.htm)
The challenger! Pat McDonagle has been coming to the Swedish Cultural Center for years to do folk dancing. He's also been making a vegetarian pea soup for years, and it occurred to him it might just be a contender against the prize winner, hence this cross-cultural challenge.
He admitted his soup wasn't entirely traditional, with the addition of some bell peppers for color.
You might think just bringing Irish pea soup to a Swedish cultural center would be challenge enough. But Pat wanted to push it even further! He also made the soup low salt to see if his other seasoning skills satisfy the judges without raising the attendees' sodium levels.
I left the chefs alone for a bit while they made final preparations and wandered around the center a bit. The walls have many of these colorful and charming crests on display.
The Center also has a busy happy hour in their bar. There was a local celebrity sighting - Sig Hansen of The Deadliest Catch - who was just hanging out with some friends. The bar has, of course, several aquavits on offer. The traditional Swedish and Norwegian way to say cheers is "Skål!" (Pronounced sort of like "skole!" to my ear.)
And the competition began! No need for pro judges, this was a democratic contest - the will of the people would determine the winner.
Pat, Gunnar and Birgitta dishing out the good stuff.
Pat's Irish pea soup close up.
Gunnar's final product close up.
Dishing out some for the event volunteers as musician Bill Booth set up to play some tunes during dinner.
Bill's an American singer-songwriter, but spends a lot of time in Norway. More cross-culture for this cross-cultural event. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bill-Booth/40034249337
After folks had tried each, the ballots were deposited, then tallied, and (drumroll!)...
...Swedish Consul Emeritus Jahn Hedberg presented the first place award, which went to Gunnar for the second year in a row! (It was a special day in another way for Mr. Hedberg - it was his birthday! The group sang the Swedish happy birthday song. I'll be adding that video soon!)
But Pat was to be praised for his delicious soup and bravery to challenge a Swede at the Swedish Cultural Center! It was a great evening of community, food, music and fun. Check out the events at the Center for other great activities and chances to learn more about Swedish and Scandinavian culture. http://www.swedishculturalcenter.org/Events/calendar.htm