Gastrosexual?

The new thing is not the metrosexual man, but the gastrosexual man, according to swedish newspaper Metro (Oldenburg, pp 3, 20100930).

Please.

"More than every other woman have been attracted by a man who've cooked a good meal at home. 'It's true, women gets crazy impressed with guys who can cook. It's super trendy with men by the stove', according to Magnus Albrektsson, teacher at the Restaurant Academy in Stockholm".

Double please.

Being a man who cooks I find this utterly absurd. Food being sexy is pureply based on the notion that men who are skilled in an area where they are not assumed to excell somehow adds extra appeal. And that is, to me, the root of the problem with this entire thing. Men are still not expected to do such an elementary addition to their own everyday life such as cooking. If cooking is supercool, how could shouldn't it then be to take out paternity leave and stay at home with your child? That ought to get those presumptive mums to flog the pill out the window instantly. The trouble is; that is hardly the case, right? Being a father who's there for your kid is not considered either trendy, sexy or any other objectifying word. Problems occur when it's labelled "trendy" to cook, because it suggests that there will come another day, when it will be equally trendy to be a caveman who expects to come home to a set table every day after work.

It should never be considered trendy to cook, doing dishes or laundry or decorating your home's interior to a certain level. It should all just be a part of every person's minimum level of commitment to a relationship and home. The fact that cooking allows for a certain level of thought and care to go into the preparation of a meal (compared to the laundry process) shouldn't take away the intial fact of making sure there is something that is both nutritious and palatable on the table every day.

And where are the gay men in the study? Do they find it super sexy with cooking men? Or are they all looking at a lifetime of perpetual takeaway dinners and fab lunches? The relationships were both are potentially equal (since there is less of a presumption regarding division of labour) has simply been left out of the study. All in all:

Triple please.

Recap: Halv Åtta

Foto: TV4

För den som har missat veckans matlagnig, eller vill se programmen igen, finns de på TV4 Play.
Recepten på både mina och de andra deltagarnas rätter hittar ni på recept.nu. Här är en länk till min förrätt, varmrätt och efterrätt.

Halv Åtta, nu verkligen HOS MIG.

Ikväll är det dags för del två av Halv Åtta, och då är det min tur att laga maten och stå för värdskapet! För menyn kolla in länken till TV4.

En till bild från Jennifers finfina bjudning igår!

Vi ses Halv Åtta i TV4!

Jonatan

Halv Åtta Hos Mig! / Come Dine With Me

Ikväll, mina vänner, syns jag i rutan i TV4s Halv Åtta Hos Mig! En riktig odyssé i fantastisk amatörmatlagning, goda viner (idag bl.a. en "sur tysk") och mycket annat. Exakt hur Helge Skoog kommer dissa mig återstår att se!

Ikväll är vi hemma hos den förtjusande Jennifer Pedersen (här sittandes i ett badkar, som man ju gör), och hennes ypperligt stylish våning i Vasastan.

Vi ses i TV4 ikväll, 19:30!

Mer info om kvällens avsnitt och mat

______

For Enligsh speaking people, this post is to let you know that I will be participating in the Swedish version of Come Dine With Me, starting tonight and continuing until thursday.

Cooking

The Cooking part of this blog is really a bit more extensive than just being about Cooking. It is about potato crisps, it is about wine, it's about dining out, AND about home cooking, including making bread and showing off my kitchen. Enjoy!

AT HOME EXPERIENCES

My kitchen

Västkustmiso (West Coast Miso)

Kräftskiva (crayfest?!)

Steak of lamb

Swedish Salad

More Salmon, More Salad

Surdegsbröd (leaven)

Det hemliga mjölet

Quinoa Thai Dinner

HALV ÅTTA HOS MIG (Come Dine With Me)
3 sorters wontonknyten med 4 dippsåser
Fisk- & saffransrisotto
Caffe Granita con Panna med mormors knäckiga havreflarn

WINING AND DINING OUT

Grilling me softly with this song

Props, Norrköping

POETRY ABOUT FOOD

Love Comes Round lyrics

WINE

Rainer Trüby's guestspot

White wine for red wine-people

Pizza wine

Rudolph the red wine reindeer

THOUGHTS ABOUT FOOD

Liedl-kampanj

Gastrosexual?

Swedish salad

Here comes a tip for lazy days: a Swedish pasta sallad.

For 2 adults and 1 2-year old with big appetite (the constellation of our household),

very approximately:

1 Clove of garlic

1 Carrot

1 small bunch of Dill

1 small cucumber

250 g cherry tomatoes

250 g Gnocchi (the pasta variety called gnocchi, not the potato-based version)

200 g Gravlax

50 g mixed sallad leafs, green lettuce or baby leaf spinach

1 dl Creme Fraiche or Gräddfil

1 table spoon Olive oil

Fresh ground black pepper

50 g Parmiggiano Reggiano

Boil the pasta. Meanwhile, peel the garlic and boil it for to soften the bitterness in taste. You can dry roast garlic in a hot pan instead, if you prefer the nuttiness this gives. If you feel like you don't have time for this, then you can use a garlic crusher - a very manly tool in the kitchen (I love bringing out the hammers and whatnots for cooking, but this tool is oh so sweetly designed for the specific end of bashing the shit out of garlic cloves). This makes it easier to remove the green stem which is a source of extra bitterness and strength. Whatever you do - don't use a garlic press: it saves time by compromising the taste, enhancing the bitterness. Remove from pan. Chop finely. Enough about garlic already.

THE GARLIC CRUSHER

Chop cucumber, half tomatoes, grate carrots coarsely, chop dill finely. Grate parmesan. Cut the gravlax into good bite-sized chunks. Rinse the lettuce/leafs. Mix some of the dill and all of the garlic into the gräddfil/creme fraiche (that's sour cream for you americans). Once the pasta is finished, drain it and add gräddfil as it cools. Then, using a bowl, fold the rest of the dill together with cucumber, tomatoe, lettuce/leafs, carrot, gravlax together. Once the pasta is somewhat cooler, fold this in as well. Add a little olive oil. Serve on individual plates, sprinkle over parmesan and grind some black pepper.

If you have some favorite vege that you love, you can add this to your salad - or replace some of the ingredients - as long as you keep the garlic, dill, gräddfil, gravlax (and I'd suggest pasta). I just try to think about having different textures in an salad, so its not a matter of eating squishy things, merely in different colors.

This week's food: Bacon.

Summary

I just wanted to fill a post with some important stuff that may be nice to have quick-access to. Here I've gathered a bit of each.

MUSIC:

Pinku Vääty: Spirits Away EP (Rakkaus04)

Ernesto: Love Comes Round (Rakkaus03)
Pinku Vääty: Checkout (Rakkaus02)

Pinku Vääty: Lili & Sushi EP (Rakkaus01)

Rakkaus Records Player

Motorcitysoul ft Ernesto: Deliver Me + remixes

Andreas Saag ft Ernesto: Dragons

Ernesto & Waveplant: (I Need a) Bassline

Discography

THEOLOGY:

I vilken utsträckning relaterar unga muslimer till vänster-högerskalan i svensk politik?

Religion & Politics part 1

Religion & Politics part 2

Religion & Politics part 3

(These 3 parts together form a mini-manifest of sorts.)

Just nu! Missa inte min något o-ortodoxa analys inför valet 2010!

COOKING:

Västkustmiso

Surdegsbröd

My kitchen

Kräftskiva (crayfest?!)

Steak of lamb

jonatanb - the lifestyle magazine

Recently I've begun to think about my blog as a sort of lifestyle magazine. But one that kind of turns things on its head. Usually in the glossy magazines you associate with the phrase start with something utterly materialistic and then works its way from there.

For instance, if it's an interior design magazine, it starts off with pictures of million dollar homes in exotic locations. Everything from their is accessories to this lifestyle focus. If it's on the other hand a men's lifestyle magazine, we apparently need help accessorizing just to express what we already are. For what we already are is something we should be content with. We may wish for other, bigger and better things, but may never disclose it.

The third example, which is a lifestyle magazine for women, I would like to expand slightly more on. These tend to start with giving women tools for changing what they're not happy with about themselves, particularely weight, but also what way to dress, accessorize and communicate. They then go on to tell women how to understand men and where the limits are, what is out of bounds and what is acceptable in terms of a good heteronormative boy-girl relationship. This off course starts with the fact that these (for the most part young) girls have not attained a sense of self worth enough to know where the boundaries are, without having to be told. These magazines jump on the wagon before girls have been able to establish this sense, and are doing a swell job promoting feelings of falling short to this endless staircase to perfection. All magazines like Elle and the likes doesn't even have to justify their existance, as the teen mags have been hammering in their message with such success that women tend to have accepted their need of guidance and crave further guidance once out of adolecense, having reached adulthood. Inventing words like pretentious to make people hear the sound of an inner mocking bell that tells them not to dive to deep - after all, we're getting quite far away from the surface, right? All according to my subjective observations and analysis, off course.

If I were to sum this up, one (very crude) suggestion could be: Men's magazines doesn't deal in dreams. Women's magazines doesn't deal in reality. How to get your dream job through your "manly agressive means" is something you're supposed to know when reading these mags, all you need is to finally accessorize to make the statement that you know. Women's magazines on the other hand ignores the fact that reality is hugely tilted in favor of men's (stereotypical) behavior and codes. And the sollution offered is always to succumb to this ('learn to communicate', 'how to be a bossy boss', 'negotiate like a man' and so forth). The norm is to neatly place yourself within these categories and find happyness either by ignoring dreams or ignoring reality.

I've come to gather that my main audience is female (now I'm talking about live performances, it's very hard to gauge what the case is with record buyers). And the people who book me are usually males who are keen to keep this clientell in their clubs. So what does my lifestyle magazine want to suggest to people? Do I want to be an Oprah (or Malou von Siwers) who gives people a triathlon of selfhelp tips, that no one really has the possibility to take them time off from life to realize?

This lifestyle magazine doesn't deal in a primary currency of dreams or reality. It deals in uncovering reality so that we can dream up a reasonably realistic scenario that can go from being a utopia to a nowtopia, without having to lower our visions to only including materialistic goods. This lifestyle magazines doesn't say that you have to like certain music, or certain food or certain theology. They are all tools in trying to uncover deep structures in society that can be said to either create or stand in the way of meaning and peace.

This lifestyle magazine is not a quick fix in that sense. Instead, it's one man's journey through these different experiences, with reports on what tools have been found joyous, useful or troubleing along the way. And there is no way of doing this, without being pretentious. Pretentions to me, are but one of the useful tools I've learnt to harness so far.

Jonatan

Editor in Chief of JonatanB Lifestyle Magazine

Hell's Kitchen - en teologisk reflektion

När man fått tre michelinstjärnor, gjort ett mångmiljonvarumärke av sitt namn och har restauranger över hela världen - vad gör man då; man kastar mat på människor! Min fundering är: i Hell's Kitchen, vem är Gordon Ramsay; Gud eller djävulen?
Låt oss gå via uttrycket The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Det kan förstås på (minst) två sätt. Det ena är att trots de deltagandes försök att laga mat enligt Gordon Ramsays standard så faller de hela tiden till korta och går sin dom i Hell's Kitchen snart till mötes. Det andra perspektivet är att det är Ramsays egna intentioner som kommer på skam. De goda intentionerna är att ge matgäster gastronomisk njutning och på kuppen lära människor laga maten som ska skänka njutningen. So far so good. Men till vilket pris kommer vems njutning? Det finns till synes ingenting som är en för låg nivå att tilltala andra människor på. En bränt köttstycke och vips utdöms blondinen som lagade maten själv som ett bränt stycke. Och så vidare.

Hell's Kitchen är en stilstudie i ruttenhet och ansvarsfrihet. Ruttenheten består i att vissa människor (matgästerna) är viktigare än andra (kockarna) och att de viktiga människornas njutning får ske precis hur mycket som helst på de mindre viktiga människornas bekostnad. Stunden de äntrar köket tycks de ha gett upp sitt människovärde och är slavar.
Ansvarsfriheten består i att inte bara Gordon själv, utan rader av mellanled (producenter, klippare, inköpare) alla rättfärdigar den här hackordningen med floskler som "bra tv" eller "tittarsiffrorna skulle varit lägre om Ramsay varit snällare".
Men. Kockarna är riktiga människor, som Gordon skäller ut i verkligheten. Vissa tappar det, vissa gråter, vissa skriker och vissa blir utburna på bår. Det är inte bara TV. Och kanske är det detta som vi bör ha med oss när vi bänkar oss framför stilstudien: Det är aldrig bara TV. Det är TV som godkänner att vissa människor är bättre än andra, som basunerar ut att misstag inte är varken mänskligt eller acceptabelt och dessutom att god mat inte kan göras under civiliserade former. Allt naturligtvis helt käpprätt åt... Helvetet.
Att skapa sitt eget lilla helvete, där man själv kan vara djävulen och stå för pinan, verkar vara fullt genomförbart här på jorden. Frågan är naturligtvis varför man väljer att göra det. Och ännu mer, varför man väljer att svära sig fri från andra människors psykiska och fysiska hälsa, när man så uppenbart är den som skapar dessa slitningar. Om Ramsay tycker att det är rätt att ge alla rookies samma behandling som han genomled i franska kök i karriärens begynnelse, då har han också valt att reproducera allt otrevligt han varit med om under förevändningen att det är nödvändigt och skapa elaka kockar i sin avbild.

Men än intressantare än att dividera om Gordon Ramsay är djävulsk eller inte är det kanske att resonera kring vilken typ av människosyn serien föder. Karriär får kosta blod, svett och tårar - inte bara mina egna utan även andras. Det vore vidare inte särskilt lyckat att tänka sig att den hårda jargongen slutar i tv-rutan och att vi själva står helt oberörda av vad vi ser. Istället påkallar tv-serien ett behov av att utvärdera om det verkligen är så att vägen till helvetet kantas av goda intentioner och i så fall hur långt vi själva vandrat på den vägen, enligt samma paroll som är förhärskande i Hell's Kitchen?