It’s been years since I’ve watched a Jamie Oliver show, although I really do quite like him. I think it’s the channel change and the variable timeslots that hasn’t allowed me to keep up with his programs. But tonight was different: he was “doing Stockholm”.

The program starts with what my friends and I call “gratuitous Stockholm porn” i.e. lots of beautiful images of Stockholm. In the voice-over, he declares Swedish cuisine one of the under-rated cuisines of the world. He relates this to the cleanness of the environment, and the history of Swedes as people who have always been “hunters and gatherers” (gathering berries, mushrooms and so on in the wild).

I loved the way he prepared gravad lax (salted salmon) prepared from scratch, and how we went looking for (and explained how to prepare) wild mushrooms. He spoke about both things with such enthusiasm that made me want to just go out and do the same right now.

I also loved his experience in eating Surströmming, the highly stinky fermented herring dish. I’ve never tried it myself, but his experience made me also want to do that straight away.

Oh, and he made the most gorgeous looking Swedish-style bun with wild berries.

There’s more on his website.

At the end of a long and busy week it was just perfect: food, Stockholm, Jamie Oliver… these are a few of my favourite things.