Lena Engelmark Embertsén's products made from hand-picked spruce shoots, juniper shoots, birch trees, and more are beloved by Swedish chefs.
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Lena Engelmark Embertson
Credit: Ola Engelmark

Lena EngelmarkEmbertsén深信森林的力量。一名化学工程师通过培训,在梅尔萨(Mellösa)觅食,Sweden,在斯德哥尔摩以东约100公里处,在她的农场,HögtorpGård。与她的丈夫Ola Engelmark一起,是森林生态学教授,她从400年历史的Homestead的森林,草地和田野中挑选了原材料,它们转变为霍格托普附近附近屡获殊荣的糖浆,油,醋和果汁生产设施和商店

"What I get energy from is finding as many tastes as possible from one raw material," Lena told me. "For example, with spruce shoot oil, you have the smell of the spruce, and you know exactly what it tastes like. [But] when you boil it in water and add sugar, you get something that is dark red and tastes of red berries. It's totally different but the same raw material." She also makes a marmalade with spruce shoot, not to mention all the things you can do with the spruce flowers. "We have 15 to 20 different products just from spruce."

lineup of Högtorp gård products
Credit: Patrik Arneke

由于它们的纯洁和风味的精致,她的许多产品都在世界各地的厨师中流行。实际上,她的大部分业务都涉及通过一些精心挑选的批发经销商出售给他们。托比亚斯·安德森(Tobias Andersson),chef in the region莉娜(Lena's)的合作者说,他喜欢使用她的油:云杉油,杜松射击油和Cepes油,仅举几例。(2013年,云杉的射击油在瑞典食品硕士学位获得了银牌。)​​但是,安德森几乎对一切都感到兴奋。亚搏电竞

"This summer I made a sorbet of spruce shoot juice that Lena had produced," Andersson said, flavoring the dessert with cucumber, strawberries, and buckwheat. "Another favorite is birch must—apple must flavored with birch leaves. It's a unique product with a unique character and it goes well with food, especially fish such as pikeperch that we often have on our menu."

It is evident from her products' popularity among chefs that Lena is seriously concerned with flavor. But she is also obsessive about responsible foraging, and helping to preserve the biodiversity of Högtorp gård's forests.

Lena Engelmark Embertson
Credit: Ola Engelmark

"If you get an understanding of what real wilderness is, you also get a curiosity for how to care for it," she said. "Because if you don't care for it, it won't be there. Once it's lost, it's lost forever." She's heartened that in recent years, and especially during the pandemic, there's been an uptick in interest in artisan food, wild food, and food practices that respect the environment. "The interest in Sweden for going out in the forest and picking mushrooms and berries has increased a lot in the past years," she said. "This was survival food; this was poor man's food. In Sweden we used to think that everything made industrial was better. We lost a bit of that tradition."

She notes that Swedish diners adopted every trend that came their way—"Italian, French, hamburgers. ... Now we have chefs who are world class and proud of the raw materials we have in Sweden."

安德森就是其中之一。他告诉我:“在Sörmland,我们有很多鹿肉,因此始终在菜单上放上它,杜松射击非常合适。”您会得到“杜松的清晰味道,但柔软而均衡”。他建议用蘑菇,羽衣甘蓝,甜菜根,耶路撒冷朝鲜蓟,芹菜,游戏肉,野鸭和腌制的肉等更令人心碎的食材提供服务。

Given Lena's wariness of industrialized food, the operation at Högtorp gård is quite small. In addition to selling directly to chefs, there's the small on-site retail operation, and you can find Lena's products in a small handful ofspecialty shops in Sweden

When it's the time of year to pick spruce shoots, Lena is joined by just one other person, her employee Ena-May. "There's only two of us picking," she said. "We pick around 500 kilos of spruce shoots year to year. Your brain goes freely and you listen to the birds. It's amazing."