The woman who vowed she'd taste anything, arthropods included, plans to draw the line at surströmming, fermented herring from northern Sweden with an aroma so pungent the locals compare it to "gas from the back."
"I ate surströmming 25 years ago on my first trip to Scandinavia," recalls my brother, Michael, who despite this dubious delicacy moved to his wife's hometown of Umea, 500 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. "That," he shudders, "was enough. It's the kind of thing you might try for the experience, like skydiving, but not quite so addictive."
Rotten eggs, rancid butter and three-week-old garbage are a few of surströmming's more colourful descriptors. "The taste is difficult to express," Michael observes, "since your olfactory sense is long dead before the fish gets to your mouth."
Which is why I'm certain that my sister-in-law Helen's diminutive 70-year-old mother, Marianne, is playing some cruel Swedish joke on this North American newcomer when she declares, "I'm crazy about surströmming. It reminds me of my childhood."
It turns out Marianne isn't joking. "I don't get it as often as I'd like these days because you can't eat surströmming by yourself," she continues wistfully. "It's the kind of food that should be shared with someone who likes it as much as you."
Wary looks all around, since the family seems to know what's coming: "So when are we having the surströmming party?" Marianne queries with that senior citizen brand of entitlement that transforms a question into a command.
Surströmming is usually eaten in groups - possibly for courage. It is also devoured outdoors, since science has yet to invent a fumigator powerful enough to vanquish its formidable odour. "You can tell there's a surströmming party going on from blocks away," Michael says from experience.
Since it's May and the weather is warming, it's ideal surströmming party weather. So off we go to the local mega-mart to peruse the whole venal selection. As Helen and Marianne forage for the tins that look most precariously swollen with fermentation gas, I can hear my brother, a dentist who knows his bacterial toxins, muttering something about botulism.
After driving home slowly to forestall premature detonation, Michael prepares his palette of surströmming opening tools - sturdy work gloves and a can opener deemed ready for the trash - as I roll out my telephoto lens and back off to a safe distance.
"I really should be doing this underwater since the pressurized liquid has a tendency to shoot," Michael admits just before uttering a phrase you never want to hear from your dentist - or from your surströmming opener. "Uh oh," he cries as a putrid geyser shoots six feet in the air, followed by an ominously long pause. "I think I got some on your jeans." He cowers in a manner I haven't seen since he was three. I laugh, certain this is some arcane Swedish taunt, until one horrified whiff sends me reeling. This, after I was nice enough to teach him to walk.
Helen shows a bit more sympathy. "I guess we forgot to tell you that after a surströmming party you have to shower, wash your hair and put all your clothes in the laundry."
Thanks for the heads up.
My immediate concern, however, is the fish on my plate. Which I am expected to eat. Since my gut response is that bathing in surströmming may be preferable to ingesting it, I suspect some clever modus operandi for the task must have developed over the centuries. Carefully observing my companions, I see some burying fish shards in a pillow of mandelpotatis, the local almond-shaped potatoes, while others are jerry-rigging a protective edifice of onion and local Västerbotten cheese around the fish before cinching it with tunnbröd, Swedish thin bread, to preclude any possible skin contact. Yet when the construction passes my lips, I'm surprised to find surströmming doesn't taste as bad as it smells. At least not quite as bad, as the tiny slivers are transformed into a sharp, savoury seasoning akin to Asia's fermented fish sauce, nuoc mam.
As the rest of us progress toward the elderflower schnapps portion of the evening, only the fearless Marianne is taking the valiant path, meticulously de-boning specimens from the can of whole herrings I assumed we bought as a prank.
By now, having consumed enough surströmming to justify a lifelong boast - two bites - I turn my attention to the burnished ribs my brother has grilled as a backup. "These are magnificent," I mumble between ravenous mouthfuls. "What's the recipe?"
"Easy," Michael reveals. "Serve surströmming first."
