The Liquorice Festival 2012
Every year in April the Liquorice Festival is held in Sweden. This year I was in Stockholm during that weekend and visited the festival. The festival has became more and more popular for every year and now it had about 7000 visitors.
During the festival I learnt what liquorice really is, namely a root from a bush. The liquorice bush grows in Calabria in southern Italy, Egypt, Syria and some other countries around the Mediterranean Sea and also in China, Afghanistan and Iran.
To "extract" the liquorice the roots are digged up, washed and boiled. Then you get a black substance that can be processed in different ways.
At the festival a liquorice tasting was held. During that session we learnt more about what liquorice really tastes like.
At the tasting we tried:
- Liquorice root
- Liquorice powder
- Lemon (very good in combination with liquorice)
- A liquorice stone (which is a gourmet liquorice from Italy)
- "Salmiak" powder (which is chemically processed ammonium chloride)
- Sterkir (a very salty liquorice from the liquorice loving country of Iceland)
- Salt liquorice fudge
- Milk chocolate with liquorice and sea salt (Cacaoe Sale Dolce from the Italian manufacturer Gardini)
The Swedish people had been voting for their favourite type of liquorice and the winner was the Danish Lakrids A manufactured by Lakrids by Johan Bülow. After tasting it I can say that the milk chocolate coated liquorice is very good!
