I’d want to have a Sunday morning breakfast, at home. We live on a small farm, about 20 minutes away from Fäviken in Sweden. We have a flock of sheep, a vegetable patch, a couple of bee hives …
It’s a really pretty log house from the 1880s, set over two floors. The dining room has a spectacularly high ceiling, with a fireplace in one corner, and one big window with old-fashioned hand-blown irregular glass panes, which looks out into the forest and the evening sun.
I like things to be functional and nice. We have a big table made from thick planks salvaged from a barn floor, an L-shaped sofa and Scandinavian chairs. My favourite ceramics are a glazed brown stoneware range from the 1960s called Ruska, by the Finnish ceramics brand, Arabia. People tend to hate them, because they make a lot of noise when you cut on them. I don’t mind that a bit.
In the dining room, we have one big modern painting – I wouldn’t say that I collect, but we have a bunch of paintings and photos that we like.
I’ve eaten quite a lot of special things, but I wouldn’t need my last meal to be a spectacular one – just a very nice one. I’d want to have rice porridge, which is a fantastic thing. Round-grain rice, boiled in milk and served with cold milk on the side, a little bit of sugar and cassia cinnamon on the side. And milk to drink. I have really fond memories of waking up Christmas morning – which is Christmas Eve morning in Sweden – to the smell of cinnamon‑scented milk.
Rice pudding is a Christmas staple. Everyone knows how to make it – the recipe on the back of a rice packet is exactly the same one that my grandmother and mother always used.
Christmas in Sweden can be like a fairytale. I lived in France for a while and while Christmas there is also idyllic, for me it was strange because there’s no snow.
After breakfast, we’d listen to Good Morning World, on Sweden’s Radio One – the best thing ever. Discovering it really was a marker of growing up. Now, I always hush the kids so I can listen to it.
I’d spend the rest of the day at home with my wife and the kids – they’re all the entertainment you need. Our extended family and all the people I know would be more than welcome to drift in and out.
Magnus Nilsson is head chef at Fäviken in Åre, Sweden, and author of The Nordic Cookbook (Phaidon)
