Daring Cooks Augusti: Pierogi

Woohoo, the Deer Eaters are finally Daring Cooks again. Sorry about neglecting the blog so much lately, there simply has been too much other stuff going on. And what better way is there to finally be back in the Daring business, than to totally misread the challenge?

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

For some reason (and I can't understand why, because it's all there, right in the first few paragraphs of the challenge presentation post on the private Daring Cooks' forum) I misunderstood the challenge. Not going to elaborate on why and how, but the fact is that we didn't make the challenge recipe. Sorry about that! We did, however, make pierogi. Two different kinds. I hope that makes up for misreading the challenge.



First up, Karelian pierogi, a Finnish specialty. We made these because they're delicious and because Markus is half Finnish, so that kind of represents his locale, or something. Anyway, maybe they're not pierogi in the challenge sense of the word (Wikipedia calls them Karelian pasties) but let's not dwell on that. These pierogi are made from a thin rye crust and filled with rice porridge. I know I know, it sounds weird and to be honest not very tasty, but trust me, they are good! The hardest part about making Karelian pierogi is cooking the rice porridge - it takes forever and the porridge always get burnt in the bottom of the pot. Luckily, there's a handy solution for that in Swedish grocery stores: ready made rice porridge in sausage form!


No it's not really a sausge, just rice porridge packaged in a plastic tube.
By the way, you can get yellow pea soup packaged the same way.

The next pierogi we made were more traditional, although oven-baked instead of boiled. For that local touch we filled them with ground moose and chantarelles. A note on the recipe, we found these a bit dry, so if you want to make them you might want to add some sort of liquid to the filling.



To see what the other Daring Cooks made, head over to the Daring Kitchen where you can also find the original recipe!


Karelian Pierogi

makes about 20

50 g butter
5 dl rye and wheat flour mix (Sw. rågsikt)
1½ tsp salt
2 dl water

For the rice porridge filling:
1½ dl round grain rice (Sw. grötris)
½ tsp salt
3 dl water
7 dl milk
...or use ready-made rice porridge (Sw. risgrynsgröt)

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp water

Start with making the filling. Let rice, salt and water simmer under a lid for ten minutes without stirring. Add the milk, stir and bring to a boil. Simmer very slowly under a lid for about 40 minutes. Watch closely so it doesn't burn! Transfer to a bowl and let cool.
OR, as I said, skip this step and use ready-made!

Heat the oven to 175-300°C.

Cut the butter into small cubes, add the flour and use you fingers to make a crumbly dough. Add salt and water and work into a uniform dough. If it's to loose, add more flour, if it's too hard, add more water. Spread some flour over your work surface, and roll the dough out into a long roll. Cut it into about 20 pieces. Use a rolling pin to turn each piece into an thin oval. Put a heap of rice porridge in the middle and fold up the edges around it (see picture). Transfer to a parchment-covered baking sheet. Put in the oven for about 10 minutes, lower the heat if it looks like they get done too fast.

Melt the butter, add the water and heat. Brush the piergoi with melted butter as soon as they are out of the oven. Let them cool covered with a cloth (although I think they are best eaten warm).



Pierogi with moose and chantarelle filling

makes about 12

25 g fresh yeast
1 tsp salt
3 dl luke warm water
2 tbsp oil
1 egg
9 dl flour

For the filling:
2 yellow onions (medium sized)
Oil and butter
100 g fresh chanterelles
500 g ground moose
2 tbsp tomato puré
1 tbsp concentrated vegetable stock
salt
black pepper
1 egg for the egg wash

Crumble the yeast into a big bowl, add salt and some of the water and stir to dissolve. Add the rest of the water, oil, egg and finally the flour. Work into a dough and let it rest for about 30 minutes while you make the filling.

Finely chop the onions. Cut down the chanterelles into smaller pieces. Heat oil and butter in a pan and fry the onions and chanterelles until lightly browned. Transfer to a bowl. Add a little more oil and butter and brown the ground meat. Add the onions and chanterelles, tomato puré and vegetable stock. Season with salt and pepper. Let the filling cool.

Heat the oven to 225°C. Knead the dough a little and roll it out into 12 large ovals. Put 3-4 tbsp of filling on the middle of the dough. Brush the edges lighly with water to make the dough stick together, fold the dough over the filling and press down with a fork to seal and make a decorative pattern around the edges. Transfer to parchment covered baking sheets and let the pierogi rest for about 25 minutes. Brush with egg wash. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 15 minutes. Let the pierogi cool under a cloth. They freeze really well, just heat them a little in the oven before eating.

Daring Cooks February: Mezze

The 2010 February Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

This was a really creative challenge with only two mandatory parts: pita bread and hummus. Then it was up to the Daring Cooks to fill their mezze tables with tabbouleh, falafel, baba ganouj, lebneh, feta cheese, olives and whatever else Middle Eastern finger food they could think of. Fun!

I recently had a fabulous mezze meal at a Lebanese restaurant in Stockholm, and was looking forward to being inspired for the Daring Cooks challenge. But come the day of mezze making, I wasn't in the mood for tons of little dishes (going to the Middle Eastern supermarket and buying their ready-made stuff felt like cheating) and then there was the usual time constraints resulting from the usual procrastination, so I ended up a bit outside the box. But still, I hope, within the spirit of the challenge. My not-so-mezze mezze table ended up consisting of:

• Tunsian lamb tagine with dried fruit
• Orange salad with feta cheese and mint
• Pita bread
• Hummus

Let's start with the mandatory parts of the challenge, the pita bread and the hummus. The pita bread was easy to make, even if it took quite some time to roll it all out and bake it. It tasted real nice and I'm happy to have a reliable pita bread recipe now. The recipe makes a lot though, we got about 20 (more or less) round breads measuring about 15 cm in diameter. Next time I'll quarter the recipe if making just for the two of us.

I have to admit I took some liberties with the hummus (sorry!). When I worked in the kitchen at Kibbutz Hamaapil in Israel, I made loads of hummus and learned that tahine is not a necessary ingredient. What is necessary, however, is olive oil. So I omitted the tahine, added olive oil and also ended up forgetting the garlic. (Oups.) I served the hummus like we always did at Hamaapil: drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with paprika powder.

The recipe for the Tunisian lamb tagine with dried fruit comes from the lovely book Citrusköket (the Citrus Kitchen) by Caroline Hofberg. I've made a few changes to the original recipe. It's a lovely, warm, spicy and fragrant stew that you can serve with couscous or bulgur, but we just ate it with pita bread and some thick yoghurt.

As a side dish I made a small salad with oranges, feta cheese and mint. These flavors work really well together and the colors are lovely.

Thank you Michele for a fun and creative challenge! Wanna see the other Daring Cooks creations and all of the recipes? Visit the Daring Kitchen where you will find the recipe archive and the blogroll. Our lovely host Michele has posted a lot of great mezze recipes on her website.

Tunisian lamb tagine with dried fruit
(adapted from Citrusköket by Caroline Hofberg)

500 g boneless lamb shoulder
100 g dried apricots
100 g dried figs
3/4 dl almonds, peeled
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 orange
1 small yellow onion
2 garlic cloves
½ g saffron
2 tsp paprika powder
1 cinnamon stick
1½ tbsp freshly grated ginger
1½ tbsp concentrated vegetable stock
5 dl water
1 tbsp cornstarch (Maizena)
1 tsp harissa

1. Soak the dried apricots and figs in hot water.
2. Roast the almonds in a dry pan until they get a little bit of color. Set aside until later. In the same pan, toast the cumin and coriander seeds and set aside.
3. Peel the orange with a potato peeler (you want quite long bits of peel with as little of the bitter white stuff as possible). Juice the orange. Set aside peel and juice.
4. Chop the onion and garlic finely.
5. Cut the lamb shoulder into cubes about 3×3 cm. Fry them in some olive oil until they are a nice brown color.
6. In a large pot, fry the onion and ginger carefully so that it becomes soft but doesn't get any color. Add the toasted cumin and coriander seeds, saffron, paprika, the cinnamon stick and the grated ginger. Fry for about a minute, stirring constantly.
7. Add the meat and stock, water, orange peel and juice. Boil over low heat for 1–1½ hours.
8. Drain the apricots and figs, cut them in smaller pieces and add them to the pot. Boil for another 20 minutes.
9. Remove about ½–1 dl of the liquid from the pot and use it to dissolve the cornstarch. Pour it back, stir well and let the tagine thicken for about 5 minutes. Season with harissa. Add the almonds right before serving.

Orange salad with feta and mint

Cut a couple of oranges into fillets (segments without any white peel). For two, I used two small blood oranges and a larger regular orange. Crumble up some good feta cheese and sprinkle on top of the oranges. Drizzle with a little extra virgin olive oil, season with freshly ground black pepper, and, for the final touch, add some fresh mint leaves.



Pita Bread

Recipe adapted from Flatbreads & Flavors by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Prep time: 20 minutes to make, 90 minutes to rise and about 45 minutes to cook

2 tsp regular dry yeast (12.1 grams)
2½ cups lukewarm water (591 grams)
5-6 cups all-purpose flour (may use a combination of 50% whole wheat and 50% all-purpose, or a combination of alternative flours for gluten free pita) (497-596 grams)
1 tbsp table salt (15 grams)
2 tbsp olive oil (29 ml)

1. In a large bread bowl, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water. Stir to dissolve. Stir in 3 cups flour, a cup at a time, and then stir 100 times, about 1 minute, in the same direction to activate the gluten. Let this sponge rest for at least 10 minutes, or as long as 2 hours.
2. Sprinkle the salt over the sponge and stir in the olive oil. Mix well. Add more flour, a cup at a time, until the dough is too stiff to stir. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8 to 10 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Rinse out the bowl, dry, and lightly oil. Return the dough to the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise until at least doubled in size, approximately 1½ hours.
3. Place a pizza stone, or two small baking sheets, on the bottom rack of your oven, leaving a 1-inch gap all around between the stone or sheets and the oven walls to allow heat to circulate. Preheat the oven to 450F (230C).
4. Gently punch down the dough. Divide the dough in half, and then set half aside, covered, while you work with the rest. Divide the other half into 8 equal pieces and flatten each piece with lightly floured hands. Roll out each piece to a circle 8 to 9 inches in diameter and less than 1/4 inch thick. Keep the rolled-out breads covered until ready to bake, but do not stack.
5. Place 2 breads, or more if your oven is large enough, on the stone or baking sheets, and bake for 2 to 3 minutes, or until each bread has gone into a full balloon. If for some reason your bread doesn't puff up, don't worry it should still taste delicious. Wrap the baked breads together in a large kitchen towel to keep them warm and soft while you bake the remaining rolled-out breads. Then repeat with the rest of the dough.

Hummus

Recipe adapted from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden
Prep Time: Hummus can be made in about 15 minutes once the beans are cooked. If you’re using dried beans you need to soak them overnight and then cook them the next day which takes about 90 minutes.

1½ cups dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight (or substitute well drained canned chickpeas and omit the cooking) (301 grams)
2-2½ lemons, juiced (89ml)
2-3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
a big pinch of salt
4 tbsp tahini (sesame paste) OR use peanut butter or any other nut butter—feel free to experiment) (45 grams)
additional flavorings (optional) I would use about 1/3 cup or a few ounces to start, and add more to taste. You can use sun-dried tomatoes, olives, roasted peppers etc.

1. Drain and boil the soaked chickpeas in fresh water for about 1 ½ hours, or until tender. Drain, but reserve the cooking liquid.
2. Puree the beans in a food processor (or you can use a potato masher) adding the cooking water as needed until you have a smooth paste.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Adjust the seasonings to taste.

The Daring Cooks gets wrappin'

'Tis the season to be jolly, and 'tis also the season to wrap up stuff! In between wrapping Christmas presents, the Daring Cooks also wrapped salmon, meat or vegetables this month.

The 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking. Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online.

Food baked in pastry, it's hard to go wrong with this one! After exploring the meat section of our local supermarket we decided to go with a regional twist and make a Moose Wellington.

For me, eating game feel better and more ethical. I would love to get it more often, but unfortunately, unless you know someone who hunts, meat such as moose, venison and deer can be really hard to get hold of, and it's often very expensive. Moose hunting season in Sweden is a short period in the fall, and is quite heavily regulated. Fresh moose meat is not very commonly found in supermarkets, so if you want to cook with it you have to take the opportunity when it arrives, and also be ready to splurge a little!

The filling for the Beef Wellington recipe was button mushrooms and Parma ham. We decided to use a mixture of chanterelles and porcinis instead. Chanterelle picking season kind of coincides with moose hunting season, so the two are often served together. Instead of Parma ham, we used a Swedish cold-smoked ham called Tvärnö ham.

We missed the September Daring Bakers challenge which was making puff pastry. Had we done that one, we probably wouldn't have hesitated to make our own pastry dough for the Moose Wellington (or there would have been leftovers in the freezer). But attempting it for the first time seemed a little too adventurous and time-consuming now, so we turned to the ready-made stuff.

The recipe called for the Beef Wellington to be in the oven at 200°C for 20 minutes. That really seemed too inexact for me (what size of beef is that for? how well done will it be?) so we stuck a thermometer into the moose and cooked until it read 73°C. Unfortunately, we had forgotten that it would keep cooking also when it was out of the oven, and a dilemma presented itself: letting the meat rest and see the temperature keep going up, or carving it without letting it rest for the desired 20 minutes? When the thermometer read 80°C, we decided to carve it. This meant that the moose was a little too well done for our liking. It was, however, still delicious. I got a bad migraine the night we made it, but since we had put in all the effort (ok, it wasn't that hard) and money I just had to eat some, even though I normally would have been in bed without a thought of food. The pain kind of took away the enjoyment of eating it though. Fortunately there were leftovers, so both Markus and I were treated to Moose Wellington for lunch the following day. It was really nice also after being heated in the oven (me)/microwave (Markus), and even the crust was still quite crispy and flaky which I hadn't expected. I guess the wrapping-meat-in-crepes part really do prevent the crust from getting soggy!

What didn't work however, was the picture taking part (seriously, every month I hang my head in shame when I see some of the pictures other Daring Bakers and Cooks have taken of their dishes), and a big computer catastrophe (tip of the day: laptop should not hit floor) didn't make things better. So we only have these two really crappy picture of our Moose Wellington. Ouch!





Thanks Simone for a fun challenge! Below you will find our version of the recipe, which has some changes, and is also halved. The original (and the recipes for salmon and vegetables en croute) can be found over at the Daring Kitchen, where you also can see the other Daring Cooks' creations.

Finally: Happy Holidays to all the Daring Cooks around the world! I look forward to see what exciting challenges 2010 will bring us!

Moose Wellington

400 g moose (elk)
110 g canned chanterelles
110 g canned porcinis
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 sprig of thyme
1 tsp dijon mustard
Ready-made puff pastry (rolled)
3 slices cold-smoked ham (Tvärnö ham)
1 egg yolk

For the herb crepes:
25 g all purpose flour
62 ml milk
1 tbsp mixed herbs (we used a frozen "Italian mix" of flat leaf parsley, oregano and sage)
½ tbsp butter
Pinch of salt

1. To make the crepes, whisk the flour, egg and milk with a pinch of salt in until smooth. Pour into a jug and stir in the herbs and some seasoning. Leave to rest.
2. Drain the chanterells and porcini well. Heat the oil in a pan, and fry the mushrooms until most of the liquid is gone. Add the thyme leaves and some seasoning and keep cooking for a few minutes. Cool.
3. Melt the butter in a frying pan (or small crepe pan) and mix the butter into the batter. Pour in enough batter to make a thin layer on the base of the pan, cook until the top surface sets and then turn over and cook briefly. Remove and repeat with the rest of the batter. This will make a couple of more crepes than you need so choose the thinnest ones for the recipe.
4. Sear the meat all over in a little oil in a very hot pan. Brush with the mustard, season and allow to cool.
5. Lay a large sheet of cling-film on a kitchen surface and put two crepes down on it, overlapping a little. Lay over the ham. Spread the mushroom mixture over the ham and put the meat in the centre. Roll the cling-film up, taking the crepe with it, to wrap the beef completely into a nice neat log. Chill for 1 hour.
6. Heat the oven to 200°C. Roll out the pastry, remove the clingfilm and wrap the beef in the pastry like a parcel, with the ends tucked under. Trim to keep it nice and neat. Brush with egg, score with shallow lines across the top and chill for 20 minutes.
7. Stick a thermometer into the meat and cook until it reads about 70°C. It will keep cooking while it rests, so if you prefer your meat slightly less done, remove it a bit earlier. We cooked it until 73°C, and it was a bit too well done for our liking. Allow the meat to rest for 20 minutes before carving and enjoying!

Char Siu Bao - first attempt

As I hinted in the post about Char Siu there was more Chinese cooking coming up. With the left over BBQ pork we of course had to make Char Siu Bao: steamed buns with char siu filling. I actually didn't like those at first in Hong Kong (what was up with my taste buds then? Char Siu Bao is delicious!), so Markus always got them to himself. But they grew on me, and by the end they were one of my favorites, competing with chicken and glutinous rice in lotus leaves, and another steamed dumpling which I believe had pork in it plus some kind of nuts and vegetables, and was served with a super hot red dipping sauce. They can be seen in this picture (sorry it's a bit blurry) - if anyone can identify it and tell me exactly what's in them, pretty please leave a comment!



So, Char Siu Bao. We turned once again to The Chinese Kitchen by Deh-Ta Hsiung and a recipe for steamed buns (you'll get it below), and immediately encountered four problems:
1. The recipe called for dry yeast. I have never used that before so I was a bit apprehensive. I know some people are uncomfortable using fresh yeast, which I don't get - baking with fresh yeast is easy, just make sure the liquid isn't too hot. Turns out, using dry yeast was super easy too. Okay, problem solved. Problem number two was a bit tricker though...

2. We were almost out of flour, and it was raining cats and dogs, as the Brits say (could I please get a mixture of tuxedo cats, soft coated wheaten terriers and Whisky?), so another trip to the grocery store was not too appealing. But if you kind of filled the measuring cup and really shaked the bag to get every teeny grain of flour out, and also used some special bread flour with extra protein (= develops more gluten) that we also had to squeeze out every last bit of, we could get the correct amount. Almost. In hindsight, we should have gone to the grocery store. Keep reading and we'll tell you why.

3. The recipe said to use self-rising flour. We don't have that in Sweden, but a quick googling told me what amount of baking powder to add to the flour (it's 1½ tsp baking powder for one cup flour). With that out of the way, we turned to the biggest issue:

4. The Chinese Kitchen didn't tell us how to make Char Siu Bao. Of course we could have googled and for instance used this recipe but for some reason we didn't. Instead we said "well, the english version of the dim sum menu said that it's BBQ pork and oyster sauce in the filling, so let's go with that!" We cut up the left over Char Siu and added oyster sauce according to the "do you think this is enough? Well, how the hell should I know? Well, I don't know either. Ok, just a little bit more"-principle.

The dough was a charm to work with, and we got our buns to be quite pretty if I may say so myself. Wanna see 'em in all their pre-steamed glory?



After steaming and tasting, it turned out that problem two and four had impacted the end result quite significantly. First of all, appearance wise: the buns got way too shiny. I understand that it's probably hard to get that really white color with the kind of flour we have here, but I also think that the extra gluten might have impacted the color of the buns. It also affected the texture: the buns got a bit too rubbery and tough and didn't have that right "short" consistency. And then the filling. Well, that was just way too boring and flavorless. Next time I'll just send myself here, type in "char siu bao recipe" and I'm sure that we'll get a much better result.

It wasn't a complete failure, we still ate all of the buns (yes, six each, they were our dinner), and they didn't taste bad or even super far from the original (just pretty far...). But there was definitely room for improvement, and we'll for sure let you know how our next attempt turns out. Anyway, here's the recipe for the steamed buns. Just follow it closely (i.e. go to the grocery store if you don't have enough flour) and I'm sure they will turn out great!

Mantou (steamed buns)
From The Chinese Kitchen by Deh-Ta Hsiung

Makes about 24 buns (we halved the recipe and it worked well)

For the dough:
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp dried yeast
10 fl oz (3 dl) warm water
4 cups self-rising flour

Dissolve the sugar and yeast in the water and let it stand for 5-10 minutes until the mixture is frothy. Sift the flour into a bowl, the gradually stir in the liquid. The dough will be firm. Knead for 5 minutes, then cover with a damp cloth and let the dough rest in a warm place for 1-1½ hours.

After resting, knead the dough again for 5 minutes on a lightly floured surface. Roll it out into a sausage shaped form. Cut into 24 pieces. Flatten each piece with your hand, and then roll it out to a disc about 10 cm in diameter.

I won't give you a recipe for filling here, but these buns can have both sweet and savory fillings. Take about a tablespoon of your chosen filling and place in the middle of the dough. Gather the edges together to meet at the top (see above pictures for how it should sort of look). Twist to enclose. Let the buns stand for at least 20 minutes before cooking.

Place the buns on top of a cheesecloth or on individually cut out pieces of parchment paper on the rack of a steamer (we use a Chinese style bamboo steamer, it worked great). Cover and steam vigorously for 15-20 minutes. Serve hot.

Char Siu

Oh Hong Kong food, how can I count the ways I love and miss thee? Crispy pork buns, sweet and sour pork, chicken in lotus leaves, spicy noodle soups, wontons, Shanghai soup dumplings.....why oh why aren't you available in Sweden?!

Well, one way to solve the problem is to make it yourself. We decided to start off lightly, and attempt to make char siu, Cantonese BBQ pork. After consulting The Chinese Kitchen by Deh-Ta Hsiung we set off on a mission to find crushed yellow bean sauce and red fermented bean curd - quite a daunting task in our culinary challenged town. We had no luck with the bean sauce, but after a visit to (the only?) Chinese store in Uppsala, there's now a rather big jar of bean curd standing in our fridge. The same store also had frozen chicken feet and canned durian, so we now know where to turn should we ever feel inclined to give those a try again.

Making the char siu was straightforward, but a bit time consuming. The marinade smelled right (it smelled kind of like Hong Kong, minus the traffic fumes and weird dried sea animals) and after tasting we had to say that we got it pretty damn close. Next time we'll use some other cut of pork, the pork loin got a bit too dry. Any ideas? We had to skip the crushed yellow bean sauce, but if we do find a jar of it somewhere, we'll make sure to get back to you to report if that got the taste even closer to right.

We used our very fancy, very expensive made-of-wood-that-you-shouldn't-buy-because-it's-bad-for-the-environment chopsticks for the first time, to eat our homemade char siu- we think it was a fitting way to inaugurate them. Now there's leftover Char Siu in the fridge and we have plans for that, oh yes we do...!



Char Siu
From The Chinese Kitchen by Deh-Ta Hsiung

2 kg pork loin
3 tbsp honey, dissolved in a little hot water

For the marinade:
2 tbsp sugar
(2 tbsp crushed yellow bean sauce - we skipped this since we didn't have any, add it if you do)
2 tbsp Hoi Sin sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp red fermented bean curd
4 tbsp rum, brandy or Chinese liquor (we used dark rum)
2 tsp sesame oil

Cut the pork into about 1½ cm thick slices. Mix all the ingredients for the marinade. Place the meat in a shallow dish or in double plastic bags (we prefer plastic bags) and add the marinade. Blend well so that all the meat is covered in marinade (this is where it's easier to use plastic bags, simply seal them (well!) and then you can "massage" the marinade into the meat from the outside). Let marinade for at least two hours, turning occasionally.

Set the oven to 220°C (425°F). Arrange the meat on a wire rack - save the marinade for later. Place the rack over a baking pan with about 2 dl boiling water in it. The water will give some steam in the oven and the pan catches the marinade that drips of the meat. Place the whole deal in the oven and bake for 12-15 minutes.

Reduce the heat to 175°C (350°F). Baste the pork with some of the reserved marinade, turn them over and baste again. Cook for another 8-10 minutes.

Brush the pork with the dissolved honey on both sides and let it brown slighly under a medium broiler for 3-5 minutes, turning once or twice. Our oven don't have a medium broiler, so we simply turned on the grill function of the oven (strong heat from above) and positioned the meat closer to the oven roof.

Allow the meat to cool before serving. Make a sauce by boiling the left over marinade with what has collected in the baking pan. Strain before serving. We ate this with rice, some sauce and a little thinly sliced leek (that's how the university's lunch restaurant served it). Char Siu is really never eaten alone as a main course (few Chinese dishes are) but rather as an appetizer, as a part of a larger meal or as an ingredient in other dishes. More on that last part later...!

Paper chef 40: Prosciutto, potatoes and thyme on Mother's Day

We really liked participating in Paper Chef for the first time last month, and of course wanted to have another go this month. The ingredient list did contain some intimidating stuff (trotters, kidneys) and other things we don't even know what it is (broccolini?) but we said that even if the picks were tuna, kidneys and blood oranges, we would have a go.

We were almost a bit disappointed when last month's winner, Bron Marshall, announced that the random picks for Paper Chef #4o was prosciutto, floury potatoes and thyme. Instead of picking a fourth ingredient, Bron picked a theme: Mother's Day (as Sunday apparently was Mother's Day in the US; it is another day in Sweden).

Actually the common-ness of the ingredients, and the fact that they go so well together, made coming up with something creative harder than we would have thought. In the end we went down a fairly common route: the most daring part of our entry is the sauce. It did taste very nice, and I'm sure my mom would eat this happily, mother's day or not. Our make-believe Mother's day main course ended up being (drum roll please):

Lamb patties
with Thyme Scented Prosciutto-Potato Swirls with Chèvre
and Spiced Red Wine Gravy

Savory gravy covered lamb patty... *drool*

Makes 3 servings

For the lamb patties:
500 g ground lamb
1 egg yolk
2 slices of prosciutto, cut in small pieces
1½ tsp dried thyme
Salt & Black pepper

For the Prosciutto-Potato Swirls:
500 g floury potatoes
100 g chèvre
1 dl milk
2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
25 g butter
Salt & White pepper
Thin prosciutto slices

Sauce: see below

Mix the ingredients for the lamb patties and refrigerate. Set the oven to 175°C. Peel the potatoes and boil until soft. Add chèvre, milk and butter and mash the potatoes. Season with salt, pepper and fresh thyme. Place a slice of prosciutto on a flat surface. Cover it in a 1 cm layer of mashed potatoes, and then roll it up. Continue until you're out of either prosciutto or mashed potatoes. Place the prosciutto-potato rolls, standing up (press them down slightly to make them stand), in a lightly oiled pan. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes. While they're cooking, fry the lamb.

Get the mixture for the lamb patties out of the fridge. Shape it into 3 patties. We make the patties by putting a third of the lamb mixture between two parchment covered flat plates and press them silly. This makes nice, fairly round, almost 1 cm thick patties, which will contract a good amount when fried. Fry in butter on medium-high heat. Keep the patties warm while making the sauce.

For the sauce, we used some left over spiced red wine that we had saved after making figs poached in red wine for one of our creations for last month's Daring Bakers challenge (scroll down for the saffron cheesecake with poached fig). We had saved the wine which was spiced with a small cinnamon stick, a star anise, some sugar and one black peppercorn. It had been sitting in the fridge for a couple of weeks, so it had really gotten a lot of flavor from the spices, and it smelled so much like Christmas - lovely! To make the sauce, we simply poured the spiced red wine into the pan where we had fried the lamb patties. We added more red wine, a splash of soy and few drops of Worcestershire sauce. We let it reduce for a while and then strained it.

The potato swirls worked like a charm, the salty flavor of the prosciutto complemented the mashed potato beautifully, and the fresh thyme provided a good link to the lamb meat. The spiced wine sauce worked surprisingly well with its warm and Christmasy flavors. It was a bit sweet, which went well with the salty and cheesy prosciutto-potato swirls. All in all a splendid combination.


Thyme Scented Prosciutto-Potato Swirls with Chèvre. Yum!

Swedish meatballs

There's been somewhat of a lacking in the “traditional Swedish” section lately, so we figured it's time to make up for that by presenting the most Swedish thing in the world (as far as food stuff goes anyway, there's always the “Dala-horse”, moose-warning traffic signs and the ever present IKEA department stores): meatballs! So, here's our recipe for Swedish meatballs with traditional condiments. No matter what your local IKEA restaurant tries to sell you, meatballs are eaten with lingonberries (usually in jam form), potatoes (mashed, boiled or whatever) and “brown sauce”.

Today we're making lingonberry jam, mashed potatoes, meatballs and rosemary/juniper infused brown sauce. And yes, the last thingy is experimental, we planned to make green pepper brown sauce, but were out of green pepper.

For the mashed potatoes, all you have to do is boil the potatoes, mash them up and add some dairy product (we used plain milk) and butter. Work it smooth, and season with (a lot of) salt, white pepper and a pinch of nutmeg.

For the lingonberries we used frozen ones which we brought to a boil with a splash of water and some sugar (use whatever amount you like, but beware of the extremely tart flavor of the berries). Let it reduce somewhat and you're done. This can be done well in advance, since it's supposed to be cold anyway.

For the tricky part, the meatballs and sauce, you need:

Meatballs
500 g Ground meat (we used a 20/80 mix of pork and beef)
1 Onion
Salt
Black Pepper
Whatever spices you fancy (we used Paprika powder and Cumin)
Butter to fry in

Rosemary and juniper infused Brown sauce
~2 dl Milk
some Rosemary twigs
3 Dried juniper berries
1 Black Pepper Corn
1 tbsp Flour
1 dl Milk
dash Soy Sauce
dash Worcestershire Sauce

Finley chop the onion and combine all the meatball ingredients in a bowl. Put it in the fridge, it's easier to handle when cold.

Bring the 2 dl of milk to a simmer with the rosemary twigs, juniper berries and black pepper corn. Let it simmer for a few minutes and then let it cool slowly.

Heat a frying pan with butter (on our stove we use heat 5 out of 6). Bring out your bowl of meat from the fridge and start rolling small balls of meat and drop them into the pan. If you don't feel fast enough, roll them all before putting any of them in the pan. Fry until they're cooked through and remove them from the pan while making the sauce.

Mix the 1 dl Milk and the flour. Pour it over the fat left in the pan. The brownness of the brown sauce depends on how long you fry it before adding the infused milk, but we usually don't let it fry too long (never really figured out how to get the coloring this way), but instead add a dash of soy sauce to brown things up. Let it emulsify to a thick sauce. Add any other spices you fancy (we used Worcestershire sauce, but you can use anything really).

”Smaklig måltid!“
(Bon apetit)


Traditional Swedish meatballs

Now the sauce wasn't that big of a hit, it tasted good, but maybe not all that extra good compared to the work of infusing and everything. We basically just had a few twigs of rosemary left over and decided to roll with it. All of this is really on a hunch kind of cooking, but then again, the particulars aren't all that important in traditional cooking anyway. :-)

First day of spring-dinner

It's spring, people! I was wearing my spring jacket for the first time this year while walking to the grocery store yesterday. I was also sneezing excessively from the pollen in my nose and the dust from the dry roads that flew around with every passing car and ended up in my throat. Kids were playing brännboll outside the school, crocus are peaking out between the dry leaves outside our front door, and the huge pile of snow left by the snowplough in what now seems like ages ago (in reality just a couple of weeks) is looking sad and lonely, being eaten by the warm spring sun. Such a lovely day!



So yesterday called for a dinner full of flavours like the spring - fresh and exciting. Leafing through my latest cookbook find - Jamie Oliver's Happy Days - I found the perfect recipe: marinated pork tenderloin with sage and rhubarb. There's no fresh rhubarb yet, but luckily there was one bag left in the freezer from last year. My dad always gets loads of rhubarb in his garden and every summer he gives me a couple of grocery bags full of them. I love rhubarb, and it's always exciting to find ways to use it in cooking, rather than in just pies, muffins and such.

I modified the recipe slightly, exchanging the prosciutto for bacon and using rhubarb cut in much smaller pieces (that's how I freeze it). I think bigger pieces of rhubarb would have been better cause now they got a bit too soggy. The flavours work really well together, especially the sage which I rarely use but definitely will pick up more often now. The pork tenderloin got really tender, almost as if cooked sous-vide. Maybe the wet grease-proof paper that it was cooked under for the first 15 minutes is the secret?



Bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin with rhubarb and sage
(adapted from Jamie Oliver's Happy Days with the Naked Chef)

One handful of fresh sage + a few extra leaves
2 garlic cloves
3 tbsp olive oil
Pork tenderloin, enough for two
Salt, black pepper
2-3 rhubarb stalks, cut in finger-sized pieces (smaller slices also works, but will be soggier)
Bacon, enough to wrap the pork tenderloin in

Bash up the sage using a mortar and pestle (or if you have one, like me, use the Jamie Oliver flavour shaker which is really convenient for this kind of stuff). Peel the garlic and cut it in larger pieces - no need for fine chopping - and add that together with the olive oil. Give it all a good bash/shake. Trim the pork tenderloin if needed, and rub the marinade on to the meat. Cover, and let it sit in the fridge for an hour or so.

Set the oven to 225°C. Get the meat out of the fridge, but do not wipe off the marinade, except for any garlic that has gotten stuck to the meat. Season the meat with salt and pepper. Wrap slices of bacon around the tenderloin so that it gets fully covered. Place the rhubarb in an oven-proof dish. NB! do not use one made of stain-less steel - the rhubarb contains acids which will make the steel oxidize! Place the bacon-wrapped meat on top, throw in the garlic from the marinade, and add a couple of extra leaves of sage.

Wrinkle up a sheet of grease-proof paper and moisten it. Tuck the wet paper around the meat. Put the meat in the oven for 15 minutes, then remove the paper, and put it back in the oven for another 15 minutes. Let the meat rest for a couple of minutes before serving. Serve the meat cut in slices, together with the rhubarb-sauce, some fresh sage and oven-roasted potatoes.

The Daring Bakers go to Italy...and cooks!

March held a lot of excitement for the Daring Bakers. First of all, our beautiful new website was launched. Make sure to go check it out, because it is very nice! And then, there was the challenge....

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

I had to read that a couple of times before getting that yes, we were actually making lasagne. Lasagne as in pasta with ragu and cheese and bechamel. No chocolate, no buttercream, no folding in of stiffly whipped egg whites. Nope, this time we were to make our own pasta dough. That's an interesting challenge, people! Thanks Mary, Melinda and Enza for your creativity and for surprising us with this!

Oh, before I continue, I should tell you that all the recipes can be found on the websites of our lovely hosts. They are long, so I will not repost them here.

Day 1: Buying new stuff
The Daring Bakers will never force you to go out and buy fancy new kitchen equipment in order to complete the challenges. We were thus given instructions on how to hand roll pasta dough, into lasagne sheets the thickness of a paper. I read the instructions, and told Markus that we probably would want to buy that pasta machine that we'd been talking about on and off for years. Yes, handrolling would have been even more of a challenge. But see, without a pasta machine we would probably never have made pasta ourselves again after this challenge. Now that we have a pasta machine, we've started talking about all the wonderful pasta concoctions we want to create (gorgonzola and walnut ravioli, anyone?). We also needed a new dish for the lasagne. A large rectangular stoneware dish is something we have been missing in our kitchen for a long time (it's very hard to make lasagne in an oval shaped dish since pasta sheets are, well, not oval), so I went and bought us a very pretty Le Creuset dish. See, we're helping the economy! (Not ours, though.)

Day 2: Making the Ragu alla Contadina (Country style ragu)
According to the challenge we could use our own favourite meat ragu recipe (or a vegetarian one for those with such proclivities). We decided to use the given recipe for a Ragu alla Contadina and that was a good decision.
The recipe asked us to buy whole meat and grind it ourselves. We don't own a meat grinder (yet) and one thing with foreign recipes is that cuts of meat are hard to translate. I think different countries use partly different cuts, so when faced with "boneless veal shoulder or round" and "beef skirt steak", I don't really know what to ask for in Swedish in the grocery store. The solution was to buy ready-ground veal and beef. There was no ground pork though, so we got a slice of pork loin and ground it in the food processor. I don't think that was ideal cause it ended up chunky rather than ground, but once it got cooking it was okay.
So, here's a picture of the mise en place for the ragu. The carrot kind of escaped under a plate.



Yup, that's a bottle of store-bought stock between the wine and the glass of milk. The recipe called for chicken or beef stock, preferably home-made. We used store-bought game stock. I've never made this in another way so I can't compare, but we thought it worked with its meaty, earthy flavour. Oh, and that glass of milk is not 100% milk since we ran out when we had almost poured two cups, so we had to top it off with 2-3 tablespoons of cream. I can't imagine that had any negative impact on the flavour...
Making the ragu was very straight-forward and posed no problems. It took a bit of time (most of it consisting of letting it bubble slowly on the stove and stirring once in a while) but it was well worth it - it was absolutely delicious! The meat had an almost melt-in-your-mouth consistency and we had to stop ourselves from "tasting" it over and over again ("are you sure it doesn't need more pepper? Let's have another taste."). But in to the fridge it went and we went on to making the pasta...

Day 2, later: The big challenge - making the Pasta Verde dough
I think I read the instructions for this three times before starting. Making a well out of flour, putting the eggs and spinach in the middle, stir that together and then gradually incorporate more and more flour from the sides of the well. We cut down on the spinach (the recipe called for 300 g, we used maybe 100 g) but I still found it very hard to do as the instructions said because the spinach kept creeping away and ending up outside the flour well. Here's an action shot (where you also can see the new pasta machine in the background, and the pretty snow-covered trees outside our kitchen windows):



There seemed to be an awful lot of flour, and when the dough had reached a stage where it was "satiny, smooth and very elastic", there was quite a bit left:



We decided to leave that flour out, because our dough was pretty and smooth green ball:



We wrapped the dough in plastic and let it rest in room temperature. After an hour or so, we noticed that it wasn't ball shaped anymore, but had started to float out and go all soft on us. D'oh! We decided to wing it and add more flour rather than to start from scratch, and after more kneading and slightly nervous resting we did a small test run through the pasta machine and - success! I guess we should have trusted the recipe and used all the flour to begin with, huh? Ah, hindsight, always so lovely... Rather than rolling out all the dough and drying it, we put it in the fridge to be rolled out the day after - the day of lasagna-making!

Day 3: Making the lasagna, and enjoying it with a good wine and a good friend.
We heated the ragu over low temperature on the stove, and made the bechamel sauce. We did some tinkering with the measurements for the bechamel (4 tablespoons of flour and 4 tablespoons of butter can't both be weighing 60 grams!) but other than that, there were no problems. Then came the moment of truth: making the pasta sheets! The dough seemed to have held up nicely in the fridge and still had the right feel to it. Markus turned the handle of the pasta machine around and around again, and our poor old IKEA kitchen table which was unsteady to begin with became even more squeaky.



The pasta sheets came out beautiful and the dough was a breeze to work with. We skipped the step of pre-boiling the pasta since we doubted that the very thin sheets would survive boiling without breaking apart and/or sticking together. Instead, we went straight to assembly, layering pasta, a thin spread of bechamel, then a thin spread of ragu and over that a generous sprinkling of parmesan cheese. We got six layers of pasta in our lasagne, then we were out of both pasta, ragu and bechamel - perfect!
We had invited a friend over for dinner, and the lasagne was a success. We found that instead of tasting like pasta baked with meat and cheese, like lasagne usually does, this one had all the components melting together into a wonderful, flavourful unity. We ate the whole thing (to Markus dismay, who wanted leftovers for his lunch box) and combined with a couple of bottles of Chianti and many laughs, it made for a wonderful evening.

St. Patrick's Day

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, and even though neither one of us has any connection to Ireland I couldn't resist trying out two recipes with an Irish feel. Both had Guinness stout in them, but since the store didn't have any Guinness I went with Murphy's instead - it's basically the same thing (if any Irish people are reading this you are welcome to disagree in comments).

Let's get to the sweet stuff first - Guinness chocolate cupcakes with Bailey's cream cheese frosting, found over at Nook & Pantry. That I just had to make - I mean, cakes with chocolate and Guinness (or, in my case, Murphy's) covered with a mixture of Bailey's, cream cheese and butter?! I will tell you that they are as good as they sound, even though my cupcakes became very low because I misread the recipe and used baking powder instead of baking soda. D'oh! Apart from that non-intentional alteration, I followed the recipe without changes, so head on over to Nook & Pantry to get all the details. My little mistake didn't seem to impact the taste though because, yum! I can also imagine the frosting would be good with Grand Marnier or some other kind of citrus liqueur. Or with Jameson's. Yeah, maybe an Irish coffee frosting, with coffee and whisky and brown sugar. Good thing I ended up with quite a few cupcakes in the freezer - that means I get to try those out!



Now, the maincourse, a beef and Guinness pie that I found at Epicurious. For this I made a few changes, the biggest one being covering the stew with mashed potatoes in shepherd's pie style rather than with puff pastry. The original had brined green peppercorns in it, but that was impossible for me to find. I meant to pop in a few regular green peppercorns instead but I forgot about it. If you have green peppercorns, brined or not, do add them because I think that would give a little punch that this dish was lacking. If you like cooked carrots that would also work with this, either in the stew or on the side, boiled and with some butter and parsley on top. I'm tucking the photo of this down at the bottom because this dish is not too pretty. We ran out of mashed potatoes so that's why there's a hole in the middle, in case you are wondering. Anyhoo, here's the recipe:

Beef and Guinness pie, Shepherd's style
(adopted from Epicurious.com)

Makes enough for a dish 30*25 cm

1 kg beef, cut in 2*2 cm pieces
3 tbsp flour
Salt and black pepper
2-3 tbsp butter
1 large onion, coarsly chopped
3 tbsp water
½ tbsp concentrated game stock dissolved in 1 cup water
1½ cup Guinness or other stout
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
5 fresh thyme sprigs
100 g forest mushrooms, quartered
Mashed potatoes for topping (use your favorite recipe, mine has potatoes, butter, cream, nutmeg, salt and pepper).

Set the oven to 175 degrees C. Mix flour, salt and pepper in a shallow dish. Pat the beef dry. Turn the pieces around in the flour to coat them, shaking off excess flour. Heat most of the butter in a large pan, preferably oven-proof. Brown the beef in batches, and transfer the done pieces to a bowl. When all the beef is browned, add the rest of the butter to the pan and then the onions and water. Cook until the onions are soft. Then return the beef to the pan (make sure to get all the juices that may have accumulated in the bowl), and also add dissolved stock, beer, Worcestershire sauce and thyme. Bring to a simmer. If your pot isn't oven-proof, transfer all the meat and liquid to a large oven-poof pan (I used a rectangular Le Creuset dish, about 30*25 cm.). Cover with a lid or with foil and braise in the oven for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, until the beef is tender. Take the pan out, add the quartered mushrooms and braise for another 15-20 minutes, now without lid/foil. You can prepare this far (it would hold up well in the fridge overnight).
Increase the oven temperature to 225 degrees C. Make your mashed potatoes, and place them on top of the dish. If you want a pretty look, you could pipe them out (we didn't). Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes until the mashed potatoes are turning golden brown.

Today's lunch special

Since I work from home and don't have any co-workers to remind me that it's lunch break time, I sometimes forgot to eat during the day. Not a good thing, I know. But I try to get better, and today I was starving by lunch time so it was impossible to forget to eat. I decided to have a lunch date with my new friend kamut again. I won't give an actual recipe for this since it so easy to make, but here's how I went about it.



I sliced 2 small chorizo sausages (total weight about 100 grams) and put them in an oven-proof dish. In that same dish I also threw 2 quartered tomatoes, 1 small red onion in cloves, and about 1 deciliter of large white beans. I drizzled some olive oil on top, but just a little cause I knew that the sausage was going to go all juicy in the oven, and seasoned with a bit of salt and some dried rosemary. I put the whole deal in the oven at 175 degress C for about 25 minutes. When about 10 minutes remained on the stuff in the oven, I boiled one portion of kamut. When everything was done I mixed the kamut with the sausage-veggie goodness and presto: lunch!

Hot Quinoa

This is my kind of food: chop'n'fry! You basically just chop up things and add them to a hot frying pan as you go along. At the end you mix in something like quinoa, bulgur or couscous, and your done! Make sure you get something spicy and something sweet in there, and you don't have to worry too much about the other flavors.

So, today I am having (as I'm typing actually) a hot quinoa based chop'n'fry. For this particular one you need:
1 Onion
1 Eggplant (I had a rather small one)
~100g Chorizo (spicy)
1 Bell Pepper (I used a small yellow one)
8 dried Apricots
4 servings of Quinoa
Salt
butter/oil (or both) to fry in

Start by setting the quinoa cooking (follow the instructions on your particular package) and heat a large frying pan with butter. Now, the order in which you chop the foods will be the order in which they land in the pan, so it's important to do this right! Start with the onion and then the eggplant—chop up and toss in the pan. Make sure there's enough fat in the pan, the eggplant can suck up quite a lot. Next the chorizo, which contains some fat that will mix nicely in with the rest. Add the bell pepper which will also add some juices, keeping the pan from drying up. Last but not least chop'n'toss the dried apricots, which will suck up any excess moist. Make sure you stir the content of the pan every now and then during the above procedure. When the quinoa is done (mine took ~15 minutes, which is just about right), toss it into the pan with the rest. Let them all have some bonding time, and introduce them to whatever amount of salt you see fit. Enjoy!

The eggplant get a really mild, sweet taste and a soft and moist feel—sometimes iterrupted by the spiciness of the chorizo, sometimes overrun by the sweetness of the apricots. The quinoa makes you full, and onion and bell peppers seem to work with just about anything that touches a frying pan. Perfect!

Oh, and if you want some crunch, feel free to chop up some peanuts, cashews or pine nuts and add at the end—it goes really great with the rest.

Sunday dinner

A little late, but here at last: our Sunday dinner. Jenny is having a hectic time right now, and is scarcely home at all, she was however home between Sunday lunch and Monday morning! Perfect time for a nice wine and dine to catch up on our missed V-day.

We had a little talk before, and settled on lamb, and we also had to make something of the Scorzonera hispanica we got in our organic box this Wednesday (the English language seems to have a lot of names for this plant, among my favorites are black oyster root, serpent root and viper's grass). The leaflet that came with the box stated that it could be gratinated almost like potatoes, so we settled on potato and serpent root gratin. The menu ended up being:

Fillet of Lamb
with Red Onion Confit, Thyme-pesto Ricotta
&
Potato and Serpent Root Gratin
~~~
Penfold's Bin 28

It turned out really nice, and we had a nice evening with good food, wine and company. The combination of the Red Onion Confit and the Thyme-pesto Ricotta was really surprisingly harmonic. Thyme was sort of a theme, and it always works with lamb, just like a good expensive Australian wine (it's curious how beverages from different countries go so well with the local staple foods). We also had dessert, but that's in a later post.


Meet the meat, real close up.

The recipe was more or less made on a hunch, so a lot of the measures are a bit iffy, but we do our best to estimate! This serves the usual three (Jenny, me and me tomorrow).

Fillet of Lamb
2–3 fillets of lamb (we had three, totaling ~450 g... it's not a very large animal)
Some fresh thyme
~4 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
~4 tbsp Oil
1 large Garlic Clove
Salt
Pepper

Clean the fillets and put them in a plastic bag. Pour the vinegar and oil over. Give the garlic clove a good beating so it raptures (put the blade of a knife over it and the put your weight on the blade) and throw it in. Throw in the thyme and add salt and pepper to taste. Don't actually taste it, but try to estimate how much you need – for us it's usually “three or four turns on the mill”). Seal the bag and massage it for a while, then put it in the fridge for a few hours.

Take out the fillets and brush of as much as possible of the other stuff. Fry them in a hot pan with butter until they get a nice coloring all around. Heat the oven to 200°C and put them in for about 15 minutes, they're supposed to have an inner temperature of ~55–60°C, or feel like the tip of your nose when you poke it (red inside) or harder. There's some oven synergy to be had with the gratin, they don't mind sharing. Make sure they're done a few minutes before serving so they have time to rest.

Red Onion Confit
2–3 Red Onions (we had 3 medium ones, but threw some of it away)
½ dl Water
2 tbsp Jelling sugar
4 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar /EDIT: Sorry, it's supposed to be Apple Cider Vinegar /
Salt
Pepper

Chop the onion coarsely and put in a kettle. Add the water and vinegar and bring to a boil. Add the rest and let it reduce to something jam-like. If you want to, add some red food coloring (I did as soon as Jenny hit the shower... :-) ).

Thyme-pesto Ricotta
2 tbsp fresh Thyme leaves
2 tbsp Pine nuts
3 tbsp Ricotta
Lemon zest
Salt

OK, I wont try this one again in a hurry. I thought it would be nice to make a kind of pesto with thyme instead of basil... turns out thyme has a lot smaller leaves, and is a real pain in the butt to pluck, but I did manage, and although I'm not sorry in retrospect, I'll probably never try it again.

So, pluck the leaves of fresh thyme. Chop the thyme, pine nuts and lemon zest (at this point you would add oil to make pesto). Mix it with ricotta and add salt to taste.

Potato and Serpent Root Gratin
~8 Potatoes
~3 Serpent roots
½ Leek (or an onion if you want)
some Cheese (we used a piece of Cheddar the size of a potato)
3 dl Cream
some Milk
Salt
Pepper

This is really just a potato gratin with some of the potatoes substituted by serpent root.

Clean, peel and slice the potatoes, serpent roots and leek. Grate the cheese. Chuck it all in an oven pot. The amount of salt should be “add until you are ashamed of yourself, and then some more” – it's really hard to have to much salt in a potato gratin. Add pepper to taste. Get down and dirty mixing it all with your hands (yes, if you want to get it really mixed there's no clean way). Add the cream and then top up with milk until the “top layer” isn't covered (but all the rest is). Bake it in the oven at 200°C for 40–50 minutes.

We didn't quite get it the way we like, we failed to mix in the cheese which stayed on top, and we had to much milk. The serpent root was a little too al dente as well, so maybe you really should try to bake it for an hour, or maybe pre-boil the roots. Or maybe you should bake it at 175°C instead, but then the meat wont like it, and we only have one oven... anyhow, it worked out quite nice anyway.

Korvpytt

A fairly traditional Swedish dish consists of meat, potato and onion, diced and fried in a pan. It's generally referred to as “pytt” or “pyttipanna” (which is just a contraction of pytt-in-pan). The meat is traditionally beef, but lately all kinds of crazy pytts has started to appear. So, today I'm making sausage pytt (sv. korvpytt). I'm using isterband, which is a lovely Swedish pork sausage (with a light sweet and sour/smoky touch to it).

Since Jenny is away on a military exercise this week, I'm cooking for two (me and my future self, who needs a lunch box). For two large portions you need:

½ kg of potatoes (peel if they're thick skinned, don't bother if they're not)
1 onion
2 isterband (packet says 330 g total)
lump of butter to fry in
salt and pepper to taste

Start by melting the butter (the stove says heat is 4 out of 6). By the time you've diced the potatoes the pan will be hot, so toss them in. Dice the onion and toss it in. Fry until the potato has got some roasting surface (feel free to toss it around TV-chef style rather than using a spatula – remember: airborne food is good for you). Dice the isterband add throw them into the pan (since it's rather bratwursty in size, I tend to go for quartered slices). Toss it around regularly until the potato yields to light spatula pokes. Add salt and pepper to taste. The whole frying time should amount to about half an hour.

Usual condiments are pickled beets and a fried egg. I don't care for any of them, and just eat it as is.

Jenny brought the camera with her, so no pictures today... :-( Let's just say it looks a lot nicer than the crap they show in the Wikipedia article!

A sort of pytt

I guess you could call this dish a more modern version of pyttipanna, the Swedish classic. Pyttipanna (wich my dictionary tells me translates as hash) is usually made of potatoes, onions, maybe some other vegetables such as carrots, and some sort of meat. It is all diced and then fried. It is a good way to deal with left overs, and is traditionally eaten with pickled red beets and a fried egg on top. More modernized version can be vegetarian, or contain fish or chicken, and if you're really radical you could even substitute the potatoes with for example bulgur, like I have done here.

The hardest part of this dish is to dice the vegetables. I know some people find repetetive kitchen tasks, such as making match stick thin julienned carrots or dicing zucchini in perfect 1*1 cm dice, relaxing. I just find it boring. But apart from chopping up the veggies, this dish is a breeze to make. My version of ajvar relish is probably not very authentic, but I thought it tasted quite close to the kind I buy in jars at the grocery store, only fresher. I didn't add any chili to the ajvar since the chorizo was so spicy, but it can of course be spiced up if necessary.


Look at all the pretty colors! (Sorry about the poor quality photo, but since it gets dark by like four here it's impossible get any decent dinner photos.)

Vegetable bulgur with chorizo and home made ajvar relish
Serves 2 + 1 lunchbox

½ onion, finely chopped
2 small carrots, diced
½ yellow pepper, diced
½ zucchini, diced
125 g chorizo (or other spicy, flavorful sausage)
4 dl bulgur
2 dl water
Salt and black pepper



Ajvar relish
2 grilled red peppers (store bought or home made)
1 tbsp tomato puré
½-1 tbsp olive oil
salt
black pepper

Fry the vegetables slowly in some butter or oil, starting with the onions and carrots and adding the peppers and zucchini after a minute or so. Bring the water to a boil and add the bulgur. Cook on very low heat until the water is absorbed; it takes about 10 minutes. Cut up your sausage in some smaller chunks; I sliced it and then cut the slices in half. Add the sausage to the vegetables and let it fry for a while. When the bulgur is done, just add it to the pan with veggies and sausage and stir it all around. Season with salt and pepper.

For the ajvar, simply put all the ingredients into a food processor and make a puree. Serve the bulgur with ajvar relish and some plain yoghurt*.

*In Sweden, we get a kind of yoghurt especially suited for use with/in food (appropriately named "food yoghurt"). It is runnier than thick Greek or Turkish yoghurt, and more sour than the kind you eat for breakfast.

Sailor's beef

When I shopped for this dish today I felt kind of old. You see, this is the kind of food that my grandmother would make: traditional Swedish food, no weird ingredients, just meat and potatoes in a big pot on the stove, slowly cooking away and filling the house with a warm, comfortable smell. According to the cookbook there should be carrot slices in there too so add that if you want, but I'm not a fan of cooked carrots, so we ate them raw on the side instead. You could sprinkle the dish with some finely chopped parsley before serving (I didn't have any, so I didn't). We ate it with some black currant jelly, but pickled cucumbers would also work.

PS. No, I have no idea how this dish got its name.

Sailor's beef (Sjömansbiff)

serves 2 and leaves plenty extra for lunch boxes

500 grams beef in thin slices
1 yellow onion
10 potatoes.
2-3 tbsp butter
1 33 cl bottle of beer (preferably dark, I used the Swedish "Carnegie Porter")
3 dl water
1 bay leaf
Salt and black pepper

Peel and slice the onion thinly. Fry it very very slowly (it should not get any color) in some of the butter. Put the onions aside, pour half of the water into the pan, whisk around and save the sauce for later.
Peel and slice the potatoes.
Add butter to the pan and brown the meat in batches. Season with salt and pepper. When all the meat is browned, put the meat aside, pour the remaining half of the water into the pan, whisk around and pour it, through a strainer, into the onion sauce.
Now get out a big pot, preferably oven proof. Layer the beef, onions and potatoes in the pot, with a layer of potatoes in the bottom and at the top. Season with salt and pepper in between the layers. Put the bay leaf in the pot, and pour in the bottle of beer and the juice from the meat and the onions.
Now, you can either boil it very slowly under a lid on the stove top for about an hour. Or (if your pot is oven proof), put it in the oven - lid on - and forget about it for one hour or so on 200 degrees celsius. I like the top layer of potatoes to be a bit crispy, so I took the lid of for the last ten minutes.

TGI Friday

So, let's start cooking, shall we?! You know when all you crave is meat and carbs, preferably with some cheesy sauce and a salad drenched in unhealthy dressing on the side? The kind of stuff you get at TGI Friday's? (Don't tell me you never get that craving and that the only carbs you eat is unsweetened rye bread with low-fat cottage cheese and grated carrots. Then this blog is not for you.)
Well, I got that craving (for the meat and carbs, not the cottage cheese and carrots), and since my town lacks a TGI Friday's (and the stuff you get there is never as good as it sounds on paper, and you pay kind of a lot for not very good food anyway) I decided to make it myself. The meat turned out very flavorful with a distinct note of ginger and cinnamon. Next time I will add some garlic and maybe up the amount of chili because it wasn't spicy at all.

Marinated spare ribs with cheddar mash

serves 2

For the ribs and marinade (adopted from Nigella Lawson's Feast):
600 grams thick spare ribs
1 yellow onion, in pieces
1 star anise
1 small cinnamon stick, in pieces
1 red chili, seeds removed, chopped
A chunk of fresh ginger (about 3 cm), chopped
1/2 lime, zest and juice
1½ tbsp mushroom soy
1 tbsp cold pressed rape seed oil
1 tbsp light syrup
4 tbsp pineapple juice (NOT the juice from canned pineapple!)

Put the meat, onion, anise, cinammon, chili and ginger in double plastic bags. Mix the lime zest and juice, soy, oil, syrup and pineapple juice and pour it over the meat. Seal the bags and rub everything around so that the marinade reaches all parts of the meat.


Ribs ready to be marinated.

Refrigerate for at least 3 hours. When you're ready to cook, get the meat out of the fridge to reach room temperature. Put your oven to 200 degrees C and pour the meat and marinade into a snug fitting pan. Cook for about 1 hour (mine could definitely have been in the oven a while longer because the middle of my piece of meat was a bit too pink for my liking when it comes to pork). Turn the meat over after 30 minutes so that it browns on both sides.

For the cheddar mash, I made mashed potatoes with a bit of butter, but no milk, and a heap of grated cheddar cheese. How much to use depends on how cheesy you want it - for me, there is no such thing as too much cheese. Season with salt, black pepper and nutmeg, and the deed is done!

I also made cole slaw to go with this, flavored with roasted caraway seeds. I also served a simple mixed green salad with blue cheese dressing (grated blue cheese and sour cream plus some freshly ground black pepper).

Seriously, don't plan to get much done after eating this (over than saying stuff like "that was so good" and "please pass the wine"). After this and desert (see next post), we happily sunk into a food coma.