Tartelettes with Brunost

Unless your Norwegian, you're probably sitting in front of the computer now, rubbing your head and wondering what on earth "brunost" is. Well, it's a Norwegian whey cheese, made primarily from goat milk. In Swedish, it's called mesost. Wikipedia tells me that it's sold under the name gjetost in the States.

The flavor is kind of sweet with notes of toffee and vanilla, but still a bit sharp. The ones made with more, or only, goat milk has a more distinct flavor, while those with a mix of cow and goat milk are milder.

We had a bit of brunost laying in the fridge since Markus' Paper Chef adventure. I got the idea of making small quiches/tartelettes with it, and the result was really delicious. I got four tartelettes with a diameter of about 12 centimeters using this recipe. They can be eaten both warm and cold. If you want something to serve with it, I think smoked meat would work really well, especially moose or rain deer. You could use this recipe to make other sorts of cheese quiches (the original recipe uses Swedish classic cheese Västerbotten).



Tartelettes with Brunost

Makes four tartelettes

60 g cold butter, cut in cubes
1½ dl flour
1½ tbsp ice-cold water
100 g brunost (Norwegian goat whey cheese)
1½ dl milk
2 eggs
Salt
Black pepper

Heat the oven to 225°C. Mix the butter and flour, add the water and work quickly into a uniform dough (I used a mixer, but you can do it with your fingers). Press the dough into four tartelette tins (diameter of about 15 cm). You could also make one big quiche. Punch the pressed out dough a little with a fork to keep them from puffing up too much in the oven, or use pie weights if you have those. Blind bake for five minutes. Remove from oven. Grate the cheese and put a quarter of it in each tartelette. Whip the milk, eggs, salt and pepper lightly with a fork. Pour the mixture over the tartelettes. Bake for about 15 minutes, until they are set and the top is a nice golden brown color.

Daring Cooks November: 寿司

...or sushi, as it's usually transcribed. Contrary to what many people believe, sushi is not about raw fish. No, the essence of sushi is the rice, dressed with rice vinegar.

Our hosts this month was Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The bite me kitchen. I must give a special thanks to them: they have spent a lot of time in the forums answering questions, giving advice and encouragement.

The challenge came in four parts:

1. Making perfect sushi rice, and then using it to make:
2. Dragon sushi roll – an avocado covered inside-out rice roll with a tasty surprise filling
3. A decorative spiral roll
4. Nigiri - the litte "pillows" of rice with various toppings

Spiral roll spread out, Jenny adding the final touch: roe.

As I said above, sushi does not have to be about fish. The private Daring Cooks forum, where members can showcase their creations, was filled with people taking the most creative and mouth-watering approaches to sushi. As we love fish and seafood, we decided to go down that more traditional route, but with a regional twist to it.

Since we intended to share the outcome between more than just our four eyes (apparently legend has it that the Japanese eat with their eyes, the Koreans with their stomachs and Chinese with their noses), we made way more than what the challenge called for, and enlisted a cousin of Markus and her boyfriend to help with the eating part. We ended up making:

1. Two dragon rolls (one dragon and one caterpillar) filled with smoked eel and “pressgurka” (a Swedish “fresh pickle” cucumber, recipe below).
2. Two spiral rolls with salmon, shrimp, roe, cucumber, avocado and mango.
3. One California roll (salmon, avocado and cucumber).
   
4. One Japanese coin roll with salmon and pressgurka (we used the pictures on this page to guide us).
5. Plenty of Nigiri with avocado, salmon and smoked shrimp.
   

Trilobite, the ancestor of dragon roll.

Making sushi is something we have wanted to try for several years now, but never found the time to (alright, we had time, but there's something to be said for a good kick in the right direction as well, so thanks again to Audax and Rose for that kick!). We really had a good time making the sushi (apart from all the rice washing and straining, which might be necessary, but no fun waiting for), and will definitely be making it again (otherwise we end up spending a fortune to let someone else have all the fun!). 'Nuf writing, picture time!


Dragon roll, took Markus an hour to carve, an hour I tell you! (An hour of good fun that is.)


Not as scary as the dragon, but equally delicious: the caterpillar roll.


Japanese coin rolls, apparently these look like ancient Japanese currency. Spiral rolls in the background.


Day-after-lunch. We were defeated by the sheer amount of deliciousness the day before, so two rolls made it to our lunch table: one spiral roll and one California roll, along with pressgurka (which works surprisingly well with sushi), gari and wasabi.


Close up on the spiral roll.

Pressgurka
Pressgurka is normally made in thin slices, but thin sticks works better when filling sushi so that's what we used. This is usually served with fish, but also works with steaks and such. We were served something very similar to this, minus the parsley, at a Korean restaurant in Hong Kong. Maybe that's why so many Swedes seem to like East Asian food – the sour, tangy and sweet flavors are very similar in these two kitchens.
Press- is a prefix from the word pressa which means “to press”. It's because the cucumber is pressed down using something heavy before the liquid is poured over the cucumber. Gurka is cucumber. That concludes today's Swedish lesson!

1 cucumber, cut in thin slices for traditional pressgurka, or in thin sticks for use in sushi. If making sticks, remove the seeds from the cucumber before using.
3/4 tsp table salt
1 dl water
2 tbsp vinegar (acetum)
2-3 tbsp sugar
2-3 tbsp finely chopped parsley

Place the cucumber slices or sticks in a suitable bowl. Sprinkle the salt on top and mix around a little bit. Place a plate or something similar on top, the plate should touch the cucumber. Put something heavy on top of the plate, I usually take my mortar and pestle. The weight will press down on the cucumber (hence the name) and make it release liquid. Let it stand with the weight on for about half an hour. In the meantime, mix water, vinegar (acetum) and sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Add the parsley. Pour the mixture on top of the cucumber and mix around a bit. Let it rest for at least half an hour before eating. Best eaten fresh, but it will keep in the fridge for 2–3 days.

The other recipes can be found at the Daring Kitchen – Command HQ of this Blogosphere quadrant.

Fine print a.k.a. blog checking line
The November 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was brought to you by Audax of Audax Artifex and Rose of The Bite Me Kitchen. They chose sushi as the challenge.

Drömtårta

Oh look, another title with weird Swedish characters! Faithful readers might recognize an element of the word: tårta, meaning cake, which we have talked about before. Dröm means dream, and thus the name of this particular cake is "dream cake". I don't know why it got that name - it's certainly not that spectacular, but it's a childhood classic for me. My mom used to make this all the time, and I think this was one of the first baking items I attempted to make on my own. I distinctly remember it being a disaster. The top of the cake was burnt to the point of resembling charcoal, and when I tried to salvage it by peeling away the burnt bits, I found that the bottom of the cake was still runny and uncooked. Lots of tears ensued. That, plus the great 1990 rice-cooking disaster, made me firmly believe that I should stay out of the kitchen. Luckily, things have changed. However, for some reason I still utterly fail every time I try to make omelette. It's like a curse, I tell ya.

Anyway, drömtårta is a Swedish classic. I think these types of cakes are called jelly rolls in English, although this one has nothing to do with jelly. It's a light chocolate flavored sponge-type cake that is filled with vanilla buttercream. You can find perversions of it in grocery stores - always unchilled and with the shelf life of a formalin-stored alien. I haven't dared to look at the ingredient list for one of those, but I'm pretty sure that you can believe it's not butter. Sadly, that seemed to be the only type of "dream cake" that Markus had eaten, prompting him to tell me that he doesn't like it. Well, that needed to be changed! I have successfully gotten him to like spinach (but sadly I have realized that I need to give up on broccoli, as dislike for that seems to be genetic), so how could I fail with a buttercream filled chocolate cake?! That, plus the fact that we had French vanilla buttercream in the freezer (leftover from the triple x macaron feast), prompted me to make this cake a few days ago.

I think it was the first time I made it since that disastrous attempt over 20 years ago. Appearance wise, it left a little to be desired, but it tasted just like moms, with better buttercream. I'll give you the buttercream recipe from the original version as well, but if I were you I would go with the French one, even though it's more labor intensive.



Drömtårta
from Sju sorters kakor (Swedish Cakes and Cookies)

3 eggs
1½ dl sugar
3/4 dl potato starch
2 tbsp cacao powder
1 tsp baking powder

Set the oven to 250°C.
Whip the eggs and sugar until the mixture is light and airy.
Mix the flour and baking powder, sift the cacao and add the dry ingredients. Mix well.
Place a parchment paper on a cookie sheet with higher edges. Spread the batter out as evenly as possible (this is where I apparently went wrong, judging from the appearance of my cake). You want it to be quite thin (~3 mm) as it rises a bit when it bakes.
Bake in the middle of the oven for 5 minutes.
Take a piece of parchment paper and sprinkle it lightly but evenly with sugar.
Transfer the cake upside down to the sugar coated paper. It's not as tricky as it sounds, as the cake will be stuck to the parchment paper that has been in the oven. Just be quick! Peel of the parchment paper carefully. Let the cake cool before filling.

Traditional buttercream filling

150 g butter
2 dl confectioner's sugar
2 tsp vanilla sugar
1 egg yolk

Beat the butter and sugar until the mixture is fluffy. Add vanilla sugar and stir in the egg yolk. Mix well.

French vanilla buttercream
Note! this recipe yields more buttercream than you need for filling the cake. It can be frozen.

80 g egg yolks (about 4)
½ vanilla bean
60 g water (60 ml)
125 g sugar
250 g unsalter butter, at room temperature.

Whip the egg yolks until they are light colored and airy.
Split the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds and put them in a small pan. Add water and sugar, and bring to a boil. Use a wet pastry brush to brush down the sides of the pan, this will remove any sugar crystals that have stuck there. Boil until a sugar thermometer reads 117°C.
Add the sugar mixture to the egg yolks, while whisking constantly.
Continue whisking until the mixture is cool. Add the butter little by little, and whisk until the buttercream is light and airy.

To assemble the cake:
Let the cake cool completely before filling it. Make sure your buttercream is at room temperature. Spread the filling over the whole cake and roll it up. Wrap the cake in plastic and store it in the fridge for a few hours before cutting it. The whole cake can be frozen, but note that if you use previously frozen buttercream (like I did), you can not freeze it again.

Smörgåstårta

I know: that's a lot of weird looking characters in the title... must be something Swedish. Why, yes it is! There are a few modern Swedish loan words in the English language, ombudsman is one of them, and smorgasbord is another. The “Smörgåstårta” is closely related to the smörgåsbord (as we write it, since we have three more letters than you do). It's basically a cake topped with a smorgasbord!

Naturally you don't want to make it a regular cake (spongecake and whipped cream/fondant), since you're topping it with savory stuff, so the base takes some creativity to work.

Looking back at the word “smörgåsbord” it's actually a compound consisting of “smörgås” (open top sandwich), and “bord” (table). I guess the original meaning is a large variety of toppings for an open top sandwich served on a separate table. The word “smörgåstårta” is also a compound consisting of “smörgås” (again) and “tårta” (cake, etymologically the same word as tort). This holds the key to making the cake base: bread!

Rather than baking the bread ourselves, we brought two large loves of toast bread, cut them down to even squares, and assembled them to form a large sheet cake. To “glue” the layers of bread together we used a filling made of spiced cheese and crayfish. The spiced cheese is a bit of a specialty (I doubt you can find anything similar if you don't know where Boxholm is located), but it's basically regular cheese that has been aged with caraway and cloves.

The sheet cake (we ended up with three layers) is covered in a mix of mayonnaise and crème fraîche, and then decorated with whatever you want on it.

Smörgåstårta
A lot of sliced toast bread
Mayonnaise
Crème Fraîche

Spiced cheese and crayfish filling
150 g crayfish tails
50 g aged spiced cheese, grated
1 tbsp dill, finely chopped
1 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp crème fraîche
1 tsp dijon mustard
½ tsp caraway seeds, ground (use a mortar and pestle)

Garnish
Shrimps
Ham (rolls)
Cucumber
Grapes
Smoked salmon
Roe
Lemon slices
... you can basically have whatever you like/think looks tasty.



This post is horribly late, I had some trouble finding the recipe for this write-up. We enjoyed it on Jenny's birthday more than a month ago... If you ever have the chance to try this Swedish delicacy, do not hesitate, it is truly delicious!

Kräftskiva!

As we call the legendary Swedish crayfish parties.

Around this time of the year people in Sweden like to fish out fiercely armed and armored crustaceans from rivers and lakes, boil them with crown dill, dress up in silly hats, drink lots of seasoned moonshine, sing songs and painstakingly disembowel the poor critters.

In other words: have a general good time.

We decided to have our own little private kräftskiva. As long as we don't have to boil them alive ourselves, and don't have to wear the silly hats (ok, we just forgot to buy/make them this year), it's really nice!

As you have probably guessed by now, crayfish is a must-have, as is the snaps (but I don't think that counts, as it is a must-have for any Swedish seasonal party). Other than that, it's nice to have Västerbottenpaj (a pie made with Västerbotten cheese), bread, salad, beer and lots of wet wipes.


Västerbottenpaj

As we decided not to boil our own crayfish and buy ready made pie, the only thing we really made for this (ok, we didn't distill our own snaps or brew our own beer, or grow our own salad, but you know what I mean) was the bread. Now crayfish needs a special bread, and Jan Hedh recommends a variant of Zopf, shaped like a crayfish and seasoned with dill. Basically just add some dill (we used frozen, but crown should work better) during kneading, shape it like a crayfish and sprinkle chili powder (for the color, we used Ancho style) and dill seeds on top before baking.

Now all you need to do is figure out how to get inside the shells of the main theme... for us it comes naturally after years of practice, and we meant to shoot a “Crayfish anatomy 101” photo series for you, but decided to enjoy ourselves instead. We'll happily answer any questions you might have in the commentary section though.


Can you tell which one's bread and which one's real?

A taste of Gotland

250 kilometers on a bike, loads of sea and sun, sleeping in a tent 5 meters from the sea, grilled sausages eaten while sitting on a pier in the sunset, using the ocean as a wine cooler, stunning nature and loads of laughter. Those are some memories that I take with me from my two week vacation at Gotland with my mum. Gotland sits to the east of Sweden in the Baltic sea, a three hour ferry ride away. Extremely popular with tourists in the summer, but a whole other place, I have been told, off season. The nature of Gotland is very beautiful and often dramatic, as the photos below will show.







Being a foodie, I of course savored the regional treats of this island. One notable feature of the Gotlandic landscape is the sheep - loads of them, gracing huge pastures with traditional farm houses. So, lamb is a given to eat while on Gotland. Smoked fish is another "must have". Recently, black truffle has been found on Gotland (more here and here in Swedish). Buying a whole truffle was not feasible neither logistically nor financially, but I did get a jar of sea salt mixed with small pieces of black truffle to use on top of potatoes au gratin, pasta, risotto...

But maybe the most famous Gotlandic dish is a desert: saffranspannkaka (saffron pancake). Now, this dish has very little to do with American pancakes or their Swedish cousins. The Gotlandic saffron pancake is a kind of rice pudding, flavored with almonds. And saffron, of course. Until recently, saffron has been quite cheap here. Less than 2 USD would get you half a gram of saffron, enough for a big batch of traditional Swedish saffron buns for Christmas, or a large pot of saffron infused seafood risotto. But today at the grocery store I was told that there is something wrong with this year's saffron harvest, and the price had increased dramatically, to almost 5 USD for a packet of 0.5 grams. I hesitated whether to buy it, but decided that it was worth it, just to celebrate a lovely time on Gotland.

Traditionally, saffron pancake is served with dewberry jam and lightly whipped cream. If you can't find dewberry jam, blackberry or raspberry works as well.



Saffranspannkaka from Gotland

10-12 servings

For the rice porridge:
4 dl water
2 dl round grain rice
½ tsp salt
1-2 tbsp butter
6 dl milk
1 small cinnamon stick

Later:
4 eggs
1 dl sugar
50 g almonds, finely chopped
0,5 g saffron
(1 tbsp Amaretto)
(extra milk or cream)

Start by making the rice porridge. Combine water, rice, salt and butter in a large pot. Bring to a boil, and boil with the lid on for ten minutes. Watch closely, this overboils easily! Add milk and the cinnamon stick, stir and bring to a boil again. Lower the heat to the very lowest setting, and let it simmer slowly for about 40-60 minutes, until all the water is gone. Once again, watch for overboiling! Stir once in a while. I have yet to make rice porridge without some of it getting stuck in the bottom of the pot; just stir carefully as not to mix in any "well done" parts. When the porridge is done, let it cool to at least room temperature (this takes a while).

When the porridge has cooled down, set the oven to 175°C. Butter a large pie tin or a rectangular baking dish. Mix the cooled porridge with eggs, sugar, chopped almonds and saffron. A tip to get more flavor out of saffron is to mix it with something alcoholic. I used about 1 tablespoon of Amaretto (almond liqueur) to enhance the almond flavor. Just mix the saffron and the liqueur using a mortar and pestle (bashing the saffron threads also enhances their flavor), and then add it to the batter. If your porridge is very dense, you can add some extra milk or cream to make it more spreadable. Spread the batter into your buttered dish and put in the oven for about 30 minutes until the pancake has a nice light golden brown color. Serve it lukewarm with lightly whipped cream and dewberry jam.

Crisp bread for Midsummer

Happy Midsummer dear readers!

Midsummer is a Big Deal in Sweden. For a picture perfect midsummer, you should be in the countryside somewhere, preferably at an island in the archipelago, where you eat an extravagant yet traditional midsummer buffet. Dancing around the midsummer pole is not mandatory unless you're under the age of 13 - then your mom undoubtedly will drag you off to dance around in a circle under the lead of an old lady wearing a traditional national dress and a man playing the accordion. The sun is of course always shining, you have made a beautiful flower wreath to wear in your hair, and everything is just so Swedish.

Can you detect a hint of bitterness there? Yeah, for a while when I was a sulky teenager I refused to celebrate midsummer, due to the fact that it never turned out to be so perfect and fun. Nowadays, we celebrate with friends who have the same attitude: let's bring some people together to eat, drink and have fun, without any prestige.

But there will of course be traditional Swedish midsummer food: pickled herring of different kinds served with new potatoes, sour cream and chives, and in the evening a BBQ. With the herring it's common to eat Swedish crisp bread (knäckebröd) with butter and sharp cheese. While loads of different varieties of crisp bread are available in every grocery store (if you're abroad you can find it at IKEA), making it yourself will score you loads of credit among your friends! And contrary to what many people think, it isn't difficult at all. You just need a good rolling pin, time and patience.

There are many different types of crisp bread, using different flours, spices and other flavorings. The ones I ended up making today are fairly traditional, made with rye flour and flavored with caraway. I love crisp bread with loads of different seeds and grains, but for these I just added a bit of flax-seed.

There's no need for the dough to rest, but on the other hand, it won't matter if you leave it for half an hour or so while doing something else. If you tire of rolling out all the bread at the same time, any remaining dough can be left in the fridge for up to a week.


Home made crisp bread stacked high.

Swedish crisp bread
(adapted from Jorden runt på 80 degar by Annica Triberg & Albert Håkansson)

50 g fresh yeast
4 dl water at 37°C
2 tbsp neutral oil
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp caraway seeds (you could also use fennel seeds or anise)
6 dl rye flour
1 dl flax-seeds
6 dl wheat flour

Place a baking sheet in the oven and set it to 250°C.

Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add oil, salt and caraway. Mix in the rest of the ingredients and work into a uniform, but not very firm, dough.

Take pieces of the dough about the size of a golf ball and roll them out very thinly using plenty of flour. The bread won't be perfectly round - that's what makes it look home made! It's easiest to do the rolling out directly onto a piece of parchment paper. I can usually fit to pieces of bread onto one parchment paper.

Transfer the parchment paper onto the very hot baking sheet and bake for about 5 minutes. Watch closely - the thin bread burns easily! Let it cool uncovered on a wire rack.

Keep rolling out pieces of bread and bake them, continuing until you're out of dough.

Crisp bread should be stored in airtight containers, away from heat and humidity. If it goes soft, you can crisp it up by heating it carefully in the oven or even in a toaster.

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. :-)

Räkmacka

The “räckmacka” holds a special place among the Swedish traditional dishes. It is frequently associated with the high-but-not-top life, and has of late slipped into the not-quite-every-day luxury segment of the middle class. The word “räckmacka” is decomposed into “räk-” and “macka” which means “shrimp“ (as first element in a compound, otherwise it's “räka”) and “open top sandwich” respectively. This pretty much says it all, without giving away the vast quantities of mayonnaise that's usually associated with it. There's also usually some egg on it, but since I don't like egg, we tend to keep it simple.

So, for this you need:
2 rounds of semi-sweet Wheat Bread
Mayonnaise
~750g Shrimp (unpeeled)
2 slices of Lemon
4 small paper-and-toothpick Swedish flags (optional)
6 twigs of Dill

Our rounds of bread were a bit to large, so we had to cut them down. They should be about the size of a side plate. Peel the shrimps (or buy them peeled, but since they are the main source of flavor, I went for the masochistic path). Use a pastry bag to cover the whole of the bread with mayonnaise, and then arrange the shrimps so that they form a mountain and hide the mayonnaise pastry bag work. Cut two slices of lemon and arrange them artistically on top of the shrimp mountain. decorate with the flags and the dill.

The beauty of a räkmacka is fairly well measured by the height, and no ones going to notice if there's some extra mayo in the middle (wink, wink)...

If the directions were unclear, just look at the picture... I haven't got time to write a thousand words... :-)


Two beautiful räckmackor (plural form). Probably the best way to enjoy shrimp!

P.S. Oh, this was really written by me (Markus), but Jenny started the post by uploading the pictures, so she's probably listed as author. D.S.

Semlor

Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, which means that us Swedes ate semlor. A semla is a cardamom-flavored bun filled with whipped cream and almond paste. They are very popular; according Wikipedia, a Swede will eat on avarage five store-bought semlor a year (me, I have only had one so far this year). All bakeries and grocery stores will sell them, even places like 7-Eleven does, and even though traditionally just eaten on Shrove Tuesday (before Lent), nowadays you can find semlor on sale from Christmas up until Easter. The quality varies vastly though, and every year the local paper will do a test of the different bakeries' offerings and tell you where to go for the best semla in town. Another way of guaranteeing good quality is to make your own, which we decided to do this year.

First, you need to make the almond paste for the filling. You could buy it ready-made but making our own is easy. Now, some people don't like almond paste and will fill their semla with vanilla custard or jam instead. I really don't get this, so let's move on. To make your own almond paste you need equal parts of blanched, peeled almonds and white sugar. We used 250 grams of each which yielded (surprise!) about 500 grams of almond paste. We really don't need that much for making semlor, so I see an awful lot of almond paste-related baking coming up. It keeps in the fridge for quite a while though, so no worries.
So, when you have blanched and peeled your almonds, you chuck them in with the sugar in a food processor and work it until everything is very finely chopped. If you have an almond grinder you really want to use that for the almonds (before mixing them with the sugar), because a food processor really doesn't make them finely ground enough, but it still works. At this point the almond-sugar stuff will mostly be grainy, the paste part comes later. Pack the paste-to-be very firmly in clingfilm/plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to firm up, at least over night.

Now, on to the buns. This recipe will give you seven buns, and one semla is very filling, but they do keep for a few days (unfilled, of course) and you can freeze them. For the buns, you need:

½ egg, at room temperature (use the other half for brushing the buns)
25 g fresh yeast (in Sweden we have a kind for sweet doughs, use that if you have something similar)
50 g butter
1½ dl milk
Pinch of salt
½ tsp ground cardamom
½ dl white sugar
~5 dl flour
1/4 tsp hartshorn salt (ammonium carbonate)

Crumble up the yeast in a bowl. Over low heat, melt the butter, add the milk and let it reach 37 degrees C. Add a little of the butter-milk mix over the yeast, and stir until the yeast is dissolved. Add the rest, and then the salt, cardamom, sugar and egg. Stir in the flour and hartshorn salt, a little at the time, until everything is incorporated. The dough will be very sticky at this point, but after rising it will be extremely easy to work with! Cover the bowl with a piece of cloth and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Put your oven to 225 degrees C. Get the dough on to a clean, lightly floured surface and knead the dough until all the air bubbles are gone. Cut the dough into seven equal parts and roll them into buns. Place them on a parchment covered baking sheet, cover with a piece of cloth and let them rest for another 30 minutes.
Brush the buns with lightly beaten egg. Bake them for 8-10 minutes, and allow them to cool completely before filling them.

To make the actual semla, you cut off the top part of the bun. The lid, as we call it, should be very thin:



After this is done, you hollow out the bun to make a hole in it for the almond paste filling. Thus:



Save the crumbs you get from hollowing out the bun, 'cause you will need those now. Get the almond paste out of the fridge. Now I don't have any proportions for this part, you just have to feel your way around this. What you do is that you mix the almond paste with part of the crumbles and a little milk to make the actual paste. It should taste like almonds, not like bread crumbs or milk, but you need the milk and crumbs to bind it together. It should have a soft consistency, but not so that it's running all over the place.
Whip the cream until soft peaks are formed. Fill the holes with almond paste (about 2 tablespoons) and top with whipped cream (if you want it to look fancy you could pipe it). Put the lid on top and sift a bit of confectioner's sugar over it. Enjoy!

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!

“Swedish” pancakes

Today is Thursday, and on such an occasion the traditional Swedish food to be had is pea soup and pancakes (if possible accompanied by a glass of punsch). It's not a very strictly observed tradition, but sometimes it's nice to have it. As pea soup is a fairly time consuming dish, we tend to stay with just the pancakes, so that will be today's recipe.

In Sweden we have two different kinds of pancakes, neither of which looks like the American ones. The one we made for dinner today is the thin ones (the thick ones aren't really traditional Thursday's food). The reason I'm writing the story is that pancakes are sort of my territory... once upon a time when we hadn't know each other for very long, I proposed that we have pancakes for dinner, Jenny, having grown up on school cafeteria pancakes, was understandably reluctant. I offered to make them the way it's been handed down to me from my father (in my world, making pancakes is a curiously masculine activity), and she agreed (having abstained from pancakes for a long time, she thought it time to give it a try). Long story short, I made pancakes, Jenny now likes pancakes (at least the ones I make), and we're married (although that hopefully doesn't have much to do with the pancakes).

So, to make the pancakes you need, for every egg:
1 dl flour
2 dl milk
~5-10 g butter
salt

To serve two, use three eggs if you're not really hungry and four if you are. The butter usually amounts to a hefty dollop, so I'm just guessing on the weight of it.

Start by heating up a frying pan and put the butter in it to melt (some will stay in the pan, so again, the exact amount of butter is iffy). Beat all the flour and half the milk into a thick, smooth batter (add some more of the milk if it's too heavy to beat). Add the eggs and the melted butter. Beat it smooth. Add the rest of the milk and salt and whisk it.

Pour the batter into the pan so it covers about ½ of the pan's area. Swivel and turn the pan until it's evenly coated, or until the batter sets (whichever comes first, the batter sets fast). Keep an eye on it until the underside is a lovely light leathery tan, and/or small craters start to appear on the surface. Flip it and let it get some color on the other side as well. Repeat until out of batter.


Stack of thin pancakes

Since it takes a long time to make these (I spent more than ½ an hour today making four eggs worth of pancakes), you can entertain yourself by learning how to flip them without a turner. It's entirely possible to throw them into the air from the pan and catch them with their bellies up, and fun too!

The first one is usually quite unhealthy, having soaked up all the excess butter in the pan, but I really like it anyway, and consider it chef's privilege. The second one is good for gauging the salinity. Add some salt if necessary, the rest of the batch is still to be made.

The traditional condiments for pancakes is whipped cream and jam, but maple syrup, fresh berries, fruit and honey works as well. just pour some in the middle and roll it up like a crepe. Come to think of it, they probably have more in common with crepes than pancakes... but the Swedish word “pannkaka” literally translates into pancake, so I'm going to stay with it. If there's leftovers you can use them as crepes. Just make some nice filling, roll them up and bake them in the oven with some grated cheese on top.

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.