Absolute(ly) Unique Visitor(s)

Yesterday, our all-time “Absolute Unique Visitors” counter over at Google Analytics passed the 200 mark! Our typical visitor is still living in Uppsala and uses Firefox on a Windows machine.

Also, yesterday was when our absolutely unique real life weekend guest left, leaving a larger void than we would have thought. We had the pleasure of watching this distinguished gentleman while his humans were away. His name's Whisky, and he's the kindest and sweetest cat I've ever met.

Breakfast whatchamacallit

Oatmeal porridge is a traditional Swedish breakfast, and something my mother eats almost every day, as did her parents. Personally I can't stand its weird consistency and mealy flavour. We had to make it in home ec class in school, and to "make it more appealing" we were allowed to put like one tiny spoon of jam or applesauce on top. Yeah, still not appealing, thanks. Or like when we made our own müesli, which mostly consisted of oats, but could be "sweetened" with one teaspoon of raisins. Do you know how many raisins you can fit in a teaspoon? The anwer is about three, which is not nearly enough to make "müesli" made of dry and flavourless oats any sweeter. Now I'm digressing into rants about the making-people-hate-cooking-disaster which was home ec, so let's get back on track.

My distaste for oatmeal porridge - and dry oat-based müesli - aside, I do like to put oats in other stuff, like bread and cookies. And when I found a recipe for oatmeal breakfast clafoutis over at Clotilde's Chocolate & Zucchini, I was very intrigued, especially since the recipe contained the stuff that goes so well with oats in cookies: brown sugar, raisins and cinnamon.

I have never eaten a real clafoutis (but I need to, since I hear they are traditionally made with my favourite berry: cherries), and I don't know how I would categorize this dish. It's not a chewy bar, it's not a cake. My first thought when taking a bite was that the consistency was similar to that of "ugnspannkaka" (which is a traditional Swedish thick pancake made in the oven), but I'll go along with Clotilde and call it clafoutis. It's a bit too sweet for me to be a breakfast dish, but it's great as part of a brunch or, as I ate it today, a late morning snack together with a cup of tea. You can use different fruits and berries, dried or fresh (Clotilde's recipe has apples), and also add unsalted nuts.



Oatmeal-raisin and banana clafoutis
Adapted from Chocolate & Zucchini

2 3/4 cups oats (not the quick-cooking kind)
2/3 cups brown sugar
3/4 cups raisins
1½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp cardamom
Pinch of nutmeg
Pinch of salt
3 1/3 cup milk
2 eggs
1 banana, thinly sliced

Combine the oats, sugar, raisins and spices in a bowl. Whisk together the milk and eggs. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Pour the mixture into a lightly oiled baking dish, about 22*33 centimeters (9*13 inches). Place the banana slices on top. Bake in a 180°C oven for 55-60 minutes until the center is set and firm to the touch. Eat while still a bit warm.

I got 12 squares out of this. I saved one in the fridge for tomorrow morning, and wrapped the rest individually in foil and froze them. They can be thawed in the fridge overnight and then reheated carefully in the oven next morning.

Rhubarb and strawberry love

There was both rhubarb and strawberries left over from last night's main course and desert. Rhubarb and strawberries are a match made in heaven, but the question was how to marry them. I pondered making the usual crumble at first, but then remembered a blackberry tarte from my favourite Swedish food magazine, Allt Om Mat, that I made a few years ago. The original recipe in Swedish can be found here - do make it, it won't disappoint you. A crispy crust with a creamy almost cheesecake-y filling and then loads of plump blackberries, topped off with some almonds. Yum!

I decided to make that tarte using strawberries and rhubarb instead of blackberries. Problem was, the original recipe called for crème fraiche and quark, of which there was neither in the fridge. But there was plain yoghurt and cream cheese though, so that's what I used instead. I was a bit nervous about the outcome (as always when it comes to kitchen chemistry), but the result was great: a perfect non-soggy crust and a creamy, light and juicy filling where the rhubarb and strawberries had made sweet sweet love (there's a mental image for ya!).



Creamy rhubarb-strawberry tarte

Makes one round tart, approx. 22 cm in diameter

Crust:
3 dl flour
2 tbsp powdered sugar
125 g butter, cold
1 egg yolk
1-2 tbsp ice cold water

Filling:
3 eggs
1 dl cream cheese
1 dl plain yoghurt
1 dl sugar
80 g almond paste (if you use store bought you need to grate it first, I used home made which was very crumbly to begin with)
1,5 dl rhubarb, cut in ½ cm pieces
1,5 dl strawberries, cut in smaller pieces

Set the oven to 200°C. Mix the flour, powdered sugar and butter together quickly in a food processor. Add the water and the egg yolk, and work together into a dough. Start with one tablespoon water and add the other if the dough won't come together. Press the dough out into a springform with about 22 cm diameter.

Whisk the eggs, cream cheese, yoghurt, sugar and almond paste together into a lump-free batter. Pour it into the crust. Put the rhubarb and strawberry pieces into the batter, try sticking them in so they don't poke out too much. Bake for about 40 minutes until the filling is set. Allow to cool before serving.

Ginger fluff & Co

As promised in this post, desert is coming up! We finally got around to making one of my old favorites, couldn't give you a source though, because rather than finding this in a recipe somewhere, it wound itself into the crevices of my brain in a fit of creativity. Haven't seen it anywhere, but please tell me if you recognize it from somewhere!

So, to make this you need:
~4 lumps (sugar cube sized) Jellied Ginger
4 tbsp Syrup from the above
2 dl Crème Fraîche
some snack style Pistachios (the salted, roasted ones)
Vanilla ice cream

Combine the jellied ginger, the syrup and the Crème Fraîche in a blender and mix it. It usually ends up being somewhat runny and more like lightly whipped cream, but this time it turned into something more mousse-like. I know it's hell to peel and chop the pistachios, but well worth it, and you don't need that much anyway. For serving: scoop up some ice cream, top it with ginger fluff and sprinkle with chopped pistachios.

The hot, sweet taste of the ginger is mellowed by the slight acidity of the Cremè Fraîche, the salt in the pistachios bring the tasted forward in a good way, and depending on which ice cream you use this can really be a cool experience. We, of course, used home made vanilla ice cream – which is the best way of making sure it's good... :-)


Not all that photogenic, but nonetheless delicious!

Berries in fizzy jelly

So after the full-of-spring-feelings pork tenderloin with rhubarb and sage, an equally "springy" desert was needed. I kept leafing through the Jamie Oliver cookbook and found a recipe for summer fruit, elderberry and prosecco jelly that seemed to do the trick. And suddenly it dawned on me what to do with the bottle of strawberry flavoured "cider" (aka alcopop) that a friend of mine left in our fridge after our housewarming party a long time ago. She didn't want to drink it then, no-one has wanted to drink it since (thanks, but no thanks!), but hey, why not put it in the jelly instead of prosecco?! It's sweet, fizzy and tastes (kind of) like strawberries, so it had to work, right?

I had some problems getting the jelly to set, so I actually had to add more gelatin. I will give you my original recipe first, but also give you instructions on how to add more gelatin if you're having the same problem I did. Also, of course you don't have to use some kind of weird strawberry flavoured alcopop called "Strawberry Desire". You want it to be a bit sweet and definitely fizzy, but do experiment. And remember that if you go down the sparkling wine or alcopop route, this dish will contain alcohol...

Berries in strawberry-elderflower jelly
(adapted from Jamie Oliver's Happy Days with the Naked Chef)

Makes 3 rather large portions

2 leaves of gelatin
3/4 dl elderflower cordial (undiluted!)
1 bottle (33 cl) of strawberry-flavoured alcopop (or sparkling wine, or another fizzy drink)
One handful each of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries

Divide the berries equally into three bowls. Put them in the fridge, where your chosen fizzy drink also should be waiting. Soak the gelatin in cold water for about 10 minutes. Pour the elderflower cordial into a bowl, and place that over a pot of simmering water. Squeeze out the excess water from the gelatin and add it to the elderflower coridal. Stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved; it should be a syrupy consistency. Let it cool at room temperature for a few minutes. Pour the cold fizzy drink over the elderflower liquid and stir carefully so all the bubbles are kept. Get the bowls of berries out of the fridge, and pour the liquid over the berries. Some berries will float up to the surface, use your finger to poke them down. Let the jelly set in the fridge. According to Jamie it will take an hour. Mine still hadn't even begin to set after two hours (see rescue-plan below) so do make this well in advance - you don't want to serve half-set jelly... Actually this can be kept in the fridge for a few days so to be on the safe side you can make it days before serving it. To get the jelly out of the bowls, dip them in hot water, place the plate upside down over the bowl, turn quickly, and hopefully the jelly will slide out of the bowl and on to the plate. Ideally it will still be "bowl-shaped". On of ours collapsed, so be careful.

What to do if your jelly doesn't set at all:
Place one or two leaves of gelatin in cold water (I used two to be on the safe side, maybe one would have been enough). Heat up some elderflower cordial (I used a bit less than half a deciliter) in a water bath as explained above, add the gelatin and stir until dissolved. Pour all the contents of your unset jelly bowls into a pitcher (to allow for easy pouring back), add the extra elderflower+gelatin mixture and stir carefully. Pour the content back into the bowls, place them in the fridge, wait and keep your fingers crossed...
Mine set beautifully after this, but it took another two-three hours.

Also, I know some people are uncomfortable with gelatin (I'm a bit uncomfortable too to tell you the truth, but as long as I don't think about it, it works...). There are vegetarian substitutions like agar-agar, but I have never used it so I can't tell you how it would work in this desert.

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.

Creamy seafood soup

I just love it when you have stuff sitting around in the freezer/fridge/pantry that needs to be used up, so you start experimenting, and the result is something as delicious as this evening's seafood soup. The base is the stock left over from making Moules à Marinière a while ago, so this recipe depends on that you have made that, strained the liquid and saved it in the freezer. If you have some other seafood-based stock (crayfish, lobster, shrimp) that would also work, I'm sure.

I feel kind of bad about the ridiculous amounts of cream that went into the soup, but the open carton had expired yesterday and needed to go into something, so it was either this or a desert (ok, desert is coming up in a later post). You can of course exchange the cream for a low fat equivalent. For the seafood part, we used shrimp and seithe, but feel free to play around. Just make sure to use a firm fish that won't fall apart when cooking, and please try to think of sustainability when choosing your fish! WWF (as in wildlife conservation, not wrestling!) has lists of which fish has healthy populations and can be eaten with a good conscience - for the US see here, in Swedish see here.


Hey, the soup kind of matches our kitchen cabinet doors!

Creamy seafood soup

1 small yellow onion
1 fennel
½ tbsp butter
3 dl blue mussel stock from this recipe
1 tbsp tomato puré
½ dl dry vermouth
2½ dl cream
Pinch of ancho chili powder
300 g saithe (coley)
750 g unpeeled shrimp (about 3 dl peeled)

Chop up the onion and fennel. Melt the butter in a big pot, throw in the vegetables and fry on rather low heat until they are getting soft but not any colour. Add the mussel stock, tomato puré and vermouth, bring to a boil and let it reduce for a little while. Whip the cream lightly and stir it in together with a pinch of ancho chili. Bring to a slow simmer. Add the saithe and let it simmer for a minute or two, then add the peeled shrimp. Cook for another 4-5 minutes (we cooked everything for about six minutes, then the saithe was perfect but the shrimp a slight bit overcooked so add those after the fish). We served with the green stuff from the fennel on top, it adds nice colour but no real taste. For colour and flavour, decorate with dill instead. We didn't think it needed any salt or pepper, but let your taste decide.