The Daring Bakers are not baking in November

...but don't worry, this just means that we deep-fried stuff instead!

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

My only contact with cannoli before this month's Daring Bakers challenge has been through the (often unfunny) sitcom "Everybody loves Raymond", where cannoli seems to be a favorite of the dad's. I had no idea how it was made and what was in it. Here's what our host Lisa Michele told us about this dessert:

Cannoli are known as Italian-American pastries, although the origin of cannoli dates back to Sicily, specifically Palermo, where it was prepared during Carnevale season, and according to lore, as a symbol of fertility. The cannoli is a fried, tube-shaped pastry shell (usually containing wine) filled with a creamy amalgamation of sweetened ricotta cheese, chocolate, candied fruit or zest, and sometimes nuts.

The challenge had a lot of leeway: no need to make tube-shaped cannoli, no need for deep-frying, no need for sweetened ricotta filling. At first I had planned to make one batch of traditional cannoli, just to see how it tastes, but as the reveal date crept closer, it became clear that there wasn't enough time for finding cannoli tube substitutes and making ricotta. So we just went completely untraditional and made a sort of Italian-British fusion version: Banoffee Cannolipoleons!

The inspiration is of course the classical Banoffee pie. We made flat, deep fried disks from the cannoli dough (ok, not only disks, we also went a bit crazy and started playing with our animal shaped cookie cutters to make bunnies and elephants!), which were then stacked with the traditional banoffee pie ingredients: bananas, dulce de leche (boiled condensed milk), and whipped cream.

This was extremely rich but very yummy! The flavor of the cannoli reminded us of traditional ice-cream cones/wafers, but it was a bit more crunchy. We have a lot of leftover cannoli, so in the near future we'll probably experiment with different fillings, including traditional cannoli filling but in the cannolipoleon form.

This was a fun and quite easy challenge, although it took some trial runs before the deep-frying yielded perfect results. We chronicle some of our cannoli-making experiences in the recipe below. The full, original recipe can be found at the Daring Kitchen recipe archive. Thank you Lisa Michele for a fun challenge!

Banoffee Cannolipoleons

This recipe yielded us 25 round, flat cannoli (diameter 5 cm), 7 bunnies and 3 elephants!

For the shells:
125 g all-purpose flour
14 g sugar
2,5 g unsweetened baking cocoa powder
0,6 g (1/4 tsp) ground cinnamon
1.5 g salt
21 g vegetable or olive oil
2,5 g white wine vinegar
Approx. 30 grams sweet Marsala or any white or red wine you have on hand*

You can do the dough in a stand mixer/food processor or by hand, we made it by hand.
Combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, and salt. Stir in the oil, vinegar, and enough of the wine to make a soft dough. We had to add a bit more juice (wine) in order to get a soft, uniform dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and well blended, about 2 minutes. Shape the dough into a ball. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the fridge, from 2 hours to overnight.

*We didn't have any suitable wine at home (we were not cranking open a bottle of Amarone for this), so we followed the suggestions on this page. Instead of grape juice, we used lingonberry juice (keeping it local), and substituted the brandy with cheap whiskey. If you don't want to use alcohol at all, Lisa Michelle suggests cranberry, pomegranate or apple juice. If using only juice, you might need to add a bit more vinegar to make the dough acidic enough to relax the gluten strands.

After letting the dough rest, use either a rolling pin or a pasta machine to make the dough paper thin. We used our pasta machine and it worked really well - see this picture:


Paper thin dough coming out of the pasta machine.

The dough is stubborn at first, but keep working it and it will give in. Use cookie cutters or a knife to cut the dough into the desired shapes. Dock the cannolis lightly, this will keep them from ballooning up in the hot oil.

Heat vegetable oil in a heavy sauce pan (or use your deep fryer if you have one). We used about 4 deciliters of oil. Heat the oil to 175-190°C. Other Daring Bakers' experiences says that it's better to use hotter oil. Deep fry the cannoli, about two at the time. They should be golden brown and blistered. Place the deep-fried cannoli on paper to get rid of excess oil. Let them cool.
To get the cannoli to hold their shape while deep-frying, Markus gave this kind of macabre tip: "Hold them down beneath the surface of the hot oil using the skimmer until there's no more bubbles. It's kind of like drowning someone". So, here's our cannoli bunnies drowned in hot oil:


Maybe an idea for suicidal bunnies?



When you have fried all your cannoli and it has cooled, it's time to make the banoffee cannolipoleons. For this you need:

1 can condensed milk
Bananas, sliced
Whipped cream

Place the can of condensed milk unopened in a pot of water. Bring to a boil, and let it boil for 2-3 hours, refilling the pot with water when necessary. The water should always cover the can. When it has boiled, the condensed milk will have turned in to creamy, caramel-tasting dulce de leche. Let the can cool completely before opening. Since boiling and cooling takes a while, you might want to do this the day before.

Stack banana slices, cannoli disks, dulce de leche and whipped cream to make cannolipoleons. By the way, this was how the above-pictured cannolipoleon looked when we had dug our spoons into it... Yummy!

The best broccoli

This is an amazingly good broccoli dish that originates from Ina Garten, aka The Barefoot Contessa. I found it over at Amateur Gourmet. Ina Garten seems to be a big name in cooking over in the States, but none of her books is available in Swedish as far as I know.

This is a (for me) completely new way of cooking broccoli: roasting it in the oven, which makes it crunchy and flavorful. None of the off-putting squishyness of over-cooked broccoli, just good, concentrated flavor. The lemon juice, garlic and parmesan doesn't make things worse...

The first time I made this, I stayed close to the original. This time I needed to get rid of a big bunch of broccoli (I'm working elsewhere the coming week, and the only place that broccoli might go while I'm gone is into the trash, which is a waste, so I'm making lunch boxes), but I didn't have any pine nuts or basil, so I skipped those. It was good anyway.

I persuaded Markus to try a small piece, but he didn't like broccoli even in this fashion. Sigh. Well, more for me!

PS. Sorry for the crappy picture, I took it straight into the lunch box in bad lighting.



The best roasted broccoli
adapted from Ina Garten and the Amateur Gourmet

A big bunch of broccoli
3 tbsp olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
Juice from ½ small lemon
1 tbsp olive oil
½ dl freshly grated parmesan
(2 tbsp toasted pine nuts)
(2 tbsp fresh basil, julienned)

Heat the oven to 125°C. Cut the broccoli into florets, not too small. Place them on a cookie sheet covered with parchment or foil. Toss with olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic. Place in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the top of some florets are browned. I only left mine in for about 15 minutes (unreliable oven), so watch them carefully so they don't get too roasted.
Remove from the oven, add lemon juice, olive oil and parmesan (plus pine nuts and basil, if using). Toss around a bit and enjoy!

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.

I won!

Yay! My Chèvre mousse with beetroot, deep fried pasta and peanut butter caramel, has been selected as the winner of Paper Chef 46 by this month's judge, Dale of Home on the Range. Thanks Dale for picking me as the winner!

This means that I will get to pick the ingredients and be the judge for for Paper Chef 47, which takes place 2-8 December. To read up on how to participate, head over to the Paper Chef blogs for the rules and regulations. I will present the ingredients - three random, one of my choice - here on December 2nd. Then you have until the following Wednesday to create something from the four ingredients. Hope that many of you will participate, it's really fun!

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.

Paper Chef 46: Markus' entry

This months Paper Chef was a real challenge, as Jenny has already pointed out. The ingredients just wont combine nicely! You start off with the given pairing of beetroot and goat cheese, and go further and further away until you actually find something that go with peanut butter, but by the time you get there it just doesn't go all that well with beetroot anymore... Try as we may, neither of us liked the others far out ideas (any idea where peanut butter and goat cheese seems to enjoy each other's company can be considered far out, however slim the chances of the get-along), and thus the idea of a “cook-off” was born!

My thought drifted towards some Thai-fusion-thingy (as Jamie Oliver succinctly phrased it on TV once), and a kind of Satay-y thing would incorporate the peanut butter in a natural way. For Satay sauce we tend to get Chicken skewers here in Sweden (I have no idea how Thai that actually is, but not too far off I think), so beetroot skewers would be the obvious way to incorporate the beetroot. This leaves the goat cheese and the pasta. The pasta was lamely incorporated as the staple food for the dish, but the goat cheese proved more difficult. There's no whey (pun intended) that would fit! Unless the whole French presupposition that goat cheese equals Chèvre was abandoned in favor of whey cheese! In Norway they make an excellent “Brunost” (brown cheese), which is a whey cheese made of primarily goat milk (at least the one I used). They taste quite strongly and a bit sweet, making them potentially agreeable to the company of peanut butter.

As the Brunost Satay started cooking and going stiff, I needed to add some liquid, and foolishly added lemon juice to cut it. As I myself (if less stressed) could have figured out, the dairy started curdling instead, making this the stiffest “sauce” in History (that's right, history with a capital H). Made it taste good though, but would probably have been better with lime, added after it had cooled down. Anyhow, that's how I made it, so that's how I'll report it!

The making of the rest was rather uneventful (turns out deep frying beetroot doesn't change it that much), and the final dish turned out to be (drum roll please...)

~~~
Deep fried Beetroot Skewers
with Brunost Satay
on a bed of Pasta
~~~

Recipes towards the end of the post. The verdict was mixed, but on the whole I'm pleased with the outcome, I kept it minimalistic, not adding very much to the four challenge ingredients, and actually making something edible (only regret cheating with the goat cheese...) Oh, and it wasn't very photogenic either, so only one picture this time (hopefully the Satay doesn't look too much like it's future self in it).



Deep fried Beetroot Skewers
1 Beetroot
Oil to deep fry in

Boil the beetroot for 45 minutes, peel and cut into thumb sized pieces. Heat the oil and deep fry the beetroot pieces for about 4 minutes. Skewer (can I use that as a verb? Please?) them.

Brunost Satay
½ Onion
2 tbsp Peanut Butter
60 g Brunost (Norwegian Whey Goat Cheese)
½ Lemon (juice from)
pinch of Chili Powder
pinch of Ground Cardamom
Butter to fry in

Finley chop the onion and fry it. Add the spices and let it get some color before adding the peanut butter and cheese. Stir vigorously to combine, then add the lemon juice.

Please don't make me write out the recipe for boiling pasta...

Paper Chef 46: Jenny's entry

This month's Paper Chef was a real challenge. When I went over to last month's winner, Dale of Home of the Range, and saw the first three ingredients - pasta, chèvre, and beetroots - I said to myself "heh, this will be a breeze!". Then I saw the last one. Peanut butter. Beetroots and chèvre works together like bread and butter, pasta goes with almost everything, but there was no clear way in which to add peanut butter to that mix.

Markus and I couldn't agree on what to cook with these ingredients, so when Markus suggested we do one dish each in a sort of cook-off, I jumped on that. After a lot of thinking, I came up with some sort of starter/cheese course.



Chèvre mousse with beetroot, deep fried pasta and peanut butter caramel

50 g chèvre without rind
2 tsp mascarpone

1½ tbsp honey
1 tsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp Dutch style peanut butter

½ beetroot, boiled
A small bunch of fresh tagliolini
Vegetable oil for deep frying

Mash up the chèvre, add the mascarpone and stir until smooth. Cover and refrigerate.
Heat the oil. Fry the pasta for a minute or so until it's lightly brown and blistered. Place on a paper towel to get rid of excess oil.
Put honey and vinegar in a pot and boil carefully until the mixture is a bit reduced. Add the peanut butter, stir well and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat. The caramel will harden quite quickly, but you can soften it on the stove again if needed.
Cut the beetroot in small cubes. Form an egg of chèvre mousse using two table spoons. Place on a plate, decorate with beetroot cubes, small dots of caramel and the fried pasta bundle.

The verdict
On their own, the elements of this dish were good. However, the chèvre mousse and the beetroot weirdly didn't go that well together. It wasn't bad, it was just that the chèvre overpowered the beetroot. In hindsight, it would have been better to bake the chèvre in the oven to make it softer and sweeter, maybe with the peanut caramel drizzled on top. The caramel itself wasn't bad either, but I think that it should have been a lot runnier, because the chewy texture didn't work that well with this. The deep fried pasta was cool though, crunchy and kind of reminded us of grissini. So, all in all not a home-run, but with some adjustments this has the potential to be a really cool dish. In a few days, all the other participants' dishes will be posted on the PC website, and then Dale will select the winner. It will be really interesting to see what all the other Paper Chefs have come up with, cause this was quite a tough one!

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.

Chicken Parmigiana, and a versatile sauce

This dinner was a result of me craving the Chicken Parmigiana I saw over at The Pioneer Woman Cooks, and Markus wanting to make a roasted vegetable sauce that he had seen on a food show on Swedish TV. So, we simply used the vegetable sauce instead of tomato sauce for the chicken.

The roasted vegetable sauce is easy to make, spreads a wonderful smell in your kitchen, and is extremely versatile. You can use other vegetables, and feel free to tamper with the amounts. It can be served on its own with pasta, used as a flavoring in casseroles, stews and paellas, or as a base for soup. You don't need all the sauce for the chicken here, so you will have some left-overs to experiment with. The sauce can be frozen.

Roasted vegetable sauce

3 yellow onions
8 tomatoes
2 red bell peppers (we used the pointy kind)
1 green chili fruit
1 parsnip
4 small carrots
2 large cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Later:
Vegetable stock (~3 dl)
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the oven to 175°C.
Take a large oven-proof dish and prep it with either some oil or with parchment paper.
Halve the onions, but keep the skin on. Place them skin up in the dish.
Halve the tomatoes and remove the seeds. Quarter the bell peppers and remove the seeds. Peel the parsnip and carrots and cut in slices. Halve the chili fruit and remove the seeds. Peel the garlic and give it a little crush by pressing down on the cloves with the side of a knife blade. Place all the vegetables together with the onions in the dish. Sprinkle with some olive oil.
Put in the oven for 1-1½ hours, until the veggies are soft and roasted.
Remove the skin from the onions.
Transfer all the vegetables to a mixer fitted with a blade, or to a large bowl or pot. We used a large pot and an immersion blender. Mix/blend until you have a purée. Add vegetable stock until you have the consistency you want (for the chicken below it should be quite saucy). We used water plus concentrated store-bought stock, but homemade vegetable stock would of course be better.
Add salt and pepper to taste.


Tasty, but not photogenic...

Chicken Parmigiana
adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

2 chicken breasts
1 dl flour
Salt and black pepper
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
2 dl freshly grated parmesan cheese
Roasted vegetable sauce (recipe above)

Place each chicken breast in a ziplock bag, or in a normal plastic bag which you tie up very well. You don't want chicken flying about your kitchen. (Yuck.) Anyway, either take one of those meat-hammer thingies, or do as we do and use a rolling pin, and pound the chicken breasts flat. You want then to be ½ centimeter thick or so. Mix the flour, salt and pepper on a plate, and coat the chicken breasts.
Heat the butter and oil in a pan. When it's hot and the butter has melted, you fry the chicken breasts (we had to do them one at the time) until they're nice and golden brown, about 2-3 minutes on each side.
Clean out your pan (or grab another one). Put in however much of the roasted vegetable sauce you think you'll eat. If we would have had some wine (red or white) at home, I would have added a splash of that at this point, so do that if you're so inclined. Bring the sauce to a simmer. Place the chicken on top of the sauce. Sprinkle the parmesan generously on top of the chicken. Place a lid on the pan and simmer until the cheese is melted and the chicken is heated.
We served this with mashed potatoes (made with more cheese!), but obviously pasta works as well. If you have any fresh herbs (parsley, basil) you can sprinkle that on top.
Enjoy!