Spring!

Spring is truly here now - the Japanese Cherry trees in Kungstradgarden are in bloom. So pink, so pretty.

And tonight is Walpurgis night, a much loved tradition in Sweden. We light huge bonfires, and celebrate the coming of spring. (Unfortunately, it's also a very popular night for teenagers to try alcohol for the first time, and get mindnumbingly drunk.) We have invited some friends for dinner, and will probably be cooking on the barbecue. I've made a Chocolate Truffle Cake for dessert - yum!

Happy spring, everyone!

New technology: Ipinium

On one of my recent train travels, I leafed through the magazine on board, and found an interesting article about Ipinium: a totally new sort of baking sheet made from a certain new metal. (Or well, not a new metal per se, but a new mix of metals. I won't go into the really technical stuff. Mostly because I can't.) It seemed really cool, and I scribbled down the website address.

A while later, I wrote them an e-mail, asking if this was available commercially, and got an enthusiastic invitation to come and visit their demo kitchen. Of course, that's not something I'd refuse. So I spent a delightful afternoon with the Ipinium team, eating and listening to all the wonders of this new product. Essentially, it's all about heat retainment and heat transfer, and in effect, you can use the oven to fry and grill rather than just to bake. They have two products out at the moment: one double-sided baking sheet which is smooth on one side, ridged on the other, and a funny looking contraption with four sharp sticks, perfect for baking potatoes. (I haven't tried that one yet, but I'll show you photos when I do.) They work in any oven, since you just use your existing rack to put the sheet on. However, this works best with convection ovens, apparently.



So, what does it do? Well, you preheat the sheet, then place whatever you want to cook on it, as dry as possible and at room temperature. No oil, no butter, no marinades. Just plain. You can add fat or seasonings later. The selling point is that not only does it cook a lot faster (it really does - sliced potatoes take about 10 minutes, salmon, meat or chicken takes 7-8.) but you get a really good surface crust. Which is kind of surprising with no fats, but it really does work. I've only tried salmon and potatoes at home, but it was definitely a success. I tried bacon on the smooth side, and that, too, was great. With bacon, I had a lower temperature - about 225°C. With the salmon and potatoes, I had it all the way up to 275°C as was suggested to me. You have to have the sheet really warm to get the surface to really brown. (Probably the Maillard reaction, right?)



A rimmed baking sheet is next in their production, which I think will be *very* convenient for, say, slow braises? You could brown it directly in the sheet, giving your meat a good color, and then lower the heat and add braising liquid.

As for me, I want to try baking on this. I don't have a baking stone, and I think this will be a pretty good substitute. I've also tried roasting peppers on this, and that went brilliantly. It was a lot faster than usual - that's really nice. I don't have a gas stove, so I can't roast them over open flames as so many suggest, so the oven is really it for me.



If you're interested in learning more, you can drop an e-mail to info@ipinium.se - you can tell them I sent you! The products are available online from their website, but also in some stores. Not sure how they've expanded abroad yet, but I think they're about to launch in several countries.

Pear, White Chocolate & Pecan Muffins

I rarely blog about something the same day as I make it - that almost never happens. But today, I've made something so tasty that I just have to write about it while the scent is still strong in my kitchen.

I have a meeting tonight, work-related. Not unusual, at all. Usually though, I buy something to have with coffee, but today I looked at all the leftover pears (from a meeting last week, actually) and thought I should bake something. I also happened to have a leftover banana, and a little bit of filmjolk - soured milk, similar to buttermilk - in the fridge. And inspiration just hit me. So, this little buttermilk muffin with banana, pear, pecans and white chocolate was born, and I hope you'll like it as much as I do!

The recipe made a truckload by the way - I had 36 mini muffin and 12 regular sized ones. (Notice the past tense here - well, I still have most of them.) They don't rise a lot, so you can fill the muffin cases nearly to the top.

Pear, White Chocolate & Pecan Muffins

3 small pears
75 g pecans
100 g white chocolate
2 tbsp Demerara (or other raw) sugar
1 banana
2 eggs
150 g sugar
50 g butter, melted
200 ml (0,8 cups) filmjolk or buttermilk, yogurt will work too
300 g plain flour
pinch of salt
2 tsp baking powder

to decorate:
more Demerara sugar

Peel and core the pears, and dice them finely. Chop nuts and white chocolate fairly neatly, and place with the pears and the two tbps of raw sugar in a bowl. Mash the banana and add it.

Beat eggs and sugar until very fluffy. Add the melted butter and the filmjolk. Mix flour, baking powder and salt with the mixed fruit, and then add all this to the egg mixture. Dollop into muffin cases, and if you want, sprinkle with a bit more Demerara sugar.

Bake at 200°C for about 10-12 minutes for the mini muffins, and 12-15 minutes for the regular sized ones.

Recipe in Swedish:
Päronmuffins med vit choklad och pecannötter

Daring Bakers try Cheesecake Pops

I'll come straight out and say it: the thing liked most about this challenge was the resulting photos.


Nonpareils


My little cheesecakes, rising nicely

Yep. This is not something I'd make again. My lack of enthusiasm is party because I've had a very stressful month, so it's not all due to the challenge itself. But hey - at least they turned out pretty. And I had no problems, really - it was easy enough. I suspected I wouldn't like it very much - so I made a tiny part of the recipe. Indeed, I made a fifth. It was pretty easy to divide everything by five, and I baked it in two ramekins, which worked out very nicely.


Coconut

I don't have anything to scoop balls with, so I just rolled eight (nine - one was for taste-testing) balls with my hands, placed them in the freezer to set, and dipped them in chocolate. (I used milk chocolate.)


Sea salt and chilli flakes


My mise en place

And various other things, as you can see! This part was fun - I used unsweetened coconut flakes, nonpareils, cocoa nibs and a few other things. I then placed them back in the freezer and.. that' where they remain, I'm afraid.


Butterscotch Sugar


Cocoa Nibs



Don't forget to visit the Daring Bakers blogroll and see what everyone else did! You can find the recipe if you feel inclined to make these yourself, over at Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasm, or Deborah of Taste and Tell.

Chicken with Lemon, Onion and Garlic

I cooked this dish when we were in Spain. I'm often stumped as to what to cook when I'm away and not in my own kitchen, but when we wandered around the large grocery store and came upon a perfect chicken, the problem was solved. We served this with cous-cous with broccoli, red bell pepper and some toasted almonds. Delicious!

Chicken with Lemon, Onion and Garlic
Serves 6

1 large chicken
6 garlic cloves
3 yellow onions
1 lemon
250 ml (1 cup) white wine
olive oil
salt
fresh coriander (or parsley, if you don't like coriander.)

Divide the chicken into serving portions. Rub them with some olive oil and salt the lightly. Slice the lemons thinly. Peel the onions and cut into wedges. Don't bother peeling the garlic - they'll steam inside their papery wrappers and turn wonderfully soft and flavorful.

Place onions, garlic and lemon with the wine in a large roasting pan and place the chicken pieces on top. Bake at 200°C for 45 minutes. The chicken should be cooked through now, but if you want some more color, raise the heat and bake for 10 more minutes until it's golden and a bit crispy. Top with fresh coriander upon serving.

Recipe in Swedish:
Kycklinggryta med lök, vitlök och citron

Swedish Snus

I was invited to lunch at Esperanto - brilliant star restaurant, excellent food - by Swedish Match, the largest producer of snus in Sweden. Snus is a very Swedish thing - not quite like chewing tobacco, but a popular alternative to smoking. (You can read all about it here.) It's apparently used by over 1 million Swedes, which should tell you something about how widespread it is. I've never tried it, but my dad was an avid "snusare" in his days and I remember it strongly from my childhood.

Snus can be flavored in many different ways, and the objective of the lunch was to point out some of these flavors and see how they would interact with nicely paired food. Interesting - even for those of us who preferred not to actually try the snus, but to just enjoy the food. (I did sniff the snus, and it did work very well with the food - chefs Sayan Isaksson and Daniel Höglander had definitely done a good job in matching the flavors!)

Before the first course, we were served "mock-snus" - the chefs had made up three concoctions that looked like snus, but weren't. One was made with dried olives, one with browned butter and one with madeleines colored with squid ink. Huh. This was quite strange, and not especially tasty - the butter one was particularly scary. (These are the tins in the first photo.)



First course was a havskräfta - a Norwegian lobster/Dublin Bay Prawn/Langoustine, it has many names! - that was flavored with peach and licorice. Interesting flavor combinations, but the problem for me was actually the texture - it was a bit too soft for my liking. It was topped with a roe, and served on a slice of avocado. It was made to match with the flavors in Röda Lacket snus.



Main course was my favorite - a potato cream topped with fried morcilla sausage and black morels (morchella elata in Latin, or toppmurkla in Swedish.) Just beautiful - the flavors went so well together. This was supposedly reminiscent of Ettan snus.



Then, for dessert, a divine rose-infused sorbet on top of a rose creme. It was served with tiny madeleines, that the chef had spritzed with rosewater before serving. Very tasty! This was matched with General snus.

The wine was brilliant too - Evolution, from Oregon, a mixture of Pinot Gris and Riesling. Unfortunately not available in stores here, but perhaps where you live - if so, do try it.



At the end, we had the opportunity to flavor a snus of our own. I made one with cognac and cloudberry for my friend at work, and she reported back that it was actually quite good! Maybe that's my alternative future, snus-flavorer...

..or I could always grow tobacco. We were each given a tobacco plant, and I plan to put it in my garden soon. Wish me luck.

New York hotels?

I'm feeling a sudden and urgent need for a mini vacation in New York. Any recommendations for cheap - but not downright dirty, thanks - hotels would be extremely appriciated.

Lazy Bread

With everything I have going on this week, it's surprising that I've managed to bake bread, too. And possibly one of the best breads ever! Even more surprising, perhaps, is that you can do it without any sort of kitchen machine, and without kneading, at all. And no, this is not that "no-knead bread" from Jim Lahey. I tried that, but it didn't turn out very flavorful, and I thought it was too fiddly and didn't give a strong enough crust.

This one though? Perfect. The idea comes from Swedish baker Anna Bergenstrom, who has had this bread in her cookbooks for years and years. I added some typical bread spices - aniseed and fennel - some crushed linseed, and some sifted rye flour. Rågsikt is a Swedish mixture of 60% sifted wheat flour and 40% sifted rye flour - if you can't get it, you can substitute pretty much any other flour you might want.

Lazy Bread
2 loaves

600 ml (2,4 cups) water
50 g fresh yeast
2 tsp flaky sea salt
1 tbsp aniseed, ground
1 tbsp fennel, ground
1 tsp sugar
900 ml (3,6 cups) wheat flour
300 ml (1,2 cups) "rågsikt", sifted rye flour and wheat flour (see above)
3 tbsp crushed linseed



Crumble the yeast and add all other ingredients in a large bowl. Stir very well - but no kneading, this should be like a thick porridge. (You might want to add a splash more of water if it seems too dry.) Cover with plastic and leave it to rise for an hour. After that, stir it, cover again, and let it rise for another hour. (After which the photo above is taken - look at that gluten development!)

Pour the dough into greased loaf tins and leave to rise for 20-30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your owen to 275°C. When it's good and hot, place the breads in the oven for 12 minutes. After that, lower the heat to 100°C and leave the breads for about 70 minutes.

If you want a strong crust, after 50 minutes or so, you can remove the loaves from the tins, and just have them on the oven rack. You can also experiment with adding steam - I didn't this time, but I probably will on my next try.

Recipe in Swedish:
Latmansbröd

Fun day at Gastronord

I spent a few hours yesterday at Gastronord, a huge food fair for the professionals. I was invited by Dan Stenqvist, a great barista who was there working for Zoegas. He gave me coffee - it was great. I also got a latte from a former Barista Cup winner, Torkel Hultén, who's working at Löfberg's Lila, and a macchiato from the smiling guy in the photo, this year's Barista Cup winner Daniel Remheden who was making latte art for Arla. I talked to him about giving me a "home barista lesson" - well, one can dream! All three were extremely nice and sweet - the baristas, that is - and the coffee was excellent too.



And then I went on to have some butter. Swedish butter has always been pretty much the same. There's just one brand, and even though it comes in varieties like "unsalted" and "organic", it pretty much remains the same. Until now! Skånemejerier is just launching their new Gourmet butter, which is made from organic cream, and then shipped to Denmark, where it's churned into butter, and then shipped back here. Not ideal, to be sure, but at least the butter tasted really good. I managed to get one of those golden slabs in the photo to take home, and I'm wondering what to do with it to get the maximum effect - possibly making a few compound butters, and placing them in the freezer for next time we're barbecuing..?



Saltå Kvarn, one of our best organic producers of things like grains, flours and nuts, was there with their baker Manfred Enoksson who was making different types of levain and sour dough. He had made some brilliant cinnamon buns.

A fun day for sure - and I met a knife sharpener who I will tell you more about later on, as I'm planning to visit him with all my knifes.

Chiquita Fruit in a Bottle

Chiquita jumps aboard the smoothie train, and launches three different "fruit in a bottle" smoothies, with no additives. They're suspiciously like my favorite drinks from Innocent, even using the same sort of ingredient list with "1 banana, 2 passionfruits" etc. Nice. But it feels a little bit like a rip off. Oh well. Three flavors then:

-mango passionfruit banana
-strawberry banana
-pineapple banana

Mango Passionfruit is definitely my fave, and it's a lot like.. again, the one from Innocent. A little bit thicker, perhaps. I suppose it's possible that Chiquita, being a banana company and all, uses a bit more banana in their drinks. Anyway - they're good, and they're cheaper than Innocent. I prefer Innocent, especially because of their brand ethics, but for a cheaper on-the-go alternative? This isn't bad.

Muhammara

Muhammara is something I've been wanting to try for a very long time. This Middle Eastern dip with roasted bell peppers and walnuts sounds extremely alluring, and I've been eagerly collecting recipes for it left and right. And not knowing where to start. Until the craving really, really hit a few nights ago, and I had to make it immediately. I turned to Clotilde at Chocolate & Zucchini, who, like me had read a lot of recipes and then made her own version. That seemed like a fine place to start indeed. I changed a few things about her recipe (and I halved it) but pretty much stuck with it. I accidentally left out oil, but the results were so good I just won't bother with it when I make it again.

This freezes very well, so don't worry about leftovers. The flavors take some time to develop, so try to make it one day in advance. Eat it as a dip, with toasted pita bread, on baguette rounds, on crispy rye bread, or treat it as you would a pesto. I bet it'll be great with pasta! I served it as a sauce with grilled salmon and that was a wonderful match as well.

Do try to get pomegranate molasses, because they impart such a delicious sweet-sour-tangy flavor. Balsamic vinegar will work, according to Clotilde, but it won't be the same. I got my bottle at a Middle Eastern market, but I've seen it in regular supermarkets as well.

Muhammara
Makes about 1 cup

2 large red bell peppers
65 g raw cashews
65 g raw walnuts
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 big garlic clove
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp smoked salt (substitute regular salt)
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 tbsp pomegranate molasses (substitute balsamic vinegar)

Deseed the peppers by cutting around the stem, and pulling. Shake them to get rid of all the seeds, and any pale membranes you can get at. Roast them - either on a grill, over an open flame if you happen to have a gas stove, or do it my way: in the oven, at 225°C, for about 30 minutes. Turn them every five minutes or so, so that they roast evenly. They should be black in some places when they're done, and completely soft.

Place them in a small bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let them steam for five minutes, and then peel them. The skins should slip right off. Let them cool.

Toast cashews, walnuts and cumin in a dry pan until golden and fragrant. Let them cool.

Time for the food processor! Combine all the ingredients, and blitz away! Taste it to see if you want any more seasoning - I needed to add a bit more chili and lemon.

Recipe in Swedish:
Muhammara

Oh, it's been so long..

..since I've shown any cat photos! Here's a fairly recent one of Glinda, our eternal kitten. She's three and a half, yet behaving as though she's six months or so. Which is lovely. She's really an adorable cat. Today, she and the others have finally been allowed outside in the outdoor cage - very exciting for them!

Chili-Cashew Crusted Fish

I have a big binder with tons of recipes that I've cut out from magazines. I keep them sorted by type, and my aim is to work through them all, some day. After I try them, I tear them out of the binder, and either write about them here or let them sink into that big black hole of distant memories, depending on how good they were. This one, I'm happy to report, was pretty good! The original used at least twice the amount of butter, but.. this was plenty. I used cod from a sustainable source, but you can use any firm, white fish here. It'd be great with salmon too, and I bet it'd work for several other fish as well, feel free to experiment. We ate this with rice, but you could serve it with bulgur, cous-cous or just an abundance of baked vegetables.

Chili-Cashew Crusted Fish
Serves 2

400 g fish fillets, frozen and then thawed are fine
25 g butter
3 tbsp breadcrumbs
50 g cashew nuts, raw, and coarsely chopped
1 tsp sambal oelek
1 garlic clove, minced
1 lime - the juice and the zest
handful of cherry tomatoes

Preheat the oven to 225°C. Divide the fish into portions if you're using a frozen (and thawed) block of fish. Put it in an oven-proof dish and salt lightly.

Melt the butter and add breadcrumbs, nuts, sambal oelek, garlic, lime juice and lime zest. Spread on top of the fish. Halve the tomatoes and place them alongside.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the fish is done (it should be opaque and flaky) and the crust has some color.

Recipe in Swedish:
Chilifisk med cashewnötstäcke

Pistachio Buns

You know already that Swedes love their "bullar", yeasted buns. The traditional filling is cinnamon, but there's also cardamom buns, buns filled with custard, and these ones: pistachio buns. Now, the ones you buy don't really have a lot of pistachios in them, it's usually just almond paste tinted green with food coloring. The flavor is much better when you make it yourself - with real pistachios, of course.

You can shape the buns as you like, but I tried making knots for the first time and well, some of them turned out quite pretty. (And some most decidedly didn't - but they were still very tasty, of course.) I've tried to describe how to make them, and it sounds a lot more fiddly than it actually is. If I hadn't been alone at home, I'd have asked Per to take photos, but as it was, my hands were quite sticky...

The recipe comes from Oscar Målevik who just won the Swedish bakery championship for young bakers.

Pistachio Buns
makes about 35

For the dough:
150 g melted butter
500 ml milk
5 g cardamom, coarsely ground or crushed in a pestle and mortar
50 g fresh yeast
50 g light muscovado sugar
1 egg
800-850 g plain flour
pinch of salt

Heat the butter and milk until tepid. Crumble the yeast into a bowl and stir in some of the liquid until the yeast has dissolved. Add the rest of the liquid, salt, sugar, cardamom, flour and egg. Work into a smooth dough. It should be very well kneaded, so let your Kitchen-Aid run for 7-8 minutes, or just give it a very vigorous kneading by hand. Let it rise, covered, for about 30 minutes.

For the filling:
250 g almond paste
150 g butter, at room temperature
45 g custard powder
100 g peeled raw, unsalted pistachios
a little bit of water

Grate the almond paste, or just crumble it into the bowl of your Kitchen-Aid if you're as lazy as I am. Add the butter, and mix until you have a smooth paste. (It's easier if you grate it, but it works anyway.) Finely chop the pistachios - in a food processor, preferrably - and add them. Add the custard powder too, and mix well. Add a few drops of water if you need it to make the filling soft and spreadable.

Assembly:
Divide the dough into two parts. Roll out one of the halves into a large rectangle. Spread with half of the filling. Fold the dough lengthwise, so that you have a large but very narrow rectangle. Cut this into strips, abut 2 cm wide, and then cut each strip once more but not all the way through. It should resemble an "y" but upside down. Take the two "legs" and twist them together, and form a sort of loose knot. Place it in a paper or foil cup, and set on a baking sheet. Repeat with the other half of the dough.

Leave to rise, covered, for another 45 minutes. Brush with a beaten egg with a dash of water and a tiny pinch of salt, and then sprinkle with pearl sugar, flaked almonds or coarsely chopped pistachios.

Bake at 210°C (if you have a convection oven, for a regular oven, heat to 225°C) for 8-10 minutes.

Recipe in Swedish:
Pistagebullar

A reminder

The fastest pear crumble ever. And it's really, really tasty.

Cookbook Watch - sweet stuff

I have a lot of new - and some not so new - cookbooks to review, and I thought I'd start off with a trio of really sweet books: all dealing in cakes, cookies and desserts.

First, one in Swedish from pastry princess Mia Öhrn, who has previously written books about candy, semlor, kladdkakor and other delights. This one is titled "Mitt eget kafé" which translates into "My own café" and it's the perfect book for those of you who have ever dreamed about opening your own place. It's also the perfect book for those who have no such dreams, and are just happy to eat café-style food, and wanting to make some goodies at home. I really fell in love with this book. It's not just recipes (but mostly), and Mia has also interviewed several people who do own their own cafés. As it happens, she managed to pick several of my own favorite places, like Cocovaja and Café Lola. I was excited to see that they shared some of their recipes, too! I like that this book doesn't only have baked goods, but also some ideas for tea-time treats and sandwiches. Definitely a keeper!



So is this one. Martha Stewart's Cookies. Oh, my. A whole book. with just cookies. In color. (The photos here are fabulous! They're so lifelike I can almost taste the cookies, wanting to wipe away at crumbs that aren't there on the slick glossy pages.)It has 175 recipes, which seems like pretty much any cookie you could ever want to make. (And yet, there are so many more...) I've tried a few Martha recipes in the past, and I've never been disappointed, so this is definitely a book I'll turn to on many occasions. The chapters are divided by texture, which I think is quite clever. Want crispy, or chewy? Sandy? Rich? Nutty? (Or like me, all of the above, please.)



Third one is not new, but new to me. It's written by Elisabeth Johansson who is one of my favorite authors for dessert books, and it's all about crumbles. It's called "Smulpajer" which is the Swedish word for crumbles, and this book has nothing else. One would think that perhaps crumbles is a bit too narrow a subject to warrant a whole book, but one would be wrong to assume that. Clearly, there are tons of different crumbles to play and experiment with - and Swedes do love their crumbles. So much indeed that two books with this same name came out at virtually the same time - the other one written by Mia Öhrn (see above). (I don't have that one though.)

All three books have one thing in common: I absolutely can not decide what to make first! There are so many delicious goodies in all of them that I feel slightly stunned, and not knowing where to begin. But I promise to tell you when I figure it out...

Feta Cheese Crostini

Here's a perfect little something that I thought up the other day - it just stuck in my brain, and I knew I had to make it. Fast. So I did, and served it alongside a soup, and that was definitely brilliant. It'd go extra-well with an orange soup, I think - carrot, or pumpkin perhaps? Something sweet-ish, to counter the salty feta.

Or you could just serve these with drinks. Make them even smaller, in that case - one bite, instead of three.

Feta Cheese Crostini
Makes about 10

75 g Feta Cheese
2-3 tbsp crème fraîche
pinch of fresh thyme
black pepper

Crumble the cheese, and mix with crème fraîche, some black pepper and fresh thyme. Spread on toasted or grilled slices of baguette, and serve straight away.

Recipe in Swedish:
Fetaostcrostini

Follow me on Twitter!

I just discovered Twitter - sort of a micro-blogging? Anyway, I registered, and if you want, you can follow my updates there, too. (And I'll have the posted in the sidebar here as well, very nifty!)

Lemon Chicken

And AGAIN, a recipe inspired by Gordon Ramsay and Fast Food. I really don't remember what I changed - I have a feeling it was quite a few things this time, but a few weeks have passed and my memory isn't that great. I'm sure you'd get good results by following the book to the letter, too. It's just that I have a hard time with that - I suppose I don't play very well by rules! So, feel absolutely free to play with this as you please - as in fact I encourage you to do with all of my recipes, or any other for that matter. Taste it, adjust to your liking, and remember that everyone's palate is different.

Lemon and chicken go so well together - and the sherry vinegar is really essential here, but if you must, substitute a good balsamic. You can serve this alongside almost any side dish, but we chose a bulgur salad with lots of tomatoes and fresh coriander.

Lemon Chicken
Serves 6-7

2 kg chicken thighs
2 lemons
1 whole head of garlic
thyme
sherry vinegar
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsp honey
flat-leaf parsley
salt, pepper, olive oil

Divide the garlic into cloves and peel them. Cut the lemon into very thin slices.

Heat the oil in a large pot. Season the chicken with salt and pepper and brown the chicken pieces all over. (You probably will have to do this in batches, unless you have a *really* big pot.) Add thyme and garlic, add a good splash of sherry vinegar, the soy and the honey, and let it reduce slightly.

Add water - I added enough to almost cover the chicken, but you don't want it too soupy so use as much as you think you might need for the chicken to cook through. Start with a cup, and go up from there - it really will depend on the size of your pot.

Add the garlic and cover with a lid. Let the chicken bake for 10 minutes or a bit more - check to see if it's cooked through and not pink inside. Season with more soy sauce or vinegar.

When the chicken is done, transfer it and the lemon to a platter, and sprinkle with parsley. Drizzle with some of the sauce. (If you're more ambitious, you can certainly reduce the sauce after removing the chicken. But the idea here is fast food, so I pretty much skipped that. Gordon also says to discard the garlic, but go ahead and eat it if you wish - it's your dinner.)

Recipe in Swedish:
Citronkyckling

Good coffee in Gothenburg

We're back! We had a great weekend - lots of walking and shopping, and visiting with friends. And the bringing back home of Kelly, who has been in Gothenburg on her own for one week, visiting her boyfriend. (Kelly, for those of you who don't know, is one of our cats. I hope I can tell you about kittens in a few months!)

We stayed in Elite Hotel Plaza which was very nice, and had a great breakfast buffet. But as with almost all hotels, the coffee was terrible. So terrible that we opted to go and have caffé lattes at Da Matteo instead. A wise choice, since Da Matteo is one of the best coffee bars in the country. (And, a mere three-minute walk from the hotel!)

Visit them if you're close - you won't regret it. Or just visit their homepage - they blog, too. And the owner just co-authored a very nice book about coffee and italian coffee bars - Bar Italia.

New egg cups!

Behold, Per's breakfast setting. A bowl of yogurt. Two sandwiches. (On kavring this particular day - generally with butter and a slice of cheese, sometimes with ham or turkey if we have it.) Tea. And on weekends, always, always a boiled egg. My lovely sister was staying with us a few weeks ago, and got tired of us only having two egg cups. See, we only eat eggs on weekend mornings, and we rarely have people stay over so.. no need for more. Except that sometimes people DO stay over, and we don't have egg cups for them. What a problem! So, my sister solved it, by getting us these pretty ones! There's a green one in the photo, but we also got yellow, black and white. I love them - and I especially loving having one of each color. As you can see in the picture, I like colorful plates and bowls...

Caramelized Apples & Pears

Yet another recipe from Ramsay's Fast Food. I'm done soon, I promise! This is a nice take on a simple dessert. Well, it's still simple, but it's a bit more elaborate than my usual "I need something sweet now, so let's just fry some chopped apple with butter, sugar and cinnamon and serve on ice cream". (That one's very nice though, do try it.) The spices are great here - but if you want to make sure you don't accidentally bite into a peppercorn, you better count how many you put in and fish all of them out before serving. Just saying.

You can use any sugar here - regular white, homemade vanilla sugar if you happen to have it (and you always should, since it's so simple - just stick vanilla pods in a jar of sugar, and let it sit. Forever and ever. Just keep topping it up with sugar as you use it, and maybe some more vanilla now and then.) or brown sugar - light muscovado sugar would be great. Use what you've got!

I'm off to Gothenburg for a mini vacation - have a great weekend everyone!

Caramelized Apples & Pears
Serves 2

1 apple
2 small pears
40 g sugar (see above)
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp whole cloves (count them!)
1/2 tsp whole black pepper (count them!)
2 whole star anise
10 g butter
splash of calvados or brandy (optional)
75 ml apple juice

Peel and core the apple and pears and cut them into wedges.

Sprinkle the sugar in a large frying pan and place it over high heat until the sugar starts to melt and brown. Add the spices and the butter, and don't stir - just shake then pan gently to mix the sugar and butter. And it's going to be pretty hot at this point, so be careful. Lower the heat a little, too.

Add the fruit. Fry for 5-6 minutes, turning almost constantly, until the fruit is softened and has a nice, caramelized surface. Add a splash of brandy or calvados if you've got it - watch out, it might catch on fire.

Add the apple juice and cook until it's reduced to a syrupy sauce. Remove the spices - or not - and serve it with custard or vanilla ice cream.

Recipe in Swedish:
Karamelliserade äpplen och päron

Bagels for lunch

I love a good bagel. My favorite filling is simple - cream cheese, halved cherry tomatoes, and some sliced red onion. It's my standard order when I'm eating at Espresso House, but if I have bagels in the freezer like I do right now, I'll make them at home, too.

Buckwheat Cookies with Cocoa Nibs

After all that coffee yesterday, let me tell you about a cookie. A really, really great cookie. And a fairly famous one - this one has definitely been making the rounds in many food blogs! (As Nibby Buckwheat Butter Cookies.) So much indeed that I can't remember where I first saw it. Anyway, the recipe is from Alice Medrich's Pure Dessert, and after trying several cookies from it, this book is definitely one I'd want to have! Everything has turned out so great.

These cookies are easy to make. You just mix a dough, form logs, chill them, slice and bake. And you can even freeze the dough, to make sure you're never more than ten minutes away from delicious cookie-delight. Not that I'm that organized, mind you. I generally freeze the finished cookies though - and that works out well.

Cocoa nibs are really nice by the way, they're chocolatey but not melty, and they stay nice and crunchy. Perfect when you want crunch without nuts. And speaking of nuts, the buckwheat in these cookies actually impart a slightly nutty flavour. Very nice.

Speaking of cocoa nibs - I still have a lot (made by Vahlrona by the way) and I think these cookies will be my next project.

Buckwheat Cookies with Cocoa Nibs
60 small cookies

300 ml regular white flour
180 ml buckwheat flour
220 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
160 ml sugar
1/2 tsp salt
80 ml cocoa nibs
1-2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the two types of flour in a bowl.

Beat butter, sugar and salt until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and cocoa nibs, then all the flour. The dough will be very dry, but keep working it until it turns nice and smooth. It will still be thick, but it shouldn't be dry.

Shape the dough into logs, and if you'd like, flatten them into triangles. Wrap them in plastic foil, and leave them in the fridge to chill for at least two hours, but preferrably over night. Slice thinly - but maybe not too thinly, mine spread a little bit during baking and were a bit fragile - and place on a baking sheet. Leave a little space in between.

Bake at 175°C for about 10 minutes, or until lightly golden. Let them cool on the baking sheet, as they're quite breakable.

Recipe in Swedish:
Bovetekakor med kakaosplitter

Barista of the year

Yesterday was Barista Cup, a big event where baristas all over Sweden compete. The winner was Daniel Remheden (second from the left in the photo above) from Lund. There was also a competition for the best latte, called Beige Award, and that went to Peter Frennhoff. Incidentally, both of them work at the same café - Klostergatans Vin & Delikatess. I've never been, but rest assured that I will definitely visit if I can! Congratulations to both!


Peter Frennhoff, in the beginning of his final set

I'm pretty sure I've tried coffee from both of them before, at an event sponsored by Arla (the big Swedish dairy company, which is also one of the main sponsors of Barista Cup) and as I recall, they're very well deserved winners!


Jack Hanna, pouring the design that won him the title.

Yesterday though, I was extremely excited to get a latte from Jack Hanna, who's the reigning world latte art champion. As he said himself, that means that he makes pretty coffee. And to make pretty coffee, or latte art, you really have to have brilliant espresso as well as excellent milk. So if it's pretty, it's just about guaranteed to taste good, too. And wow - it was the best latte I've ever had. Too bad Jack lives in Australia! He's a very charming guy, too - and he made me a very cute heart. Aww.


The lovely latte, made by Jack Hanna.


More Jack Hanna!

I'm now properly inspired to start making espresso at home again. I have to admit that my Gaggia has been sitting unused for a long time. Then again, Gaggias aren't great for frothing milk properly, I might have to look for another one... Um, and take a class, perhaps.


We also got to try different espressos with different sugars - and no, I wasn't brave enough to go for the pink stuff, which is raspberry infused...

You can read more about the competition - in Swedish - at www.beige.nu

Lime Jalapeño Slaw with Peanuts

Here's another recipe from Suvir Saran, the writer of American Masala. (And this blog!) God, how I love this one. I've made it at least four times in the past few months, and it's decidedly addictive. I've simplified the original recipe - omitting a few things that aren't easy to find here, changing the quantities slightly. And still, it's so good. I can't imagine it being any better than this! It goes perfectly with a piece of chicken or fish, but it's also really nice on its own. It's sour, spicy, vibrant, crunchy and fresh, and I just can't get enough of it!

Lime Jalapeño Slaw with Peanuts
Serves 2

500 ml (2 cups) finely sliced cabbage (more or less - it's not exact)
the juice of 1 lime
2-3 cm fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1,5 tbsp white wine vinegar
1,5 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp flaky sea salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 jalapeño pepper, finely minced
200 g cherry tomatoes, halved
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
1 bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
handful of toasted peanuts, chopped

Mix ginger, lime, vinegar, sugar, cumin, cayenne pepper, salt and black pepper in a large bowl. Add the cabbage, onion, jalapeño, tomatoes and coriander, and stir so that everything is nicely coated. Top with the peanuts and serve!

Recipe in Swedish:
Kålsallad med lime, chili och jordnötter

Ben & Jerry's

My first choice for premium ice cream - if I can't have homemade - is definitely Häagen-Dazs. And my favorite flavor? Strawberry. Plain strawberry. Which is not sold anymore. It's re-named Strawberries & Cream (at least in Sweden) and sorry, it's not the same. Still good, and still my favorite.

Ok, I got that out of the way. Because this post is not about that, it's actually about the three (well, two) new flavours that Ben & Jerry's just released here. Jesper hooked me up with three pints, and I've been happily slurping my way through them.

One is not really new - it must just be re-released - but that doesn't mean it's not good: Chunky Monkey. This is a lovely banana ice cream with walnuts and dark "chocolatey" bananas. And while I'm at it, let me tell you how annoying I find the fact that they don't use real chocolate in their ice cream. They have great organic ingredients, it's fair trade certified, they obviously care about getting the best flavour - so why settle for "chocolatey" instead of proper chocolate? I don't get it. Anyway, rant over. It's a great flavor combination. If I could change another thing, I think I'd have lightly caramelized the walnuts. (So I think I'll do just that, this summer!)



Then, we have Baked Alaska. This is pretty funny. They have the tagline "If it melts it's ruined - take it from the ice cream guys" and that's a pretty amusing way to put a serious message. Again, the company obviously cares. This ice cream is apparently completely climate neutral, and the proceeds go to Climate Change College. And what's more - it's actually really tasty. I didn't expect to like this all white ice cream, but it's really quite lovely - vanilla, with marshmallow swirls, and white "chocolatey" (again!) polar bears. I love the polar bears, by the way. But be forewarned - this is very, very sweet.



Third, Bohemian Raspberry. Amusing name - and the proceeds here go to the Mercury Phoenix Trust, in memory of Freddie Mercury. It's vanilla ice cream with raspberry swirls and brownie bits. I don't particularly like cakey stuff in my ice cream, so this wasn't up my alley. Nice flavors, but the textures didn't quite work for me. It was Per's favorite of the three though, and I'm sure many will love it.

It does seem like Ben & Jerry's have pulled my favorite from the Swedish market though - Cherry Garcia! And my second favorite as well - Vermonster. Sigh. Which one is your favorite?