Heart of the matter #3 - Pasta with Avocado & Cashew Pesto

I got this delightul idea from Johanna - I switched some things, and simplified the already simple method, and used some fresh sage instead of all basil as my basil looked so dull and my sage so beautiful. (And isn't that what should really inspire us to cook - what fresh produce happens to be available?) I used a little less olive oil, and just a bit of parmesan - which makes it suitable for Ilva's event "Heart of the matter". Heart-friendly dishes are always good to know, and this month's theme happens to be pasta. How convenient! And let me assure you that this dish is perfectly delicious!

Pasta with avocado & cashew pesto
Serves 2

60 g raw cashew nuts
2 cloves of garlic
2 tiny dried chillis, or a pinch of dried chilli flakes
10-15 basil leaves
5-6 sage leaves
1 avocado
1-2 tbsp olive oil
salt
squeeze of lemon
small handful of parmesan, grated

Toast the nuts in a warm pan until they are golden and fragrant. Move to the bowl of a food processor, add the garlic cloves and blitz away. Add chilli and the herbs - blitz again. Add the avocado, in pieces, and mix some more. Add olive oil to loosen it up a bit, add some salt, and a little bit of lemon. Finally, add the parmesan.

Serve with freshly boiled pasta - and save some of the pasta water to loosen up the dish, the pesto can be a bit difficult to blend into the pasta if you don't.

Recipe in Swedish:
Pasta med cashewnötter och avocado

Some recent food

The buffet plate from the Vasterbotten Cheese Award - delicious asparagus pie, chicken salad with avocado, roasted red pepper soup, super bread with cheesey butter and a beet carpaccio with pumpkin seeds. Everything had Vasterbotten Cheese, of course.



The dessert from my work conference last weekend. A great idea, but so-so in execution. The chocolate cake was a bit dry, and placed on a *very* dry biscuit of some sorts. The pistachio mousse was quite tasty, but that color *has* to be artificial. (As was the taste, I think.) Then there was some sort of coffee "caramel" according to the menu, but I couldn't detect anything caramelly about the cream. Oh well.

Bye-bye to high calories snacks at school

Good news for hundreds of parents of elementary and middle school kids. Congressman have asked the Institute of Medicine to to recommend new standards for school snacks and foods that sharply would limit calories, fat and sugar. This means that schools would have to offer healthier foods including those that are sold in the vending machines.

The new foods will include:

Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nonfat or low-fat dairy among others

Learn more about low calorie food at schools

Smoked Salmon Canapé with Fennel, Strawberries and Sichuan Peppercorns with Salted Sesame Brittle

This is my entry for the Swedish food blogging event Cyberkocken, which is like Paper Chef - which is, in turn, a bit like Iron Chef. You're given certain ingredients, and asked to come up with something fun. This time, the ingredients were salmon, sesame, fennel and a berry of some kind. Easy!

I decided to make a small canapé, a tiny appetizer that could be eaten in a few bites. You could of course make this a larger starter too. It's elegant and with very interesting flavors - it all goes so well together. The sesame brittle makes a rather large amount - but it does make a very yummy candy. I used a recipe for nougatine from The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum, and that worked out really well - it was just as I had imagined.



Smoked Salmon Canapé with Fennel, Strawberries and Sichuan Peppercorns with Salted Sesame Brittle
4 small appetizers, or 2 larger

50 g smoked salmon
1/4 fennel
5-6 strawberries
1-2 tsp white wine vinegar
1-2 tsp coldpressed rapeseed oil
1/2-1 tsp sichuan peppercorns

Cut the samon into small strips. Slice the fennel as thin as you can, preferrably on a mandolin. Dice the strawberries. Mix everything with a bit of vinegar and rapeseed oil, taste to see that it's to your liking. Season with crushed sichuan peppercorns. Divide on plates, and top with a few fennel fronds.

Salted Sesame Brittle

130 g sugar
110 g corn syrup (I use Swedish white baking syrup, which apparently is a very good substitution.)
1 tbsp salted butter
200 ml (0,8 cups - you don't need to measure here, it's not crucial) toasted sesame seeds
flaky sea salt

First, toast your sesame seeds if they're not already toasted. This is easy in a large dry pan, but make sure they don't burn!

Bring sugar and syrup to a boil while stirring. When boiling, stop stirring, and let it boil undisturbed until it's a medium gold color. Watch very closely, once the color starts changing, it'll be quick. Remove from heat, stir in butter and sesame seeds and pour onto a teflon or silpat baking sheet. (Which you can oil, if you're concerned about sticking.) Put another similar sheet on top and use a rolling pin to get it as thin as you can. Uncover, sprinkle with flaky sea salt, and let it cool completely before breaking into shards.

You can add a simple strawberry sauce to dot on the plate by mixing a few berries with a little white syrup, or sugar and water. Very tasty!

And since it's Saturday, I'll show you what it's like for me to take photos with the cats around:





Recipe in Swedish:
Kanapé på rökt lax, jordgubbar och fänkål med sichuanpeppar och saltat sesambräck

Arlas Golden Cow, part 2

I told you about Arlas Guldko the other day - now, let me tell you about the food! My pictures are not great, but I hope they can give you some idea of what it was like.

The dinner was composed by Swedish Chef of the Year Tommy Myllymäki, and Swedish Pastry Chef of the Year, Mattias Ljungberg. For starters, they served a herring with a vinaigrette with roasted tomatoes and various shellfish, with new potatoes. Definitely an interesting take on herring - it didn't completely wow me, as I'm not a huge herring fan, but it was nice. The wine for the first course was incredible though, I really enjoyed that: Dr Loosen bernkastler Lay Riesling Kabinett 2005, from Mosel.



The main course was a duo of lamb - one very slowly cooked for a long time, and so tender it literally melted in my mouth. The other piece of lamb was not as flavorful in comparison - that's the danger of doing a duo like that, you will of course compare and conrast. There was a nice potato goat's cheese terrine, topped with a baby carrot, baby leek, and on the side, a curry glazed piece of something we couldn't quite identify - sort of like swede, but something else. Not celeriac, either. Turnip, possibly? There was also a nice wedge of braised apple that went nicely with the lamb. I felt that there was a bit too many flavors going on - everything on the plate was super tasty, but I don't know if I really thought it went very well together. The wine, again, was delicious - but not a great choice for the dish in my opinion. It was very assertive, and sort of took over a little. But nice, nonetheless. Baltasar Garnacha 2003, from Catalunya, Spain.



We were then served a cheese course - Kvibille blue cheese on a piece of bacon toast, topped with a sliver of fig that had been cooked in a red wine caramel. Tasted as good as it sounds! I'll make this myself sometime - but I'll skip the toast, and go straight for crispy bacon bits instead.



And then the dessert. Oh. The dessert. Can you see how pretty it is? How it must have been airbrushed pink, on one end? That there's pulled sugar decor? I wish you could all taste it, it was so amazing. So, what is it? According to the menu, spiced spring rhubarb with a fresh cheese bavarois and lemon chibouste. What I'd describe it as? Well. Lemon and vanilla mousse, on some sort of cookie base, with a layer of rhubarb in between, with rhubarb and strawberry sauce, and topped with pistachios. Regardless of what it actually was, it was plain delicious. And so was the wine served with this - a very sweet German wine, called Moselland Brauneberger Mandelgraben 2000, Ortega Beerenauslese, from Mosel.

And after dinner, there was a surprise - Swedish artist Nanne Grönwall was on stage! Nanne is very well known, and very well liked, too. All in all, a wonderful evening! A big thank you to Arla - I'm glad you let me come! And a big thanks to Dagmar, too, for coming with me! :)

Banana Ice Cream with Sugar-Toasted Pecans

It's incredibly warm and sunny today, so I thought I'd share a fabulous ice cream recipe from David Lebovitz new book, The Perfect Scoop. I found it on the Traveler's Lunchbox, where you can also read an interview with David. The book is definitely on the top of my wishlist for summer - I'm sure all the ice creams are fabulous. This one definitely was!

It's a great way to use up browned bananas - why do I keep buying them, since I never really eat them? One of life's eternal mysteries.. but I do like to use them in baking, as I'm sure I've said over and over again. Roasting the bananas with brown sugar really brings out their flavor, and adds that of caramel. Yummy! I adapted David's recipe a little, using less lemon and more vanilla, tad more salt, and adding sugar-toasted pecans. If I didn't know, I'd never guess that this ice cream didn't have cream in it - but it's really just made from milk. (I don't think I'd try it with low-fat milk though - you gotta draw the line somewhere..)

Banana Ice Cream with Sugar-Toasted Pecans
3 very ripe bananas
70 g brown sugar
1 tbsp butter
375 ml full-fat milk
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt (flaky sea salt is what I used)

Cut the bananas into pieces, and put in an oven-proof dish. Sprinkle with brown sugar and dot with the butter, and bake at 200°C for about 30 minutes. The bananas should be really soft and you will have a caramel-like syrup in the pan. Remove to a large bown, and add milk, sugar, vanilla and lemon. Mix with a handheld mixer (or do this step in a food processor) until it's smooth. Add the salt.

Cover the bowl tightly, and place in the fridge until very cold - overnight is good. Then freeze in an ice cream maker. Add the sugar-toasted pecans for the last minute or so.



Sugar-Toasted Pecans
100 g pecans, roughly chopped
2 tbsp demerara sugar (or brown sugar)
1 tbsp butter

Mix in a large pan, and heat while stirring until all the sugar has melted and the nuts are lightly golden. Spread out on a lined baking sheet so that they cool down quickly, and keep in an air-tight jar.

Recipe in Swedish:
Bananglass med sockerrostade pecannötter

Arla's Golden Cow - part 1

Last week, I was invited to a fancy event hosted by Arla Foods, the largest dairy company in all of Europe. (And certainly the major one in Sweden - I've grown up seeing their logo on the milk cartons.) The event is called "Arla's Guldko", which translates to "Arla's Golden Cow" - the cow being their most prominent logo. This is an awards program, to reward some of the food-related businesses in Sweden. The categories were - roughly translated - best school kitchen, best senior restaurant, best food store, best fast food store and best environmental work. (You can read more about it, and all the winners, here.) I was especially excited for the winners of the school kitchen award - they were so happy and jumped up and down on the stage. Farsta Gymnasium - congratulations!

Me, and Dagmar, arrived just in time for coffee. Which was very lucky indeed! They had ordinary coffee, but they had also brought up four of the best baristas in Sweden to make latte and espresso for everyone. Daniel Remheden from Lund (who came in second this year in Barista Cup) made my espresso, but I'm not sure of the name of the latte artist - he was really good, anyway.



There were, as you can see in the picture, plenty to eat. The highlight was the blueberry crème brûlée, but the passionfruit and mango smoothie was great too, as was the rhubarb jelly topped with crumbs and vanilla sauce. Additionally, there were tiny versions of classic Swedish cookies, and a very cute - and tasty - miniature swiss roll with fresh raspberries. I'm not sure if it was Sweden's Pastry Chef of the Year who was responsible, but I suspect as much. (He did dessert, later on.)

We then got to listen to Mattias Klum, who is a world-famous photographer. He works for National Geographic, and his photos are absolutely wonderful. He told of about his travels to India and Borneo. He's as great a storyteller and entertainer as he is a photographer, so that should tell you something about how much fun we had!

In the next part, I'll tell you about the fabulous dinner we had. It was really amazing! (Sadly, my photos are not - but hopefully Dagmar's are a bit better!)

Mobile blogging!

This is my first post written on the go, or more accurately, with my new PDA, a Palm TX with wifi. Pretty cool, in my humble opinion. I'm at a session with local parliament, which is interesting but little tedious as we had another session last night, but didn't manage to work through our long agenda.

Foodwise, we get sandwiches and coffee, and fruit. However, we have our meetings at a local cinema complex, so there's also soda and popcorn for those who want. (And trust me, we have our very own version of Mr Bean, too!)

I promise a more interesting post tomorrow, with details of an amazing dinner I attended last week, composed by chef of the year.

Spicy Orange Crème Brûlée

Crème Brûlée is definitely one of my favorite desserts, at any time. This one was a particularly lucky version, inspired by simply having some spiced sugar at hand. (Not a bad strategy!) I served it after a simple salad, for a luxurious lunch with food blogger Kristina of Clivia's Cuisine.

The beauty of this is really that you can - and should! - make it in advance. It's definitely best if made the night before, and then placed in the fridge.

Spicy Orange Crème Brûlée
Serves 2

250 ml (1 cup) heavy cream
20 g homemade vanilla sugar (or regular sugar)
1-2 tbsp spicy orange sugar (look here) or substitute 1 tsp grated orange peel, some cinnamon, and 1 tbsp regular sugar)
2 egg yolks
demerara or muscovado sugar, to caramelize

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Mix the cream with the spicy sugar in a saucepan, and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

Beat the egg yolks with the sugar, and add the warm cream. Mix well, and divide between two small ramekins. Place them in an oven-proof dish, and pour hot water in the dish, to about half the height of the ramekins. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove and let cool completely, then place in the fridge.

When you're ready to eat, sprinkle some muscovado or demerara sugar on the surface, and blaze with a chef´s torch.

Recipe in Swedish:
Crème Brûlée med apelsin och kanel

Prinsessornas Kokbok

I didn't know what to title this post - is it "Foodie Gifts" or "Cookbook Watch"? Because this is a fantastic old set of cookbook that my darling big sister Ehva gave me. It's a fairly famous cookbook, called the Princesses' cookbook (wasn't very hard to translate, was it?), and written by Jenny Åkerström back in the 1920:s. My edition is printed in 1931, and in fantastic condition. I have the first four books - I think there might be more, but I'm not completely sure. (Nor do I really care, I'm perfectly happy with these.) Jenny Åkerström had a domestic school in Stockholm, where she educated future housewives, including the three princesses Märtha, Margareta and Astrid. Hence the title of her very popular book - this was printed in many, many editions, but it is now rather hard to find.

So, is it useable? Well, sure it is! But it *is* old. It's supposed to have the original recipe for Princess Cake, but I haven't found it so far. (I've only had quick leaf-through just yet.) And some of the things.. well, I guess offal meats were pretty popular back then, as was gelatin in many different shapes and forms. But it's amazingly fun to be able to time-travel like this and see what was popular in a very different time. Of course, some things don't change - the books have a very well-filled chapter on ice cream!

Spicy snacks

Still in Örebro, at my hotel room after a hard day's work. Well, not that hard. Unless you count sitting a conference hall hard work. It's been long, anyway.

Photo - that's some very spicy and flavorful peanuts that I made a while ago. I'd been asked to test a few recipes for the Swedish food writer (and blogger) Lisa Förare Winbladh, and this is one of the things I tried. The spice mix is really nice, and rather close to the traditional chinese five-spice. I used, among other things, star anise, cinnamon, sechuan pepper (my first experience with this lovely spice!), salt, chili pepper and some other things. I tried it with cashews too, but Per ate those so quickly I couldn't even get a photo. Highly recomended.

Finally Friday!

Well, it'd be better if I wasn't working all weekend. Which I am. I'm currently in the city of Örebro, at a conference, and I'll be here until Sunday. I'm already a little bit homesick, which doesn't exactly bode well. But I'm mostly just tired - because last night, Dagmar and I attended a really great awards show hosted by the largest dairy company in Sweden (and I think, Europe), Arla Foods. It was wonderful - and I promise to tell you all about it when I'm back home. But let me just say that the menu was created by Swedish Chef of the Year Tommy Myllymäki, and the dessert by Swedish Pastry Chef of the year Mattias Ljungberg. And especially the dessert was absolutely heaven.

Speaking of heaven. Look at that picture up there. It's one of the simplest starters you can make, but it makes a super appetizer. Just cut halloumi cheese nice logs, wrap with bacon, and bake in the oven (200 degrees C) for about 15-20 minutes - until the bacon is nice and crisp.

Banana Espresso Brownies with Figs

I was in a real baking mood yesterday, and I really felt like making something gooey and delicious. So, what could be better than brownies? I haven't made any for a long time. And they're so versatile! I looked around my kitchen and decided that the overripe banana sitting on the counter would be a nice addition, as would the ten leftover dried figs I had in the cupboard. Remembering the super-tasty flavor of my Fig Espresso Cookies, I decided to add a teaspoon of espresso grounds, too. And thus, the Banana Espresso Brownies with Figs were born! I love the inclusion of figs - they make for such a satisfying crunch, without using nuts.

As this was a real cleaing-out mission, I used three different kinds of chocolate. Two rather ordinary, and one very dark (75% cacao) with salted macadamia nuts. They weren't really noticable in the final results though. And I used two types of sugar since I ran out of brown - feel free to do as you please.

These are gooey, but not overly so - they can easily be cut and served, and would be really good for a larger gathering. The recipe makes quite a few - I got 24 normal-sized pieces. I asked Tesse and Danne over for tea, dropped off a box of six at my neighbor-the-vet, and froze the rest.

Banana Espresso Brownies with Figs
Makes 24

225 g butter, softened (I use normal, salted butter)
170 g brown sugar
125 g white sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
175 g dark chocolate
1 tsp ground espresso coffee
1 very ripe banana
10 dried figs, cut into small dice
175 g flour

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave (that's what I always do). Let it cool slightly.

Beat the butter with both sugars until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well. Add vanilla, espresso and banana, and beat well. (Don't forget to scrape down the sides, if you're using a Kitchen-Aid.) Stir in the melted chocolate, flour and figs. Scrape into a greased and lined baking pan, and bake at 175°C for about 20-25 minutes.

I'm entering this in a lovely new food event: Browniebabe of the month!

Recipe in Swedish:
Brownies med banan, espresso och fikon

H1b Official Website Bomb

I have posted this article on H1b official website on my other blog, and the post has made it to the Times of india here.

When you search for the keyword H1b official website on google, you'd expect the pages of uscis, but no. Well at least before I made the post, the first result was of a hate site, called send [them] back dot org. After my post, a few links from other bloggers, now the google result page has pushed down the hate site fron the number one spot of google result page.

But, it is still on page one. I want a few more links to push the result back to at least page two.
I want my dear readers and fellow food bloggers to read the above post, and write a post titled H1b official website, with links to the genuine H1b sites below:


uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis
h1b1.com/welcome.htm
infinitilaw.com/h1bquotacount.html
buchanan.org/blog/?p=618

make it fast.
This hate site got into search result number one by getting link with H1b Official website as the anchor text. By linking to the other sites with the same text, we are going to ou\sh the hate site back inside the google result pages.

Start Linking...

Chèvre Tzatziki

Totally continuing my cheese theme this week! (Completely unintentional - really!) Here's a handy little sauce to have at hand for any upcoming barbecues. A tzatziki traditionally has garlic - but here it's been replaced with crumbly goat's cheese, Chèvre. Delicious!

It's great with grilled meat - particularly lamb. But it's nice with salmon, too - in fact, try it with just about anything.

Chèvre Tzatziki

200 g chèvre cheese
200 ml (0,8 cups) thick yogurt
1/2 cucumber
salt
white pepper
1-2 tsp runny honey

Mash the cheese with the yogurt. Split the cucumber lengthwise, remove the seeds, and cut the rest of the cucumber in small dice. Mix with the cheese-yogurt, and season with salt and white pepper. Add a drizzle of runny honey, to taste.

Recipe in Swedish:
Chèvre Tzatziki

Västerbotten Cheese

Yesterday, me and Dagmar of A Cat In The Kitchen, went to a cheese seminar. It was hosted by Västerbottensost, Västerbotten Cheese - which is a very special cheese indeed. It's made in a small dairy in Burträsk in northern Sweden, and it's very strictly regulated. It's been made in the same way since 1872, when it's rumored that a dairy maid named Ulrika Eleonora Lindström made a mistake. She was constantly interrupted in her work, and the fancy version states that it was due to a handsome farm boy who came to see her. You can choose to believe that, or the more boring version where Ulrika Eleonora just had too much to do. (Very likely, giving the working conditions in those days.) Either way, she was interrupted, and the cheese was altered because of it. And what a delicious mistake it was!

The cheese is still made much in the same way, using the same process. It's aged for at least 12 months. (We got to try an early cheese, and one that had rested longer - and it was a huge difference.) The cheese itself is a very flavorful, assertive, fairly hard cheese (although not as try as a parmesan or a pecorino) with tones of caramel. It's rather sweet, and has a delicate balance between sweetness and bitterness. Really - if you get your hands on it, do try it. It's great for snacking on as it is, but can also be used in cooking. I used some last night in a pasta dish with broccoli and bacon, and this morning I tossed in a small handful with my scrambled eggs. (Yum!!)

The seminar was given because of the Västerbotten Cheese Scholarship, which is a competition for culinary high school students. The winner was Jesper Kansten, who had created a very interesting dish with a warm pork terrine with apples and mushrooms, a Västerbotten cheese cream with celery, some Västerbotten cheese sticks (I have to try those this summer - they sound brilliant!) and saurkraut-boiled tiny onions. Exciting stuff, and congratulations Jesper - well deserved!

We didn't get to try the winning dish, but we did get to try a great variety of dishes that really showcased the versatility of the cheese, which was of course a component of every dish). My favorite was an asparagus pie with pine nuts, and a vegetable carpaccio of cooked yellow beets, thinly sliced and drizzled with cold-pressed rapeseed oil and pumpkin seeds. There was also a salad with chicken, avocado and mango, and a roasted red pepper soup with grilled shrimp. And almost the best - a simple butter mixed with grated cheese, served with excellent bread.

Check out Dagmar's post too - she has some great photos. And a very nice write-up - where she nicely forgot to tell you that due to me forgetting to print a map, we got really lost and wandered for almost half an hour before finally making it to where the seminar was. So sorry!

Raclette

Ooey, gooey cheese. Raclette is divine. What a great concept. Melt cheese. Pour on bread, veggies, anything really. Eat. A lot.

I'm off to another cheese event today - a seminar on the deliciously sharp Västerbotten cheese. I'll report back!

Chèvre Tomato Tart with Roasted Garlic

Ah, almost summer! Sweden has had a really warm weekend, with blue skies and lots of sun. Today will be spent in our tiny garden, planting some new kitchen herbs (I'm thinking thyme, mint, sage, rosemary, tarragon) and then grilling up some sausages. My sister Ehva is coming over to help us, and my parents are popping over later.

I'm not making this tart today - but I could have. It's not super dependent on great tomatoes, since roasting them brings out whatever flavor there is. But obviously, the better your tomatoes, the better the final product. I don't need to tell you that. Anyway. It's a great tart! Perfect as a light meal for four, with a salad on the side. Or make it snack-sized and serve with drinks!

I got this recipe from Cuisine Capers, and well, adapted it a bit but pretty much kept it the way it was.

Chèvre Tomato Tart with Roasted Garlic
Serves 4

1 sheet of puff pastry (ready-made)
3-4 large tomatoes, sliced
1 bulb of garlic
4 tbsp olive oil
150 g chèvre cheese
1 tsp fresh thyme
salt, pepper

Optional toppings - like balsamic vinegar, olive oil, black olives, basil or parmesan

Slice the tomatoes and let them dry a bit on paper.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Start by roasting the garlic. Divide the garlic bulb into cloves, but don't peel them. Toss with a tbsp of the olive oil in a roasting pan, and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the cloves are soft. Remove from the oven, peel the cloves and put them in a bowl. Add olive oil, chèvre cheese, thyme, salt and pepper, and mix with a handheld blender. (Or do this in a food processor.)

Roll out the puff pastry. Mark a border all along the edge. This makes the edge puff up nicely. Spread with the garlic-cheese mixture, and top with the tomatoes.

Bake for 25 minutes. When you take it out, top it if you want to, with balsamic vinegar, some extra olive oil, olives, basil and/or parmesan cheese.

Recipe in Swedish:
Tomatpaj med rostad vitlök och getost

Brie and Bacon Pasta

Yet another variation on pasta with cheese and bacon! This is good, but very very heavy. For the recipe, check out Cooking with Amy. It's basically a matter of frying onion and bacon, tossing with the cooked pasta, and adding cubes of brie and some pasta water until it all turns into a silky sauce. Finish with black pepper and some parmesan.

I have to say that the very favorite thing about this pasta is the photo though - I'm quite happy with it!

English food is no joke.

English food is no joke. Or is it? I told my husband about the event that Sam is hosting - Fish and Quips, and his immediate response was "let's make Spotted Dick!"

Well.

When I think of English food, I think of Afternoon Tea. And there's certainly nothing funny about that. (Or is it?) I think it's a rather lovely tradition, and I much enjoy the ritual of it. Not that I've ever had afternoon tea in England, but quite often in several Stockholm cafés. And I enjoy making some of it at home, too, of course. These tiny sandwiches were served at my Tupperware party, and they turned out to be very popular.

One kind is simple good butter (with flakes of sea salt) and thinly sliced cucumber. The other holds hardboiled eggs (2), mayonnaise (2 tbsp), crème fraîche (2-3 tbsp), fresh coriander (2-3 tbsp) and a little salt. Yummy!

Now is also a great time to tell you about a thesis I once wrote when I was studying English. It was about the language of puns, and whether or not they were easier to understand for native speakers than for foreigners who had English as their second language. (Turned out to be no big difference). It was called - rather obviously: That's Not Punny. I remember my professor chuckling his way through our numerous sessions - my subject was a lot more light-hearted than most of the other linguistics thesises that year.

Anyway. English food is not a joke. It can be great.

Feel free to enter this event too - there's still time! Head over to Sam to find out how! I'm really looking forward to a great round-up!

Chickpea Dip with Feta Cheese

Here's the dip I promised you yesterday! Sort of a hoummus - in the sense that it's a chickpea dip - but not very traditional. Awfully good though! I'm not a huge chickpea fan, yet, but I'm getting there. Slowly.

Chickpea Dip with Feta Cheese

2 cans of chickpeas (each 400 g)
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 lemon
1 tsp salt
3-4 tbsp olive oil
2-3 tbsp water
cumin
cayenne pepper
75 g feta cheese
1/2 red onion
fresh coriander

Put the chickpeas, the garlic, the juice of the lemon, salt and olive oil in a food processor and mix until you have a smooth mixture. Add water if it's too thick. Put in a bowl. You can prepare this in advance.

When serving, top with crumbled feta cheese, finely chopped red onion, cumin, cayenne pepper and fresh coriander. Serve with baked pita chips.

Recipe in Swedish:
Kikärtsdip med fetaost

Baked Pita Chips

Consider this post a teaser. I'm about to post about a luscious hoummus with feta cheese, and it went beautifully with these chips. (Which were served at my Tupperware party about a month ago!) The chips are great - SO easy to make, somewhat healthy and they keep well for a few days, too. You can obviously vary the seasoning as much as you'd like.

Baked Pita Chips

Pita breads - however many you want.
olive oil
flaky sea salt
black pepper

Split the pita breads into two rounds. Cut each round into triangles. Put on a large baking sheet (single layer!) and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 175°C for about 15 minutes. Give the pan a good shake after about ten minutes.

Recipe in Swedish:
Pitabrödschips

Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans

Technically, chocolate covered espresso beans, even. I sometimes buy this in candy stores, but it's rather rare to find them. And so easy to make your own. Just take your favorite beans (I like Mauro DeLuxe) and dip in your favorite chocolate. Temper it by all means if you want to be able to touch your beans without them melting, but if you're like me and can't temper chocolate to save your life, don't bother. Just eat the results quickly. And be aware that this has a LOT of caffeine...

Cranky-Free Diet

Hello guys,

I read article on Yahoo.com about cranky-free diet, and this diet will help you to lose weight without altering your mood. The diet consists on 1,600 calories per day and gives you a variety of low-calorie foods that you can substitute from the high-calorie foods without losing the protein and vitamins.

Cranky-free diet

Raspberry Chocolate Cake

Here's another trial cake, before I have to make wedding cakes in May. This is for an easter lunch with my sisters and brother, and it also doubles as a birthday cake for my niece Emmy who's turning 15 in a few days. Happy birthday Emmy!

I haven't tasted it yet, but I can say that I am already sick of making the layers this way - individually. While it seemed like a great idea to not have to slice them, it's not as fun to fill each pan and make sure they don't become uneven. (As they undoubtedly will.) So, back to the drawing board on that - the good thing here is that they have no added fat, and are reasonably fluffy and moist. I would however like a stronger chocolate flavor.

I filled this with chocolate mousse (a very slight variation on my normal true and tested recipe) and a raspberry jam that had been fortified with a few extra raspberries. (Frozen and thawed - no fresh in season now.) And finally, a raspberry buttercream from Rose Levy Berenbaum's great book that one of you faithful readers sent me, The Cake Bible. The buttercream is Rose's Neoclassic buttercream (1/2 recipe) and the reduced raspberry purée is a simplification of her more elaborate reipe, but it works well this way too. The whole thing is then covered in sugarpaste - or rolled fondant - and decorated with royal icing. Let's hope it tastes good, too!

Definitely make this the day before when you want to serve it. The flavors will have more time to develop, and the chocolate mousse needs time to set. Decorate on the day of serving, though.

This is also an entry for Easter Cake Bake, hosted by A Slice of Cherry Pie!

Cake layers (3):
4 eggs
200 ml sugar (0.8 cups)
70 g potato flour
4 tbsp cocoa powder
1,5 tsp baking powder

You need three springform pans, 9 inch. Butter them and line each with a round of buttered parchment paper.

Beat eggs and sugar until very fluffy. Sieve in the potato flour, cocoa powder and baking powder, and mix gently. Pour evenly into the three pans, and bake at 250°C for 4-5 minutes. Remove and let cool, preferrably on a rack.

Filling 1:
100 g frozen raspberries, semi-thawed
100 ml (0.4 cups) raspberry jam

Mix together, and put on the first cake layer. Top with a second layer.

Filling 2, dark chocolate mousse:
3 eggs
50 ml sugar (3 tbsp + 1 tsp
200 g dark chocolate
250 ml (1 cup) heavy cream (40% fat)

Beat eggs and sugar until fluffy. Melt the chocolate and gently fold into the eggs. Beat the cream until fluffy, and fold in that, too. Spread on the second cake layer, and cover with the third layer. (You will not need all of the chocolate mousse, so pour the rest in ramekins and leave in the fridge to set.)

Raspberry butter cream:
200 ml raspberry purée
3 egg yolks
75 g sugar
82 g corn syrup (or if you're in Sweden, white baking syrup works perfectly)
225 g unsalted butter, softened

Start by reducing the raspberry purée until half is left. Leave to cool completely. Beat the egg yolks until fluffy. Bring sugar and corn syrup to a boil, and immediately remove from heat. Pour over the egg yolks and beat at high speed until fully cooled. (Try not to get any on your beaters, or it will spin to the sides of your bowl.

Add the butter, a pat at a time, until fully incorporated. Finally add the reduced raspberry purée, a little at a time.

Spread this over the top and sides of the cake. Cover with plastic foil and leave in the fridge overnight. On the next day, cover with sugarpaste (rolled fondant) and decorate with royal icing.

Royal Icing:
1 egg white
150 g powdered sugar

Mix and beat for 10 minutes with a kitchen-aid or handheld beaters. It's should be very thick and shiny. Color with food coloring if you want to, and decorate to your heart's delight.

Recipe in Swedish:
Hallon och chokladtårta

Tomato Apricot Soup

Yes, another soup recipe! Here's a slightly different tomato soup from the one I usually make. This doesn't need fresh tomatoes, and it's a lot sweeter than my usual soup. Nice for a change - and it'd make a good starter, as it's full of flavors, but not something at least I can eat a full bowl of. Add chilli or other strong spices to your liking - I prefer it to be fairly hot.

I also really recommend a salty garnish, since the soup is sweet. I like a good dollop of pesto, but maybe some chopped up cured ham would be nice, too. Or a sprinkling of pecorino? (Or by all means, all three.)

Tomato Apricot Soup
Serves 2-3, or more as a starter

1 yellow onion
1 clove of garlic
1 tsp neutral oil
2 cans (400 g) cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato paste
600 ml vegetable stock
10 dried apricots
salt
cayenne pepper

Chop onion and garlic, and fry in some oil until softened. Add tomatoe, tomato paste, stock and apricots, and let it boil for about fifteen minutes. Mix with an immersion blender until smooth, adding extra water to get the right texture. Season with salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

Recipe in Swedish:
Tomatsoppa med aprikoser

Blue Cheese Bacon Pasta

Sometimes I make this. And I always wonder why I don't make it more often. After all - it's pretty divine. (But not very healthy, which is the reason I *don't* make it so much, after all.) I'm not giving an exact recipe - you need to do this the way you prefer. I can't tell what blue cheese is your favorite, or how much fat you allow yourself in your diet. But the bare bones here is plenty of crispy bacon, pasta boiled in well-salted water, and some kind of cheese sauce. The easiest way to achieve the sauce is to melt butter, and then melt the cheese into it. Finish with a little milk, cream, or water from the pasta. You can also use a ready-made cheese sauce (mild) and add the blue cheese into that. Not bad at all, either way.

Negative Calories Foods

What are negative calories foods? Well, those are the type of foods that instead of adding calories to your budy, it actually helps you substracting calories and thus help you to lose weight. In order for your body to process foods, it needs at least 100 kcal to digest your food. Some fruits such as apple, cranberries, orange and mango are considered negative calories foods or what is most often known as "wonder foods".

To see the list of negative foods click here.

Happy Easter!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

With all the chicks and bunnies around, I can't help thinking about Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer - the one who's deadly afraid of bunnies? Let me recite her bunny song from the Buffy Musical "Once More With Feeling". (Which is one of my favorite episodes. I'm a die hard Buffy fan - albeit a late one, we just watched the entire series last fall.)

Bunnies aren't just cute
Like everybody supposes!
They got them hoppy legs
And twitchy little noses!
And what's with all the carrots?
What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
Bunnies! bunnies!
It must be bunnies!!

You can watch the entire clip here - Anya's piece is 30 seconds from the beginning.

And the picture? That's little Habanero (who's 2 years old and not very little at all) happily digging into a bowl full of candy. He's nine weeks in that picture.

Healthy kids in Florida

According to the Sun-Sentinel, lawmakers are persuading a bill in which schools will be required to offer physical education or PE every day. I think it would be very beneficial for children to learn the importance of practicing a sport and to become good at it, since we have seen little kids suffering from diabetis and other health related problems such as obesity, to the lack of exercise and healthy eating habits.

Healty Kids in Fla.

Steve's expresso = Unhealthy FAU's coffee shop

Like most of the students at FAU, we rely on the little cafeteria that FAU's Fort Lauderdale campus has. To my misfortune, Steve's Expresso only sell high calorie foods, like pizza, hamburgers, and sandwiches. But, I found an interesting way of saving calories. First, if you like wraps or sandwiches, try to get whole wheat bread or wraps, the difference between whole wheat and white bread is 62 kcal. If you like cheese I suggest you to have an American cheese which contains 369 Kcal less than the Provolone cheese, same when deciding whether to buy a diet soda versus the regular.

For snacks, I highly suggest you to eat an apple which contains 70 Kcal, this fruit is actually a negative calorie food, this means that instead of adding calories to your body it actually helps you lose some.

Fig Espresso Cookies with Dark Chocolate

Let me tell you right away - these cookies are great. They're really lovely in texture as well as in flavor, and they're just the thing with a cup of coffee or a tall glass of milk. They are also a breeze to make. In fact, I just might go whip up another batch right now! See, they keep well in the freezer, too.

Fig Espresso Cookies with Dark Chocolate
Makes about 20 cookies

5,5 dl flour (2,2 cups)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp finely ground espresso beans
200 g dark chocolate, finely chopped
100 g dried figs, chopped
225 g butter, at room temperature
1,5 dl sugar (0,6 cups)
1,5 dl brown sugar( 0,6 cups)
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix flour, baking soda, salt and espresso. Add the chocolate and the figs, and mix well.

Beat butter with both types of sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, and beat well. Add the vanilla.

Gently fold in the dry ingredients, and mix carefully. Cool the finished batter for at least two hours. If it's not cold enough, the finished cookies won't be as soft.

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Roll walnut-sized balls and place with plenty of room in between on a lined cookie sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes.

Recipe in Swedish:
Fikonkakor med espresso och mörk choklad

Cookbook Watch: Sushi, Tradtition & Fusion

I got a copy of this book from Damm Förlag, and while in Swedish, it's translated from an English original by Emi Kazuko. I believe it's called New Sushi, in its original version.

One of my promises this year is to make sushi. I thought this book would help. Now that I've read it, I'm not so sure. Sure, it has basic tips, but it seems to be more aimed to those that already make their own sushi, and are looking for new flavors, and new inspiration. It has some very wild things - gorgeous rainbow rolls for example. However, I'm not sure how much is really fusion. I feel it's more slightly new takes on traditional sushi. It's still mostly Japanese ingredients, although perhaps they wouldn't normally be used in sushi.

The book introduced me to a wooden sushi press - now *that* looks handy! The pictures of the finished sushi pieces looked great!

The photos are by Gus Filgate, and they are just gorgeous. This book is well worth it for the pictures - but if you're looking for beginner's tips, I'd choose something else. I'll pass this on to my neighbor, who regularly does make sushi at home. And for me, I'll be checking out this site a bit more - it has adorable little flash illustrations, very handy...

Apricots with Mascarpone & Pistachios

I made this for the Tupperware party I hosted a few weeks ago. It's a fun little snack with cool combinations - sweet, tangy and nutty, and chewy, creamy and crunchy. I wouldn't eat a whole plate of these, but one or two - absolutely. Poaching the apricots in cardamom-scented syrup makes them swell up a bit, but I honestly don't think it's absolutely necessary. If you want the faint cardamom flavor, try adding a tiny bit to the mascarpone instead.

Apricots with Mascarpone & Pistachios

200 g dried apricots (the soft, ready-to-eat kind
50 g mascarpone cheese
30 g pistachios
300 ml water
150 ml sugar
seeds from 6 green cardamom pods

Bring sugar and water to a boil and add the cardamom seeds. Add the apricots and let them simmer for fifteen minutes. Remove, and leave to cool. Finely chop the pistachios and put in a shallow bowl.

Cut a pocket in each apricot (they will already have a little hole from when the stone was removed, so just make it larger) and stuff with a tiny bit of mascarpone cheese. Dip, cheesey side down, in the pistachios. Arrange on a platter, and leave in the refrigerator until serving.

Recipe in Swedish:
Mascarponefyllda aprikoser med pistachnötter

Easter Chocolates

I rather have a little really good chocolate than lots of cheap candy. Or ideally, a lot of really good chocolate.

Nacka, the part of Stockholm I live in, don't have many industries anymore. But we do have a wonderful chocolate maker, that I have written about before, back when I first started blogging. Puss & Kram (which translates to "Kiss & Hug") is a delightful café and chocolate shop, and I really recommend a visit if you're in the area. (It's located in Sickla Köpkvarter)



Here's one of their boxes that I was lucky enough to get a while ago - delicious truffles! They also make gorgeous wedding cakes, and now that they've moved, you can get coffee and various goodies as well.

My favorite piece ever from them is the white chocolate with saffron truffle, but I have to say, it's all pretty good. From this box, my favorite was the greenish ones - that's lime and white chocolate.

Puss & Kram Choklad
Järnvägsgatan 8
131 34 Nacka

Salad for lunch

I made this when I had my food blogger friend Kristina (of Clivia's Cuisine) over for lunch. It was really tasty, and I like the endless possibilities of something like this. Every bite tastes differently. This plate had steamed bulgur wheat, crispy bacon, diced emmenthaler cheese, diced green apple, alfalfa sprouts, tomatoes and avocado. To finish it, I served a super salad dressing! It took a while - so you might want to start it well in advance - but it's very much worth it. Yum!

Apple Dressing

500 ml (2 cups) apple cider
2-3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp finely chopped shallots or onions
1 tbsp dijon mustard
1/2 tbsp poppy seeds
2-3 tbsp olive oil
salt, pepper

Start by reducing the apple cider. Preferrably the night before! Boil it until you have about 100 ml of liquid left - it will probably take at least an hour, depending on the size of your pan.

Let it cool completely, and chill for at least an hour. Then whisk in apple cider vinegar, mustard and shallots. Add the poppy seeds, and then the oil. Finally season with salt and pepper to taste.

Recipe in Swedish:
Äppeldressing