Feta Watermelon Skewers

Feta Watermelon Skewers

This is so simple it's not even a recipe. It is however a brilliant idea. Just dice watermelon and the best quality feta cheese you can find. Stick them together on cocktail skewers and place in the fridge until you're ready to eat. Ta-da! It's really a great flavor combination. Add some other things too if you feel like it - mint or basil leaves would work, as well as Kalamata olives.

Raspberries everywhere!

Head over to Paulchens blog to see the round-up for the Garten-Koch Raspberry event! You can vote for your favorite - I entered my raspberry & limoncello semifreddo for this. There are many delicious entries!

Cold Garlic Almond Soup - Ajo Blanco

It's another warm day in Stockholm! I really don't get all the complaints about the Swedish summer this year - I think it's pretty warm and sunny all the time! Maybe I'm just oblivious to the rain and the wind... it doesn't bother me at all.

I have always been suspicious of cold soups. In fact, of anything that's not served at it's "proper" temperature. (I guess I'd have a hard time at a hard-core molecular gastronomy place, huh?) However, I'm learning to appriciate it more and more, and this is a nice little Spanish soup, with garlic and almonds. I found this particular recipe at Annette's lovely blog called I Mitt Franska Kök, "In My French Kitchen". She blogs in Swedish, and lives in France.

I changed a few things about her recipe, but not much. Less oil, more grapes, a bit less almonds, and since I didn't have sherry vinegar at home, I used regular sherry, and vinegar. Worked out nicely! I also didn't have raisins, but plenty of dried cranberries, which worked very well here. We served this as a tiny starter, because as good as it is, I can't eat more than a very small bowl. It's pretty intense!

Cold Garlic Almond Soup - Ajo Blanco

Serves 4 as a main course, or 8 as a starter

100 g white bread, crust removed
90 g almonds, blanched
120 g seedless green grapes
2 garlic cloves
3-4 tbsp olive oil
sea salt
black pepper
500 ml water
1 tbsp sherry
1 tbsp white wine vinegar

To serve:
2 tbsp pine nuts
2 tbsp dried cranberries
1/2 cucumber, peeled

Tear the bread into smaller pieces and place in a bowl. Cover with cold water. Let it sit for half an hour and squeeze most of the water from the bread. Put the bread in a food processor, with the almonds, grapes and garlic. Process until it's very smooth. Add oil, salt, pepper, water, sherry and vinegar. Process again until it's completely smooth. I had to get out my immersion blender for this, so be prepared for it to take a while. (Next time, I'm using my Kitchen-Aid blender, which is much stronger than my food processor.)

Leave it in the fridge to chill for a couple of hours, it should be really cold when you serve it.

Toast the pine nuts and chop roughly with the cranberries. Put this mixture in the bottom of each soup bowl, add the soup, and garnish with finely diced cucumber.


Recipe in Swedish:
Kall mandelsoppa med vitlök

Some great copycat recipes

It's been a while since I posted one of these! Here are three brilliant recipes I've found on other food blogs lately.

Buttermilk biscuits is a real favorite - I made it for Fourth of July with fried chicken, and they were absolutely delicious. I especially liked them with the Canadian maple butter Jeff and Brad brought us when they visited in June! This recipe is from Nook & Pantry.



Roasted tomato salsa, from 101 Cookbooks. This was also for the Fourth of July, actually. And very tasty indeed! I used regular dried chillies and chipotle sauce to flavor it, rather than chipotles in adobo or guajillo peppers.



Peanut Noodle Salad from Cloudberry Quark. Oh wow. This was just a fabulous, fabulous dinner. I really liked it - definitely one to try again. And again. I served it with some sliced beef on top, and it was just delicious. I used dried chillies rather than fresh, and red onions rather than scallions. Feel free to substitute as you see fit!

Thai Beef Salad

I crave salads now that it's summer - and this one is a real winner. It's not really thai, but it sure has a thai vibe. And most of all, it's really flavorful and easy to adapt to your liking, as well as very quick to cook.

Serve it with rice, or not - depends on how hungry you are!

I don't really specify what cut of meat to use - seems that those terms are particularly hard to translate since butchers around the world do things differently. But you want something tender since you're only flash-frying it.

Thai Beef Salad
Serves 2

300 g tender beef, cut into strips
1/2 zucchini, cut into strips
100 g mango, diced
10-15 cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 bunch fresh coriander (say, a large handful.)
small handful fresh mint
3 tbsp neutral oil
3 tbsp Japanese light soy sauce
2 limes, juiced
3 tbsp water
1/2 tbsp sesame oil
pinch of brown sugar
1 garlic clove, minced
1 chilli, finely chopped, or crushed dried chilli. I use a mixture of Piri-Piri and sea salt.

Combine tomatoes, mango, red onions, mint and coriander in a bowl. In another bowl, mix oil, soy sauce, lime juice, water, sesame oil, sugar, garlic and chilli.

Heat some oil in a large pan or a wok. Fry the zucchini strips for 3-4 minutes or until lightly browned. Put aside. Add more oil, and fry the meat for a few minutes or until browned. Pour over the dressing and let it boil for 30 seconds.

Arrange everything on a plate and serve.

Recipe in Swedish:
Thailändsk biffsallad med mango

Waiter, there's something in my... Smoky Rocket Sauce

This is an entry for Spittoon Extra's event "Waiter, there's something in my...", the currant theme is of course sauces and this fits the bill perfectly. See, in the summer I almost always go for cold sauces. I have no inclination of standing at the stove more than I need to, so it's much more often a cold sauce, and something coooked on the barbecue.

Rocket, or arugula, is one of my favorite types of greens. It's rather strong and has a mustardy tone, and it's great for a simple salad. It's also great for making a cold sauce, as we discovered the other night. We had to improvise and had "nothing" in the fridge. However, I managed to scrape this together, and boy, am I glad I did! It's super tasty and easy to make - and I've made it twice since, already.

Smoky Rocket Sauce

50 g rocket (arugula)
150 ml thick yogurt (greek or turkish, around 10% fat)
2-3 tbsp mayonnaise
1/2-1 tbsp chipotle sauce or paste (chipotle is a smoked chili pepper)
cayenne pepper

Chop the rocket coarsely. Mix yogurt and mayo, and flavor with chipotle and cayenne, and a dollop of honey if it's too sour. You can add a little salt, too. Mix in the rocket, and serve.

You can prepare it several hours in advance - it keeps well in the fridge. Add some garlic for more of a bite, if you'd like.

Recipe in Swedish:
Rökig ruccolasås

Weekend Cat Blogging - sleepy kittens

We visited our dear friends Helmy and Bernt this week. They are the breeders of two of our cats - Ywette and Kelly. They have kittens right now - eight of them, in fact! I just had to share some of the photos I took - there's nothing more adorable than sleepy kittens...



And no, I can't tell them apart. They're all Shaded Silver British Shorthairs, though. And one is still for sale, a gorgeous little cutie called Samurai Sam - he spent the night in our bed, and awww, it was hard to resist his charms. But we're not getting another male, I don't think Hamlet would approve...



Check out S*Esteticas homepage for much more pictures.



Weekend Cat Blogging this week is hosted by A Byootaful Life - check it out for many more gorgeous kitties!