Ingredient: butter

Maybe French Apple Cake

(stealing is that thing geniuses do right?)

This really isn’t my recipe. It just might be my favorite cake though. Our mum passed a couple of years back and she really loved to make it, so maybe there’s a bit of nostalgia mixed in there, but… anyway. Me and my brother Olov especially love this cake. And you know, he had a food blog called “Falsk Mat” (it’s in Swedish, I’ve linked to it before). And he also wanted to tell the world (more precisely Sweden) about this cake. But it’s not his cake either. He named it: “Mammas franska äppelkaka” (“Mum’s French Apple Cake“). Suck up much Olov? I kid. I really shouldn’t use such an arrogant tone as this is unquestionably yet another chapter in “posting recipes that Olov has already posted”.

So it’s our mum’s cake? Well, she did have a real good run when she made it on an at least semi-regular basis. But it’s not quite her cake either, though she did tweak it to become much better (suck up much… myself?).

It’s from the Swedish cook book “Vår kokbok” (“Our Cook Book”) or possibly “Annas mat” (“Anna’s Food”) where the cake is called “Hanna’s franska äppelkaka” (“Hanna’s French Apple Cake”). So it’s a French apple cake out of a Swedish cook book from a time in which I really don’t think Sweden had other food cultures quite nailed down. I’m not sure if it’s really that French is what I’m trying to say.

To us though, it really is our mum’s cake. At first, I wasn’t completely sure if I remembered what she changed, but I had a feeling she primarily upped the batter to apples ratio. I spoke to Olov about it and said that I kind of remember something about mum liking the batter a lot and that she might have increased it in the recipe. He said…

“oh yes, she really loved the batter. I remember her saying, about the amounts in the recipe from the cook book ‘It has to be a mistake…‘”

….which I had completely forgotten but jolted me back to hearing her say it, which was really lovely.

Then I spoke with my dad, who sent me the recipe from the cook book in which mum had made notes about increasing the batter (+50%). Well… she adjusted it further upwards since, to almost +200%! Aaaaand I’ll be honest… when I did it from a recipe that mum jotted down for Olov, I actually thought “It has to be a mistake…” because there was sooo much batter. I guess we’ve come full circle 🙂 So, you know, dial it back by a third if you like, but be sure to try mum’s maxed out version first!

I’m counting on that this mind blowing exposition has led you straight to the heart of the issue? We’ve ended up with a heck of a cake here. Combined with home made vanilla ice cream it’s downright dangerous.

Do it right away and never look back. And hey, if it goes well: why not dedicate it to a parent?

Special Equipment

  • Ice cream maker
  • Immersion blender
  • Thermometer
Created with Sketch. 60 minutes + oven time Created with Sketch. 10 (cake), 5 (ice cream)

Ingredients

  • For the cake
  • 5 large apples (adjust if you use smaller apples)
  • 200 galmond
  • 300 gbutter
  • 320 gsugar (ca 4 dl)
  • 6 eggs
  • 3 lemons
  • For the vanilla ice cream
  • 4 egg yolks (ca 80 g, take 5 yolks if the eggs are smaller)
  • 2.5 dlcream
  • 2.5 dlmilk
  • 1 vanilla rod (or 2 if you're feeling wealthy)
  • 70 gsugar (just short of a dl)

Directions

  1. Start with the ice cream. This is basically this recipe but with vanilla instead of popcorn, so I’m gonna go through it pretty quickly. Slice the vanilla rod and scrape out the seeds. Heat up the milk and cream with the vanilla rod. When it comes to a boil, take it off the heat.

  2. Whisk the yolks (4) and the sugar (70 g) together. Pour the hot milk/cream- mix over the whisked sugar and yolks while whisking.
  3. Put the resulting mix back on the stove on medium to low heat. While stirring with a flat bottomed wooden spoon or spatula, let the mixture reach 82-84 C and then take it off the heat, and let it cool down in the fridge (let the vanilla rod stay in the batter). After an hour and onwards, it’s ready for the ice cream maker.
  4. Now for the cake: peel the apples and cut them into big pieces (roughly 1/4). Put them in a pan, cover them with water and add 1 dl of sugar. Bring this to a boil and let it simmer for about 3-5 minutes.
  5. Mix the butter (300 g) and sugar (240 g) together.
  6. Crack the eggs (6) and divvy upp the white and the yolks in different bowls.
  7. Add the juice from the lemons (3) and the peel from one lemon to the yolks. Then add the almonds (200 g) and mix with an immersion blender until the almonds are really smashed into pieces (the consistency should be like a loose-ish porridge). Stir this in with the sugar/butter- mix.

  8. Put the oven to 200 C.
  9. Whisk the egg whites into a thick foam.
  10. Put the boiled apples into an oven shape, turn the egg white foam into the almond/yolk/sugar/butter/lemon- mix, and pour everything over the apples.

  11. Bake in the oven on 200 C for about 30 minutes.

Let it cool down for at least 20-30 minutes before serving. If it’s at all hot when serving it’s gonna look more like this…

…than this…

…in which the cake has had time to set (in the fridge no less). Just fyi.

I’m not recommending you to it it cold mind you. I’m just preparing you for the reality with regard to the esthetics. When I sent the first picture (in which it’s more of a “pile” than a “piece” of cake) to Danilo for illustration he just replied: “I can’t illustrate that, it’s just a blob”. So, you know… it’s not a beautiful cake is all I’m saying.

Oh, and by the way, this is my mothers original recipe flaunting her rather insane hand writing.

Miss you mum.

Salmon Pudding

(don't worry, it's not a fish dessert)

This is a real Swedish classic. As in Britain, also in Sweden a “pudding” can be both a dessert and a savory dish (unlike in Britain it can also mean an attractive person). This is… kind of a gratin I guess? There’s another traditional thing in Sweden called Cabbage pudding (coming on the blog sometime in the future), which is completely different from Salmon pudding so the Swedish word for savory “pudding” doesn’t mean much more than “stuff put together in an oven shape”, at least not to my knowledge. As you never now how traditional something you perceive as traditional really is, I did some light googling to get a sense of the history and it does seem to have been around quite a while. It is mentioned in the early 19th century, thou I would guess the recipe has gone through some changes since then. Presumably lemon wasn’t something that people had in general. On the other hand, maybe Salmon pudding wasn’t something ordinary people had? The good news is that all you ordinary people can have it now!

As it turns out, it’s also perfectly adapted to modern society as it’s an ideal lunch box meal. Easy to divvy up in pieces, well suited to be reheated in a microwave and you know…. ridiculously good, which is a big plus in my book.

It’s also one of these dishes that almost makes itself. Yes, there’s a bit of light seasoning but for the most part, the flavors come from the ingredients themselves and there’s not many of those. The only real hassle is slicing the potatoes and the onion which is why you should really have a kitchen mandolin handy.

Let’s get to it!

Special Equipment

  • Kitchen mandolin
Created with Sketch. 2 hours Created with Sketch. 8

Ingredients

  • 1 kgpotatoes (low starch)
  • 500 gcold smoked salmon
  • 2 yellow onions
  • 1 pot of dill
  • 6 normal sized eggs
  • 3 dlmilk
  • 3 dlcream
  • 350 gbutter
  • Some salt and black pepper

Directions

  1. Put the oven on 225 C.
  2. Smear the bottom of an oven pan with butter (50 g). Thinly slice potatoes and onion (preferably with a mandolin) and spread across the bottom. Sprinkle the surface with salt and black pepper. It’s hard to give any exact measure regarding the salt. It depends on how salt the salmon is, but it shouldn’t be a lot.
  3. Add a layer of salmon, then another layer of potato, onion and dill. Another sprinkle of salt and pepper (for each layer of potato). Repeat until you’re out of stuff.

  4. Mix the eggs (6), the milk (3 dl) and the cream (3 dl) in a bowl. Add a teaspoon of salt and a couple of dashes of black pepper, then pour the mix over the layers of potato, onion and salmon.
  5. Finish by spreading the surface with flakes of butter (100 g), more dill, the juice from 1/2 a lemon and another light sprinkle of salt.
  6. Put the pan into the oven for about 40-45 minutes (225 C). When it’s done the potatoes should have some firmness left and the top of the pudding should be ever so slightly burnt.
  7. Serve with clarified butter (200 g), some fresh dill and a slice of lemon.


This is actually a sort of summer dish, probably because of the fresh dill, but don’t let that stop you!

Banoffee Pie

(banana and toffee, bananatoffee, banoffee, get it?)

This is a ridiculous dessert. I guess it is very English (I think it’s English… look, I’m not gonna google it)? At least it feels very English, in that it’s just… too much… of… stuff? Digestive biscuits mixed with substantial amounts of additional butter? Condensed, super sweet milk? Banana? Whipped cream? Let’s get it all in there.

I’ve added a bit of acidity as the quadruple threat of “sweet and fat with no acidity”, i.e. digestive biscuits x condensed milk x banana x cream just feels a bit much for me. But the thing is, the sum of the parts really has got something. It’s rather glorious actually, in all its too-muched-ness. I find myself really crave it from time to time and it’s real easy to make, so I thought you might like it.

Created with Sketch. 4 hours (but three of them is waiting for the condensed milk to gel) Created with Sketch. 6-8

Ingredients

  • 200 gDigestive biscuits
  • 100 gbutter
  • 2 bananas
  • 200 g(2 dl) of cream (40-ish % fat)
  • 400 gcondensed milk
  • 1 lemon
  • Some sugar
  • Some cocoa powder
  • A bit of dark chocolate

Directions

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and put the can of condensed milk in the boiling water. Turn the heat down so the water is just simmering. Leave for three (3) hours. It’s important that the can is covered by water the entire time so you might have to add a bit of water after a while.
  2. Slice the two (2) bananas into one centimeter-ish thick pieces and put them in a bowl or a shallow container of some sort. Squeeze the lemon and pour the lemon juice over the banana slices.
  3. Melt the butter (100 g) and smash up the Digestive biscuits (200 g). Pour the melted butter over the crushed biscuits and mix with an immersion blender.
  4. Put the biscuit-butter-mash-up in a pie tin and spread it evenly across the bottom. Use something flat to really…. um, flatten it… Let it rest in the fridge for at least one hour.
  5. Thing is, now you’re basically done! When the condensed milk has simmered for three hours, take it out of the water, open the can and spread it on top of the biscuit bottom of the pie tin.
  6. Add the banana slices (don’t use the lemon juice at the bottom of the tray) on top and finish it off with some lightly sugared whip cream (200 g / 2 dl, couple of pinches of sugar), cocoa powder and grated dark chocolate. If you leave in the fridge for a while it gets a bit more set and the jellyfied condensed milk has time to cool down, but that’s basically up to you. I’d say that it’s good to go from the start but gets a bit better from some 30 minutes or so in the fridge.

This is… well, I’ve already said it several times but it bears repeating: too much. It’s really great though.

Kids really fucking love it as well, so that’s good. It’s soooo hard getting kids to finish their desserts, am I right?

Cod, potato, green peas and hollandaise

(cod wonder)

Sometimes… most of the time..? All the time?! No, probably most of the time, the simple stuff is the best. Cod, potatoes, butter sauce. That’s perfect, isn’t it? I think so. I’m going to complicate stuff a bit (duh) but the basis of this dish is really simple. A few ingredients and very straight forward flavors.

We eat a lot of fish in Sweden and cod is kind of the king of the fishes. Or something. I tried to find the translation for this specific part of the cod (the back fillet) but I… well I failed. Maybe the English-speaking world does not make the distinction?

In this recipe I’m cooking the fish with the sous vide technique but it’s brilliant pan fried as well. It’s just a little bit easier to get it just right when using sous vide. Btw, I use the ANOVA sous vide machine, which I can really recommend.

So what’s the deal with sous vide? Well, it’s pretty straight forward. Vacuum seal something in a plastic bag with some spices and/or butter or whatever you think might be good. Then put the bag(s) in a temperature controlled water bath at the exakt temperature you want your meat/fish/veggie/whatever to be cooked at, and leave it in there for a long time (as compared to the cooking time using more “traditional” techniques). I think it’s pretty rare to get well prepared fish at “not-high-end”- restaurants, and actually also at many higher end restaurants. Why? It’s almost always overcooked. Dry, overcooked fish is… I mean, it’s not horrible or gross or whatever but it’s just such a waste, right?  When it’s juuuust right, it’s almost falling apart, it’s cooked through but only just so and it’s brilliant. When you’ve had that perfect thing, the overcooked one is such a sad reminder of what could have been. With sous vide, it’s so easy to get it just as you want it and basically impossible to fail. So you should really try it.

Special Equipment

  • Sous vide machine
  • Vacuum sealer
Created with Sketch. 1 hour for the cooking. Simple preparations to be made a couple of hours before cooking starts. Created with Sketch. 6 portions

Ingredients

  • 900 gcod (back) fillet
  • 2000 gsmall (low starch) potatoes
  • 300 ggreen peas
  • 300 gbutter
  • 5 egg yolks
  • 1 lemons (possibly two if they're small)
  • Cayenne pepper
  • Quite some salt
  • Some white pepper

Directions

  1. Firstly, we’re gonna prepare the fish. Brining is something that you should do with almost anything fish, poultry or pork. It’s basically letting the meat soak in salt water for a time before cooking. It gives the meat extra moisture and a natural saltiness that is very nice. So: dissolve about 50-60 grams of salt in 300 grams of water in a pot. When dissolved, add 700 grams of ice-cold water to the solution and put in a bowl. Add the fish to the salt water and put in the fridge for a couple of hours (or what time you have)
  2. Fill up a pot with cold water, add the potatoes and A LOT of salt. About 100 g. Seriously. Put it on high heat under a lid. When it boils, turn the stove off and leave the potatoes (under lid) in the boiling warm water. This is a pretty good trick when making potatoes. They come out just right (but check after a while anyway, I wouldn’t want overcooked anything on my conscience after that rant in the intro).
  3. Turn the oven to max.
  4. Set the sous vide machine to 47 or 48 degrees C and 45 minutes.
  5. Take the fish out of the brine. Rinse off the salt water and dry the fillets with some kitchen paper.
  6. Vacuum seal the fillets. Add som spices to the vacuum bag if you want!
  7. Put the bags in the sous vide machine (when it’s at temperature of course).
  8. Now, let’s make hollandaise! Bring a pot of water to a simmer. When it’s simmering put the stove on the lowest heat setting.
  9. Cut the 250 grams of the butter into about 2 cm x 2 cm big cubes.
  10. Mix 30 ml (2 tablespoons) of lemon juice with the egg yolks in a bowl. Put the bowl over the simmering water and heat the mixture while whisking. Use a metal bowl or at least something that can transmit heat. If you use a thick ceramic bowl the yolk/lemon mixture is probably not gonna get hot enough.
  11. When the egg/lemon mixture starts thickening, drop in a butter cube while continuing to stir/ whisk (if the egg/lemon mix thickens very quickly or becomes very thick, take the bowl off the water bath). When the cube has dissolved, drop another one in. Continue until you run out of butter. I use this technique instead of melting the butter first and then pouring it in to the yoke, as I think it’s easier to avoid the sauce breaking doing it this way.
  12. Add cayenne pepper, white pepper and possibly lemon and salt, to you liking. Note that you can’t refrigerate butter sauces. The butter sets and can’t be reheated without breaking.
  13. Pour away the salt water from the potatoes and put them in the oven with som rapeseed oil for 10-15 minutes. Don’t rinse the potatoes. The salty water stuck to the skin will give it the perfect saltiness (i.e.: no need to add any salt when taking them out of the oven)
  14. Put the remaining butter (50 grams) in a pan. Heat the butter in the pan until it starts to brown.  Take the cod out of the vacuum bags and fry them for 10-15 seconds on each side. Be careful, the fillets can be very brittle.
  15. Boil the peas.
  16. Serve with fresh herbs, some fried kale, a squeeze of lemon or something… else?

A couple of notes.

If you use frozen fish (I did), be sure to thaw it gently. The meat easily becomes a bit thready and chewy if not treated carefully.

Why low starch potatoes? Well, low starch potatoes keep their shape better when cooked and therefore fits well for this recipe (I think).

Why all the salt? First of all: It’s not to make it taste very salty. It just gets…. tastier. A bit salty, yes, but not at all over the top (promise). I thiiiink it’s due to osmosis. The salty water is pulled in to the potato due to the higher ion-concentration in the water as compared to the water in the cells in the potato. The salt water adds moisture and saltiness to the potato, much like brining (it is basically brining).

So that’s what I think, but the internet gives… differing explanations. Some say it (the better taste) is due to the potatoes being cooked at a higher temperature (the salt raises the boiling point of the water), but this seems implausible to me as the temperature is very marginally higher. Some do say osmosis but that also doesn’t seem quite open and shut.

I have been planning on writing something about potatoes on the blog, primarily about this. Let’s hope I get to it soon. Oh, and I you know something about this potato stuff, do get in touch.

In the meantime? Get good at making cod and hollandaise. You’re in for a lifetime of tasty joy!

Tarte Tatin

(accidents happen)

Tarte Tatin is a puff pastry apple… tart (well yes I guess, but is “tarte” the same thing as “tart”, no right?)? Pie? Cake? Something. It was invented by accident at Hotel Tatin in France, and thank the lord for accidents.

I’m not really sure exactly what it is about it that I like so much. I am a bit of a sucker for apples in desserts (I’ll be back with an even better but also a bit more complicated cake in a while) and there’s just something with the apple & caramelized sugar combo that’s… lovely.

It’s sweet. Maybe too sweet for some. Hanna (my girlfriend) thinks so, but she’s very sugar conservative. I might be a liiiittle bit wained off sugar but I thinks it’s right on the border, despite my recipe having quite a lot less sugar than other ones I’ve come upon. It depends a lot on the apples as well for sure. I recommend you to use quite sweet as well as not too sour apples, which might sound a bit counter productive when reading the above, but I think it fits best for this dish.

So how do you make this bad boy? Easy. You just pan-fry the apples in butter, sugar and lemon until the sugar starts to caramelize. Then you cover the the contents of the pan with puff pastry and bake it in the oven. When it has cooled down outside the oven you flip the pan upside down over a plate and out comes this lovely thing. I tend to think that it’s ok to buy the puff pastry. The store bought one is mostly pretty good and it’s a bit of a chore to do it.

Best eaten with vanilla ice cream so I’ll include a simple recipe for that as well. Mmmmm.

Special Equipment

  • Frying pan that you can put in the oven (most modern ones qualify)
Created with Sketch. 40 min Created with Sketch. 6-ish

Ingredients

  • For the Tarte Tatin
  • 4 quite bigapples (maybe five)
  • 1 lemon
  • 75 gbutter
  • 75 gsugar (ca 0.9 dl)
  • 300 gpuff pastry
  • For the vanilla ice cream
  • 250 gcream (2.5 dl)
  • 250 gmilk (2.5 dl)
  • 5 egg yolks
  • 70 gsugar
  • 1 vanillabean

Directions

Making the ice cream:

  1. Cut open the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds and put the together with the emptied bean in a pan.
  2. Add the milk (250g, 2.5 dl) and the cream (250g, 2.5 dl)
  3. When the milk-cream mixture reaches a light simmer, take it off the heat and let it rest while continuing to step four.
  4. Gently whisk the sugar (70 g, ca 0.8 dl) with five egg yolks.
  5. Pour the vanilla cream-milk-mixture into the sugar-egg-yolks while whisking.
  6. Add the mix back into the pan and heat it slowly up to 84 C, while stirring constantly (a flat wooden spoon scraping the bottom of the pan is ideal). When it reaches 84 C, take it off the heat (important to not exceed 84 C, but if you want to stop at 82/83 C, that’s completely fine). Pour the batter into a bowl and put it into the fridge.
  7. Now the ice cream is ready to go into the ice cream maker. If you have a fancy ice cream machine (active cooling), you can put the warm ice cream batter straight into the machine.If you have a less fancy ice cream maker (freeze block cooling), you’ll have to wait for the batter to get cold before putting into the ice cream maker, otherwise the warm batter will heat the freeze block too much, and the ice cream might not get the proper consistency.

Making the Tarte Tatin:

  1. Put the oven on 200 C.
  2. Peel the apples and cut them in four or six (or something) pieces.
  3. Heat a pan to medium, add the butter (75 g). When the butter stops sizzling, add the apples.
  4. Squeeze the lemon into the pan and add the sugar (75 g, ca 0.9 dl).
  5. After a couple of minutes, lower the heat to low/medium and let the apples fry until the butter caramelizes (gently turning them ones in a while).
  6. Let the apples cool off the stove for five minutes (but still in the pan), then cover the apples with puff pastry.
  7. Put into the oven for about 15-20 minutes. When done, flip the pan over a plate. Beware of hot caramelized sugar dripping on to your wrist when turning the pan. Let it rest for a while and serve luke warm.


Making Tarte Tatin is really very easy. You might have different preferences regarding how caramelized the sugar should be, how much lemon to use and so forth, but I think you’ll be happy from the first go. If you want to get adventurous later on, try mixing the apples with pears or even parsnip(!).

Making the ice cream might seem a bit involved at first but after a while it becomes second nature. It’s really worth getting comfortable with this. Whipping up some home made ice cream is a real home run and this basic recipe is the starting point for all cream-based ice creams.

Lemon & Meringue Tart

(when life gives you lemons, great!)

In Shanghai, me and Hanna lived close to one of the real hot spots for expats: Yongkang Lu. People mostly went there for the numerous bars. To eat, barhop and have a good time. This however didn’t sit well with the locals (living on the second floors along the street) who regularly started throwing things from their homes down to the street when the clock past 10PM – the official curfew.

Things deteriorated further I guess, as Chinese authorities closed the street shortly after we moved back to Sweden. Anyway, we didn’t go there much for the drinking but we did frequent a café called Pain Chaud. A surprisingly wonderful French café, though everyone weren’t aware of that. One of the first time we went there the Chinese waitress serving us asked what “Pain Chaud” meant and which language it was 🙂 A french café yes, yet unabashedly Chinese.

Most importantly, they made great cakes and best of the bunch was this lemon/ meringue tart. I’ve tried to recreate it and I think I’ve done a decent job. I’ve pieced it together from a version of the filling in Greg’s tangy lemon tart, a less sweet variant of this simple pie dough, and this Leif Mannerström Italian meringue recipe. The result is different from the thing we had, but very good.

Special Equipment

  • Bunsen burner
  • Electric mixer
  • Thermometer
Created with Sketch. 2 hours Created with Sketch. 15 pieces

Ingredients

  • For the dough
  • 150 gbutter
  • 180 gflour (3 dl)
  • 60 gsugar (≈ 0.6 dl)
  • 5 gbaking powder (1 tsp)
  • For the filling
  • 3 lemons
  • 120 gsugar (ca 1.25 dl)
  • 5 eggs
  • 150 gdouble cream, i.e cream with ca 40% fat (1.5 dl)
  • For the meringue
  • 120 gsugar (ca 1.25 dl)
  • 37 gwater
  • 60 gegg white (ca 2 egg whites)
  • 5 glemon juice (1 tsp)

Directions

Start with the dough.

  1. Put the oven on 180 C.
  2. Melt the butter and mix it with the dry ingredients.
  3. Spread the dough evenly in a pie tin. Prick the bottom of the dough with a fork.
  4. Coat the dough with aluminium foil, then fill it with (in order of preference) coins, rice, or beans. The purpose of this is to keep the dough from collapsing and generally keep its shape.
  5. Bake the dough for ca 15 minutes then take it out of the oven, remove the coins/rice/beans and the aluminium foil. Continue baking in the oven until golden, then let it rest.

  6. While the pie crust is baking, prepare the filling. Grate two of the three lemons (should result in ca 30-40 ml peel).
  7. Squeeze out the juice from all three lemons (should be 100-150 g/ 1-1.5 dl).
  8. Crack the eggs and mix them with the sugar. Whisk until reasonably smooth.
  9. Add the cream, the lemon juice and the grated lemon peel.
  10. Pour the filling into the (baked) pie crust. Bake in the oven on 130 C. It should be finished in about 30 minutes but depending on the shape of the pie tin (and the oven) the time can vary quite a lot. The lemon filling should be just set. If overcooked it becomes a bit to eggy.
  11. Let it cool for a bit outside the oven.
  12. And now for the Italian meringue. Mix 110 grams of the sugar with the water in a pot and bring it to 125 C. Let it cool to ca 115 degrees.
  13. Add the egg white, the lemon juice and the last 10 grams of sugar to the sugar solution whilst mixing with the electric mixer on the highest (most intense) setting for about three minutes. It’s very important that you’re mixing while you’re adding the egg white, otherwise you’ll get a very sweet omelette instead.Continue mixing on a slightly less intense setting until the meringue is fluffy and firm (ca 5 minutes).
  14. Spread the meringue across the surface of the pie.
  15. Give the top of the meringue a nice burnt tint with the Bunsen burner. You can do this with the grill setting on the oven (on warmest setting) but it doesn’t become as pretty 🙂

 

I just love love love this pie but it does require a bit of practice. I’ve made several ones that I haven’t been quite pleased with. The lemon filling is really so much better if the time in the oven is timed perfectly and the meringue can be a little bit tricky. Easily worth it to put in the time though.

Enjoy!

Janssons frestelse

(maybe my favorite food... yes, of aaaaaall of the foods)

Well. It’s that time again. Christmas is coming.

I like Christmas I have to say. All in all, it’s mostly quite cosy and nice. There are things I LOVE about Christmas though. And maybe, just maybe, what I love the most is Jansson’s frestelse (sorry, all my family members, you’re a strong second).

According to folk lore it was invented by the opera singer Per Adolf “Pelle” Janzon, that used to treat his guests to beer, schnapps and this type of gratin (Wikipedia tells me the name might be from a movie with the same name. Let’s hope it’s not that boring).

It’s something so unusual as a completely Swedish dish (I don’t even think it’s got an international name) that I really think should be the envy of the world. It doesn’t seem to be though. I think very few people outside of Sweden have ever heard of it. But hey, up here, it’s one of the seminal holiday dishes. It is essential. It is culture. I’m not sure if people really like it that much though..? But I love it and that’s enough for me.

It’s a bit complicated to explain what ‘Jansson’ actually tastes like to non Swedish people. You see, in Sweden there are anchovies, but they’re not like anchovies in the rest of the world, which are usually salty and preserved in oil (they’re called “sardeller” in Sweden). The Swedish version is very sweet, pickled with a whole bunch of spices like cinnamon, bay leaves, allspice, black pepper, sandel wood, clove, cardamom and some version of oregano. And it’s not made from the fish “anchovy” either, but rather sprat. Crazy stuff, right? But it is the bomb. And these “Swedish anchovies” basically make the dish; the savory, sweet, fatty, salty, wonderfully decadent Janssons frestelse. I love everything about them. Even the can they come in is awesome!

In my family we eat (and always have eaten) Jansson’s on 100% of the following holidays: Christmas, Easter, Midsummer, and on 0% of all the other days. Or, well… sometimes my dad can’t help himself and makes it off-season with like twice the anchovies.

It’s also really easy to make, as all the spicing is already in the stuff you put into the gratin. No added spices, easy peasy.

Let’s go!

Created with Sketch. 45 minute preparation, ca 45 minutes in the oven Created with Sketch. 8-12 servings

Ingredients

  • 1.8 kgpotatoes
  • 3 yellow onions
  • 400 (or 500) gcream (40-ish %)
  • 3 (or 2)cans of anchovies (125 g per can, including the liquid)
  • 100 gbutter
  • 25 groe
  • 20 gtomato puré
  • 50 gbread crumbs

Directions

As you might have guessed, I like anchovy. So this recipe does not skimp on the anchovy. For some people this amount can be a bit much. If you think that you’re one of these people, you can skip one of the cans of anchovy and add about 100 g (1 dl) of cream instead.

  1. Put the oven on 225 C. Put a pan with 25 g of butter on medium heat. Chop half of the onions. When the butter starts to sizzle, lower the heat to medium/low and add the chopped onion. Fry until the onion starts to caramelize.
  2. While the onion is frying, peel the potatoes and cut them into sticks.
  3. Finely chop the rest of the onion. Open all three cans of anchovy and drain the pickle-juice into a bowl. Whatever you do: don’t throw it away! This is very important. It really packs a lot of flavor! Chop the anchovy from two of the cans. When the onion in the pan has caramelized somewhat, let it cool down off the stove in a bowl.


    I mean, just look at those… so pretty.
  4. Whisk the pickling juice, the roe and the tomato puré into the cream.

  5. Now you’re all set to put the pieces together. Layer potato sticks – raw and fried onion –  and pieces of anchovy, until you run out of ingredients.
  6. When you’re done with the layering, pour the cream/anchovy pickling juice/tomato puré/roe- mix on top.
  7. Now sprinkle the bread crumbs evenly over the surface.
  8. Distribute the remaining can of anchovy fillets on top of the layer of bread crumbs.
  9. And finally: slice the remaining butter (or better yet, use a cheese grater) and layer it on top of the anchovy fillets. 
  10. Into the oven it goes! It needs about 45 minutes but this is very dependent on the oven, the depth of the oven dish and to some extent the ingredients (like the type of potato). You’ll know it’s done when it’s golden brown, the cream is wonderfully gooey and the potatoes are soft. Check in now and then to time it perfectly. Let it rest out of the oven for at least 30 minutes before eating. As with many recipes, this is probably the most important and hardest part. But the gratin really has to set to let the ingredients meld. It’s also way tastier at something like 60 C than piping hot.

This is normally had at Christmas with tons of things as a part of the Christmas dinner behemoth. But it’s great with just some good ol’ meatballs and an egg.

Happy holidays!

Swedish Meatballs

(originally from Turkey or something of course)

We’re not getting around the most Swedish of the Swedish foods right? Nope. As a Swede I don’t have that strong of a bond to meatballs. I mean, they’re pretty great and all but I eat them on holidays like Christmas and sometimes I make’em at home (but really, it’s quite rare). I think my most common interaction with the little suckers is when I spend time with my girlfriend’s nephews because listen: “Mamma Scans köttbullar” is the bleeding bedrock of any household that includes kids. Back in the day I ate those type of meatballs as well (not that much though). They weren’t that great really. Lately though, I personally think they (“Mamma Scans”) have improved somewhat. But whatever, let’s get on with it.

In my opinion, Swedish meatballs should be made with quite a lot of onion, some sweetness and above all have a really smooth taste. The smoothness comes from a mix of cream/milk, egg and bread of different types. Some recipes use potato (grated, either boiled or raw) which plays a similar role. A friend told me that his grandpa, who in his family is the often challenged but ever undisputed champion of meatballing, put potato purée in his. Not mashed potato, potato purée, the finished product. Top marks for ambition and originality (btw: I imagine that’s a pretty good idea actually).

Anyway, here’s how I make mine.

Ingredients

  • 500 gof minced meat. Use a mix of pork and beef. 70/30 or 60/40 beef/pork is good.
  • 1.5 yellow onions
  • 1 egg
  • 50 gmilk
  • 50 gcream
  • 1 sliceof white bread
  • 15 gbreadcrumbs (preferably the Asian variety "Panko")
  • 50 gbutter
  • 7 gof vinegar
  • 7 gof sweet mustard (can be substituted for the Swedish speciality "pickled sprats", most famously used in the holiday dish "Jansons Frestelse")
  • Some salt, white pepper and sugar (just a sprinkle of sugar)
  • Some allspice (if you like that sorta thing)

Directions

  1. Chop one onion roughly and fry them on medium to low heat in a pan with half the butter until golden.
  2. While the onion in the pan is frying, grate or finely chop the remaining half onion.
  3. Tear the bread into small pieces.
  4. Put everything in a bowl, including the fried onion with the residual butter from the pan. Mix with your hands or with a fork.
  5. If the mixture seems too loose/wet you can add some more bread crumbs but be careful to not make the mixture too firm.
  6. Taste and adjust with salt/pepper/sugar/vinegar.
  7. Roll the mixture into balls with a diameter of about 3 cm.
  8. Fry ’em on medium heat in a healthy amount of butter (the other half of the 50 grams) and some oil.

 

It’s all a bit confusing as a Swede – the talk about Swedish meatballs. But, it’s really good, especially with some killer mashed potatoes, chanterelle sauce and lingonberries or maybe pickled cucumbers. Mmmmm. So make ’em for gods sake. What could go wrong?

Shrimp and Saffron Risotto

(let's try this without the ketchup)

Risotto is just the best thing. I know that now. However, when I was younger (probably well in to my twenties actually) I thought risotto was… something other than it is. At home, it was more akin to fried rice, with some chopped ham or chicken and quite commonly: a mix of peas, corn and paprika (this one!). In the school diner risotto was a weird, gooey meat ragu type thing with rice in it, that for some reason always tasted aggressively sweet. Like really ketchupy sweet. Most likely explained by them putting a LOT of ketchup into it. Actually… thinking about it: growing up, the combination rice and ketchup was a strangely frequent occurrence.

So let’s just get some things straight about what risotto actually is. It’s rice, and it can be any type of rice. Most commonly though, it’s a type with quite large grains that release starch when cooked in a way that creates a wonderfully creamy texture. It’s broth, it’s wine (usually white) and almost always cheese (usually parmigiano). So what’s up with that rice? Well, it has to do with the chemical composition of the starch. Here’s some science stuff from Serious Eats:

“Rice contains two molecules that make up its starch content, amylose, and amylopectin. Generally speaking, rices with a higher proportion of amylopectin to amylose will tend to soften more completely and thicken their sauce more strongly. All risotto starts with a short- to medium-grain form of rice high in amylopectin. It’s the exact ratio of amylose to amylopectin that determine the final texture of your rice and sauce.”

In Sweden, you tend to see three type of grains meant for risotto: Arborio, Carnaroli and Avorio. Arborio has the largest grain and creates the most creamy result. Carnaroli gets you a firmer result and Avorio even more so (I tend to really like Avorio). Obviously, what dish you’re preparing can guide the type of rice, but make sure to try them all to see which you like best in various situations.

This is my favorite kind of run-of-the-mill risotto recipe and it’s real easy to make.

Ingredients

  • For the risotto (including shrimp and garnish)
  • 330 grisotto rice (in this recipe, I use Arborio)
  • 0.3 lwhite wine (3 dl)
  • 80 gparmigiano reggiano
  • 1 lshrimp broth
  • 800 gunpeeled shrimp
  • 1 handfulfresh parsley
  • 1 yellow onions
  • 0.5 gsaffron
  • 50 gbutter
  • 30 golive oil
  • For the broth
  • salt and white pepper corns
  • roasted shrimp shells
  • 3 yellow onions
  • 3 bay leaves

Directions

This recipe is for 4-5 people. Generally, some 80 g of rice equals a big portion. From start to finish this should take circa 1 hour and 30 min, if you’re starting from scratch.

A couple of things are really important when making risotto in general and this one specifically.

The first, and this is imperative, non-negotiable: do the broth yourself. This is just how I feel. Sure, in a pinch you can maaaaybe use one of those reduced broth-on-a-bottle things but never ever use broth cubes to make risotto. Never. They have an aftertaste, an off-flavor that’s really noticeable. So that’s what I think.

Secondly, always buy shrimp with the shells (frozen are fine) and do not rinse the shrimp with water after you’ve pealed them as that just flushes so much taste down the drain.

And hey, one more note: use a nice dry wine, not to sweet.

So about those shrimp:

  1. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees C. Put a big pot of water on the stove. While you wait on the oven to get warm and the water to come to a boil: peel the shrimp.
  2. Spread the shrimp shells (not the shrimp) on an oven pan and when the oven is ready, roast the shells until pinkish white (about 10 min). Image is showing the shells before roasting, sorry about that… I’ll try to remember to update it in the future.
  3. Peel three of the yellow onions, cut them into quarters and put them in the boiling water with the bay leaves, some salt, pepper corns and when they’re ready: the roasted shrimp shells. Why roast the shells you ask? Well, it gets yummier. But why? I’m embarrassed to say: I’m not quite sure and haven’t been able to find anything really useful about it either (please tell me if you know). Let this mix simmer for at least some 30 minutes or so. And by the way, you can put other stuff in the broth. Celery, parsnip, carrots? Go to town!
  4. While waiting on the broth (there’s a whole thing on what’s important when making broth. We’ll do a thing about it at some point I’m sure),  put some butter and olive oil in a pan and take it up to medium heat. Dice the last onion finely (not important that it’s that fine) and put it in the hot pan.
  5. When the onion has turned clear, add the rice.
  6. After a couple of minutes raise the heat somewhat (to 8-9 on a 12-point-scale) and then pour the wine into the pan.
  7. Taste the broth to make sure that it’s salty, shrimpy sweet. It should a bit less salt than you want the end product to be (you can always adjust the salt level upwards later. Too much salt however? Well… you’re kinda stuck with that).
  8. Add a couple of deciliters of broth and start stirring continuously. Why are we stirring? Well, it’s to dissolve the starch into the liquid, allowing for the creamy end result. You don’t have to stir all the time though, but make sure to do it regularly. Adjust the heat to create a light simmer in the pan.
  9. So I listed 1L of broth in the ingredients list but I don’t find it very useful to give an exact volume. It differs with the grain type, the brand and how much you stir. The important part is to continuously add scoops of broth until the rice is almost done. This should take about 20 minutes. Taste both the liquid and the rice when you’re getting close to the 20 minute mark.
  10.  When the rice is just about done, i.e still a bit hard but almost eatable, you should try to adjust the consistency to be runny, quite a lot runnier than you want the end product to be (it will set due to after-heat and further stirring). Grate the parmigiano, put it in with the rest and stir.
  11.  Add the rest of the butter in cubes (should be about 30 g left) and finally: the saffron. Take the pan off the heat and stir.
  12. So this is really the practice-makes-perfect part of the whole shabang. The consistency should at this point still be less firm than how you want to serve the risotto and the rice should be ever so slightly more al dente than how you want it to be eaten. It continues to cook when resting off the stove, which it should do for about 10 minutes. Stir it every couple of minutes. Regarding the consistency I think (and this is mostly a preference thing) that the end result should be such that when you put a scoop of the risotto on the plate, it slowly expands out towards the edges of the plate under the weight of its own pressure. If you (after letting it rest) think that it’s to firm, just add some broth and stir.
  13. Heat a pan to medium/high heat with olive oil. Put one or a couple of garlic cloves in with the oil for a bit. Quickly fry the peeled shrimp (about 30 seconds) and take the pan of the stove. Do this in batches if the shrimp fill up the pan. You want them to be fried, not boiled and too much shrimp = too much water in the pan = boiled shrimp.
  14. Put some risotto on a plate. If you want it to spread nicely over the plate you can punch the underside plate with your palm a couple of times.
  15. Top it off with the fried shrimp, a splash of lemon juice, some black pepper and chopped fresh parsley. Fucking awesome.

…and then put a generous amount of parmigiano on top right, YES! Right..? Nope. Sorry.

I have conferred with my Italian colleague and: no parmigiano on seafood. The gods’ll get piiiiissed.

But hey, maybe you’re just not that religious? You do you.

Scones

(to start your day with a stroke!)

Let’s do some breakfast shall we? But, let me just hedge this a bit first. I am but a simple Swede and I do realize that I’m trodding English turf here. So, with that out of the way:

This is by far the recipe that most people have asked me for (or is it..? Might be tied with vegetarian almond balls that I think well get to quite soon). I think it’s because it can be a bit puzzling to do the seemingly same thing over and over and get different results, insanity and all that. Despite using the same basic ingredients in the same approximate amounts, the end result of this recipe can vary quite a lot. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but the end result seem to hinge on the non-ingredient parts to an unusually large extent. I’ll try to highlight what I do that might not be so commonplace.

So what makes a great scone? Let’s start with what doesn’t. Bad scones are either doughy and too compact (failed home made), or too dry and too brittle (Starbucks). Thusly, a good scone is moist and fluffy!

After experimenting a great deal I find that the simple recipe below makes for a really fabulous scone. Just make it a Sunday tradition to get some practice under your belt. Most importantly though, whatever you do, do not skimp on the butter (you can however add more if the occasion is special).

The best thing of all? It’s carb free…!

Just kidding. It’s smack full of carbs.

Ingredients

  • 240 gwhite flour (of course, you can mix different flowers but I just can’t resist the superiority of really unhealthy scones)
  • 100 gbutter
  • 100 gmilk
  • 100 ggreek/turkish yogurt (2 dl of milk is fine I guess, but definitely not as good)
  • 15 gbaking powder (about 3 teaspoons)
  • Some salt

Directions

  1. Put the oven on 250-300 degrees (just max it out basically).
  2. Mix the flour with the salt and the baking powder.
  3. Slice the butter into flakes (requires it to be cold) with a cheese grater and gently mix it with the flour mix.
  4. Mix the milk and the yogurt and stir it in with the rest. Don’t mix too much, definitely don’t use a mixer. Preserving the butter flakes adds (I think) kind of a faux-puff-pastry effect to the end product, increasing fluffiness. Add a bit of flour if the batter is too sticky and some milk if it’s too dry (floury). The consistency should be such that the batter/dough sticks a little bit to the walls of the bowl, but does so without leaving a trace of batter/dough in its trail. I.e.: it should basically clean the walls of any leftover dough.
  5. Butter the oven plate.
  6. Form 2-4 balls and gently flatten them to 3-4 cm thickness on the buttered oven plate.
  7. Put them in the oven for 10-15 min. When they are golden brown, they’re done.

 

How to eat scones: a suggestion

Listen. I put butter and cheese and jam/marmalade AND I then proceed to dip it in coffee? I’m mad you say? I think not. And don’t even think about starting with the ”it’s already so much butter in the scone, why put even more on” shit. It’s Sunday and it’s delicious.

My favorite: ordinary breakfast butter (put it out 20-30 min before eating to facilitate spreading). A mild cheese (e.g. Gouda). Plum marmalade (the one made by my relatives if you can get it). Coffee with milk (this is the only time in my daily life I put milk in my coffee).