Ingredient: carrot

Aunt Humla’s Greek Beans

(I give these five meow meow beans)

This reminds me of when Hanna used to make hummus, when we lived with my brother in Lidingö. When the hummus came out particularly good, Olov asked “what do you put in this, drugs?”.

I can’t tell you why these beans are so goddamn good. I’m not even especially confident you’ll feel the same. But I like them sooooo much I don’t care.

So my aunt isn’t really Greek, or well, in spirit I guess. She had two kids with a Greek man and I’ll just tell you: it’s not a bad food culture to hitch your wagon to. I’m gonna squeeze some more recipes out of her, especially the moussaka, which is I mean… maybe the best food you can put into your body. It’s ridiculous.

But anyway. I found the beans a bit hard to pair with a vegetarian option, besides the obvious (tzatziki and greek salad). The beans are extremely good with barbecued meat, so I wanted to find something similar-ish. I think it’s a good idea to go fairly salty, since the beans themselves are pretty sweet. This time I went with portobellos fried for a loooong time in butter, with a splash of soy in the end and som salt and pepper. Perfect. Really good. Do that. Ok, so let’s go, and thank you Humla, for all the food 🙏🏻😋

Created with Sketch. 2 hours + soaking of the beans Created with Sketch. 10

Ingredients

  • 500 gwhite beans (large, dry)
  • 400 gcrushed tomatoes
  • 250 golive oil
  • 25 g(1-2 table spoons) of tomato puré
  • 15 gsalt
  • 2 large carrots (or 3 smaller)
  • 2 tomatoes (or 3 smaller)
  • 2 yellow onions (or 3 smaller)
  • 2 sticks of celery
  • 1 bouillon cube or equivalent amount of condensed broth meant for circa 0.5 L of water
  • Some peppercorns
  • A couple of bay leaves
  • Fresh parsley

Directions

So this is easy, but takes a bit of time, but it’s mostly waiting on things so you have plenty of time to prepare the mushrooms and sides or whatever.

In preparation, soak the dry white beans for at least 3-4 hours, preferably over night, in plenty of cold water.

  1. Bring 2.5 liters of water to a boil. Add 10 (to 15) g of salt and the soaked beans (sift away the soaking water first of course). Chop the onions (2-3) into big slices and add them as well. Boil/simmer for 45 minutes. Oh, also: if you wanna do the mushrooms, now’s the time! Just put 5 portobello mushrooms in a pan with 50 g of butter, let them sizzle away on low heat for 2 hours, flipping them occasionally. Finish with a splash of soy, some salt and pepper and serve them in thin slices!
  2. While they’re boiling away. Chop up the celery, carrots and tomatoes. When 45 minutes have passed, throw them in as well.
  3. Add the crushed tomato (400 g). Also add the olive oil (250 g/ml), the pepper corns (10-15), the bouillon cube (or substitute), the bay leaves (a couple) and the tomato paste (25 g/ 1-2 tablespoons. There has been some translation issues with tomato stuff, so: this is what I mean with tomato paste). Let it boil for another 30 minutes.
  4. While waiting, turn the oven to 175 degrees C. After the 30 minutes of boiling, pour everything in a deep oven tray and sprinkle it with chopped parsley. Put it in the oven for 45 minutes (+/- 10 min depending on the oven).
  5. To be done, it should “set” a bit. If you stir it a bit, it should be thick but absolutely not dry (then you’ll need to add water) and also not runny. You’ll get it.
  6. As with many foods, now you have to wait. I’d say for at least 30 minutes before eating. This really is better when not piping hot. Actually, it doesn’t even has to be hot at all. But the upside of this is that you can use the time to make a sweet ass tzatziki (3-4 dl greek, firm yogurt, 1 grated cucumber with the juice squeezed out of it, 2 cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, vinegar and lots of olive oil) and a greek salad!

 

So that’s it. It’s also excellent to save in the fridge for days and days so don’t worry about the ten portions. They’ll come in handy!

 

Red Lentil Fritters

(or are they actually burgers 🤔)

So we’re going back to my childhood again. Well… maybe not childhood. My mom really wanted to cook nice food for various vegetarian (girl)friends that me and my brothers started bringing home at some point. And nice food to my mom meant no store bought, ready made stuff, no short-cuts, no I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-meat… stuff. You know? Real stuff.

I have no idea where she got these ones from, or if they’re something she more or less came up with herself, but they became a real staple food at home. The base is red lentils but I think what give them their defining character is rather the mix of root vegetables that result in a sweet, earthy taste which I became really fond of.

What’s a bit weird is that despite making them regularly for, well, fucking twenty years, I’ve never really settled on a pairing. Sometimes, it’s roasted potatoes with bearnaise sauce. Other times it’s the wonderfully Swedish “stuvade makaroner”, i.e. macaroni boiled in milk, or perhaps mashed potatoes with browned butter. So you know, throw em in somewhere and see how it feels.

That’s at least what I’m (still) doing (seriously..? Twenty years? TWENTY?! Well. I’m old I guess).

Created with Sketch. 1 hour Created with Sketch. About 10 burgers

Ingredients

  • 130 gred lentils
  • 130 gyellow onion (1 normal sized onion)
  • 130 gcarrot (1 big or 2 smalls carrots)
  • 80 gparsnip (1)
  • 4 eggs
  • 30 gpanko (plus som for coating the burgers before frying)
  • Some salt, pepper and whatever you like in stuff
  • A dollop of tomato puré and/or mustard if you're feeling fancy

Directions

Making these ones are ridiculously easy. The only thing to really learn is how the consistency should feel to make the burgers keep their shape, but not be too compact when fried in the pan. I’ve included pictures and a video to help but as ever, practice makes perfect.

  1. Boil the lentils (130 g) in salted water (or if you like, broth) until they’re soft
  2. Finely chop the onion(s)(130 g) and finely grate the carrot(s)(130 g) and the parsnip(s)(80 g). Squeeze some of the water from the grated carrot. Then put everything in a bowl.
  3. Add the boiled lentils (not the water of course), then mix the eggs in. Finally add the panko (dried bread crumbs), some salt and black pepper and stir everything together. It should look something like this:
  4. If you have the time, let it set for a while in the fridge (overnight is also fine if you end up with un-fried left-overs), this helps with consistency. Make an oversized golfball of burger-mix in your hand and dump it in a bowl of panko/ dried bread crumbs. Cover it with crumbs and place it in a pan with medium hot oil, then gently press down on it with a spatula to make a burger. Fry for 2-3 minutes before flipping. Naturally, you can prepare several breaded over-sized golf balls before putting any in the pan.




Obviously these can be endlessly added to and experimented with, but I wanted to give you the base, the original, first.

I often add feta cheese, fresh herbs (thyme is a good one), as mentioned in the list of ingredients but not in the instructions; mustard and/or tomato puré

Black Bean and Portabello Burgers

(lean, mean, bean-machine)

These ones are real companions in our household. When I don’t quite know what to make, I often think: “Eeh, I’ll just do some black bean burgers”. They’re good with oven baked potatoes and bearnaise sauce. They’re great with mashed potatoes and roasted garlic and mushroom sauce (as in the pictures). They’re really good as just… hamburger burgers as well actually.

The black beans, combined with the umami heavy confit onion and portobello mushrooms, give them a really rich and deep taste. Using bread is really good for consistency and the cheese is… well cheese is pretty great.

I like using soy as it together with the rest gives some meaty tones, but I get that that might not be for everyone (to make it more like meat I mean). But from this base-recipe you can basically do whatever. Fresh herbs, chili, spices, you go wild!

Created with Sketch. 1.5 hours Created with Sketch. 6

Ingredients

  • 760 gof black beans (boiled and in liquid, weight including the liquid)
  • 2 (or 3) portabello mushrooms
  • 4 eggs (a bit depending on the size)
  • 100 gcheese (e.g. Gouda cheese)
  • 2 small carrots (80 g)
  • 1.5 yellow onions
  • 3 slices of bread
  • Some tomato puré, mustard, soy sauce, salt and pepper
  • 75 gbutter
  • 3 dloil (rapeseed)

Directions

  1. Start by making the confit onion (which is onion boiled for a long time in oil). Chop the onion (1 yellow onion) into sizes of about 1/4 onion rings. Heat up oil enough to cover the onions (3 dl) to low/medium temperature and let the onion simmer in the oil for about 30 minutes.
  2. While the onion is cooking, chop the portobello mushrooms and put them in a pan with a generous amount of butter (50g), on medium heat. After ca 5 minutes, take the heat down to low, add salt, pepper and the tomato puré (1 tablespoon) and mustard (1 tablespoon). Stir and leave on low heat for 20-30 minutes (turn the mushrooms over now and again).
  3. Tear the bread into small pieces (3 slices in pieces about 1 cm x 1 cm), crack the eggs (4) and stir the eggs and the torn bread together.
  4. Sift away the fluid from the beans and put them in a bowl. Finely chop 1/2 yellow onion, finely grate a carrot (and squeeze out some of the the juice) and mix both in with the beans. Mix together with whatever but not with an immersion blender or mixer. Take a fork or something and stir until some beans have become squished but some are still whole-ish.
  5. Grate the cheese (100 g) and put it in to the mix. Sift away the oil from the confit onion and add the onion and the fried mushrooms.
  6. Now, the trick is to get the texture just right, by adding bread crumbs and/or flour/ potato flour. You should be able to form semi-firm, semi-sticky balls from the mix, but if there’s too much flour/bread/bread crumbs, the burgers get too dry when cooked. Personally, I more often make the mistake of making the mix to firm so try to err on the side of a looser, stickier mixture. More breadcrumbs can always be added in later. When I did these ones I didn’t use any breadcrumbs (or flour) other than the coating (see list item 9).
  7. Use salt, pepper and soy until the mix is to your taste. I usually put a bit of vinegar in the mix, but then again: I fucking love vinegar.
  8. So now the base mixture is done. If you have the time, let it set in the fridge for an hour or so.
  9. Make balls from the mixture and cover them in bread crumbs. Heat up the remaining butter (25 g) and some rapeseed oil to medium-high heat in a pan. Put the balls in the pan and gently push down on them with a spatula. If the consistency is right they should flatten easily (they should flatten slightly but not all the way under their own weight). Fry for about 5 minutes on each side. And you’re done!


These are best about five minutes off the stove, when they’ve settled a bit (become a bit firmer) but are still warm. Fry them the last thing you do before serving up the food.

Almond balls

(vegetarian meatballs for the people)

We’re an almost exclusively vegetarian household. My girlfriend is vegetarian you see (or actually a recent convert to Pescetarianism, so fish if back on the menu, yeiij!). This has led me to develop a lot of  vegetarian alternatives through the years, which has been really great. I’m not especially fond of the concept of mimicking meat. Soy meat, quorn, oumph, pulled oats, beyond meat… I mean, I get it. If people like it: cool. I’m just sayin’ that the best of that kinda thing I’ve ever had has never been anywhere close to the meat equivalent. Often, they just feel like attempts to create a vessel for heavy spicing.

I like when you try to use unprocessed stuff and make something different but equally great. Like portabello hamburger, or black been tacos, or carrot and parsnip burgers. Or: almond balls. So let me get the irony out of the way. Yes, they look a lot like meatballs. Yes, they kinda taste a bit like meatballs. But they’re not meatballs. And they’re made from scratch.

The challenge when making vegetarian alternatives to burgers or ball-shaped things is consistency. It’s real easy to make something that sticks together if you’re fine with the end result being dry and dense and boring. It’s equally easy to make something juicy that’ll fall apart. I think this recipe strikes a real good balance, but it can take a while to get a hang of the nuances. I got the gist of this recipe from my girlfriends mother (something akin to this Swedish recipe I think), but I’ve tinkered with it quite a lot through the years.

Some of the ingredients are cooked before going into the batter and the balls are boiled in broth before being fried in the pan. All this adds up to a really juicy and rich end result. The consistency can be tricky however. But practice makes perfect so let’s practice!

Special Equipment

  • Kitchen wizard/ Blender/ Immersion blender
Created with Sketch. 60 minutes Created with Sketch. 5-6 servings (or ca 40 almond balls)

Ingredients

  • 150 galmonds
  • 150 gmushrooms (any mushroom really, I use forrest champinjons)
  • 150 ggouda cheese
  • 1.5 yellow onions (about 150g)
  • 100 gcarrots
  • 50 gbutter
  • 25 gChinese soy
  • 40 gbread crumbs
  • 10 gpotato flour (or normal flour)
  • 2 slices of white bread
  • 4 eggs (or 5, depending on the size)
  • 5 gsweet mustard
  • Some sriracha
  • Salt and pepper
  • For the broth
  • 2 yellow onions
  • 2 carrots
  • Bay leaves, salt and pepper

Directions

  1. Put a big pot with 3 liters of water on the stove. Peel and roughly chop 2 onions and 2 large carrots and add them to the pot. Add salt, pepper and bay leaves. Let it come to a boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer. Don’t salt to much as it will reduce somewhat. The end result should be a quite lightly salted broth.
  2. Chop the mushrooms and add them to a pan with ca 2/3 of the butter and some rapeseed oil. Start out on high heat, then lower to low/medium. Add salt, white pepper as well as the mustard and some Sriracha. Let this fry for 10-ish minutes before adding one chopped yellow onion.

  3. While the above is frying on low heat (under a lid if you have it), quickly boil the almonds in water (like a minute). Rinse the almonds under cold water. Now peel the almonds….. I know. Fun. Two things: 1) You can skip it and just use them with the peelings. 2) Alternatively, put the almonds in a colander and take handfuls of almond and squeeze them together over and over. This removes most of the peels and really makes the whole thing a lot more bearable.
  4. Crack the eggs (all four) in a mixer (or in a bowl if you’re using a immersion blender), then add the almonds. Mix to a paste. The consistency varies with the size of the eggs and the type of mixer. If it’s a bit loose, don’t worry. You can either add some more almond now (not too much thou, less than 50g) or adjust the consistency at the end (see instruction number 11). The important thing is the the almonds are properly chopped/blended.


  5. By now, the mushrooms and onion should look something like this.
  6. Add it to the egg-almond-mix and blend it a bit.

  7. Peel and finely grate the carrots. Squeeze out the carrot juice. You can throw away the juice, or save it. Or drink it. Grate the cheese finely. Add the grated carrot and cheese in with the rest and stir.
  8. Rip up the bread into small pieces (or dice it with a bread knife). If the edges of the bread are hard, don’t use them. Put the pieces of bread in with the rest, add the soy sauce, the vinegar, the bread crumbs, the potato flour and some salt and pepper. Stir together.
  9. At this point, you can add whatever. Making these for Christmas? Add som allspice why don’t you? Or maybe som fresh parsley, some chili or basil? Taste and adjust with salt, pepper, soy, vinegar and/or other things to your liking. The level of salt and such should be as you want the end result to taste.
  10. The consistency should now allow you to make quite firm balls from the mix. Like such:
  11. If you think it’s to dry: add another egg. If it’s to loose: add some bread crumbs and/or flour. Roll a lot of balls with a diameter of about 3 cm. “Quite small meatballs” to ball-park it for you.
  12. (You can skip this step and go straight to frying, I commonly do. It does add something thou) Now we’re going to boil the balls in broth before frying them. Sift the broth to remove the onion and carrot pieces. Put a frying pan with some butter and oil on medium/high heat. Bring the sifted broth to a boil and add 10-15 of the almond balls. Let them simmer in the broth for ca 3 minutes before adding them to the frying pan. Be careful as the can be quite fragile. Turn them gently after a minute. Continue to turn them in the pan until brown all around. Repeat.


  13. They’re best as they’ve cooled down a tad but not too much, so eat them promptly!

These are really great as a vegetarian alternative to meatballs but they’re also just awesome in general. We usually have them with what’s on the plate in the first photo: mashed potatoes, sweetened lingonberries and garlic sauce. Mmmmmmm.

Get the hang of the consistency, add some of your favorite flavors and make’ em your own!