Ingredient: flour

Tomato and Aubergine Lasagna

(definitely not Italian, Italian food)

So I’m Swedish. That’s important, because I don’t want you to think you’re getting a traditional bonafide Italian lasagna. This is a Swedish lasagna. So, to Danilos big big disappointment I don’t make the pasta sheets myself, I don’t pre-boil them, I don’t… I’m not Italian ok?

I’ve been trying to find a vegetarian lasagna recipe that is – not similar to – but equally great as the meat lasagna I’ve grown up with and really love. I stopped trying to mimic the meat version a long time ago, partly because, well the meat substitutes no matter what the hype says are… well crap. Ok, maybe not crap. Some of them are quite good but all of them are very far from imitating meat. So for me, a soy, quorn, impossible meat whatever lasagna is always a sad reminder of what could have been.

Instead I’ve been making a tomato version more and more. It really clicked when I added the fried aubergine (as already established, tomato and aubergine make good bedfellows) and I think it took another not insignificant step forward by adding kale.

This is it. The lasagna I make because I can’t have meat lasagna that often because my wife is a vegetarian. It’s pretty good.

Created with Sketch. 2 hours Created with Sketch. 8

Ingredients

  • General stuff
  • Salt, sugar, pepper and vinegar (weights in the description)
  • 2 aubergines
  • Rapeseed oil for deep frying / pan frying the aubergine slices
  • Olive oil for frying
  • 300 glasagna tiles
  • For the tomato & kale sauce
  • 500 gtomato sauce
  • 500 gcrushed tomatoes
  • 100 gkale
  • 1 yellow onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • For the béchamel sauce
  • 25 gbutter
  • 1 lmilk
  • 100 gflour
  • 100 gParmigiano cheese
  • 100 gadditional cheese of your choice

Directions

  1. Heat up some olive oil in a big pan with a clove of garlic. Cut away the thicker parts of the kale stems, slice the kale and put it into the pan.
  2. Chop 1/2 yellow onion and add to the pan.
    Kale
  3. After about 5 minutes, add the tomato (500 g tomato sauce + 500 g crushed tomatoes) and the salt (10 g / 1.7 tsp), sugar (10 g / 1.8 tsp), vinegar (15 g/ 15 ml) and some white pepper. Let this simmer on low heat for 20 minutes. Meanwhile…
  4. Béchamel. Put the butter (25 g) in a pot on medium heat. Finely chop 1/2 yellow onion and fry it in the butter until soft.
  5. Mix flour (70 g/ ca 1.2 dl), salt (7 g / 1 tsp) and white pepper in a bowl. Add 3 dl of milk and whisk until smooth.

    Add the rest of the milk (7 dl) while whisking.
  6. Add the milk-mix to the pan (with the chopped and softened onion). Heat it up on medium to high heat while stirring with a flat-bottomed wooden spoon or a spatula.
  7. When the milk starts to thicken, lower the heat to avoid burning the bottom of the pan and add the parmigiano cheese while continuing to stir. When the cheese has melted into the sauce (couple of minutes), take it off the stove to cool.
  8. Slice the aubergines (2) into 0.5 – 1 cm thick slices and coat them with flour.
  9. Deep fry the aubergine slices (or fry them in a pan with plenty of oil).
  10. Put the oven to 220 C.
  11. Now you’re ready to assemble. Start with a layer of béchamel sauce in the bottom of a quite deep oven tray.
  12. Then add 1) lasagna tiles, 2) tomato & kale- sauce, 3) grated cheese, 4) fried aubergine slices with a sprinkle of salt, 5) béchamel sauce, 6) repeat until you’re out of stuff. Save a bit of the béchamel sauce for the top.


  13. Top it off with a layer of béchamel sauce and put it in the oven for ca 25 min or what the lasagna tiles require.

So here comes the really tricky part. Don’t eat it for at least 45 minutes. It’s so much better when the whole thing has had time to really set, and furthermore: this type of food shouldn’t be piping hot when you’re ingesting it, right? I say… it should be around… 50 C. You say, yes?

 

No-Knead Bread

(faux-sourdough for dummies)

In 2006 Mark Bittman, food writer for the New York Times, revolutionized home-bread-baking by introducing No-Knead Bread. Actually he just shared the recipe invented by a New York baker, Jim Lahey. No-Knead bread was a fool-proof miraculous loaf that tasted and looked much better than any other home-baked bread, as well as many of the fancy stuff at your local bakery. Super easy to make, it needed no kneading and no attention whatsoever, only a few minutes of action plus some waiting.

One and a half years later, my favourite food blogger, Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats (at the time writer at Food Illustrated) perfected the recipe adding a faux-sourdough touch to it. He did it by substituting part of the water with some white vinegar and beer, you now, to give the bread that tang and complex yeasty flavour. Well it worked perfectly. I’ve done this recipe so many times, and it never fails. It is quite important to use a cast-iron pot (enameled or bare is the same) to achieve an optimal rise and a crunchy crust, but if you don’t have it, the bread will be still very good using the oven as usual.

Special Equipment

  • cast- iron pot
  • a flexible spatula
Created with Sketch. About 20 hours, 15 minutes active time Created with Sketch. One 500gr loaf

Ingredients

  • 430 grflour (both all- porpous or bread flour will work)
  • 1 grdry yeast (or 1/4 teaspoon)
  • 8 grsalt (or 1 full teaspoon)
  • for the regular version
  • 345 grwater
  • for the faux-sourdough
  • 85 grlager beer
  • 15 grwhite vinegar
  • 245 grwater

Directions

The process is quite long but easy: I usually mix the ingredients before I go to bed, and bake it the next day after work.  The dough is gonna be quite loose (85% hydration) and therefore a bit difficult to handle, but there’s not much handling involved really. Here we go:

  1. Mix flour (430 gr), yeast (1 gr) and salt (8gr) in a large bowl. Mix it well.
  2. Add the water (345 gr), or if you are doing the foux-sourdough: water (245gr.) + beer (85gr) + white vinegar (15 gr), and mix it with a spoon, just the time it takes for all the flour to be sucked in the liquids, about 20/25 seconds. Cover it tight with plastic foil and leave it to rest at room temperature for about 15/18 hours.
  3. After the time has passed (it’s probably gonna be the next day), the mix is going to be quite bubbly. With the help of a flexible spatula, pour it on a well floured working surface, sprinkle some extra flour on top, and possibly with the help of a scraper, fold the dough on itself a couple of times, 20 seconds in total. Put it back in a very well floured bowl, cover it again and let it rest for 2 more hours. We’re almost there.
  4. After one and a half hour set the oven to 230°, place the dutch-oven on the lower shelf of the oven, and let it heat up for 30 minutes: it needs to be HOT. If you don’t have a dutch-oven, jump to n. 7
  5. When the 2 hours have passed and the cast-iron is hot, take out the dutch-oven being very careful, place it on your stove-top, open it quickly, and with the help of the flexible spatula just pour the dough into the pot. You don’t have to worry about how it goes in, if it looks all smashed up or ugly: it’s gonna work! (Alternative, less messy method: place a sheet of baking-paper on the table, pour the dough onto said paper, and picking it by the four angles, gently lower it into the pot)
  6. 30 minutes at 230° with the dutch oven’s lid on. Another 15 minutes without the lid. Et voilà.
  7. For no dutch-oven baking: just heat up the oven tray on the lower rack instead of the cast-iron pot. When the 2 hours have passed, place a sheet of baking-paper on the table, pour the dough onto said paper, lift it by the four corners, and place it on the hot oven plate. Bake it for 45 minutes at 230°, covering the bread with some aluminum foil for the first 30 minutes to avoid to burn the top.

Pancakes

(Fluffy McFluff Face)

American style pancakes are our Saturday breakfast beloved routine, so much beloved that I often want to go to bed early on Friday night so the morning comes faster. There is a lot of fuss and strange recipes to achieve fluffy pancakes, but I don´t think it´s that difficult really. This recipe is the product of years of little tweaks and adjustments, and now is probably close to perfection, and it´s very easy. You won’t have to use weird coconut oil, or whip the egg-white separately, or align the flux-capacitor before hitting 88 miles per hour. No, just put all the ingredients in a bowl, mix them for 30 seconds, and you’re done. ONLY if you feel fancy, add a tablespoon of ricotta for extra creamy – but still fluffy! – consistency (I love it).

Special Equipment

  • hand mixer
  • good non-stick pan
  • plastic spatula
Created with Sketch. 10 minutes Created with Sketch. about 10

Ingredients

  • 130 gbread flour
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tablespoonnatural oil
  • 170 mlmilk
  • 2 teaspoonssugar
  • 2 teaspoonsbaking powder
  • 1 pinchsalt
  • 1 tablespoonricotta (optional)

Directions

The only tricky part of pancakes is the batter consistency, that has to be just right, not too thick and not too runny, thick BUT able to run slowly and nicely off of the spoon. The amount of milk in this recipe works perfectly, but since different flours absorb liquids differently, you never know. I actually don’t measure milk, I add it a little at the time, until I reach the desired consistency. Once again, experience is key. If you use a good frying pan, unscratched, you won’t need to grease the pan to cook the pancakes; otherwise, a flake of butter will do the trick.

 

  1. Put your best non-stick frying-pan on medium-high (if the pan is good, no butter is needed to grease it).
  2. Put all the ingredients together in a bowl, mix them but not too well, I feel like the pancakes come even fluffier when the mix is not super smooth but still a little bit lumpy. Quite soon the batter will start bubbling a little thanks to the baking powder action.
  3. Scoop the batter in the frying pan (a 24 cm frying pan will accommodate three 10 cm pancakes) with a small ladle, or a big spoon, or a 1/2 dl measure: using something that can contain just the right amount of batter will help achieving evenly-sized pancakes.
  4. After about 20 seconds, bubbles will start appearing on the surface of the pancakes: it’s time to flip them! Use a good plastic spatula, and with a gentle but firm wrist movement, you’ll do it (again, it takes some experience): the pancake should have that kind of golden/brown color; if not, adjust heat and cooking time accordingly. After 20/30 more seconds, the first batch is ready and you can pile your pancakes on a plate.
  5. Continue until you run out of batter, and the pancake tower is ready to go to the breakfast table.

Pancakes are of course best served still warm. My absolute favorite way of eating them is with plenty of butter, bacon and maple syrup. But of course you can use fruit, honey, whipped cream, why not ice-cream. I mean, you do you.

Fried Pizza

(a better kind of pizza)

If we decide we want to give meaning to words, you can’t really make good pizza at home. And by pizza I mean proper pizza, you know, the one invented in Napoli in the seventeen hundreds: it needs a brick oven that reaches 450° celsius (so that the dough cooks quickly and doesn’t get too crisp), very specific ingredients for the topping, and so on. Because of course, in time pizza has become literally everything, there’s even people that put kebab on it, imagine.

However, a loophole exists, and it’s what we’re doing here: fried pizza. Or well, a version of it. Fried pizza (pizza fritta) in Napoli is pretty much as popular as regular pizza, often regarded as street food. In it’s highest form, it’s a huge stuffed pizza deep fried in a big pot of oil, basically a big fried calzone. But in some different iterations, fried pizza can be miniature pizza, fried in a pan with a more reasonable amount of oil, and then topped -or not- with a simple tomato sauce and parmigiano. In a way, this is a better kind of pizza, as far as make-at-home pizzas go.

 

Special Equipment

  • stand mixer
Created with Sketch. 30 minutes to prepare the dough + 10 hours for rising + 15 minutes for frying the pizzas Created with Sketch. about 15 small fried pizzas

Ingredients

  • for the dough
  • 5 dlwater
  • 25 grsalt
  • 1.5 grfresh yeast
  • 850 grflour (50% regular flour, 50% bread flour)
  • vegetable oil for deep-frying
  • for the topping
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 2 tablespoons ofoliveoil
  • 400 grpomodori pelati
  • parmigiano flakes

Directions

The dough recipe is the same one used by the Official Napolitan Pizza Association (intended for regular brick oven-baked pizza), and it calls for a very small amount of yeast, and as a consequence, a long rising time: this is why the dough becomes so soft and puffed up.

 

  1. Pour the water (5 dl) in the stand mixer’s bowl and add the salt (25 gr); it will melt completely.
  2. Using your fingers, melt the yeast and add 1/10 of the flour (85 gr). Mix well.
  3. Start the mixer on the lowest speed, and gradually add the rest of the flour (765 gr). Different brands of flour will absorb water differently, so you might need all of it, or less, or a bit more: experience will teach you. Continue mixing for 15 more minutes: the dough will become elastic and separate completely from the bowl. Lay it on a working surface covered with a humid cloth, and let it rise for 2 hours.
  4. Work the dough a bit, and then cut and form the dough balls, 100 gr each, and lay them, ideally, in a container with a lid, or covered with plastic foil. Let them rise for at least 8 hours.

Now is time to prepare a simple tomato sauce for the topping:

  1. Using a mixer or immersion blender, mix the pomodori pelati into a sauce (it’s much better than using regular sauce)
  2. In a small pot  on medium add the oliveoil (2 tablespoon), the clove of garlic, and once it becomes golden brown, add the tomato, plus salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 5/10 minutes.

Let’s fry the pizzas:

  1. Heat abundant natural oil (ideally at 170°) in a deep pot or wok.
  2. Stretch out the  dough balls, one at the time, into round shapes, starting from the center and pressing the air outwards; in this way the pizzas will be thinner in the center, and puffier at the edges.
  3. Add the dough to the hot oil, and cook it for about one minute on each side (or the time needed for the pizza to become golden and crispy).
  4. Top the pizzas with with a tablespoon of tomato sauce and some parmigiano and eat it while the other pizzas are frying.

You can of course eat the fried pizza without any topping (just an extra sprinkle of salt), improvise with your own choice of toppings, and even make stuffed little fried pizzas. But please, no kebab.

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!

Bagels

(the chewie wonder)

New Yorkers have a bit of a fixation when it comes to bagels: they say that you can only eat a good bagel in New York and everything else is crap. I once met a guy who invented some kind of machinery that was able to replicate the exact chemical structure of New York water, to be able to do NY-style bagels in California… It really sounds like with me and pizza actually, so I can understand them perfectly. But to be honest I can’t see much of a difference between my bagels and the ones you would buy, say, at Absolute Bagels on the Upper East Side. But hey, I’m a profane here! I tried a few different recipes from the web and ended up with one that I think works very well despite being a lot simpler than most.

The bagel-making process is quite fascinating, as it calls for boiling the dough before baking it. Yes, boiling. I donno of any other kind of bread or baking product that contemplate such a thing. I can almost imagine, sometimes in sixteenth century Poland, an old jewish baker dropping some dough in boiling water by mistake and than thinking ‘what the hell, let’s bake it anyway and see what happens”. Et voilà!

Yes, bagels are a traditional bread originated in the Jewish community of Poland and later exported to the US. They have a characteristic chewie texture, a crispy and shiny crust, and the delicious smell of freshly baked bread. And they’re my favored bread of choice when it comes to breakfast or brunch. Egg, bacon and cheese are a good topping, but my favourite is of course cream cheese, salmon, tomato and avocado!

Created with Sketch. 2 hours Created with Sketch. 8 bagels

Ingredients

  • 500 gbread flour
  • 2 tsactive dry yeast
  • 300 gwater
  • 1 tbssugar
  • 1.5 tssalt
  • 1 egg
  • your favourite choice of seeds

Directions

  1. Mix the dry yeast together with 1/3 of the water at about 37°C and the sugar, and let it sit there for about 10 minutes: the water will start to bubble a bit.
  2. Add the flour, the salt and the rest of the water and mix the dough with a stand mixer for 10 minutes at a slow speed. the dough should be quite firm and shiny. Shape it into a ball and let it rise in a big oiled bowl for 1 hour covered with plastic foil at room temperature: the dough will double in size.
  3. Once the dough has risen, knead it shortly by hand again and divide it in 8 balls of about 100 grams each. With your thumb make a hole in the center of the dough ball, and stretch it out a bit until you have the characteristic round shape with a hole in it. Let the 8 bagels rest for 10 more minutes on a oven plate or other flat surface, covered with a kitchen towel.
  4. Set the oven at 220°C.
  5. Put a big pot of water on the stove and bring it to a boil. Prepare an oven plate lined with baking paper and start boiling the bagels. Boil 2 or 3 at a time, depending on how big your pot is; the bagels will float and grow in size while boiling, so be careful not to cram the pot. Let the bagels boil for 2 minutes on each side, flipping them halfway using a skimmer. You can boil them a bit less or a bit more, but the more you boil them the more chewie they will become.
  6. Arrange the boiled bagels on the oven plate, mix the egg with a tablespoon of water, brush the top of each bagel, and sprinkle your choice of seeds on each one of them (here I’m using a mix of poppy, line and sesame); the eggwash will give the final shiny color, plus will keep the seeds “glued” to the surface.
  7. Throw the plate in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, until they become golden/brown.
  8. Bagels are best freshly baked, but they can also be refrigerated, frozen, re-heated and toasted.

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).