Ingredient: garlic

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?

 

Chanterelle toast

(second breakfast?)

Sometimes, things are just too easy. It’s fall, it’s mushroom season and the goodiest most wonderful mushroom toast is so simple to make, it’s… well it’s ridiculous.

Cream, mushrooms, some soy and a nice piece of bread.

We’ve always picked a lot of mushroom in my family. Chanterelles of different kinds, Porcini, maybe even the odd Russula? Through the years I’ve had different favorites for this recipe. The Yellowfoot is spicier and a bit more intense. Porcini is softer and more “forrest-y”. I really like Black chanterelle which also look incredibly cool. The one I make most often though, is the one with Yellow or Golden chanterelle, but you can’t really go wrong with any of them (pictures below sometimes show Yellowfoot and sometimes Yellow chanterelle).

Created with Sketch. 15-20 min Created with Sketch. Enough for 5-6 toasts

Ingredients

  • 5 slicesof bread
  • 150 gmushroom
  • 200 gcream (2 dl)
  • 25 gbutter
  • 8 gChinese soy (use 5-10 ml depending on taste)
  • 0.5 cloveof garlic
  • A squeeze of lemon
  • Some salt and pepper
  • Some cheese for garnish

Directions

This is the best part because there’s really nothing to this recipe at all. It’s so so simple.

Firstly let me just note that it’s a bit difficult to give a good weight estimate for chanterelles. Depending on the water content 150 g can be almost nothing (a couple of big mushrooms) or quite a lot. Look at the pictures below to get a gauge of what I used.

  1. Clean the mushroom. If they’re not very dirty, just brush them off. Otherwise rinse them with water. Some people say this is bad, I have no idea why. Maybe they confuse it with shrimp? Mushroom is a liiiiittle bit like the shellfish of the forrest?
  2. Chop the mushroom and fry them in butter on medium/high heat. Fry them until they sizzle, then we’ve gotten rid of all the excess water.
  3. Add finely chopped garlic and fry for another minute or two. Use as much as you want but I’d recommend about 1/3 of a clove. This is not supposed to be real garlic-y but rather just give some depth.
  4. Pour over the cream and add the soy. Again, add soy to your preference. I’d say 5 g (1 teaspoon/ 5 ml) is on the low end and 15 g (1 tablespoon/ 15 ml) is on the high end for me, meaning 15 g will give you quite a sharp taste of soy. I prefer to be at 5-10 g.
  5. When the consistency is a bit more sauce-y then you want it, take the pan of the heat, add a squeeze of lemon, some pepper and salt (if you think it needs the salt). Then let it rest off the heat for 5 minutes.
  6. Toast the slices of bread in a toaster or in the oven.
  7. Put the mushroom “stew” on the toasted bread slices, garnish with cheese and you’re done! Maybe give them 5 minutes in the oven on grill, but this is very optional.

For me, this is one of these dishes that are just the tastiest ever. There’s a bit of childhood nostalgia in that for sure. As I said, we really are a mushroom picking family and chanterelle toast was always the go-to thing after a walk in the forrest.

However, that’s not all. The combination of chanterelle, cream, soy and a hint of garlic and lemon is really something. And as a bonus it’s really nice to go mushroom picking.

Enjoy!

Greek style Chicken with Potato and Tzatziki

(I'm sorry, I can't sing for you)

In the nineties we went to Crete to celebrate my late grandpa’s 70th birthday. We went to a kinda café-restaurant-ish place in a village he and my grandma had been to before. They instantly recognized him and after some pleasantries and most likely some customary Raki (booze, usually home-made), we decided to have dinner there that same evening. It wasn’t a big establishment. We had to decide what to eat so they could go kill it in time for dinner. You know, that sorta place. We decided on chicken and came back a couple of hours later. I vividly remember two things about that meal.

One. From the start the waiter was a bit… off I guess I’d say. The second time he came in… was he drunk? The third time, yes, decidedly drunk and now he also started to apologize profusely. He couldn’t sing to us you see, “I’m very sorry, I can’t sing for you… I’m so sorry”. After a while we understood that the village was in mourning. The waiter cried and apologized. No singing.

Quite surreal.

Two. The chicken and rice. Crispy, lemony, wonderfully roasted chicken with some kind of risotto-ish rice. Creamy and lemon-infused. It was all just really, really great.

So, back to Sweden. A bunch of years later, my dad started to make a lemon tasting, greek style chicken thing, but with potato instead of rice. I just assumed that this was a riff on that memorable meal. Turns out, it was from a recipe booklet he got from our part-greek cousins. That doesn’t really matter though. What matters is this: that chicken and potato is the bomb. And, ironically, the star of the show is the potato! Don’t get me wrong, the chicken is great, but I tend to think that roasted chicken can only be that good. The potato though… beyond great.

What’s also great with this dish is that it’s so, so simple. It needs some time in the oven but takes very little time to prepare.

Created with Sketch. 2 hours in total. 30 minutes preparation, circa 1.5 hours of cooking. Created with Sketch. 6-7 people

Ingredients

  • 1 large organic chicken (circa 1.5-2 kg)
  • 1.5 kgpotatoes
  • 2 lemons
  • 100 gbutter
  • 100 gwater (1 dl)
  • 700 gGreek (or Turkish) yogurt
  • 200 gsoured cream (this is a bit complicated, see below)
  • 1 cucumber
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 200 golive oil
  • 25 gvinegar (circa 1.5 tbsp)
  • Salt, pepper and oregano

Directions

If you’re feeling ambitious, I’d recommend you to brine the chicken over night. Dissolve approximately 60g of salt per one (1) liter of water. Put the raw chicken in the salt-water (the brine) and let it soak over night in the fridge. As the ion concentration in the brine is higher than the water in the meat, salty water will go into the chicken (osmosis) making it more juicy and naturally a bit salty (well… maybe a bit of a stretch to call it naturally). For pork, chicken (birds in general) and fish this is a really awesome trick.

One more thing. About that soured cream: in Sweden it’s called “gräddfil” and is very common. The closest international equivalent I’ve found seem to be soured cream but I’ve never actually tried it myself. Note that it isn’t the same thing as creme fraîche although that is fairly similar.

Gräddfil is about 12% fat, soured cream about 18% and creme fraîche is a lot fatter. If in doubt, just use more of the yogurt instead.

So, onwards to the instructions!

  1. Heat the oven to 220 C.
  2. Cut the potatoes into quite thick slices and put them in an oven tray. Pour 100g (1 dl) of olive oil over the potatoes. Turn the potatoes in the oil a couple of times thus that the potato slices are well covered in oil.
  3. Place the chicken on an oven grid and put the grid on top of the tray of potatoes.
  4. Press a lemon worth of lemon juice over the chicken, splash it with some olive oil and distribute 50g of butter across the skin of the chicken. Sprinkle some salt and black pepper over the chicken.
  5. Press the other lemon over the potatoes, pour the water into the oven tray and distribute the remaining 50g of butter amongst the potato slices.
  6. Sprinkle oregano quite generously over everything.
  7. Put into the oven for 30 minutes, then take the whole thing out, turn the potatoes and flip the chicken over (belly up). Put everything back into the oven for about 60 more minutes (depending a bit on the size of the chicken).
  8. Now you’re done with that! Over to the Tzatziki. Put the yogurt and the soured cream in a bowl.
  9. Grate the cucumber and press it to remove excess water. Press the garlic cloves and put the garlic and cucumber in with the yogurt.
  10. Add 100g of olive oil (1 dl) and the vinegar (1.5 tbsp) and mix everything together. Add salt and pepper to taste. Done!

 

Serve with a nice Greek salad and make sure to pour some of the juice from the oven tray over the chicken and potatoes on the plate. The roasted chicken dripping down into the lemon-butter-olive oil makes for a truly great dressing.

I hope I get to that original Crete dish some day. I’ve tried making it a couple of times but haven’t really been able to mimic the rice. In the meantime though? Eat this for christ’s sake.

Dumplings

(bingo, bingo, bingo!)

When I was still in school I lived in Shanghai for a bit. I have… shall we say mixed feelings about China. On the one hand it’s a super cool country, buuuut on the other hand they’re not that great at democracy and individual liberty and stuff. While being there, I wrote a thesis on sports betting and had to enlist my brother to register himself at various bookmakers as this is definitely not something you can do from China. You also can’t use google. Or Facebook. Or many other things we take for granted on the internet. And this is of course only scraping the surface, from the vantage point of a privileged westerner. The Chinese people have more alarming concerns than not being able to use Google. Millions of people being moved to clean up the city for a world expo for example. Or citizens waiting 15 years to be allowed a passport. Stuff like that.

China’s oppressiveness is camouflaged juuuust enough for you to forget that it exists if you don’t pay attention. But if you start looking..? Well, then it’s… it’s pretty bad.

All of this said – I do miss Shanghai. A city full of life and possibility. A place were you can start the evening playing bingo at a luxurious restaurant were a waiter drives the top bingo-prize (an electric scooter) through the restaurant honking at every turn yelling “BINGO, BINGO, BINGO”. Then, you continue a couple of floors up the building, befriend a German billionaire with childhood issues and see the sun go up from his 20 000 € per night suite on the 84th floor of The Bottle Opener.

Nothing remotely similar has happened to me in Stockholm, I’ll tell you that. But Shanghai is really a crazy place, in good ways and in bad ways.

Similar to Stockholm though, Shanghai is a city with great food, both at the high and the low end of the price spectra. You can easily find a good meal for less than two dollars and you can (obviously) spend however much you want.

I miss the weird breakfast street pancakes with the brown, gooey, chili stuff and the crispy cracker. I miss the Hongkong duck at my go-to lunch place. I miss the street side wooks. Most of all though, I miss the dumplings at Ruijin Road. They’re just these simple dumplings in broth for 13 or so RMB (≈2$). But man… I got seriously hooked.

I’ve tried to recreate them with this recipe. They’re close enough to vividly remind me of the real deal, but I know they’re not as good.

They are very good thou! You should try them.

Special Equipment

  • A little "dumpling-maker"- tool is advisable (see pictures below) but not necessary
Created with Sketch. 45 min Created with Sketch. 4-5 people

Ingredients

  • 2 litersof vegetable broth, preferably home made of course
  • 50 dumpling wrappers
  • 500 gminced pork
  • 1 egg
  • 250 gpak choi
  • 1 yellow onion or ca 3 leaks
  • 1 pot of cilantro/ coriander (ca 15 g)
  • 1 fresh chili (ca 15-20 g)
  • 3 cloves of garlic (15 g)
  • 1 tbspgrated fresh ginger (20 g)
  • 1 dlpanko (30 g)
  • 2 tbsprice vinegar (30 g/ml)
  • 2 tbspJapanese style soy, e.g. Kikkoman soy (30 g/ml)
  • 2 tbspsesame oil (30 g/ml)
  • Some salt (ca 5 g) and pepper
  • Sichuan pepper if you have it!

Directions

  1. Make a simple broth. Chop up some onions, carrots and whatever and bring to a boil. Add salt, pepper corns and bay leaves. Simmer for and hour (or more if you have the time) and you’re done.
  2. While the broth is boiling away, you have plenty of time to do everything else. Put the pork in a big bowl. Grate the fresh ginger, press the garlic and chop everything choppable and mix it in with the pork.
  3. Lightly beat the egg and add it to the mix. Add the sesame oil, rice vinegar and soy.
  4. Add the panko and stir everything together thoroughly.
  5. Take an appropriate amount of pork-dumpling-batter and put in a wrapper. Seal with the wrapper tool or if you don’t have it, a plain ol’ fork.



  6. Repeat until you’re out of batter and/ or wrappers. Easy!
  7. Now, you can cook these in different ways. I really like them boiled. The you just sift away the vegetables from the broth, add the dumplings to the boiling broth and cook them for 2-3 minutes.
  8. In Shanghai they quite often “steam-fry” them. Then you put some oil in a pan, heat it up to medium/ high, and add the dumplings to the pan. Then you add just a bit of water to the pan and put a lid on. “Steam-fry” them like this for 4-5 minutes. The bottom becomes fried and a bit crispy, while the top gets steamed. Quite good!
  9. And you can also just regular-steam them. I’ll leave that up to you to figure out.

If you want, dip them in three parts soy (e.g. Kikkoman) mixed with one part rice vinegar and some sriracha, but really, they’re great just as they are. And if you’re of the vegetarian persuasion, replace the pork with mushrooms (e.g. champignon) long fried in butter and I think you’ll be pretty pleased.

It really is surprisingly easy to make dumplings (if you don’t think it’s super easy, if you think it’s super easy you’re right on the money). At least if you don’t make the wrappers yourself. I’m sure that can be fun but I’m very pleased with the ones I can get at my local China-store (those I use are called “Gyoza skins”).

And just to have said what really goes without sayin’. IF you are in Shanghai and find yourself close to Ruijin Road. DO NOT tell me about it. I will be consumed by jealousy.

Bean tacos with fried cheese and guacamole

(definitely not "taco")

A while back, me and my brother went to a lecture by Magnus Nilsson (of Fäviken fame). It was fun and strange. He was (supposed to be) promoting his book The Nordic Cookbook but began the lecture by telling us he thought it to be a really bad idea making a book about Nordic cooking. Since there is no “Nordic cooking”. However, he then figured someone else would be tasked to write it if he declined. Which would probably make the book be worse than if he wrote it. So… he wrote it. Then he talked about bread for 20 minutes. Then, it got really strange. He claimed that “taco pie” is one of the most Swedish dishes there is. Crazy, right? Buuuuut…. he just might be on to something. In Sweden, taco is a real mainstay in the weekly family menu. Or well… “taco”. Many times it’s just minced beef fried with a spice mix from Santa Maria, coupled with some creme fraiche, grated cheese, corn, some other vegetables and salsa. It’s not bad I guess. It’s… a rouse, a cheap trick, if you know what I’m saying? It’s good in the way McDonalds can be quite good. You eat it and think “hey, this is really pretty good” but then half an hour later you think “was it thou..?“.

Anyway, nowadays we Swedes put “taco” in lots of places where it doesn’t belong. In pies, on pizza, heck there’s even a taco-semla (semla is a weird-ish dessert we eat on Fat Tuesday, taco-semla is just straight up super weird… Also, the nacho-semla was actually a way bigger deal).

So maybe “taco” is actually really Swedish. We certainly are a bit obsessed with it.

I got turned on to tacos when I got treated to some of the stuff from Jonas Cramby’s cookbook of Mexican food. It was decidedly different from the “taco” I’d had before. Real beefy and spicy and smokey, with loads of coriander and lime. Just great. And as with everything when living with a vegetarian: if you find something that’s wonderful but also made from animals, you try to make a vegetarian version so you can eat it more often. After some experimentation, this recipe quite quickly rose to the top. The wonderfully rich black beans are so good with the garlic and the chili. Guacamole is a perfect match and fried cheese… fried cheese is just food cocaine. About 50% of the time I have fried cheese I think: “there is nothing better than this… there can’t be anything better than this“. If I’m drunk I’m certain of it. And really? I don’t think I’m especially off base here. Top it off with pickled red onion, a generous dash of fresh coriander (cilantro) and lots of lime and you have what for me might have become my favorite taco. Maybe it’s because I don’t make the pulled pork version, or the beef one, or the fish taco as much, but I’m not sure… There’s just something about the beans with the cheese and the…. mmmmm. So good. We have it once a week.

Should you really be any different?

Created with Sketch. Roughly 2 hours Created with Sketch. 5

Ingredients

  • For the bean stew
  • 1 kgblack beans including the liquid , ca 700 g without the liquid
  • 1 yellow onion
  • 4 cloves of garlic, maybe five if they're small
  • 1 chile ancho (dried poblano chile)
  • 1 chipotle (smoked chili)
  • 5 gSriracha
  • 40 gchili sauce
  • 35 gchipotle salsa
  • 330 g/ mlnice beer
  • 0.5 fresh chili
  • 1 lime
  • 5 gsoy
  • 13 g(1 & 2/3 tbsp) cumin
  • 1 g(1 tbsp) oregano
  • 6 g(ca 4/5-1 tsp) salt (or smoked salt!)
  • 3 g(1 tsp) paprika (or smoked paprika!)
  • 6 g(1 tbsp) coriander seeds
  • 0.5 g(1/2 tsp) white pepper
  • 5 mlvinegar
  • For the fried cheese
  • 300 ggouda cheese
  • 100 gpanko
  • 2 eggs
  • 100 gwhite flour
  • For the guacamole
  • 5 ripe avocados
  • 1 lime
  • 50 golive oil
  • Half a pot of fresh coriander
  • Some vinegar
  • Salt and white pepper

Directions

I haven’t included a recipe for the tortilla here. If you want to make it yourself (which I really think you should) I used this one for a long time. It’s good (it’s in Swedish but I think you’ll get it)!

Nowadays I mostly use a simple pizza dough (yeast, water, salt, oil, flour), take about 40 g of the dough, work it to a thin tortilla and fry it in a hot pan for 20-30 seconds on each side.

  1. Begin with the beans. Put a pot or a saucepan, with a generous splash of oil, on medium/high heat. Chop the onion (1) and put them in the pan when the oil gets hot. Turn the heat to medium.
  2. After a couple of minutes, press (or finely chop) and add the garlic (4 cloves). Chop the fresh 1/2 chili and put it into the pan.
  3. Mix the coriander (1 tbsp) seeds in a mortar. Add the oregano (1 tbsp), paprika (1 tsp), cumin (1 & 2/3 tbsp), white pepper (1/2 tsp) salt (4/5 – 1 tsp) and mix further in the mortar.
  4. Sift away the liquid from the beans (700 g excluding the liquid), rinse them a bit under water and add them to the pan, then add the spice mix.
  5. Add chili sauce (40 g), sriracha (5 g), chipotle salsa (35 g), vinegar (5 ml) and soy (5 ml). Stir.
  6. Add the beer (330 g/ml) to the pan as well as about as much water. Put the ancho (1) and the chipotle (1) in with the rest and bring it to a boil. Turn the heat to medium/high. Now you’re almost done! Reduce the mixture to a thick stew. This should take about an hour.
  7. Now for the Guacamole. Split the avocados (5), remove the seed and scoop out the avocado with a spoon. Add salt, juice from 1/2 lime, 1/2 deciliter (50 g) of olive oil, half a pot of fresh coriander, white pepper (I like to have quite a lot of pepper, but I’ll leave it up to you) and a splash of vinegar.

  8. If the avocados are perfectly ripe, all you need to do now is turn the mix over on itself with a spoon continuously for a minute or two to get a wonderful mix of creamy guacamole with large bits of avocado still intact. If the avocados are not completely ripe you’ll have to split them a couple of times with the spoon. However, I recommend to not put it in a mixer. I think it looses something when everything is smashed together completely. Taste and adjust with salt & pepper, add the other half of the lime if you like it limey, and depending on the avocados and the lime: you might want to add some sugar. Done.
  9. And so for the last (amazing) part: the cheese. Cut the cheese (ca 300 g) into sticks and flour them. Remove the superfluous flour.
  10. Gently whisk 2 eggs and about 1/2 deciliter (50 g) of water with a fork. Pour the panko in a big bowl.
  11. Cover the floured cheese sticks with the egg/water whisk and turn them in panko.



  12. When the bean stew starts getting thicker/ more reduced, add the juice from 1/2 of a lime. Taste and adjust the saltiness and add more spice, lime juice and perhaps chili sauce to your liking. When the consistency is appropriate for putting in a soft tortilla bre ad (thick but not dry, definitely not runny), take the pan/pot off the stove to rest for 5 minutes.
  13. Deep fry the panko-covered cheese sticks in 180 C oil until the crust is golden (this takes 60 seconds-ish). Now, make sure this is the very last thing you do and that everything else is prepared for serving. The fried cheese is good for maybe 10 minutes.

 

Put the pieces together. Make sure to add plenty of fresh coriander and a splash of lime juice on top and enjoy. And I almost forgot! Except for the cheese, this is actually vegan. Though fried cheese is just amazing a really great substitute is fried and lightly salted slices of eggplant (and honestly, just adding this to the taco without removing the cheese is also pretty great).

I’ll be back with a pork, beef and a fish taco down the line. Those are also really quite good 🙂