Vegetarian – Popcorn Icecream

06/12/202006/12/2020

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 🙏🏻😋

2 hours + soaking of the beans 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.

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!
While they’re boiling away. Chop up the celery, carrots and tomatoes. When 45 minutes have passed, throw them in as well.
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.
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).
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.
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!

23/10/2020

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).

1 hour 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.

Boil the lentils (130 g) in salted water (or if you like, broth) until they’re soft
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.
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:
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

07/04/2020

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.

2 hours 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

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.
Chop 1/2 yellow onion and add to the pan.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
Slice the aubergines (2) into 0.5 – 1 cm thick slices and coat them with flour.
Deep fry the aubergine slices (or fry them in a pan with plenty of oil).
Put the oven to 220 C.
Now you’re ready to assemble. Start with a layer of béchamel sauce in the bottom of a quite deep oven tray.
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.
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?

25/03/202025/03/2020

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!

1.5 hours 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

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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
So now the base mixture is done. If you have the time, let it set in the fridge for an hour or so.
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.

17/03/2020

Lemon Risotto

(the unexpected risotto)

It was probably early two thousands, and together with a friend we managed to crash a fancy graduate lunch in a fancy restaurant in Napoli (Zi Teresa), that was only intended for the close family and teachers of this other friend of ours. The family was clearly not super happy about our presence, but we made friends with a couple of teachers. For the first time I had Lemon Risotto. It was good, but not exceptional. While we were dining, and commenting on it, the very Professor that discussed my friend’s thesis, leaned towards me, and in a complicit tone said: this one is made with butter, which together with the lemon gives it a bit too much of a cream cheese feeling. You should try with an egg yolk instead, it’s much better.

The professor was absolutely right, and I never had the chance to thank him, so here we go: thank you professor, that was a good tip.

30 min cooking + 30 for making the vegetable stock 2

Ingredients

for the vegetable stock
1 potato
1 stick of celery
1 onion
1 carrot
for the risotto
1 onion
olive oil to taste
160 grCarnaroli rice
150 grwhite wine
1 lemon
1 egg yolk
parmigiano to taste

Directions

Preliminary notes:

in a perfect world everybody should be able to have access to the Amalfi coast lemons, the most beautiful and intense lemons ever, but since most of you readers don’t live in the south of Italy, well, I’m sorry. Try to find the most beautiful and fresh and expensive lemon, because lemon is key here.
you can choose to use or not use the parmigiano in the end, I like both versions.

Start by making the vegetable stock: throw one potato (peeled and halved), one stick of celery, one onion (peeled and halved) and one carrot in a pot of salted water, and let it cook for 30 min. You can do this in advance, but the stock must be hot when you start making the actual risotto.
In a different pot on medium/high heat, pour a couple of tablespoons off olive oil, add the onion finely diced, and let it sauté for 5 minutes.
Add the rice and stir it continuously. Let it toast for a couple of minutes, the rice will develop a hard surface, which will slow down the cooking process a bit, adding to the final creamyness. Add the white wine and keep stirring until it evaporates.
Finely grate the peal of the lemon, and then squeeze out the juice. Add half of the peel and half of the juice to the pot, stirring again and again.
Now you can start adding the broth: again, stirring the rice continuously, add a first ladle of stock and keep stirring until the stock is consumed: you have to be quick with the next ladle of broth or you will burn everything.
Repeat point .5 until the rice is cooked, about 15/20 minutes in total. It’s important that the final risotto is on the firm side. Please don’t all a lot of stock all together, we want the starch to come out of those grains a little at the time to make the risotto more creamy.
Take the pot off the heat and finally add the rest of the lemon peel and juice, the parmigiano (if you want to), and the egg yolk: be very quick to stir in the egg yolk. If you let it sit there for too long without stirring, you will end up with an unpleasant taste of cooked egg.
Feel free to add some black pepper, freshly chopped parsley, and some more greated lemon peel.

17/02/202005/03/2020

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

10 minutes 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.

Put your best non-stick frying-pan on medium-high (if the pan is good, no butter is needed to grease it).
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.
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.
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.
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.

12/03/201812/03/2018

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?

Roughly 2 hours 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.

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.
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.
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.
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.
Add chili sauce (40 g), sriracha (5 g), chipotle salsa (35 g), vinegar (5 ml) and soy (5 ml). Stir.
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.
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.
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.
And so for the last (amazing) part: the cheese. Cut the cheese (ca 300 g) into sticks and flour them. Remove the superfluous flour.
Gently whisk 2 eggs and about 1/2 deciliter (50 g) of water with a fork. Pour the panko in a big bowl.
Cover the floured cheese sticks with the egg/water whisk and turn them in panko.
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.
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 🙂

20/12/2017

Eggplants Parmigiana

(or one of its variants)

This recipe originates somewhere in the south of Italy sometime around the seventeen hundreds, when eggplants and tomatoes finally made it in the mediterranean cuisine. They both had existed for quite some time (eggplants coming from Asia in the Middle Age, and tomatoes coming from the New World after it was “discovered”), but like everything new, it took some time to be accepted. Napolitans say it originates in Napoli, sicilians say it comes from Sicily, people from the city of Parma, in the north, swear it’s their invention (yeah, sure), but since I come from the Napoli region, then it’s decided, it’s a napolitan recipe, ok? Ok.

Even if it has few basic ingredients (one of wich, the most important, is of course Parmigiano cheese*), it has a lot of variants; probably every family has its own version, and sometimes even in the same family it can be a matter of discussion. For example in my family, my aunt Tettella fries the eggplant slices after being egged and floured. I only flour them. She uses mozarella, I use ricotta. I love her parmigiana, but I think mine is superior of course. My girlfriend, who comes from a parmigiana-free country (Sweden), and is not usually influenced by such trivial things as “love” and “affection” in her judgement, thinks mine is way better. So it’s decided, the recipe you’re about to read makes for the best eggplant Parmigiana ever. Ok? Ok

However, since I have said somewhere here that I’m not a fundamentalist any more, this is some variants you might want to try in your parmigiana making:
– don’t use ricotta but mozzarella instead, or even better provola (which is a kind of smoked mozzarella)
– use both ricotta and mozzarella/provola
– fry the eggplants after being floured/egged/breaded
– fry the eggplants after being egged only
– roast the eggplants for a “lighter” version
– any combination of the above

*when I say Parmigiano cheese, I mean the real thing, please don’t use any of that parmesan crap, do yourself a favour.

1 and a half hours 6 servings

Ingredients

4 eggplants (about 1 kg)
250 gricotta
30 gmilk
300 gParmigiano Regiano
salt to taste
vegetable oil to deep-fry
for the tomato sauce
1 lttomato sauce
2 tbsolive oil
1 clovegarlic
black pepper to taste
salt to taste

Directions

Start by preparing the tomato sauce. As for any tomato-based sauce, heat olive oil with a clove of garlic on medium-high until the garlic gets golden brown. Pour in the raw tomato sauce from the can, plus a couple of tablespoons of water if the tomato is very thick (I usally “wash” the tomato sauce bottle or carton with some water and pour it in the pan with the rest). Add salt and pepper to taste, and let cook on medium-low for 15 minutes.
While the tomato sauce is cooking, slice the eggplants in 2-3 mm slices, put them in a big bowl, cover with water and add abundant salt: this will help to get rid of some of the bitterness eggplants sometimes have (if they’ve been harvested too late, or if they have been sitting in the fridge for a while). You can actually skip this if you are in a hurry, it’s not strictly necessary. I do it only when I have time, because the slices have to sit in the water for at least 30 minutes. It’s important, however, that you rinse the slices, so that the flour will stick to them, as in the next step.
Throw the flour in a big bowl and, one at a time, flour the eggplant slices, shake them well to eliminate excessive flour, and arrange them nicely in a plate ready to fry.
Heat the vegetable oil in a big frying pan at around 150° C, and being very careful, put the floured slices in the hot oil without cramming them too much. Fry the slices turning them every now and again, until they get golden brown. When done, arrange them in a plate lined with absorbent paper or, like I do, in a oil-drainer (these might be hard to find out of italy, however…). It will take some time to fry all the slices, and you will probably need to add some oil after a while. Also, don’t forget to salt the slices when they’re out of the oil.
Prepare the ricotta for the final composition: add some milk to it and mix until it’s easily spreadable. I mean, ricotta is spreadable already in its normal form, but you want it just a bit more liquid than that. Also, grate all the Parmigiano cheese, ready for the “assembly-line”. And, start pre-heating the oven at 180°C.
Now you have the tomato sauce, the spreadable ricotta, the parmigiano, and the fried slices of eggplant. All you have to do is assemble them in layers, just like what you would do for Lasagne. Start with just a little bit of tomato sauce on the bottom of a 20cmx30cm oven plate (use one that is at least 5/6 cm tall), and than it goes like this: one layer of eggplants, a couple of tablespoons of ricotta, well spread on the entire surface, 3 tablespoons of tomatosauce also well spread, 2/3 tablespoons of grated parmigiano. Go on like this until all the ingredients are over, but remember, for the last layer, to skip the ricotta; it will be only eggplants, tomato sauce, Parmigiano.
All you have to do is cook it in the oven for 45 minutes, and, VERY IMPORTANT, let it rest for 45 more minutes after it’s cooked: all the flavours will have time to set, and the consistency will become nice and firm.

You won’t believe it but in Italy this thing is considered a side dish, something you eat after a big bowl of pasta, a steak, and why not some green salad. I really think it’s a complete dish though, it has everything, and I usually eat it with a side of more Parmigiana. Yep, like two servings. It’s also good to be eaten at room-temperature or straight out-of-the-fridge cold. You can freeze it and then bring it to work in your lunch-box, or save it for those rainy days when you want to treat yourself to something special.

10/12/201707/01/2021

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

60 minutes 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

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.
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.
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.
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.
By now, the mushrooms and onion should look something like this.
Add it to the egg-almond-mix and blend it a bit.
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.
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.
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.
The consistency should now allow you to make quite firm balls from the mix. Like such:
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.
(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.
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!

23/11/201728/01/2018

Black Bean Moussaka

(greek goodness)

Well it’s not just Greek though right? It’s middle eastern, Turkish, Greek kinda. But you know what I mean. Anyway, this might be my favourite vegetarian dish.

Now, some might question why I’m posting a vegetarian version, instead of the meaty original, so let me just clarify: I absolutely adore the meat version. My cousins father was Greek, so a lot of the food in their mother’s (my aunts) house have always been very Greek.

The moussakas I’ve had there have been just… bonkers good.

So why the black beans? Well, my girlfriend is vegetarian and I just couldn’t stand not having moussaka frequently. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. But then, I just started liking it so much I’m not even sure which one I prefer any more…

So what’s the deal with moussaka anyway? As with many dishes it’s not one single thing. The corner stones of a great moussaka are the spicing, heavy with all-spice and possibly cinnamon (I say yes to cinnamon btw. My aunt says fuck no, so… don’t say no, say maybe, maybe, maybe, as a famous Swedish song goes), fried egg plant, and a creamy, egg-infused béchamel sauce with plenty of parmigiano!

A couple of things are, according to myself, crucially important.

Deep frying the egg plant (and the potato if you choose to include it).
Ample amounts of parmigiano in the béchamel.
Lots of eggs in the béchamel.
Daring to spice the bean stew. I think beans need heavier spicing than meat, so go for it.

Just stick to these and you’ll be ok. And the moussaka will be a lot more than ok.

Special Equipment

Deep fryer (you can manage without a dedicated fryer, but it's a bit tedious)
Kitchen thermometer

3 hours 8 servings

Ingredients

For the bean stew
500 grwater soaked black beans (excluding the weight of the water)
1 yellow onion
100 grchampignons
2 clovesof garlic
33 clbeer
1 dlred wine
6 grallspice
3 grpaprika powder (smoked if you have it!)
3 grkoriander seeds
3 grcinnamon
1 grblack pepper
50 grchili sauce
25 grsoy sauce (Japanese style, e.g. Kikkoman)
10 grsriracha
Vinegar to taste
For the layers
700 grpotato (7-9 medium sized potatoes)
800 graubergines (two big ones)
For the egg-béchamel
700 gmilk
70 gflour
40 gbutter
1 yellow onion
100 gparmigiano cheese
5 eggs
3 bay leaves
5 piecesof clove
6 gsalt
White peppar to taste

Directions

Chop the mushroom and fry them with som oil in a pan on medium heat. While the mushroom are frying, finely chop the yellow onion and the garlic cloves. Add the onion chop when the mushroom have some color.
Mix all of the spices (and salt) in a mortar. Add them into the pan with the black beans when the yellow onion starts to look a bit transparent. After a couple of minutes, also add the sriracha, soy, chili sauce, beer, wine and 3-4 deciliters of hot water.
Let the mixture reduce on low to medium heat. Stir occasionally. When the consistency is gooey (not watery) but not dry, the bean stew is done! Balance the taste with vinegar and additional spicing to your liking.
Do the béchamel while the bean stew is reducing. Start by putting a big pot on medium heat and adding in the butter. Finely chop the yellow onion and add it to the pot when it’s hot and the butter is sizzling.
Put the flour in a bowl. Whisk about 30% of the milk into the flour, until no flour-lumps remain. Add the rest of the milk while stirring/whisking.
Add the salt, som white pepper, the bay leaves and the clove. When the onion in the pot has softened, pour the milk-mix into the pan.
Turn up the heat. Stir the bottom of the pan continuously with a flat wooden spoon. When the mixture starts thickening, lower the heat to low/medium heat and continue to stir. Grate the parmigiano.
After a couple of minutes on low/medium heat (the mixture should simmer ever so slightly), add the parmigiano. When the cheese has melted into the sauce, take it of the stove and let it rest for 10-15 min.
When the sauce has cooled down a bit of the stove, mix in the 5 eggs.
Find and remove the bay leaves and clove and you’re done!
Now for the tedious part – deep frying the aubergine & potato. Start by cutting the aubergine and potatoes into slices about 0.5 – 1 cm thick.
Heat up a big pot of rapeseed oil (alt. sunflower oil) to 180 C. Make sure to have a thermometer to keep tabs on the temperature. Fry in batches. If you put to much in at the same time, the oil can boil over and/ or drop in temperature too much. When the potatoes/aubergine are golden, take them out of the oil and let them drip in a sieve or put them on paper towels. Wait for the temperature to get back to 180 C before starting a new batch.
When done deep frying, salt the potato and aubergine slices. The level of saltiness should be about the sam as if you would eat them separately (maybe just a hair less). Turn the oven to 200 C.
Cover the bottom of a deep (10-ish cm) oven dish with aubergine and potato slices. Spread a thin-ish layer of bean stew on top of this and then do another layer of aubergine and potato. Continue until you run out of ingredients.
Finally, pour the egg-béchamel on top of all of it.
Bake in the oven on 200 C for circa 30 minutes.
Emerge perfection!
So… now for the, by far, hardest part of this recipe.
You have to leave the moussaka to rest for about 45 minutes out of the oven before eating. I mean… you really don’t have to, but I IMPLORE you. It is so much better lukewarm than piping hot and there is quite a lot of oil in this one so it stays hot for a good while. So plan for it to rest, you’ll not regret it!

Serve with a nice Greek sallad or maybe even some Tsatsiki!