An Extemporaneous Meal

Ida and I cooked a fish casserole over the summer. We invented our recipe, and it was delicious.

1 packet of frozen cod
1 packet creme fraiche (a bit like sour cream)
Basil leaves (as much as you desire)
Red onion
Lemon pepper

We dusted the cod pieces with lemon pepper and put them in the glass casserole dish. We then took a red onion and plucked a few handful of basil leaves from our basil bush and chopped them up and then mixed the blessed lot together with the creme fraiche. We smoothed this over the cod and cooked it in the oven for twenty minutes or so, and then called the whole family to come eat it with boiled taters and butter and and green peace peas.

A Shirley Temple with a strawberry

Hoo Hoo

My friend Jennifer made made an owl cake.

It's a chocolate fudge cake covered in cream frosting with chocolate covered cashews and almond slices for decoration. Jennifer made the frosting, but I provided the recipe for this simple no-fuss chocolate fudge cake.

2 eggs

3 dl sugar (300 ml)

2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or a few drops vanilla essence

4 tablespoons cocoa

1/2 teaspoon salt

1.5 dl flour (150 ml)

100 grams of soft butter or margarine

Mix eggs and sugar. Add soft butter and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients. Pour batter into a greased pan and bake at 175 degrees Celsius for approximately 35 minutes. Best enjoyed with vanilla ice cream.

Yeah Toast!

I am now a breadmaker. To my knowledge I have never before made bread on my own, though I have dabbled in the similar culinary arts of bun making. Saffron and cinnamon, specifically. My friend Kraken, a bread aficionado and Google employee, sent me a recipe for a honey wheat bread, which I tried my hand at and succeeded. Heartily dared, half won, you know. I am always fussing over the water temperature; I am always afraid I'll kill the yeast (I have such violent tendencies), but in the end, I fret over nothing.

2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 tablespoon active dry yeast

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup honey

1/3 cup vegetable oil

5 cups plain flour

Dissolve the yeast in warm water (not too hot or cold--test with finger if all else fails). Add honey and stir well. Mix in the whole wheat flour, salt, and vegetable oil. Work plain flour in piecemeal. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knee it knead until it is smooth and elastic. Place in a well-oiled bowl, turning it to coat the entire surface of the dough. Cover with a red-checked cloth and let it rise in a warm place (I'd recommend on top of the oven) until double in size. 

After it has doubled, punch down the dough and shape into two loaves. Place loaves in buttered bread pans. Allow to rise until dough has risen three centimeters/1 inch over the rim of the pan. Bake at 190 degrees C/ 375 degrees F for 25 to 30 minutes. Let loaves rest (they've had a long day) and settle for at least twenty minutes before cutting and serving. Invite Englishman over for tea and toast.

Toffee

Today I showed Ida how to make toffee in five minutes, and now I will show you.

4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla sugar or a few drops of vanilla essence
2 tablespoons golden syrup
2 tablespoons margarin

Mix everything in a ceramic bowl. Mircrowave for 1-2 minutes. Take out of oven and stir. Microwave for another minute. If you are unsure when it's done, test the mixture by dropping some of it into a glass of cold water. If it becomes stiff and holds its shape, the toffee is ready. Spread the toffee over a baking sheet and tell everyone to grab a spoon. Once it has cooled, scrape off apiece and eat! (Or, of course, if you care more about appearance, you can spoon the hot toffee into bite-size pieces and serve when cool.)

Soak the bowls and spoons in water before cleaning. It helps.

Gretas äppelkaka

Last Sunday, Mats and Karin came over for dinner and dessert. As you may remember from one of my previous posts, Karin is an old lady who we have known for a longer period of time--she is very kind, and now a little forgetful with age, but a beautiful soul nonetheless. She didn't eat much for dinner because she said she was saving herself for dessert, and luckily, I was just trying out a new recipe (from my brother's mother-in-law) that evening.

Greta's Apple Cake

125 g margarine or butter
1 1/2 dl sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 dl flour
1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons cream

Topping: apples, sugar, cinnamon

Melt the butter. Let it cool and mix with sugar. Add one egg at a time and mix in the flour, baking powder, and cream. Pour batter into a round baking pan. Peel apples and cut into thin slices. (I used three medium-sized apples because I like my apples to be really appley.) Layer apple slices on top, pushing them down a bit into the batter. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over the top. Bake at 200 degrees Celsius (392 degrees Fahrenheit) in the lower part of the oven for thirty minutes. (Our oven is a little fidgety, and we have to check the cake with a fork at regular intervals. It took us a over thirty minutes, but that is no fault of the recipe. Just the oven.)

Serve with vanilla sauce or vanilla ice cream. Enjoy!

Chocolate Balls

Our baking had a rather unceremonious beginning. The recipe calls for sugar, as all sweet treats do, and instead of pouring it into the metal bowl I tipped the measure into the oatmeal container. We had to find a sieve and sift the oatmeal to separate it from the sugar; but still, Amelia gave me only one of those you're-rather-hopeless looks.

Sweet cousin Amelia

Regardless of my own shortcomings, I give you the recipe in hopes that you fare better on your journey. This is a tried and true no-bake classic, a delicious memory from my childhood when my mother and I made chocolate balls around the kitchen table.

Chocolate Balls

100 grams butter

1 1/2 dl sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla powder

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

5 dl rolled oats

2-3 tablespoons water

pearl sugar or coconut flakes

Stir sugar with room temperature butter. Add vanilla powder, cocoa, rolled oats, and water. Mix well. Pinch off bits of dough and work into balls by hand. Roll balls in a bowl of pearl sugar or coconut flakes. Store chocolate balls in a lidded container, preferably in a cool, dry place. (We always keep ours in the freezer.) Enjoy!

Duck, Duck, Gooseberry

Packages of gooseberries have been sitting in our freezer for quite some time now. My mother picked them at the Sandbergs last year, but never made anything of them. They have been waiting patiently all these months, and today I fulfilled their dreams. I made gooseberry jam.

Of course, before pouring the new jam into glass jars I had to soak them in water to unstick the labels and then boil them in a pot of water to disinfect them. With my tongs, I felt a bit like a mad scientist, demoted from the higher echelons of science and forced to concoct secret formulas on the kitchen stove.

Homemade gooseberry jam

You know, despite spending all day in the kitchen, I forgot to eat.

Let Them Eat Cake

The messier the kitchen, the better the chef.

How does one bake a cake? How does one bake anything at all? One follows instructions. Today I made carrot cake for my mother, who was having people over for coffee later in the evening. I looked up carrot cake and followed the recipe, and it turned out very nicely. There are plenty of carrot cake recipes floating about (I remember Natalie bringing a splendid carrot cake to class in the ninth grade--I should ask her for the recipe), and you may choose your own, but at least you'll have this one close at hand. You may try to recreate it at will. (And it has already been put through a series of taste tests--and passed!)

Grated carrots

Carrot Cake

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups melted butter
8 oz can crushed pineapple in juice
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups grated carrots
1 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
3 eggs

Grease baking pan. Mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Beat together butter and sugar. Add flour mixture, then pineapple and juice, carrots, nuts, and vanilla. When well-blended add eggs, beating after each egg. Bake 45-50 minutes at 175 degrees Celsius/350 degrees Fahrenheit. (Though I must warn you, this recipe makes a lot of batter; enough to make two cakes even! Also, be sure to check your cake's texture during the last dash towards the finish line. I had to fiddle around with the baking times, but that could have been because I put two cakes in the oven, which my mother tells me I should not have done.)

The frosting was a mix of cream cheese and icing sugar. You'll have to ask my mother for the exact measurements, though I highly doubt there were any. She most likely threw it together after her own preference.

Tyger! Tyger! Burning Bright

Elsa treated me to a delicious slice of tiger cake and a cup of tea last week when I stopped by for a visit. She wrote down the recipe on an envelope and today I tried my hand at it at ten o'clock at night, not feeling productive enough after four hours of heavy lifting. (We were moving storage spaces, and the most exciting thing to happen to me today was that I rode on the forklift to steady the load, four meters in the air.)

200 g butter
2 1/2 dl sugar
3 eggs
4 dl flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 dl cream or milk
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 tablespoon vanilla powder

Oven: 175 degrees Celsius

Melt butter in bowl. In a bowl mix sugar, eggs, and melted butter. Stir in flour, baking powder, and cream or milk. Pour a small portion of batter into a separate bowl. (I'd recommend using the butter bowl to save dishes.) Add the two tablespoons of cocoa powder to this mix. Add the one tablespoon of vanilla powder to the other bowl. Alternate pouring yellow batter and brown batter into buttered baking tin. Pull a fork through batter a few times to make tiger stripes. Bake for 40-45 minutes in the lowest part of the oven. Adjust baking time to desired stickiness. Enjoy!

This was my first attempt at baking tiger cake, but as it is a rather ferocious delicacy, it will be made again. Tomorrow my mother wants me to make carrot cake and åh! limpa, and I will. I have never made either of them before, but beginner's luck lies with the happy amateur.

Breakfast

Crushed tunnbröd

lingonberry jam

and milk

Recipe for Success

Watermelon, honey dew, feta cheese, and balsamic vinegar. And a letter from a dear friend.

In Want of Doughnuts, I Made Havreflarn

Today I have finished my thank you cards, cleared out loads of things from the basement, done the dishes, and--not feeling productive enough--baked a batch of havreflarn, which are delicious all on their own or with a cold glass of milk or served as a complement to real vanilla ice cream. This  was my first try at baking them, and I made the first ones so big that they stuck to the paper and couldn't be peeled off, even by the most dextrous among us. My parents sampled them without a second thought anyway, nodding and saying simply that  "a bit of paper never hurt anyone." For the second set I placed the cookies on a reusable baking sheet of black Teflon which worked marvelously, and though I do not like Teflon on the whole, I will use it in this case.

75 g butter
1 dl sugar
1 dl rolled oats
1 dl wheat flour
2 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons syrup
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Melt butter in a pot on stove. Remove from heat when butter is melted. Add all other ingredients, while stirring. On a baking paper-covered metal tray, drop half tablespoons of dough, making sure to leave room between each cookie, as they will spread out during baking. Bake for five minutes (at 200 degrees Celius/ 392 degrees Fahrenheit) or until slightly golden. Feed to friends.

Biscuits, Not Cookies

It's Saturday. A rather unproductive one at that. I watched a few episodes of Pair of Kings and Kickin' It and Good Luck Charlie--Disney shows, you see. In the evening I had a sudden rush of energy (to make up for my hitherto lack of it) and decided to make chocolate balls. As I flipped through an old cookbook from my high school days, assembled by students, staff and parents of my school, I found a recipe for ANZAC biscuits and made those instead.

For the uninformed, ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and according to legend, wives of soldiers abroad sent these particular biscuits to their husbands because the ingredients kept well during naval transportation. Whatever the case, they always remind me of my friends Lauren and Matt, both Australians, and that great country of beautiful vistas I have visited only twice. Here's to you!

1 cup / 2.36 dl quick-cooking rolled oats
3/4 cup / 1.6 dl desiccated coconut
1 cup / 2.36 dl flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup / 2.36 dl sugar
1/2 cup / 1.2 dl butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup
2 tablespoons boiling water

In a large bowl, mix oats, flour, sugar, and coconut together. In a small bowl, melt the butter and add golden syrup.

Mix baking soda with boiling water and add to butter and syrup mixture. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients. Place 1 tablespoon of mixture on a greased tray. (The mixture will be crumbly, so form small balls to keep it from falling apart.) Bake for 15 minutes at 320 degrees Fahrenheit / 160 degrees Celsius. Enjoy!

I Spent My Day in Awesomeness

At twelve o'clock I started up from my computer and ran into the kitchen exclaiming, "Dad, what are we having for lunch?"

Dad (from the living room): I don't know.
Me: I know you don't know. You never know.

I have memories of my father starting out of his chair and dashing into the kitchen when he realized his two daughters had come home from school and he'd forgot to turn on the rice cooker. He and I are the same in many ways. We seem never to have developed any lasting feelings of hunger and can go for hours, even a day without eating because we are too absorbed in other work.

Dad (offers as an explanation): Well, I just got back yesterday.
Me: I just got back yesterday, and I made pancakes last night for myself.
Dad: You can make pancakes again.
Me: Do you want me to make pancakes?
Dad: I like pancakes.

So I made pancakes.

American: So they're like crepes? 

Swede: No, they're not like crepes. They're like Swedish Pancakes. 

2 1/2 dl / 1.06 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 dl/ 2.5 cups milk
3 eggs
3 tablespoons butter


Melt butter. Mix ingredients in bowl. Pour a thin layer into frying pan. Flip the pancake when lightly brown on the underside. Serve when pancake is lightly brown on both sides. To be eaten with jam and a glass of cold milk. Serves four.

Pasties Galore!

I am sure there are better and more authentic pasty recipes online, and if you consider yourself a pasty connoisseur and refuse to bow down to anything other than the One True Pasty enshrined in the golden pagoda in Cornwall, then by all means, troll the internet in search of better, unadulterated recipes.

But all you have for now is this:

1. Make curry with finely chopped yummies. (Poor man's version: chop veggies; blend with curry sauce from jar.)
2. Make pie dough. (For a how-to, click here.) Roll out and cut into large squares.
3. Blob curry onto half of square, fold over, pinch edge closed.
4. Place on baking sheet and cook at 375 F/190 C until crust turn golden around the edges.
5. Eat.

P.S. Melissa gets the credit for this one too. 

Stew You!

This is the stew Melissa made. She wants to make sure I give her credit for the title of this post. 

Cinnamon and Curry Sweet Potato Stew

Serves 6-7

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp olive oil

4-5 cloves garlic, chopped (no garlic press)

3 red onions, diced

1 small eggplant, diced

3 tomatoes, diced

3 medium sweet potatoes, diced

3 carrots, sliced into coins

salt

coarse ground black pepper

paprika

cinnamon

yellow curry powder

2-3 cups water

2 boxes plain couscous (needs butter, salt, water.  Instructions will be on box)

Steps:

1) Dice everything and have it at the ready.

2) Heat oil in large pot.

3) Add garlic, agitate until just turning brown.

4) Add onions, agitate until coated in the oil.  Add 1/4 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp pepper.  Put lid on and allow onions to sweat for 5-7 minutes on medium heat.

5) Add eggplant, stir and return lid to pot.  Let cook for 10-15 minutes at medium heat, stirring occasionally.

6) Add tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes; stir.  Add enough water to just barely cover the vegetables.  Return lid to pot and let cook for 5 minutes.

7) Add 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, 1/3 paprika, 1/2 Tbsp curry, 1/2 Tbsp cinnamon.  Stir and return lid to pot.  Let cook down for 20-30 minutes on medium to low heat, stirring occasionally.

8) Taste stew, add additional spices as needed.  Predominant flavors should be curry and cinnamon.  Continue to cook for 30-40 minutes on low to medium heat until carrots and potatoes are soft all the way through.  Stew will reduce as it cooks, have no fear.  If the meal is delayed, you can turn off the heat and leave the lid on, re-warming the stew closer to serving time or cook the stew on a lower heat starting from step 6.

9) Remove from heat and serve over couscous with shredded coconut and/or shredded swiss cheese.  

MMMmmm, delicious.