Offal Boy's Blog

New era!

2009-05-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

It has arrived! woho my first kichenaid :)

However, the arrival of this icon also marks a new beginning. I am letting offalboy hibernate and moving my writings to my new blog Pickles & Pork. Mainly because I was feeling like a hypocrite considering that i never really got around to write about offal, but have been getting heavily into pickles lately. I also grew pretty bored with the look of my blog so on i go to start a new one :). Hopefully i will start a new pickle each month and keep my nonexistent readers updated on other culinary exploits :)

Here are some pickle pics :P

First of the mixing of my beet lemon and garlic pickle. I have never really read about this combo before but it seems to make sence;)

This one is the start of a kimchi. ow i must confess i have never eaten the stuff, but it looks and sound really tasty. See Pickles & Pork for recipes!

Shopping makes the world go round, world go round

2009-05-04T10:02:00.001-07:00

I know I know (he says like he actually has readers), not a whole lot going on on the blog lately. This is due, partially to a lot of work, but also that I have been all caught up in the serious business of choosing a color for my fist KitchenAid ever :P. Long have i lusted for one and and now the longing for baking and meat grinding has toppled all economic sense (those things run $450 here in Sweden). Initially i thought as avant-garde as to go with their purple specimen...having scouted it out in real life im glad i did not, the color did not appeal to me at all, and shunning the traditional red (it is not the right kind of red for me) i went with the apple green.

Knowing this to be a somewhat shaky, and wonderfully nerdy, segway, i also decided to splurge on a new chefs knife (anyone out there with the same terrible humor as me will by now know the brand i finally went for). My research led me to oh so tempting specialty knifes from artisan craftsmen in Japan, but considering we are in somewhat of an recession i decided against those sweet Hattori blades. Back on earth i started eying the forged models from Global (the brand, I up until now have used and liked). I must admitt these where purchased more on looks than anything else and although happy with them their sharp ridge is tearing away at my finger. From the internet chatter I discerned that MAC might be the brand for me. The type of "for us in the know" type of knife my not so foodie friends would have never heard of, however, I would never buy a knife without holding it so I went in search of a store who had the MBK-80.

Eventually i did find one after some difficulty (ok they did not have them in the first two stores i checked), as it seem MAC has fallen out of favor with the people catering to the general public. Anyways Lagamati (www.lagamati.se), which is a great store, did have a wide selection of MAC knifes and a handy cuttingboard to try out goods. With knife in hand though i could tell this was not the blade for me. Don't get me wrong it is a superb knife, but it just did not feel right in the hand.

I don't know if it was the distraught look on my face or rehearsed sales tactic but the women working there suggested the more commercial (a redeeming factor is that it is endorsed by my favorite cooking show hos Alton Brown) and more expensive Shun knife. I was quick to dismiss it with my superficial claims of not liking the design, but once pushed in my hand i did not want to let it go. The D-shaped handle, edge and weight all felt tailored to me! (now do you get the segway ;))

Placing the order at work I also went for a Wüsthof Gourmet cleaver and two fermentation bread baskets as well as the all metal meat grinder for the KitchenAid....oh i cant wait until it all gets here!!

Homage du grandma :)

2009-04-18T13:43:00.001-07:00

So, like I said before. The kraut has had four weeks and could be considered ready. It is not a super long ferment so the texture is really nice and crunchy but the acid is wonderful. I must say it is the best kraut i have ever tasted, in fact it was so good i had to have a bowl of it before i used it all in this old worldesque soup recipe. Oh and I'm really exited by pickling now, i have bought a pickle crock so i wonder what will come next...i wonder what pickled fennel would be like?

Anyways off to this posts ”no twenties something guy in theri right mind would do that”-recipe. I'm making sauerkraut soup. Now this idea sparked up in my head as soon as i started making the actual kraut. Given that my grandparents are from Estonia i had stuff like that when i was a kid, the funny thing is i don't even think i liked sauerkraut back then, but the thought of creating this recipe sends tingling sensations of childhood memories down my spine.

As far as ingredients go its not complicated at all, that said this is not going to be glamorous or technical. This is real barnyard fare.

So to make this soup you will need:

Sauerkraut (homemade of course)
Onions
Caraway seeds
Smoked ham hoc
Brined pork belly
Baley or Oats (whole not flattened)
Water

Slice the onions any way you want and throw them in a pan with the fat of your choice and sweat them of together with a pinch or three of whole caraway seeds (going with the high animal fat Estonian barn feel i went with butter but if i would have made choucrout garnie I think duck fat would be the fat of choice as it so often is, actually with some riesling instead of water and some additional pork sausages this would probably make mouths water all upp and down those French/Germanic regions).

Having softened the onion carefully arrange your perfect pig parts in the pan ;) (by the way, these are really cheap cuts so go out of your way to find the best pork you can) and cover the thing with as much sauerkraut (with pickling brine) as you deem appropriate...like so.

Cover with water and bring to a boil and then reducing the heat to a gentle simmer. Cook under a lid, checking back on it after 30 min to skim of any scum and then leaving it to its own devices for another 30. After this hour, taste the broth, chances are it will be pretty salty. The texture is also pretty runny despite all the collagen in the pork bones and skin you have put in there. The fix for this is starch. A potato in a salty stew will suck up some of the salinity, however i did not want to use that method here since i knew this soup traditionally contained a handful of barley to thicken. Being starchy i baked on it having some salt tampering ability as well...Ok so if you know your grains well i did not use barley, i had cooking-oats but deeming them theme appropriate i threw in about two hands worth. Simmer for about another hour or until the bone comes out of the hoc.

Take the beautiful hunks of meat out of the pot. Remove stuff you don't want to eat and portion up the meat so it is more manageable (the meat will be so tender you wont need a knife to do this, a fork will almost be overkill). The smoked hoc will have a deep red color strong smoky flavor and melt in your moth meat.

The pork belly might be the most daunting thing in this for some readers. I like to leave the skin on even after cooking because i like the flavor and texture of it. Also the taste of the fat is out of this world its so good!

Return the meat to the pot and your ready to serve. Once again this dish would do well with a whole bunch of parsley in it (buying some for the next time i eat this) both for its flavor that would co-mingle with the sour smoky goodness of the soup but also to bring some color balance to this admittedly esthetically challenged dish.

Oh and just because I'm a bitt odd, here is a honerary pictures of bone and skin which lend such wonderful body to soup!

Still alive, but not my camera? (Updated)

2009-04-16T13:24:00.000-07:00

Hay, yeah i know i haven't posted in a while even though i should have plenty to brag about. Ok so we Swedish people don't really brag a lot generraly speaking, but yeah my duck breast turned out pretty good if i do say so myself. However i say good from a technical standpoint, I actually found it a bit bland, and i might have had too much duck fat for some time. I did find the whole process really exciting though so onward to new projects!

Coming up: My sauerkraut is done and I'll be doing something with that. New dry curing excursions, oh and i'm shopping around for new stuff for my kitchen :P

Oh and i would post pictures but my camera is dead....hopefully i will be able to resurrect it though.

Ok so here are the pictures of the sd card, terrible quality though :(

Cheers

Homage du Ruhlman

2009-03-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

Enjoying a sudden burst of inspiration, or maybe falling for the seducing lure of the dark side, i awoke with the determination to cure meet. Now! Today! It all depends on how you look at it i guess, maybe I'm going crazy. Anyhow, i rushed out and descended on the previously scouted location (the Internet is a marvelous thing), and there it was. The answer to all my wants and desires...ok maybe not but the perfect solution for my minimal closet of a kitchen. This black tower, built to hold 18 bottles of wine in two different zones anywhere between 6C and 22C with insulated glass doors and that all important blue LED lighting...what is that word I'm looking for, Pimpin? ;)

I also bought a extra thermometer with a built in hygrometer to monitor the compartments, now i know that hygrometers are less than trustworthy, but hay better than nothing. I also had plans to find a moisturizing device from a cigar humidor. However, i tried the low-tech non gadget way recommended by Ruhlman and would you know it, with a bowl of water (salted to a 4% salinity to mirror the Mediterranean) the hygrometer jumped up to a steady 70-75% which is ideal! Now i only hope the thing isn't way of, guess only time, and experimentation will tell.

Eager to graduate from the vanilla side of the foodporn sphere and into the harder stuff i took my defrosted magret out of the fridge and lay it on a bed of sea salt. I know the measure of salt is probably completely useless but i confess i am holding Mr Ruhleman's hand through this one. After preparing the bed though I just made sure to tuck the breast in neatly, not really bothering with another helping of 225g of salt which is suggested in the book. It all depends on size anyways, and sending it of for a 24h sleepover in the fridge.

I was amazed to see the change in texture and color of the meat as i took it from its salty situation. Feeling a bit cocky i decided to deviate from the recipe and give the magret a last wash with cognac before applying some white pepper. (not anticipating a lot of flavor from the added alcohol but hay worth a try)

We are no longer in ”centerfold of the month” foodbloging, haha, bring forth the rope and suspension hooks... So yeah i did not get any cheesecloth as Ruhlman instructs us to (guess i let go of that hand) i pierced a overhanging flap of fat with a meat hook and went shibari on the poor thing with some butcher-twine before locking it in its new dungeon.

As a side note i also have this ”food calender” which i will use to record dates and weights any upcoming clientèle. The goal is a 30% weight loss before...ok I'm stoping here there are to many unappetizing jokes to be told now that i started walking down this path! Check back soon for more updates.

Progress and projects

2009-03-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

First of all, the sauerkraut is doing good (i know your all dying to know). It has just been a few days so not a lot of action from my bacterial friends yet, on the other hands there is no sign of intrusive moldy bacteria either which is also good.

The different ”lid” methods i used both seem to be working fine, however the water filled zip top bag did struggle to press the kraut down leaving cabbage exposed to air for a longer period of time, and i will have to see if this has any effects on the end product. Speaking of which it is so far away like three more weeks, i had trouble sleeping last night thinking of a recipe for it. I wont tell you what it is just yet, you'll just have to wait and see.

On the project side of things I'm guessing that the choice between a TV (i don't own one) and kitchen appliances is a pretty easy choice for any 26 year old guy...i don't even think i have to be gender specific here....most people my age would probably go for the TV before the industrial food processor. Me... I'm spending my weekends making sauerkraut so a food processor would actually be a pretty high tech investment.

Food processors aside, i don't think it is what I'm buying right now, there is something else that have been occupying my thoughts. I want to make sausages and dry cure meats. Living in a small apartment this presents somewhat of a challenge, but i am not deterred in the slightest. Here is the plan. I will buy a wine fridge, a humidor air moisturizer and maybe a fan. The combinations of these items should allow me to have that 15C 70% humidity conditions required to cure!

I will keep you guys updated.

Sunday night sauerkraut

2009-03-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

Having Estonian grandparents I was introduced to the wonderful world of cultured foods at a early age. However, my exposure to the the alluring flavors and techniques of fermentation have been missing for the most part, they are not really a part of Swedish everyday cuisine, but armed with a new resolve and wonderfully nerdy literature as Sandor Ellix Katz “Wild Fermentation” I have set out to change this.

Given the rather trendy minimalism of these types of foods this will be a short post, but one that will keep on living so to say as the kraut needs about four weeks to mature.

Ok, to make sauerkraut you only really need cabbage and salt (Estonian types use caraway but I have none left from the summer so this one will be kraut at its most simplest form). Most recipes actually call for pickling salt, but I will use sea salt since I don't really know if pickling salt is a readily available product here in Sweden or in the rest of the world. The thing with pickling salt is that it is a really small grain and dissolves in cold water. Sea salt does this too if it is fine enough and that is just a matter of how rough you are willing to get with your salt (if your lazy and want to waist energy other than your own I guess you could heat water with sea salt to make a brine, but that will be your own experiment).

The tricky thing with the recipes in wild fermentation and all the places I found with a quick search is that they give you the amount of salt you need in a volumetric measure. This is absolute madness! Granted the salinity of sauerkraut probably isn't as important as say sausage making, but still it annoyed me enough to go out and find the approximate weight of pickling salt, and as a average people seem to aim for a 2% salt which sound pretty decent to me plus it makes this whole thing way more scalable.

With my 2% salt safely in my mortar, which in this case turned out to be 38g, I proceeded to quickly slice the cabbage. Throw in salt and mix with clean hands (I don't want to culture anything that could have come home with me from the subway). Let the salt do its osmosis thing which pulls water out of the cabbage and softens it (30 minutes should be enough), but also makes it easier to stuff into a suitable fermentation vessel. I used to glass containers but I guess it really doesn't matter as long as it is food grade and not metal (mixing salt and metal for longer periods of time never seem like a good idea in my mind).

Eventually the salt will have pulled out enough water to actually cover the cabbage so you could say this recipe creates its own brine. The salt is however grateful for all the help it can get since we want the cabbage submerged as quickly as possible. I will try two methods, one is a simple weight the other looks pretty cool but I will have to see how it turns out, at least the idea of filling a bag with water and using it as the weight makes theoretical sense.

Store in a dark place and await the next post! (should probably be a bit colder than room temperature but hay I live in an apartment so I don't really have a root cellar)

Mm Monday bloody Monday

2009-03-16T15:11:00.000-07:00

Armed with that most marvelous medium of the Maillard process, duck fat, i set out to make this an offal Monday with Morcilla sausage and Madeira glazed pears.

Not everyone likes their Mondays i know, and blood doesn't really tick the box for a lot of people either, although I have been hearing about these teenage girls reading a lot of Vampire novels lately... Anyways, while I am compelled to agree with the first statement, blood is a very intriguing ingredient in food.

I decided to pair the blood sausage with something sweet because it is the traditional French thing to do. Not having any apples I grabbed a lonely pear from the fruit bowl, and since I was cooking a morcilla which is decidedly Spanish with its onions, garlic and cumin I decided to caramelize the pear slices in sugar and Madeira. Figuring the burnt notes on the fortified wine (which is probably my favorite dare I say) would go well with the amber of the sugar. Personally I like taking the caramel pretty far when doing this sort of fruit for food thing as a tiny hint of bitterness can really bring out savory flavors. That being said, don't burn the stuff, we don't want to waist any Madeira!

Cooking the morcilla is pretty straight forward and quick. Turn the oven on to 200C (about 375F) and put some fat in a pan over medium heat. Now if your a thrifty person, and who isn't when it comes to things like this, you saved that duck fat (So good!). Poke holes in the sausage to avoid blood splatter, might look cool on shows like Dexter, but in your kitchen...not so much. Season with salt and pepper and get those babies into the duck fat, you did save the duck fat didn't you?

Fry for about two minutes on each side and then park the pan in the oven for minutes. When done plate for a marvelously brown meal, no garnish!... actually I did really want to pair this with some parsley thin slices of onion and lemon juice to bring some acidity to the party, but no such luck this time.

Getting back on the horse...with duck

2009-03-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

Wow it has been a long time since my last post! I could go into all the reasons why my time and energy totally disappeared from the wonderful world of food blogging but then i would deviate even more from the nature of Offalboy.

I must confess, i feel a bit guilty for having written nothing about offal on this site. I guess it mirrors my eating habits though. I have yet to take the time to prepare something offal, but by my word that will change and change soon! I will cast away time constraints and tricky sourcing in order to no longer falsely advertise the content of my foodwritings. Ehm...that being said, as much as i do like offal and the technical aspects of that kind of cooking, what is more, i most of all like the philosophy of it. Using the whole animal, or nose to tail eating as the great Fergus Henderson would have us call it is not only a noble way of treating out animals but also essential, and without going to much out on the environmentalist trail, I'll just leave you guys with the wove that i will lead by my own example, or should i say eat!

Oh and i almost forgot. I will get back into this in a rather celebratory way. I cooked duck breast today! Or to go all pretentious restaurant menu on you guys; Pan roasted duck breast with oven roasted balsamic glazed red onions, almonds and chiffonade of basil. This isn't the most exciting season for vegetables but thinking about it onions actually seem like the perfect combo here even if I would disregard the seasonality of the ingredients.

Ingredients:
Duck breast
Organic red onions
Balsamic vinegar (di moderna)
Basil
Garlic
Almonds
Olive oil
Sugar
Salt
Pepper

Oven on 200C or approx. 375F
Oven proof skillet
Hotel pan
Aluminum foil

Ok here we go. Proceed to cut the tops and bottoms of the onions, however don't cut of to much since the “root” end is important for the structural integrity of the onion. With that small operation done halve and peel of any tough layers before dumping them into a small hotel pan or other oven proof vessel. Drizzle with a little olive oil, and throughly drench in the balsamic (and do use a moderna, read cheap kind, balsamic for this. Save the real stuff for other things).

Turn the onions cut side up if they aren't already and season with salt and pepper. Also sprinkle a pinch of sugar on each halve to help bring out the natural sweetens of the onion but also to balance the acidity of the vinegar.

Slither a garlic clove and throw the slices over the onions. Then get yourself a few stems of basil leaves and make them follow the garlic slices into the pan (I think sage would be another great herb to use here but basil is what I had growing in the kitchen window today).

If your me, pause to take a picture at this point, otherwise cover with aluminum foil and put into the warm oven.

Hopefully you have had your duck out on the bench for a while so it is not icy cold. Lightly score its skin, but don't go to deep, its just to allow the fat to render out more easily, you defiantly don't want to see any flesh through your slits in the fat. Season the breast liberally with salt and rub it into the skin side.

Now I don't actually know the best practice way of pan frying a duck breast but I do it at a low medium heat in order to render out as much of the wonderful nectars of the gods (duckfat!). As the fat releases the skin also turns a wonderful golden brown, crispy and delicious. Once at this state, pour of the fat AND SAVE IT! Flip the breast over and let it join the pan in the oven. This is also a good time to take of the foil of.

Chop some almonds and cut the basil into garnish size pieces while you wait for everything to come together. The duck should be pink so don't let it play in the oven for to long. You also need to rest it as long as you can keep your greedy paws of it in order to let the juices in it relax.

Plating is of course a personal thing but here is mine. Sprinkled with the almonds, to ad a textural dimension, and basil to echo the ingredient in the onion roast.

Enjoy, I certainly did!

Oh and by the way, I tested this and cutting the duck in the esthetically correct sort of angeled diagonal way is not at all the way to do it. The duck will eat much more tender if you just slice it straight down since the fibers in the meat will be shorter in each slice.

The Unpasta

2007-08-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

If your somewhat like me, and I’m guessing some people are since I actually get some hits on this page ;), then you connect with people through food. It becomes a communication tool which can span over language barriers or cultural and religious beliefs like when I had fried chicken feet and fermented pal juice with locals of a small town in Lombok Indonesia. But in contrast to those macro level benefits, of the collective and unspoken bonding qualities of food, it also works on a much more personal level. Basically I want to connect to you through food, it is something I love passionately, and I want to share that experience with people I love/admire/respect…I should however stop my rant on my views on food and get to the recipe that has come out of one of these encounters.

If you haven’t guessed, you will undoubtedly find out, … I love pasta…and how can you not, it’s such a versatile and tasty food of the gods. Well, up until about two years ago I would have answered that NO you can not deny the awesomeness that is well made and properly cooked pasta, but now I know better. If your allergic to gluten you have no choice but to say no thank you when offered. Yes I know there are gluten free product out there that claim to be pasta, I however would regard them as something else (actually I haven’t tasted them so I can’t comment on taste), and below I humbly offer my entry into the unpasta category. This recipe has been dormant in the back of my head for maybe a year now and was inspired by the obstacle of not being able to cook my signature dishes (most of them pastas) for a very deer friend.

Parsnips (two or three per person depending on size)
Pancetta or bacon (the air dried qualities of pancetta is preferred but both work great)
Garlic
Fresh rosemary
Cream (or half and half)
Zucchini
Fresh parsley

Start by cutting pancetta or slab bacon into any size you want but keep in mind that our objective with this wonderful piece of charcuterie is for it to go really crisp and render out its fat (lardoons are supposedly the cut for this but sine my pork belly was precut in slabs and I was feeling lazy I just cut them in inch long pieces. Another side note to this is to try to use a poke product which haven’t been pumped with lots of water since this is bad for the crispiness.). Put in a skillet (preferably cast iron ) and at a water to just cover the bottom of the pan and set it over medium heat. The water will let the pork render its fat and the medium heat will slowly crisp it up without burning it.

While the pork is doing its thing go find a garlic clove per person. Smash them lightly to open them up from their peel a bit and add them to the rendering fat in the pan and let it roast while you continue with the rest of the ingredients.

Delicately peel your parsnips or scrub them clean. In any case you want your peeler handy for this. What you want to bee doing is creating thin strips of parsnip on your cutting board. The width and length of the strips aren’t super important, but think of a thin tagliatelle for optimum consistency and ability to grab the sauce. Also make sure to only use the “outer flesh“ since the inner “core“ can get really woody and that wont work well in this recipe. When this is done remove the fresh rosemary from the stem.

By now the water should have disappeared from your pa and everything should be browning nicely. Keep an eye on the garlic so it doesn’t burn, but since its still in its skin this is unlikely. When the pancetta is crispy take it out of the pan and put it on some sort of mesh to drain and crisp up even more (paper towels aren’t ideal because it holds the fat right next to the thing you want drain from fat, however dabbing particularly fatty pools does help, at least psychologically).

The garlic should also be removed at this point, and you should be left with wonderfully garlic scented pork fat mmm good. Ok you’ll be left with way to much pork fat so drain most of it away but you do want to keep as much as you dare keep in the pan because that’s major flavor your taking from the pan (and hopefully putting into a suitable container to store in fridge for later use).

The garlic should be all mushy and sticky with all the sharpness of raw garlic gone and replaced by wonderfully earthy tones. Remove the peels since these aren’t tasty at all and mush up the sticky stuff into a garlic paste.

Put the rosemary into the pan and watch it fry up nice and crispy in just a little while, but be careful not to burn it. Once it has reached a stage of your liking grab your cutting-board, which should contain your parsnip tagliatelle and the garlic mush, and dump it into the pan. Be attentive since both the garlic and the parsnip contains plenty of sugars that burn easily. You do not want your unpasta to become hard fried strips, you basically want to start wilting it. Since both the heat of your pan and the size of your strips matter here I cant tell you how long you can do this, but as soon as you see browning you want to hit the pan with the cream (half and half) and watch it bubble, thicken, coat and cook the parsnip. This is also the time to add other vegetables to your dish.(I used zucchini).Once again I cant give you a time, but just taste the strips until they are done to your liking (also correctively season, but odds are you wont bee needing any salt since the brine of your pancetta or bacon will see to that, some freshly ground pepper is always nice though), you can always add more liquid if the pan gets to sticky.

To finish the dish of cut some parsley for a little fresh note and color as well as crumble up the bacon for that salty crunch. Plate and enjoy.

Pat Pat on the sholder

2007-07-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

Bad things have happened to me sins last time, my computer…my lovely computer, it used to be so nice and helpful, but now it has turned into a hard drive munching monster devouring any new hardware that comes close to it. This would have opened up a lot more food and nature time for me since I am a bit of an internet addict and you cant really spend to long surfing on a media center tv screen because it gives you terrible headaches due to resolution and things like that. Anyways, nature it was…or well due to all of us polluting way too much (especially you people with way to many and to big cars)…nature here has been a very wet experience, and I’m not talking a bout the good waterfall/supersoaker/any other good wetness either. It has been pouring down. This does, however have its advantages, its great for the mushrooms.

So after a decent little walk in the woods hunting chanterelles I whipped up this little dish.

If we have to name it I guess it would be a chanterelle and zucchini pasta with a hint of thyme. I’m feeling pretty proud about myself actually because this was really really tasty. Here is what I did:

Start your pasta water, and when it boils don’t skimp on the salt…it should be like the ocean at least. Penne works well although I used another kind (think about 3 portions worth).

Take two generous handfuls of clean chanterelles and start sautéing them in butter and a tiny sprinkle of salt on medium heat (no scary low fat substitutes please).

Take your nice..ehm I’d say John Holmes sized zucchini but I guess we shouldn’t mix such things in with the food so about 30cm worth or I I guess a bit over a pounds worth. Halve and quarter, cut away the seedy bit because it becomes mushy, and then cut into pieces somewhat resembling the size of your pasta.

Peel and finely chop two cloves of garlic (one would probably be enough but hay garlic is good for you)

When all the water has been evicted from the mushrooms and has jumped ship on the pan as well, add your garlic and pieces of zucchini. (you might have to add a bit more butter so the garlic has something to play around in and wont go all burnt on you)

Let everything in the pan heat up a bit then hit it with a splash of cream. The amount depends on how much you have in your pan I guess but it should not be running all over the place. The cream is the to blend the flavors and should be added to just a bit over coating everything nicely once the initial heat reduction has occurred. The pan will look way to dry to be able to coat your pasta but don’t worry. This is also where I would add a nice bit of fresh time to the party to enable it to perfume the creamy mushroomie goodness.

Take the “sauce” of the heat once the thyme has gone in as not to overcooked the veggies. The zucchini will go all mushy on you if you give it to much heat to quickly and we do not want that happening. At this point your pasta should be rapidly approaching that perfect al-dente phase by now anyways, and when it does start lifting it over to the pan you made the sauce in. not rinsing the pasta will allow the sauce to cling to it better as well as some of that salty pasta water coming into the mix as well creating a silky smooth sauce that finely coats everything. At this point all you have to do is serve and eat…but if you want to go all fancy I guess you could add a nice little bit of parsley for that added green effect which my picture is obviously lacking.

Its really tasty I promise…and soo easy to do…so don’t sit there in front of your computer, go out and enjoy what nature so generously offers.

Nostalgic foraging

2007-07-12T04:51:00.000-07:00

With the luxury of all this nature we have in Sweden combined with a warm day at my families summerhouse i thought i would revisit some of the tastes of my youth. Granted that i did not cherish the surroundings while growing up there (i mostly wanted to play computer games as is the fashion of the youth of this time) i still remember that some things in these here woods are edible.

First of two classics...wild strawberries i think would be the English term for these rubies of the forest. Wonderfully sweet and intense in flavor, i wouldn't want to cook with these though, they demand eating right there and then...or maybe, just maybe if your feeling decadent have them in a bowl with some full fat cream (none of that light stuff here) its so delicious it should be enjoyed more often.

The more readily available blueberry is another forest favorite of bears and Patriks alike. However, these are the real deal. Not those scary frankenberrys we got in the college cafeteria or that you can buy bloated in the supermarket. These are, like so many wonderful things, tiny! And the inside pulp is intensely colored and flavorful. They taste great directly of the bush or in a pie or as soup...YUM YUM YUM

This is the flower of a Dog rose, a wonderful flower on its own but what you want are the rose hips that are great dried and then boiled to make an excellent brew or soup. I'll be sure to post a recipe for this later on. The book I'm reading (a “neo-paganistic” rewrite of the Arthurian legends, thank you for this one Anna) also claims this concoction to be beneficial for pregnant women, i'll have to remember that for the future so i can enjoy it together with the future mother of my children.

The above should not in any way be confused with real dogs....which although considered delicateness in some countries would, at least to me, make morally fouled brews. (Bad joke i know, but a good reason to post a picture of my aunt's cute little doggy)

Ok, so this isn't exactly a childhood snack but my dear grandmother taught me to spot this spice, its caraway, which is a traditional bread spice, and also appear in a lot of traditional Scandinavian not so child friendly beverages, Islandic brennivin anyone?.

Summer's day treats

2007-06-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

So yesterday my dad came upon a real treasure in the dry forests around our house. Chanterelles are a mushroom pretty common during the fall but this early they are rare. Still super delicious though. Now, there are tons of ways to use them but considering the small quantity I think, one of the simplest and tastiest ways is just frying them in butter and then adding a touch of cream at the end, then serving it on a slice of toast (home made of course). Another good one would be in a risotto, but I think I’ll save that one for the fall.

Guess this won’t be much of a recipe post, more of a picture tryout for me, but I just had to commemorate the yellow gold combined with the black (mom’s cast iron skillet that is).

Since it was rainy I also took the time to whip up a batch of my cinnamon roles. Much to my family’s delight I might add, although, I wasn’t happy with them since I haven’t become really good friends with the oven yet.

Forget the baguette, the weather beet me

2007-06-25T10:58:00.000-07:00

In my earlier post I promised sourdough baguettes, and although a great concept in theory, I only manage to crank out something that would have made a tasty thin crust pizza but nothing close to a baguette. Several things could have gone wrong, but my money is on the sourdough starter overheating in the summer weather and not being lively enough. I will tinker with it and see what I come up with. For now, I can leave you with a nice little summer side dish recipe as some conciliation.

As the bad pun (I do love them) might hint it’s about beets. Now I know beets maybe aren’t the first vegetable you think of in summertime since they are pretty good all year around and go great with savoury autumn and winter dishes. However, this time a year you can get those cute baby beets which go great in salads or as a side to some grilled meat or fish.

I know some of you might be lucky enough to have cool farmers markets with heritage breed beets, but I’m stuck with the common red variety, and actually they taste great so I shouldn’t say stuck with. Look for bunches with their greens left on and for uniformity in beet size. The fresher the greens the fresher the beet, and the uniformity is just to keep cooking even.

Once you have beets at home this is a pretty quick recipe. Scrub your beets, as they are bound to be dirty, but never peel them before they are cooked. For one the beets wonderful colour will jump all over, and cleaning was never my favourite part of cooking. Further, peeling them after their done is a lot easier than to peel them raw. Just rub the beet in a kitchen cloth or sturdy kitchen paper. Yes it will stain but the colour is water-soluble so don’t worry.

With your beets scrubbed cut of the greens, but leave a little “handle” which will look nice as well as give you something to hold when you peel them. The greens can be cooked and eaten much as spinaches or kale if they are fresh, but if they are slimy discard them (you do have a compost or cute animal to feed them to right?).

Set the scrubbed beets aside in a colander in the sink (because they will bleed a bit). Now depending on your amount of beets make an aluminium foil pouch. I recommend using double lyres so it becomes sturdy and wont mess up your oven. That’s right…the oven! Its way better than boiling I promise. Probably it has something to do with the dryer heat concentrating the flavours of the beet instead of diluting them with water. This pouch method also allows you to create a flavoured environment which can only be betterJ. This is my personal favourite:

Pouch summer beets

Olive oil (Generously coat the beets in the pouch)

Balsamic or sherry vinegar (One part to three parts oil, think vinaigrette)
Garlic cloves (Just crush them, no need to peel or shop finely. Use as much as you want i.e. LOTS!)
Sage (coarsely chopped and or bruised with the handle of your knife)
Fresh rosemary (Try to balance the amount to the sage)
Salt and pepper

Close the pouch tightly and sort of swoosh the beets around inside it to coat evenly and to let everything blend. Then just park it for 40 minutes in a 200°C or 390°F oven.

After you have peeled them serving can range from just a knob of butter to salads whit feta or baked chèvre cheese. Personally I had them with a cooling yogurt tzatziki kind of sauce.

And I know, still no pictures…..if I manage to massacre the wonderfully photogenic beet with my camera I threat for future posts…I’m just not good with the camera.

Mmm Toast

2007-06-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

Yeah that’s right, I make my own toast. I must say I don’t even look at the scared wheat (my name for the 99% air pre-sliced white bread you find in your local store) when I pass the huge piles of the stuff as I forage for groceries. However, we have just finished celebrating midsummer’s eve here in Sweden and you sort of want some newly toasted bread to go with the egg and pickled herring or the sour cream, onion and fish roe toast. Anyways with a fresh batch of (or I guess it’s sour but anyways) wheat sourdough starter in the kitchen I’d thought this was an excellent opportunity to put its powers to good use.

Sourdough cheese toast
360 g water
30 g fresh yeast
100 g sourdough of wheat
60 g butter
600 g extra strong flour
50 g durum wheat (semolina for you US readers)
16 g sea salt
100 g cheese in cubes (not to hard cheese of your choice, but not to strong, and defiantly not that horrible scary yellow propane product some Americans call cheddar)

Possible taste additions:
1.
10 g of freshly chopped dill
2+ cloves of finely chopped or smashed garlic
Red chilly flakes to taste

2.
15 g of toasted sesame oil
50 g toasted sesame seeds

Mix all ingredients except the salt, cheese and additions in a mixer on a medium setting for 6 minutes (or hardcore kneading for 10). After that add the salt and let your machine work another 4 minutes (or yourself for 7). After this you can add the rest of the stuff and work it in for 30 second (1 minute by hand).

Let your wonderful dough rest for 20 minutes. Divide into two pieces and “round-shape” them (I don’t know the exact word for this but the process is: 1. Flatten or punch down the dough into a disc and then fold it into a jellyfish sort of shape. 2. Cup your palms over the jellyfish and work it in small circular motions. 3. Repeat a couple of times). This is done in order to even out tensions in the dough as well as making a nice round shape:).

While resting the two nice rounds for five minutes prepare to loaf pans with a bit of oil. Now destroy your nice round shape by reshaping the dough to fit into the pans and make some slits in the dough (I went for 3 diagonal ones on each). This is also the time to brush some eggwash on and maybe another addition (raw seeds of any kind fork fine, but try to display what is inside the loaf so if you added sesame in the dough use sesame on top), and then rest for 60 minutes. *insert bad joke about not waiting for the CBS show if you want*

Preheat your oven to 250C or 480F (if you have a wood burning stone oven *drool* that would be the best option, but otherwise convection ovens work best). Put the loafs in spray in water to create steam and lower the oven to 220C or 420F, and bake for approximately 30 minutes.

After removing the loafs from the oven I would let them cool a bit before removing them from the pans but not to let the bread cool completely in them.

Store the bread in a paper bag if uncut or since this is toast, slice it, and freeze it. Toast and eat with butter *YUM*

Ok, so I did mean to be a good bloger and give my readers pictures but I am sort of picky about aesthetics sometimes and I didn’t give my bread enough time to rise after I slashed it which resulted in sort of teacup shaped toast slices not fit for a picture. I’ll be more vigilant with my camera tomorrow when I will make sourdough baguettes.

PS. I'm scared of the camera; I’m a crappy photographer to start, and everyone else post such beautiful pictures HELP

Going wild

2007-06-19T10:39:00.001-07:00

Ok, so the blog got of to a really slow start due to me moving from my student apartment to my parents to live the life of a parasitic bum while I search for that dream job. Anyhow, I’m all settled in now and I can start to take over the kitchen like the megalomaniac dictator I sometimes turn into.

First of, some basics: No sourdough starter….what is this *shaking my head*. Oh well I guess that isn’t really a standard item for most, but it should be! It’s easy to make and HALLO those wild yeasties give great rise and a certain zing to nice things like baguettes, toast or fruitbreads YUM!

Ok, so wild yeast are floating around everywhere. Actually, it’s really fascinating; every strain of wild yeast is different and so will bring different flavour to the bred depending on where you are in the world. To harness the awesome power of these free roaming microorganisms (doesn’t that sound tasty ;) we need three things; water, flower and time. Now some people might say they don’t have time, but they are mistaken. Sure, building your starter base is going to take you four-five days but most of that time your starter can be left all alone without your supervision.

Here we go. To set your yeast trap find yourself a container of some sort. I used a plastic bucket type thing which I guess would hold a litre of water (guess that is about two pints of liquid). This is hardly ideal, and I personally prefer a glass jar so I can watch the action. The volume is pretty good though since the starter is going to rice about seven times its original size.

Wheat starter

Day 1

In your container whisk the ingredients into a smooth paste:

200g of water (here in Sweden we have great water from the tap but if the stuff coming out of your tap is full of chlorine and other killers then use bottled since we don’t want any chemicals to kill the yeast that dive into our slurry)

150g of flour (try to use organic stone ground flower because it contains more natural goodness which will give you a better sourdough)

Put the lit or plastic wrap on (but not air tight) and let your yeast spa sit, in a not to warm (about 18-20°C or 64-68 F) dark place, for two days.

Day 3

Add 100g of water and 80g of flour, and put it back for another day.

Day 4

Repeat the day 3 step and let the starter sit for yet another day and then your ready to bake.

This will produce more starter than you are likely to need for a single bakesession. This is good since we don’t want to repeat this process every time we want to make bread. The leftovers can be easily stored in a sealable container in your fridge, and when your ready to bake again reanimate your starter a day in advance by adding water and flour until it reaches the consistency of a pancake batter and leaving our container in room temperature.

Some of you readers (if there are any) might have noticed my use of grams, this is because baking is a bit of a science and although this starter can be made freehand once you have the feel for it, bread should always be made by measuring the ingredients. However for you people that wants to stick to measuring with cups and all those things 100g of water is one dl and 150g of flour is about 2.5dl. if your not on the metric system and don’t want to go convert the numbers yourself just leave me a comment and I’ll post this and continuing information in that other strange system, which is only used by the US, Liberia and Myanmar ;)