Progress and projects

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.

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Sunday night sauerkraut

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)

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Mm Monday bloody Monday

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.

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Getting back on the horse...with duck

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.

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The Unpasta

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.

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Pat Pat on the sholder

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.

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Nostalgic foraging

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?.

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