Category: Recipes

Happy Sweden National Day!  Yesterday's National Day only became an official, no-work holiday about three years ago.  My Swedish friends tell me it wasn't a big deal because it's not like Sweden was celebrating escape from tyranny, since they were always the ones ruling over others.

Sweden is a small country, and despite the fact that their IKEAs have taken over our suburbs, they're unaccustomed to celebrating themselves.  Check out this clip of the country's greatest sports moment in recent history, Sweden's bronze medal in the 1994 World Cup:



Happily, Swedes are plenty good at eating and drinking.  My friend Malin invited me over to celebrate National Day over a kick ass Swedish meal at her house, complete with a variety of snaps (including one lovely fläder-flavored one) and a Sweden v. Denmark football match on TV.  We did a shot for every goal scored -- sadly, the Danes prevailed -- not very nice of them. 

The starter was a stunner -- red onion panna cotta with fresh dill and bleak roe toast.  If you've never had bleak roe, you should see if you can hunt some down -- the roe is tiny and orange, mild and not too salty.



I also had my very first plate of meatballs in Sweden!  Can you believe how long I've held out?  I'm glad I waited for homemade ones.  Köttbullar are to Swedish kids as chicken nuggets are to American kids.  Malin's köttbullar are adult-palate friendly, with tons of pepper and dijon mustard.  I think it's important not to make them too big -- Malin's are about the diameter of a nickel, very dainty.  The gravy is made just by adding water to the browning pan -- genius!

I'm translating and converting her recipe for you here (with the help of Google translate, of course). 



Cutie's Spicy Christmas Meatballs

The Allt om Mat staff used to call Malin "Gullemallan", which means "cutie".  The notes say that the milk and breadcrumbs mixed directly into the meat swells, so you get a solid mixture that's easy to roll, but not dense to eat.  At least I think that's what it says.  Serve with mashed potatoes, lingonberry jam*, sliced mushrooms sauteed in butter, and sweet pickled cucumbers (you can also try this recipe in English).  We finished dinner with a Swedish strawberry parfait -- himmelsk, as they say.  I'm sure these will make an appearance at the Swedish dinner party I'll have to have when I get back to Brooklyn.

1 yellow onion
1 tbsp. butter
1 kg (2.2 lbs.) ground beef, 10% fat
1 egg
2 tbsp. dijon mustard
1 tbsp. salt
1 tsp. white pepper
1 tsp. four-pepper blend, crushed fine
2 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. breadcrumbs
1/2 dl (3 1/3 tbsp.) milk
3 tbsp. butter for frying
2 dl (about a cup) water

1. Mince the onion.  Malin says, "It's very important that the onion is chopped into smithereens! Now I always grate it and then chop it some more. If it's too big pieces the small meatballs will crack." Saute in butter.  Let cool.
2. Mix onion, meat, eggs, mustard, salt, pepper, brown sugar, breadcrumbs and milk.
3. Roll very small meatballs (about the circumference of a nickel).  Wet your hands with some cold water if the meat is sticking to your hands.
4. Melt butter in a frying pan, cast iron or nonstick.  Fry a meatball and taste it.  Fix seasoning as needed.
5. Brown meatballs about 20 at a time on high heat in the butter.  Let them fry until brown on all sides, not too long.  Transfer to a large pot on low heat. 
6. Pour a little water into the frying pan, picking up the fond.  Pour this gravy into the pot with the meatballs.
7. Repeat until all meatballs are browned and all water has become gravy.

*When I first posted, I forgot to include the lingonberry jam.  Malin says, "You must serve the meatballs with lingonberry jam! It is important. :)"

Kladdkaka is not a brownie.



Sure, the ingredients are similar, and the looks are similar, but trust me, they would be in totally different cages at the zoo.

Kladdkaka is a chocolatey, gooey or chewy thing with a crusty top. 

Beyond that, all bets are off.  Some people use flour, some people don't.  Some people use cocoa, some use only bar chocolate.  Some people use a round springform pan, some spread it out in a glass rectangle.  Some serve it with whipped cream, some serve it with ice cream, some serve it with a little sprinkle of powdered sugar.

Best of all, everyone here has their own version.  It's the kind of sweet Swedes seem to always have lying around under a piece of plastic wrap, ready to nosh on. 

"Oh, try a piece of my wife's kladdkaka -- it's the best." 

"Do you want some kladdkaka?  It's a bit dry, maybe have it with a lot of ice cream."

"Oh, I have a recipe.  But it's not a real recipe or anything.  I can write it down for you." 

"Kladdkaka is the one thing I can make that comes out perfect every time."

Kladdkaka recipes vary wildly.  Malin kept her favorite kladdkaka recipe in her purse, a recipe which calls for no flour and a day of refrigeration (!).  My co-worker Sofia knew hers by heart and wrote it up in an e-mail -- a whole recipe with ingredients in about 30 words.  At Kitchen Coup #4 (coming soon), Anja threw one together without measuring anything -- a shake of this, a crumble of that, chop chop chop, poke poke, done!  Anja's, a marvel of crackly top and gooey innards, had a slew of secret ingredients which she wouldn't divulge to the dinner party.

I plan to try a lot of different kladdkaka recipes. We'll start with my variation on Sofia's recipe.  This is not the intense coconut of Mounds or suntan oil.  The silky young coconut gives it a very mild coconut perfume.  Your friends who don't like coconut might even like it.  And if they don't, they can go mooch off someone else's kladdkaka.

If you want to try Sofia's original, classic non-kokos recipe, omit all the coconut stuff, up the sugar to 3 dl and up the butter to 150 grams. 



Kokos Kladdkaka
(which I would call Ko Ko Ko if it didn't have such a terrible meaning in English.)

3 eggs
2.5 dl sugar
125 grams salted butter
25 grams coconut oil*
1 dl flour
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla sugar**
4 tbsp. good quality cocoa
1/2 can young coconut meat*** (don't add the syrup)
Toasted coconut flakes for garnish

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius.  Grease and flour a 30 x 15 cm glass pan.
2. Melt butter and coconut oil together.  Whip eggs and sugar together.  Mix in butter/coconut oil.
3. Mix flour, vanilla, cocoa together.  Add to dry ingredients to liquid and mix well.
4. Add young coconut meat.  Stir into batter to coat.  Pour batter into greased pan.  Top with coconut flakes. 
5. Bake for 35 minutes.  Let cool completely before serving.

*Available in health food stores.
**I'm not sure how much vanilla extract is equal to vanilla sugar.  My best guess is that 1 part extract = three parts vanilla sugar.
***Available in Asian markets.  Can looks like this.

I remember fawning over my friend Helen's bread the first time she made it for us.  "Everyone in Denmark can make this kind of bread," she said, bewildered at my enthusiasm.

I like that attitude.  Why has bread become this special occasion thing?  I would never buy pre-made rice.  Why should I buy pre-made bread? 

Look, this is not some slender, golden Parisian baguette with slashes and leaves, or a ciabatta with holes big enough to put your fist through.  But it's a sturdy, honest bread, the kind of bread your body would be happy to wake up to.

When I was in Copenhagen, I asked Helen to teach me to make her bread.  No measuring, no kneading, no chopping, and she can make the dough after partying until 8am.  I've seen her do it.  And now I can do it.

Now that I understand how it works, I can make as few or as many buns as I want to at a time.  I can make it in metric countries or in non-metric countries, whether I can read the food labels or not.  The world is mine.



Ingredients: flours, water, yeast, salt, honey/sugar, whatever hippie flourishes you want in the bread.

Equipment: A bowl, a spoon, parchment paper, a rice paddle, a baking sheet, a dish towel, an oven



Take 1/8 of a block of cake yeast.  That's a little bit of yeast.  And drop it into some warm water.  Like a couple of cups.  Add a generous teaspoonish mound of salt and a tablespoonish squirt of honey.  Mix it all up until everything dissolves and the honey smell blooms. 
 


Add nuts, seeds, dried fruit and a glug of oil.  Whatever you got, that's fine.



Add enough spelt flour (or rye flour, or wheat flour, whatever alternative brown flour you can find) until you get the consistency of pancake batter.



Sprinkle in some muesli.



Add enough regular flour so you get a wet bread dough.  It should be kind of elastic and pull away from the sides of the bowl.



Cover with a well-wetted clean dish towel and go to work.  Or go to bed.  Or set it in a warm place and do your laundry.
 


The dough will be twice the size.  Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius.  (That's 375ish Fahrenheit, or 3/4 to the top of the dial on a home oven.)  Use something like a rice paddle to plop bun-shaped mounds onto parchment paper.



Bake until brown and crusty.  I don't know how long this takes.  Use your nose.  When your kitchen smells like bread, take a look at them.  The buns should be brown, and the exterior should be crusty.  



Enjoy with sliced cheese.

I spent the whole weekend cooped up at home, trying to kick a cold I got on Wednesday.  I tried (unsuccessfully) to patch my bicycle tire on Saturday morning, and that was about as much activity as I could handle. 

Luckily, I finally did get around to buying cream of tartar last weekend, the key ingredient in Snickerdoodles.  For years, I've been wanting to make Snickerdoodles, only to be thwarted by the fact that I never have any cream of tartar on hand. 

So what is this mysterious cream of tartar?  Wiki sez:

Potassium bitartrate crystallises in wine casks during the fermentation of grape juice. In wines bottled before they are fully ripe, it can precipitate on the side of the bottle in a sort of crust, thus forming what is called "crusted wine".

This crude form (known as beeswing) is collected and purified to produce the white, odorless, acidic powder used for many culinary and other household purposes.

I don't know who decided to collect the wine scum and cook with it, but the world is a better place for it. 

I love crisp-chewy Snickerdoodles + I love tweaking recipes = Tweakerdoodles.  Bring 'em to your next holiday function.  The pepper, cardamom and ginger add a touch of warmth.

I have to admit that I didn't add any rosewater to this batch because I didn't have any, but I have a feeling that it would tie the whole thing together nicely.  Add at your own risk.  The flavor combination is a riff off some chai I bought from the T Bar in Australia.  You could probably get even closer to the flavor combo there by adding orange zest and slivered almonds. 



Tweakerdoodles
Makes 30 cookies 

2 1/4 cups flour
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 sticks unsalted butter
1 cup plus 4 Tbsp. granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. rosewater (optional)
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cardamom
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
1/4 cup chopped candied ginger

Grease two cookie sheets.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt together and set aside.

Cream butter and 1 cup sugar.  Add two eggs, vanilla extract and optional rosewater; mix well.  Incorporate flour mixture until blended.

Mix 2 Tbsp. sugar with cinnamon, cardamom and pepper in a shallow bowl.  Toss candied ginger in 2 Tbsp. sugar in separate shallow bowl.

Make a 1 1/2 inch ball of dough.  Dip once in sugared ginger bowl, then toss to coat in spice sugar.  Place on greased cookie sheet 2 1/2 inches apart, ginger side up.  Repeat until done.  (If you have leftover dough balls, freeze and save for coming economic dark age.)

 

Bake cookies in oven for 9-12 minutes until edges look crisp and centers look soft but done.  (If you're using two racks in the same oven, switch the top and bottom sheets halfway through baking.)

1. Take your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. 



2. Use dark chocolate chips; add 1 tsp. cinnamon and 1 cup chopped sweet & spicy pecans.



3. Bake a few cookies as directed. 



4.  Prep and freeze the rest of the dough for coming economic dark age; pray that your freezer doesn't bust.

Number of search results in Google news for downer cows: 462

From the man himself. Voilà!

Chris Scott's Sweet Potato Fluff

Real simple...it's basically a sweet potato soufflé.

2 sweet potatoes
1 c. milk (warm)
1 stick of butter
[Wow, a stick of butter for two sweet potatoes! You don't mess around! --Ed.]
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. allspice
1/8 tsp. cloves
(all ground)
1/4 c brown sugar
6 egg whites

Peel, rough chop and boil potatoes. Drain water and put into a mixer. A bowl and a hand blender will do if you dont have a mixer. Add milk ,butter, spices, sugar and a couple pinches of salt. Blend till like mashed potatoes. Cool. Separately whip egg whites till firm, fold in with potato mixture. Place into a buttered soufflé dish and bake at 375 till puffy and done. ( when a skewer comes out dry). Garnish with marshmallow, or my new favorite -- eat it with spicy roast pork. [Yu-um. --Ed.]

Who wants to be cooking all night at their own party? I tried to design a menu that could stand on its own at room temperature for the whole evening. I set up a Make Your Own Crostini table (which negates the problem of soggy toasts) with four topping choices: roasted beets with parmigiano and basil (adapted from the Babbo recipe), the chicken liver paté with red onion confit, blackened eggplant puree with red peppers and garlic, and the surprise hit, this roasted butternut squash topping. A little sweet, nutty and bright, it smacks of autumn.

Roasted Butternut Squash Crostini

1 large butternut squash
2 tbsp. chopped sage
olive oil
salt
pepper
1/2 c. pumpkin seeds
hazelnut oil
toasts

Peel and chop the butternut into small dice. Toss with sage, salt, pepper and olive oil. Roast in 400 degree oven on a baking sheet for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until squash is caramelized and tender but not quite jammy. Place into your serving bowl.

While the squash is in the oven, toast the pumpkin seeds in a dry pan over high heat. Throw the pumpkin seeds on top of the squash and anoint the whole thing with a splash of hazelnut oil. Serve at room temp with toasts.

I don't know a ton about how to cook offal, so I've been experimenting with chicken livers lately. Raw livers have a really gelatinous, delicate texture which would probably really freak out those puritans who don't like to touch raw meat. (As I ran my fingers through the bowl of livers, I thought, Maybe the only people who know what this feels like are cooks who like offal and surgeons.) I don't have a whole lot of chicken liver recipes in my cookbook collection. But I did find one curious recipe in Madeleine Kamman's massive tome, The New Making of a Cook, for a Mousse of Blond Livers and Figs. The notes say, "Any good butcher can order the pale-colored livers for you."

While going through my pound of Bell and Evans chicken livers, I noticed that some of the livers were a pale, blondish color and some of them were a darker maroon. This wasn't the case with the tub of chicken livers I had bought from Flying Pigs Farm at the Greenmarket. None of their chicken livers were blond.

Today, I asked Jennifer of Flying Pigs what the color difference meant. She wasn't sure, but she said she'd look into it and let me know. I did a little googling and found that yellow livers are fattier (sounds good to me) and, according to Jacques Pepin, "they tend to have a mellower, richer flavor than deep-red ones."

Jennifer said she'd been chucking the paler livers. I asked her if she'd pack the blond livers and sell me the first tub. Flying Pigs Farm sells 1/2 pint tubs of chicken livers for $4. Note: Bell and Evans livers from Whole Foods were cheaper, but Flying Pigs' livers were a lot cleaner.

This chicken liver paté was a huge hit at my birthday soiree. I served it with olive oiled crostini, cornichons and red wine onion confit. To serve as a civilized lunch or light dinner, add a bit of bittersweet salad like frisee vinaigrette or puntarelle with anchovy lemon dressing. It's easy to make, improves if made ahead of time, and it looks impressive even though it's pretty cheap. I adapted this Epicurious recipe and added elements I liked from a bunch of other recipes; I also adapted a Saveur recipe for the onion confit. For the crostini, I recommend the not-too-holey peasant loaf from Bread Alone's Greenmarket stand.

Chicken Liver Paté

1 lb. chicken livers
1 cup milk
1/3 brick of French butter
2 shallots
1 clove garlic
1 bay leaf
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
1/4 tsp. dried marjoram
1/4 tsp. dried sage
pinch of allspice
a good glug of madeira
2 tbsp. creme fraiche
salt and pepper
fresh parsley and sage to decorate
another 1/3 brick of French butter

Clean the livers well, trimming away fat, membranes, veins and green bits (which could be bitter from bile). Soak them in the milk and set aside.

In the meantime, finely mince your shallots and garlic. Melt the first 1/3 brick of butter in a saute pan. Saute the shallots and garlic over medium-low heat til soft but not brown. Add herbs and allspice to the pan. Drain the milk off the livers and add them into the saute pan. Cook over medium heat til livers are browned but still pinkish inside, about 7 minutes. Add your generous glug of madeira and cook 2 minutes more. Remove from heat.

Let the livers cool for five minutes. Put the pan contents into a food processor and pulse til pureed but not too smooth. Add creme fraiche. Season aggressively with salt and pepper, tasting to make sure you have enough seasoning. Use rubber spatula to scrape mixture into a terrine. Smooth the top very well. Melt down your second 1/3 brick of butter. Skim the foam. Lay whole sprigs of parsley and whole leaf sage over the top of the paté in the most artistic manner you can muster. Pour the clarified butter over the top of the paté til you've sealed it in. Refrigerate at least one day before you serve it. According to the Epicurious recipe, it keeps for two weeks, sealed in butter

Note: if the clarified butter top scares you, you could also make an aspic glaze as described by Jacques Pepin here.

Red Wine Onion Confit

Melt a generous chunk of butter and olive oil in a pan. Add 3 thinly sliced onions, a tsp. of sugar and some salt & pepper. Sweat down til the onions are translucent and silky soft but not brown, 40 minutes. Add 3/4 c. cabernet or other heavy red wine. Reduce til most of the liquid is gone, 40 minutes. Add another tsp. of sugar if the onions are too tart. Finish with another hunk of butter at the end. Serve warm with paté.

Quince are coming into the Greenmarket! Raw, they're dry. They're rock hard. They're covered in gray lint. The astringency sucks the moisture right off your tongue. But cooked -- genius! That dry, grainy flesh, so sweetly perfumed, soaks up the white wine and vanilla in this sweet-tart, syrupy quince butter. Though the green ones have more pectin, choose ripe, yellow fruit for this recipe. I've riffed on the ingredients in a Claudia Fleming recipe my friend Julie recited to me once. The result is a rosy, speckled compote just sweet enough to spread on a piece of warm toast with salted butter. It's also excellent spooned over a little bed of ricotta cheese. I can't stop eating it.

Note: Vanilla beans can become an expensive habit, but there's no substitute. I got mine from Penzey's in the Grand Central food market -- 3 big, moist Madagascar pods come in a resealable test tube for $6.89. I hear SOS Chefs on Ave. B has great vanilla.

Quince-pear butter

5 large, ripe quince
white wine
water
1 vanilla bean
3/4 c. packed brown sugar (more or less to taste)
1 bosc pear

Peel, core and roughly chop the quince. Put quince in a saucepan with enough wine and water to cover (1 part wine to 2 parts water). Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean. Add beans and pod to quince. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes or until the quince is soft. Mash the quince with a fork til the fruit is spreadable. Add the brown sugar. Peel, core and thinly slice the pear. Add to the quince butter. Simmer for 15-20 minutes longer til pear is tender. (It'll be thick and lava-like. Scrape the bottom of the pot regularly with a rubber spatula so it doesn't burn.) Cool and refrigerate. Makes about 4 cups. Keeps for about 1 1/2 weeks (but I don't expect this batch to last me for more than five days).