All posts by Johanna

Hot Sauces for Ice Cream

2 Comments

Nearly every Friday, our friend Andrea comes over to watch a movie with us. It’s a little like a ritual. We make some simple food and often Andrea brings dessert. Even if none of us are particularly bored, we nearly always fall asleep in front of the screen.

Andrea’s Chocolate Sauce with Blueberries

1 bar of bittersweet dark chocolate
some cream or milk
blueberries

Melt the chocolate over low heat in a saucepan and gradually add some cream. Stir continuously until the chocolate has melted.
Serve the hot chocolate sauce over vanilla ice cream and top with the fresh blueberries.

As I like hot sauces to ice cream, here are some more…

Rhubarb Sauce

about 3 sticks of rhubarb
sucanat
lime

Rinse the rhubarb and chop them into small pieces. Heat up some water and boil the rhubarb until its soft and falling apart. Add as much sucanat as you like and squeeze some lime into the mixture. Serve hot over vanilla ice cream.


Hot Peaches with Rum

two peaches
two or three cardamom capsules
sucanat
chopped almonds
rum

Cut the peaches in pieces (half moons). Heat them up with a little water and the cardamom. When the peaches start to get soft add as much rum and sucanat as you want. Lastly add the chopped almonds. Before serving take out the cardamom capsules, they are too ripe to bite! Serve with vanilla or even rum ‘n’ raisin icecream.

Mussels Gratin

Leave a comment

snorkling
One summer, when I was a teenager we rented a cottage for a week’s vacation on an island. I think the weather was great because I remember I got badly sunburnt. As the water was just below the house we could go swimming any time. My brother, who was and still is into animals was exploring the water life, snorkeling. One day he found a group of mussels and decided to pick some for supper. (I would not recommend to pick them your self. The mussels can be poisoned by the algae they eat). This must have been my first time eating them fresh. My mother did a great job. It was simple and just fabulous.

mussels in wine

about 30 mussels
400 ml (1.7 cup) white vine
½ red onion
garlic
few lemon peels
parsley

First you have to clean the mussels. Don’t use mussels that are open or damaged. Chop the onion into small pieces and sauté with some olive oil and chopped garlic. Add the parsley, lemon, salt, pepper and lastly the wine. Heat up before you add the mussels. Let the mussels boil under a saucepan lid for a few minutes. They are done when they have opened. Lift them out and reserve the liquid (that can be used for a soup). The mussels that did not open you have to throw away. They were probably already dead when you started.
Of course you can do only this part and serve the mussels with bread and white wine.

gratin

about 100 g (0.2 lbs) butter
3 cloves of garlic
parsley
salt and pepper
breadcrumbs

Prepare the mussels and boil them as I described above. Mix the butter with crushed garlic, parsley and a little salt and pepper. When the mussels have cooled down discard the top half of the mussel shell. Divide up the butter on each mussel. Spread some bread crumbs over. Bake the mussels in the oven at 275°C (550F) until the mussels are golden brown (5-8 minutes). The butter should have started to bubble.

Serve them immediately with bread and dry white wine.

Strawberry Pie

5 Comments

strawberry

We needed to defrost the freezer so I had to do something with the frozen strawberries I had kept for autumn treats…

crust

75 g butter (ca 0.2 lb)
3-5 tablespoons sucanat
100-150 ml (0.4-0.6 cups) flour
75 ml (0.3 cups) almonds

Mix all the ingredients in one bowl. Add more flour or sucanat if you want. I prefer the crust to be greasy. It’s already fat anyway so why make it dry and boring! The sweetness depends on the fruit. If the strawberries are sour, use more sugar and vice versa. I like the contrast between sour and sweet.

filling

Take about 1/2 liter (2 cups) strawberries and if necessary cut them into smaller pieces. Fill the bottom of a baking tin with the strawberries and divide the crust over them.
Bake the pie at 200°C (400F) until it’s done or the top has become a little brown. Serve a little warm with vanilla icecream!

Flower Head Stew with Horseradish

2 Comments

flowerheadWhen I came to Manhattan I didn’t know the English word for cauliflower. In Swedish it is Blomkålshuvud, which would be something like ‘flower cabbage head’ but I called it Flower Head. Well I did not know the name of horseradish either…

1 medium head of cauliflower
2-4 tablespoons of fresh horseradish
300-400 ml (1.4-1.7 cups) milk, cream or half and half
1-2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
salt and pepper
parmesan or other nice cheese

Rinse the cauliflower with water and break the head into smaller pieces. Place the heads in salted water and cook until all dente. In the meantime you can do the stew…
Melt some butter. Quickly stir in the flour and immediately pour in the milk. You can also add some of the water from the cauliflower. Let it boil for 2-3 minutes. Add grated horseradish, salt and pepper to your own taste. I like my stew to have a strong taste of horseradish (in fact I want to feel it in my nose). But you can also have some grated horseradish on the side when you are serving the dish.
Poor the stew over the cooked cauliflower pieces and sprinkle some grated cheese over the dish. Gratinate in the oven at 225°C (437F) for about 10-15 minutes.

Serve the gratin as it is with a salad. I often have the stew with Polish Kielbasa or Swedish Lard Sausages (Isterband).

Matcha Pistachio Chocolate Cake

Leave a comment

matcha
I while ago I had a Pistachio cake from a neighborhood bakery. It was very buttery and creamy. The butter cream was flavored with matcha (Japanese green tea). I thought the pistachio and the green tea was a great combination so I decided to do my own version that ended up totally different…

butter cream with matcha

100 ml (½ cup) sucanat
20 ml (0.125 cup) water
1 egg
100 g (a little less than 1 stick) butter
about 1 tablespoon matcha (green tea powder)

Heat up the water with the sucanat. Let it cook, stirring constantly, until you can form soft balls. In the mean time beat the eggs in an electric mixer. When the sucanat mixture is done, add it very slowly to the eggs to avoid scrambled eggs in the butter cream. When the mixture is cooler carefully add the softened butter. Use low speed and add the butter carefully. It’s very easy to make the mixture coagulate. If that happens take new butter and add the coagulated mixture carefully into the new mixed butter. At last you add the matcha carefully. Take more matcha for a stronger tea taste.

pistachios layer

50 ml (0.60 cup) almonds
50 ml (0.75 cup) pistachios
20 ml (½ cup) flour
300 ml (1.2 cup) sucanat
2 eggs
50 g (0.11 lbs) butter

Mill the almonds and pistachios and blend with the flour and the sucanat. Beat the eggs and add the nut mixture. At last add the melted butter. Spread the nut mixture into two round cakes, about 20 cm (8 inches) diameter and 2 mm (1/8”) thick, on buttered baking paper. Bake in the oven 200°C (392 F) for 8-10 minutes until they are darker or more golden brown if you use regular white sugar.

(I had only salty pistachio at home. It worked out fine as a nice contrast to the sweeter almonds.)

glazing

80 g (0.18 lbs) bittersweet dark chocolate
100 ml (0.4 cup) cream
some sucanat

Melt the chocolate with the cream. I added some sucanat to make it a little sweeter.

Spread the butter cream over one pistachio cake. Place the other cake layer above the butter cream. Lastly spread the chocolate on top of everything. Let it cool before serving.

I took the cake with me on a barbeque and everybody thought it was really delicious. The cake looked a little bit funny as I had some problems – it was a hot summer day. I had to put the cake in the freezer so it didn’t melt totally. Even if I was satisfied I will try to improve the recipe next time. I will do that when the autumn comes.