A week ago I was asked to be one of the contributers at Honest Cooking. This online culinary magazine started just a couple of weeks ago and the articles are written by food & drink writers, chefs and photographers etc from all over the world. I think its a impressive work the editor Kalle Bergman and all the other contributers have done so far and I’m honored to be part of it. Yesterday my first post Squid with a Bite was launched.
This diagram doesn’t really give you any measurements, its more a guide on what I like to feed my beef stew with. I have learnt that these ingredients work splendidly together and, by adding a small amount of cocoa at the end, really makes this dish into something complete. This Beef Stew can be served with rice or just a piece of bread and a salad. Sometimes I make it as a bolognese and use minced meat instead.
This Recipe Diagram is my submission for GOOD’s Redesign the Recipe project. If you like it you may vote for me. Thanks!
See more Recipe Diagrams here.
This image is also for sale in the SHOP.
My second guest to write here on kokblog is Anna Brones who is a Swede (like me) living in Portland, Oregon. Anna is a writer and co-funder of Under Solen Media (New Media Marketing company). We just met on the Internet and immediately started a conversations around Swedish treats such as knäckebröd, gravlax, and the Swedish Fat Tuesday bun called Semla.
Semlor For Fat Tuesday
by Anna Brones
In my family, as with many, food represents tradition. As a child growing up with a smorgasbord – pun intended – of Swedish foods all year round, I found nothing unusual in our repertoire of dining choices. There should always be hard tack in the pantry, pickled herring and aquavit indicate a good party, and open-faced sandwiches are a perfectly acceptable way to start the day. In Sweden, yes. In the U.S., maybe not.
The same goes for seasonal traditions. I can’t have Christmas without meatballs, and I can’t have a winter without a semla.
A semla, also known as fastlagsbulle or fettisbulle, is a flour bun filled with almond paste and topped with whipped cream and powdered sugar. Historically the decadent pastry was intended for consumption on fettisdagen, Fat Tuesday. But in modern day, the tradition of semlor has gone far beyond just fettisdagen, allowing for Swedish pastry shops and bakeries to fill their windows with the baked good from just after the New Year all the way through Easter. Several months of pastry bliss.
But tucked into the forest of the Pacific Northwest, we were thousands of miles from a Swedish bakery. And yet, I remember that antsy feeling that would come in the late winter months, as my mother would whip out the baking supplies and create masterpieces of almond paste and whipped cream. I would inevitably end up with powdered sugar on my nose.
And thus tradition was born. If Fat Tuesday comes and goes without having eaten one, something is wrong. But with a food savvy mother, my own food traditions come with high expectations.
So in preparation for fettisdagen this year, I figured it best to make some semlor in advance, fine tuning the recipe and ensuring that come Fat Tuesday, I could successfully produce a baked good that would live up to my own standards.
A misread recipe and a bag of whole wheat flour later, I had a batch of cinnamon rolls and a plate full of mini-sized semlor buns on my hands, small enough to be bite size for a five year old. Failure.
“You used whole wheat flour?”
“Well yeah, you know how guilty I feel about buying regular flour,” I responded to my mother on the phone. Along with food tradition, she has also instilled a continued expectation of stocking my apartment full of healthy food. Things made with white flour and sugar are out of the ordinary.
“Did you even buy whipping cream?”
“Umm… no,” I quietly added. What am I going to do with an entire bowl full of whipping cream by myself? I thought.
“Anna, if you’re going to make something decadent, make something decadent. It has to be a real semla!”
And that is where tradition wins. No need to use organic agave instead of sugar, or switch out unbleached white flour or even attempt to make something that doesn’t use butter and eggs, because when it comes to baking and cooking in the name of tradition, you stick with what works, and you get what you expect: a celebratory moment with a cup of coffee and a semla.
semlor
(20 buns)
400F (200°C)
250 ml (one cup) milk
100 g (3 ½ oz) melted butter
25 g fresh yeast (2 teaspoons dry yeast)
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon cardamom
1 egg
850 ml (3 2/3 cups) flour
1 egg, lightly beaten, for glazing
filling
200g (about 1/2 lb) almond paste
insides of the buns + 200 ml (7/8 cup) milk
100 ml (½ cup) whipped cream
Melt butter and add in milk. Heat until lukewarm. Pour over yeast and let sit for 3 minutes. Add rest of ingredients and work the mixture into dough. Leave dough to rise under cloth for 15 minutes.
Knead dough on floured surface. Separate into two sections, then each section into 10 small balls. Place on greased baking pan and let rise for 20 minutes. Glaze each bun with lightly beaten egg. Bake approximately 15 minutes. Cover the buns with a cloth and cool on a wire rack.
To fill
Cut off a circular “lid” off of each bun and set aside. Scoop out inside of bun with a spoon or fork. Mix in a bowl with almond paste and add milk to make a smooth mixture.
Fill buns with mixture and top with whipping cream. Place lid on top of whipping cream and garnish with powdered sugar.
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You can follow Anna Brones on twitter, @AnnaBrones
More Swedish baked classics
Kanelbullar – Swedish Cinnamon Bun
Pepparkakor – Ginger Bread Cookies (at EcoSalon)
Lussebullar – Saffron Buns
Mazariner – Guest post by Anna Brones
In Sweden you eat yellow pea soup and thin pancakes every Thursday, or at least its popular to do so. The tradition has its roots from the middle-ages, where it was a preparation for Friday which was a day of fasting at that time. Nowadays its common to serve the soup with hot Punch, a sweet arrack flavored spirit. Its one of those odd combinations that actually works.
To make the soup, use whole yellow peas* that you soak for about 12 hours. After soaking, cook the peas in some water together with a whole piece of salted pork** (or if you prefer, cut into smaller pieces), onion, bay leaves and plenty of thyme (marjoram can also be used). I don’t mind adding a carrot into the soup, its not essential but it give the soup a sweet touch that I like. Just before the peas are done (almost mushy) you take out the meat and slice it. The meat can be served on the side or in the soup. If necessary season with salt. Serve the peasoup with mustard and buttered hard bread (knäckebröd). And to my taste don’t forget the hot Punch.
I often skip the thin pancakes but for most Swedes this is the grande finale of this meal! They should be served with whipped cream and jam.
* in case you don’t find whole yellow peas, yellow split peas may be used, just skip the soaking and follow the rest.
** bacon or similar may be used if its impossible to find salted pork.
Often while I’m cooking I also have a stockpot going. I feed it with bits and pieces of whatever I have at hand. It can be the end of a carrot, a head of a fish or bones from a piece of meat etc. My vegetable stock as described in the diagram, can be made just as shown or together with any kind of meat. The point is to use the parts of vegetables or meat that you normally don’t eat. However the ingredients must be fresh! With fish I would add some dill stalks and maybe lemon rinds.
I use my stocks to feed risotto, soups, cook beans in or to touch up stews. The use is really endless.
