Tag Archives: recipe

Curry

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kokblog_on_the_train

One friend of mine was on a train and overheard a conversation between to guys. The conversation was about how to make the best curry. One of the guys was bragging about his curry and he even stated that it was the best. My friend thought the conversation was inspiring and decided to listen carefully and memorized the whole recipe. Excited about his new discovery my friend went home to give the curry a try. He managed to get all the ingredients and everything seemed to be great. But the bragging guy on the train had talked a little too much. The curry dish didn’t stand out at all. In fact the curry was a big disappointment for my friend.

M:s curry is probably not the best curry either, but it is tasty, quick and simple to make.

serves 3-4 people

1 teaspoon mustard seeds
2-3 cloves of garlic
½ yellow onion
more or less chili
2 teaspoons coriander powder
2 teaspoons cumin powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
4-5 whole cardamoms
235 ml (1 cup) chickpeas
handfull raisins
handfull cashew nuts
½ cauliflower
one zucchini
two carrots

Heat up some olive oil and add the mustard seeds. When the seeds are popping in the pan, add chopped garlic, onion and the chili together with the coriander, cumin and turmeric. When the onions starts to get soft, about 3 minutes, add the vegetables. Mix and sauté for another 2 minutes before adding some water, cardamom, raisins and chickpeas. Cover and cook until vegetables are done. Add the cashew nuts at the end of the cooking. Serve with couscous or rice, simple dill cucumber salad and some nice yogurt on the side.

Note If you are using dried chickpeas I suggest the following: soak the chickpeas over night. Boil them in salted water together with one bay leaf and one clove of garlic for 30 minutes. Prepare some extra and you can make humus as well.

Spinach Lasagna

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dinnerparty

Well Alice on her lovely Swedish food blog Brax on Food asked me for a kitchen confession and here is one of them…
The other day we had some friends over for spinach lasagna. Just a half an hour before everybody arrived there was a small crisis in the kitchen. I had forgotten about the cheese sauce on the stove, it cooked for at least 45 minutes too long. Even though it was on very low heat the sauce had separated and the cheese had transformed into some kind of porridge that was floating in the saucepan. It did not taste burned or bad it just looked a little uneatable. One solution could be to try to get some new cheese in the supermarket. But they would probably not have a great replacement for the Gorgonzola that was floating in my saucepan. I had nothing to lose, so I poured everything in the blender and out came the smoothest cheese sauce I have ever done…

(Serves 4-5 people)

You will need lasagna noodles enough for three layers. Precook the noodles in a big pan or use already precooked noodles.

spinach sauce

2 bunches of spinach
olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
chili
40 ml (1/6 cup) tamari sauce
40 ml (1/6 cup) of water

Clean the spinach carefully and let it dry while you peel and chop the garlic into small pieces. Heat up some olive oil in a pan and fry the garlic and the chili. When the garlic starts to get a little golden brown, add the spinach and sauté until it gets softer. Add the water and the tamari, cover the pan and let it cook for five minutes. If necessary season with salt and pepper.

blue cheese sauce

50 gram (about ½ stick) butter
50-60 ml (¼ cup) flour
700 ml (3 cups) milk
about 250 ml (1 cup) of any blue cheese (depending how strong taste you want)
salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter and stir in flour. Cook under very low heat for 2-3 minutes. Constantly stir the flour mix. Add the milk gradually and stir to a smooth blend. Add the cheese and stir until cheese is melted. Season with salt and pepper.

Grease a baking tin. Start the layering with some cheese sauce and some spinach in the bottom. Keep layering with pasta in between layers of both cheese sauce and spinach. At last cover the last layer of pasta with only the sauce. Bake the lasagna in the oven at 375º for about 20-30 minutes. When the lasagna is nearly done sprinkle some fresh grated Parmesan over. Put in the oven for further cooking until the cheese is melted and got a nice color. Serve with a nice mixed salad, for example arugola, apple, grated carrots and walnuts.

… and the guests loved the lasagna.

Steamed Artichokes

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atrichokes

There are two machines in the kitchen that I never use, the espresso machine and the pressure cooker. I guess I am just too lazy to learn how to use them and so M makes me coffee every morning.

The pressure cooker isn’t really a machine but it’s noisy and I find it a little bit scary. M uses the cooker for rice and artichokes. When M makes rice he use brown basmati rice mixed with wild black rice. He cooks the rice together with salt, bay leaves and garlic. The cooker really keeps the flavor of the rice.

for two artichokes you need

one lime
one clove of garlic
3 bay leaves

Wash the artichokes and pull of the bottom brownest leaves. With a very sharp knife cut the tip off the artichokes (about 1/2 “) and trim the stem. Squeeze limejuice over the top of the artichokes. Fill the pressure cooker with a little water in which you put mashed garlic, bay leaves and the rest of the limejuice. Insert a steaming tray above the water and put the artichokes on the tray. Close the cooker and heat it up on medium high until the steamer begins to steam. Lower the heat and continue cooking for 10 to 15 minutes depending on the size of the artichokes. Turn off heat and remove cooker from the heat. Serve the artichokes at room temperature with the vinaigrette on the side to dip the artichoke “leaves” in.

vinaigrette

3-4 parts olive oil
1 part apple cider vinegar or white balsamic vinegar
1-2 gloves of garlic
fresh oregano or thyme
1-2 mustard
just a drop of honey
salt and pepper

Mix the oil and the vinegar with some mustard, garlic and a drop of honey. Lastly add the spices to your own taste.

Now off to Madrid for some days of great culture, wines and food.

Gravlax with Gravlax Sauce

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gravlax_worm
In English Gravlax should be called Buried Salmon, which would be the ‘correct’ translation. But I agree that Gravlax sounds better and today you don’t have to bury the fish to make it.

1 kilo (2 lb) salmon fillet
2 teaspoons crushed pepper
4 tablespoons salt
2-4 tablespoons sucanat or sugar
lots of dill

If I buy fresh salmon I always freeze it for 24hrs, to make sure that there are no parasites in it. Clean the salmon fillets of any bones but keep the skin. The skin makes it easier later on when you are going to slice it. Mix together salt, pepper and sucanut. (more sugar makes a softer gravlax). Rub the fillet with some of the mixture. Divide the rest of the mixture and the dill on top of the fillet. If you have two fillets, place them together, meat against meat and short side against wide side. Place the fillet in a plastic bag and close it carefully. You can also use plastic wrap but it can be a little messy. Let the fillets rest in the fridge for 1-2 days. Thinner fillets can be done in 24 hours and thicker pieces need 48 hours to be ready to eat.

Unwrap and clean the fillets. Start to slice the gravlax at the small end. Make thin slices with a fillet or boning knife at an angle. Gravlax can be stored in the fridge for a week or longer in the freezer.I often serve my Gravlax as dinner with either potatoes and gravlax sauce or with dill creamed potatoes. In the summer I like to have a fresh potatoe salad with mustard vinaigrette. But gravlax is also great as an appetizer on toast.

See also Gravlax Juniper and Elderflower Gravlax

Gravlax Sauce
(serves 4)

3 tablespoons unsweet mustard
100 ml (0.4 cups) oil
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 tablespoon sucanat
salt and fresh ground pepper
100 ml (0.4 cups) chopped dill

Mix mustard, sucanut, vinegar, salt and pepper. Slowly start dripping in the oil while stirring the mixture. Continue dripping in the oil and stirring. If you add the oil too quickly the mixture can separate. The result should be a thick sauce. Lastly add the chopped dill.

Glögg (Mulled Wine)

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flambera

I have never in my life done my own Glögg until now. Glögg is a warm wine drink that is very traditional during Christmas time in Sweden. In fact it’s a very old tradition and I have heard that it was a way to cover up a bad wine!

1 cup rum,or vodka or 50/50
1 bottle of a full bodied red wine (ex. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon)
dried figs
75 ml (0.3 cups) sucanat (or sugar cubes)
blanched almonds
raisins

spices
3 cinnamon sticks
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 peels of an orange
5 whole cardamoms
1 small piece of ginger, chopped
20 raisins

Heat up the wine. It’s important to not let the wine boil! Put all the spices in the warm wine, turn the heat off and let it rest covered for at least 4 hours.

Seive the spices from the wine. Heat up the wine together with the figs to 60º C. In the meantime prepare a stainless steel net (for example a steel strainer) with sucanat or the sugar cubes. When the wine has reach the right temperature, place the steel net over the saucepan. Pour the rum over the sugar and light the alcohol steam below (flambé). Let the burned sugar drip into the wine mixture. Take the saucepan from the heat. Cover with a lid to stop the flames.

Serve the glögg warm with raisins, blanched almonds and the warm figs. Great after a walk in the snow!

(There are many ways to do your own glögg and what you choose to make it out of. I got inspired by Bengt Frithiofssons recipe, “Glödgande Glögg”. Frithiofssons talk about wine on the Swedish TV Channel TV4.