Tag Archives: food illustration

Skållat Råg Bröd (Rye Bread)

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This Christmas I’m looking forward to being with my family and friends in Sweden. I will fill the house with the right holiday flavor by lighting candles, bake pepparkakor (ginger cookies) and brew glögg spiced with cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, orange and ginger. I will bake dark rye bread (recipe below) and have plenty of mustard herring and slices of aged cheese (with my homemade akvavit). The evenings I will spend in front of the fireplace, crawled up on the couch with a glass of madeira and a handful (or more) of chocolate toffees.

The rye bread is based on a Swedish traditional bread called skållat rågbröd (scalded rye bread). When baking the bread you start by scalding the rye flour with boiling hot water and let it sit over night. This method makes a rich and flavorful bread. Traditionally you bake this kind of bread with mörk sirap (dark syrup) but by using cranberries instead I have given this bread a more fruity flavor.

This bread is excellent with julskinka (salt cured ham that have been cooked in aromatic broth), which is one of the classic spreads on a Swedish julbord (Christmas table which is the most common Smörgåsbord in Sweden). But the bread really works with many other things too, like herring, gravlax, cheese or leftover meatballs.

Last Sunday this bread was part of an food art installation by Ursula Endlicher at Air Circulation gallery in Bushwick here in Brooklyn. Then we topped it with pate, pickled gherkins and fresh pomegranate seeds. I also baked caraway thin crisps and specially created a hazelnut & star anise cookie for her installation.  The show will be on view every Sunday until January 24.

I bake this bread all year around as M and my friends don’t seem to get enough of it. My neighbors have even requested I start selling it as they think it’s the best bread in the neighborhood. (which is quite easy to beat as there is no bread bakery around here that bakes a dark rye bread like this).

Psssst! This bread got listed by Marisa McClellan at Local Mouthful, Philadelphia as one of her favorite things in 2015.  Woohoo!  I’m super honored.

kokblog-ryebreads

Skållat Rågbröd with Anise Seeds (Scalded Rye Bread)
adapted from my Rye Bread recipe in Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break*

2 loafs

1st dough
3 cups (720 ml) water
3 cups (12.75 ounces, 362 grams) rye flour
60 gram (2.125 ounces) starter

overnight soak
handful (about) 1/3 cup dried cranberries
5 tablespoons water

2nd dough
3 cups (15 oz, 426 grams) all purpose flour (plus extra as needed)
2 teaspoons salt
4 teaspoon anise seeds

preparing the 1st dough
Bring the water to a boil and pour it over the rye flour. Work the flour and the water with a large spoon or spatula until even (sticky) dough. Let the dough cool down to about 98°F (37°C) before adding the starter. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp tea towel. Leave at room temperature overnight or at least for 6 to 8 hours.

Soak the cranberries in 5 tablespoon water overnight or for at least a couple of hours.

preparing the 2nd dough
Mix the soaked cranberries in a food processor into a smooth sticky mixture. Crush the anise seeds slightly with a mortar and pestle. In a large wide bowl mix together wheat flour, salt and anise seeds. Add the 1st dough together with the cranberries. Work everything well together until all flour is mixed. Transfer the dough to your counter top and knead the dough with as little extra flour as possible. The dough will be sticky and dense. Let the dough rise for 2-3 hours.

Divide the dough into two pieces and shape into 12-inch long loaves. Dust some flour all around and place them on a well floured tea towel. Cover and and let rise for about 2 hours. The bread will have small cracks on the surface.

About 30 – 60 minutes before baking your bread, set the oven to 450°F (230°C). Place a baking sheet or baking stone into the oven. (please note that a stone will need more time to heat up than a baking sheet).

When it’s time, carefully transfer the shaped loaves onto the hot baking surface. Score (as you like) and bake for 40-50 minutes. The bread should have a dark brown color and if you knock at the bottom of the loaf it should have a hollow sound. Let them cool completely on an oven rack before cutting the bread.

The bread will keep fresh in room temperature for a couple of days. For longer storage, freeze, sliced or whole.

* The original recipe from the Fika book, which is equally addictive is baked with active dry yeast and uses prunes instead of dried cranberries. I have also baked this version at a higher temperature which gives the bread a slightly harder crust.

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related links

learn more about the Swedish Christmas table in my book
Smörgåsbord: The Art of Swedish Breads and Savory Treats

 

Quick Pickled Cucumber

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In our garden we had an earth cellar that my mother stocked with treats during the outdoor season. The whole family went for weekend walks in the woods to forage for plants, berries and mushrooms. Some of the fruit and vegetables came from our own garden or nearby orchards and neighbor’s vegetable gardens. My mother made strawberry and raspberry jam, cooked apple compote, pickled gherkins and beets. With a steam juicer she made both elderflower cordial and black currant juice. She also made lingonberry jam that is very common as a side for typical Swedish everyday dishes such as meat balls, potato pancakes, kroppkakor and blood pudding. Some Swedes even enjoy this jam with fried herring. My father made different kinds of spirits (blackthorn and figs), that they stored and forgot until it was found (to their happy surprise) several years later.

Some of these wonderful treats I do myself today, but at a much smaller scale as I don’t have the storage or a family of five to feed.

My latest favorite are these quick pickled cucumbers that I created from memory from a restaurant visit to Amsterdam last summer. The original origin is definitely not Dutch or European,  it’s more likely Korean or Japanese.  These pickles can be done just a couple of hours before serving. They are fresh and crunchy and the rice vinegar together with the  sesame oil give them a very pleasant sweet and sour flavor. I love it as a small treat before dinner, just as it is or together with cured fish. Its also excellent as a side for BBQ, stews and sandwiches.

kindvall-pickling

Quick Pickled Cucumber

2- 3 (about 10 ounces, 280 – 300 gram) kirby cucumber
2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil

½ teaspoon chili flakes
1 teaspoon finely grated ginger
black pepper, freshly milled
fresh chopped dill
toasted sesame seeds

Wash the cucumbers and cut them into small bite size pieces.

Place them in a bowl and add the salt. Toss well and let sit for 15-30 minutes.

In the meantime, whisk together rice vinegar, sugar and sesame oil. Whisk or stir until sugar is dissolved. Add the chili flakes, ginger and season with pepper and fresh dill.

Rinse the salted cucumber lightly with fresh water. Squeeze them slightly to remove water and pat them dry with a paper towel. When dry add them to the vinegar mixture. Toss well until all pieces are well coated. Season with more salt if necessary. Let sit for about an hour.

Sprinkle some roasted sesame seeds over before serving.

Please note that these pickles are not meant to be stored for a long time. The pickles should be stored in the refrigerator and I recommend you eat them within a few days.

You can tweak this in many ways. For example you can take out the sesame oil and switch the rice vinegar to distilled white vinegar and use horseradish instead of ginger.

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related recipes

Raw Stirred Cranberries (kokblog recipe)
Orange Cured Carrots by Sofi Meijling
Lemon & Olive Oil Preserved Asparagus by Amy Pennington
Superfast Salt-and-Sugar Pickles by Dave Chang

Red Gooseberry Jam with Thyme

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Every morning my husband walks out and pick handfuls of red & black currants, strawberries, raspberries or red gooseberries. He cooks the berries slightly into a sauce together with cardamon & cinnamon and serves it together with his oatmeal. Unfortunately I’m not a porridge girl so I just simply have it with some Swedish traditional filmjölk.

Gooseberries are one of our favorites. When really deep red and totally soft and ripe they taste a little like grapes. Last week I picked the ones we had left and made some jam.

Red Gooseberry Jam with Thyme

2 cups red gooseberries
a bunch of fresh thyme, cleaned and striped from branches
½ – ¾ cup (100 – 150 grams) natural cane sugar*

Clean the gooseberries and remove the top and tail. Place the gooseberries together with the sugar and thyme in a medium sized pan. Bring to a boil and cook over medium heat until your desired thickness has been reached (between 15 – 30 minutes).

To check the consistency, take a spoonful of jam onto a chilled saucer, leave to cool for a minute or so before run your finger through it. It’s ready if the jam wrinkles up. If not, let it cook for another few minutes before testing again.

When ready, remove the jam from the heat and pour into a clean sterilized jar. Screw on the lid and turn the jar upside down to create a vacuum. Let cool completely.

Store the jam in the refrigerator for up to a month. If you want to store it longer, place the jam in the freezer.

The jam is nice on top of aged cheese and toast.

* I recommend to start with the lower amount and add more sugar if you want a sweeter jam.

Related recipes

Sofi’s Caramelized Rhubarb Jam
Pear Marmalade (and the boy who poisoned a whole scout camp)
Canning How To – Prepping & Sealing Jars – by Amy Pennington
Rosemary Flavored Plum Jam – by Ilva Beretta
Orange Blossom Jam – by Anissa Helou
Cherry compotê – by Rachel Alice Roddy

 

 

Fika: Cardamom Biscuits

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A couple of years ago I had the honor to have lunch with Russell at London Eats here in Brooklyn. It felt like we had known each other for years. Like me, he is very much into baking. And he does it pretty well. In December he has the wonderful tradition of baking 12 cakes and cookies, which he share on his blog. As Russell lived in Sweden for a while, you can also find some Scandinavian pastries on his site as well.

The other day I baked Cardamom Biscuits based on one of Russell’s recipes. But don’t confuse this kind of biscuit with a typical American biscuit. In UK a biscuit is a sweet or savory small cracker (or cookie) while in US a biscuit is like a small soft scone. In Sweden you call it kex.

The recipe is based on Russell’s recipe for Abernethy biscuits. Instead of using Caraway seeds, which is the tradition for this kind of biscuit, I used cardamom as the flavor. The result was fantastic. It really is a perfect snappy biscuit that works beautifully together with a strong cup of tea, coffee or a glass of milk.

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Cardamom Biscuits
(about  40)

Adapted from  Russell’s (London Eats’) Abernethy biscuits

240 grams (little more than 1 2/3 cup) all purpose flour + extra for dusting
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
85 grams (3 ounces) butter
85 grams (3 ounces, little more than 1/3 cup) caster sugar
2 teaspoons whole cardamom, crushed
one egg
one tablespoon milk

Mix together flour and baking powder in a bowl. With your fingertips rub in the butter until it resembles a coarse meal (a little like breadcrumbs as Russell describes it).  Mix in the sugar and the crushed cardamom.

Beat the egg in a small bowl and add it together with the milk to the flour mixture. Work the dough together with your hands until you can shape it into soft ball.  If the dough feel too sticky or too dry, add more flour or milk.  Wrap the ball in plastic wrap. Let rest in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (355ºF). Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper.

On a floured flat surface roll half the dough thinly (less than 1/2 cm thick, about 1/8 inch). Cut out rounds with a small glass. Place them on the prepared cookie sheet and make neat patterns with a wood skewer. Repeat until all dough is all used up.

Bake the biscuits for about 10 – 15 minutes. The should have a nice color. Watch them carefully so they don’t get too dark. You may need to turn the baking sheet once to get an even color.

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also check out my other fika related recipes here.

 

The Art of Swedish Holiday Baking (Recipe for Ginger Spice Cake)

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Despite different time zones, my book collaborator Anna Brones and I always find time to bake “together”. And for our regular skype meetings we always treat ourselves with strong coffee and something sweet to nibble.  This week we are celebrating a little extra; Fika just got listed in Saveur Magazine‘s 100 cooks’ edition list! (issue 171, January & February 2015). We wish you all a wonderful and sweet Holiday and a Happy New Year.

Julbak: The Art of Swedish Holiday Baking (With a Recipe for Ginger Spice Cake)
Text by Anna Brones

If there’s one thing that’s essential to a good December in Sweden, it’s julbak. It might come as no surprise that “Christmas baking” is of the utmost importance in a country where December is cold and very dark month; what’s better on a chilly winter day than a warm kitchen wafting of freshly baked gingersnaps? Not a whole lot. Well, except for a kitchen wafting of freshly baked gingersnaps AND a pot of glögg.

Holidays, no matter what they are and what culture they are celebrated in, are often linked to certain foods. The act of preparing a particular dish ties us to the tradition and the celebration. While we may find ourselves far from family, friends and the place that the tradition comes from, if we prepare a certain food, we are immediately transported back.

Julbak is this kind of tradition, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a Swede, whether they’re living in Sweden or elsewhere, that isn’t craving pepparkakor come the month of December.

While julbak can consist of a whole variety of baked goods, there are a few Swedish classics that are indicative of this time of year:

Pepparkakor – Swedish gingersnaps, rolled out thinly and cut into traditional shapes like hearts, pigs and adorable gingermen and gingerwomen. Ready to try pepparkakor? Here’s a recipe.

© Johanna Kindvall

Lussekatter – Also known as lussebullar or saffransbullar, these are the beautiful sweet buns baked into a golden yellow. The color comes from the addition of saffron, and the buns are decorated with currants. They are commonly baked for St. Lucia day. Here’s a recipe if you’re feeling up for it.

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Glögg – While the Swedish mulled wine isn’t a baked good, you can’t eat all of the julbak treats without a nice mug of glögg to go with them. Here’s a recipe to try.

Of course, the problem with both pepparkakor and lussekatter is that you need time to bake them, and not everyone always has it. But because the flavors are so iconic, in the modern Swedish baking world, you’ll see saffron and the spices used pepparkakor incorporated in a variety of creative ways in other recipes, all helping you get the traditional flavors of December with a little less kitchen work.

Last December, Johanna and I were caught up testing all of our classic Christmas recipes for our book Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break – which is coming out in just a few months – so this year we thought it might be fun to do something a little different. In Sweden, the pepparkaka can take many forms. In our book for example we have the classic version as well as the softer ginger cookie, which the Swedes smartly call a lunchpepparkaka, because it’s so dense you can in fact eat it for lunch. This recipe takes the form of a soft ginger cake, but still includes all the spices normally used in a traditional pepparkaka. The end result is a tasty gingersnap spice cake of sorts. Perfect with glögg or just a strong cup of coffee.

Anna & Johanna’s Ginger Spice Cake
makes one 6-cup Bundt cake

10½ tablespoons (5¼ ounces, 148 grams) unsalted butter
3 egg yolks, room temperature
¼ cup (2½ ounces, 70 grams) honey
2 teaspoons whole cardamom seeds, crushed
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1½ teaspoon ground cloves
3 tablespoon milk
¾ cup (3¾ ounces, 106 grams) all-purpose flour
3 egg whites, room temperature
¾  cup (5¼ ounces, 148 grams) natural cane sugar 

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease and flour the Bundt pan. 

In a bowl, cream together the butter with the honey until well blended. Add the egg yolks one by one followed by the milk and the spices. Mix the batter together.

Sift the flour, then stir it carefully into the batter, stirring as little as possible until you get an even and sticky batter. The batter is quite stiff but will get lighter in the next step. 

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites, ideally with an electric mixer. When soft peaks form, add the cane sugar little by little. Whisk until stiff peaks form. Carefully fold the sugar and egg white mixture into the batter and keep folding until the batter is evenly blended. Be careful not to overstir. Pour directly into the Bundt pan. 

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes. The cake is done when a knife or toothpick comes out clean when inserted at the thickest part of the cake. If the cake starts to get a golden brown color earlier (which can happen after 20 minutes), remove it from the oven, cover it with aluminum foil, and put back in the oven. This will prevent the top of the cake from burning. 

Remove the cake from the oven and let cool for a bit before inverting it onto a plate.

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more by Anna Brones and me

ToscaKaka with Orange (recipe)
Kanelbullar (recipe)
Mazariner (recipe)
Semlor (recipe)
Amuse Bouche (illustrated food caption series, Foodie Underground 2012-2013)
Fika – The Art of The Swedish Coffee Break (about the book and where to pre-order)