Julie’s Kitchen

Make a delicious soup out of this!

“The soup was great, Mamma.” “Yeah, 5 out of 5.” ” Don’t give any of the leftovers to the dog – save it for us.”

When you’ve got a family that frequently takes your cooking for granted coming up with comments like this, you have to stop and think about what you’ve just produced. The recipe has to be shared with other people!

I wish I could say that I picked this bag of golden chantarelle mushrooms but I did not. They came from the overflowing open boxes of chantarelles available in supermarkets in Sweden right now. We had already started our mushroom season in the kitchen earlier in August with some sauteed mushrooms on toast.  These were from our forest and when you just cannot wait to eat them this is the best way. See Best and Basic Wild Mushroom Recipe in this blog.

However, a nip has come into the air and I caught the customary first sniffle of the season last week, so it felt like soup time. I don’t like overloading my mushroom soups with high fat creams, butter and bacon drippings as many do in these parts. However, a little creaminess is definitely in order and so here is what I came up with that seems to have left everyone feeling that this was a very special dinner without the formality.

Creamy Chantarelle Soup
Serves 4

1 liter or 1 quart chantarelle mushrooms, cleaned and roughly chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
6 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 liter or 1 quart water
1/2 liter or 1/2 quart white wine
1 bay leaf
Soy or oat milk
2 dl or 1/2 cup creme fraiche
Salt and pepper to taste
Pinch of sugar

Saute the onion and garlic in olive oil for two minutes in a soup pot. Add the mushrooms. Saute for another 2 minutes. Remove from heat and sprinkle over the flour. Return to the heat and gradually add the water, stirring so that the flour blends in. Add white wine and bay leaf. Season generously with salt and pepper and add a pinch of sugar. Cover and allow to simmer for 20 minutes over low heat, stirring occasionally. If the soup has become too thick during the cooking period, add soy milk or oat milk  to the desired consistency. Remove bay leaf. Gently beat the creme fraiche into the soup over heat. Check seasoning. Heat the soup for 5 minutes.

The best food in the world, if you treat it right

The fresh perch that we’ve been catching recently in our lake has reminded me that great food isn’t at all about complicated recipes, particularly when it comes to fish. Why is it that so many children dislike fish? Because the fish that lands on their plates is most likely over-processed, over-handled and not particularly fresh. While not everyone has a lake to pull their fish out of every day, one can certainly address the first two points.

Making a great fish dish has much less to do with what you throw into the frying pan or pot (other than the fish), than it has to do with how long you cook it. Due to phobias about bacteria in fish, we usually consume our fish overcooked. A bit of salt and pepper, a bit of butter or olive oil and the courage not to overcook  usually delivers excellent results when it comes to fish.

So what happened to the perch? I filleted them, melted  a dollop of butter and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan, lowered the heat to medium and placed the fillets in the pan. Fillets suffer from over-handling. So, don’t start shuffling and flipping until you see that the fillets are starting to turn white around the edges. Flip once and then remove from the heat. If your fillets are very thin, which is usually the case with perch, leave the pan uncovered. If you have thicker fillets, cover the pan with a top so that a bit more cooking takes place.

Serve the fish with a few new potatoes and steamed vegetables. There are few main courses that beat this.

The perfect balance between sweetness and tartness

My fingers are feeling tender, but they are certainly worth picking. Is there a berry with a more perfect balance between sweetness and tartness than the hard-to-get gooseberry? When they have reached a state of perfect ripeness, I find that quite a few do not make it to my kitchen counter. They are shamelessly devoured right at the bush which is of course the most healthful way to enjoy them. Gooseberries have more vitamin C in them than most fruits and they are rich in antioxidants which protect against a wide range of modern-day diseases such as heart disease and cancer.

However, for those that do make it to the kitchen counter, I’ve got a couple of good ideas. The first is one that my husband reminds me of each year when the gooseberries ripen. “Grandmother made a wonderful cold gooseberry soup with whipped cream,” he reminisces. Of course, I have no idea exactly how grandmother made her gooseberry soup and unfortunately I cannot ask her since she took her recipe with her to heaven some decades ago. Here is my best guess which is tried and tested, and makes a superb dessert or a light lunch on a hot summer’s day.

Gooseberry Soup
Serves 4

1 liter or 1 quart gooseberries, hard ends removed
Water (as per preparation instructions)
Contents of one vanilla pod or 1 tsp vanilla sugar
1 lime
Honey or sugar to taste
4 tbsps cornflour blended with a bit of cold water

Place the gooseberries in a cooking pot and pour in enough water so that the gooseberries are not quite covered by the water. Add vanilla pod or vanilla sugar. Cook over medium heat so that the berries soften – ensure that the mixture does not boil. Remove from heat and add honey or sugar to taste. Once blended, add the cornflour mixture and allow to thicken over low heat. Set aside and allow to cool to room temperature. Pour into a serving bowl and grate over the rind of 1 lime. Serve with the option of whipping cream.

Recently I discovered that gooseberry makes a delicious sauce for roast chicken (and I am sure turkey). Everyone at the table, particularly my children, agreed. Take about 2 dl or 1 cup of gooseberries and pour over 2 dl or half a cup of water. Allow to cook over low heat until the berries have softened. Add a little sugar and a pinch of salt and blend so that the berries are crushed. Don’t make the sauce too sweet – remember this is a savory topping. Allow the sauce to cool to room temperature. Serve at the table in a pitcher as an option with the roast chicken. Don’t serve anything spicy with this dish – perhaps a few roasted or boiled vegetables such as carrots, potatoes and parsnips - so that the wonderful gooseberry flavor can be allowed to stand out.

The Crown of Swedish summer dishes: Dill

Gubbröra is one of those Swedish summer classics that never grows old. It is typically made with strong-tasting ingredients, including anchovies, and eaten on rye crisp bread or with new potatoes. It makes for a light lunchtime meal which is satisfying, not salad (!), and yet leaves you feeling light and mobile on a hot summer’s day. 

Anchovies are not most childrens’ cup of tea, so to speak, and so I decided to come up with a variation on Gubbröra that they might be able to enjoy as well.  The only thing that I was not willing to change in so far as ingredients was dill. It is that supreme herb of Swedish Midsummer that gives whatever you are eating that relaxing summer flavor. Here is my family-friendly answer to Gubbröra:

Family-friendly Gubbröra

8 thin slices of smoked salmon cut into thin strips
1 red onion finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
Juice of half an orange
Salt/Pepper
2 hard-boiled eggs sliced

Combine all ingredients. Toss. Place in a serving dish and top decoratively with boiled eggs. Serve with crisp bread or new potatoes.

Smoked salmon, ground elder, a squirt of lemon and a dash of pepper. Don't be afraid to experiment!

I’ve stopped fighting the weeds. In fact, at an event I arranged yesterday I decided to use them to the full. And what a delightful range of taste surprises they delivered! Some types of edible weeds bring back long-forgotten flavors (if they are edible they will have been eaten by someone sometime!) which our frequently tame-tasting greens such as spinach and iceberg lettuce cannot deliver.

Anyone who reads my island blog knows by now that my garden is home to a flourishing colony of bishop’s goutweed (or ground elder). My elderly neighbor who is a devoted gardener sings its praises as an alternative to cooked spinach. However, as I picked a leaf and chewed for a while, I became interested in the delightful qualities of this zesty, juicy leaf uncooked. The thought of throwing it into the blender to make a pesto struck me and soon I was dipping my carrot sticks into an absolutely fabulous bowl of ground elder pesto. At my event, the guests, many of whom fight ground elder in their gardens too, were at first aghast that I could consider serving this up as food but after tasting wanted my recipe. Here it is.

Ground Elder Pesto

9.5 dl or 4 cups ground elder, rinsed and stalks removed
2.6 dl or 1 cup parmesan or Västerbotten cheese
1 dl or 1/2 cup olive oil
Grated rind of 1 lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

Blend all ingredients in a food processor and serve as a dip for crisp bread or cut vegetables.

On the same day as I created this recipe I also noticed that the nettles had grown to giant size in the fertile soil just outside my garage. I clipped them down and placed them in my prettiest basket. Clipped nettles can make your fingers burn but their smell is divine and awakens that wonderful feeling of summer and soft grass. I needed a creamy alternative to the pesto and so cleaned out my blender and combined the nettle with a bit of cream cheese. The result provided a perfect balance to the other dip. I also dolloped this cream cheese mixture onto small rounds of dark bread to serve with drinks. Very good indeed.

Nettle cream cheese bites on dark bread rounds

Nettle Cream Cheese Dip

9.5 dl or 4 cups fresh nettle, rinsed and stalks removed
600 g or 21 oz light cream cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Blanch the nettles in a bit of boiling water so that they soften and the sting goes away. Drain and allow to cool. Squeeze as much liquid out of the nettles as possible and form a ball out of them. Chop into pieces and throw into the blender with the cream cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Use as a dip or a topping for bite-size open sandwiches.

So, what’s so Scandinavian about using weeds in the kitchen? There is an old saying in the Scandinavian kitchen coined by its first cookbook writer Cajsa Warg (1703-69) which says, “one takes what one has.” I’m taking what I have. Why don’t you try it too.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Not all weeds are edible. Please do your research before experimenting and ingesting!

Wear rubber gloves when you handle them until they are cooked!

How could we miss it? The Nordic Wellbeing Cookbook hasn’t got a nettle soup recipe until now! If you don’t already know it, those stinging nettles that shoot up around your compost or wherever there is a bit of nutritious soil, are one of the very first fresh spring ingredients of the Scandinavian kitchen. And how fortunate we are that they kick in first! Nettles launch us into that green season of lighter foods with a healthy dose of iron.

You can pick nettles for use in the kitchen throughout the warm season – use them dried as a herb in cooking and bread baking, sprinkle them dried on a bit of yogurt or buttermilk for enjoying on a hot day, bake them into pies – but we are out after the smallest and earliest leaves for nettle soup. Follow the instructions for preparing nettles as in the recipe for Spring Nettle Pie up to cutting the ball of cooked, pressed nettles into strips. Then follow this recipe reprinted from the invaluable food chapter of On My Swedish Island by yours truly.

“For every amount of fresh nettles that you use, you need half the amount of broth (for 1 quart or 1 liter of fresh nettles you need 1/2 quart or 1/2 liter of broth). Add the cooked, pressed nettles to the broth and gently warm, mixing together. Add whatever: a couple of  tablespoons of butter, cream, or creme fraiche. Season with salt and pepper. You can also stir in an egg yolk or two. As garnishing serve with either a dash of sour cream, or finely chopped hard-boiled eggs. There are so many ways.”

Add 2 dl/1 cup to your usual sourdough recipe for better results

While everyone has been focusing on best techniques for preparing Easter lamb, I’ve been thinking about how to freshen up my diet for the spring. One way to do that is to reduce the amount of refined white flour and to introduce more fiber, fruits and vegetables. I do, however, love that nice slice of sourdough bread (search for recipes in this blog) and find it hard to give up that zone of my culinary life. There is a way, however, to include that slice or two and improve the quality of your diet. Dinkel or spelt is one answer.

First a little background on dinkel. It’s been grown for consumption in northern Europe for the past 3000 years making it one of our oldest grains. During the 19th century and into the 20th production of spelt reduced considerably as it was more labor-intensive to produce than our modern white flour.  Thanks to the continuation of limited production in southern Germany and Switzerland, dinkel was kept alive as a healthy grain alternative.

Dinkel offers excellent benefits from both health and environmental points of view. First, I need to clarify one misunderstood issue: dinkel is easier for people who are gluten-intolerant to consume, but it isn’t gluten-free. In contrast to regular wheat flour, dinkel contains essential nutrients not only in the husk but also inside the grain. These include essential amino acids, vitamins B1 and B2 and several essential minerals such as iron, copper and zinc. In comparison to whole wheat flour, the nutritional differences are not as great until you examine the environmental differences. The husk of spelt protects it from spoilage by many of the pests and diseases that afflict regular wheat. For this reason it is easier to grow biodynamically. Spelt is also less demanding on the soil, growing even in poor soils.

As we learn increasingly that the key to meeting our nutritional needs into the future rests partly on bringing greater diversity into our diets, I cannot recommend trying spelt more. While you can purchase it in the form of flour and use it in baking just as you would any regular flour, I suggest trying to integrate it into salads and as a side dish in meals as a substitute for whatever starch you would otherwise consume with your meal. If you are going to try it, you’ll need to remember that the whole grains you purchase from your local grocery will need to be soaked overnight and then cooked over low heat for an hour or so to be ready to used in preparing breads and other dishes. While this preparation time might seem long, you can prepare a batch for the week and store it in a tupperware container to use whenever you need it.

As we enter into a season where we’ll be able to enjoy tomatoes and parsley grown closer to home, I thought of the following simple lunchtime salad recipe which is also a very satisfying accompaniment.

Dinkel & Tomato Salad
(Serves 4)

4 dl or 2 cups whole dinkel, soaked and cooked
4 medium-sized ripe tomatoes, chopped into bite-sized pieces
Handful of fresh parsley, chopped
Parsley for garnishing
150 g  or 5 oz feta cheese
For the dressing:
1 dl or 1/2 cup rapeseed or olive oil
2 tbsps apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp honey
4 tbsps water
Pinch of salt and pepper

Combine the prepared dinkel, tomatoes and chopped parsley in a mixing bowl. Combine the dressing ingredients in a clean, empty jar with a lid. Screw on the lid tightly and shake so that the dressing blends smoothly. Pour the dressing over the dinkel mixture. Place the dinkel mixture on a serving dish, crumble over the feta cheese and garnish with parsley. Enjoy!

Baka med Spelt

If you can read Swedish and have been looking for the ultimate dinkel recipe book you can now order Gotland Dinkelcentrum’s book by Icelandic Sophia Bövarsdottir which provides 87 pages of dinkel recipes! Let me know if you can find a good English equivalent that I can recommend.

Still working on using up last season's carrots

We’re being asked to do so many things when it comes to food and diet these days. The new drive to combat obesity spear-headed by Michelle Obama in the United States is long overdue yet at the same time opens the floodgates for all sorts of new diets suggesting a host of rules and regulations about eating and food preparation. Today it is common knowledge that rigid diets do not serve us well over the long term. They might reduce weight for a time but they won’t do anything for us as the years go by. So what do we do?

At the same time as we are being urged to think about how to eat for healthier weight, we are also being asked to choose in relation to the environment, taking climate change, pesticide use and genetic modification into account. On top of all of this we should prioritize fair trade, meaning the purchase of food products which improve the working and living standards of producers in developing countries.

All of this seems a tall order. You could be forgiven for standing in your kitchen holding your head in your hands. It was with all of these various new demands in mind, the experience of winning over a food disorder and the strong desire to have a natural relationship to food that I came up with The Natural Eater system for thinking about food choices. On the concept page you can read about this values based idea for having a relationship to food that feels freeing and healthy rather than constraining and leading only to short-term health solutions.

With The Natural Eater system in mind, I’m freeing you up with a refreshing little recipe for using up whatever is left and creating a hearty meal out of it. One of the operating principles of The Natural Eater is that food is creativity. For this to be so, it’s important to have enough food preparation skills so that you can look into your fridge or pantry at any given time and prepare something good to eat. Limitation is the mother of invention if you have certain basic food preparation skills. The idea of using whatever is left also relates to another important Natural Eater value which is that food is solidarity with the planet and its peoples and therefore we do not waste it.

I opened my fridge at about 5 pm this weekend and found a few carrots, a carton of champignons, a bit of cottage cheese, a stick of mozarrella cheese and some remaining soured cream.  I had a few other odd ingredients around and wondered whether I should instead shoot off to the supermarket to reduce my thinking time. Then I thought of one of my favorite food programs shown on BBC television for years in which a well-known chef was asked to prepare a meal with a bag of inexpensive ingredients purchased by a regular everday person who would be their assistant. Using this program as my inspiration, I came up with the following:

Carrot & Champignon Lasagne (serves 8 persons)

1 package of lasagne sheets
6 carrots, peeled and grated
dried or fresh herb such as parsley, tarragon or nettle
1 box of champignons, rinsed and sliced
1 onion, sliced thinly
2 dl or 1 cup soured cream
2 dl or 1 cup cottage cheese
500 g or 1 lb mozarrella cheese
3 dl or 1.5 cups milk
canola or olive oil
salt & Pepper

Preheat the oven to 200 C or 390 F. Grease a rectangular pyrex (mine is 30 x 17 cm or 12 x 7 inches)and cover the base with lasagne sheets. Set aside. Prepare the lasagne fillings. Toss the grated carrot with 2-4 tablespoons of herb. I used dried nettle which you cannot find in shops but parsley, tarragon and a host of other dried or fresh herbs work just as well. Drizzle over a bit of olive oil, season with salt and pepper and toss. Set aside. Drizzle some olive oil into a pan and saute onions and garlic over medium heat for two minutes. Add the sliced champignon and saute for another two minutes. Season with salt and pepper and remove from the heat. In a mixing bowl blend the cottage cheese, soured cream and milk. Season with salt and pepper. Slice the mozarrella thinly.

Assemble the lasagne. Spoon half the carrots onto the bottom lasagne sheets and cover with a new layer of pasta. Spoon half the mushrooms onto the new layer of lasagne sheets and cover with half of the milk mixture. Cover with another layer of lasagne sheets and repeat the layers once more, finishing once you have spooned over the rest of the milk mixture. Cover the surface of the lasagne with mozarella slices, season with salt and pepper and drizzle over oil. Bake for 20 minutes or until the lasagne sheets are soft and the mozarella is lightly browned. Serve with your favorite salad.

I thought the dish would last us for two days. It didn’t. We probably ate one too many portions, but at least you know that this recipe lives up to the taste test!

It was a good life...

When Rita turned up at my door with the pieced lamb that I had ordered this autumn from the local Sheep Association, I suddenly had 10 kilos or 22 pounds of high quality grass-fed lamb to prepare this holiday season’s dishes with.  I remembered that I had once tasted a lamb stew that was one of those meals that you remember for all of your life. It was so good, that I contacted my neighbor down the road to find out how he had produced that memorable dish. He mentioned that he had got the recipe off of a woman whom he meets when he is walking the dog. They exchange food notes while standing around watching their dogs frolicking in the park. He no longer had the recipe but he would get a hold of it.

The next day, my neighbor was at my doorstep with the recipe in one hand and a lead holding back his highly active dog in the other. “I got it from her,” he said victoriously. So, with Rita’s lamb in my kitchen, I got to work. This recipe takes less effort than it does cooking time, determination to find the right cut of lamb (lammlägg in Swedish or leg of mutton in English meaning the lower leg parts of the lamb), and a big, sturdy casserole dish with top suitable for the oven.

Best Braised Lamb
(original recipe by Petter at meny.se)
Serves 4

4 pcs leg of mutton
white flour for coating
2 red onions, peeled and chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 tbsps tomato puree
0.5 dl or 1/4 cup balsamic vinager
5 dl or 2 cups red wine
1 sprig of rosemary
2 sprigs of thyme
Olive oil
Butter
Salt & Pepper

Preheat oven to 150 C or 302F. Coat the lamb with flour. Warm a click of butter and a few tablespoons of olive oil in a deep oven-proof casserole dish with top and saute onions and crushed garlic over medium heat. Do not brown. Set aside the onion mixture. Increase the heat, add olive oil, if needed and saute the lamb so that it is browned on all sides. Add the onion mixture back to the pot and add in vinager, wine, tomato paste and herbs.  Cover and allow to cook for 2.5 hours until the lamb falls off the bone. Serve with a green salad, boiled potatoes or some bread for lapping up the delicious sauce with.

Oh, just a note about the Christmas ham, if you are having it. Remember, PLEASE to order it from an ecological farm that takes good care of its pigs. We’ve just had the most horrible experience here in Sweden learning about how our pigs are treated before they become Christmas ham. I’m ordering from Årstiderna. Try to find an equivalent where you live.

In general, I’ve always harbored an old-fashioned suspicion of the many ‘easy’ and ‘convenient’ flavorings available on the supermarket shelves.  Instant sauces and mixes have never been my thing and on each occasion that I’ve used them just because someone left the box behind, I’ve always ended up throwing the results in the bin. Once you get used to seeking out the real flavors in true ingredients, food that is flavored with highly processed substances just doesn’t taste right.

In so far as health goes, there have long been scares about the effects of flavor, color, texture and preservation additives in food. Now that information is becoming increasingly well-researched and specific. The publication in Sweden of “Den Hemlige Kocken: Det Okända Fusket med Maten På Din Tallrik” (The Secret Chef: The Unknown Cheating with Food on Your Plate) by cancer survivor Mats-Eric Nilsson is a food tsunami that will hopefully leave the food industry in Sweden changed forever. This book reveals that 9 out of 10 of the additives that we regularly consume are  cosmetic. That is to say, that we don’t really need them.  Many are plainly not good for us to consume. The cancer survivors that I know are on the lookout for most of them and look at those stock cubes that we regularly throw into our recipes to create flavor with horror. In times when we need to think seriously about the environmental effects of our consumption patterns, these unnecessary additives which require considerable energy to process and turn into something that we can use should come into question.

When it comes to stock cubes, I am guilty. I have provided recipes using these in the past but this has been one of my few evils which it comes to recipes. Now I am repenting by giving you some of my best ideas about how to flavor food without stock cubes. During the past months, I have made divine soups and sauces without a stock cube in sight. Give it a go. It is an interesting and very worthwhile journey.

How to Find Real Flavor

Dried & Fresh Herbs & Spices: Familiarize yourself with the wide range available and what types of foods they fit best with. Use them generously. If you live in a cold climate, try to go for the dried herbs in the winter. It is kinder from a climate perspective. Strong spices such as ginger, garlic and chili can easily transform a dish. Learn to use them. Use spices in non-traditional

Lemon & Lime: These can work wonders in terms of flavor, providing a tangy acidity. If you need to watch your salt, note that lemon and lime juice are a salt substitute. Using the rind (do remember to wash well before using it) adds a strong flavor punch to your dish.

Make your own stock: Keeping a good, strong vegetable stock on hand in the freezer can be a great way to add flavor. Cover some chopped carrots, parsnips, onions, pepper corns and bay leaf with water. Cover and cook on slow heat until the vegetables are soft. Add salt. Drain the liquid into freezer containers that you can defrost for use in making soup. Note that the liquid left over when you prepare mussels makes an excellent fish stock (although watch out to inform those that are allergic to shellfish).

High Quality Ingredients: The flavor that you can generate in a dish depends most of all on the quality of the basic ingredients – vegetables, meats and fruits – that you use. Transfer your budget for highly processed food flavorers to the best quality ingredients you can find and you have just taken one gigantic step towards finding the real flavor in food.

Keep your Pepper Grinder sharp and use good quality flake salt.