Julie’s Kitchen

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 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.

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.

Which fish?

In my household we love to eat fish. The problem is that there is one issue or another with buying most of the fish commonly sold in my supermarket. Cod presents a sustainability problem. The farmed salmon has got various health and sustainability issues attached to it. But then there is the Saithe or European Pollock which is a superb alternative since it is sustainable, safe and enjoyable if you find the right way to prepare it. Saithe has quite a firm meat so is easy to handle in cooking. My past experiences of consuming Saithe is that it had a rather fishy flavor which I didn’t like. However, the following recipe which I came up with at the spur of the moment surprised and delighted everyone in the family.

Pollock or Saithe in a Tomato Bath
Serves 4

2 large fillets of Saithe or Pollock
white flour for dipping the fish in
1 egg, beaten for dipping the fish in
4 tablespoons canola or olive oil
2 cloves garlic
500 grams or 18 oz. crushed tomatoes
dried or fresh chopped herbs of your choice
thinly sliced cheese such as gouda or other to melt over the fish
salt & pepper to taste

Rinse the fish fillets and pat dry. Heat the cooking oil in a pan over medium heat. Dip the fillets into the egg first and then into the flour which should have a pinch of salt and pepper blended into it. Place in the pan, crush garlic on top and brown on both sides. Lower heat and spoon the crushed tomatoes around the edges of the fish. Sprinkle over the herbs. Add a pinch of salt and pepper. Cover and allow to cook for 10 minutes. Add cheese slices on top of the fish and cover once again, cooking for a further 5 minutes when the cheese will have just melted over the fish. Serve with a salad and some whole grain bread.

Check The Nordic Wellbeing Guide to Responsible Eating and our new rating system in The Nordic Wellbeing Cookbook for more about sustainable eating!

A real winner

Now you’ve been very patient, waiting for me to test that plum sauce and see whether it works with savory foods. The good news is that a) it does and it is superb and b) you get an extra recipe for plums which cropped up in the process!

I served the following plum sauce over pork served with braised apples and red cabbage, and boiled potatoes. My children couldn’t get enough of it which should give you the heads up. It has the advantage that it is much more health conscious compared to the better known plum sauce from Asian kitchens.

Savory Plum Sauce

1 liter or 1 quart plums, halved and pitted
3 dl or 1 1/3 cups dry white wine
2 tbsps apple cider vinegar
3 tbsps honey

Cook the plums covered on low heat in dry white wine and vinegar.  Once the plums are soft, allow to cool and press through a strainer. Place the plum liquid into a clean cooking pot and add honey. Allow to cook on low heat uncovered until the volume of the sauce has reduced by half.  Serve warm or cold over pork, potatoes or other.

Making the sauce didn’t exactly take care of the copious quantities of plums I had picked from my tree. I even needed a friend to help me pick them and suggested she take a basket home. We both came to the conclusion that the best thing to do in order to bottle this sunshine was to make some plum jam. This recipe is divine:

Bottled sunshine

Plum Jam with Lemon & Cinammon

1 liter or 1 quart plums, halved and pitted
500 grams or 1 lb sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
grated rind of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp natrium bensoate

Clean glass jars with tops for bottling

Combine all jam ingredients in a pot and blend with a wooden spoon, cover and cook over low heat. Once the sugar has dissolved and the jam is gently bubbling, remove from heat and skim away the ‘foam’ at the surface of the jam. Blend the natrium bensoate in a spoon or two of jam and add to the pot, blending thoroughly. Remove the cinnamon sticks. Pot the jam immediately.

We love them at nordicwellbeing.com!

My grandmother always used to say that most things that you prepare taste even better the next day if you rehash them a little bit. I guess she had to develop this approach having lived through two world wars. The thing is, I tend to agree with her. I don’t know whether it has to do with actual taste or just the satisfaction of not wasting food.

Who doesn’t have a sealed tub of leftover cooked pasta in their refrigerator? Please raise your hand. Aha! As I suspected, no one is raising their hand. As I had just pulled this year’s beets out of the ground in my kitchen garden yet didn’t feel like spending too much time cooking, I decided to put two and two together and came up with this little number that is just superb. I know you must think that we are beet-lovers at nordicwellbeing.com (yes we are! see our Nordic Wellbeing Cookbook).

Beet Pasta
(per person to be served)

50-100 g or 2-3 oz leftover cooked pasta or cook up some new
2 medium beets, cooked*
30g  or 1 oz. Goat’s cheese: feta or chevre
2-3 tbsps roughly chopped hazelnuts
Olive oil for drizzling
Salt/Pepper

Place the pasta in a microwave-proof bowl. Chop beets into bite-size wedges and add to the pasta without blending. Crumble over goat’s cheese and add hazelnuts. Cover and heat in the microwave until warm (1-2 minutes on maximum). Drizzle over the olive oil, season with salt and pepper and toss. Enjoy with a green salad.

* Cooking beets: Remove most of the stalk leaving about 2-3 cm or 1 inch on the beetroot. Wash and place in a cooking pot. Cover with water and add a bit of salt. Bring to boil and then lower heat leaving to cook about 30 minutes or until you can easily pierce the beets with a fork or other. Drain away the water and allow to cool. Remove the skin to use in food preparation. It should slide off easily.

If you do like beets (a wise health choice), please look no further, check Paavo’s Bytes and The Nordic Wellbeing Cookbook.

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Along the lines of food and frugality, please do check out the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm which is now home to the Manna Exhibition which has toured Sweden, Denmark and the US. The new cafe, MatMekka, established simultaneously with the exhibition is well worth a visit!

Scandinavian Sushi

When first I came to Scandinavia I worked for a Danish company based just outside of Copenhagen. In their cafeteria on every day of the week one could choose from several different types of pickled herring combined with various toppings and several different types of bread, many of them dark and grainy. I wasn’t wild about it at first, but it grew on me. I began to miss my pickled herring smörrebröd when I sat in London pubs – England was my other base during this phase of life.

Now that I have been living in Sweden for 13 years, I know that the summer cannot pass without a jar of sill or pickled herring in the refrigerator. There are many types that you can purchase in the shops, prepared in almost every imaginable marinade. The classic in Sweden is to lay a few slices on a starter plate with boiled new potatoes (peel unremoved) and soured cream. It is an elegant and exotic start to a meal even if you come from these parts. Sill is also a highlight at Christmas although at that time of year served with crisp bread rather than potatoes….but that is too far away to worry about just now.

Sill doesn’t feel like something you want to consume too much of at once. It has a richness as a result of the fact that herring is an oily fish and a strong flavor, imparted by the marinade, that makes small quantities in starter portions just right.

For some years there have been health concerns about the consumption of herring from the Baltic sea which was heavily contaminated by PCBs (Polychlorinated Byphenals used in refrigeration), methylmercury and dioxin-like compounds during the 1960s and 70s. In addition, overfishing severely reduced herring stocks to dangerously low levels.  The news for the Baltic seems positive, with sinking levels of these pollutants and collaborative efforts to control fishing. Still, best advice is to consume Atlantic or Pacific herring up to two times per week. If you are expecting, avoid consumption of fish from the Baltic entirely.

The good news is that sill is one of three types of oily fish (the others are mackerel and salmon) rich in Omega-3 fatty acids which protect against heart disease, among other clear health benefits. These fish are a great way to get the healthy fats that your body needs without eating ‘fat food’.

So, what is the trick for coming up with that tangy tasting sill that is one of the most common features of the Scandinavian smörgåsbord? Here is a basic recipe that you can vary according to taste and what herbs you’ve got available. You can consider adding other flavors such as juniper berries, sherry or garlic.

Pickled Herring

1 dl or 1/2 cup vinegar
6 dl or 2 1/2 cups water
3 dl or 1 1/3 cups sugar
800 g or 1.8 lbs (28 ounces) canned herring
20 Black and white pepper corns
2 red onions, sliced thinly
4 bay leaves
Clean pickling jars

Blend the vinegar, water and sugar and bring to simmering. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. During this time, chop the herring fillets into 2-3 cm or about 1 inch chunks and layer in clean jars with pepper corns, onions and bay leaves. Pour over the liquid so that it covers the fish and fills the whole jar. Seal and allow to marinade for 4 days.

Serve with your favorite dark bread, potatoes, sour cream and perhaps, for that extra health and flavor kick, beet root salad. The possibilities are endless.