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.

It's October again...

October wouldn’t be October without an apple recipe. At Sweden’s smallest factory, which happens to be devoted to apple products, I tasted the most heavenly little apple cake with a cup of freshly brewed coffee. I tasted carefully in order to record the ingredients on my tongue and recreate at home. Here is what I came up with and it is very good. The upside is that you can eat it in thin, small slices. The downside is that it does contain those bad boys, refined white flour, sugar and butter. This recipe contains no eggs.

Thin Apple Cake

4-5 tart medium-sized apples peeled and cut into slices
juice of 1/2 lemon
2.5 dl or 1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsps vanilla sugar
2 dl or 3/4 cup sugar
1.5 dl or 1/2 cup dessicated coconut
100 g or 3.5 oz. butter
4-5 dl or 1.5- 2 cups milk

Preheat the oven to 200 C or 392 F. Grease a pie dish. Prepare the apples and toss in lemon juice. Melt the butter in a pan, remove from the heat and blend in milk. Start with 4 dl. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, make a well in them and pour in the butter and milk liquid. Blend with a hand-held beater. The batter should not be too stiff. Add milk if it is hard to mix with the beater. Pour the apples into the batter and mix into the liquid. Pour the batter into the pie dish. Bake for 20 minutes or until lightly browned.

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Learn more about  Sweden’s smallest factory devoted to apples at Julie’s Nordic Island.

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!

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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.

The magic of a plum tree

The plum trees in my garden have decided that this is their year! Standing on the ‘inside’ of a plum tree next to the trunk with the branches curving in like an igloo all around you is quite an experience. Everywhere I look the rich fruit pours down and I wonder whether I have gone to heaven. Fortunately, not yet…I’m quite alive so far and have been thinking about all of the many fine recipes I can prepare with these beauties.

First, to encourage you to enjoy plums, here’s the nutritional scoop on them. Plums are giving blueberries competition when it comes to antioxidant value (antioxidants fight free radicals associated with cancer and heart disease). In difficult economic times they could even be a preferable choice since a single plum can give you just as effective an antioxidant boost as a handful of more expensive blueberries.  Plums are also famous for their beneficial effects in encouraging good digestion due to a substance under the skin.

Apart from eating them just as they are, sweet and delicious, this season, it is hard to resist making a sweet dessert with them.  Here is my recipe for plums under a blanket which suits the cooling weather of September and isn’t too dangerous for your wasteline in delicate quantities.

Plums under a Blanket

800 g or 1.8 lbs plums
3/4 dl or 1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 dl or just under 1 cup white flour
1.5 dl or 1/2 cup wheat germ
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 dl or 1/3 cup sugar
100 g or 3.5 oz butter
1 egg
1.5 dl or 1/2 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 125 C or 257 F.

Plums under a blanket

Rinse the plums and pat dry. Cut in half, remove the pit and place in a cooking pot. Add sugar and cinnamon and cook on medium heat for up to five minutes so that the sugar blends into the fruit. Remove from heat.

Combine the dry ingredients for the blanket in a food processor and add butter cut into chunks, egg and milk. Blend until an even batter.

Place plums in an oven-proof dish and cover with the batter. Bake 30-40 minutes and serve warm. Of course, a dollop of cream is nice but not necessary.

I’ll be exploring making a savory plum sauce this evening. If it’s successful, watch this space!  Until then, check the Nordic Wellbeing Cookbook.

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!

Raw Honey

Last night I tried out a few experimental recipes from various cookbooks I have in my kitchen library but it was my own dessert recipe, whipped up on the spur of the moment, that I got that 5 stars for.

The secret to this lovely sweet is the power of warmed, newly harvested raw honey. When I say raw, I mean honey that has not been preheated and remixed with sugar by the food industry. You can find it sold in the small boutiques and by beekeepers in your area.  As you know, I am a beekeeper, so it isn’t hard for me to find raw honey.

I had six very mature bananas resting in the fruit bowl on my kitchen counter, last year’s rosewater (liquid from aromatic rose petals immersed in brandy) and more jars of newly harvested honey than I can count, I set to work as follows:

Flambéd Fruit with Honey
Serves 4

4 mature (but not black) bananas peeled and halved lengthwise (it doesn’t matter if the bananas break into smaller pieces)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
50 g or 2 oz butter for sautéing
1 dl or 1/2 cup brandy, warmed
1 dl or 1/2 cup raw honey
Vanilla ice cream or whipping cream

Warm the honey in a small pan. Do not allow to boil. Whip the cream or remove the vanilla ice cream from the freezer. Place 4 dessert bowls on the counter so that it is easy to assemble the dessert quickly and serve.

Douse the newly sliced bananas in lemon juice. Sauté the bananas in a thick-bottomed pan in butter until lightly browned. Don’t over-handle the bananas as they will become mushy. Flambé the bananas for your dining audience by momentarily bringing the pan near the table, throwing the warm brandy over the bananas and setting it alight. As soon as the flame has died down, spoon the bananas into the bowls and top with one scoop of vanilla ice cream plus a generous drizzle of warm honey. Serve immediately.

As with all desserts, in fact all foods, please remember to stick to small portions. This is a lovely sweet to round off the meal, not the main feature of a second meal after the first meal!

Gold of the Forest

It’s been a variable summer so far with a bit more rain than most Nordic sunseekers like to see. Yet for those of us who are chantarelle lovers it looks like this is already a remarkable year. The damp forest floors of Scandinavia are already covered in ‘forest gold’, and when my husband found them growing out of the sandy soil under the swings in our children’s playground at our island home, we realized that it was time to take down the mushroom picking baskets hanging from the kitchen ceiling and head out.

The culinary mythology around what to do with wild mushrooms once they are in the basket on your kitchen counter is contradictory as it is extensive. ‘Never do this’ and ‘never do that’ are a common means of expressing advice around the precious annual fungi finds. Butter companies adore this time of year and if you happen to be in a Nordic subway station from August until October, you’ll notice that chantarelles are portrayed on billboards as the inseparable buddies of a lump of butter.

Fine if you like butter, but my advice is not to be swayed. Years ago I walked the forests around my island with one of Sweden’s most respected mushroom experts, Bo Nylen, and he reminded me always when I got home to do the following with the most delicious edible mushrooms:

Basic Mushroom Recipe (particularly chantarelles and porcini)

Wild mushrooms (consume only if you are absolutely certain about what you have picked!)
Ecological Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1-2 garlic cloves (optional)
Salt

Clean the mushrooms with a cooking brush (anything resembling a small basting brush is fine). Preserve as much of the mushroom as possible for eating, including the stem. Do not wash in water as the mushrooms become…well…I cannot find another word: mushy. Chop the mushrooms into cross-sections or just roughly. With porcini, make sure that the insects and worms have not gotten into the mushroom first. Heat a thick bottomed sauteing pan with a few tablespoons of ecological extra virgin olive oil. Lower the heat to medium and add the mushrooms. Drain away the excess liquid in the pan after a couple of minutes of sauteing and add some extra olive oil, the crushed garlic and a pinch of salt. Saute until the mushrooms become ever so slightly browned (not burned). Serve on a slice of toast with sour cream and chives or use in a wide range of other dishes. See, for instance, Warm Mushroom Wraps.

My friend, Rune Kalf-Hansen, has just come out with a fabulous new cookbook in Swedish language called Kalf-Hansens Ekologiska Kök. If you do read and understand Swedish, you will enjoy his mouth-watering recipe for Kantarellpiroger (his version of Chantarelle Wraps). Rune’s cuisine gives eating seasonally new meaning and he has devoted decades to making people understand why it is important. An authentic work in every way!

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.