Pickled Green Tomatoes 1

Here is something I've been wanting to do for a while - ever since I had pickled green tomatoes as a side at a steak house I went to 2 years ago. I had a reminder last year when a friend served me green tomato jam, but somehow it got postponed again. Lately I started thinking about it, and have been on the look-out for some nice green tomatoes. This morning I found some lovely green tomatoes at the local market - pretty small too, which is the best kind for pickled tomatoes.

Ingredients:
- ~ 500 g (1 lb) small green tomatoes
- 1.5 dL (²/₃ cup) vinegar
- 1.5 dL (²/₃ cup) water
- 200 g (7 oz) sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla-infused sugar^[1]
- 4 tsp Atamon^[2]
For storing:
- 2 ¹/₂ L (pint-sized) glass jars

The tomatoes were rinsed, and deep holes were punched in them with a small fork. In a pot, the water, vinegar and sugar was brought to a boil and the tomatoes were added - I used a pot large enough to hold all the tomatoes in a single layer, but if this isn't possible it might be a good idea to do them in batches. The heat was reduced and the tomatoes were boiled for 7-8 minutes.

While boiling the tomatoes, the jars were prepared: to warm them up they were filled with boiling water, allowed to stand a little before pouring out the water. Each jar was then added 1 tsp Atamon which was swirled around in the jar and discarded.

After boiling, the tomatoes were immediately moved to the jars with a slotted spoon. The liquid in the pot was brought back to a boil, then removed from the heat before adding 2 tsp Atamon and the vanilla. The liquid was poured over the tomatoes in the jars, and the jars were closed tight.

Now comes the waiting time - I understand they should stand for at least a couple of weeks before trying to enjoy them.


Update: It turns out they are pretty close to what I was going for. They are a little firmer than I expected and perhaps the vanilla flavour is a bit too much. For uses see here.

^[1] I'm really not sure if I should have used vanilla pod or simply vanilla seeds. Crossing my fingers here.
^[2] Brand-name aqueous solution of sodium benzoate used as the preservative here.

Lentil Potato Stew

With heavy inspiration from this recipe, I first tried this dish back in January when the land was covered in fluffy white blanket and it was possible to walk on the ice from island to island. It's not nearly that cold yet, although the weather is changing more and more for fall these days. In my hands this soup became so think I'd call it a stew - or at least borderline so.




Ingredients:
- 125 g (4-5 oz) bacon, cut in smaller pieces
- 2 yellow onions, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 2 jalapeño chillies, finely chopped
- fresh ginger, finely diced
- yellow curry powder
- turmeric
- 1.8 kg (4 lbs) potatoes, diced
- scoop of flour
- 2 L (¹/₂ gallon) chicken stock
- 500 g (~ 1 lb) green lentils
- salt
- cilantro, for serving




In a large pot, the bacon was fried on medium-high. When crisp the bacon was removed, but the fat that had been rendered out was left in the pot. To this was added onion, garlic, chilli, ginger, curry powder and turmeric.^[1] When the onion had softened, the potato dices where added. A scoop of flour was added and the contents of the pot were stirred - just so the flour coated the potatoes. Then the chicken stock and the lentils were added. The pot was brought to a boil before covering and reducing the heat. After simmering for about an hour the stew was seasoned to taste with salt and served with bacon bits and freshly chopped cilantro on top.

^[1] Yellow curry powder of course contains turmeric, but I wanted a blend that was richer in turmeric.

Almonds

When my parents came to visit me in California we rented a car and headed for a national park. While I was busy at the wheel observing the road ahead, my parents were busy observing everything else, discussing plants and animals as we went along. Somewhere in the Central Valley, I understood, we were passing by some almond plantations. And for all I know that's about as close as I've ever been to an almond tree.

Interestingly, I never saw fresh almonds for sale while I lived in California (despite California being the single largest almond producer world-wide). While on vacation in southern France this summer, I suddenly found fresh almonds at the supermarket one day. Needless to say, I bought a handful just to have a look.


The fresh almonds (lower left corner) could be peeled (with some effort) to leave the shell bare (upper right corner). Cracking the shell of a fresh almond revealed the skin of the almond below which there was a white, rather soft nut that didn't taste all that much like the almonds I usually get - I'd say the taste was reminiscent of fresh beechnuts (although I haven't had those in many years).

Letting the almonds dry for a month or so, the peel could no longer readily be removed from the shell. Cracking open the shell at this stage revealed a dried, shrunk almond (upper left corner). Although very thin and having a funny texture, this almond tasted much more like the almonds I usually get. Soaking the dry almond in cold water overnight, produced nuts (lower right corner) there were quite similar to the ones found when cracking open the fresh almonds.

Serbian Stuffed Peppers (2)

As I believe I have mentioned around here recently, I suddenly find myself with better options for shopping chillies after I moved. When I saw the nice big bags of dried Anaheim and New Mexico chillies I remembered I had been told that Serbian stuffed peppers could be made using dried peppers. This excited me as I have had a hard time finding suitably hot, large chillies here in Sweden, so I decided to give it a go.

For the stuffing, I followed the old recipe (except for using a mixture of ground beef and pork). For the peppers I took a total of 12 dried Anaheim and New Mexico chillies, and let them soak in hot water for 20-30 minutes before de-seeding them. In hindsight I think it might have been easier to remove the veins before soaking them, but it wasn't too bad.

Unfortunately the chillies weren't as large as I had expected them to be after soaking. This meant that they were rather tedious to stuff, and that most of the 'stuffing' had to go in the tray not inside any peppers. For the water, I used the same water as I had soaked the chillies in (in order to add more flavour to the dish).

The chillies used had a very nice flavour - but I was quite disappointed regarding their hotness. Not nearly hot enough.

Kladdkaka

There's chocolate cake and there's chocolate cake - and then there's kladdkaka. I guess it's symptomatic of my level of proficiency in Swedish that until recently I though kladdkaka was simply an abbreviation from chokladkaka, meaning 'chocolate cake' (yes, I assumed wrongly that chocolate in Swedish was spelled chokladd with double 'd') - when in fact it simply means 'goo cake'. The name hints at the fact that when done right, the centre of the cake is in fact quite gooey - soft, viscous and not at all dry.

By now you might be thinking of a good moist brownie - which is essentially what kladdkaka is. Tradition dictates that it is round and that wedges are served with a dollop of whipped cream. This was how I first encountered it, in the cafés in Stockholm where it is one of the staple cakes along with the ubiquitous cinnamon rolls.

I'd been wanting to try my hand at it for a while when a friend directed my attention towards the winning recipe (in Swedish) from the 2009 Swedish championships in kladdkaka (!!) - which I proceed to describe below (with minor modifications). The spiced fudge included in this recipe is pure luxury - the kladdkaka without the fudge is perfectly delicious in it's own right - although I suspect the fudge was part of what set it apart to become the winning entry in the kladdkaka competition.

Ingredients:
- 2 eggs
- 340 g (12 oz) sugar
- 90 g (¹/₅ lb) flour
- 40 g (1.4 oz) powdered cocoa
- 1 tsp vanilla sugar
- ¹/₄ tsp salt
- 100 g (3.5 oz) unsalted butter, melted
fudge:
- 1.5 dL (²/₃ cup) cream
- 1 tsp honey
- 2 tsp powdered cinnamon
- 2 tsp powdered cardamom
- 200 g (7 oz) milk chocolate
to serve:
- whipped cream

The eggs and the sugar were whipped to a white foamy mass. Separately, the flour was mixed with cocoa, vanilla sugar and salt before stirring it into the sugar-egg mass. Lastly, melted butter was stirred in before pouring the batter into a greased and floured spring form (diameter ~ 22 cm / 8.5 inches). The cake was baked in the bottom of the oven at 175 C (350 F) for 20 minutes.


While the cake was cooling a bit, the fudge was prepared. This is where I deviated from the original recipe: as I don't have a mortar I used powdered cinnamon and cardamom rather than freshly (lightly) crushed cinnamon sticks and cardamom seeds. The original recipe brings the cream, honey and spices to a boil, then lets it stand for minutes to extract flavours from the spices before reheating, filtering off the bulk of the cinnamon sticks and cardamom seeds and mixing with the milk chocolate. Since I used powdered spices, there was no need for filtration, and thus no real reason to let the warm cream stand to extract flavours - I simply let the cream stand long enough to break the milk chocolate to bits before mixing.

The fudge was applied on top of the cake and the whole thing was cooled in the fridge for 1.5 hours before serving with freshly whipped cream - delicious perfection.

It's rather heavy, so I didn't have enough guests to finish it off right away. Leaving it in the fridge overnight, I found that the texture wasn't quite right the next day - at least not when coming straight out of the fridge. Also, I do think less fudge could suffice.