Bloglagged

The recent low frequency of blogging is primarily due to having had an overnight staying visitor for the past 2 weeks - not that we stopped cooking for that reason, but there was less time for blogging.
Actually, I used the circumstances to run a couple of my favorites again .. such as chicken quesadilla and beef tongue tacos.
Anyway. I guess this post is mainly to say I'm still alive - no blogging is expected for the next 10 days as I'll be on vacation far from home.

Rhino Chasers

A while ago I was in LA and had some very nice Korean BBQ in Koreatown. On the way back to the car we dropped into a small store to pick up a few drinks for later. Scanning the fridges my eyes suddenly noticed a lonely rhino - i.e. a single of bottle of this beer on the left. I was unfamiliar, hadn't even heard of it before, and I found the name interesting, so I felt I had to buy it and try it out.

While I admit it went down very easy, and was nicely refreshing on a warm night, I don't think I'll go out of my way to get it again.. actually I didn't really find it to be anything special.

Creamy Cheesy Eggplant

In honesty this was somewhat inspired by these zucchinis I saw over on Spis Ordentligt, but it turned out quite nicely, so here it is anyway.

Ingredients:
- 1 eggplant
- 125 mL (1/2 cup) cream
- grated pecorino
- salt and pepper

Slice the eggplant in 6 mm (1/4 inch) slices and place them in a baking pan, season with salt and pepper, pour the cream over it and finally a little bit of grated pecorino. Put in the oven on high heat till the cheese looks nice golden and crisp. CAREFUL: On high heat DO NOT leave in the oven for too long - suddenly the cream will turn to charcoal.

I served it with mushroom tortellini, tomato sauce and coarsely chopped fresh leaves of basil.

Risotto

According to my previous roomies the definition of goulash was anything I cooked .. while that is a bit unfair I do have a tendency towards cooking improvised dinners that start with frying bacon in a large pot and continues by adding ingredients until I have 6 or more servings of .. well, gulasch might be one way to describe it.
This, however, I would call a risotto.

Ingredients:
- 150 g (5 oz) bacon (cut in small pieces)
- 1 large (red) onion (finely chopped)
- 4 cloves garlic (mashed)
- 2 serrano chilis (finely chopped)
- 500 g (1 lb) crimini mushrooms (coarsely chopped)
- 500 mL (2 cups) arborio rice
- 250 mL (1 cup) wild rice
- 500 mL (2 cups) white wine
- 1 L (1 quart) chicken boullion
- 125 mL (1/2 cup) cream
- 125 mL (1/2 cup) grated pecorino
- salt & pepper
- fresh ginger (finely diced)

In a large thick-walled pot fry the bacon, then add the onion, garlic, chili and ginger. After a few minutes add the mushrooms and a few minutes later add all the rice - stir until the rice are well-coated and translucent. Reduce to medium heat and add 1/3 of the wine. With occasional stirring let the liquid reduce, then add more wine, repeat. Using the same technique continue with the chicken boullion in 4 portions of equal volume. When this proces is done, reduce to low heat, add the cream and the cheese, as well as salt and pepper to taste. Stir till well mixed, turn off heat and let sit for a few minutes before serving.

The result is quite dense, so be careful not to serve too much.

Nopales con Huevo

When I first arrived in California some 5 years ago and started examining the goods on offer at the local supermarkets I was quite intrigued to find jars of nopales - i.e. cactus. I quickly bought some and set about trying to incorporate them in my cooking.. unfortunately this all long time before I started this blog and I guess I didn't take notes (well, I didn't find any such around my belongings, anyway).
Having recently purchased Diana Kennedy's The Essential Cuisines of Mexico (in order to assist my growing interest in the mexican cuisine) and semi-recently discovered the fresh nopales in a local supermarket I've decided - after years of absence - to revisit the cactus with a more authentic touch.
This then happened within the frame of our Sunday tradition of having eggs for breakfast in the shape of Nopales con huevo..

Ingredients:
- oil
- 1 lb (450 g) raw nopales, cleaned and diced
- 2 tomatoes, diced
- 1 small onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, finely diced
- 1 serrano chili, finely diced
- salt
- 4 eggs
- 6 tortillas

Heat the oil in a skillet, add everything except the eggs and cook over medium heat for about 25 minutes - should be kind of dry at this point.[1] Break the eggs into the mixture and stir till set. Serve on heated tortillas.

While I was quite happy with the result my muse was of the opinion that there was a little too much cactus relative to the other ingredients.

[1] The dryness is kind of important - otherwise the eggs don't set so nicely. Actually here I don't really understand Diana Kennedy's recipe: It says to cover while cooking on medium heat till the mix is dry. Covering tends to keep in the juices a little too well. I ended up covering for the first 15 minutes, then removing the cover and turning up the heat for the last 10 minutes to get them proper dry.

B.L.A.S.T.

...that is the Bacon Lettuce Avocado Sprouts & Tomato sandwich. The idea for this one came about as we ate a BLT with alfalfa sprouts at the local eatery Silvergreens and I thought: "Just add avocado and it would be a blast...". Mrs. Erator suggested substituting prosciutto for the bacon, but that would then become a SPLAT sandwich. Maybe some other time.

Ingredients:
- bacon [1]
- 1 tomato
- leaves of romaine lettuce [2]
- clover sprouts
- 1 avocado
- ciabatta bread

Fry bacon, slice the tomato and the avocado, rinse the lettuce and toast the bread. Assemble the sandwich: Bread, bacon, tomato, lettuce, sprouts, avocado[3], and bread again. Enjoy immediately!

[1] No, I'm not going to tell you how much bacon to use - you know how much bacon you want in your bacon sandwich.
[2] Same as for bacon.
[3] The order is not really important, but it works nicely to put the avocodo and the sprouts next to each other because the avocado help keep the sprouts in place.

Cod & Goat Cheese in Bell Peppers

I'm not really sure how this recipe came about.. I thought I read it somewhere, but when I searched for it again I couldn't find it. Maybe I dreamt it up or misunderstood something I heard. Anyway, these things are not so important - it is much more important that this is delicious.

Ingredients:
- 225 g (0.5 lb) cod fillet
- 2 red bell peppers
- 6 scallions
- 100 g (3.5 oz) goat cheese
- salt & pepper

Clean the bell peppers, cut them in half and remove the seeds. In a bowl mix diced cod fillet [1], finely cut scallions, goat cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Fill the cod & cheese mix in the bell peppers and put them in the oven at 175 C (350 F) for 30-40 minutes.

Serving suggestion: With a cold sauce made from 1 dL (1/2 cup) yogurt, 1 tbsp mustard, salt, pepper and tarragon as well as red rice. Actually this was my first time ever cooking red rice, I just recently found some a my local Indochina Market. The taste was somewhat similar to brown rice, but they cook faster than these and look pretty - the latter aspect I'm sure I'll try to utilize in future dishes.

[1] If you have a grinder, I'm sure ground cod would work nicely.

Banana cake

My "secret" to banana cake is - quite simply - to use more banana than the original recipe. If banana cake made with 1 banana is excellent, then banana cake made with 2 bananas must be even better - right?

Ingredients:
- 100 g (4 oz) shortening
- 2 dL (1 cup) flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 dL (1 cup) sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla sugar *
- 3 eggs
- 2 bananas (preferably well-ripened)
- 100 g (4 oz) dark chocolate

Melt the shortening and let it stand to cool off a bit. In a small bowl mix the flour and the baking powder. In a larger bowl whip the sugar, vanilla and eggs well (so it becomes a white foam). Now stir in the flour and the melted shortening in portions. Mash the bananas and mix them in the dough. Pour the dough in a bread pan that you have greased (e.g. with shortening) and floured - this makes it a lot easier to the cake out of the pan in one piece.

NB: Do NOT fill to the brim - the dough will rise during baking.

Bake at 175 C (350 F) for 55 minutes. Let it cool a little bit before flipping it out on a plate and covering with melted dark chocolate. The easiest way is to melt chocolate is in the microwave oven, but since I don't have one here I made the water bath as you can see in the photo.

Let it sit until the chocolate stiffens at least a little bit, but it will take hours before it becomes hard again at room temperature.

* see here.

Stuffed Chicken Breast

Encouraged by my luck with the stuffed pork tenderloin recently I decided to try my hand at these stuffed chicken breasts - somewhat modified from the way I saw them made previously, not least due to my memory failing me. It's not entirely implausible that my version is less authentically Italian than the one I based it off.

Ingredients:
- 2 chicken breast fillets
- 100 g (3.5 oz) roasted bell pepper
- 75 g (2.5 oz) walnut pieces
- 25 g (1 oz) grated pecorino cheese
- 2 cloves garlic
- fresh basil
- salt & pepper

Additionals:
- 1/2 cup rice
- 1 cup water
- salt

- 1/2 onion
- 1 large tomato
- dash of cream

Make a stuffing of cut roasted bell pepper, walnut pieces, mashed garlic, grated pecorino cheese, salt, pepper, and freshly cut basil. Cut pockets in the chicken breast fillets leaving about 1 cm (1/2 inch) of meat to all sides if possible, and fill the pockets with the stuffing. Close the fillets again - I used a few tooth picks, but if you have something more fancy go ahead and use that instead.
Sear in a pan for a couple of minutes on each side, then cover and leave on medium-low heat while cooking the rice. When the rice are done the chicken is done, and some juices have collected in the pan - take out the fillets, turn up the heat and add coarsely chopped onion, fry these till soft. Then add diced tomato, salt, pepper and a dash of cream. Let simmer for a few minutes.

Tuna Salad 1

This tuna salad is so simple I can hardly believe it's also so good. But it is. This is classic recipe I remember from my childhood and it's still good - though I have since picked up a couple of other recipes (which I will get back to later).

Ingredients:
- 2 cans tuna (drained)
- 1 large tomato
- 1 cucumber
- 10 tbsp sour cream
- salt & pepper

Open the cans of tuna, drain, and put in a bowl. Add salt and pepper and let stand while cutting the cucumber and the tomato (dices). Add sour cream and mix it. Add lastly the tomato and cucumber pieces.

Goes well with several kinds of bread - this time we had it with pita breads.

Köfte

While still in the kitchen my muse also made köfte, e.g. meatballs of ground lamb with a flavour I'd call middle eastern.

Ingredients:
- 500 g (1 lb) ground lamb
- 1 egg
- 1/2 onion
- chopped fresh parsley
- chopped fresh cilantro
- mint (dried or fresh)
- salt and pepper

Dice the onion relatively finely and mix it with the ground lamb, spices and the egg. Form into meatballs and fry on the pan (or grill on skewers).
Served this time with cabbage couscous salad and a bit of hummus.

Cabbage & Couscous Salad

The other day I let my muse (how does Mrs. Erator sound?) be in charge of the kitchen. The result was this wonderfully fresh cabbage & couscous salad.

Ingredients:
- 2.5 dL (1 cup) dry couscous
- 5 dL (2 cups) water[1]
- 1 small/medium cabbage
- 1 small onion
- basil (either dried, or chopped fresh)
- chopped fresh italian parsley
- ground cumin, salt, & pepper

Bring the water to a boil, turn off the heat and pour in the couscous, cover and let stand for 5 minutes. Then mix in the spices as well as medium finely chopped onion and cabbage. Makes a very nice salad, could probably be eaten on its own, but it also goes very well with, e.g. meatballs of various kinds.

[1] The package actually recommends 1 cup water per cup of couscous, but in our opinion the resulting couscous is then too dry.

Carne Asada I

Carne Asada is basically just thin cuts of beef grilled (or fried - if like me you can't be bothered with setting up a grill). While I've enjoyed it in the past when others have made it, I'm relatively new to preparing it. My first attempt at it turned out somewhat disappointing and I reckoned that marinating the beef would be essential. This turned out much better.

Ingredients:
- 2 pieces thin cut beef
- 2 limes
- 3 cloves garlic
- crushed dried red chillies
- ground coriander, ground cumin

Mix a marinade of lime juice, mashed garlic and spices - put in the beef and let sit in the fridge for about 24 hours. Fry or grill. Cut in strips and serve, e.g. on tacos with grated cheddar, lettuce, sour cream, avocado, salsa of onion and orange cherry tomatoes. Rice and pinto beans on the side.

Zucchini Cake

I told you the zucchini plants give quite a prolific harvest - so here we go again with another use for them. This is another recipe I lifted from my mother, and ironically she has it filed as "American Zucchini Cake". This is one out of relatively few recipes that call for mixing baking soda with baking powder - all the more curious as the latter is already a mixture of baking soda and a solid acid. I guess it must be a question of getting the acidity right.

Ingredients:
- 350 g (12 oz) flour
- 200 g (7 oz) sugar
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 75 g (3 oz) walnut pieces
- 2 dL (~ 1 cup) canola oil
- 1 tsp liquid vanilla flavour^[1]
- 3 eggs
- 500 g (~ 1 lb) grated zucchini^[2]

Mix the dry ingredients well, then stir in the oil, vanilla, lightly whisked eggs and grated zucchini. Pour into a baking pan and bake at 175 C (350 F) for about an hour to 1 ¹/₂ hours depending on the size of the baking pan.

^[1] My original recipe says 2 tsp vanilla sugar, but I'm currently out, so we went for this - seemed about right.
^[2] If you like raisins - add some to the batter.

Potato/Green Bean Salad & Bratwursts

Surfing the web we found this balsamic potato and green bean salad, which we decided to modify a little bit - not least due to the ingredients we had on hand, but also to modify the amount of dressing a bit. We decided to go with bratwursts as company for this potato salad.

Ingredients:
- 1.5 lbs small potatoes
- 1 lb green beans
- 1 bunch (12-15) radishes
- ¹/₂ red onion
- 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- juice of ¹/₂ lime
- 2 tsp dijon mustard
- ¹/₂ tsp sugar
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- pepper
- 1 beer
- water
- bratwursts

Boil the potatoes in salted water, in a pot large enough to throw in the beans for the last 3 minutes. When done, pour off the water and let cool a little bit.

In a second pot bring 1 beer^[1] mixed with an equal volume of water to a boil - NB: Be careful as it can very easily foam a lot and spill over. Add the sausages when the water (beer) is boiling and boil lightly while finishing the potato salad.

In a bowl mix vinegar, mustard, lime juice, sugar, pepper, and oil. Add finely diced onion and sliced radishes. Now add the potatoes and the beans and toss to coat these with the dressing.

Finally, take the sausages out of the water (beer)^[2] and fry on the pan just to give them a nicely brown colour.

Serve with mustard. In our opinion this is 3 (maybe 4) servings.

^[1] I used a Trader Joe's Bavarian Hefeweizen, but that is hardly essential.
^[2] Although I'm normally strongly opposed to the idea of throwing away beer, I have to say I made an exception with this one after having boiled sausages in it.

Stuffed Zucchini

One of my friends grows zucchinis in his garden and since the plants always give quite a prolific harvest he has been nice enough to leave a few on the plant for a little extra time and give them to me. Thus I have obtained large zucchinis, allowing me to cook the dish I alluded to earlier.

Ingredients:
- 1 large zucchini
- olive oil
- 1 large onion
- 6 large tomatoes
- 4 cloves garlic
- handfull fresh basil
- 100 g (4 oz) butter
- 2 1/2 dL (1 cup) grated cheese
- 5 tbsp (panko) bread crumbs
- approx. 1/16 L (2 fl. oz.) cream
- salt and pepper

Chop the onion coarsely and heat it in the olive oil for a few minutes before adding coarsely chopped tomatoes, mashed garlic, chopped leaves of fresh basil, salt and pepper. Leave to simmer while preparing the other parts.

Melt the butter, mix in finely grated cheese - such as Madrigal baby swiss, or any other pale, semi-soft not too strong cheese. Then add the breadcrumbs, salt and pepper. Finally add cream until the texture is like thick oatmeal.

Take the large zucchini, rinse it well before cutting it open along the long axis - they're not particularly hard, so cutting them is quite easy. I only removed the ends because the zucchini I got was too long for my oven. Remove the seeds with a spoon.

Place the tomato/onion mixture in the bottom of a baking pan, then put the zucchinis on top and spread the cheese/bread crumb paste in the cavity where the seeds used to be. Put in the oven at 200 C (400 F) for about 40 minutes - then up the heat to 220 C (440 F) for about 5 minutes. The cheese/bread crumb paste should turn golden brown.

Serve hot, prefeably with fresh baked buns.

If you have leftovers the dish actually goes quite well cold too.

Buns

2021-02-28: UPDATED RECIPE HERE

This is the recipe for buns I learned from my mother - glancing in her cooking notes I gather she learned it from "Magda". The recipe can be changed quite a bit - more or fewer grains, different seeds, different toppings - but the following is a pretty typical example.

Ingredients:

 - 5 dL (2 cups) milk

 - 3 eggs

 - 150 g (2/3 cup) melted shortening

 - 1 tbsp sugar

 - 1 tsp salt

 - 100 g (3.5 oz) fresh yeast OR 21 g (3/4 oz) dry yeast 

- 750 g (27 oz) flour

 - 150 g (5 oz) oat bran

 - 150 g (5 oz) sunflower seeds or walnut pieces

 - poppy seeds

If using fresh yeast: Put the milk and the shortening in a pot and heat on low till shortening is melted - should only be lukewarm, then dissolve fresh yeast in this.

If using dry yeast: Warm the milk in a pot to just above body temperature, dissolve the dry yeast in this and let stand for about half an hour. Then add melted, cooled shortening.

For both types of yeast: Add to the mixture, 2 of the eggs, the sugar, the salt, the oatbran, the sunflower seeds and/or walnuts. About 675 g (24 oz) flour is mixed in in portions - the resulting dough should be sticky. Cover the dough and leave it rise for about half an hour. Shape into buns, remembering to put flour on your hands as the dough is still sticky - about 75 g (3 oz) of flour was used for this.

Place on baking sheet with some space between and let rise for another 20 minutes. Then whisk the remaining egg and brush the buns, add poppy seeds on top. Bake in the middle of the oven at 220 C (440 F) for about 12 minutes (should turn golden on top). Makes about 15 buns. Let them cool at least a little bit before eating.

 

Koldskål

Koldskål translates as cold bowl, which gives you a pretty good idea of its primary use: As a refreshing summer dish. There's a number of different ways to make it, but the ingredient on which almost all are based is buttermilk.

Ingredients:
- 1 L (1 quart) buttermilk
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 3 tsp vanilla sugar^[1]
- 400 g (14 oz) plain yogurt
- Juice of ¹/₂ grape fruit

Whip together the sugar, vanilla sugar and grape juice with a (hand-held) mixer, then add the buttermilk and mix well. Lastly add the yoghurt and whip thoroughly.

Serve chilled with rusk.

NB: If left in the fridge for a while, whip it up again before serving.

Update: For a version of koldskål without buttermilk, see here.

^[1] Scandinavian vanilla sugar is a mixture of sugar and vanilla bean ground to a fine powder. I've never actually tried to make it myself. Presumably for this recipe one could easily substitute with vanilla extract, but I never tried to figure out a good conversion table between vanilla sugar and vanilla extract.

Rusk

I was recently told that these are called rusk in English - in Danish they're known as kammerjunkere. While most people in Denmark buy them, it is possible to make them as well (good thing, as I haven't seen them in shops here in southern California).

Ingredients:
- 2 eggs
- 150 g (5.3 oz) sugar
- 50 g (1.8 oz) butter
- 300 g (10.6 oz) flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt

Melt the butter and let it cool off.

Mix the baking powder and the salt with the flour.

Whip the eggs and sugar together using a (hand-held) mixer for about 4 minutes. Add first the melted butter, then the flour mixture. Mix everything together lightly, cover and leave the dough standing in the fridge for at least an hour before shaping into 3 logs of about 35 cm (14 inches) length. Bake for 25 minutes at 200 C (400 F), then let cool for 1-2 minutes before slicing - although here I went for 1 cm (half inch) slices I think 0.5 cm (quater inch) slices would probably give a better result - and putting them back in the oven until crisp and golden (approximately 5-10 minutes, I think). Consider flipping them over halfway through.

Serve with koldskål.

Update: The initial baking time should only be 15-20 minutes and after slicing they should be baked 2 times 5 minutes (flipping them over in between).

Stuffed pork tenderloin

I was thinking about how to use the pork tenderloin I had bought when I saw this .. and I thought to myself: So ein ding muss wir auch haben. Or at least something very similar. I made my stuffing from italian parsley, sundried tomatoes, garlic, an egg, salt, pepper, panko breadcrumbs and the few odd pieces of the meat that was cut away. Since I was all out of cooking string I used tooth picks to hold the rolled tenderloin together while cooking. Served with potato wedges.

While I was quite happy with the result, I can see my technical skills don't quite match those of Chef John - particularly in terms of getting the meat and stuffing so thin as to be able to really roll it.