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.

Chicken Quesadilla

Somewhat ironically perhaps, I learned how to make quesadilla from a German friend (so perhaps I should call them käse-dilla). Here is my slightly modified version.

Ingredients:
- fillet of chicken breast
- grated sharp cheddar
- scallion
- cilantro
- paprika, cumin, caraway
- tortilla (burrito size)

Season the chicken with ground cumin, paprika and caraway seeds and cook in the pan - I like to add either wine or bourbon if at any time it looks like getting too dry before I think the meat is done. When done, slice the meat.

In a large pan, preferably of the non-stick variety, place a tortilla, then a layer of grated cheese, then pieces of chicken together with chopped cilantro and scallion, then another layer of grated cheese and one more tortilla. Heat until tortilla browns (and cheese inside melts) - careful: once brown, the tortilla will quickly continue on to black (i.e. burnt) if left on the heat - and flip over for similar treatment of the other side. The flipping itself might take a little practice - try to avoid spilling any of the cheese when flipping as the cheese on the hot pan burns quite readily and makes it a lot more difficult to keep the tortilla from sticking to the pan (and getting burnt).

Serve with black beans and a scoop of sour creme.

(Parsley)-Banana Herring

Inspired by the TGWRT#2 event (although much too late to really participate) I decided to try this modification of one of my favourite recipes. Banana Herring is - as far as I have been able to figure out - an Icelandic speciality and seeing as Iceland is probably one of the few places on earth where one has access to both locally produced herring AND bananas I guess it does sound reasonable. When I first read about this particular combination, I was intrigued - banana and pickled herring? - so intrigued I decided to try it out and found that it really tasted good. So far, everybody whom I've convinced to try it have agreed that it works a lot better than it sounds.

Pickled herring is of course a speciality from Scandinavia, but I've learned that it's possible to get it at least as far away from home as southern California. Based on other people's experience with the parsley I decided to simply make my standard banana herring and then add fresh, coarsely chopped parsley just before serving.

Ingredients:
- 4 tbsp sour cream
- 4 tbsp mayonaise
- 4 tsp honey mustard
- 1 diced banana
- paprika to taste
- pickled herring

Stir the sour cream, mayonaise, honey mustard and paprika together with a spoon. Then add the diced banana and pieces of pickled herring (making sure to get the herring into the mixture) and let it sit in the fridge for at least one night.

Serve on whole-grain dark rye bread (again, this can be obtained far from Scandinavia) and sprinkle with fresh, coarsely chopped parsley.

VERDICT: While the parsley certainly added a very nice look to the banana herring, I have to admit that I couldn't really taste it. So, from a tasting point of view the parsley didn't really add anything to the banana herring.

HBC revisited

Came back to the HBC recently and was initially surprised at how quickly they had been replacing the house beers with new ones. But I guess some of their batches must run out quickly if they have a lot of business.

Of course I was sad to see the The Pope and the Pig Man Pale Ale missing this time around, but the Table 42 and particularly the White Star XPA (with the very nice touch of the nitrogen - smooth & creamy, just like the list promises) made sure I didn't leave in any way disappointed.

(Solvejg's) Oatmeal Cake

Keeping our secret oven dial in mind we were a bit hesitant towards baking a cake, but we decided to give it a try with this oatmeal cake which I learned from my mother - as with most other of my mother's recipes it was known around the house by the name of the person my mother got the recipe from. Hence the name.

Ingredients:
(dough)
- 2 eggs
- 125 g (1/2 cup) sugar
- 125 g (1/2 cup) flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 50 g (1.75 oz) shortening
- 1 dL (3.4 oz) milk
(topping)
- 150 g (5.3 oz) shortening
- 100 g (3.5 oz) sugar
- 1 dL (3.4 oz) milk
- 4 tbsp cocoa powder
- 150 g (5.3 oz) quick oats
- pinch of salt

Mix shortening and milk, heat lightly till shortening is melted.
Whip the eggs and the sugar well, then mix in the flour and the baking powder, lastly mix in the milk & shortening mixture and pour into a baking pan.
Bake for 20 minutes at 200 C (400 F).

While the cake is baking, make the topping: Melt the shortening, and on low heat mix in the rest of the ingredients. Spread on top of the cake when it comes out of the oven and let it stand to solidify.

Judging by how the cake turned out we estimate that putting the dial on 50% gives us approximately 400 F (200 C).

Avocados

Recently I was out on a small bicycle ride in my area and I noticed this lovely sign. I especially like the implication that other kinds of theft are not so bad (?)...

Fortunately I had the fortune of living in a house with an avocado tree in the back yard for a couple of years. This way I didn't have to resort to thieving to secure myself quite a number of avocados. I ate them in salads, in sandwiches, just plain (possibly with balsemico vinegar), in mexican fare in general or as guacamole in particular. I never really did hear of any dishes that incorporated heated avocado, but maybe they just get too soft.

I didn't know much (any at all) about avocado trees until I suddenly lived right next to one, so I'll take this time to tell you a little about it in case you never had the opportunity.

The one in my yard flowered only every other year, in June, and only for a relatively short time - which is why I only have pictures of the buds and the new fruits but not the flowers themselves. The tree brings forth new fruits continually throughout the 2 year period between flowering. At times there can be quite a number of avocados, but as they don't ripen until picked one can pretty much control the harvesting by picking them at a suitable rate.
Although as my pictures show I sometimes went and got quite a number of them.

When picked the fruits are green and quite hard. They need to sit for a number of days to ripen. When they are ripe then skin turns dark and they soften considerably. This requires patience - and/or planning: pick the fruits a couple of weeks before you want to eat them. The ripening is, as for some other fruits - including apples and bananas - regulated by ethylene. As ethylene is quite volatile, the ripening is helped by placing the avocados in a tightly shut paperbag. A common trick is to put a well ripened banana in the same bag because ripe bananas contain/release higher levels of ethylene than do avocados, thereby accelerating the ripening procedure. You should still expect the process to take some 9 days or so.

I remember hearing years ago that one should be careful with storing apples and bananas together since apples have higher levels of ethylene than do bananas - the possible result being a super-ripening of your bananas. With this in mind I thought maybe it was worth a shot to put an apple in a brown paper bag with some avocados, but I have to report that this did not seem to be appreciably different from using bananas (with the possible exception that afterwards the apple hasn't gone nearly as soft as the bananas tend to).

Tongue Taco

I know lots of people are sceptical about eating tongue, but prepared the right way the meat is very delicious - extremely tender. I picked this recipe up when I had a Mexican roomie.

Ingredients:
- 1 beef tongue
- 1 leek
- 1 bunch Italian parsley
- Queso fresco (white, soft cheese)
- Corn tortillas (taco size)
- Salsa verde

Boil the whole beef tongue with the leek and the parsley for 5 hours. Remove the tongue from the water and let it drip off and cool. Now the skin can very easily be peeled off. Dice or shred the meat (will tend to fall apart as it is so tender) and fry on the pan until crisp on the edges.
Warm the tortillas (say, 30 seconds in a hot oven), add tongue meat, crumbled cheese and salsa verde.

Serve with mexican rice.

Update: Since this post, I've started boiling the tongue with more herbs and vegetables (e.g. sunchoke, parsnip, leek, celery leaves, fresh flat leaf parsley, fresh sage, dried bay laurel, and whole black pepper corns). When I take the tongue out, I remove the vegetables and herbs as well and concentrate the water to about 1 L (1 quart). This beef tongue stock can then be frozen for later use (i.e. making soup or similar).

Mexican Rice

Actually I don't know how Mexican these rice be - I learned how to make them from a roomie who came from Pennsylvania.

Ingredients:
- 2 cups rice
- 1 red onion
- 1 tomato
- 1 cube chicken flavor bouillon
- paprika
- water (as much as the rice used calls for)

Heat up the water and use it to disolve the bouillon cube.
With constant stirring fry first the raw rice for 5 minuttes, then add the diced onion and shortly after the diced tomato. Finally add the bouillon and season with paprika. Leave on low heat till water is absorbed by rice - stir occasionally.

Salsa verde

That is green salsa.. just a quick preparation for tomorrow's dinner.

Ingredients:
- 4 tomatillos
- 6 scallions
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 limes
- cilantro
- green chilies as befits your temper

Boil the tomatillos till tender (approx. 12 min), separate them from the water and blend them thoroughly. Mix in finely sliced scallion, mashed garlic, the juice of the limes, chopped cilantro and finely diced chilies - personally I favor less hotness, so I use a relatively mild chili.
Cover and cool in fridge.

UPDATE:
I actually like the result better when leaving out the cilantro and scallions from the salsa verde itself, but rather sprinkle with fresh cilantro and scallion (or onion) on top when you use it.