November 2010 – Scandelights

Bruges

Published on November 30, 2010 by Hanna3 Comments

It is the second year in a row now that the four of us (Ian, Anna, Christopher and myself) have travelled to Bruges for the Christmas markets. For the other three, it is actually the third year in a row, but I hadn’t met Christopher then.

Bruges is a lovely city, very picturesque and christmassy. As in most beautiful cities, there is a canal, bridges, nice old buildings and squares. The Christmas market itself is like most other Christmas markets; it has some nice food, some tacky bits, some arts and crafts and some commercial stuff.

Christmas coffee: a coffee liqeur served warm with wipped cream on top

We didn’t spend much time in the Christmas market, only to have a hot drink, Christmas coffee for the boys, Gluhwein for Anna and hot chocolate with Baileys for myself, a bratwurst later and a quick look around.

Instead we went to the lovely chocolate shops! Some shops are all christmassy in their display, some tries to be a bit different displaying chocolate boobs and bottoms, and some stick to the traditional.

Our favourite is Pralinette, one of the more traditional shops and their truffels are to die for. They are soo amazing and rich, so one is enough and the lovely taste of chocolate stays in your mouth for quite a while. Pure joy!

Moving on to the other ‘must’ in Belgium – beer. There are plenty of well-stocked beer shops with quite a few (at least to us) unsual ones. A few of them you can find in Belgo in London, but I don’t think you can buy them by the bottle in a shop in England. This is a great Christmas gift tip as well; assorted unusual beers.

Braadwurst with fried onions from the Christmas market

We had a wander around town and popped into one of my favourites that we discovered last year, the cookshop Dille & Kamille. This year I bought four soup bowls, a flan tin, ramekins and some other bits.

This is the tackier part of the Christmas market...

After a few hours in Bruges, we did a two hours drive to Brussels where we would spend the evening and the following morning.

Short-cuts

Published on November 29, 2010 by Hanna5 Comments

I really like eating out at gourmet places where they have food I just can’t cook myself, and I dislike readymeals and want to cook everything from scratch as a principal. Sometimes though, I take shortcuts, and it is really nice to do so once in a while on a cold and dark November evening when you are just not in the mood to cook.

For this meal I used a readymade glaze (Newman’s own) and made some myself (reggae reggae sauce, worchestershire sauce, Heinz chilli sauce, English mustard, brown sugar, salt and black pepper) for the ribs. I used a Cajun spice blend for the potato wedges and I bought coleslaw and garlic bread readymade in M&S. And worst of all, I served a dipmix + creme fraiche with it. A Swedish dipmix called Holiday, that I really like with things like this, or crisps.

This is hardly called cooking, the oven does it for you, so this is what I did: Turn the oven on 200C. Put the rack of baby back ribs in a dish and brush the glaze on to it. Put it bone-side up and cook for 30 minutes. Wash potatoes but keep the skin on, cut into wedges and coat with olive oil and cajun spices, put underneath the meat in the oven. After 30 minutes, take out the ribs and turn the rack, brush on some more glaze. Put back in for 30 minutes. When 10 minutes is remaining, put the garlic bread in. Serve with coleslaw and dip/sauce. Done.

Bruges & Brussels

Published on November 27, 2010 by Hanna3 Comments

Hi there!

Can you believe that it is the first Sunday in Advent this Sunday?! Where has the year gone? I love this time of year though and all the preparations before Christmas. I can’t wait to bake and put the Christmas star up and to light all the candles.

13669_341432275373_690490373_9793435_7452661_n — This photo is from a Christmas market in Vienna last year. Amazing gingerbread!

We’re away this weekend though, for a quick trip to Bruges and Brussels and the Christmas markets. Last year I bought lots of lovely chocolate, an antique sceptor for the Christmas tree and on the way home we stopped at a French supermarket and filled the car up with goodies. Can’t wait to do the same this year!

I really recommend a trip to Bruges, the town is lovely and old, if you want to see what it looks like check out the film, In Bruges with Colin Farrell. Great film too.

Rabbit stew with cider

Published on November 26, 2010 by Hanna1 Comment

I know that eating rabbit might not be politically correct, but it is very tasty. More and more restaurants are serving rabbit and you can buy it from Ocado (like I did). The meat is very tender and juicy and looks and taste similar to darker chicken meat. The rabbit meat is just tastes a bit sweeter.

This was the first time I cooked rabbit, and after looking around on different recipes I realised that cider was a common accompaniement and went for that.

Rabbit stew with cider, serves 3

olive oil

300 g rabbit meat in chunks

4 slices streaky bacon, smoked, in small pieces

flour

1 large schallots or a small regular onion

1/2 fennel, in slices

2 carrots, sliced

2 sprigs of fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

salt and pepper

1 dash concentrated game stock

500 ml dry cider

1 tsp honey

1 small garlic clove, pressed

1 tsp tomato paste

coloring agent (not necessary)

Fry the bacon in some olive oil and remove from frying pan. Fry the meat in the bacon fat until nice and brown, season with salt and pepper. Remove and put with the bacon in a casserole dish. Sprinkle on some flour and shake the dish to coat all the meat. Put the dish without lid in 175C for 5-10 minutes. Shake it and put it back in for another 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile, fry the fennel, onion and carrot in the same frying pan as before for a few minutes but don’t let them brown. Pour the vegetables into the casserole, add the cider, honey, stock and add the herbs too. Put the lid on and leave it in the oven for about an hour.

Strain the casserole after an hour and remove the herbs. Reduce the sauce to the thickness you want. I added tomato paste, garlic, salt and pepper and colouring agent. Serve with rice or roast potatoes.

Supperclub #3

Published on November 25, 2010 by Hanna2 Comments

It is time for a supperclub visit again tonight! As usual I’m going with Gaby and this time her parents are joining us because it is a Thanksgiving dinner we are going to, and her dad is American. I’m really excited as I’ve heard lots of good things about the Nomad Chef, but it will also be my first Thanksgiving and I can’t wait to try all the nice food.

As usual, I willlet you know later on what it was like.

PS. It said in the confirmation email that we should come ‘very hungry’! Sounds good to me… 😉

Tuscan bean soup

Published on November 25, 2010 by Hanna1 Comment

I really like soup, and ideally I’d like to eat soup at least twice a week. But because I have some issues with my stomach and too much fiber in the food, I haven’t had as much soup as one should during the autumn. At the moment it is trial and error to see where my level for eating fibre is. I always thought that beans were too fibery and would make you bloated, but I don’t think that is true. I read somewhere that all beans apart from green beans contains more soluble fibers than insoluble fiber, and therefore gave this soup a go. So far so good, and it was really tasty and filling.

The recipe is from the olive oil company Zeta, and I did follow it for once. 🙂 It needs a lot of salt and pepper towards the end, but it was really nice. Not really four portions though…

Tuscan bean soup, serves 2

homemade croutons (fry bread cubes in olive oil and garic and some salt until crisp)

1 red onion, chopped

1 clove of garlic, minced

2 cans of cannellini beans (and the water they are in)

350 ml chicken stock (or water + stock cube)

15 fresh sage leaves

1 tsp tomato paste

Fry the onion and garlic in olive oil without browning. Add the sage and cook for another minute or so. Add the beans, stock and tomato paste. Bring to boil and cook for a few minutes. Mix the soup smooth with a stick blender. Add plenty of salt and white pepper. Serve with the croutons.

Prawn sandwich Swedish style

Published on November 24, 2010 by Hanna2 Comments

Sometimes easy is good. Like this sandwich for example. It is important to choose nice bread, a good mayo (homemade or Hellman’s), nice Icelandic prawns, and to boil the eggs exactly the way you want them (I want mine with the yolk very yellow and quite soft). And if you pipe the mayonnaise onto the eggs, it looks really pretty too. Yum!

Prawn sandwich, serves 2

1 nice baguette or ciabatta

butter

4 little gem leaves

3 boiled eggs (they way you like)

lots of mayonnaise

150-200 g peeled Icelandic prawns

red onions, cut in half and sliced

lemon

Cut the bread in half and spread on some butter. Place the rinsed and dried lettuce on top. Peel and slice the eggs and divide them between the two sandwiches, pipe lots of mayonnaise on top. Scatter the prawns on top. Sprinkle on some red onions and decorate with lemon.

Caramel sauce

Published on November 23, 2010 by HannaLeave a comment

We have the tiniest freezer. It is not even a freezer, it is just a tiny freezer compartment in the fridge. That is the only downside with our kitchen, but it is a big one… Well, a girl can’t have everything, and at least it stops me from baking lots of cinnamon buns that I would fill the freezer with if we had one.

But it is always a puzzle when you buy food, to not buy more food that needs to be frozen than we have space in the tiny compartment. So when I buy icecream I want to eat it quite quickly as we could use the space for other more important things than icecream… (Yes, there are such things! ;-))

This is why I came up with the excuse to make caramel sauce. I used Pioneerwoman’s recipe and it was really nice and easy. The first evening we had just vanilla icecream with still warm caramel sauce. Lovely and simple. The second evening we had icecream, cold caramel sauce, meringues and warm chocolate sauce. Yu-um. And last night we finished off the icecream with pancakes and some more caramel sauce. Not bad that either. 🙂 And now the icecream is finished so I have room for meat in the freezer instead. Job done.

You find the recipe here.

Chicken in stilton sauce with fennel gratin

Published on November 23, 2010 by Hanna1 Comment

This dish might look beige, but I promise there is nothing beige about the taste. The Stilton flavour is a bit subtle, but definitely there, well balanced by sweetness in the chilli sauce. The fennel is soft and fresh and you can definitely taste the lemon. Try this if you want a different side dish.

I used chicken thighs for this dish, because they are more moist and taste more than chicken breasts. But if chicken fillet is your preference, go for it!

Chicken in Stilton sauce with fennel gratin, serves 2

olive oil

3 chicken thighs

10 cm leek, sliced

250 ml single cream

1 icecube homemade chicken stock (or a splash of concentrated chicken stock)

70 g Stilton

1 tsp mild chilli sauce (for sweetness)

salt

white pepper

1,5 fennel

2 cloves garlic, sliced

olive oil

salt

white pepper

1/2 lemon, juice from

500 ml vegetable stock

grated cheese

Take the skin off the chicken thighs and cut the meat into chunks. Fry them in olive oil, salt and pepper. Remove from skillet and add the leeks. Put the chicken back into the pan and add the cream and stock. Crumble in the Stilton, add the seasoning and adjust to taste. Serve with rice and the fennel gratin (below).

For the gratin, wash the fennel and cut into wedges. Slice the garlic. Fry these in some olive oil in a pan on low heat so they don’t brown. Add salt, pepper, stock and lemon juice. Bring to boil and cook for about 20 minutes until soft. Drain and place in an oven dish. Spinkle grated cheese on top. Bake in 200C for about 15 minutes.

Swedish peasant food: stewed spinach, fried potatoes, eggs and frankfurters

Published on November 22, 2010 by Hanna2 Comments

My mother used to (and still does) distinguish weekday food from weekend food. On weeknights we used to have mostly peasant food like meatballs, sausages and mash, soups etc and on the weekends she would go all out with fillet of beef, seafood etc.

I take after her, I always make the weekends something extra, I definitely spend more money on meat for the weekends, but my weekday food can sometimes be quite different from my parents’. I use more pasta and make different kind of soups, whereas my dad would be happy with boiled potatoes five days a week. I need to mix it up a little and try new things. But sometimes I go back to the peasant food. Last week I made this stewed spinach served with lots of fried things; diced potatoes, eggs and frankfurters (it works with bacon too).

I have actually never made this before, or asked my mother for a recipe, but I was really happy that it tasted like my mother’s version. Yum!

Stewed spinach, fried potatoes, eggs and frankfurters, serves 2

4 large potatoes

butter

olive oil

salt

white pepper

sugar

flour

milk

nutmeg

frozen chopped spinach

eggs

frankfurters

Peel the potatoes and cut into small dices. Fry in plenty of butter and oilve oil on medium heat until they’re done. Season with salt, white pepper and 2 pinches of sugar (very important and the key to perfect fried potatoes). Make a roux of butter and flour, add milk (warm milk makes it quicker), stir the whole time and let it thicken. Season with nutmeg, salt and white pepper. Add as much frozen chopped spinach as you think is good (I used about 400 g for 750 ml milk). Let the spinach heat up. Fry eggs and frankfurters and serve with the potatoes and spinach-bechamel.