At first I was going to make a Swedish version of Blackforest gateau, but of course I ended up improvising, so this is a slightly different version, although really nice. It is also gluten-free, which is great when friends have coeliac disease.
It is quite funny that the Swedish version of a Blackforest gateau has a hazelnut meringue base and lots of cream, but the English version is made with a chocolate sponge. I googled it in German (Schwarzwälder torte) and the result was a cake that looks like it is in between the English and Swedish. I guess it was interpreted differently in different parts of Europe…
Hazelnut meringue cake, serves 10
300 ml hazelnuts
400 ml icing sugar
3 egg whites
75 g dark chocolate
100 ml thick custard
500 ml whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla sugar
4 tbsp cocao
Grind the nuts and mix them with the icing sugar. Beat the egg whites really stiff, fold the nuts into the meringue. Try to incorporate these carefully. Smear the meringue onto parchment paper in two 20 cm rounds. Bake in 150C for 15-20 minutes. Take the baking trays out and use a sharp knife to loosen the bases from the paper. Leave them on there to cool. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over boiling water and brush it evenly onto the two meringues. Leave to dry.
Beat the cream with the vanilla sugar and divide into two bowls. Add the custard and cocoa in one and mix. Place one meringue base on a cake plate, spread half of the cocoa cream onto it and spread half of the cream on top of that. Add the other base and spread the remaining cocoa cream on top. Pipe the remaining cream into a pattern of your choice. Grate some chocolate over the cake.
Christopher’s birthday last year was on a Saturday, and the poor thing had to work all day, until 8pm. I felt very sorry for him, so I tried to make the most of it when he came home. After a trip to Borough Market I cooked up a feast consisting of Jerusalem artichoke soup with fried scallops, cream-baked pheasant with Hasselback potatoes and a nice cake with sponge, lemoncurd and elderflower cream.
Mmm, bacon...One and a half hours later. Yum!
Of course I had to try and top that this year, and I actually managed to do it. I don’t know why, but I appear to be in good cooking form around his birthday. This year he had the whole weekend off, and with a lunch and party planned for his birthday (Sunday), I cooked us a nice dinner on Saturday instead. As a starter we had yesterday’s post on mushroom toast, and as a maincourse we had a looovely venison steak with thyme and bacon (I found the recipe in a Swedish newspaper), perfect roast potatoes with cepes goose fat (you make cepes confit and use the goose fat that is left over – yum!) and a port sauce. Very good, if I may say so myself! We were both quiet during the meal apart from a few sighs of happiness. Chris said that the roast potatoes were the best he ever had. I curtsey. 🙂
Purrfect potatoes!
We used the leftovers in lunch sandwiches the next day. Best sandwiches ever!
Venison steak with perfect roast potatoes and port sauce, serves 4
800 g – 1 kg venison steak
whole peppercorns
fresh thyme
2 bayleaves
10 slices streaky bacon
some olive oil
Maris Piper potatoes
goose fat
salt
white pepper
a knob of butter
sauce flour
200 ml cream
200 ml milk
2 tbsp port
1-2 tsp rowanberry jelly (or other jelly)
coloring agent
a splash concentrated game stock
the meat juices
salt
white pepper
Smash the peppercorns in a pestle and mortar and mix with fresh thyme leaves. Pat this into the meat and add salt. Cover the top of the steak with bacon slices, tuck the ends un underneath the meat. Place two bayleaves underneath the bacon. Pour some olive oil into a roasting dish and place the meat on it. Put a steak thermometer into the thickest part of the steak. Put the tray in 150C for 1,5 hours. The inside temperature of the meat should be 70C when you remove the steak from the oven. Cover the meat with tin foil and let it rest for 15-20 minutes before you slice it.
Meanwhile peel the potatoes and cut them in half if they’re large, boil them for a few minutes in salty water. Drain. Put quite a lot of goose fat onto another roasting treay, put it in the oven to melt. Add the potatoes and make sure they are coated with the fat. Sprinkle over some salt and pepper. Put the tray in the oven, below the venison. When the venison is cooked, move the potatoes up in the oven and raise the temperature to 200C and let them brown while the meat is resting.
Pour the meat juices through a sieve. Melt a knob of butter in a saucepan on low heat, add flour, whisk around and add, cream and milk. Add some of the meat juice. Bring to a boil while whisking and add port, jelly, stock, salt, white pepper and colouring agent. Taste and maybe add some more meat juice.
It was Christopher’s birthday on Sunday so we have had a real food orgie of a weekend. Not that I’m complaining… 😉 On Friday we went to Christopher’s mother and she served a lovely three course meal; halloumi with lime dressing, roast lamb with root vegetables, potatoes and red cabbage and for dessert a baked lemon cheesecake with raspberry coulis. No one even attemped the cheese board afterwards… 🙂
Then on Saturday we had venison that I brought home from Sweden last week, and a starter we had to come up with in Sainsbury’s, but it was actually really tasty! But I do hate to come up with food ideas in the supermarket. I much prefer to have my shopping list and stick to it. 🙂
Christopher found some really nice onion bread, that I fried in butter, topped with wilted spinach, fried mushrooms with garlic and some shavings of parmesan. Really nice!
We then finished off the weekend with a lunch at the Wolseley followed by a port and cheese party. Good times.
Does anyone know what mushrooms we used? You can see the picture here. It is so annoying when the label only says ‘exotic mushrooms’. These were the only mushrooms more exotic than normal button mushrooms, sad really that that is all they stock.
Mushrooms toast with wilted spinach, serves 2
2-4 slices of nice bread (depending on the size of the loaf)
140 g mixed mushrooms
a handful fresh spinach
1 clove of garlic, pressed/greated
some chopped parsley
butter for frying
olive oil for frying
parmesan
Fry the breadslices in butter until they’re golden brown and pretty. Place on plates. Wilt the spinach in the same pan. Season with salt and pepper and place on top of the bread. Lägg på tallrikar. Heat up the same pan again and fry the mushrooms in butter and olive oil on high heat. Add garlic and parsley. Add salt when they’re done (otherwise they will get watery). Place the mushrooms on top of the spinach, put some parmesan shavings on top. Enjoy!
I believe this recipe is from a place where my parents used to buy char. The sauce is fantastic with fish, and in particular char. When I was visiting my parents my mother fried char fillets with the skin on in butter and served it with scallops, fried spring onions, boiled carrots and potatoes. And this sauce. Everything was lovely on its own, but the sauce took this dish to a whole new level. We ate and we ate and had to wait a few hours until we had room for dessert. 🙂
The recipe serves four, but if you are like me and like your sauce, especially with fish, then it is a good idea to make a bit more. It is so wonderful it just disappears.
Herb sauce, serves 4
50 g butter
250 ml creme fraiche
200 ml milk
50 ml dry white wine
1 tsp dijon mustard
concentrated fish stock
3 egg yolks
20 g mixed fresh herbs
1/5 lime, the zest
salt & pepper
Mix all the ingredients apart from the yolks and herbs in a saucepan. Stir until it has boiled for a few minutes. Then add the sauce to the yolks bit by bit until they have soaked up everything. Heat the sauce up so it thickens but it must not boil. Throw in the herbs and serve.
I went out for drinks with work on Thursday, even though we only get together when it is someone’s leaving do, it was still nice. The wine just keep on coming, so after three glasses and not much to eat since lunch I made my excuses and came home to make dinner. Christopher was working late, and I was out, so we (I) had planned to have pasta with mussels and squid, because it is so quick to make pasta and because we had some squid in the freezer. But Christopher wasn’t in the mood for pasta, so we had to come up with something else. It might have been because I had read this NQN post the same day, that I came up with squid sandwiches, and I am forever grateful for the inspiration, because this was really good. And perfect after a few glasses of wine, I may add… 🙂
It would have been even nicer with homemade aioli but at half nine in the evening when you’re sooo hungry, it is just not an alternative to whip up aioli. Instead I took the next best thing; Hellman’s mayonnaise mixed with pressed garlic. That worked too.
Squid sandwiches, serves 2
2 squid tubes
olive oil
1 clove of garlic, pressed
2 tsp chilli flakes
1/2 lemon, juice from
4 slices of nice bread, toasted
butter
baby spinach
aioli (or Hellman’s + pressed garlic)
Cut the squid into 1 cm thick rings. Heat up some olive oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Throw in the squid, press in some garlic, sprinkle over the chilli flakes and when they’re cooked through (after 3 mins or so) squeeze over some lemon. In the meantime, toast the bread and spread with butter. Put some spinach on two slices, add some garlic mayo, then the squid, then some more mayo, and maybe squeeze over some more lemon, put the remanining bread slices on top and cut the sandwiches in half. Dig in and enjoy!
You might remember that before my trips to Devon and Sweden, Gaby and I went to our second supperclub?! I am now going to tell you all about that lovely experience!
This supperclub, Cucina Cinzia, is in south London and not that far from home, but we were still slightly late getting there. A combination of time optimism, delayed tubes and bad sense of direction… Sorry! When we arrived to Jill’s home, the other guests had gathered in the living room, having a glass of prosecco and some unusal nibbles. We got a glass each and started to chat with the other guests. They were in good spirits and raved about the nibbles already. It was fried sage leaves and small pieces of cured meat, which we later learned was pig’s head. All of the head, compressed. Unusual indeed.
Soon after the hostess told us about the menu and invited us over to the table. She opened everyone’s wine bottles and distributed them. The table was set with lovely china, all matching. It felt more like going to a dinner party were you only know a few people, than a supperclub. The house was big and there was easily room for the twelve of us around the table. The dining room/kitchen was open plan so we could see the cook, Cinzia in action in the kitchen.
The other guests were an interesting bunch of people. One young Asian couple had been to many supperclubs around London and liked this one so much that they invited their neighbours, a middleaged couple that were very sociable. There was also an Italian woman and her twenty-something daughter, and this lady had met Cinzia on a plane and they became friends. There was also a twenty-something couple where the girl had a website about how to plan dates, and she had discovered supperclubs that way. There were a few more girls, but the evening went so quickly I didn’t get a chance to speak to them.
It was a very relaxed atmosphere, Cinzia seemed relaxed in the kitchen and Jill seem to like being the hostess. The food arrived quickly (even quicker than some restaurants) and every course was introduced to us again, in case we’d forgotten.
The first course was a torta salata (salty cake) made with chickpea flour served with fennel salami and crostinis with chicken liver mousse. Everything was lovely, and the portion very generous. We learned that the trick to take away the strong liver taste was to add a anchovy. Both the chickpea flour (that was milled locally to where Cinzia lives) and the salami travelled all the way from Tuscany in Cinzia’s suitcase!
Next up was my favourite, pappa al pomodoro (bread and tomato soup). It was a large portion, and I’m still sad I couldn’t finish it all. It was not at all what I expected, as it was the least ‘soupy’ soup I’ve ever had, more like a bread porridge, but that doesn’t sound very nice. 🙂 This was nice though, better than nice. Absolutely divine with the flavours if the tomato, olive oil and bread working together. Extremely comforting as well. This is what I would like to make then the rain is poring down, it’s cold and dark outside and I’ve had a absolutely shitty day at work, because this soup would put the smile back on my face after a day like that.
Next up was salsicce sausages with cannellini beans. Again a very generous portion, and I was once again sorry I couldn’t finish it. This felt like real peasant food but less stodgy than bangers and mash, and the sausages was much nicer (I might add that I’m not a fan of English sausages but I’m learning to like them).
To finish off the dinner we were served a piece of chestnut cake with raisins, nuts and rosemary. It was made from chestnut flour (also brought in the suitcase) and olive oil but without sugar. The diplomatic word for this was interesting, no only joking. It was very different from normal desserts but we learned that in Tuscany, desserts are usually not very sweet. It was strange to me to have rosemary in a dessert, my thoughts went to lamb as soon as I tasted it, but after a while the other flavours from the chestnuts and the raisins came out. We also got a glass of Vin Santo with it, and the sweet wine made the chestnut cake feel more like a dessert.
The cute take-home gift!
The dinner was finished around 11.30pm so there was plenty of time to catch the last tube. People stayed for a while and chatted, and Cinzia answered lots of questions about the food. We still had some wine left and stayed a bit longer chatting to Jill. Before we left everyone got a little jar with herb salt that Cinzia made herself. So sweet and unexpected!
This supperclub was very different to Fernandez and Leluu (read my post here), the first one we went to, and we love both, but in different ways. F&L is trendier and more of a party with 25 people in a small space. People drank a lot here (maybe a bit too much somtimes), started singing and shouting, and it was a shame that it was so little interaction with the lovely Fernandez and Leluu themselves, but they were in the kitchen a floor above and of course extremely busy catering for so many people.
Cucina Cinzia feels classier, and Jill’s home is a lovely setting. It is more relaxed, more efficient, and of course less guests. This is a place were I could bring my mother as well as enjoy it myself, but at Fernandez and Leluu the crowd is a bit younger and artier.
I am pretty certain I will come back to both, because they are both great supperclubs with excellent food, and of course I want to visit others as well.
I didn’t take any photos during the dinner, because I wanted to relax and fully enjoy it and not having to think about taking photos, the light etc.
Since I left Malmö and Sweden two years ago, the town has changed a little. In the old part of the town, the west end, a new hotel has been built. I was very sad when they announced it as they had to tear down the old Saluhall (food market) to do it. I loved that food market, even though there weren’t many shops left, but nice cafées and restaurants. This west part of the town is my favourite, with old houses, nice cobbled streets and a very cosy feel to it. The new development still houses one of the old restaurants, a nice fish restaurant called Johan P, a new TGI Fridays and Malmö’s first five star hotel.
A different display of a dry martini
Even though I was against this development I can’t hold a grudge to something I haven’t experienced, and according to another blogger, the bar Rosen, the rose, in the hotel serves Malmö’s best cocktails. I met up with my friends here last Friday for a drink before dinner. Some chose a glass of cava, and some of us tried the cocktails. Claes went for the classic dry martini and it was served in a very original way, a glass cone holding the drink, but down in a bowl of ice to keep cool and olives scattered in the bowl. I went for an Elderflower Fizz, because one ingredient was my favourite liqueur. The drink was lovely, but I couldn’t really taste the elderflower in it. A shame.
Elderflower fizz
The bar was quite full up at 7 pm, a good sign, and people seemed to enjoy themselves. I didn’t think the bar looked very fancy for being a five star hotel, but maybe we want it a bit understated in Sweden, here in England it is a bit more full on with the decoration.
It feels like longer ago, but it was only last week that Christopher and I went down to Devon for a few days to visit his grandmother. It was lovely to se the countryside, the sea, the woods and breath fresh air. I got to try the very English dessert trifle for the first time. Will try and make it myself soon, it was really tasty!
We ate enormous award-winning icecream cones in Sidmouth, with Ferrero Rocher and honeycomb flabvour. Yu-um!
We bought some cheese and chutneys at the farmers market in the grandmothers village. It was pouring down with rain so thankfully it was hel inside. The Sombrero cheddar was absolutely lovely, can’t wait to have it with enchiladas or fajitas or maybe just melted over nachos.
When we saw a fudgeshop we just had to buy some fudge, chocolate, clotted cream vanilla and butterscoth.
It is pretty isn’t it?! It was great to explore more of my new country and I highly recommend a trip to Devon. It is mostly as picturesque as one thinks, but of course there are a few exceptions.
I love London and have visited a few other places around the UK, but I want to see more. The countryside is so beautiful and the people so friendly.
It has been quiet here the last week, I went back to Sweden for a few days and didn’t feel I had time to sit by the computer when I see my friends and family so seldom. It was lovely to see them all and catch up.
When I arrived on Wednesday my dear mother had made meatballs for dinner. So much easier to make in Sweden where you can buy mixed beef and pork mince. On Friday I went out for dinner with my friends and on Saturday we had some lovely fish with scallops and the best sauce for fish ever (will post the recipe later).
I also got to spend a whole day with my best friend, and it was great to go shopping, walking around town, have lunch and chat a lot. We don’t see each other that often but when we do, we certainly make the most of it.
I also managed to sort out all my things I have packed in boxes since I moved here, and found the two things I’ve been looking for for two years. Silly things really, but needed; steak knives and a rotating grater. I’m so geeky, haha. 🙂
It was lovely to take some time off, and it actually felt like more than a week, which is great.
Scandelights 
