I’m trying to get better at not wasting food. I am actually pretty good, but there is always room for improvement.
So I saved the lobster shells from NYE to make stock wihich I then reduced and froze as ice cubes. I also made stock from the wild ducks, which I reduced even more and froze as well, but I was exceedingly clumsy and dropped the tray and lost half of the stock. The same evening I also broke a china bowl. 😦
Lobster stock
the shell from two lobsters
1 large carrot
1/3 fennel
1 onion
some peppercorns
1 tbsp tomato paste
a few sprigs of parsley
1 garlic clove
olive oil
Rinse the shells thoroughly. Cut into smaller pieces. Fry with the vegetables in olive oil to get more flavours out. Cover with water. Add the spices, herbs and tomato paste. Bring to a boil and continue to cook until about half the water remains. Strain and pour back into the pan. Add some salt and reduce until you have the concentration you would like. Leave to cool. Pour into ice cube trays and freeze. Put the cubes into a freezer bag and keep in the freezer.
NYE was a great night. I finished work already at noon, went to pick up my lobsters and to do some last minute food shopping. The whole tube ride home from London bridge (I bought the lobsters at Borough Market) I was scared that one of the lobsters would poke it’s claws through the bag or start wiggling the bag and be noisy. Thankfully they both behaved! I then had trouble to fit them one at the time into my 5 l pot, they were huge!
They were so tasty though! I cooked them in salty water for 7-8 minutes and then let them cool down in cold water. I served them gratinated in garlic butter and parsley with nice crusty bread, a lemon wedge and homemade aioli. Simple but delicious!
Gratinated lobster with garlic and parsley, serves 4
2 cooked lobsters
4 tbsp soft salted butter
1 garlic clove, pressed
chopped parsley
4 lemon wedges to serve
Cut the lobsters lengthways in half. (My best tip is to use boning scissors. With those I managed to get the meat from the claws out in one piece too.) Remove the arms and claws. Take away everything but the meat in the shells and rinse. Mix the soft butter with the pressed garlic and spread over the meat in the shells. Scatter parsley on top. Bake for 10 mins in 200C oven. Sprinkle some more parsley on top before serving. Serve with one whole plain claw on the side, a wedge of lemon and crusty bread and aioli.
Aioli
2 egg yolks
2 tsp dijon mustard
1,5 tsp white wine vinegar
some salt
some white pepper
3 tbsp cold pressed rapeseed oil
250 ml regular rapeseed/vegetable oil
1 clove garlic, pressed
Mix the yolks with mustard, salt, pepper and vinegar in a tall bowl. Add the whisk to the stick blender and pour the oils in a gentle stream while whisking. Add the garlic and maybe some more salt.
On Saturday we had a little Christmas dinner among friends. It was David, Gaby, Ian, Anna and me and Christopher and we all contributed to the dinner by bringing different dishes, and the result was a great smorgasbord of Christmas food with an international touch.
Blinis with smoked salmon, chives and creme fraiche
Anna (who has a Russian mother and a Finnish father) served homemade blinis with smoked salmon, chives and creme fraiche as a starter. Wonderful!
For the first time I tried making meatballs in the oven and then fry them afterwards, and they were perfect. 🙂
Instead of a main course we had a buffet with different dishes; David and Gaby’s amazing ham, Anna’s Salad Olivier (Russian salad with boiled eggs, potatoes, carrots, beetroots, frankfurters, gherkins, grated apple and mayonnaise), roast potatoes, meatballs, anchovies bake, brussel sprouts with bacon, carrots in orange butter, green beans and a shallots and red wine gravy. Really nice! 🙂
The prettiest ham ever!Ham with wholegrain mustard from Daylesford organic.Salad Oliver!Anchovies bakeBrussel sprouts with baconA plate full of wonderful food!
Gaby made a lovely crumble with apple and blackberries for dessert. After that we had some Christmas sweets, the almond biscuits with cream and jam, clementines, tea, coffee and quite a lot of port.
Apple and blackberry crumble with custard
I woke up poorly the next day though. 😦 I hate having the flu, but it is difficult to avoid it this time of year… I really hope I will be feeling better towards the end of the week, because I’m flying home to see my family and friends on Friday.
Anchovies bake, serves 6
10 large potatoes
1-2 onions
1/2 packet anchovies with brine
300 ml cream
butter
bread crumbs
salt
white pepper
Grate the potatoes and the onions. Butter a regular dish and fill it halfway up with potatoes and onions. Cut the anchovies fillets in small pieces and scatter them on top. Put the rest of the potatoes and onions on top. Pour over the cream and the brine from the anchovies. Place a few dollops of butter around the dish, and sprinkle over some salt and white pepper. Lastly cover the dish with breadcrumbs. Bake in 200C for 45 mins to 1 hr. The potatoes should be soft and the top crispy.
Brussel sprouts with bacon
500 g brussel sprouts
8 slices of bacon
butter
grated nutmeg
salt
white pepper
chopped parsley
Trim the brussel sprouts (a really boring job, but it has to be done. Take the outer leaves off if they look manky and cut off the white bits). Boil them in salted water for 10 minutes or so. They should be softer but still quite firm.
Cut the bacon in pieces and fry them crispy in butter. Add the drained brussel sprouts, salt, pepper and grated nutmeg. Add the parsley and serve straight away.
One of my favourites for Christmas is this anchovies potato bake, in Sweden called Janssons frestelse (Jansson’s temptation). Even though it sounds like a weird combination, this is great together with homemade meatballs. It could be that I like this combo because this was the few things of the (Swedish) Christmas food I liked as a child. I didn’t like herring, browned cabbage, red cabbage, poached ling (a relative to cod) etc. I’ve grown up now, but still dislike the poached ling… 🙂
Anyway, try this if you want a Scando touch for Christmas this year. These are tried and tested on my English friends and co-workers and they approve. 🙂
Before......and after. It works really well to put the cake cases in a muffin tin to help them keep their shape.
Mini anchovies potato bake, about 15
6-8 potatoes depending on size, peeled and grated
1 onion, grated
300 ml double cream
1/2 tin ansjovis (incl the brine)
small knobs of butter
bread crumbs
Grate the potatoes and the onion and mix them together. Put the potato mixture half way up in paper cake cases (or even better: aluminium ones). Chop the anchovies finely and divide them between the cases. Fill the cases up with grated potato. Pour in 1/2 teaspoon of the brine in each case. Pour cream in to the cases to just about cover the potatoes. Put a tiny knob of butter on top of each cake case and sprinkle some bread crumbs on top. Bake in 200C for 20 minutes.
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.
My mother used to have a wall full of copper pans and moulds in the kitchen when I was younger, which looked great in a country kitchen. And when she cooked paradise prawns on Fridays she always used a copper sauté pan. Unfortunately that pan can’t be used anymore as the tin has worn off and it is not easy to find someone who does re-tinning anymore as people in general have stopped using copper pans. A shame, because they are both pretty and very good to use.
When I was back home last time I found an unused copper pan in a charity shop for less than £4, which of course made me very happy. My mum has also managed to spare a few copper things for me. For me it is happiness to melt butter in a teeny tiny copperpan with a spout, on my gas hob instead of using a microwave (that we don’t even have).
Start with onions, garlic and leek.
When people ask me which country I prefer out of Sweden and England, I can never give anyone a straight answer – I love both countries! The conservative part of me loves England and all its old buildings and the fact that you don’t change anything unless there is a strong reason for it while the efficient part of me never will understans why people still have two taps on a basin instead of a mixing tap in England and why triple glazing is so rare. The old-fashioned part of me is appalled by the ‘out with the old, in with the new’ mentality Swedish people sometimes have while English people appreciate most old things. There are always two sides of things and I happen to like them both. 🙂
Add everything but the mussels and let it reduce to intense the flavours
Back to copper pans. On Monday when I got home from work and was really tired it made me happy to cook a pasta sauce in my £4 copper pan. 🙂
Add the mussels last and let them warm up
Pasta with mussels and sambal oelek, serves 2
250 g pasta
1 large schallots or 1 small regular onion
2 cloves of garlic, pressed
10 cm leek, cut lengthwise and sliced
400 g chopped tomatoes
50 ml water
4 tbsp creme fraiche
2 tbsp or more sambal oelek
a pinch of sugar
2 dashes concentrated vegetable or fish stock
salt
white pepper
chopped parsley or Gourmet Garden parsley
180 g mussels in brine
perhaps some lemon/garlic or truffle oil for serving
Cook the pasta according to the packet. Heat up some olive oil in a pan and cook the onions soft on low heat for a few minutes. Add the garlic and leek and let it cook for a few more minutes. Add everything but the mussels and let it reduce a littl. Season to your taste. When the pasta is nearly cookes, add the mussels to the sauce to warm up. Drain the pasta. Serve with oil of your choice.
You might suspect my latest hang-up is squid, and you might be right. 🙂 So far I have cooked squid in the seafood bake and for yummy sandwiches, and up next is of course calamari.
Nearly done.
This is as far away from bad pub calamari; you know the ones that are all rubbery and difficult to chew and have soggy batter?! This is melt-in-your-mouth-soft squid in a light semolina and paprika coating, fried seconds before you munch them down with oven fries and aioli (or the lazy version: Hellman’s mayo and pressed garlic). Yum!
Oven fries with persillade.
Calamari and oven fries, serves 2
a few potatoes
olive oil
persillade
salt and white pepper
4-5 squid tubes
3 tbsp semolina
2 tbsp corn flour
1,5 tsp paprika powder
a pinch of salt
neutral oil (vegetable oil/ground nut oil)
For serving:
lime and lemon wedges
aioli
Wash the potatoes and keep the skin on. Cut into fries. Pour some oilve oil into an ovenproof dish and throw in the potatoes. Sprinkle some persillade, salt and white pepper over the potatoes and push them around a bit so it spreads evenly. Bake in 200C for about 40 minutes. Push the potatoes around a few times during cooking.
Cut the squid into rings. Pour semolina, corn flour, paprika powder and salt in a large ziplock bag and shake it. Add the squid rings and shake so the rings get coated by the mixture. When the potatoes are cooked, start frying the calamari. Heat up 2 cm high of oil in a large pan. Check that it is hit enough by throwing in a small piece of bread. If it browns it is hot enough. Remove the bread and add a handful calamari. Beware of the oil splashing about. Fry until the calamaris are golden on both sides. Remove with a slotted spoon or tong, drain on some kitchen towel. Fry the remaining squid in a few batches. Serve immediately!
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!
We had clams again on Saturday! This because I bought a few more than we could eat on Friday. I put them in a bowl of water and kept them in the fridge overnight. Three had opened itself a little so we threw them away, but 12 of them were fine, and Christopher made them into this lovely starter. It was a bit fiddly openening the shells with a knife, but worth it.
This was also the christening of the lovely escargot dishes I got for my birthday. It is definitely time for the escargots next!
Clams au gratin, serves 2
12 clams
butter
garlic
chopped parsley
breadcrumbs
Open the clams carfully with a small knife. Keep one half of each shell with the clam on it. Place these on a dish. Melt butter, add garlic and parsley and spoon ot over the clams. Place some breadcrumbs on top and pop the dish under the grill or in a hot oven (225C or so) until the breadcrumbs are golden and crisp and the clams are cooked. This only takes a few minutes. Serve with some nice bread.
Nigella’s new series, Kitchen, is on at BBC at the moment, and this recipe is from the first episode. First you roast some potatoes in the oven, then you scatter seafood on top, add some wine and put the dish back in the oven for another 15 minutes. This was utterly delicious with homemade aioli and nice crusty bread.
Nigella’s seafood bake with potatoes, serves 2
4-5 large potatoes
1 lemon
1/2 red onion
olive oil
4 squid tubes
some large raw prawns, unpeeled
clams
50 ml white or rosé wine
persley, chopped
Don’t peel the potatoes, just cut them into 1,5 cm thick slices and cut each into four pieces. Put the potatoes in an ovenproof dish. Cut the lemon into pieces the same way as the potatoes and scatter over them. Cut the onions into pieces and scatter around the same dish. Pour over some olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Put in a 200 C oven for an hour. Meanwhile, soak the clams to remove grit. Throw away the opened ones. Take out the dish from the oven, cut the squid into rings and put them into the dish, next add the clams and prawns. Pour in the wine and add some more olive oil. Bake in the oven for another 15 minutes. Crank up the temperature to 220C if you like. When it is all done, scatter some parsley on top, maybe squirt some lemon juice and serve with aioli and nice bread.
Scandelights 