Category: Meat

Dinner with the girls: pulled pork with pitta and aioli

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Last Sunday was a girlie day back home spent with my best friends Emma and Malin. Our male friend Linus also joined us for the first part which was lunch/brunch so he got to pretend to be a girl for the day.

Actually we are not the girliest of girls so the conversation involved golf, football and handball among other things so I don’t think Linus suffered too much.

After our lunch and a brisk walk in the cold, Linus left and us girls went back to Emma and chilled out.

Emma wanted pulled pork for supper so I prepared that before we went outside and it smelt really nice by the time we got back to her flat. We then cooked together to prepare the rest. I instructed Malin to make aioli and Emma did the salad and grated root veg for the slaw. We also made a big batch of guacamole to have with nachos. It was the first time I served pulled pork with pitta and aioli but I highly recommend it as it was a great combo.

After all that food we had to sit back on the sofa, continue chatting and keeping one eye on the Masters. It was a lovely day and I do hope we get the chance to have one again soon. It is not always easy for us to meet up as we live in different places (countries even) and work different hours. But when we do meet up we always have a great time!

Guacemole, serves 6

5 small avocados

3 tbsp creme fraiche

juice from 1 lime

1/2-1 tsp Worchestershire sauce

tabasco, to taste

salt, white pepper

Mush up the avocados with a fork, add creme fraiche and lime juice. Season to taste witth Worchestershire sauce and tabasco, finish off with salt and pepper.

Aioli, serves 3

1 egg yolk

ca 150 ml mild rapeseed oil (or other neautral oil)

1,5 garlic clove, pressed

1-2 tsp lemon juice

salt, white pepper

Place the yolk in a mixing bowl and add the oil drop by drop while whisking away. After a while you can add the oil abit faster but take care. Once the oil is incorporated, add the garlic and lemon, season to taste with salt and pepper.

Our Good Friday dinner party

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I went back to Sweden on Friday and after a quick fika (coffee break with cinnamon buns in this case) I whipped up a cheesecake for that evening’s dinner when my best friend Emma and her fiancée Claes came for dinner at my parents’ house.

We started with some bubbly (Crèmant de Bourgougne) and served some olives, pistachios and parmesan crisps as nibbles. It was the first time I made parmesan crisps, but certainly not the last. They were really yummy!

We then sat down and enjoyed my mothers’ roast lamb with garlic, red wine and rosemary and we had a large rösti, creamy sauce, broccoli and carrots with it.

We then served the dulce de leche cheesecake with coffee, bailey’s and whisky. Although I have made it before and loved it, I was still surprised by how divine it is. Just try it!

It was a perfect first evening back home and we had such a great time together. It can be real fun to hang out with different age groups at the same time and I truly enjoy spending time with my friends and parents at the same time.

Parmesan crisps

Choose a good parmesan. Grate it finely and place in piles on baking parchment on a baking tray. Bake in 200C for a few minutes or until the cheese has melted and is golden brown. Leave to cool on the tray.

Venison mince buorguignon

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Not evry long ago I saw that Annika at the Swedish food blog Smaskens.nu had been making a boeuf bourguignon with beef mince and I thought that was a nice thing to try. But then I remembered I had a kilo of lovely venison mince (from fallow deer) in the freezer from Sweden and tried the recipe with that.

As usual though, I made a few changes, but not all of them because I wanted to. For starters I had to use streaky bacon instead of lardons, because I couldn’t find any lardons in my local supermarket. Shame on you Sanisbury’s.

I also cooked the dish in my slowcooker while I was at work, and that worked really well.

Because venison mince is very lean (like all game) it really works to either cook it with some more fatty ingredients, like cream or to serve it with something richer. I went for the latter, because you should not have cream in a bourguignon! Instead I made a very creamy potato purée with lots of butter to serve with it. It was the perfect combination and also how Annika served hers with beef mince. Thank you for that suggestion!

Below is my own version of this dish, but I found all the inspiration here. If you fancy a proper Boeuf Bourguignon instead, then try the ultimate recipe by Julia Child.

Venison mince buorguignon, serves 4- 6

1 kg venison mince

1/2 bottle red wine

200 ml water

2 tsp concentrated beef stock

1 bouquet garni

3 whole cloves of garlic

2 sprigs thyme (taken off the stem)

2 tbsp tomato purée

salt, black pepper

Step 2:

another dash of red wine

2-3 slices carrots

2 tbsp maizena (corn starch to thicken)

1 tbsp tomato purée

season to taste with stock, salt and pepper

100 g button mushrooms

100 g lardon (or streaky bacon)

Brown the mince in butter and transfer to the slowcooker. Add wine, stock, water, garlic, herbs, tomato purée, salt and pepper. Turn it on low heat and leave it for 8 hours. Transfer the pot to the stove (or pour the stew into another pan) and add the wine, carrots, tomato purée and maizena/corn starch. Bring to the boil and let it simmer for 10 minutes to thicken and for the carrots to cook. In the meantime, fry the mishrooms in butter on high heat, then the lardons/bacon and add to the pot.

Season to taste with sugar, herbs and salt and pepper. Serve with a buttery potato purée (cook waxy potatoes until very soft, mix with a plenty of butter with a stick blender, season with salt and pepper) and creme fraiche. If you have leftovers the stew will only taste better the next day.

Slowcooked pig’s cheeks with white wine, thyme, mustard and cream

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To slowcook meat has its advantages. Because it is best done with more flavoursome but tough cuts of meat, the result is always tasty very tender meat.

For me I probably started slowcooking big cuts for roasts. Even less tough meat benefits from gentle cooking and more time and lower temperature in the oven. After that I made stews like Boeuf Bourguignon, soon after I tried pulled pork and by then I was totally hooked.

So I bought a Crockpot slowcooker and have never looked back since. 🙂

These cheeks were first browned in a frying pan then transferred to the Crockpot, to which I added white wine, a bay leaf, thyme sprigs, half an onion and water. I left it on the low setting for about 10 hours and by the time I got back home the flat smelled amazing.

The meat was very tender but I still let it rest while I added cream and mustard to the sauce. It doesn’t take much to throw a lovely supper together when it almost cooks itself…

Slowcooked pig’s cheeks with white wine, thyme, mustard and cream,serves 1-2

Step 1:

4 pig’s cheeks

butter/oil for frying

100 ml white wine

150 ml water

4 thyme sprigs

1 bay leaf

1/2 red onion cut into wedges

Step 2:

100 ml cream

100 ml milk

2 tbsp white wine

1,5 tsp dijon mustard

1/2 tbsp soy sauce

gravy browning

salt, white pepper

Brown the meat in a frying pan. Place in the slowcooker and add the other ingredients from step 1. Put the lid on and turn on the low heat and leave it for 9-10 hours. If you are using an oven then place the casserole dish with the lid on in a cold oven and turn it onto 80-90 degrees. Check on it after 6-8 hours.

Remove the meat from casserole dish and let it rest covered with tin foil while you make the sauce. Pour all the liquid from the pot into a saucepan and add milk and cream and bring to the boil. Add the rest of the ingredients and season to taste. Once the sauce has thickened pour it through a sieve. Serve with pressed boiled potatoes and the tender lovely meat. Vegetables are optional.

Weekday wonders: cheesy mini burgers with tzatsiki in pitta

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Found this post and realised it wasn’t published when it was suppose to be, some time in January. It is a great weekday supper though, so here we go:

It is Monday and back to work. For me, the best way to stay at good spirits on a Monday is definitely to eat something nice in the evening, but still something quite speedy so I have time to watch something good on TV or catch up with my friends.

These quick little burgers are tasty and filling, and is lovely paired with homemade tzatsiki, some baby spinach and toasted pittas. If you’re really hungry, why not put some potato wedges in the oven as well?!

To season the mince I used a spicy sea salt from Halen Môn which I crushed in my pestle and mortar before adding it to the mince mix, but feel free to use any spices you like, just make sure you season the mince enough. Just shape the mince to little burgers, fry them in butter and oil in a hot frying pan while the tzatsiki is developing its flavours and you pop the pittas in the toaster.

Beef mini burgers, serves 2

300 g beef mince

1 1gg

50 ml breadcrumbs

2 tbsp water or cream

3 tsp Halen Môn spicy salt or another spice blend + salt

cheddar cheese in slices

Mix egg, breadcrumbs, spices, salt and water/cream in a bowl and let the mixture swell for a few minutes before adding the mince. Incorporate thoroughlly. Shape the mince to small burgers and fry them in a mixture of butter and oil in a frying pan. First on high heat then on medium heat. Place half a slice of cheese on each burger while they are in the pan, so the cheese melts. 

Serve with the following:

Tzatsiki

Pittas, toasted

Baby spinach or other lettuce

Pork belly, Jerusalem artichoke purée and creamy black trumpets

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In a way it has been liberating food wise to move to the UK. It might sound silly, but in the UK everyone eats. In Sweden not so much.

Maybe it is because the world’s perception of Swedish people as blond, slim and beautiful that Swedish girls in general don’t eat much. They are all very conscious about what they eat and unless it is low-carb, low-fat the food is merely pushed around the plate instead of put in the mouth.

This is a generalisation of course, but for a foodie, this environment felt rather hostile. Moving to the UK almost four years ago, I could not believe it when the really slim women in my office had a sandwich and a packet of crisps for lunch. I mean bread? Crisps? And they still stayed slim. Was that even possible? Of course it was. In the UK people ate the way we did when I was young; everything in moderation. And it works.

But you can imagine that if people don’t want bread for lunch they certainly wouldn’t eat crackling. In Sweden a few years ago it seemed that it was only chicken breasts and salmon fillets that people ate. Some still do, and I am sick and tired of both. But foodies eat differently, thank God, and restaurants with the same philosophy as St John are opening up everywhere in Sweden and it seems more OK to actually eat there now. Or maybe I just don’t care anymore.

Pork belly, Jerusalem artichoke purée and creamy black trumpets, serves 2

2 slices pork belly

salt

a few sprigs thyme

300 g Jerusalem artichokes, peeled

3 tbsp salted butter

1 handfull dried black trumpets, soaked in water

1 tbsp butter

1 garlic clove

a splash of dry white wine

50 ml cream

1 tsp concentrated vegetable stock

salt, white pepper

Preheat the oven to 125C. Place the pork belly slices in a buttered dish. Rub salt into the crackling and add some salt all over. Place the thyme on the meat. Let it cook for at least two hours or until tender.

Cut the artichokes in equal pieces, cover with water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Cook until soft. Turn the oven up to 250C and cook the meat for another 10 minutes until the crackling crisps up.

Squeeze the water from the mushrooms and chop roughly. Fry in the butter on high heat for about 5 minutes. Add the wine and let some evaporate. Add the cream and stock and let it thicken.

Purée the artichokes with the butter, season ieth salt and pepper.  

Pork fillet in a creamy bacon and mushroom sauce

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A few weeks back I invited my friend Nick over for dinner. In exchange he got the lovely job of putting up my curtain rod. A perfect exchange if you ask me.

Just before he arrived I started cooking and was about to blitz the floors with the vacuum cleaner but it refused to even come to life, so I had to open the door with dusty floors.

Maybe not a big deal to some people, but it is to me. I like things to be nice, and most of the time as nice as possible. But I thought to myself, maybe I can distract him from noticing the dust in the corners if I cook something really good.

As it turns out I did. It is a very simple recipe, and pork fillet is a cut we use A LOT in Sweden. Less so here, and although I like other parts of the pig, this is a very versatile cut and I always go back to it now and then.

Pork fillet in a creamy bacon and mushroom sauce, serves about 3

200 g button mushrooms, quartered

4 slices smoked bacon, cut into small pieces

350-400 g pork fillet, tendons and fat removed, diced

100 ml dry white wine

200 ml creme fraiche

200 ml cream

ca 2 tsp dijon mustard

some concentrated beef stock (Touch of Taste)

soy sauce

sauce colouring

salt and pepper

Fry the mushrooms on high heat in a large frying pan, in butter and olive oil. Remove when properly browned, add salt and pepper. Add the bacon to the same pan and fry until crisp. Remove. Brown the pork on high heat and remove as well. Add the wine and let half of it bubble away. Add the cream and creme fraiche and let it bubble for a few minutes. Add the mustard, stock, soy sauce and sauce colouring. Adjust the seasoning. Add the mushrooms, bacon and pork and let it cook for about 10 minutes or until the meat is cooked through.

Serve with potato wedges and any vegetables you like. I served it with crunchy green beens and soft leek and peppers that I cooked in the oven in some olive oil.

Boeuf Bourguignon in the slowcooker

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Since I bought my crockpot a while back it has provided me with some nice stews and a lot of pulled pork.

But would it work with the ultimate stew – the famous Julia Child Boeuf Bourguignon?

It did! I mean, it doesn’t cook itself like many other stews, but once you’ve done all the prepping, you can definitely leave the rest to the slow cooker.

I did all the chopping and frying in the morning, turned on the crockpot and went to a friend’s house for the afternoon. When I got back in the early evening, I fried some mushrooms and added them to the pot and got the potatoes roasting. Other than that supper was labour free.

Boeuf bourguignon in the slow cooker, serves 4

60 g streaky bacon

olive oil

450 g stewing steak, cut into cubes

1 small carrot, sliced

1/2 onion, sliced

salt & black pepper

10 g plain flour

230 ml red wine (Beaujolais, Cotes du Rhone, Burgundy, Chianti)

130 ml beef stock

2 tsp tomato paste

1 clove garlic, pressed

1/4-1/2 tsp thyme

1 bay leaf

150 g button mushrooms

Cut the bacon into lardons. Simmer rind and bacon for 10 minutes in water. Drain and dry. Preheat oven to 230C.

In a frying pan, sauté the bacon in oil over moderate heat for 2 to 3 minutes to brown lightly. Remove to a side dish with a slotted spoon. Leave frying pan aside. Reheat until fat is almost smoking before you sauté the beef.

Dry the beef; it will not brown if it is damp. Sauté it, a few pieces at the time, in the hot oil and bacon fat until nicely brown on all sides. Add it to the bacon.

In the same fat, brown the sliced carrot and onion. Place the bacon, meat, carrots and onions in the slow cooker pot and toss with salt and pepper. Then sprinkle on the flour and toss again to coat the beef lightly with the flour. Place casserole uncovered in the middle position of preheated oven for 4 minutes. Toss the meat and return to oven for 4 minutes more. (This browns the flour and covers the meat with a light crust.) Remove casserole and turn the oven off.

Stir in the wine, and enough stock so that the meat is barely covered. Add the tomato paste, garlic and herbs. Turn the slow cooker on low heat and leave it for 5 hours.

Before serving, fry the mushrooms. Place a frying pan over a high heat with some butter and oil. As soon as you see that the butter foam hasbegun to subside, indicating that it is hot enough, add the mushrooms (washed, well dried, left whole if small, sliced or quartered if large). Toss and shake the pan for 4 to 5 minutes. During this the mushrooms will first absorb the fat. In 2 to 3 minutes the fat will reappear on their surface, and the mushrooms will begin to brown. As soon as they have browned lightly, remove from the heat.

If the sauce is too thick, remove the meat and add some stock. Check the seasoning. Put the meat back. Add the mushrooms and heat up. If the sauce is not thick enough, remove the meat and reduce the juices. Check seasoning, put the mat back, add the mushrooms and warm up to serve. The sauce should be thick enough to coat a spoon lightly.

 

Steak tartare

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For the first time ever I made steak tartare. As an adult I have thoroughly started to appreciate rare meat, and it was about time I made my first steak tartare. But there are sooo many recipes to chose from, I asked for help on Twitter. Maybe someone had the ultimate recipe at hand. It certainly paid off and the lovely Hanna at Swedish Meatball Eats London shared a link.

The recipe is courtesy of Anthony Bourdain, so it was bound to be good. I did chicken out regarding the anchovies though. I lika anchovies, don’t get me wrong. and in patées for example they are an essential, but I didn’t want my steak tartare to taste fishy. Next time I will try it with them though.

Only problem I had with the recipe was the size of the steak tartares. They certainly ended up bigger then the ones you get in restaurants so I think a smaller portion would be better.

Steak tartare, serves 2

adapted from Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook via Hanna
 

>300 g Sirloin steak

1 egg yolk

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

2 chopped anchovies – which I omitted

1 tsp ketchup – omitted as well

1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Tabasco (about 6-8 dashes)

black pepper

2 tbsp mild oil

1 tbsp Cognac

1/2 chopped onion (or 1 shallots)

parsley

small capers

cornichons, chopped

Chop and chop the meat. If you find that difficult like me, use a food processor, but be careful not to disintegrate it.

Mix the other ingredients apart from onion, capers and cornichons in a bowl. Mix in the chopped steak and then add onions, capers and cornichons. Shape to patties by hand or using a cooking ring. Serve with an egg yolk each, blackpepper and crusty bread or chips. 

Panko and parmesan coated lamb racks with mashed potato and red wine sauce

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Lamb is not the most traditional Scandinavian food, although it is definitely available. But in the south where I am from, the land is used more to grow crops than keep cattle on, and further up cows and pigs seem to be the way more represented than lamb. It’s not like in England where you see the while little things on every empty part of land.

This recipe is an adaptation from this Nigella recipe, so now it is perfect to me. Using panko breadcrumbs make the coating very crusty and as long as you have good quality meat this dish is a winner. I prefer to eat my lamb racks rare, and that is the method described in the recipe below. If you prefer yours pink or well done even, just heat up the oil a bit less and cook the meat for longer.

Panko and parmesan coates lamb racks, serves 2

5-6 lamb rack cutlets

2 eggs

200 ml panko

50 ml grated parmesan

salt, black pepper, 1 tsp dried Italian herbs

500 ml vegetable oil

Beat the eggs in a bowl. Mix panko, parmesan and spices in another bowl. Cut the large line of fat off each cutlet. Pour the oil into a sauté pan and heat it up until very hot. Dip the meat, one at the time, in first the beaten egg than the panko mixture to coat it all around. Place two or so at the time in the pan. FRy for about 40 seconds to a minute on each side. Turn when it is nice in colour and crisp. Leave on kitchen towel to drain from excess fat.

Mashed potatoes, serves 2

500 g potatoes like Maris Piper or King Edward

50-100 ml milk

70 g butter

salt, white pepper

Peel the potatoes and cut into smallish pieces (smaller pieces equal less cooking time). Cover with water (just about) add salt and bring to the boil. Once boiling lower the heat to medium heat and cook with the lid half on until very soft. Drain from water and mash with a masher. Add milk (start with the lower amount) and butter. Season. Mash properly to avoid lumps.

Red wine sauce, serves 2

200 ml red wine

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

150 ml cream

1 garlic clove, pressed

1 tbsp soy sauce

salt, white pepper

2 tsp sugar or a mild chilli sauce for sweetness

colouring agent

Add wine and vinegar to a sauce pan and bring to the boil. Reduce for about 10 minutes. Add cream, soy , garlic and the something sweet. Bring to the boil and season with salt and pepper. Colour a light brown.