Prague - here I come!

This will be a very short entry indeed. I'm leaving for Prague today! So exciting, I've never been to an Eastern European country before! Everyone says that Prague is really pretty, but I've also heard that the food leaves quite a bit to be desired. Oh well - in addition to that, I've heard that they have great pastries. So, if I can't have the food - let me eat cake!

Cardamom Coffee

Flavored coffee is a gift from the gods. Truly, it's so good! And I'm not just talking about the average coffeeshop either (although I'm getting to the point where I'd kill for a Starbucks. If they're really taking over the world - hey, here! Come HERE! We NEED you!) but about the goodness in a cup you can make in your very own home. I have had brief flirts with flavored coffee syrups before, nice but very very sweet and somehow fairly artificial. (Not that that's really a problem, authenticity is not really what I'm aiming for here.) Those bottles now mainly collect dust in the back of my cupboard.

I'm not really much of a coffee drinker. Which is a good thing, as I have a pretty sensitive stomach, nearly getting an ulcer last december. I've cut way, way down on coffee since then. However, I do enjoy a couple of cups a week. And yesterday, sitting at my desk, I really wanted a cup to go with my lovely chocolate bars that I wrote about yesterday. My timing was off - or perfect, as it would turn out - because the coffee machine at work was getting it's yearly checkup. Our coffee machine generally sucks - but the one on the next floor down is REALLY good. It even grinds the beans as you watch! How cool is that? Anyway, I happily went down a floor, and got my coffee. I use milk in my coffee, so I went back to where our own machine is to get a small pack. The service guy smiled and said "hey, try this instead!" and handed over... the best thing since sliced bread. (What a stupid expression really! I hate presliced bread - never buy it,except if I'm putting it straight into the freezer.)

I cannot find this on the web. Oh well. It's cardamom milk!! A tiny little pyramid of milk, flavored with cardamom!! (There was vanilla too, but this was much better.) I put it in my coffee, and instant bliss happened. I'll try to get my hands on a whole box of these, (because I really doubt my office will spring for the extra expense and order them) it's perfect for december. I don't know if cardamom is a christmas spice in other parts of the world, but in Sweden, it's very heavily associated with the holidays.

Speaking of the holidays, I'll be cooking a thanksgiving dinner for the very first time this year! Exciting! Now, I'll get back to my coffee. It's SO good that I never even got around to having it with my chocolate. I'm having another cup right now, but I stupidly (lazily?) used the coffee machine on our floor. Not as good. But still delicious, with the infused milk. I know that you can buy cardamom-flavored coffee, and you can indeed just flavor your coffee yourself, putting a few grains of cardamom right in with the coffee grounds, but it's not the same. That always ends up a little gritty for me. Mixing it with the milk makes perfect sense. I hope they make more flavors, too!

More about chocolate – this time, I ate

Being in a chocolate mood, and not really able to stop thinking about various beans, flavours et cetera, I was out shopping and came across a large chocolate display at a nearby tea- and coffee store. They carried Lindt, Café Tasse, Vahlrona, Poulain and Dolfin. I’ve had Dolfin before and I really like their interesting combinations, so I picked up three bars – all three are dark, 70% cocoa solids. The first is with Nougatine, tiny pieces of caramelized almonds. It says on their homepage that each almond is broken by hand with a hammer for getting the optimum size. Well. I don’t know. But it tasted divine. The chocolate itself is very deep, dark and almost on the edge of being bitter, as 70% chocolate generally is. It melts slowly but surely, leaving a satiny coating in your mouth – and the small lovely almond pieces. These are very sweet, and would certainly have been way too much for a lighter chocolate. This is however a pairing made in heaven.



The second Dolfin bar is made with fresh ginger. Not crystallized or caramelized ginger – fresh. Very, very interesting – ginger is pretty sharp. (And hey – this should be the ultimate diet food since ginger is also good for speeding up your metabolism!) You can smell it right away when you open it – it’s a very special scent. And this chocolate really tastes like nothing else. For chocolate, it’s not very dessert-y or sweet – the ginger makes it a lot more food-y. It’s fairly spicy, too. I like it a lot, but this is probably one that a lot of people would pass up.

The third Dolfin is really quite traditional – it’s made with mint. And just what chocolate manufacturer doesn’t carry something chocolate and mint? But this, this is different! This is real, actual mint leaves, like the ones I grow on my balcony! Real ones! Just dried out a bit. As with the ginger, you can really taste the freshness, and it’s just amazing. It’s truly different from all other mint chocolate – a very special creation. As with the two other bars I tried, the pieces of flavouring are very tiny – no big huge chunks of stuff at all, this is really focusing on the chocolate and the flavouring is just there to enhance the overall experience.

Something I love about Dolfin is their packaging. The bars are so pretty, and they’re all in a self-sealing packet just like loose tobacco. Very smart, because chocolate can lose its aroma pretty fast, and we certainly don’t want that to happen, do we now? Because I’d have felt silly to buy the whole assortment (he had pretty much the full line) I also bought a basic Lindt bar, the Madagascar. It has vanilla in it, but is also 70% cacao solids and thus; very dark. Lindt may not have great packaging – foil – but it keeps the chocolate nice and pretty since it never rubs or bruises on something else. No scratches – which Dolfin does have.

Anyway. The vanilla is really, really noticeable. It tastes almost like milk chocolate, because of it. The chocolate itself is a lot fruitier, and I’d wager it’s made with the fruity Criollo bean. Not too far of a stretch since the origin *is* marked as Madagascar, where I do remember that Criollo is often grown. Oh well. This is a really good chocolate for when you want something a little more candy-ish than just very very dark.

I drank mineral water while tasting these four – it’s good to have something to rinse your palate with. Now I’ll have my bars in my desk drawer, all ready for when I’m just desperate for chocolate. (Tomorrow.)

Chicken and kabanoss stew

Per, my fiance, lodged some complaints regarding yesterday's entry. He wanted it duely noted that HE was indeed the one to do all the adding. I merely instructed. And indeed, this is how it went. Sorry, honey.

Today, we're cooking a chicken-kabanoss stew. It smells very promising indeed. Here's the recipe - created pretty much by tossing together things that were in our fridge.

-4 chicken thighs
-4 thin kabanoss sausages, thickly sliced
-1/2 red chili, seeds and all, chopped
-1/2 garlic (I like to use the solid garlics, if you use regular - I'd say about 4 cloves), chopped
-2 small onions, sliced
-1/2 leek, sliced
-3 carrots, sliced
-2 jerusalem artichokes (at least I think that's the name - small brown, nubbly things), sliced
-1 can (400 grams) of crushed tomatoes
-2 cans (I was lazy and just used the can while you certainly could use measuring cups) of water
-pinch of salt
-fat pinch of sugar
-some "herbes de provence" or whatever dried herbs you prefer
-cumin
-olive oil

First, fry the sliced kabanoss in a dry pan until it has some color. Take out of the pan and set aside. Fry the garlic, chili and onions in a little bit of oil for about a minute. Put them with the kabanoss, Pour in a bit more oil in the pan and brown the chicken thighs, on both sides, for about five minutes. Then, it's time to lower the heat a little, add the kabanoss/garlic mixture, the carrots, the artichokes, the leek, the tomatoes, water (It should just about cover everything) and the herbes the provence. Cover with a lid, and let it simmer on low heat for half an hour.

After that, add sugar, salt and some cumin. It makes a very soupy stew, and I tried to make it a bit thicker with cornstarch.. but no great luck, which is why it's not included in the above recipe. Oh well. Cook, uncovered, for about ten more minutes, by which time the chicken meat should fall off the bones easily. Serve with some cumin-infused couscous.

This really was incredibly good! The chicken really soaks up the flavors of the spices, and the smoky kabanoss is a perfect partner for it. The couscous turned out perfect, I am so pleased! Instead of following the instructions on the packet like I usually do, I did it Nigella-style. (I have been quite unhappy with my couscous attempts before - often ending up with a soggy mess.) Nigella Lawson happens to be one of the chefs I like the most - I really enjoy reading her cookbooks, and she recommends this way to cook couscous in her latest one, Feast. She said to just put couscous in a bowl (we used about 130 grams for the two of us, and that was a little bit too much) with a pinch of cumin and salt, add boiling water from a kettle (we used 300 ml which was just right for the amount of grains) and cover the bown with a clingfilm for 15 minutes. (I think 10 would have been enough.) Perfect! Perfect! No added oils or fat, and yet perfect little nubbly grains of couscous. I'll never go back to my old method.

I ate Rudolph

Yeah, Rudolph the reindeer, that is. Reindeer is a very important food in Sweden, or at least in the Norther parts. Reindeer breeding and herding is mostly taken care of by our native citizens, the Lapps. I have only seen real life reindeer at the zoo, but I've eaten it quite a bit. It's a very very lean meat, and can be absolutely delicious with the right things. My friend Rebecca from the US had it when she was here to visit, and liked it a lot - but it really freaked her out when we told her what it was.

My favorite way to make it is a very very simple recipe indeed. Sadly, I didn't think to take a picture, but it's not especially photogenic anyway. It reflects quite well how I like to eat sometimes - simple, clear flavors. You can buy the meat here frozen in little strips, called Renskav. I thawed that in a dry frying pan, and as the meat heated up, I kind of scrubbed it off so it all thawed evenly. I added in two small onions, thinly sliced into half moons. Next, a big pile of mushrooms - I used chanterelles, which are in season right now. (I'd like to say that I picked them myself, but.. not this time.) After that had steamed for a little while, I added a pat of butter, and about 400 ml of cream - or in this case, a very good cream substitute with 5% fat. I'm generally quite sceptic of such things, but this one is very good. (For any Swedes that might be reading this - Milda MiniMat is the way to go.)

I seasoned it with a tablespoon of soy sauce, some freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of salt. Ate, happily, with a pile of brown rice. Yum!

Chocolate school

I was at a chocolate class the other night. It was held at a small local chocolate shop, called Puss och Kram Choklad. Jozica Obidic is the extremely knowledgeable and very talented and creative owner of the store. Her daughter, Karolina Castillo, held a lesson in chocolate knowledge, explaining to us the various cacao beans that are used in chocolate, and where they grow. She also showed us a cacao bean – wow! It may just be me, but I never realised how large they are! It’s huge! Karolina taught us about how good chocolate is for you. It has tons of nutrients and vitamins, it makes you happy, it can make you calm – hey, you can even lose weight with it. (It’s true! Chocolate, as well as chilli and ginger, can really get your metabolism going. But it has to be good chocolate.)

After learning about chocolate, it was time for the tasting. We got to try three different Vahlrona flavours – Manjari, Caraibe and Gianduja. Manjari is made from a rare bean called Criollo, and has a very fruity taste. Caraibe is darker, more chocolatey and not as sour – I liked it better. Gianduja was, as far as I can recall, a mixture of the two, and sort of had the best of both worlds. I think for praline making that I would pick Caraibe, possibly Gianduja if I wanted to have fruity fillings.

For this is indeed what I want – to be able to make pralines properly. I got a book for Christmas two years ago, Jan Hedh’s (a very well-known Swedish pastry chef) Chokladpassion. It has delicious recipes, and I happily embarked on my chocolate-making journey. But I’m… not that good yet. Not that my truffles aren’t appreciated – they sure are – but I really want to learn how to temper chocolate properly, and I want to get some good molds. Unfortunately, Jozica told me that the best molds are only available to professionals. (But hey – there’s always Ebay.)

Anyway. Jozica then took out a huge plastic bowl of molten chocolate from their industrial-size microwave oven. She then proceeded to freak everyone out by pouring the whole thing out on a marble table. Scary as that thought is, it was SO pretty! She kept moving it around with a palette knife and when it was cold enough – 28 degrees – she poured it back into the bowl, and heated the whole thing up to 32 degrees. And that’s it. That’s tempering. (Which is what you do to ensure that your chocolates turn out nice and glossy and don’t get that nasty white skin.)

After that, it was playtime! We were each given a bit of chocolate dough (chocolate mixed with glucose) and were taught how to make a rose! I’m pretty impressed with my own attempts, and made two that I got to take home - see the picture on top!! (The dough was yummy, too.) Because Per was picking me up, and everyone else took their sweet time agonizing over just which pralines to take home, I decided to skip it for now, and instead go down after my water aerobics (sadly, my gym is almost next door to this store) some day and get some. I’ve had them before – they are VERY good. Especially the little pyramids made out of saffron-scented truffle filling and a white chocolate shell. Yum…

I think I’ll place an order with Simonssons Chokladkompanie that sell Vahlrona and other chocolates in bulk – I really want to make some nice edible gifts for Christmas. Now, if I can just find some decent molds…

My very own blog!

Oh my god! I just created a blog! MY blog. My very own! My preciousssss... Ok. Yeah, you get it. Another blog. Great. But - it's just not any ordinary blog! It's mine! All mine!

Allright. Really. Anyway - I'm a bit excited. I've started blogging attempts before, I'll admit. With various success. But I decided to get this one going because lately I've been really enjoying reading so many other peoples blogs, especially food blogs. It's to the point where I'll walk around, mumbling to myself. In English. About food. So I thought I'd better get this going before people start calling me crazy. (Or should that be crazier?)

As I mentioned, I read foodblogs. And this will be yet another one. I love food. I really do. I love cooking, I love eating, I love talking about food, reading about food, shopping for food - you name it. However, I have two other obsessions and they might very well find their merry ways into this little blog too. They are *drumroll please* cats, and makeup. Kind of funny to have three interests that have so extraordinarly little to do with eachother, but yeah, that's how it is. (To add to this, I also happen to love politics, which is what I do for a living, computers and books.)

While I'm on the subject (and that would be the subject of "me", my favorite) I should tell you some background. I am a girl. My name is Anne. I live in Sweden, which is a smallish country in Northern Europe. I live in a suburb to the capital city of Stockholm, and was born and raised in the area too. My parents live here, as do two of my sisters and my brother. Third sister lives in Northern Sweden. I'm the youngest, and I'm 28. (Although I have a hard time actually accepting that. If someone asks, my response is generally "Oh, 24. Hey, wait, no.. I have to think.. right.. I'm 28. Yeah. 28." I really don't know why it's like this, I don't mind approaching 30. (Right.)

I share a large apartment with Per, my fiance since five years. (Swedes are not big on that tradition of actually marrying within a year. But we are planning on getting married next summer, July 9 is the tentative date. Nothing big... I'm sure I'll tell you more about it.) We have four cats - Hamlet, Ywette, Edith and Kelly. They're all purebred British Shorthairs, except for Kelly who's a British Longhair. In the event that you'd like to learn more about my cats, you can visit the cattery website at http://www.hufflepuffs.net

Ok. My very first post in my very own foodblog.. and nothing about food. That's a great start. (Or not.)