Four Cheese Linguini with Fava Beans

I spent all afternoon yesterday shopping with a friend, and when I returned home, I was exhausted. And lonely, since Per was off on a business trip. What better thing to comfort me than... cheese. Cheesy pasta, to be exakt. I had found a recipe in a recent issue of "Mat och Vänner", a fairly pretentious foodie magazine that's been around for about a year, and I was itching to try it.

Luckily, on our shopping trip, we stopped by Hötorgshallen, which is the Swedish version of Les Halles. That's a good stop if you need cheese. And I need four kinds - Fontina, Pecorino, Gorgonzola and Parmesan. Parmesan is always in my fridge, Gorgonzola can be found in any store. Pecorino proved a bit harder, but the cheese-man had four kinds to choose from. Fontina on the other hand - the first cheese-man said it was impossible to find. Defeated, I turned around and walked smack into another cheese-seller, who had a big block of Fontina in the glass case. So, I bought some of that, too.

At home, I promptly put on a pot of water with plenty of salt, and started boiling my wholewheat linguini which is not only fairly healthy, it has an amazing nutty flavor and a great texture. I defrosted my fava beans (as I have written before, this is pretty much the one kind of bean I like. And I can't buy it here - I have my parents bring me back frozen bags of it from Spain. Ridiculous, really.) and shelled them. (I normally eat the shell too, since these are tiny little baby beans, but for this I wanted the purer bright green bean, and not the slightly tough shell.) In a small saucepan, I melted the butter, added the fontina and gorgonzola, added the pecorino and parmesan... and when the pasta was cooked, I tossed it with the cheese sauce, a little bit of pasta water, the beans, and some freshly ground pepper. I finished with a final grating of parmesan on top.

Bliss. I did have a problem getting the cheeses really emulsified, and instead of lusciously coating my pasta, they clumped up a bit. Not a problem, because more delicious clumps? I could not imagine. It was my first time with pecorino, and the salted sweet milkiness blew me away. Fontina, I could do without though. The recipe said to substitute mozzarella if need be, and I think that's what I'll do next time. Or just skip it, and up the gorgonzola instead.

Four Cheese Linguini with Fava Beans
Serves 2

linguini for two people (I suck at measuring pasta - just use however much you normally would. Use whole-wheat linguini if you can find it - it's great!)
25 g butter
50 g pecorino
50 g gorgonzola
50 g fontina
50 g parmesan plus a bit extra
freshly ground black pepper
handful of fava beans, shelled

Boil the pasta in plenty of salty water. When al dente, drain and reserve the water. Melt the butter, add the cheese - start with fontina and gorgonzola, and add the pecorino and parmesan last. Boil your fava beans for a few minutes, until "just right". (I used the microwave.) Toss the pasta with the cheese, add pasta water if you need more liquid. Toss in the beans, and the black pepper. Finish with a final grating of parmesan.

Brussel Sprouts with garlic, ginger and orange

Brussel sprouts is really more of a winter food for me - preferrably served au gratin with a thick white sauce and some crispy bacon, alongside a bowl of pasta - but I happened to have a bag in the freezer and an idea. This was tasty - you will need to like brussel sprouts to enjoy it, obviously. Frozen sprouts worked well, I microwaved them until defrosted, and trimmed off the bottoms. We had pork chops with this, although it'd go nicely on its own.

Brussel sprouts with garlic, ginger and orangeserves 2-3

500 g brussel sprouts, halved
1 orange
1 thumbsized piece of fresh ginger
2 cloves of garlic
sesame oil
1 tbsp honey
salt, pepper

Heat the sesame oil in a large pan, or a wok. Grate the ginger, garlic and the peel of the orange. Fry this in the oil, for a minute. Add the sprouts, and fry until they have some color. Squeeze the orange, and add the juice. Add the honey. Season with salt and pepper.

Another take on Asparagus

We had a big lunch yesterday, at MAX - one of the most popular Swedish hamburger chains. It's not great food, but it's ok. And they have a burger called Ultimate Cheese with melted nacho cheese on it. Mm. That is really good, actually. (But next time, I think I'll ask them to hold the mayo and ketchup on it - nothing to interfere with the cheese, thanks.)

After that, we went shopping for groceries. Neither of us were in the mood for a big dinner, so when we found green, bright bunches of fresh asparagus on sale, we nodded our heads and put them in our cart. Now, we had roasted asparagus just the other night.. so how to make these a bit different? Luckily, I remembered a recent post by the Amateur Gourmet, Adam. He put fried bacon and crumbled goat's cheese on his roasted asparagus. Perfect! I took this opportunity to experiment with frying bacon in the microwave (so-so) and crumbed the results liberally over the asparagus. Added some chevre - and that was that. It disappeared faster than I could take a picture - sorry. Next time, I think I'll add some plump cherry tomatoes, too.

IMBB? #14 : Orange Carrot and Ginger soup

Ah, it's that time of month again - time for another great food-blogging-event, that is! The theme for this month's Is My Blog Burning? (Invented by Alberto over at Il Forno) is Orange You Hungry? and is hosted by Foodgoat.

The rules are really simple - it has to be the color orange. Hm. That got me thinking. I like orange food a lot. My favorite must be that fake, plasticky american cheese - yes, really. I adore Kraft Macaroni & Cheese (and I hoard it like crazy when I travel, since it's not sold here. - I have friends ship me the stuff.), I love whatever was in the "nacho cheese" that was served at my high school in California when I was an exchange student, and I love things like Velveeta. And none of that is sold in Sweden. You can find pre-sliced cheese that's somewhat orange, but it's not really the same. (Nevertheless, I buy it and put on hamburgers.) Besides, I thought I might get thrown out of the foodie society for posting about something as unsophisticated as that. You never know.

So enough about that. I've had a fairly upset stomach for the past week - stress-related, probably - so I opted for something soothing: soup.

Orange Carrot and Ginger soup
Makes two large bowls

1 orange, peel grated, juice squeezed
3 carrots, sliced
1 thumb-sized knob of ginger, grated
1 onion, sliced
1 clove of garlic, sliced
olive oil
salt
white pepper

Gently fry the onions and garlic in the olive oil for a few minutes. Add the orange peel and the ginger, and stir well. (This smells heavenly.) Add the carrots, the orange juice and enough water to cover. Boil for about 20 minutes. After that, get your trusty immersion blender (or a food processor, if you don't happen to have one) and blend the soup. When smooth, check if you need a bit more water, season with salt and white pepper, and enjoy. Really nice with a swirl of creme fraiche - but I wasn't in the mood for dairy. The soup had a nice blend of flavors - aromatic, citrusy, sweet, earthy - and a lovely orange color.

SHF #7 - Syrup-cranberry cookies

This month's Sugar High Friday event is hosted by Derrick of An Obsession with Food. The theme: Black and Sticky. Molasses? What the heck is that? Sure, I've heard it, but what is it HERE, in Sweden? I had no idea. We have light syrup (golden?), and dark syrup. (Treacle? Molasses??) That's it. I do have pomegranate molasses in my cupboard (sadly unused yet) but I couldn't think of something reasonable to make with it.

I chose to interpret the term molasses fairly generously, and went for this cookie recipe that's flavored with syrup. Mmm. They're real good. The original recipe came from "Konditorns Bästa" - "The Pastry-Chef's Best", by Signe Maria Bengtsson. I adapted it quite a bit - adding a bit more syrup to get the right flavor, using a mixture of both light and dark, and substituting dried cranberries for raisins. I also opted to make these round rather than the stick-shape she suggested. Cookies are best round, in my opinion.

Syrup-cranberry cookies
Makes 48 small cookies

200 g butter, room temperature-ish at least
2 dl sugar (that's about 3/4 cup)
5 dl flour/300 g/2 cups
1 tbsp golden syrup
2 tbsp dark syrup/molasses
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla extract
1,25 dl (1/2 cup) dried cranberries, chopped up

Preheat the oven to 225 degrees C (450 F). Cream the butter with the sugar, vanilla and syrup. (I used my lovely Kitchen-Aid to bake these - it took five minutes.) Add the baking soda, flour and cranberries. The dough should just about come together - if it's too sandy, add a smidge more syrup. (Or water - but syrup is more fun.)

Make balls, place on baking sheet (fairly closely, they won't spread much), and press down on them with a fork. Bake for 6 minutes. The original recipe said 10 - mine were definitely done by 6. Watch your oven!

Perfect with a tall glass of cool milk! In fact - these are some of the best cookies I've ever had. They're crunchy, but chewy, and yet melt in your mouth. (All that butter, I bet.) They have a very pronounced syrup (treacle? molasses?) flavor, and the cranberry complements it perfectly. I am normally a lover of both nuts and chocolate in my cookies, but.. I must say I miss neither with these. I was planning to bring the batch to my mother-in-law-to-be but.. frankly, no, these are going straight into my freezer. Except for the ones that are going straight into my tummy. And that's probably the lion share.

Amazing Asparagus

This is really simple, and really delicious too. Asparagus is still fairly scarce here - spring isn't quite here yet - but it's getting easier and easier to find. The other night, to celebrate our 5-year-being-engaged-anniversary (and yes, we're finally getting married, in less than three months actually!), we ate this as an appetizer. It was perfect.


Roasted Asparagus with Parmesan and Lemon

1 bunch green asparagus, woody ends trimmed off
dash of olive oil
pinch of sea salt
the juice of half a lemon
1 small handful of freshly grated parmesan

Heat the oven to 200 degrees (400 Fahrenheit). Put your asparagus in a roasting dish - large enough to fit all in a single layer, small enough to not give them too much extra space. Drizzle with olive oil and sea salt, and roast for about fifteen minutes. (You might want to give the pan a few shakes once or twice during the roasting, to make sure the asparagus roast evenly.)

Take out the pan. Squeeze the lemon over the beautifully green stalks, and sprinkle over the parmesan. Enjoy!

Taste or Beauty - How do you like your apricots?

Take a good look at this picture. It has two kinds of dried apricots in it. Until a few days ago, I had no ideas that dried apricots came in another way than the bright, jewel-like, glassy ones. Did you? Note the dark ones in the picture. They’re not like that. What makes them different? They are not treated with sulfur dioxide.

I was actually a bit surprised to hear this. I had never given it much thought – I thought dried apricots really were that bright. Maybe I’m stupid. Apparently a lot of people are highly allergic to sulfur dioxide. Huh. Here’s a link to read more about it.

Anyway – I found unsulfured apricots at my store, and brought home a bag to try. I also had some bright apricots left in my fridge, where they’ve been sitting for a while. So, for my taste-test, I had old, sulfured apricots, and new unsulfured ones. I would really love to be able to say that the unsulfured ones, despite their brown appeareance, were so much better-tasting. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. They were sweet, and much more caramelly – they tasted kind of like figs, or even raisins. (And I'm sadly not much of a fan of either.) Not much like the apricots I’m used to though. The orange apricots were much tarter, and much “brighter” if that makes sense. They tasted like apricots should taste. So, in the case of apricots, I say beauty AND taste wins. Try for yourself!

Oh – what I did I make with all these apricots you ask? I made Clotilde’s Breakfast Clafoutis, a “cake” from oatmeal, milk, sugar, eggs, dried fruit, apples and nuts. I’ve made it a couple of times now, and it’s nice to keep in the freezer for emergency breakfast days.

Bruschetta

Ah, bruschetta! Nothing announces summer like a bruschetta, in my humble opinion. Summer is pretty far away here in Sweden, but that didn't stop me from making a glorious bruschetta the other night, as a small appetizer. I recently bought Nancy Silverton's Sandwich Book and reading it sure got me in the right mood for something - anything - on bread. And we just happened to have some leftover slices of baguette. And some cherry tomatoes begging to be used up... (Funny, I almost always write "cheery tomatoes", and have to correct myself. But, they are pretty cheery, don't you think?)

Bruschetta
Serves 3

3 slices of baguette
3 heaped teaspoons of pesto
1 clove of garlic
10-15 cherry tomatoes, quartered
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 - 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar of your choice - I use raspberry balsamic vinegar
small glug of olive oil
pinch of sugar
pinch of salt
good grind of black pepper

Divide the garlic clove in two halves. Chop one half finely, and put in a bowl. Add the tomatoes, onion, vinegar, oil, sugar and spices. Toast the bread, and rub with the other half of the garlic clove. Pile on about a teaspoon of pesto for each piece of bread, and spread it out a little.Add the topping - and that's it.

Ruby Red Risotto

This is one of my favorite recipes, and I'm extra proud of it because it is all mine. Not borrowed from someone, or inspired by someone else - I hadn't even had beet risotto before I tried my hand at it - all my own creation. I make it mostly in the fall, the colors are so excellently autumnal for me, but it's wonderful with the first small beets of spring too. I made it last night for my big sister, who is visiting Stockholm for a week. This recipe is enough for three large portions, and since I added bacon, I didn't serve anything else with it. Otherwise, this works well as a side dish as well.



Ruby Red Risotto

250 g your favorite risotto rice (I use arborio)
4-5 raw beets, depending on size and taste, peeled and diced
2 small onions, diced
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
olive oil
butter
1 litre chicken stock (or vegetable stock)
1 tbsp honey
2 tsp chipotle paste or other chili paste
200 g bacon
large handful shredded parmesan

Heat the stock, and fry the bacon until crispy. Heat up the oil and the butter in a large pan, and gently fry the onions and garlic for a few minutes. Add the rice, and stir well. Fry on medium heat for a few minutes, add the beets and stir well. Start adding the stock, working as with any risotto in small increments. You might not need all the stock, or you may need a little bit more. (I generally put on a kettle of water, and just add some of that if I need to.) When the rice is done, and that is when it's soft but not mushy, stir in the honey, chili paste and bacon. Taste to see if you want any more seasonings, but remember that you still have to add the parmesan, so don't salt. Add the parmesan right before serving.

Chocolate Walnut Cake

Ok, so after the disaster cake I wrote about, I had to come up with another cake. Fast. And it had to be a reliable one. (No more experimenting with short time limits!) So, I turned to a chocolate walnut cake that I've made twice before. It's excellent - really flavorful and moist, and quite different since it doesn't have any flour nor any added fat. Do try it - it takes all of two minutes to make, and the outcome is great. You do need a food processor though!

Chocolate Walnut Cake

200 g walnuts
150 g dark chocolate
100 g sugar
3 eggs
2 tbsp coffee (water works too)

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius. (350F) Get your food processor, and blitz the chocolate to tiny pieces. Add walnuts, eggs, sugar and coffee (or water) and pulse until you have a nice, uniform, creamy batter. Pour into a lined springform tin (you can just line with butter or flour/crumbs - I have cut out rounds of teflon baking sheets that I use instead.) and bake in the oven for 22-25 minutes. (My tin is 9,5 inches / 24 centimetres) Let it cool, and sift some powdered sugar on top.

Serve with a dollop of cream, and maybe some fruit. No mistakes on this one. The only way to mess things up is to not process enough, which might leave you with chocolate chunks. That results in a crumblier cake that doesn't hold together very well - but it's awfully good since you get all those chocolate bits.

Nigella is such a liar!

I was going to blog about the lovely anniversary dinner I had with Per on Saturday, but I can't - I'm too upset. This has, so far, been the cooking evening from hell. And it's only seven thirty.

Started by having the lid of my salt shaker fly off as I was salting the pasta water. Three quarters of the (large) container emerged, most of it thankfully into the water, but a lot also landed on me, my floor and my stove. Enough to find remnants of salt for weeks, I'm sure.

Next was making a birthday cake for my sister. I was going to make Nigella Lawson's Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake from Feast. All went fairly well, until I was going to pour boiling water down the funnel of my food processor. For some reason, I decided to use a metal measuring cup. Not such a great idea. Severe fingertip burn. Hurts.

That hurdle passed, barely, and next came - "line the tin with overlapping clingfilm. Don't panic - it won't melt." Like HELL it won't melt, Nigella! What kind of clingfilm do YOU use? The IRON kind? Let me just say - MINE melted. Which means all the loving labour spent on the cake is probably totally meaningless. Right now, I have a ruined loaf tin (and I didn't use my cheap IKEA one, either) with a chocolate cake in it. It smells delicious (if you can get past the scent of melted plastic, that is) and it's probably completely inedible.


If you look closely, you can see the melted plastic bits.

Oh, and to add insult to injury - Nigella also has you poke holes in the cake with a skewer, and then pour chocolate syrup onto it. I decided to go through with this last step, just in case the plastic magically heals and is not incorporated into the cake. (Still not fit for a birthday, but it might be some comfort.) Two mistakes. First, the chocolate syrups boils with a fury. All over. My salt-splashed stove now also has chocolate syrup on it. Lots. Then Nigella says, "if you don't have a cake skewer, just use a straw of spaghetti!" Oh yes. Do that. And like me, have the spaghetti break in neat inch intervals, lodging themselves inside the cake. Please.

I just feel like screaming. All the way to the UK. Hope she can hear me.

Update August 2007 - this is one of my most commented-on entries. I'm now forced to close the comments, as I'm not happy with getting heaps of abuse about this. Really, it should be taken rather lightly - I'm a big Nigella fan, and while this particular recipe was a dud, I'm very happy with just about anything else I've tried. The recipe I tried was as written in the first edition of the book, and the instructions have been changed in later editions and on the tv show. Apparently I wasn't the only one with problems. Anyway. I even feel a bit eager to try this again!

Update on kittens, and help with breakfast, please!

A tiny update on the kittens (Thank you, Niklas, for asking!) - they are doing a bit better and gaining some weight on their own. I'd prefer it to be a bit more, but at least they're getting by. We didn't feed them anything yesterday, but I think I'll give them a bit more formula today. I'll update with some more pictures later.

I have had some issues with breakfast lately. I usually get up at 6 am, and leave for work around 7 am. That doesn't leave a lot of time for breakfast, and besides, I don't like to eat that early. I generally feel a bit queasy, and the thought of sitting down to something substantial.. no. I've brought some sandwiches in to work, and that works out.. but it's no fun, and not a good long-time solution.

I'm thinking of getting some yogurt and keeping that in the fridge at work, but I'm also looking for better ideas. Ideally, I want things that can be made in advance, and just heated or at least thawed at work. And they should be fairly self-contained, I don't want to fuss with adding stuff. Any ideas are very welcome! :)

Spicy chocolate

Some spicy chocolates in this update. As I posted a few days ago, we got a big box of chocolate for easter. I'll keep on posting pictures for a little bit. The one on top was a Chilipepper Truffle. Isn't it a pretty chocolate? Those cute things on top? Those are chili flakes. They are hot. Very much so. This is a very interesting piece - the chocolate shell is filled with a white ganache, mostly just sweet, no discernable notes, and then the full heat of the chili hits.. ooooh.




Black Pepper Truffle. This was really different, and really, really good. It was a dark, deep chocolate truffle with a very distinct bite of fresh black pepper. I imagine this would have went so well with an appropriate wine - but it was fine on its own. Definitely something I will get again.



Finally, one of my very favorites from this store. This is the Saffron Truffle. It has a white chocolate shell, and a gorgeous yellow, creamy saffron filling. It used to be in a better shaped piece though - a small pyramid shape. I don't like the new one as much, but the flavor is as good as ever. And that means very, very good.

More about the cats

Kittens are one week old today, and I'm spending most of my time feeding them formula. Or so it seems. They are gaining weight s l o w l y, but hopefully, surely.

Here's a lovely picture of Kelly and Nero (Habanero):


I tried my hand at a new dessert last night. No picture - didn't have a chance before it was all gone - but it wasn't that pretty anyway. I was supposed to make a parfait - the French word for perfect, it's sort of a semifreddo or an ice cream without all the stirring. Basically just eggs, sugar, cream and your chosen flavoring. I made mine in a silicon mold, and stupidly invited friends for dessert before realizing that it would take several hours for it to firm up enough to be turned out of the mold and sliced. So, we ended up digging into it with spoons instead - it was perfectly soft and creamy. Really luscious! I used Marianne candies as my flavoring. These are hard peppermint candies with a chocolate filling. When I was a kid, it wasn't sold in Sweden - only in tax-free stores at the airport, or at the ferry-boats between Stockholm and Helsinki. Nowadays, you can find it anywhere, but I insist on only buying it on the boats. It feels right. Last time we went, we bought a lot - this was a really good way to use up some of them!

Marianne Parfait
4-6 servings

30 Marianne candies, finely crushed
2 eggs
1/2 dl sugar (a scant 1/4 cup will work)
300 ml cream

Beat the eggs and the sugar until fluffy. Beat the cream until it holds stiff peaks. Mix the candy with the eggs, and fold in the cream. Pour in a mold and freeze - overnight would be good.

Mmm..chocolate...

For Easter, we decided to splurge on a large box of chocolates from my favorite chocolate store, Puss & Kram Choklad. We got to choose 25 lovely pieces - the hardest part was remembering all the names though. I think I know what most of them were, but some are a bit of a mystery. Anyway - I took pictures as we ate, and I thought I'd give you some brief reviews. Not that most of you are likely to ever come by this little tiny store, located in Nacka Strand outside of Stockholm. (Conveniently placed two minutes from my gym. Sigh.) But I hope some of you feel inspired to either make your own chocolates (and post about it, please!) or go visit your local chocolatier for a piece or two.



Let's start with the lime truffle. This is a really yummy white chocolate shell, holding a soft, satiny lime-cream-butter filling. It's very sweet and rich, but the tanginess of the lime cuts through it and creates perfection. It was really good - but half was just enough.

Mediterranean Pie

Kittens are still being hand-fed. Not a lot of time to cook, but some joint efforts produced a nice pie the other night. It's now resting happily in our freezer, in convenient portion-sized pieces, and will be perfect for quick lunches. It's a recipe that Per's mom made last time we were there - delicious!

Mediterranean Pie
Serves 6

1 pie shell (just use your favorite pie crust recipe), baked blind for 10 minutes

large handful of rocket leaves
150 g smoked ham, cubed
1 red onion, thinly sliced
100 g feta cheese, cubed
3 eggs
300 ml milk
1 garlic clove, minced
oregano
salt
pepper

Place the rocket leaves in the pie shell. Cover with the ham, the cheese and the onion. Whisk together the eggs with the milk, the garlic, oregano, salt (don't use much - the feta cheese is salty) and some pepper. Pour this over the pie. Bake for roughly half an hour, in a 200 degrees warm oven. (Celsius.)

"Thai chicken"

Sorry for the lack of food posts lately. We're having an emergency with the kittens. They don't gain weight like they should - indeed, they don't gain any weight at all. We can't figure out what's wrong, either. They suckle just fine, and Kelly has plenty of milk. Kelly also has no infections, and her x-rays came out fine. Still, something's not working. Keep your fingers crossed that it will work out! In the meantime, we bottle-feed, every two hours. Yesterday, I drove clear across town with tiny Number One safely curled up in my bra, to visit my friend and fellow breeder Eta. Eta gave me a supply of silicon teats, and a lot of support and advice. She has just had to bottle-feed 14 (that's right - fourteen!) kittens, so I consider her the expert on this. (Two litters, and two c-sections.) Number One fed happily on her formula, and even tried a tiny little purr.

Back home, feeding them is quite tough. We're getting a lot of practise, and I just hope we don't mess up. But, it's a stressful time.

So, for stress, this great chicken-curry paste-coconut milk dish is excellent. I call it "thai chicken" but I bet there's not much thai about it. It's really easy and fast to throw together, but more importantly, it's delicious. I use "red curry paste", which is one of the two curry pastes commercially available in Sweden. (The other one being "green curry paste".) I'm sure other places have more sophisticated choices. Just use your favorite curry paste. The red onion is what really makes the dish here, so even if it sounds a bit suspicious - try it!

Thai Chicken
Serves 3

1 tbsp red curry paste
olive oil
2 chicken breasts, in bite-sized pieces
200 g mushrooms, in large dice
1 red bellpepper, in large dice or strips
1 can (400 ml) coconut milk (for a leaner dish, use half a can, and half water)
1 red onion, cut into thin half moons

Pour a splash of olive oil into a saucepan. Add the curry paste, and fry for a minute. Add the chicken pieces, and mix well. Fry until they have some color. Add the mushrooms, and the bellpepper. Fry on medium heat for about five minutes. Add the coconut milk. Let simmer until the chicken is done, and the sauce has come together nicely. Serve with jasmine rice, and top with generous helpings of the slivered red onions.