Feta-tomato pasta

Ooh, this wasn't half bad. It's a really simple recipe - I based it on something I read in Buffé which is a magazine by ICA, one of the largest grocery stores. This recipe made a lot of food - dinner for two and four lunches for me.

Feta-Tomato Pasta

250 g penne
1 large onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
200 g feta cheese
3 tbsp creme fraiche
500 g crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 tbsp runny honey
olive oil

Gently sweat the onion and garlic in the olive oil. Add the tomatoes and the dried herbs. Let cook for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to instructions on the package. Mix the creme fraiche with half of the feta cheese. Crumble the rest. When the sauce has reduced, stir in the honey and the creme-fraiche-feta mixture. Stir together with the pasta, add a bit of pasta water if you want a looser sauce. And finally stir in the reserved feta cheese. Top with some fresh herbs if you have them at hand.

Help!

Ok, my wedding is approaching quickly - July 9 is the big date - and I'm knee-deep in food planning. And I need help thinking up some fun little hors d'oeuvres to serve with bubbly after the ceremony. I tried some nice corn crackers last week, but my mom nixed that idea. Too salty, and a little flat. So ok, that's out. I'm still thinking about caprese-on-a-stick, but it doesn't go all that well with bubbly. So, if you can give some ideas, please do! These are the criteria:

-Must be portable, and packable
-No assembly can be done at the site, it needs to be fully preparable
-Needs to be cold
-Needs to be non-sticky and easy to eat with your hands
-Preferrably, can be prepared well in advance, at least a day
-Must go reasonably well with some kind of bubbly, we're probably choosing a sparkling dry rosé rather than champagne. Possibly Prosecco instead.

So - bring on your best ideas! Please?

More on Midsummer

Midsummer turned out great. The weather was absolutely wonderful, and we spent all day - and night - on my parents boat. Per, amazingly, did not get seasick at all due to his new little gadget - the Seaband. It sounds like magic, I know - but it works. Per is as sceptical as they come, and it still worked on him. Usually, he's not even able to spend time NEAR the water. If you have similar problems, do give the Seaband a try!

The picture collage above shows a fair representation of our weekend. Let me tell you about the pictures!

Top row:
My mom, on the back of our boat. You can see the Swedish flag behind her.
A view from the boat, while riding from the jetty to the island where we anchored.
Our boat is the white one on the right, you can see my dad climbing on it. Our friends are parked on either side.
There were lots of boats in the same spot.

Second row:
Wilma, the gorgeous Welsh Terrier that belong to one of the other couples we were with.
Xider - one of our preferred summer drinks. It's touted as a cider, but it's probably nothing natural about it. It's fairly weak, and has a pleasant lime flavor. Nice and refreshing!
My parents - we're sitting on the cliff at 5 pm. Drink time! We stuck to our cider, the others had whiskey, wine or dry martini. (They have the cutest little thermoses with the martinis.)
Me and Per.

Third row:
Ah, Swedish strawberries and cream. Nothing says summer like this one.
Punsch - a Swedish sweet liquour that's traditionally served with coffee. Very tasty!
A fairly upset swan approaching the boats. They usually arrive in families, but this one was on its own.
Another view.

Bottom row:
Wilma again, and her owner Bertil.
Per.
Another view of our boats.
Linn, a very happy baby.

Foodwise, we had sill, new potatoes, finely chopped red onions and sour cream for lunch, and my mom had brought a great salmon for me since I don't eat sill. I have to get the recipe - it was delicious. For dinner, we had grilled pork tenderloin, potato gratin and a wonderful barbecue sauce that my old friend Cissi makes. She just started her blog, and I was thrilled to see that this recipe was the first one she posted. It's VERY good, definitely give it a try! It's in Swedish - but I'll ask her if I can translate it and put it up here.

Homemade frappuccino!

Look! I made one! Myself!

Well, it's not quite as good as the marvellous liquid I finally experienced at my beloved Starbucks (come to Sweden! Please! Please!) in Paris, but it's not that far off, either. I had read tons of frappuccino recipes, and grown very tired. So difficult. Surely it can't be that hard? So, I used a shot of cold coffee, a dash of milk with some chocolate powder in it, a splash of caramel syrup, and tons of ice. And ended up with the above. Not bad! Next time, I want more coffee flavor, it was a bit weak. And you couldn't taste the chocolate at all, so I think I'll go with a chocolate syrup. And possibly full milk rather than the 0.1%-stuff that I have. It tasted a little watery. But still, it had potential. I want more!

And I've already noticed that there'll be plenty of Starbucks while I'm in London. Thank you.

IMBB #16 - Skagen Mix

Ah, it's that time of month again! Is My Blog Burning? is THE original food blogging meme, and this edition is hosted by Viv at Seattle Bon Vivant. The theme? Eggs. That's right - eggs. What a huge theme, you might think. I know that I sure did. I love eggs - I eat a lot, and I use them for so much stuff. We always have soft boiled eggs for breakfast on weekends (much to the delight of my cat Kelly - she loves soft egg yolk, and will come running as soon as she hears me crack the shell with a spoon), and whenever we're on vacation. It's a life-long tradition for me, it's always been like that when I grew up. But, as much as I love my boiled eggs (not to mention how much I love my little gadget - the egg boiler!) I can't very well post about that for an IMBB?. Luckily, Viv gave a lot of examples in her announcement - and she even mentioned that fish eggs - roe - would be acceptable.

And here I am, having been waiting for an excuse to share a classic Swedish recipe. Skagen Mix is a mayo-based sauce with shrimp and dill, "invented" by Tore Wretman who is one of the most famous Swedish chefs. He served it with toast, as in a Toast Skagen. This is found on menus all over Sweden (including as a baguette filling in many cafes), it's an eternal classic appetizer. And you certainly should try it.

I have no idea why he chose the name Skagen. Maybe I would know if I read one of his books, but I never have. Skagen is the northern coast of Denmark's largest island - and has nothing to do with Sweden. Maybe he tasted something similar there - certainly possible!

We wanted something more substantial, and served it with a baked potato instead. Match made in heaven. Especially as we happened to have an avocado ripening in the window. Perfect meal. There are tons of recipes for Skagen Mix, using all kinds of stuff - but this one is fairly classic. Although I think that if you really want authentic - more mayo is the way to go. I don't think creme fraiche was introduced in Sweden when this was first invented - but I could be wrong. And besides, Mr Wretman might have used sour cream. In either case, it lightens the whole sauce quite a bit, and I prefer the flavor this way.



Skagen Mix
Two generous portions

3 tbsp mayonnaise
3 tbsp creme fraiche (low-fat is fine)
1 tbsp finely chopped dill
50 g bleak roe
500 g shrimp, unpeeled but cooked
1/2 red onion, finely diced
freshly ground white pepper

Peel the shrimp, and roughly chop them if you want to. (This is not the time to use jumbo shrimp, small ones will be better here.) Stir together the mayo and the creme fraiche or sour cream. Add the dill, roe, onion and white pepper. Add the shrimp. Mix well. Voila - you're done! Serve with anything you'd like - it goes very well on toast, perfect in a ciabatta or in a baguette, excellent with baked potatoes or avocado.

Happy Midsummer!

Tonight is Midsummer's Eve, which is one of the most celebrated holidays in Sweden. (It ranks right up there with christmas.) So what is really celebrated? Well, the summer solstice, and the light. As such a large part of the year is dark in especially Northern Sweden, we take every advantage of the lighter part of the year. Midsummer's is the night to stay up all night (and it's actually sunlight 24 hours in some parts of the country!), eating, drinking and being with family and friends.

You can read more about it here. I, like very many other Stockholmers will go out into the archipelago. (Everyone seems to want to be near water on Midsummer.) Per and I will join my parents on their boat. Midsummer is all about food and drink (especially drink, for very very many), but the traditional food is sill (pickled herring) and new potatoes, with a garnish of sour cream and chives. The potatoes are fine (excellent!) but I really can't stomach sill. Most people also barbecue, and so will we. And I'm bringing some of the radishes and cheese I talked about! And some snacks. And a lot of strawberries - it wouldn't be midsummer without strawberries, that's for sure.

So, happy midsummer's eve to you all! I recommend one of the oldest traditions for those single girls out there - tonight is the night that you go out, pick seven kinds of flowers, and sleep with them under your pillow. Ignore the bugs that inevitably will inhabit the bouquet. You will dream about the man you're going to marry. Yes, of course it's true.

Strawberry Pecorino salad

Another great little salad! Again, a recipe I found at Debbie's blog - she's probably the blogger whose recipes I try out most often! This one charmed me at once - strawberries are everywhere now, and I'm always looking for fun new things to use them in. A pairing with cheese - gimme! And especially since pecorino is one of my latest new food finds. So good - more flavorful than parmesan, but less intense. Different. Salty. Good. I also managed to find sugar snaps for this salad, and I'm glad I did (even though they were criminally expensive!) - their little bursts of sugary goodness was perfect.

So - very simple really - take about 250 g of strawberries, halve them or quarter them depending on size, mix with roughly diced cucumber, freshly blanched (1 minute in boiling water, plunge in ice water, drain, serve) sugar snap peas (about 250 g), as much pecorino as you want, and I tossed in a bunch of toasted pine nuts, too. And a little bit of mint - I have it in my "herb garden" (grand name for a little flowerbed outside my balcony, but still) and it went very well with the other flavors.

And toss with a good vinaigrette. I use about 2 tbsp of white balsamic vinegar, 2 tbsp of olive oil, dash of dijon mustard (I picked up one that's flavored with shallots - very good!), a dash of honey, salt and pepper.

The Muffin Factory

Look at those muffins! They're HUGE! Muffinsfabriken ("The Muffin Factory") pride themselves on selling the largest muffins in Stockholm. And they sure do. Don't plan on having a big dinner on the same day as you buy these babies, that's for sure. We got one banana-walnut, and one chocolate-orange, split both and stuffed our faces. I could finish my half of the banana-walnut (incredibly good!) but when time came to the chocolate orange, I'm sad to report that I could only manage a small bite. It was a very good bite though.

Muffinsfabriken
Nioörtsvägen 26
Midsommarkransen
or
Götgatan 99
Stockholm

Hot weather - time for salads!

I realise that this blog has had an unproportionate number of baked goods and unhealthy dishes lately. So, I'll start making up for it by telling you about the excellent chicken salad we had for dinner last night. Ah - so simple and fast, and so yummy! We used a ready-roasted chicken, or half of it to be precise, fed the skin to the cats, and combined the meat with halved cherry tomatoes, red onions sliced into thin half-moons, tossed it with lots of rocket salad, and finished with lots of parmesan cheese. Dressed it with a herb vinaigrette - white balsamic vinegar, olive oil, little bit of mustard, salt, pepper, sage and tarragon. Perfect for when it's too warm to consider anything else, and you want dinner on the table straight away.

Corn crackers with Rosemary and Sage

I'm getting married in three weeks. And I'm doing all the food myself. I've been agonizing about what to serve with drinks - and I think I'm settling on caprese-on-a-stick (cherry tomatoes, mozzarella and basil on toothpicks) and then I want something crunchy and savory, too. I looked through cookbooks last night, and found a recipe that was interesting, but sounded too weird - it had chicken bouillon powder as the only spice and.. well, no. But the idea - to use crushed tortilla chips in a cracker? Hey, I like that. So, I fiddled with it quite a bit, added some herbs from my garden, and added polenta since I didn't have that much regular flour in the house. Presto! These are excellent! And they'll be absolutely perfect with champagne. (Or whatever we'll be having, we're leaning towards a sparkly rosé.)


Corn Crackers with Rosemary and Sage
makes 60 small crackers

50 g tortilla chips, crushed
2 teaspoons of baking powder
2,75 dl flour
1 dl polenta
1 tbsp finely chopped rosemary
2 tbsp finely chopped sage
dash of cayenne pepper
dash of cumin
60 g cold butter, diced
2 eggs
sea salt

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C. (350F) Use a food processor. Start by crushing the tortilla chips. Add the flour, polenta and the baking powder, and mix. Add the herbs and the spices. Add the butter, and process until you have a sandy rubble. Add the eggs, and process until just combined.

Turn out the dough on a floured workface, and form into a ball. Roll into a thin (0.5 centimeters/1/4 inch) disc, and use a cookie cutter to take out shapes. Re-roll the scraps - this is a VERY friendly dough, and you can use everything up. Bake for 12-14 minutes.

Radishes and Cheese

This is a small little dish, but oh so full of flavors! I found the recipe on Annette's blog, I Mitt Franska Kök. I made it a couple of nights ago for something to nibble on before dinner - yum! We're definitely making this again - and in fact, it'll probably find its way to our wedding buffet, too. But I want to try it with another cheese - Comté was good, but I'm dying to try it with Pecorino.

As for the recipe - it's so simple. Just slice radishes thinly, and mix with about an equal amount of diced cheese. (Try it with Comté, as the original recipe suggests!) Dress with a simple vinaigrette from white balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and a small bit of Dijon mustard. And add whatever herbs you have handy - I made this with tarragon and sage, and it was a beautiful combination.

On another note - I'm so excited! I'll be joining the UK food bloggers for a picnic at Henley in two weeks time! Johanna has very kindly talked me into flying out for the event, and has even offered me to stay at her place - is that perfect or what? I know I should probably be wedding planning like crazy, since this will be just one week from my wedding, but I also feel that I could use a little time away from here and have fun on my own. And a rowing regatta! That just sounds SO English, and so very Jilly-Cooper-ish that I can't possibly resist. Yeay!

Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookies!

I saw these quite a while ago on Debbie's blog, but I didn't really think about them until a few nights ago. I wanted to make something to take with me on a small field trip I was making together with some of our members of parliament to a cat shelter, to encourage the girls who work there. I was already bringing treats and toys for the cats, but I figured that the staff could use a little cheering up too. So, cookies.. I wanted something I could easily prepare that night, and just slice and bake the morning of the visit. These turned out to be perfect. I made the dough, shaped it into a roll, and chilled overnight.

I got about 40 cookies out of this, but I think mine were a bit smaller than Debbie's. I baked mine for 9 minutes, and they came out just right. She has the recipe with US measurements, but I'll post it here for anyone who wants metric equivalents.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
40 medium cookies

3,75 dl flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
110 g cold butter, cut into 1 cm dice
1,25 dl sugar
1,6 dl brown sugar
1 1/2 tbs vanilla extract
1 large egg
200 g dark chocolate, chopped

Mix flour and baking soda. With a free standing mixer with the paddle attachment, or with a handheld beater, mix the butter with the two sugars on low speed. When it's smooth, add the egg and the vanilla. Mix until just combined. Add the flour and baking soda, mix until just combined. Add the chocolate. Shape dough into rolls and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.



When it's time to bake, preheat the oven to 175 degrees C. Slice the cookies and place on a baking sheet (I always use teflon baking mats, if you don't, use parchment paper.) Bake for 8-10 minutes. Cool on a rack. (But make sure to have one straight out of the oven - heaven.)

SHF Tart Edition -Rhubarb Caramel Tart

This month, the fun event Sugar High Fridays is hosted by Life in Flow, and the theme: Tantalizing Titillating Tempting Tarts. Well, first of all, I'm not completely sure if this qualifies as a tart, or a pie, or a crumble, or a cobbler or whatever else it might be - but it's so darn tasty I absolutely have to share it with you, and this seems like the perfect occasion. It's an absolutely amazing.. well, whatever it is, but let's just call it a tart. (I have a vague suspicion that a tart should have filling on top of dough, rather than the other way around.. oh well.)

I found the recipe via a Swedish journalist who blogs (that's becoming very big here right now - one of our largest tabloids have ordered 8 or so of their staff to start blogs.), and I don't really know the original source. Whoever that is - THANK YOU, because this is so good. I'll definitely keep it in my regular repertoire. I've already tried two other rhubarb recipes so far this summer, but this turned out even better. Very, very delicious!

Sadly, it's not very photogenic, but the taste truly makes up for it. Try this! Try this! Try this! (I'm sorry, but I'm really very excited. In case you couldn't tell.)

Rhubarb Caramel Tart
Serves 4

500 g rhubarb, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
sugar

150 g butter
1/2 dl golden syrup
1 dl cream (half and half works well, doesn't need to be full fat)

2 dl rolled oats
2 dl sugar
2 dl flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Put the rhubarb in an oven-proof dish, and preheat oven to 175 degrees C / 350 F. Sprinkle with sugar - how much you need is determined by how tart your rhubarb is.

Mix the oats, sugar, flour and baking powder in a bowl. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the syrup and the cream, and take off the heat. Add the mixed dry ingredients, stir well. Pour this on top of the rhubarb, and bake for 25-30 minutes. Serve with vanilla ice cream or custard.

Summer = Salad

We've had some wonderful summer weather here these past few days - blue skies, sunny and temperatures soaring. I managed to get a fairly nasty sunburn on my upper arms last Friday, but it's fading now. My freckles are bursting out so fast you can almost see it happening. Anyway, when it's this warm, there's no way I'm turning on the stove to actually cook.

And neither was the case when we were visiting friends over the weekend, and instead Helmy made this wonderful salad for us. Isn't it beautiful? It has leaves of Maché and Lollo Rosso, tomatoes, yellow bellpeppers, avocado, red onion, yellow zucchini and a really lovely feta cheese with sundried tomatoes. With this, she served an amazing herb omelet, and a basil vinaigrette. Food at their house is always wonderful, and this certainly was no exception.

It'll be a lot of salads these coming months, I think. Tonight, we're making the crawfish bulgur again, it's one of the dishes we're both craving almost constantly.

Rhubarb-Cardamom Cake

So, I ended up with quite a big batch of rhubarb after visiting Per's parents, and I wanted to do something new. Rhubarb pairs well with many things - strawberry, lemon, ginger - but I wanted to try something different. And I needed a cake to bring with me to a "fika" with some girls from a cat message board I frequent. I started thinking about some truly marvellous cardamom buns I've had lately (for all you Swedes - Ica Maxi has the best buns ever!) and it struck me that cardamom and rhubarb would probably not be bad at all. I made a fairly normal cardamom cake, and tossed rhubarb with more cardamom and sugar and piled it all at the top. Results? Most excellent! This is very summery, and goes perfect with a tall glass of lemonade.

Rhubarb-Cardamom Cake

For the cake:
100 g butter
600 ml flour
3 tsp baking powder
200 ml sugar
3 tsp cardamom
1 egg
200 ml milk

For the topping:
400 g rhubarb, peeled and cut into 1 cm pieces
50 g sugar
2-3 tsps freshly ground cardamom

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Centigrade (350F). Melt the butter. Stir together the dry ingredients, add the egg and the milk, and stir well. Add the butter, and stir again. This will be more of a dough than a batter. Pour into a 24-cm lined springpan.

Toss the rhubarb with the sugar and cardamom, and add the pieces to the cake pan. Make sure to cover the top of the cake. Bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes. It will rise quite a bit, so don't use a smaller pan unless you augment the quantities.

Strawberry merengue cake

Few things spell Swedish summer more than a cake with strawberries. For Swedes, strawberries are sacred - they're available for a short period, and during those weeks, people eat as much as they possibly can. I still haven't seen any Swedish strawberries (and of course, they are much better than all the others) but there has been some nice Belgian ones around for a while.

A few days ago, Per came home with something strange. It was two small cartons of strawberry cream. As in strawberry-flavored whipping cream. Weird. Very weird. But, they had been giving them away as samples at the store, and I thought I'd give it a go. I couldn't think of that much to do with it (a mousse? Maybe...) so my mind quickly landed on strawberry cake. Off to the store again to get merengue meringue rounds (we were in a hurry, so no time to bake my own pavlovas) and some strawberries. Then it was just a matter of assembly.

You can see that the cream is really pink. Well, it was. And did it taste good? Sure. It was fine - not very sweet, and with a pronounced strawberry (as in strawberry ice cream) flavor. But it's not something I'd buy on my own. And I'm still wondering what to do with the second one, that's still left. Oh well. :)

And here's another pic of it, just for good measure. You can see that there's a bundle of sliced berries in the middle layer, too.

Oh, yummy rhubarb!

A tiny little rhubarb stalk

Rhubarb is one of my favorite things. It tells me that Sweden's cold spring is finally over, and summer is coming - maybe not with hot weather and sunny days, but at least with little peeks of blue sky, and sudden bursts of heat that makes people gather in the parks. When I grew up, we grew our own rhubarb, and thus buying it in stores is totally unacceptable to me. That will not happen. It just feels wrong. Sadly, my parents moved a few years ago, and away from the rhubarb. We live in an apartment, and although we do grow some things - mint, sage, thyme, tarragon, rosemary - rhubarb is not one of them. Although we could, I'm strongly thinking about planting some for next year. Rhubarb is very easy to grow, it keeps coming back and it yields a lot. Two of my neighbors have rhubarb, and to my intense annoyment, they don't pick it. I could ask, but I'm not sure who they are. Oh well.

Per's mom has rhubarb too, and she usually gives me a big bag of it when we meet. Since we were down for Per's little brother's graduation, we got to pick as much as we wanted. It was raining heavily by then, so we did a quick thing of it, but still ended up with enough rhubarb for at least three great desserts. I started as soon as we got home the next day by making a classic rhubarb crumble. It's simple, and delicious. One of the best things to do with rhubarb, really. The crumble can be changed in any number of ways, by adding oatmeal or nuts, but this is just a very basic crumble that really showcases the tart-sweet rhubarb.



Rhubarb Crumble
4 generous servings

500 g of rhubarb, peeled and cut into bite sized pieces
sugar

300 ml flour
2 tbsp sugar
125 g butter

Start by preparing the rhubarb. Put in a pie dish, and sprinkle with sugar - it depends on how tart your rhubarb is, but don't skimp on it. Make the topping in a food processor, or by hand - start by combining the sugar and flour, add the butter and pulse (or chop) until you have crumbs. Simple as that. Put the crumbs on top of the rhubarb, and bake in a hot oven (225 degrees C, 450 F) for 20-25 minutes or until the topping looks done. Serve with custard or vanilla ice cream.

A Swedish Graduation

We recently visited Per's family, in the city of Motala. It's about two hours from Stockholm, where we live. The occasion was his little brother's graduation from high school - "studenten" as it is called here. Sebastian is 19, and was celebrated with lots of champagne and great food. Swedish graduations differ quite a bit from a US high school graduation (I know, since I've done both) and are a lot less formal. There is no ceremony - at least not open to the families. The students, after having had a ceremony themselves, run out into the schoolyard, toss their white hats in the air, and are recieved by their families. The families generally shower their students with flowers, little toys with student hats, and small bottles of champagne. They then gather, in their respective classes, to go on a glory-ride around the town, on big decorated trucks. (This is the perfect time to drink all those tiny bottles of champagne, by the way.) After that, most students have a reception at their houses, and are brought there in a nicely decorated car. (Well, this all differs a little from school to school, but it's a fairly common way to do it.)



The reception was held at Per's aunts house, and the food was yummy. First, we had strawberries and champagne, and little bites of melon and parma ham. In the background, there's small crostini with Skagen salad, which I'll have to make and post about some day. It's mainly shrimps, roe, dill and mayonnaise. Oh, and the rollups with soft rye bread, horse meat and horseradish.

Then followed a buffet with all kinds of goodies, my favorite being the Vasterbotten Cheese pie served with roe, chopped red onions and sour cream. There was also cold, marinated pork tenderloin and chicken breast, and several salads. And more pies, but I was getting stuffed at this point. I had to leave a little space for some wonderfully soft brie cheese, and then there was coffee and jam roly-poly. Roly-poly is a fun dessert, and one I really want to learn how to master. It's very intimidating, rolling up a big cake like that, but I'll have to try one day. Per claims that it's a breeze, so I'm thinking that *he* should do it.

The Tartine and the Omelet

For our final day in Paris, we walked around the Marais, and looked at all the little stores. We also went to the Bastille monument, and discovered a little market nearby. Hunger overtook us, and we landed at a small bistro near the Place des Vosges. A very friendly waiter welcomed us and quickly seated us at a small table outside. We sat there and enjoyed a very good bottle of wine (Côte du Rhône - our favorite district) and read the menu. I decided on a tartine with warm chevre cheese on pain poilane. Per wanted an omelet. (What is the secret to a perfect omelet, anyway?? This was better than any I've ever made.) As you can see, the servings were beautiful and very generous. We were very, very, very happy.

More about Paris - Pierre Hermé

The main reason we went to Paris was to celebrate my birthday. And for a birthday - you need a cake. Sure, I made the Nigella cake when I got back, but I wanted something actually on my birthday too. And what better than something from Pierre Hermé? One of the best pastry chefs in the world, and I've been salivating reading posts about him from fellow bloggers. Finally, the time had come. We found our way there easily enough, and stood mesmerized by the offerings. I finally decided that chocolate was the way to go (as it so often is) and chose the Plenitude. It's a chocolate mousse dome, covered in chocolate and some more chocolate. And I think there were some hazelnuts in there, too. The chocolate flakes on top were SALTY - an unexpected and tasty twist. In all, it was delicious. Per had something I can't remember the name of - it had pistachios and strawberries, and was also very yummy. Sadly, it fell over before I had a chance to take a picture. There's no space in the shop to eat your goodies, so we ventured into the park across the street. Judging from the number of Pierre Hermé boxes in the trashcans, we were not the first to do this. Smartly, we had hoarded the spoons from a previous day's visit to a Häagen-Dazs shop, so we could enjoy our goodies without making too much of a mess of ourselves.



We also tried a few of the macarons, ah, what a glorious cookie! I really want to try my hand at making them myself now - it can't be *that* hard. We had one kind with salted butter caramel and then the one pictured above, which had passionfruit and a milk chocolate filling. Delicious! And gorgeous, isn't it?

Harissa Chicken

Harissa is a spicy African chili blend (and incidentally also the name of one of our kittens - the one who's grinning in the picture I posted a few days ago. The other two are Habanero and Honey.) and it seems that there are a ton of recipes for it - just do a google search. I, however, didn't use any recipe, but instead used a ready-to-cook spice mix from Santa Maria. Cheating, for sure, but sometimes, dinner just has to be FAST. Very, very fast.

This was one of those days. So, I cut up some chicken (thigh fillets, juicy and flavorful) and fried them real fast, added the spice mix and water, and let that simmer for five minutes. Done! Meanwhile, I made couscous the perfect way - 120 g of couscous, pinch of cumin and salt, 300 ml boiling water, cover with plastic wrap, let stand for 10 minutes - and added chopped tomatoes, spring onions, red bellpepper and coriander. A simple sauce of creamy yogurt, lemon juice, garlic, mustard and chili.

Very satisfying.

Some notes on Paris

Ah, this is long overdue - after all, it's been two weeks since I got back from our weekend trip to Paris. It was a really wonderful couple of days - the weather was wonderful, and we felt like we had lots of time to relax and explore. And we did *all* the touristy things - all of them. My feet have never been more sore.

I might get kicked out of the foodie community for this, but.. we really didn't eat that much fun stuff. Our own fault, for sure - for some reason we decided that salads at Planet Hollywood sounded good for one dinner, and lunch at Disneyland the next - but frankly, that was fine too. Not great, not exciting, certainly not French...

However, there were several high points, culinary-wise, too. We started out by having lunch at Vegetable, which both Louisa and Clotilde has written about. It was a wonderful experience, the food was excellent and the service impeccable. And I was so excited to be there! I had the ravioli, as seen up top, and Per had the risotto. No room for dessert or starters, sadly. The ravioli was everything I've hoped for - so flavorful! And the dough felt wonderfully silky, not like any pasta I've ever experienced before. Per's risotto was extremely cheesy and very good. And pretty, too!



My excitement grew to previously unknown heights when I realised that Paris has what Stockholm so much lacks - Starbucks. I love, love, love Starbucks. I really do. And we went there twice. I got to try two great drinks, exciting for me - Caramel Macchiato which was yummy but not that special and.. Frappuccino. I've shied away from cold coffee drinks before, fearing them a little.. but this was perfect. Incredibly tasty, and refreshing. I want more, much more. Sadly, it looks like I'll have to learn how to make them, because I've tried some of the copies here and they're nothing like the real thing. At all.

We also had lunch at a wonderful little bistro, and desserts at Pierre Hermé - but I'll make another post about that.

June 6 - Sweden's National Day

Today is Sweden's National Day. It's a little bit funny, because in stark contrast to other countries, nothing specific is really celebrated on this day. Not like the US Independence Day, or France's Bastille Day, or Norway's May 17 (when they actually celebrate that the union between Norway and Sweden was ended).

Or well - it's not entirely true. Sweden's National Day celebrates the day Gustav Vasa was elected king in 1523, and it's also in memory of one of our constitutions frm 1809. (No longer in effect.) But no one knows this stuff. (I had to look it up.) So, it's safe to say that our National Day is not so much of an event, exactly. Indeed, this year is the first one when it's actually a holiday! The decision came very late last year, when most calendars were already printed. The government decided that we needed some more national cheer, so we should get the National Day off work. Yeay, another holiday! No. Sorry. They decided to even it out by taking out one of the other holidays, instead. (Pentecost.)

Anyway. So what do we do to celebrate this day? The government would like to see us cheering in the streets, waving flags. But Swedes aren't really much of a flag-waving country. I'm personally celebrating by taking an extra spinning class at my gym, featuring only Swedish music. And that's about that. :)

Food-wise - there's a fairly new tradition (since 1997) of each year naming a new National Dish. This is decided in a competition between five cooks, each nominating a recipe. The winner will be announced today, so I'll have to report back. The recipes can be found here - but sadly just in Swedish.

The announcement is part of a six-day long food celebration called "Smaka på Stockholm" - A Taste of Stockholm, loosely translated. It's a big fair in one of the large parks, where several restaurants offer some of their best menu items for a very fair price. I walked around for a bit on Saturday afternoon, but I wasn't hungry at all so I didn't try anything. It sure smelled good though!

Meanwhile - the picture is of the kittens, they're nine weeks old now and starting to grow up into real little tigers. All three have found new owners, and will be moving out in a few short weeks. Ah, that's the bittersweet part of cat breeding - it's great to see them grow into their own little personalities, and it's great to meet new cat owners - but I miss them so much!

That's that then

Today, Sweden banned all smoking in restaurants and bars. Thanks. Sure, we have an awfully big government, butting into every little aspect of peoples lives, but in this particular case? I'm pretty ok with it. I hate going out to eat, just to have to sit in a large cloud of nasty smoke. And more importantly, the health aspect of the restaurang workers - well, if they choose to smoke themselves (as many do), that's obviously fine, but at least they won't have to inhale all that second-hand smoke.

The opposition against this ban has been very tough. People claim that it's a witch-hunt, and a lot of people feel that it's pure evil to force the smokers outside. (This works fine in California, but let's just say that there are certain climate differences.) Well. I say that it isn't half as evil as willingly spreading poision to your surroundings. And I look forward to my next night out - sans smoke.