Mortens aften - suggestion for food to enjoy

Today it is Mortens aften, which typical is celebrated in Denmark by eating fried duck served with plain as well as brown potatoes, pickled red cabbage and brown sauce. For dessert we will typical enjoy the very Danish dessert ris a la mande (rice porridge) served together with warm cherry sauce. The food is more or less the food, which we will eat as well on Christmas Eve, so the evening could be considered as trial run on cooking the food to be served for Christmas.

As inspiration for food to enjoy on this evening I would like to the following recipes with you. Another way to the enjoy the duck part could be this:

seared duck breast

And to be served together with duck you could serve this

red & black currant jelly

And for the rice dessert (ris a la mande) the cherry sauce could be this version:

  

cherries in rum

Cocktail set from Spiegelau - kitchen equipment 31

As a member of the Danish supermarket COOP´s locality program you can here in October 2018 - February 2019 collect "stamps", which can be used for discount on different glass type and cocktail mixing equipment from Spiegelau.

Here I just been using some "discount stamps" to buy with cocktail set, which consist of measuring cup, strainer and stirrer. The price with "discount stamps" is 90 DKK (12 €) instead of 299 DKK (38 €).

So I assume I should making some fancy cocktails in my little kitchen, perhaps include various cocktail ideas for the Christmas Calendar 2018 ?? Any thoughts/idea for cocktails to try out ?

Scones with pecan nuts and maple syrup

As a "pick-me-up" comfort for some dark and very misty November days I decided to bake some scones with pecan nuts and maple syrup using this recipe on scones with maple syrup and walnuts as starting point. I decided to use pecan nuts as I have plenty of those nuts from a recent trip to US, however you can easily replace pecan nuts with either walnuts or hazel nuts in my opinion.

After the cutting of the scones, I let the scones raise for 15-20 minutes, before glazing them with egg wash. It is important only to glaze the top of the scones, so they can continue to raise during the baking step. The raising before the baking could also be 30-40 minutes, it depends on the amount you have available in your kitchen.

The salty taste is a little to high for me, so I would recommend to lower the salt addition from 1 teaspoon to ½ teaspoon.

Scones with maple syrup and walnuts: - 12-16 scones

• 450 g (cake) flour
• 50 g sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 175 g cold butter - diced
• 150 g milk
• 100 g maple syrup
• 70 g pecan nuts - medium chopped
• optional egg wash for glazing

1. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt vanilla sugar together in a mixing bowl,
2. Grind the butter pieces into the flour mix.
3. Mix milk and maple syrup together.
4. Add the liquid phase and walnuts without kneading the mass into a homogeneous dough
5. Place the dough on a piece of baking paper.
6. Flatten the dough by hand into a height of 3 cm.
7. Cut out 12-16 scones, I use a glass for this purpose.
8. Place the scones on a baking tray covered with baking paper.
9. Let the scone raise for 15-40 minutes before baking.
10. Heat up the oven to 190'C
11. Glaze the top of the scones with egg wash using a brush.
12. Bake the scones at 190 (conventional) in the middle of the oven for 20-25 minutes, until they have a brownish colour
13. Cool down the scones before serving them with clotted cream & jam or lemon curd.

The Potato Soup with twist of parsnips

I have been twisting this recipe on The Potato Soup by adding in some parsnips, as I had some left over of parsnips after making this pumpkin soup with parsnips and potato. I also decided to boost the serving by adding in some fried bacon.

This soup is another simple soup to make. The original potato soup has been one of my favourite recipe for close to 40 years !!!

Ingredients for 2 l: - 5-6 servings

• 5o0 g potato - peeled and rough chopped
• 2 onions - peeled an roughly chopped
• 2 clove of garlic - peeled and srughy chopped
• Vegetable stock extract for 2 l 
• 1.75 l water
• 2½ dl full-fat cream (38% fat)
• salt & pepper
• Bacon - optional

1. Peel the potatoes, parsnips, onion and garlic. Cut those into smaller pieces.
2. Meanwhile roughly chopped the bacon and fry it.
3. Boil the vegetables in 1 l water with the broth extract, until the potato and parsnips are soft (15-20 minutes)
4. Blend everything to a homogeneous mass without vegetable lumps
5. Add the rest of the water (7½ dl) and the cream (2½  dl). Cook up to the boiling point
6. Season with salt and pepper
7. Serve with bread and roasted bacon

Apple jam with vanilla

As my colleagues have been busy buying all jars with apple & ginger jam, I decided to make a new portion of apple jam, as I still have plenty of apples on my apple tree. This time I decided to exchange the ginger with vanilla, but other I made no changes to the amount of apples, lemons and sugar.

In order to get a little more freshness to the flavour profile, I added in a tiny amount of apple vinegar.

As usual I added the water, lemon juice and lemon zest into the cooking pan first, so this liquid mixture hopefully could reduce the browning of the apple boats, as I right after the apple cutting would place the apple boats into this acidic liquid.

When I started to remove the scum from the surface of the jam, I became a little uncertain, if I at the same time was removing all the vanilla corns together with the scum. However, later I could see, that the jam jars still had plenty of vanilla corn inside the jam.

Apple jam with vanilla: - 8 glasses

• 1.4 kg apples - washed, cored, peeled and cut into smaller boat shapes
• 600 ml water
• 2 organic lemons - zest and the juice
• 1 vanilla pod
• 1 teaspoon of apple vinegar - optional for flavour adjustment
• 1.4 kg sugar

1. Add water, lemon juice and zest into the cooking pan.
2. Prepare the apples washing them, removing both core and peel and finally cutting the apple into small boat shapes. Place the apple boat in the liquid in the cooking pan.
3. Open up the vanilla pod, remove the corn from the vanilla pod. Add both vanilla pod and vanilla corn into the apple mass in the cooking pot.
4. Put the cooking pan on the stove, heat up the content, so the apples are simmering. 
5. Let the apple simmer until the apple boat are tender and starts to cook out.
6. Prepare the jam glasses either by heating up in the oven or adding boiling water to them.
7. Remove the vanilla pod from the apple mass.
8. Add the sugar into the fruit mass and stir until it is dissolved.
9. Bring the jam to a rolling boil and boil hard until the setting point is reached. Stir the jam frequently.
10. Test of set after 5 minutes using the flake test.
11. When the setting point is reached, remove the pan from the heat and leave it to stand for approx.  5 minutes. As the jam settles, push any scums from the surface of the pan to the side and remove it with a metal spoon. The purpose for the waiting step is well to build viscosity in jam, so the fruit pieces will be trapped inside the jam inside of be going to the top of jam.
12. Gently stir the jam after the resting time and pour it into the prepared glasses, fill the glasses up to the brim. Remove any scum for the surface of the jam using a tea spoon. Close the glass with a lid.
13. Leave the glass upright and disturbed to cool and set.
14. Store at ambient temperature.

Pink closure to October month

PINK CLOSURE TO OCTOBER MONTH

Here in August, September & October month I have been selling the extra jam jars from the many different types of jams & vinegar, which I have been creating in my little kitchen to both work colleagues and friends. Hopefully the buyers are and have been enjoying:

• tomato & chilli jam
• gooseberry jam
• blackcurrant jam (classic version)
• apple & ginger jam
• plum jam
• blackberry vinegar

As a starting asking price I have suggested 15 DKK (=2 €)/glass or bottle. This sale has in total generated 420 DKK, which has just been donated to araceagainstbreastcancer.dk. As I still have different jam jars left, I keep selling them to friends and colleagues, and here in November & December the sale will be donated to Julemærkefonden.

Pumpkin soup with parsnips and potato a la Føtex

As my way of  celebrating Halloween I was serving pumpkin soup yesterday evening using the recipe on Føtex græskarsuppe.

I made no changes to the recipe. It is a good recipe, however the use of the roasted pumpkin seeds did not bring anything special to me. It was actually pretty distracting to chewing these pumpkin seeds, so after a few seeds I got ride of the remaining pumpkin seeds !!!

I am wondering, if exchanging the coconut cream with mascarpone would bring some more body to the soup. Also the spice level is very moderate, so it is not harming anyone.

Pumpkin soup with parsnips and potato a la Føtex: - 3-4 servings

• 3-4 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 Hokaido pumpkin - 700-800 g - deseeded, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 onion - roughly chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic - roughly chopped
• 200 g parsnips - peeled and roughly chopped
• 150 g potato - peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon curry
• 2 teaspoon curry paste
• ½ l vegetable stock
• 400 g canned coconut cream
• 200 g rye bread - roughly chopped
• 1-2 tablespoon olive oil
• ½ teaspoon salt
• Pumpkin seeds and fried bacon pieces as optional topping

1. Fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil in a cooking pot for 2 minutes.
2. Add in the parsnips and potato, and fry for another 3-4 minutes.
3. Add in the various spices and them fry for 1-2 minutes.
4. Add in the pumpkin, vegetable stock and coconut cream, and let the soup simmer gently for 20 minutes.
5. Meanwhile mix the rye bread crumbs, olive oil and salt together.
6. Roast the rye bread crumbs in the oven (fan) at 175'C for 15-20 minutes.
7. Roast the pumpkin seeds on a dry pan for 5 minutes.
8. Blend the soup together.
9. Serve the soup with toppings in form of roasted rye bread crumbs, pumpkin seeds and bacon.