Christmas market at Haughus Gods

My mother & I have visited the Christmas market at Haughus Gods, which is located close to Jelling, and this is the first Christmas market, which we have visited here in 2018.

There was a few greet looking Christmas tableaus inside the main building. And some of the stand at the markets had some good stuff to buy. But all in all this Christmas market had too much of the "uninteresting home-made" Christmas stuff.

I found some natural Christmas decorations at a very attractive price level, which now have found a place in my home for the upcoming Christmas decoration.

Anyway, I an really looking forward to the Christmas fair Trapholt, which takes place next week-end, as I always find some very tempting things at these fairs at Trapholt.

Raspberry Daiquiri

It is time for a cocktail to celebrate it is week-end and at the same time it is great opportunity to use my newly acquired cocktail equipment (mixing jug & cocktail set). I decided to make raspberry daiquiri using this recipe from Cookie & Kate as starting point.

Raspberry Daiquiri: - 2 cocktails

• 20 fresh raspberries
• 5 cl orange liqueur
• 15 cl white rum
• 1 teaspoon raw sugar
• 2 limes - only the juice
• For the rim: lime wedge & sugar

1. Start by preparing the cocktail glasses by running the lime wedge around the rim of the cocktail glass. Dip the top of the cocktail glass into a plate sprinkle with sugar.
2. In a mixing jug press the raspberries with lime juice and sugar together.
3. Stir in the orange liqueur and rum, and add in ice cubes.
4. Stir well together.
5. Pour the cocktail through a sieve into order to remove the raspberry seeds. Pour the cocktail into two cocktail glasses.
6. Place one-two ice cubes into the cocktail glasses to keep the temperature low.
7. Cheer and happy week-end :-)

Quince jam

One of my work colleagues has a neighbor, which has a quince bush in their garden, so my colleague has asked, if she could get some quinces for my jam making. As starting point I have used this recipe on apple jam with vanilla to make this jam from quinces.

The flavour of the quinces is richly perfumed. It is a quiet time consuming exercise to make quince jam, It took me me a little more than 1 hour to prepare the quinces for the cooking part of the process. Afterwards it took close to 2 hours "just" to cook the quince pieces, so they changes colour from yellow to dark orange-red as well became soft enough to mash & blend them. So you need to have plenty of time, when you make quince jam.

Quince jam: - 8 glasses

• 1.5 kg quinces - washed, cored, peeled and cut into smaller shapes
• 700 ml water
• 4 limes - only the juice
• 1.5 kg sugar

1. Add water & lime juice into the cooking pan.
2. Prepare the quinces by washing them, removing both core and peel and finally cutting the apple into small pieces. Place the quince pieces in the liquid in the cooking pan.
3. Put the cooking pan on the stove, heat up the content, so the quince pieces are simmering. 
4. Let the quinces simmer until the pieces are tender enough to be masked and blended. This took 2 hours in this case.
5. Prepare the jam glasses either by heating up in the oven or adding boiling water to them.
6. Add the sugar into the fruit mass and stir until it is dissolved.
7. Bring the jam to a rolling boil and boil hard until the setting point is reached. Stir the jam frequently.
8. Test of set after 5 minutes using the flake test.
9. When the setting point is reached, remove the pan from the heat and leave it to stand for approx. 3-5 minutes. As the jam settles, push any scums from the surface of the pan to the side and remove it with a metal spoon. 
10. 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.
11. Leave the glass upright and disturbed to cool and set.
12. Store at ambient temperature.

Cocktail mixing jug from Spiegelau - kitchen equipment 32

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

I have used some "discount stamps" to buy this mixing jug as company for this cocktail set. The price with "discount stamps" is 70 DKK (9.25 €) instead of 260 DKK (34.40 €).

So, now I am ready for some serious cocktail creation. Any thoughts/idea for cocktails to try out ?

Apple jelly

I keep experimenting using the various recipes and techniques, which I learned at the Summer preserves course using the different fruits, which I can get access to from gardens of friends and colleagues.

This time I got a bag of different apple types from a colleague as part of my preparation for the annual Christmas calendar. So look by in December to check out, what I need apples for.

As I had apples let from my Christmas experiment, I decided to make apple jelly using this recipe on red & black currant jelly as starting point.

As usual I always remove the core of the apple, as I do not like the bitterness from the apple kernel. Do not worry about removing the natural fruit pectin within the apple getting ride of the apple core. The pectin is not located in the apple core, the pectin is located in fruit part of the apple.

Compared to the recipe on red & black currant I decided to add in lemon juice for two reasons. First reason I use the lemon juice in order to reduce the browning effect of the apple after cutting, And the second reason is, that a higher acidity level (lower pH) will give a faster and stronger gelling inside the jelly.

If you work with smaller portion of jelly, when you should not stir the jelly during the cooking of the jelly mixture as this can give problems with too many air bobbles in the final jelly.

I noticed, that this apple jelly was extreme slow with regards to obtain the gelled texture. It took close to 1½ day for the jelly to gel, and the texture seems quiet soft (= not so firm). This can be due to several issues. Either the used apples were more matured in, so the content of natural active fruit pectin inside the apples were lower, the acidity level was to the high side (further adjustment by adding in more lemon juice or apple vinegar or the ratio between apple juice and sugar should have been 100 g sugar to 100 ml juice (as I used, when making this crab apples jelly).

It is actually quiet nerve racking turning the jelly jars slightly to see, if the gelled texture is where or not. And when thinking about how to "safe" a liquid jelly and get it too gel !!!

Apple jelly: 6-8 glasses per 1 kg apple

• 1100 g apple - washed and cleaned, the stems and core removed
• 750 ml water
• 1½ lemon - only the juice
• 450 g sugar per 600 ml juice or perhaps 100 g sugar to 100 ml apple juice ?

1. Add water, and lemon juice 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. Bring to the boil. Reduce the heat, and let the apple simmer gently for 10-20 minutes, until the content becomes pulpy in appearance. 
4. Mash the apple boat into apple mask structure.
5. Place a jelly bag suspended over a large bowl.
6. Pour the mashed apple/water into the jelly bag.
7. Leave until, the bag has stopped dripping. Alternative night over.
8. Prepared the jelly glasses. I add boiling water to the glasses, while other will heat the glasses in the oven at 120 minutes.
9. Measure the amount of fruit juice and weight out 450 g sugar per 600 ml juice.
10. Pour the fruit into large cooking pan and heat up the juice to the boil.
11. Add in the (pre-heasted) sugar, Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
12. Bring the jelly mixture to a rolling boil (the jelly mixture has a lot of boiling foam on top).
13. Let it boil for 4 minute as starting point.
14. Test for a set after 4 minutes using the flake test (how the jelly is dripping from the cooking spoon). This is tricky, otherwise see, if the temperature is 104'C.
15. When the the texture is right, remove the cooking pan from the heat. Start right away to remove any scum from the surface of the jelly, using a large metal spoon.
16. Pour the jelly into glass jars, fill the jar to the top. Again remove any scum from the surface using a tea spoon.
17. Seal the jar with a lid.
18. Leave the glass upright and undisturbed to set.
19. Store at ambient temperature. 

Green ceramic vase from Søstrene Grene

 

It has been some time since my last sharing of a photo of a green vase with you, so now it is time again :-)

This time it is a vase, which I found in Søstrene Grene, a chain of shops in Denmark selling a lot of different funny, interesting and sometime useless stuff at low price. The vase costed 40 DKK (5.5 €). So a green vase does not need to cost a fortune to find its way into my home, it basically only need to be green :-)

Baked tomato soup

In my last weekly vegetable box from Årstidernes I got, what seamed like tons of tomatoes as well as some red pepper fruits. Where were so many tomatoes, that it would not be possible for me to eat through all these tomatoes within reasonable time. So I could either make a new portion of tomato, garlic & chiili jam or find a recipe on tomato soup using fresh tomatoes.

Here I located such as recipe in form of tomatsuppe a la Femina. I have made a few modifications. As I had no fresh basil, I did not use it. And instead of only using balsamico I used a combination of balsamico and raspberry vinegar. I also decided to add in the two red pepper fruits from the weekly vegetable box, as I already been shopping pepper fruit from the supermarket.
And finally instead of using only cherry tomatoes I used a combination of normal big tomatoes and cherry tomatoes. It is a question of using, what you have available in your kitchen.

UPDATE 13 November:
According to my mother this tomato soup taste much better than the Mou's tomato soup :-) My mother is a regular user of the various frozen soup from Mou.

Baked tomato soup a la Femina: - 4 servings

• 1000 g fresh tomatoes - washed and divided into medium chuncks
• 1 onion - finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic - finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• 2 red pepper fruit - washed, de-seeded and medium chopped
• season with salt & pepper
• 1½ tablespoon balsamico
• ½ tablespoon raspberry vinegar
• 3 dl vegetable stock
• 70 g tomato concentrate

1. Add the tomato chuncks, pepper fruit pieces, onion and garlic into the large oven-stable traying.
2. Drizzle over the oilve oil and season with salt & pepper. Stir everything together.
3. Baked the tamato mix in oven at 200'C (fan oven).
4. Bake for 20 minutes.
5. Add in the balsamico and raspberry vinegar, stir everything around.
6. Bake for another 10 minutes at 200'C.
7. Meanwhile pour the vegetable stock and tomato concentrate into a cooking pan.
8. After 30 minutes baking in the oven, fill the tomato mix into the cooking pan.
9. Blend everything together.
10. Bring the soup to the boil.
11. The soup can be served with boiled pasta, boiled rice, fried bacon and/or bread.
12. Enjoy :-)