Airport "food shopping"

Home again after a business trip to Shanghai, where I spend last week having internal company meeting. It was a week, where we left the hotel 7.30 in the morning and returned again between 21.00-22.00 in the evening after the evening meal.

So the majority of my "food shopping" took place in Helsinki Airport, where I changed flight on my way to and from Shanghai.

I used the opportunity to buy some tax-free gin. As I could not find my favourite gin (Tanqueray no 10), I decided to try a new gin in form of Hendrick´s Gin. This gin is described as a gin with the traditional botanical such as juniper, coriander and citrus peel. However, it also contain "unexpected" infusion of cucumber and rose petals. I am really looking to taste this "new" gin for me.

I also fillled my backpack up with one of my favourite chocolate, which is Fazer Salmiakki, which is Finnish milk chocolate with salmiac filling.

I also found room in my suitcase for a Chinese rose tea, which should consist of 100% rose petals.

So this time my fascination of flower food resulted in gin and tea !!!! It is going to be interesting to try both of these products.

Rush hour in the kitchen window



People looking in through my kitchen window will get the impression, that "rush hour" is taking place here. Here you will see, how I have been saving the Summer of 2011 in glass and bottles for bringing some sun shine into the coming Autumn, Christmas and Winter.

In the back row you see from the left blackcurrant rum, crab apple aquavit and plums in spiced red wine at the right side.

In the front row you see from the left raspberry vodka, raspberry vinegar, apple aquavit and blackberry cognac at the right side.

CHEERS :-)

Classic baked apple

I have located this terra cotta apple baker in one of my kitchen cupboards. I believe my mother gave me this terra cotta apple baker around 10 years ago. And I have not used it for the seven years, so I placed it on the kitchen table and what would happen !!! It actual went into action this evening.

I found an apple and decided to make this classic baked apple following the recipe on the box. There is plenty of the filling, enough to fill two apples, so I will suggest, that you reduce the recipe with 50%. All in all it is a too sweet baked apple dessert for my taste buds. So I will be on the look-out for some other recipes on baked apple.

Also I imaging this baked apple would go perfect hand-in-hand with some vanilla ice cream :-)

UPDATE 27 October 2015:
This baked apple is forwarded for the monthly blogging event Tea Time Treats having the theme of Halloween and bonfire night. Tea Time Treast is managed by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Jane from The Hedge Combers.

 Classic baked apple:

• 1 apple
• 60 ml brown sugar (1/4 cup)
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 tablespoon raisins
• 2 tablespoons nuts - chopped
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon orange juice

1. Heat the oven to 200'C.
2. Wash the apple. Cut the top of the apple. Remove the in-side of the apple without cutting through the actual apple.
   
3. Place the apple in the terra cotta apple baker.
4. Mix sugar, species, raisin and nut together.
5. Fill the center of the apple with this mixture. Leave the rest of the mixture of top of the apple.
6. Dot the top with butter.
7. Add the orange juice in the apple baker.
8. Seal the apple baker with the lid.
9. Bake the apple at 200'C for 20 minutes.
10. Enjoy :-)

Marzipan cooking book

I went shopping for some milk in a local supermarket, and came out of the shop with both milk and a new cooking book.
I found a new cooking book from Odense Marcipan called "Kager, desserter & konfekt - Stjernestunder og gæster". And as it is a Danish producer of marzipan, which is behind this cooking book, marzipan is always on the ingredients list for every single recipe !!!!

This cooking book is having plenty of wonderful and tasty looking pictures. And the recipes is covering the entire year from winter, Easter, summer, autumn, Christmas and different celebration cakes. Uuuuhmmmm, looking at these pictures are really mouth watering !!!!

Status on blackberry cognac

When I made this blackberry cognac one week ago, the cognac has it "normal" brownish colour.

However, already one day after starting this "production" the colour of the cognac had changed from brown to purple. Also the blackberries had moved from the bottom of the bottles to being free flowing in the entire bottle.

I am looking forward to tasting this blackberry cognac. It will "only" be five weeks old, when some friends are coming around for a evening of alcohol tasting one month from now, and this is according to the recipe is too young.

Flammkuchen - regional speciality from Alsace

Flammkuchen is a regional speciality from Alsace, which I have been eating on various occasion. Flammkuchen is the Alsacian version of pizza, but without the tomato sauce and mozzarella.

However, I stumbled across this ready-to-use flammkuchen dough in Switzerland, so I took it back with me to Denmark to try it out making my version of flammkuchen. I have a recipe on flammkuchen dough in a guide book, so I will try to make my own version of flammkuchen from the very bottom to the very top.





Flammkuchen: serves 1 person

• ½ portion flammkuchen ready-to-use dough
• 125 ml full-fat sour cream
• ½ onion - sliced
• 100 g mushrooms - sliced

1. Heat the oven to 225'C (conventional oven)
2. Place the flammkuchen dough on baking paper.
3. Spread the full-fat sour cream on top of the dough.
   
4. Top the dough with thin slices of onion and mushrooms.
5. Bake the flammkuchen at 225'C for 12-15 minutes.
6. Serve the flammkuchen together with a glass of white wine from Alsace and imaging your are sitting in wonderful Alsace. 
   
   

Sønderjyske festboller - Feast bun from South Jytland

"Hjemmebagt" - 73 recipes - 13 accomplished = 60 recipes to bake

As a part of celebrating Hannibal the Cats birthday I decided to bake some birthday buns using one of the recipes from the baking book "Hjemmebagt".

These buns contain milk, butter, egg, flour, cardamon and yeast of cause. Kneading the dough is quiet a "fatty" sensation, the dough is not behaving as a normal bread dough based on flour, water, milk and yeast, it is really sticking to your hands, even after 10 minutes of kneading.

The buns contains 2 tea spoons of cardamon, in my opinion I would add 1 table spoon, as I found the cardamon to be too weak.

Despite the "calorie rich" formulation, I did not find these buns to be something special. I have tried other butter containing buns, where you get the extra rich flavour from using butter. However, the good thing is, that I got one small step closer to my target of baking my way through "Hjemmebagt".

Could it be, that the new "fat tax" here in Denmark is also having an effect on the richness of flavour ? I recall seeing in the news, how people were hoarding butter, full-fat cheese and meat in the supermarkets before the introduction of the "fat tax" October 1st. And I was laughing for myself about the consumer behaviour. Now I am not laughing, because this week-end I could count 8 packs of 250 g Thise butter in my own refrigerator !!! And I had not even notice this hoarding behaviour of my own !!!!

I have also noticed, that I am "trendy" looking at the introductions words in my blog header, which I decided to use almost 1 year ago. "Rigeligt med smør" quote br. Price translates into "Plenty of butter" OR "I prefer Thise organic butter" quote Hannibal the Cat.

Many food bloggers have followed in my foot step since the introduction of this "fat tax", as they as well as declaring their love of BUTTER.

"Apple Fish" a la La Tascha

I have found this recipe on a apple cake called Æblefisk (=Apple Fish) on this blog La Tascha æblefisk med marcipan. It just looked so tasty, that I decided to make a portion of apple mash, so I could bake these "Apple Fish" myself. I have only made some thiny modifications to this recipe.

My apple mash is not very sweet, so the use of marzipan is providing a good level of sweetness. If you have no marzipan to use or if you do not like marzipan, you need to increase the sugar level in the apple mash.

Today I served a new portion of these "Apple Fish" for my work colleagues. And we had a discussion, why the name is "Apple Fish" (Æblefisk) for these cakes. No one had any idea why, perhaps you can help us with an explanation ?

"Apple Fish" a la La Tascha:

• 1 portion puff pastry (ready to use)
  
• 1 small piece of marzipan
• 2 dl apple mash
• 1 egg
• pearl sugar

1. Heat the oven to 200'C (conventional oven).
2. Cut the puff pastry into 8 equal size squares.
3. Divide the marzipan into 8 pieces as. Squeeze into a thin layer.
4. Place the marzipan on a triangle part of the square.
5. Cut the apple mash on top.
6. Whip the egg together to homogeneous mass.
7. Bast the edges of the puff pastry squares
8. Fold the square into a triangle.
9. Press the edges together using a fork.
10. Bast the top of the puff pastry with the egg
11. Sprinkle with pearl sugar.
12. Bake the "Apple Fish" at 200*C for 10 minutes
13. Cool the "Apple Fish" slight before serving them.
14. These "Apple Fish" will be crispy the day of baking, the day after baking they loos the crispiness, so they are still very eatable.

Apple mash with rosemary and vanilla

It is a wonderful thing to have good work colleagues :-), which are keen to supply you with their excess produce from their kitchen gardens. One of my work colleagues more or less supply with apples and squash upon request.

First he provided me with crab apples for the crab apple aquavit, and this time he has collected Belle Boskop apples for me, so I could make apple mash.

UPDATE 4th September 2013: this blog has been submitted for the Blogging Challenge "Cooking with Herbs" September 2013

Apple mash with rosemary and vanilla:

• 15 apples (cooking apples) = 3½ l apple pieces after removal of core and peel.
• 4 dl water
• 75 g sugar
• 3 stalks of rosemary
• 1 vanilla pod - pod and vanilla corn

1. Clean the apples, remove the core, peel and damages part of the apple. Cut the apple into smaller pieces.
2. Place the apple pieces into the cooking pot.
3. Add water and sugar.
4. Cut the rosemary into small fine pieces.
5. Remove the corn from the vanilla pod.
6. Add rosemary, vanilla corn and vanilla pod into the cooking pot
7. Heat up and cook until the apple pieces are soft.
8. Remove the vanilla pod from the mash.
9. Mash the apples.
10. Cool down.
11. I have a preference for eating apple mash with plain milk on top :-)

Blackberry cognac a la Country Living

My good work colleague, which supplies me with excess fruit from his garden, gave me the "last" portion of freshly picked blackberry this year. I have already turned this season blackberry into brownie with blackberry and blackberry-orange jam, besides from the blackberries being eaten on top of my breakfast cereals in the morning.

First I was planning to use this last portion of blackberries in blackberry muffins, but instead of I found a small article in Country Living September 2011 issue about fruit liqueurs, which I decided to test.

Making this blackberry cognac also provided me with the opportunity of clearing my cellarette from a total of 15 small cognac bottles. I pick up these small alcohol bottles, when I am flying, as they are great to use in your kitchen experiments.














Blackberry cognac a la Country Living: 

• 225 g fresh blackberries
  
• 100 g sugar
• 445 g cognac

1.  Add boiling water to a glass bottle - leave for 4-5 minutes - empty the bottle.
2. Fill the bottle with cleaned blackberries.
3. Add sugar afterwards.
4. Fill the bottle up with cognac.
5. Close the bottle.
6. Shake the bottle regular.
7. Remove the raspberries after 3 months days.

Lunch again at Hopballe Mølle

My mother and I "bravely" enough decided to eat lunch Hopballe Mølle yesterday !!!! This was a bad decision made by us !!!!!

This time both the food and the service service level were unexpected BAD.

• We were seated at more or less the only table, which did not contain used plates, glasses and cups.
• It took the "waiter" 15 minutes to ask us, what we would like to eat.
• When we were served the food, the waiter promished us a free cup of coffee due to long waiting time, which they "forgot" to serve.
• While we were waiting I noticed, that the people having the brunch buffet kept asking for more coffee, which apparantly were not noticed by the staff
• We were sitting in side, but perhaps we should have decided to sit out side, as it was so cold, that I had to grab some plaids in order to keep warm. This was due to the owner running in and out the door to pick up used plates ect without closing the door behind him.
• The worst thing was, that the food was not perfect. Instead of crunchy bacon, we got big unpleasant fat lumps. Some of the asparagus was not cooked enough and the bun was quiet tricky to chew.

So I will NEVER EVER return to Hopballe Mølle for eating !!! My mother said, that she wished, she had asked me to cook lunch for her, instead of inviting me out for lunch.

Do you also know the feeling, that you are getting angry on yourself, because you did not get up and left the place ?? This was how I felt yesterday !!

New tea for my tea cup 13

I have already been using this Rose tea from Løv from my last tea shopping in Paris. It is a black tea with rose flavour and rose petals. It has a perfect balance between the black tea and delicate rose taste.

You already get in a good mood at the moment, when you open the lid on the tin and your nose notice the fantastic rose flavour. This is loved, when the wonderful taste of the tea in your tea cup. So I have fallen in love with this tea, which has become a very popular guest in my tea cup. I can only recommend you to try this tea, if you like flower taste



Interesting talk about how to improve your daily way of eating

This afternoon my work place had organised a talk by Anne Ravn about how to improve your daily way of eating. It was a very relevant talk with a few down-to-earth suggestions /rules of thumbs of how you can change the way you eat into a more healthy way. Anne Ravn did not pointed fingers of anyone and she used herself as a very good example of what happens in real life after work. You can find more information about her here http://anneravn.com/

I had taken her book called "Spis dig let" with me, so I could get an autograph, which she kindly enough placed in the book.

New tea for my tea cup 12

I have been drinking the tea called "detox" from Pukka for the last couple of evenings as a way of relaxing my mind and body.

The tea is made from organic aniseed, fennel and cardamom, which could be cleansing herbs with detoxifying properties. However, I have not felt these detoxifying effect on me and my in-side. I really like the taste and sweetness of this tea, where I have no need to adding sugar, which I normally do.

Do you have a favourite tea ?

Marzipan confect with walnuts and vodka raspberries

I am participating in a virtual step event, where you have to walk 10.000 steps every single day. And if you walk 10.000 steps every day between 15 September and until 1 December you will actual be walking from Copenhagen to Berlin, which is 585 km.

Yesterday Sunday I passed Lübeck, which is well known for it's marzipan. Therefore I decided to celebrate this by making some marzipan confect with walnuts and vodka raspberries. The initial plan was to coating the marzipan in white chocolate, but the chocolate would not melt at all for me !!!!! so I ended up with a mix of milk chocolate and dark chocolate. However, the coating with chocolate was one big challenge for me.

The vodka raspberries comes from my creation of raspberry vodka. One month after making this vodka I removed the raspberries and decided to place them in the freezer, so I later on could use them in various marzipan confect.

I would suggest, that you use less of these vodka raspberries, as they are bringing a lot of moisture to the marzipan. This high moisture content also means, that the chocolate coating takes a long time to dry.

Marzipan confect with walnuts and vodka raspberries:

• 400 g chocolate marzipan
• 66 g walnuts - grinded
• 86 g vodka raspberries
• 200 g chocolate for coating

1. Knead the vodka raspberries and grinded walnuts into the marzipan into a homogeneous mix
2. Divide the marzipan into smaller pieces.
3. Melt the chocolate (here I normally use the microwave oven).
4. Coat the marzipan pieces with the chocolate.
   
   
5. Let the chocolate coating dry, before the marzipan confect is placed in air tight container for storage,
6. Eat and enjoy.

Pink Saturday cream puffs

Yesterday it was pink Saturday in Vejle, where you with your shopping could support collection of money towards the fight against breast cancer.

I decided to buy these two small cream puffs at "Von Fass" as my way of doing pink shopping. The sharpe of these white chocolate cream puff really looked like breasts.

Eating these cream puffs turned into one "fight" against sweetness. The white chocolate, the plain cream filling and the thick marzipan bottom were sweet, sweet and sweet. Actual too sweet for my "sweet tooth" !!! The positive thing, which I can say about the cream puff is, that they were relative small and the support to breast cancer fight.

Celebrating Hannibal the Cat´s birthday

One month ago I forgot to celebrate Hannibal turning 3 years !!!!

Therefore I decided to make a delayed birthday party for him, as I strongly believe, he will not know the date of his actual birthday ! Or that he actual has a birthday !

To ensure that Hannibal the Cat was home, when his guests arrived this evening, I decided to keep him in-side, when he dropped by to get a little snack this afternoon.

So Hannibal had to "relax", while his "land lady" was busy baking "Sønderjyske festboller" (Southern Jutlandic feast buns) and making birthday cream cake.




When the guests arrived, Hannibal was greeting them on his way out to freedom again.

So Hannibal did not taste his birthday cake, which was quiet colour full :-) The birthday cake contained vanilla cream, banana and blueberries, uhm :-)

I also had to un-pack the birthday gift on his behave. You can his gift both on the top and bottom photo. It is a wonderful portrait of the birthday cat :-)

Thank you very much Karoline and Rie :-))

New mile stone - 250 blog posts

Mid September I participated in a dairy conference in Holland, where the conference gala dinner took part at an open-air museum having focus on old farm activities !!! A colleague and I located some funny photo figures, so here I am as a Dutch farm woman :-)

This blog post is having the number 250, which I see as other big mile stone for me and my blog. So a the blog posting numbers keep increasing, I have decided to extend the list on the overall most popular posts from a top 5 to a top 10:

1. New mile stone - 200 blog postings
2. TUC cake
3. Fantastic fast-food meal at Beta
4. Product test 2 - cup cakes from Kvickly
5. Blooming apple tree
6. Ice cream for lunch
7. Home-made yogurt
8. Blackcurrant muffin
9. Freshly picked blackcurrants from some friend's kitchen garden
10. Could you have too much chocolate ?

It is quiet funny to see, how the position as THE most popular blog post is not a food recipe, but actual my blog posting about the mile stone about 200 blog postings !!!! Wonder if it has something to do with the fantastic picture of Hannibal the Cat climbing as a monkey in a big tree.

Another big jump on the top-list is located as the fifth most popular. Here you will find my subjective evaluation of some cup cakes from Kvickly. This post has only needed 14 days to move to this top position. As benefit I have also received a recommendation for trying some other cup cakes, which should be better. Wonder how you quantify "better" ?
Perhaps the title for the blog post with the position as number 10 on this top list is responsible for the popularity of this specific post ?

I am still in a stand-by position concerning my intention about baking my way through the baking book called "Hjemmebagt". I have only managed to bake one more recipe from this baking book since my last re-view about my 200 blog post, so now I have baked a total of 12 recipes out of the 73 recipes in total. However, for the coming celebration of Hannibal the Cat's birthday I will bake some birthday buns for him and his guests.

September 2011 Most Popular Search Keywords:

tuc kage 9 tiramisu 8 kitchenofkiki.blogspot.com 5 kusmi tea paris 5 cooking book 4 helsinki airport runway map 4 polsk vodka 4 apple and vanilla jam 3 cheese swiss emmental 3 christmas candy 3 It is quiet interesting reading looking into the 10 most popular search keywords for September 2011, which have redirected people to my blog. As top 1 you see TIC kage (=cake), and the blog posting about the TUC cake is also the second most popular on  my blog at all. As top 3 I can see, that some persons is active in their search for my blog. This is very flattering to see. The most "funny" search directing people to my blog is actual "Helsinki Airport runway map" !!! I wonder, when I will see an air plane landing in my garden ?

Status on Key Performance Indicators) for the blog looks like this:

Review day: 6 October 2011
Start day - first posting: 13 November 2010
Development on "Hjemmebagt": 73 recipes - 12 accomplished = 61 recipes to bake
Amount of cooking books in my kitchen: 52 books
Page views: 10746
Publish posts: 250 incl. this
Followers: 5
Blogs followed: 15

Page view per country:

• Norway: 1%
• Netherlands: 1%
• Moldova: 1%
• India: 1%
• UK: 2%
• Russia: 2%
• Germany: 2%
• Portugal: 8%
• US: 13%
• Denmark: 69%

Thank you for visiting me, Hannibal the Cat and my kitchen :-)) Hope to see you again in the near future :-))

Pie with pepper fruit, tomatoes and goat cheese

The good thing about a food pie is, that you get an evening meal PLUS some pie pieces for coming lunches !

Pie with pepper fruit, tomatoes and goat cheese: serves 4 persons

• 3 pepper fruits
• 4 tomatoes
• 3 tablespoons tomatoes concentrate
• 1 teaspoon sambal oelek
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• salt
• pepper
• ½ teaspoon balsamico
• 400 g goat cheese
• 1 pie dough - ready to use
  
• black olives as topping

1. Heat the oven to 200'C
2. Cut the pepper fruits into bigger chunks.
3. Cut the tomatoes into halves.
4. Place the pepper fruits and tomatoes into the bottom of the pie form.
5. Mix tomato concentrate, sambal oelek, brown sugar, salt, pepper and balsamico together.
6. Spread this mix on top of the pepper fruit and tomatoes.
7. Cut the goat cheese into slices and places them on top again.
   
8. Place the pie dough on top of everything. Fold the dough down along the rim of the pie form.
   
   
   
9. Bake the pie at 200'C (conventional oven) for approx. 35 minutes.
10. After baking take the pie form out of the oven. Place a big plate on top of the pie form and tip the pie form up-side down. Now the pepper fruit and tomatoes is on top on the pie.
11. Use black olives as topping on the top.

Bindeballe Bjesker

During Autumn 2011 and Spring 2012 I have big goal !!!!!

I will actual walk the entire Kyst til Kyst Stien (coast to coast path) between Vejle (East coast of Jutland) and Blåbands Huk (West coast of Jutland).

I have already walked the first distance between Vejle and Bindeballe, which is a distance of 20 km or approx 30.000 steps. It is more tough to walk 20 km, than I have taught at the beginning. Honestly I will rather row 50 km than walk 20 km. Actual  I felt more tried walking these 20 km than rowing 50 km, which we did this Summer on a one-day trip from Vejle to Trelde Næs, the beginning of Vejle Ford on the south side.

On the first day we got served Bindeballe Bjesker as a part of the tour "entertainment". So when we reached Bindeballe Købmandsgård, I decided to buy my own bottle of Bindeballe Bjesker to celebrate, that I managed the first distance.

Bindeballe Bjesker is produced from an original recipe for the Bindeballe Købmandsgård (Bindeballe Merchant House). Danish heather honey is one of the ingredients inside, so the is relative sweet, so I would recommend to served cold, perhaps ice cold or with some ice cubes.

Bindeballe Købmandsgård is living museum showing an old merchant house. You will find stuff dating back to the "good old days" (not for sale) mixed with soaps, jams, tea, coffee, candy etc. It is very interesting place to visit.

When you read this blog posting I am out walking the second distance between Bindeballe and Bække, another 20 km. So please cross your fingers for my feet and legs :-)