Rugkiks - Rye bisquits with cumin

"Hjemmebagt" - 73 recipes - 23 accomplished = 50 recipes to bake

Progress - progress - progress on my baking efforts in my little kitchen. You could almost get the impression, that I am being sponsored by Skærtoft Mølle, as I am using various of their products, while baking my way through the bread book "Hjemmebagt". However, this is not the case.

This is the very first time, where I have been baking biscuits at all. Normally biscuits is something, which I usually buys in the supermarkets. And it is much more easy to bake biscuits, than I had imaging in my mind.

You mix the ingredients together, let the biscuit dough rest for 1 hour in the refrigerator, roll it out into a thin layer, cut the biscuit dough into the desired shape and finally you bake them.

These biscuits are made from whole grain flour from both wheat and rye, carbamate, salt and cumin seeds.

This recipe gave me an idea about trying out a different spice addition at a later stage. When I come around to this, I will share this specific recipe with you.

Chili con carne

Another good comfort Winter dish is chili con carne, so I am sharing a simple and easy recipe from my kitchen with you.

Chili con carne: - 4 servings 

• 350 g minced beef
• 2 onions - finely chopped
• 230 g ready-to-use Kidney beans
• 2 red pepper fruits - medium chopped
• 2 carrots - in thin slices
• 340 g mashed tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon fresh (frozen) chili - finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon Sonnentor Hot Stuff (spice mix of paprika, garlic, thyme, chili, oregano, rosemary, basil, black pepper, rose flowers, marigold and sun flower)
• 1 tablespoon dark syrup
• mix of butter and oil for frying the meat and onion
• salt and pepper for seasoning.

1. Fry the meat and onion in hot butter/oil mix in a larger cooking pot.
2. Add the spice mix chili, dark syrup, pepper fruit, carrots and mashed tomatoes.
3. Let everything softly for 30 minutes.
4. Add in the kidney beans and let everything cook for another 5 minutes
5. Season with salt and pepper.
6. Serve together with rice.

Hvedebrød med tranebær - wheat bread with cranberries

"Hjemmebagt" - 73 recipes - 22 accomplished = 51 recipes to bake

I am impressed with myself and my progress on my task of baking my way through the entire bread book called "Hjemmebagt". Since the beginning of January month I have been baking a total 3 recipes incl this one, which accounts for half of the recipes, which I managed to bake during the entire year of 2012.

This time it is the bread called "Hvedebrød med tranebær" (wheat bread with cranberries), which beside from wheat flour contain rolled barley grains and dried cranberries. The funny thing is, that you can not finds the rolled barley grains at all in the final bread, which I some how was expecting. Also the cranberries is giving a good overall sweetness to the final bread.

Instead of baking one whole bread I turned the dough into smaller buns.

Cointreaupolitan

I am continuing my New Year Resolution on sharing a cocktail/drink every month with you every single month with you, and as we are fast approaching the end of January month, it is about time, that I enjoying a drink together with you. This month I have located a cocktail containing Cointreau on the bottle of Cointreau.

Cointreaupolitan: - 1 drink

• 5 cl Cointreau
• 3 cl cranberry juice
• 2 cl lemon juice
• ice cubes

1. Pour the ingredients into a cocktail shaker containing ice cubes.
2. Strain the drink into a chilled Martini glass
3. Cheers :-)

News teas for my tea cup 15 - four differents from Belgium

During a visit to Belgium in May 2012 I found an interesting tea shop called Javana, where I brought four very different teas:

• Lavender love - black tea with lavender
• Lady Blue - Earl Grey with corn flowers + orange and lemon
• Vitamineboost - black tea with taste of grapefruit
• Flower Power - black Ceylon tea with rose, jasmine, corn flower and lychee

The Lady Blue and Vitamineboost were on a fast track through my tea pot and tea cup due to their excellent taste profile.

Lavender love is simply to dominated by the lavender flavour, as one or two cups per day is the very maximum, which you can drink without getting nightmare. If you would like to taste lavender tea, I would recommend you to make you very own version, just as I did here: home-mixed lavender tea. When my good girl friend from Horsens read this post, she will some how feel revenged after her tasting on my home-made lavender tea.

Flower Power is a little to plain for my taste buds, so I still have plenty of this tea in one of my many tea tins.

Stone Age Bread

I have found this recipe on Stone Age Bread on a Danish blog called "Maden i mit liv", as I found the composition very interesting being a bread made without neither yeast or flour, I decided to it out in my little kitchen. Some how the composition reminds me about bird food, so perhaps this Stone Age Bread should be re-named to "Bird Bread" for human.

This bread has a great taste and texture, which I find can be useful in many different connection. Next time, when I will be baking this bread type, I will be reducing the amount of added salt from 1 teaspoon to ½ teaspoon, as I find the taste to be too salty for my taste buds.

Stone Age Bread: - 1 bread

• 4 eggs
• 100 g sesame seeds
• 100 g linseed
• 100 g almonds - roughly chopped 
• 150 g sunflower seeds
• 150 g pumpkin seeds
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 75 g rapeseed oil

1. Add the eggs into a mixing bowl, whip them lightly together.
2. Add all the other ingredients into this egg mass.
3. Stir everything well together. 
4. Cover a rye bread form (2 l) with baking paper, and fill it up with "bread" mass.
5. Bake the bread at 175'C (conventional oven) for 60 minutes.
6. Let the bread rest for 10 minutes in the rye bread form.
7. Remove the bread and let it cool down on a baking grid.

Sigtebrød med sirup - Term bread with syrup

"Hjemmebagt" - 73 recipes - 21 accomplished = 52 recipes to bake

I have been baking again this week, this time the recipe called "Sigtebrød med syrup" from "Hjemmebagt". Normally sigtebrød is a type of bread, which I would never ever buy myself in a shop, as it stand for me as on of the most boring bread type without special about it !!! However, after I have been making sigtebrød myself, I have really change my opinion at least about the home-made version. And the taste of this bread is just amazing.

This is a bread, where you have to plan very well in advance, that you would like to have a piece of sigtebrød, as this bread dough has to cold raise for 10-12 hours followed by a raising at room temperature for 4 hours followed by the final raising in the bread form for another 3 hours at room temperature !!!!!

This specific sigtebrød is baked from finely sifted wheat flour and finely sifted rye flour, malt syrup, buttermilk, salt and water, and finally brushed with melted butter just before baking.

Having baked two different recipes from "Hjemmebagt" with a time frame of two weeks, I am suddenly making serious progress on my taste to bake all the different recipes from this wonderful bread. Last year I only managed to bake 6 different recipes during the entire year of 2012, so perhaps I have to relax a bite with this baking thing of mine ?

Pork tenderloin stew

In wintertime when you need some comfort food to keep you happy and warm during low temperature, rain, snow, grey misty weather, this pork tenderloin stew could be a good option. 

For slicing up the mushrooms I used my egg slicer for boiled eggs, this is a very easy way to slice mushroom in equals slices in no time. I have got this little kitchen from my cousin. And now I am sharing it with you.

Pork Tenderloin stew:  - 4-6 servings

•         125 g bacon – optional
•          30 g butter
•          400 g pork tenderloin – chopped in bigger chunks
•          1 onion – diced
•          2 pepperfruits – diced
•          250 g mushrooms – sliced 
•          2 x 400 g canned diced tomatoes
•          300 g cocktail sausages
•          250 g dairy whipping cream – 38% fat
•          Salt and pepper for seasoning

1. Cut the bacon into smaller pjeces, add them into a big cooking pot, where the bacon is fried. Remove the fried bacon pieces, which will be used for decoration, while serving the dish.
2.  Add the butter on top of the bacon fat in the cooking pot, and heat it for frying the tenderloin meat.
3.  Fry the tenderloin and onion in the warm fat, stir well.
4. Add the mushroom and pepperfruit, and let everything fry for 4-5 minutes, until the mushrooms have taken some colour.
5.  Add in the canned tomatoes, place the lid on the cooking pot and bring the stew to the boil.
6.  Let the stew boil softly for 15 minutes.
7.  Add in the cocktail sausages and dairy, and let everything cooking for another 5 minutes.
8. Season with salt and pepper.
9. Served together with mashed potatoes or rice.

Dinner at Sokeri-Jussi at Oulu, Finland

On our second evening in Oulu we covered up in warm clothes and went out into the cold evening, with temperature at - 18'C. Walking on snow in these low temperatures has it´s very special creaking sound. I wanted to taste some local food, so I dragged my colleagues with me to a Lappish style restaurant called Sokeri-Jussi housed in a old wood house. The entire decoration was like in agriculture museum, which was were fitting to the house.

I really like to eat game, so when I can see this on the menu card, I will select the game dish. In this case I actually had to chose between elk or reindeer, so I decided to go for a cousin of Rudolf with the red noise.

The Tavern Cocktail made up of Shaman Spirits Lingonberryvodka (2 cl), Shaman Spirits honey-liqueur (2 cl), Granberry juice, Soda water and ice. It had a wonderful red colour, the taste was good, but I have no plan of re-creating this cocktail at home.

As starter I selected the Lappish appetizers in form of both cold-smoked and warm-smoked reindeer roast, forest mushroom salad, pickled cucumber and cranberry jelly. I liked everything on this plate.

The main course was Tavern style reindeer in form of roasted and sliced reindeer sirloin, dark cranberry sauce, creamy false morel stew, oven root vegetable, cranberry jelly and roasted Lappish potatoes topped of with a stem of rosemary.

The meat was excellent with it´s dark meat taste and structure like soft butter. And the morel stew was just great in taste.

In total I ended to with paying approx 67 € for food and drinks incl a cup of tea.

Dinner at Scandic Oulu - Torilla restaurant

Tapas starters

This week I have been on a business trip to Oulu in the Norther part of Finland. I was expecting much less sun light, than that there actual was, the sun was “on” between 9 am to 15-15.30 and combined with the snow covered landscape, it was quiet light.

On our first evening in Oulu we decided to make it easy for ourselves, so we ate at the Scandic hotel in Oulu. Looking at the menu card we all decided to have the Mediterranean Menu to a price of 35 €.

Lamb main course

As starters we got three different tapas dishes.  The first tapas was Parma ham with cherry tomatoes and avocado. The second tapas was a soup called Chanterelle Cappuccino and the third tapas was green olive tapenade on bruschetta.  The tapenade layer was quiet heavy, too salty for me and lacking olive flavour in my opinion. The Parma ham tapas was quiet plain in it´s character. What really saved this starter was the magic Chanterelle soup with a light whipped foam on top, so it could look like a cup of cappuccino. The soup was creamy and had a wonderful taste of cantrell.

The main course was grilled lamp roast wrapped in Parma ham, sage butter, marsala sauce and chili-glazed sweet potatoes. Besides from the potatoes the dish was also served with orange and yellow carrot bites. The lamb-Parma ham combination was good, the amount of vegetable was very fitting, but I could not identify the chili-glazing on the potatoes.

Raspberry sorbet

As dessert we were served a huge portion of raspberry sorbet on top of marinated fruits in form of pineapple, banana and strawberries. This dessert did not work for me, the sorbet reminded me more about a creamy raspberry ice cream than a light freshing sorbet. I am OK with pine apples and bananas as seasonal fruit from the tropic, but strawberries without any flavour served during Winter, does not work for me as person.

All in all it was a menu to the plain side in my opinion. The lamb main course was good. What really was standing out for me was the chanterelle soup, which was excellent. However, it is easy to eat at the hotel and we did not have to dressed up in the entire Winter equipment and go outside in the cold looking for a different place to eat. 

Lemon curd for Tea Time Treats

My first home-made lemon curd

In January Karen from Lavender and Lovage is the virtual hostess for the monthly blogging event Tea Time Treats having focus on citrus. Tea Time treat is virtual tea table runned by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked, which I participate regular in with great pleasure.

Having seen, that the theme is CITRUS, I have some difficulties in selecting just one recipe, so therefore I have decided to share a selection during this coming month with the rest of guests at this virtual tea table. 

This is my final fourth contribution for the virtual tea time table January 2013 having focus on CITRUS. What would be more fitting for a tea table than home-made lemon curd ? This is also at the same time my debut making lemon curd, normally I have always been buying lemon curd. However, having experienced how easy it is to make lemon curd, it will not be the last time, that I will be making lemon curd. This recipe on lemon curd I have located in the cooking book called “ Te og kager året rundt”, and I have have no changes at all to this recipe, and it has a perfect balance between lemon taste and acidity and sweetness, uuhmm.

While I was making this lemon curd, I was surrounded by the wonderful flavour of lemons and when adding in the butter, I got the buttery flavour notes on top.

Lemon curd a la “Te og kager året rundt”:

•         3 eggs
•         200 g sugar
•          2 organic lemons – zest and juice
•          50 g butter – cut into smaller pieces

1. Start by adding boiling water to the storage containers/glasses.
2. Take the zest from the lemons as well as squeeze the lemons from their juice.
3. Whip eggs and sugar together in a bowl, before pouring this mass into a small cooking pot.
4. Afterwards add in the lemon zest and juice.
5. Heat on the lemon curd mass on low heat, stir very well in the mass, heat the mass until it thickens. The lemon curd must not boil.
6. Remove the cooking pot form the heat and stir in the butter and let it melt.
7. Pour the lemon curd into the prepared containers/glass and place them in the refrigerator.
8. In case you add no preservation to the lemon curd, the shelf-life of it is approx. 1 week, when stored cold in the refrigerator.

Risotto with fungi and leak

I have found this recipe on risotto with fungi and leak in the latest issue of the magazine "Isabellas", issue 8/2012, and I have have made a few adjustments to the ratio, as I was lacking some risotto rice and I had more fungi in the refrigerator, when I was cooking this risotto.

For all the chopping I decided to use the food processing part of my all ways helpful and elegant kitchen helper = Bamix, this way you can get chopped up all these vegetable in no time at all. However, the various mushrooms I sliced by hand and knife.

If you are not going to eat all of the risotto at the same meal, it is important, that you do not mix in the parsley, in this case you should use the parsley only on the risotto, which will be eaten. Parsley contains earth bacteria, which can become a microbiological problems, if stored and re-heated again.

Risotto with fungi and leak: - 4 servings

• 4 scalots - finely chopped
• 4 stems celery - finely chopped
• 2 leaks - finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic - finely chopped
• 350 g mixed fungi: mushrooms, beech mushrooms, brown mushrooms, shii take fungi and oyster mushroom - i smaller pieces
• 1-2 tablespoons olive oil 
• 250 g risotto rice
• 3 dl white wine
• 8 dl vegetable stock - warm
• 100 g butter - i smaller pieces
• 50 g Parmesan cheese - grated
• parsley - chopped
• salt and pepper for seasoning

1. Chopped all the vegetable in the desired size.
2. Heat up the olive oil in a bigger cooking pot. Add all the vegetable and fry them for 2-3 minutes.
3. Add the risotto rice and stir them around for 1 minute to absorb the oil.
4. Pour in the white wine on top of the vegetable and rice and let the wine cook at lower heat, until the majority of the wine has boiled away. 
5. Afterwards add the warm vegetable stock little by little, let the rice absorb most of the liquid, before adding more vegetable stock. This part of the cooking process takes approx. 20 minutes.Keep stirring regular.
6. Season with salt and pepper.
7. Add the smaller butter pieces and let them melt into the risotto.
8. Add approx 40 g of the grated Parmesan cheese and stir well. 
9. Top of the risotto top with the rest of the grated Parmesan and chopped parsley on the serving plates/bowls. 
10. Serve together with the white wine. 

Almond Orange cake for Tea Time Treat

In January Karen from Lavender and Lovage is the virtual hostess for the monthly blogging event Tea Time Treats having focus on citrus. Tea Time treat is virtual tea table runned by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked, which I participate regular in with great pleasure.

Having seen, that the theme is CITRUS, I have some difficulties in selecting just one recipe, so therefore I have decided to share a selection during this coming month with the rest of guests at this virtual tea table. 

This is my third recipe, which I am sharing with the virtual tea table, and this time I have moved away from the citrus jams to an orange cake.

When you prepare the oranges for this cake you will be surrounded by a wonderful orange flavour in in the entire kitchen. The original recipe is made by Mai Knauer.

Almond Orange Cake:

Cutting the oranges is like cutting warm butter

• 2 organic oranges
• 1 liter water
• 1 hand full minced dried apricot
• 1 hand full minced fresh mint
• 6 eggs
• 250 g sugar
• 275 g grounded almonds or almond flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

1. Wash the oranges. Boil them softly in 1 liter water for 2 hours.
2. Cool down the cooked oranges.
3. Cut the oranges into minor pieces.
4. Add the orange pieces, apricot and mint into a blender and blend everything into a homogeneous mass.
5. Whip the egg and sugar together into a thick mass.
6. Add almond flour and baking powder into this egg-sugar mass
7. Mix the orange puree into this egg-sugar mass.
8. Fill the cake dough into a round form with a diameter of 24 cm.
9. Bake the cake at 200'C for approx 60 minutes.

Orange, apricot and mint in the blender - just before I turn it on

Blended orange mix with a lovely smell, uhm

Kartoffelbrød - potatobread from "Hjemmebagt"

Potatob bread with insible potatoes

"Hjemmebagt" - 73 recipes - 20 accomplished = 53 recipes to bake

Yes-yes-yes, I have made progress again on my task about baking my way through the baking book called "Hjemmebagt". This time it was the bread called Kartoffelbrød (= potato bread), which has been baked in my little kitchen.

I assume, that you from the bread title will know, that potato as well as the boiling water from the potatoes are ingredients. However, besides from this wheat flour, rye flour, yogurt (I used Greek yogurt with 10%), dark syrup and fennel are the ingredients in this bread.
As I could not find any ground fennel in the supermarket, I had to buy fennel seeds and grind them myself in my coffee grinder. This is giving a lovely flavour of liquorice, so I was again sniffing around in the kitchen, sniffing to my coffee grinder and to the dough.

The bread dough was quiet unusual, when I was kneading it, as it did not feel moist at all, actually the dough was very, very dry almost like flour. So I had to knead one small portion of the dough, when another small portion, before I managed to knead it into one big dough portion. SO I was very, very doubtful, if this dough would turned into a normal bread dough. However, after the first period of raising the dough look and felt like any normal bread dough.

The final bread has a very fine flavour with a delicate look-a-like liquorice note. And the softness of the bread remains for a longer period, before the bread becomes stall. This should according to the recipe be due to the potatoes. I must admit, I have no clue about the effect on adding potatoes into bread dough, as it the very first, which I have add potatoes into my home-made bread. 

Bergamot-orange jam for Tea Time Treat

In January Karen from Lavender and Lovage is the virtual hostess for the monthly blogging event Tea Time Treats having focus on citrus. Tea Time treat is virtual tea table runned by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked, which I participate regular in with great pleasure.

Having seen, that the theme is CITRUS, I have some difficulties in selecting just one recipe, so therefore I have decided to share a selection during this coming month with the rest of guests at this virtual tea table. 

So this is the second recipe, which I am sharing with the virtual tea table, and the one is another jam recipe, however, this time is made from bergamot and orange instead of grapefruit.

I received the bergamot fruit in my weekly vegetable box. In the beginning I thought, these bergamots were "old" lemon, which I thought was a bit unusual, as the citrus fruits normally are very, very fresh, when I receive my weekly vegetable boxes. When I located yet another "older" looking lemon, and I started to get a bit annoyed with receiving these two "older" looking lemon.

After emptying my vegetable box I started to look into the weekly newsletter -  Årstidernes weekly newsletter week 8/2012 - and I here I saw a recipe on bergamot-orange jam. And when I realised, what my "older" looking lemons actually were bergamot citrus fruit. It is also the very first time, that I see a bergamot in "real life" !!!!! And I am a big "user" of bergamot, as I drinking pot after pot of Earl Grey tea !!!!!


So I decided to make this bergamot-orange jam a la Årstiderne right here on the spot.

As this jam is made from citrus fruit and the sugar amount is quiet high, where is not need for adding pectin gelling powder, as the citrus fruit is a natural source of pectin.

 Bergamot - orange jam a la Årstiderne:

• 2 bergamots - organic
• 2 oranges - organic
• 2 tablespoon of almonds - without skin
• 550 g sugar or 600 g sugar is more sweetness is preferred

1. Wash the citrus fruits.
2. Place the citrus fruits in a small cooking pot, which when is filled with water.
3. Place the lid on the cooking pot. Let the citrus fruits boiled (softly) for 1 hour.
4. Remove the citrus fruits and place them in a blender.
5. Add almonds and sugar on top of the citrus fruits.
6. Blend everything into a homogeneous mass.
7. Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water. I do not use any preservatives in my home-made jam, so this is important to increase shelf-life of your jam. Another thing you can do is to store the jam cold afterwards. 
8. Fill the glass with jam and close the glass.

Lønnestræde Grapefruit Jam for Tea Time Treat

In January Karen from Lavender and Lovage is the virtual hostess for the monthly blogging event Tea Time Treats having focus on citrus. Tea Time treat is virtual tea table runned by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked, which I participate regular in with great pleasure.

Having seen, that the theme is CITRUS, I have some difficulties in selecting just one recipe, so therefore I have decided to share a selection during this coming month with the rest of guests at this virtual tea table. 

The first recipe, which I would like to share with this recipe on Grapefruit Jam based on red grapefruit (Star Ruby sort).

I started by weighting the grapefruit, so I would have an idea about the amount of sugar needed to make this jam. As initial starting point I started with 1 to 1 ratio of grapefruit to sugar. However, with this sugar level, the bitterness in the jam was too strong for me. Therefore I decided to increase the ratio to one part of grapefruit to 1½ part of sugar. With this sugar level I found the balance between bitterness and sweetness to be quiet interesting, so I to took the decision to stop the sugar addition here. However, you should consider to use a level of 1 part of grapefruit to 2 part of sugar, if you find the bitterness of gin tonic to strong for you.

I also noticed, that I should make adjustments to the cooking time of the citrus fruit depending on the firmness/softness of the citrus fruit, which you are putting into the cooking pot. I cooked the grapefruit for 1 hour, which was too long, as the grapefruit was turned into a pure without any fruit pieces at all during the blending process. I think, that 40-45 minutes would have been better to target as the cooking time. So with firm citrus fruit, you should target 1 hour as cooking time, where you with softer citrus fruit should reduce the cooking time to 40-45 minutes.

As this jam as well is made from citrus fruit and the sugar amount is quiet high, where is not need for adding pectin gelling powder, as the citrus fruit is a natural source of pectin.

Red Grapefruit Jam:

• 2 (red) organic grapefruit = 550 g 
• 825 g sugar or 1100 g sugar, if more sweetness is preferred

1. Wash the grapefruits.
2. Place the grapefruits in a small cooking pot, which when is filled with water.
3. Place the lid on the cooking pot. Let the citrus fruits boiled (softly) for 40-60 minutes.
4. Remove the grapefruits and place them in a blender.
5. Add sugar on top of the citrus fruits.
6. Blend everything into a homogeneous mass.
7. Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water. I do not use any preservatives in my home-made jam, so this is important to increase shelf-life of your jam. Another thing you can do is to store the jam cold afterwards. 
8. Fill the glass with jam and close the glass.