Happy Halloween soup

Happy Halloween :-)

This is not a scary soup recipe made on bone nor fingers ! This is a comforting and warming Halloween soup made on hokkaido pumpkin !

UPDATE 3 November 2015:
This soup is being forward for the monthly blogging event Tea Time Treats having the theme of soups, borths and stocks. Tea Time Treast is managed by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Jane from The Hedge Combers.

Happy Halloween Soup: 4 servings

• 1 hokkaido pumpkin - peeled, de-seeded and cut into medium size squares
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion - medium-fine chopped
• 2 potatoes - peeled and chopped into medium size sqaures
• 2 carrots - peeled and chopped into medium size squares
• 1 l vegetable stock
• 2 dl dairy whipping cream, 35-40% fat
• 2-3 cm ginger - peeled and finely grated
• salt & pepper for seasoning
• roasted sunflower seeds or roasted pumpkin seeds - optional
• crispbread - optional

1. Fry the onion in the hot olive oil, until the onion is clear
2. Put the rest of the vegetable and vegetable stock into the cooking pot.
3. Heat up everything to the boilling pont.
4. Let the vegetable cook gentle for 15-20 minutes.
5. Check that the vegetable are soft
6. Blend everything together using a hand blender
7. Stir in the freshly grated ginger and dairy whipping.Season with salt & pepper
8. Heat up to the boilling point.
9. Serve the soup with roasted sunflower seeds, or roasted pumpkin seeds and/or crispbread

Pickled beetroot with Camilla Plum twist

During my creative beetroot cook out in my little kitchen I turned 3 kg of boiled beetroots in 4 different pickled beetroots, It is actually very easy to do, as the beetroot slices is identical, the difference is in the pickle liquid.

I used a recipe from Camilla Plums cook book (Mormormad = Grandmas food) as inspiration using the ingredients, which I had available in my kitchen.

The boiling time for the beetroots depend on the size of beetroot, so everything between 20-50 minutes, so check after 20 minutes cooking with a kitchen knife, if the beetroot is firm or soft.

When the beetroot is boiled, place them in a big bowl or the kitchen sink, which is full of cold water. This will cracking the skin on the beetroot, so you push the skin off using your hands. Afterwards slice the beetroot in thinner slices. Now they are ready to be placed in the pickle liquid.

Beetroots will giving off plenty of colour, so consider to wear plastic gloves, when you remove the skin and slice the beetroot. Otherwise you hands can get a nice purple colour.

Pickled beetroot with Camilla Plum twist: 2-3 glasses

• 600-750 g boiled and sliced beetroot
• 500 g plain vinegar
• 250 g sugar
• 1 stem of fresh thyme
• ½ teasspon black pepper corns
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds

1. Add vinegar, sugar, thyme and herbs in a cooking pot.
2. Bring the pickle liquid to the boil.
3. Add beetroot slices into the storage glasses, which has been sterilised with boiling water.
4. Pour the hot pickle liquid into the glass, covering all the beetroot slices.
5. Store the pickled beetroot as ambient temperature, when not opened. 
6. After opening a glass of pickled beetroot store the rest in the refrigerator.

Filling the suitcase up with tea in Paris

When I am in Paris on business trip I somehow always managed to return with my suitcase full of Kusmi tea, yogurt and cheese. During lunch breaks or after a full meeting day I "run out" of the meeting room with a shopping bag and a long shopping list.

At my last trip I managed to fill my suitcase with various Kusmi tea incl this special Kusmi shopping bag with Jean Paul Gaultier logo, which I got as a gift in the shop due to my large shopping volume !!!

I always go to the Kusmi shop on 75 avenue Niel, Paris, as this specific shop sell the Kusmi tea in both the tins as well as refill without the tin. I do not see any reason to keep filling up my kitchen with more metallic tins, than I already have.

This time I filled my suitcase up with:

• Kashmir Tchai
• Sweet Love
• Chocolat Epices
• Label Impérial
• Løv Revigorant

So now I am ready for the dark Winter time, where I will spend more time inside drinking tea, actually plenty of tea.

Chocolate-beetroot cake

I some ago stumbled over a cake recipe, which was a combination of chocolate and beetroot, which I found to be a very interesting combination of vegetables in sweet cake.

So when I received a BIG portion of beetroot, it was time for me to bake such chocolate-beetroot cake. The original recipe, which I stored in unknown place, could not be located, so I went searching for another suggestion, and I here I found this recipe on beetroot-chocolate cake, which I made no modifications to.

Chocolate-beetroot cake is really love or hate cake, where is no in between !!!! I love this, but some of my work colleagues had their worst cake experience every in entire life !!!!

Chocolate-beetroot cake: 1 cake

• 250 soft butter
• 325 g dark muscovado sugar
• 4 eggs
• 250 g (cake) flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 4 tablespoons dark cocoa powder
• 100 g dark chocolate - medium-fine chopped
• 450 g raw beetroot - finely grated
• 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• icing sugar - optional

1. Heat the oven to 190'C.
2. Whip butter and muscovado sugar into a light and foamy texture on a stand alone mixer.
3. Add in the egg one by one, whip between each addition of egg.
4. Sieve flour, vanilla sugar, baking powder and cocoa powder, before it is added into the cake. Stir this in by hand.
5. Afterwards stir into the grated beetroot and chopped chocolate.
6. Pour the cake dough into a round form (25 cm in diameter).
7. Bake the cake in the middle of the oven at 190'C for 40-50 minutes. Check the cake texture with a knitting needle, that it is baked, before removing it from the oven.
8. Cool down the cake. Optional dust icing sugar over the cake, before serving it.

Classic pickled beetroot

Beetroot is one of my favourite vegetable, which I like to have a juice with beetroot, part of oven baked root vegetables or as pickled beetroot.

One of my good colleagues has some farm land, where he grows various vegetable for own use as well as sharing some of the surplus with us his colleagues.
So when I asked, if he could share some beetroots with me, I did not get a little plastic bags with 10-15 beetroots. No I got a feeding bag 1/3 full with beetroots, carrots, pastinac and onions :-)






So one Autumn evening I turned my little kitchen into pickled beetroot creation place. I boiled 1½ kg beetroot at the time. The boiling time depends on the size of beetroot, so everything between 20-50 minutes, so check after 20 minutes cooking with a kitchen knife, if the beetroot is firm or soft.

When the beetroot is boiled, place them in a big bowl or the kitchen sink, which is full of cold water. This will cracking the skin on the beetroot, so you push the skin off using your hands. Afterwards slice the beetroot in thinner slices. Now they are ready to be placed in the pickle liquid.

Beetroots will giving off plenty of colour, so consider to wear plastic gloves, when you remove the skin and slice the beetroot. Otherwise you hands can get a nice purple colour.

Classic pickled beetroot: 2-3 glasses

• 600-750 g boiled and sliced beetroot
• 500 g plain vinegar
• 250 g sugar
• 1 stem of fresh thyme
• 3 black pepper corns

1. Add vinegar, sugar, thyme and peppercorns in a cooking pot.
2. Bring the pickle liquid to the boil.
3. Add beetroot slices into the storage glasses, which has been sterilised with boiling water.
4. Pour the hot pickle liquid into the glass, covering all the beetroot slices.
5. Store the pickled beetroot as ambient temperature, when not opened. 
6. After opening a glass of pickled beetroot store the rest in the refrigerator.

Wheat pot bread

Baking bread in cooking pot without kneading the dough at all becomes more and more popular in my kitchen. Making bread this bread requires planning, as the raising for the bread dough is between 12-24 hours !!!

When I was making this bread this morning, I must have been a little bit sleepy still, as I forgot to remove the plastic things, which is keeping a distance with the actual cooking pot and it´s lid !!! Heating up the cooking pot in a fan oven at 250'C means, that plastic is melting. However, I do not have worry about this anymore, as the melted plastic has left the kitchen in garbage bag !!!!

The inspiration for this bread comes from the bread book "Det æltefri grydebrød" and the recipe called quinoabread. Anyway I made the bread without the quinoa seeds, so the dough felt like it needed more water (the dough was very firm), so therefore I increased the water content.

Wheat pot bread: - 1 bread

• 5 g fresh yeast
• 60 g sour dough (optional)
• 350-375 g cold water
• 1½ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon honey 
• 350 g wheat flour
• 150 whole grain wheat flour
• oil

1. Stir yeast, sour dough and water together in a big mixing bowl. Add salt and honey into the liquid and stir well.
2. Afterwards add the wheat flour and stir very well with a cooking spoon. 
3. Rise the dough to rise at room temperature overnight - minimum 12 hours.
4. Take the dough out off the mixing bowl, move 1/3 of the dough in over the rest of the dough, keep repeating this process until you have a small size of the dough.
5. Clean the mixing bowl for any dough leftovers.
6. Glaze the dough bowl with oil.
7. Place the dough again in a clean dough, let is rise again for 2 hours.
8. Heat up the cast iron cooking pot (1½-2 l) incl. lid on a rack in the lower part of the oven at 250°C (fan oven) for ½ hour.
9. Remove the hot cast iron cooking from the oven, remove the lid. Cover the bottom of the cooking pot with oat flakes, as this will prevent the dough from sticking to firm to the surface.
10. Place the dough in the hot cast iron cooking pot, put the lid back on. Place the cooking pot in the lower part of the oven, let it bake at 250°C for  25 minutes.
11. Remove the lid from the cast iron cooking pot, and let the bread bake at 225°C for another 15 minutes. 
12. Let the bread cold down on the cast iron cooking pot for 30 minutes. before it is taken out.