Lønnestræde´s Plum in spices red wine - year 2013

The plum season has started again here in Denmark, and one of my work colleagues is supplying me with some wonderful tasting small red plums with a good firm texture, which is excellent for this specific formulation. When I am arriving to work I will find a bag full of plum ready to use laying waiting for me on my work desk - I will call this extreme good service :-) So a BIG thank you to my good work colleague for these great plums :-)

Continuing with my modification on this favourite plum dessert of mine, I have again made a few changes to this recipe used Lønnestræde´s plums in spiced red wine - year 2012. Again I looked into, what my kitchen cupboards had inside them, and what I felt like putting into the red wine.

When you cook these plums you are having the most fantastic smell of gløgg in your kitchen.

Lønnestæde's Plum in spiced red wine - 2013:

• 1000 plums - without stone
• 500 g red wine
• 330 g sugar
• 4 sticks of cinnamon
• 2 bay leafs
• 10 cardamon
• 6 allspice corns
• 10 cloves
• 10 red pepper corn
• 10 white pepper corn
• 1 empty vanilla pod - cut into smaller pieces
• potassium sorbat - optional

1. Add boiling water to the storage glass.
2. Wash the plums and remove the stone. Cut the plum into 2 pieces.
3. Cook up the red wine with sugar and all the different spices.
4. Add the plums into the red wine, and let the plums cook for 5 minutes.
5. Empty the glass for the hot water.
6. Add the plums into the storage glass.
7. Reduce the red wine syrup into half the amount.
8. Fill the red wine syrup into the storage glass with the plums.
9. Let the plums mature for minimum 2 weeks, before using them for dessert.
10. Serve the plums together with whipped cream or ice cream.

Product test - Risotto with Karl Johan mushrooms from Il Formaio

Sometimes I do not have a lot of time to both cook a meal from scratch in the evening, and here it can be difficult to find a fast and good solution for such occasion.

Recently I found this solution in my local supermarket in form of risotto with Karl Johan mushrooms from Il Fornaio, which contains two servings.

The plastic bags contains all the dry matter for the risotto. As other ingredients you need as well to have olive oil, white wine and Parmesan cheese in your kitchen, ingredients which my kitchen always have inside. The parsley is an optional extra ingredients. The total cooking time is 15 minutes, which is the case for making your own home-made risotto, so the time saving element is the fact, that you do not need to make any ingredients preparation, as you simply add the entire bag into the cooking pot and no shopping is neither as well.

The taste was excellent and reminded me about a home-made risotto prepared to the bottom. I can certainly see myself buying some bags of this risotto.

Kitchen equipment 21 - tea cup for my garden

During a one-day trip to Sweden with my mother during Easter 2013, we visited an outlet area in Höganäs, Sweden, and here I found various new things for my little kitchen, which I as usual "could not live without" such as this herb watering pot and this silicone hand protector !!!!

I also brought this big tea cup with green flowers as decoration and a green tre strainer again from Sagaform (costing 99 SEK). So now I be able to sit in my little garden drinking a cup of tea full of flower and enjoying my garden being full of flowers.

Greek yogurt with Canadian twist

I am in a period, where I am having a caving for Greek yogurt (I suppose you could call this caving trendy) either for breakfast or as a snack in the afternoon or evening. I have enjoying plenty of this Greek yogurt with rhubarb compote and honey roasted muesli during Summer. The only issue is, that the rhubarb season is more or less over, so I am forced to find a new way of enjoying Greek yogurt.

And suddenly I remembered one of yogurt, which I enjoyed in New York this spring, Greek yogurt with blueberry and blueberries are in season right now here in Denmark, or rather it is more correct to state that blueberries are in season in Poland, which is much closer to Denmark than blueberries coming from Chile during the winter season (I suppose you could call this being sustainable ?).

Now you are sitting wondering, where the Canadian twist in blog headline is coming from ? Well using Canadian maple syrup in combination with blueberries :-)

Greek yogurt with Canadian twist: - 1 serving

• 200 g Greek yogurt - 10% fat or what ever fat content you prefer
• 1-1½ tablespoon maple syrup
• 3-4 tablespoons of blueberries
• 2 tablespoon chopped walnuts
• 1 teaspoon of linseed

1. Start by adding the Greek yogurt into the serving dish
2. Fill blueberries on top of the yogurt followed by maple syrup, chopped walnuts and linseed.
3. Grab a spoon and enjoy this start to your day :-)

Kerneboller (whole grain buns) a la Skærtoft Mølle

Most Monday evenings during the rowing reason I spend rowing on the fjord of Vejle, which means I drive directly from work to the rowing club, jump into the boat and I spend the first 15 minutes sitting on the coxing seat, while eating a bun with either cheese or ham.

So on a regular basic I need to stock my freezer up with more buns for the rowing tour on a Monday evening, so I spend time looking for new recipes mostly located in the bread book "Hjemmebagt". However, this time I have found this recipe on kernebrød on the home-page of Skærtoft Mølle, and instead of baking bread I turned the dough into buns.

Kerneboller (whole grain buns) a la Skærtoft: - 20 buns

• 150 cracked rye grains
• 200 g cold water
• 30 g salt
• 80 g sun flower seeds
• 80 g stone grounded whole grain rye flour
• 1300 g stone grounded Ølands wheat flour or spelt flour
• 15 g yeast
• 20 g sugar
• 400 g buttermilk or yogurt
• 500-600 g water

1. Start by mixing the cracked rye grains, salt and water together in a mixing bowl, let it rest cold for minimum 8 hours or night over.
2. Add the soaked cracked rye grains into a dough bowl, add the rest of the ingredients as well.
3. Knead the dough together, I usual knead for 10 minutes.
4. After the kneading process, let the dough raise warm for 1½-2 hour.
5. Divide the dough into equal size buns, I always a kitchen scale for this purpose in order to ensure equal baking of the buns, I target a dough amount of 80 g per bun.
6. Place the buns a baking tray covered with baking paper, and let the buns raise for another 30-45 minutes.
7. Heat up the (conventional) oven to 200'C.
8. Bake the buns at 200'C for 20-30 minutes in the upper part of then oven.

No clue what to do with the last of this season´s rhubarbs ?

If you are in the lucky situation that you still are having rhubarb growing like maniachs in your garden or perhaps in a garden belongs to friend ? You really need to use this opportunity to use these rhubarb for various great tasting food stuff, as the rhubarb are getting to the end of their season. Or perhaps you have a freezer full of rhubarb to use during the coming Autumn and Winter ?

If this is the case I would like to share a selection of recipes having rhubarb as the main/important ingredients.

You can make various types of rhubarb cordial sush as a la Camilla Plum, a la Årstiderne, a la Dansukker, a la Perch Hill or just this .

What ever rhubarb cordial you make, you can drink it as "normal" cordial mixing with tap water or sparkling water or you can make these great tasting drinks:

Rhubarbe Royale

Gin with lime and rhubarb cordial

And if you like to turned your rhubarb stems into some more solid food, you can try to make:

rhubarb tiramisu or rhubarb tiramisu with Greek yogurt

Muffins like these:  rhubard muffin with marzipan, elder flower and rhubarb muffin or muffin with rhubarb and white chocolate

rhubarb crumble

Or you can "save" the rhubarb in form of:

rhubarb jam with vanilla or rhubarb compote with vanilla

rhubarb sorbet

Classic rhubarb cordial - easy to make

As I still had some rhubarb stems left from my visit to the garden in Horsens, I decided to make the very last portion of rhubarb cordial of 2013 !!!! This time I used another old recipe clipping from a Danish magazine, where I again have no idea of the original source.

Have a look at the picture of this rhubarb cordial, is it not an amazing dark red colour it is having ? Wauuw I am crazy with this red colour, which I know my cousin will be as well.

Classic rhubarb cordial:

• 500 g rinsed rhubarb - chopped in to smaller chunks (fresh or frozen)
• 500 g water
• 600 g sugar

1. Cut the rhubarb into pieces of 2 cm.
2. Add water, sugar and rhubarb into a the cooking pot.
3. Cook it up and left it cook for 5-10 minutes.
4. I prefer to keep the lid on the cooking pot on as much as possible in order to keep the  volatile part of the rhubarb flavour inside the cordial instead of loosing to the air.
5. Remove the cooking pot and place it away from the stove, let it rest for 1 hour
6. Remove the rhubarb pieces from the cordial part using a sieve.
7. Pour the rhubarb cordial into bottles, which have been standing with boiling water for 5-10 minutes.
8. Store the rhubarb cordial in the refrigerator or freeze, as it no anti-microbial have been added.
9. The rhubarb pieces in the sieve can be turned into a rhubarb compote, which I decided to do. I add sugar until desired sweetness level and juice of ½ lemon. Stir everything well together and place the rhubarb compote in the freezer for later use in desserts.