Pickles and Pork

So what is in my future?

2010-01-27T21:48:00.002+01:00

Jul pictures

2010-01-27T21:42:00.004+01:00

Very good veggies

2009-11-11T22:06:00.003+01:00

Just putting up last nights dinner here, I have made it a couple of times and just love it. I'm not going into the recipe since it is basically right out of Jamie Olives, Jamie at home tv show but its a vegetable based canneloni.

The filling is broccoli and cauliflower seasoned with plenty of chili garlic and olive oil baked in a simple tomato sauce with some mozzarella and pecorino cheese.

Some more pics after the jump..

This dish definitely comes with the P&P seal of approval! Enjoy

Clams...for virtually no clams at all!

2009-11-05T19:56:00.009+01:00

So while checking out the newly opened grocery store close to where i live i quickly browsed through the rows and rows of big brand pre-packaged stuff to get to the things that matter i.e. the charcuterie/meat guy and the fishmonger. Although the meat section sported some tasty looking stuff a small net caught my eye, vongole! I was craving clams. However, hiding just behind those and a larger pile of your ordinary blue shell mussels I came across razor clams. Now i have only ever seen this item on a few menues in sweden and never sold like this to consumers.

Out of curiosity i asked the price and my jaw almost dropped.....

...The two people working behind the counter had no idea what those things where, and after some conversation told me they would charge me the same as the vongole clams! I quickly agreed and almost ashamed of myself walked away with 1Kg of razor clams for 149 swedish kronor, thats about $20 which has to be insanely cheap right?

Anyways i hurried home thinking id cook them a la plancha. I did, however, quickly realize that they wouldn't fit all at once so i opted for sort of a spanish version of moul marine. Cooking them in a pot with a base of some panchetta healthy amounts of olive-oil and garlic and adding a dash of sherry.

The clams cooked up a treat although the liquor they had left was lacking a bit in acidity so i added a dash of sherry vinegar and it really hit the spot!

For those wondering razor clams are sweet and firm, not chewy at all (unless overcooked) and just wonderful...a small note of caution, they might seem disturbingly phallic for some, but hay thats their loss just means more for you.

And yes I ate them ALL! haha

Brazin amazin

2009-10-11T18:06:00.002+02:00

Who doesn't love a good shank, from the deep recesses of some of the worlds worst prisons to the 3-star michelin chefs. Everyone whant's to have a good couple of ways for making shanks.

And how could you resist, here with some garlic, olives, lemon and a bottle of cote-du-rhone before going low and slow in the oven for a couple of hours.

Tomato roast

2009-10-11T18:02:00.002+02:00

Before making sauce, try roasting your tomatoes with some garlic, basil and olive oil. I know all the tv-chefs go on about this but its really worth it!

"Inkokt Lax"

2009-10-11T17:47:00.003+02:00

The essential swedish poached fish, and dare i say it, one of the best things to have during one of those picture perfect summer days (they don't happen that often so splurge when they do)

Being basically a court-bouillon with some extras. If you have read any of my other posts you should know about the dill! but more interestingly most recipes call for the addition of gelatin. Personally i believe this is done to mimic the effects you would have from poaching a whole skin on bone in salmon. Those being particularly high in collagen (you know you have heard that word before...its all the rave in the cosmetics industry nowadays, and i know your not using any such products if your vegan right) which would then convert to gelatin during the cooking process and later jell as the dish cooled (and yes it is served and eaten that way). The piece of salmon i got, while skin on, does not have any bones plus i do not want to poach it long enough for the conversion to take place anyways so in goes 2 sheets of gelatin.

Full scale Kimchi pickle

2009-10-11T17:36:00.003+02:00

So a while ago, while writing on my old blog Offalboy, i made a small batch of kimchi. Or at least i think it is kimchi, having never eaten the real deal. Anyhow, i loved it. So here we go again, in larger quantities.

Constructed as follows:
Chinese cabbage (also works great with pac choi)
2% Seasalt to the weight of the cabbage
As much as you want of:
Spring onions
Fresh ginger
Garlic
Chili

Pasta

2009-10-11T17:26:00.003+02:00

Come on people, don't let the marketers fool you. That stuff in the stores does not deserve to be called fresh pasta! Your just carrying home extra water, and worse yet, paying extra for it too!

Homemade pasta is so soft end smooth, its like eating silk...if silk was a really tasty food that is.

2 parts egg
3 parts flour (the high protein stuff)

Pickle Of The..Many months later

2009-10-11T17:03:00.005+02:00

So i finally got around to making them! One of my favorite foods EVER! I don't know if it's that balance between fermented salt/sour that does it for me. Or i guess it could also be the case that my grandmother used to make them and i'm just hit with a huge wave of nostalgia. On the other hand the malolactic process is fascinating and the cherry on top is that it is not really a food that big industry can tame! As we say. The revolution will not be microwavable.

The recipe is marvelously simple:
4,5% Brine
Flowering dill
Garlic
(Chili if you want a added kick)
Time

I love dill!

2009-07-05T18:14:00.004+02:00

So it kind of shows I'm on a bit of a summer haitus when it comes to this blog thing...

Anyhow, Its summer, to hot to be in my tiny kitchen for to long, and you don't want to cook the wonderful vedge that is springing out of the gound and onto our plates anyways.

The reason for this post though is just a quick share of a successfull experiment. I made a dill, chili and garlic pickle and newpotatoe sallad and it was just great :P

I made the mayonnayse from scratch adding a ton of dill and chili and garlic to taste. Boild up the new potatoes in really salty water and some dill stalks. Cut two pickles in small cubes, and hay presto a awsome sallad! I'm reallt happy with it and warmly recomend this dill/chili/garlic mayo!

Umeboshi!

2009-06-13T21:03:00.003+02:00

After beeing thoroughly warned about these I just had to make them ;)

Hehe actually I was not planning to, but i walked past a guy selling green plums at the market...more text to come

Pickle Of The Month #1

2009-06-13T20:57:00.003+02:00

Radish, satranais and szechuanpeppar!

After weeks of trying to find a dykon worth its name (ok so i havent looked that hard) I sort of caved and whent with the traditional radishes we get here in Sweden. I still wanted to keep a asian feel to the pickle, hence the spices.

3% salt seems to be the golden rule when it comes to dykon so i'll start this one with that.

Pigeons, rats with wings? (no text yet)

2009-06-13T20:35:00.006+02:00

If that is the case, rat tastes pretty good!

There will be some pretty graphic pictures beyond this point so if your not up to seeing a dead bird don't go any further.

Hehe

Sometimes one FAILS!

2009-06-13T20:17:00.005+02:00

Basicaly one of my pickles deeloped a nasty mold.

This is how it started out. Innocently enoughe just some beets, salt, garlic and lemon.
Warning, ugly beetmold monster past this point.

Don't say i didn't warn you!

However, if you ever stumbeled upon you know i also made a kimchi. Having never eaten kimchi before I am probably not your best guide in this subject matter, but wow i think i made a really good one. I have almost finished it and it tasted great, slightly fermented hot and spicy.

Our daily bread

2009-06-01T23:43:00.007+02:00

Awesome good-lookig bread made by me that is! Who needs friends when you just bought a KitchenAid Artisan :D

Sunday night sauerkraut

2009-06-01T21:35:00.008+02:00

Having Estonian grandparents I was introduced to the wonderful world of cultured foods at a early age. However, my exposure to the the alluring flavors and techniques of fermentation have been missing for the most part, they are not really a part of Swedish everyday cuisine, but armed with a new resolve and wonderfully nerdy literature as Sandor Ellix Katz “Wild Fermentation” I have set out to change this.

Given the rather trendy minimalism of these types of foods this will be a short post, but one that will keep on living so to say as the kraut needs about four weeks to mature.

Ok, to make sauerkraut you only really need cabbage and salt (Estonian types use caraway but I have none left from the summer so this one will be kraut at its most simplest form). Most recipes actually call for pickling salt, but I will use sea salt since I don't really know if pickling salt is a readily available product here in Sweden or in the rest of the world. The thing with pickling salt is that it is a really small grain and dissolves in cold water. Sea salt does this too if it is fine enough and that is just a matter of how rough you are willing to get with your salt (if your lazy and want to waist energy other than your own I guess you could heat water with sea salt to make a brine, but that will be your own experiment).

The tricky thing with the recipes in wild fermentation and all the places I found with a quick search is that they give you the amount of salt you need in a volumetric measure. This is absolute madness! Granted the salinity of sauerkraut probably isn't as important as say sausage making, but still it annoyed me enough to go out and find the approximate weight of pickling salt, and as a average people seem to aim for a 2% salt which sound pretty decent to me plus it makes this whole thing way more scalable.

With my 2% salt safely in my mortar, which in this case turned out to be 38g, I proceeded to quickly slice the cabbage. Throw in salt and mix with clean hands (I don't want to culture anything that could have come home with me from the subway). Let the salt do its osmosis thing which pulls water out of the cabbage and softens it (30 minutes should be enough), but also makes it easier to stuff into a suitable fermentation vessel. I used to glass containers but I guess it really doesn't matter as long as it is food grade and not metal (mixing salt and metal for longer periods of time never seem like a good idea in my mind).

Eventually the salt will have pulled out enough water to actually cover the cabbage so you could say this recipe creates its own brine. The salt is however grateful for all the help it can get since we want the cabbage submerged as quickly as possible. I will try two methods, one is a simple weight the other looks pretty cool but I will have to see how it turns out, at least the idea of filling a bag with water and using it as the weight makes theoretical sense.

Store in a dark place and await the next post! (should probably be a bit colder than room temperature but hay I live in an apartment so I don't really have a root cellar)

Soon!

2009-05-23T17:39:00.001+02:00

Work in progress