Artichoke and feta dip

I don't know how you feel when you leave work, but I'm usually starving. In fact, I would say that I'm pretty ready at that stage to do almost anything for something to eat. And I hate anyone who gets on the train with food (I'm talking to you, blonde girl who gets on in Harrow with a hamburger every night!), because I so envy them.

This is the worst time for me when it comes to trying to eat healthily, as I have absolutely no will power when I'm hungry and it is so easy to buy some nuts, a muffin or crisps on my way home. I've tried taking fruit with me to eat on the train home, but find that it doesn't really satisfy me, and for awhile I've instead brought mini houmus pots and some vegetables.

I really like houmus, I do, but recently I find it quite boring, and the full fat one is quite heavy on the calories anyway. The broccoli dip I posted about quite recently is an attempt at getting away from houmus, but it's really best when freshly made, so not ideal for me as I like to be able to do a batch and use it for a week.

So I needed to come up with something new. A dip that would be salty, savoury, easy to make, and could be done as a batch. The solution was this artichoke and feta cheese dip. It is not pretty, to cite my friend Sigrid - the winner of Swedish Masterchef, 'I do ugly food that tastes good'. So no, it won't win any beauty contests, but wow, does it taste good! This is definitely my new favourite dip. Great as a dip for vegetables, and also as a spread on bread. You could also have it on crostini and serve as canapes.

Artichoke and feta dip
180 g of grilled artichokes
100 g feta cheese
2 tbsps quark (or you could use cream cheese, sour cream or creme fraiche)
1 small garlic clove, crushed
1 tbsp lemon juice
0.5 tsp honey
1 pinch salt
1 pinch black pepper
1 pinch chili flakes

Mix all the ingredients, I used a stick blender

Taste, and add more lemon or spices if needed

Serve as a dip for vegetables or as a spread on bread

Stored in an airtight container in the fridge, it will last up to one week (well, it can be stored that long, but if you're like me, it really won't last that long...)

Salty licorice chocolate truffles

Hi, my name is Saga and I'm addicted to salty licorice.

Salty licorice is hugely popular in Scandinavia, and it is by far my favourite type of sweets. I really do get cravings for it, and I cannot have it at home without devouring it immediately. Anytime anyone comes to visit me from Scandinavia, they have to bring salty licorice to me. When the cravings gets to bad, I also usually go to Scandinavian kitchen at Great Titchfield st or Totally Swedish on Crawford st for a hit. Cyber candy in Angel and Covent garden also have salty licorice, but the most impressive store is a new sweets shop in Covent garden on Long Acre, Sugar sin. It is owned by two Swedish sisters, and they have an impressive range of Scandinavian sweets that you can pick n mix. The shop is so cute, with old-fashioned sweets jars. I highly recommend a visit if you like sweets, and in particular if you share my addiction of salty licorice.

Sugar Sin. Picture borrowed from Hop Interiors, where you can see more pics and read an interview with the owners of Sugar Sin.

I love the combination of salty licorice and chocolate, it is a match made in heaven combining to great things into one! My favourite one is Fazer's Salmiakki, with a soft salty licorice centre encased in milk chocolate. Marabou Black, with milk chocolate and splinters of salty licorice, is pretty good too. Inspired by these two, I decided to try to make my own chocolate truffles with salty licorice. After a quick googling I found a recipe at Söta saker, that I tweaked by adding milk chocolate and adding more salty licorice. The result was delicious! I will definitely make these again.

Salty licorice chocolate truffles (20 truffles)
100 g milk chocolate, chopped
100 g 60% dark chocolate, chopped
1 dl double cream
1-1.5 dl salty licorice (I used Turkisk peppar), crushed

Start by splintering the salty licorice. Place the salty licorice caramels into double plastic bags, and place onto a tea towel. Using a hammer, crush the caramels. You want a quite coarse powder with some larger pieces.

Heat up the cream, and pour into a bowl over the chopped chocolate. Stir until the chocolate has completely melted and you have a soft even mix

Stir in the salty licorice. Reserve 1-2 tsp of the finer powder for decoration. How much salty licorice to add is a matter of taste, I added quite a lot.

Pour the truffle mix into a small square tray lined with baking paper. The truffle mix should be approx 1 cm high.

Sprinkle with the licorice powder, then leave the tray in the fridge for about one hour

Transfer the now hardened truffle to a cutting board and remove the paper. Using a sharp knife, cut it into 2 x 2 cm square truffles

Store in the fridge until serving

Lemon curd chocolate truffles

This Easter have been very food orientated, went to two Easter dinners two days in a row for example, and really indulged in heaps of delicious food. For the first dinner, I made white chocolate and lemon curd truffles, and they were a definite hit. My only creative streak is cooking, as was very clear when we during the party played the boardgame Cranium... As part of the game, I had to try to make a microscope out of clay, you would think with me being a scientist that would be easy, but I so failed at that. Very embarrassing.

Anyhow, this is an incredibly easy recipe, and the result is amazing. Soft lemony centres encased with white chocolate, yummy! I used Sainsbury's Taste the difference lemon curd (my preferred ready made one) as I didn't have a lot of time, but of course the truffles may be even better with homemade curd. Something I really would like to try is to do the same with blood orange curd or rhubarb curd, I think that would be really lovely too.

For the white chocolate encasing the centres, I used white chocolate chips. These melt at a higher temperature, and thus doesn't melt as easily in room temperature, making it easier to serve and eat the truffles

Lemon curd chocolate truffles (20 truffles)
200 g white chocolate (I used Green & Black's), chopped
1 dl lemon curd
1 tbsp double cream
200 g white chocolate chips

Melt the white chocolate. I usually melt chocolate in a glass bowl in the microwave the following way and find that it usually gives a perfect result without burning the chocolate: Start with 1 min at full effect, stir the chocolate, and then stir every 10-15 sec at full effect until completely melted

Stir in the double cream.

Stir in the lemon curd, one tablespoon at the time, until you have smooth glossy mixture.

Leave the filling in the freezer for 1 h

Using a melon scoop or a teaspoon, take out balls of the filling and use your hands to shape them further into spheres. This is quite messy to do, try to work as quickly as possible to avoid the filling to become to soft and start melting

Put the chocolate/lemon curd balls back in the freezer for 1 h to harden before dipping them in white chocolate

Melt the white chocolate chips.

Stick a toothpick into each lemon curd ball, and dip them into the melted chocolate. Leave on a sheet of baking paper to harden.

Store in the freezer or fridge until serving

Sigrid Barany - Swedish Masterchef 2012

I am so incredibly happy and proud today, because one my best and oldest friends, Sigrid Barany, has today won Swedish Masterchef!!!!!! The Swedish Masterchef is similar to British and Australian Masterchef, with amateur cooks competing for the title. It's been fantastic, exhilarating, and nerve wracking seeing my friend on TV, but she's been AMAZING! I can't wait to get her cook book when it comes out in April.

Sigrid have also just started a blog (only in Swedish I'm afraid) that you can follow here: Spisvärme.

I have so many memories around food and Sigrid, many from when we used to share a flat together in Uppsala. Weird cooking session in the middle of night after drinking way too much (my favourite night meal is pasta with an obscene amount of cheese, ketchup and curry....), cooking up enormous amounts of food for our joint 25 year bday party (I think we ate leftover for months afterwards), and lavish dinners for new years eve celebrations.

Another food memory is our trip to Porto in Portugal, where Sigrid, who was very tired after a Ryanair flight, ordered a bbq hot dog in a small touristy restaurant for lunch. She got a large sausage that she had to bbq herself on the table over a live flame, the result was not only a cooked sausage but that Sigrid lost part of her fringe..... We had better luck with our food going out for dinner in Porto, we found a great place that did Portuguese tapas. It was so good that we had to come back a second time, and ended up staying very late at the restaurant and got free drinks from the lovely waiting staff.

Sigrid has made me so many fantastic meals, and I'm not surprised that she won today. Now I just hope she'll come and cook for me soon here in London :)

Saturday mornings

This is one of my favourite ways to spend a Saturday morning, watching Saturday kitchen live (I love the omelette challenge!) in bed while drinking milky cardamon coffee and planning what to cook this weekend. I'm thinking of doing something with squid, if I can get out of bed and get my lazy ass down to Borough market to buy it....

What are you cooking this weekend?

Linguine with asparagus and scallops

Today the rain is pouring down, and my umbrella broke when I went out for Sunday roast :( I have no idea how many umbrellas I buy every year, but quite a few as they either break or I leave them on the tube. It's not the only thing I leave on the tube or bus, I have a habit of loosing everything I own, from phones to umbrellas to wallets to once a box of rat brains (that I luckily got back!). The last one was not a box of ingredients to cook with, I'm not that brave with my food, but from an experiment for work. In addition to being an amateur cook by night, I'm also a scientist by day.

Anyhow, the weather today has been awful, but yesterday it was a lovely spring day. I love spring, the lighter mornings and evenings, all the spring flowers (the daffodils are in bloom outside my house), and of course all the vegetables that comes with spring.

Inspired by spring I decided to make pasta with asparagus and scallops. This is a lovely light dish, with the green asparagus and sweet scallops, with a little tangy lemon and salty pecorino,

Linguine with asparagus and scallops (serves 2)
160 g dry linguine
1 large bunch of green asparagus
6 scallops, divided in halves
100 g pecorino cheese, grated
1 medium lemon, zest
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 pinch of chili flakes
2 tbsp olive oil
1 egg yolk, beaten
salt and pepper

Snap of the dry woody ends of the asparagus. Cut of the top 3-4 cm of each stalk, and cut the rest of the asparagus in 1-2 cm pieces.

Heat up the olive oil in a frying pan and add the chopped asparagus. Fry for 1-2 min and then add the garlic, fry for another few min, take care to not burn the garlic. Stir in a pinch of chili flakes and the 3/4 of the lemon zest, put the pan to the side.

Cook the linguine in plenty of boiling salted water according to pack instructions. Add the asparagus tips for the last 2 min of cooking time.

Drain the pasta, reserving 1-2 dl of the cooking water.

Return the pasta to the pot, stir in the egg yolk, fried asparagus, and cheese. If the pasta feels dry, add in some of the reserved cooking water, I usually add in around 1 dl.

Divide the scallops in halves, and fry in olive oil in a hot frying pan for 1-2 min on each side until golden.

Add the scallops on top of the pasta, sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper and the rest of the lemon zest.

Smaklig måltid (bon appetite in Swedish)!

Broccoli garlic dip

Reading a recent post on Picki picki about broccoli side dishes reminded me of a broccoli dip/spread/sauce I used to do quite frequently last year, and I made it again last weekend. I use it as a spread on fresh bread, or as a dip for carrots when I'm trying to be healthy (while conveniently forgetting the fact there is quite a bit of cheese in the dip), or I stir it into pasta for a quick dinner.

The dip can be stored in the fridge in an airtight container for a couple of days but loose some of its vibrant green colour.

Broccoli garlic dip
1 medium-sized heads of broccoli
1 lemon, juice
2 garlic cloves, minced
3-4 tbsp olive oil
100 g parmesan, grated
a pinch of chili flakes
salt and pepper

Cook the broccoli florets in lightly salted water for 2-3 min.

Drain the water and mix the broccoli with the other ingredients. I use a stick blender to do this.

Add salt and pepper to taste

Enjoy!

And since that was such a quick recipe, you now have time to see Peacock, a lovely film with a fanatastic performance by Cillian Murphy :)