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 :)

Korean spare ribs

This weekend I have done nothing but cooking, walking in the sunshine (really felt like spring this weekend!), and streamed a lot of TV shows. Had a bit of catching up to do after holiday in Thailand (hot and sunny and white beaches and amazing food and quality time with my parents = great holiday). I'm quite addicted to shows like Vampire Diaries and Secret Circle. I know, I know, I am 36 years and watch teenage TV soaps about vampires and witches... What can I say, they're my guilty pleasures. I had brought my work laptop home, but, as usual, I haven't even taken it out of the bag yet. As it's now 8 pm, I'm guessing it will stay in the bag until tomorrow....

Anyhow, I love Korean food like bulgogi, bibimbap and kimchi, and luckily there are some nice, and cheap Korean restaurants in London, like the 3 or 4 restaurants on St Giles street and there is also a good one on Finchley road, Seoul. This weekend I decided to try to cook something Korean myself, and Korean spare ribs sounded like a good idea. I've actually never cooked spare ribs in my life, strange in a way because I love good sticky and tender ribs, and decided it was a good project for a weekend. I read a few recipes online, and from them made up my own.

First I had to go to Camden to get the spare ribs at Morrison's. Here in the UK I hardly ever see spare ribs at my usual Sainsbury's or Waitrose store, but Morrison's, another chain of grocery stores, often have good butcher and fish monger sections in their stores. I know, I should have gone to a proper butcher, but that felt like to much hassle. Easier to jump on the 274 to Camden... Coming back from Camden I went up to Finchley road, and went to an Asian supermarket, Natural natural, that's next to Waitrose. It's quite a small shop, and for anyone who wants a larger variety of Asian/Korean products, I would recommend going up to K-mart in Golders green instead. Anyhow, I got Asian pears, kimchi, and gochujang, a Korean hot red pepper paste, I needed and then went home to cook.

This recipe takes some time, but it is not labour intensive as most of the time is due to marinating or cooking the ribs. And believe me, it is so worth the time, because the ribs are amaaaaazing!!!! The ribs were so tender that the meat was almost falling of the bones, and covered with a sticky, hot and sweet glaze.

I served the ribs with kimchi and a coleslaw with lime and sweet chili, which was so good it really deserves a post of its own but is included here anyway. My mum makes a similar coleslaw, and it goes really well with any kind of barbecued meats.

Though how I ever thought that sticky ribs would be good as lunch box food I don't really know. Better bring some wet wipes with me to work tomorrow....

Korean spare ribs (serves 4)
2 racks of pork spare ribs (approx 2 kg)

Marinade
1 Asian pear, finely chopped (in all honesty, I think any large ripe juicy pear would do)
0.5 dl sesame seeds, toasted and ground
10 garlic cloves, minced
1 dl light soy sauce
0.5 dl brown sugar
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp mirin (rise wine)
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
3 tbsp gochujang (Korean hot pepper paste)
7 cm ginger, grated
1 tbsp sesame oil

Cooking liquid
5-7 dl water
5 star anise

2 cm ginger, grated

Serving
0.5 dl sesame seeds, toasted
3 spring onions, finely chopped

Coleslaw
250 g white cabbage, shredded
250 g red cabbage, shredded
5 spring onions, finely chopped
4 apples, grated (I used medium-sized Cox apples)
250 g Greek yoghurt (half a large pot, approx 2.5 dl)
2 lime, zest and juice
2 tbsp sweet chili sauce
1 bunch coriander, finely chopped
Salt and pepper

Toast the sesame seeds for the marinade and for serving in a dry pan. Ground half of the seeds to a coarse powder using a pestle and mortar

Score the ribs so that they can absorb more of the marinade

Mix all ingredients for the marinade together

Cover the ribs with the marinade, and leave in the fridge overnight. I think it's easiest to marinate the ribs in a large sealable plastic bag. Turn the ribs over a couple of times to make sure that all sides gets marinated properly.

Transfer the ribs with the marinade to a deep oven tray. Add the water and star anise and cover the tray with aluminium foil.

Cook for 1.5-2 h at 150C, until the ribs are tender

Combine all the ingredients for the coleslaw in a large bowl and let marinate in the fridge while the ribs cook.

Transfer the ribs to a plate, and pour the cooking liquid through a sieve and into a clean pot.

Heat up the oven to 250C or turn on the grill to its highest setting

Reduce down the cooking liquid to a sticky consistency, then add 2 cm grated ginger

Put the ribs on the grid of an oven tray. Brush on a thick layer of the glaze.

Cook the ribs in the oven/grill for 5-10 min. Watch the ribs carefully to make sure they don't burn!

Sprinkle the ribs with toasted sesame seeds and spring onions, and serve with the coleslaw and kimchi.

Enjoy!

Here's something for you to listen to while cooking, Fujiyama Mama by Wanda Jackson, queen of rockabilly.

Swedish semlor

I'm baaaack!!!

Hi and merry Christmas and Happy New Years and long time no see. So, I decided to continue. I do like blogging about food, but I might add a post or two about other stuff too.

First out is a recipe for semlor (semla sing, semlor pl), a cardamon flavoured sweet bun filled with almond paste and whipped cream, traditionally eaten on Shrove's day, or, as it's called in Sweden, Fat Tuesday. Here in the UK the tradition is to eat pancakes on this day, usually with lemon and sugar. Really tasty too, but almost nothing beats a semla. Fat Tuesday was this week, but I hadn't time to bake then and therefore baked this weekend instead.

The other reason I decided to bake semlor is that it reminds me of home. My grandma always makes here own, usually smaller than the one's you find at the bakeries, and with her homemade slightly chunky almond paste. I thought a lot about my grandparents and family during the past weeks, as my granddad has been very ill and sadly passed away a couple of days ago. Sometimes it is very hard being an expat, you never feel more far away than on occasions like this.

Anyhow, I used a basic semla recipe, but I tweaked it a bit by adding more cardamon and changing the filling slightly. Here in the UK, you can't find mandelmassa, a less sweet almond paste compared to marzipan, and I like my filling to really taste of almonds and be a bit chunkier, like my grandma's, so I added chopped almonds to it.

The result was delicious, so delicious I had more than two. The exact number will however remain a secret as it's slightly embarrassing. In particular as I still managed to eat a full dinner....

Semlor (12 buns)
7.5 dl strong wheat flour
25 g dried yeast
0.75 dl sugar
2 tsp ground cardamon
a pinch of salt
100 g butter
2.5 dl milk
1 egg, beaten

Filling
200 g marzipan or mandelmassa
150 g chopped almonds
0.5 dl milk or cream

5 dl whipped cream

Mix flour, yeast, sugar, cardamon, and salt together in a large bowl

Melt the butter, add the milk and warm to 40C, slightly hotter than finger temperature

Add the butter and milk to the flour mix, stir together to a dough.

Knead the dough for a couple of minuter, add more flour if necessary.

Leave the dough in the bowl, covered with a tea towel, to rise for 45 min

Divide the dough into 12 pieces, roll each to a small bun, and place on a buttered oven tray.

Cover with a tea towel and leave to raise for another 30 min

Brush the buns with egg wash

Bake for 10-15 min in the middle of the oven at 225C

Remove from the hot oven tray and let the buns cool down

To make the filling, coarsely grate the marzipan (this is easiest to do if you first leave it in the freezer for 30 min) and mix together with the chopped almonds and milk.

Whip the cream, it should still be a little loose

Cut of a thin lid from the buns. Scoop out a hole in the middle of the bun, this additional bread can be added to the almond paste if you like (I usually don't bother...).

Add the almond paste to the bun, and also add a generous amount of whipped cream. Place the lid on top. If you like, sprinkle the lid with icing sugar (I didn't have any at home, and don't think it's really necessary).

Enjoy!

Thoughts on continuing food blogging?

I'm not sure what I'm doing with this blog at the moment. I started it as a way to share recipes mostly with friends, and as a way to keep track of the food I cook. I cook probably 99% of my meals without following a recipe, which makes it sometimes difficult to repeat it again without some sort of record. For that, I guess the blog is fulfilling what I set out to do. Although I wish people would actually post more of their comments to the blog.... I'm such a feed back junkie, and it's lovely getting told when people tried a recipe and they liked it, but I so want comments also ON the blog. Yeah I know, that was a not very subtle hint ;)

Food is such a passion for me and I spend way to much time thinking about food, and reading lots of food blogs and cook books for inspiration. I wish I would spend even more time cooking and blogging about it. At the same time, most of the blogs I follow are not about food, but more personal. Maybe this is what I should try to do instead? Or write more about music? Maybe I can combine all of it?

Argh, I don't know what to dooooo...............

Well, at least not with the blog. Or life in general. But I do know what I'm planning to cook on Thursday. And I do have a pretty amazing lunch box with roasted chicken and sweet potato wedges for tomorrow :)

Cardamon chicken with harissa braised cabbage

I really need to learn how to stop procrastinating! I've got recipes that I been meaning to post here for ages, and I just haven't gotten around to it. I'll do it later, I think. After I watched Vampire dairies or some other quality TV show. Talking about TV, have you seen one of the new ones, Pan Am? Love the outfits and hair! Fantastic. Lovely little bit of total escapism from when I get home tired and unmotivated after work. Otherwise I watch too much food TV, seriously, I got a bad addiction to TopChef and MasterChef. I'm following the new season of TC, and must admit I got a bit of a crush on Chicago chef Chris Jones. Mmmm, cute guys that can cook....

OK, see what I mean about procrastination and being easily distracted? I was supposed to write about a new recipe here, not TV!

Anyhow, this is an easy recipe with harissa and tomato braised cabbage. I've got at bit of a thing for cabbage recently. White, savoy, red, even brussel sprouts. This is very tasty and easy to do, and goes really well with just a couple of nice spicy sausages or, as I served it with this time, cardamon and fennel marinated chicken fillets

Cardamon chicken with harissa and braised cabbage (serves 4)
4 chicken fillets

Chicken marinade
1 tbsp fennel seeds, ground
1 tsp cardamon seeds, ground
0.5 dl light soy sauce
0.5 tbsp honey
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 pinch chili flakes
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

Braised cabbage
1 medium-sized head of white cabbage, thinly sliced
2 onions, yellow or red, finely chopped
5-6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 dl harissa
1 dl creme fraiche
1 dl chicken stock
1 can chopped tomatoes
250 g feta cheese, cubed
1 lemon, zest and juice
1 tbsp oregano
0.5-1 tsp coarse black pepper
salt
neutral oil

Ground the cardamon and fennel using a pestle and mortar. Then mix the ingredients for the marinade together and marinate the chicken for at least 30 min

Saute garlic and onions in oil in a medium to large pot for a couple of minutes until the onion is soft

Add harissa and lemon zest, saute for a couple of minutes

Add all the remaining ingredients except the feta cheese, and stir it together

Cook on medium heat while occasionally stirring for 10-15 min until the cabbage starts to be soft

While the cabbage is cooking, fry the chicken fillets in a large frying pan

Add the feta cheese to the cabbage, and salt and black pepper to taste

Smaklig måltid/bon appetite!

Chicken curry coconut soup

I got back a couple days ago from a weekend in Berlin (fantastic city, go there!), followed by a busy week in Munich attending a course organized by the company I work for. It was an interesting course, focused on management and leadership. When all of us attending the course were asked what type of business they would start if they could choose, most said a restaurant or similar. Quite interesting considering we all work for a technology company...

Anyhow, the course was good, but very intense. Since coming back on Friday, I've spent most of the time lazying around in the flat, watching quality TV like Project Runway, and MasterChef. I'm seriously addicted to food TV shows, and MasterChef is a clear favourite. One of my oldest friends auditioned a couple of weeks ago for the Swedish version, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she'll make it.

Anyhow, in addition to watching food being cooked, I also made this soup to brighten up my lunch box for the coming week. It's got a deep smooth curry flavour, enhanced by toasting some of the spices first.

I quite often cook some of the vegetables, and/or the meat/fish/prawns to go into a soup separately. This is to avoid overcooking the vegetables. I also like it, because I think it gives the dish more layers, here the creamy curry soup with fresh lime chicken, and the kick from the vegetables fried with chili and garlic.

Chicken curry coconut soup (serves 4)
4 chicken breast fillets a' 120-150 g each
Marinade
2 lime, zest and juice
0.5 ml light soy sauce
1 pinch chili flakes
1 pinch smoked paprika
1 tsp brown sugar, like light muscavado, or honey
1 garlic clove, grated

Soup
400 ml coconut milk
600 ml chicken stock
1 large yellow onion, finely chopped
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1.5 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1.5 tsp cardamon seeds
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1.5 tsp curry
1.5 tsp coriander
0.5 tsp turmeric
0.5 tsp smoked paprika
1 pinch chili flakes
2 large garlic cloves, grated
3 cm ginger, grated
1 lime, juice

1 red pepper, diced
1 green pepper, diced
4 tomatoes, diced
1 red chili, finely chopped
4 spring onions, chopped
1 garlic clove, grated
1 large bunch of coriander, chopped
vegetable oil, like sunflower or other neutral oil
salt and pepper

Start by mixing the ingredients for the marinade. Trim and butterfly the chicken fillets, cover with the marinade, and leave for at least 15 min before cooking.

Toast fennel, cardamon, mustard, and cumin seeds in a dry frying pan over high heat whilst stirring until the mustard seeds starts popping.

Grind the seeds using a pestle and mortar, and then mix with the other dry spices.

Grate the ginger and garlic cloves.

Heat up 1-2 tbsp oil in a medium-sized pot. Add the onions, all the spices, and the grated ginger and garlic. Saute on medium heat for a couple of minutes to release all the flavours from the spices.

Add the coconut milk, chicken stock, and lime juice. Simmer for 10-15 min.

While the soup is simmering, fry the chicken fillets in a frying pan. Set to the side to rest, and then slice the fillets.

Also lightly fry the peppers, tomatoes, spring onions and garlic for a couple of minutes. Season with salt and pepper, and stir in the coriander.

Taste the soup and adjust if necessary by seasoning with salt, pepper and a squeeze of lime juice.

Serve the soup by pouring it into bowls, adding a handful of the pepper and tomato mix, and topping with the sliced chicken.

Enjoy :)

Steak with horseradish butter

I don't eat a lot of meat, but recently I've really been craving a good steak. I bought a couple of high quality steaks, and decided to make a seasoned butter. As I had quite a lot of horseradish left since my visit to the Borough market a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to use that. I added some mustard, capers and garlic, and wow! Seriously, this butter is SO good!

I served the steak with sauteed mushrooms and greens, and it was delicious. Sex on a plate, finger licking good, you have to try this! You won't regret it. Well, your waistline might, but hey, it's almost a year to beach 2012, right?

Steak with horseradish butter (serves 4)
4 steaks, I usually go for sirloin or rump steak, around 150 g each
100 g butter
3 tbsp grated fresh horseradish
2 tsp grainy mustard
2 tbsp capers, chopped
1 large garlic clove, grated
250 g mushrooms, quartered
1 large head of broccoli, divided into florets
400 g haricot vertes
1-2 cloves of garlic, grated
butter
olive oil
salt and black pepper

Start by making the seasoned butter by stirring together the butter with the grated horseradish, garlic, mustard and capers. Refrigerate until served.

Take out the steaks, they should be room-tempered by the time of frying.

In a medium-sized frying pan, melt a small knob of butter, and add the mushrooms. Fry the mushrooms until golden, season with salt and pepper.

While the mushrooms are cooking, cook the green beans and broccoli florets for a couple of minutes in salted water. Drain well.

Remove the mushrooms to a side dish, cover with aluminium foil or a lid to keep warm. In the frying pan add a little olive oil and a grated garlic clove. Fry the greens with the garlic for a few minutes, and then set to the side until served.

Trim the steaks if necessary of excess fat and sinew, season with salt and pepper on both sides. In a large frying pan, add a knob of butter and a little olive oil. Once the butter is browned, add the steaks. Make sure the pan is really hot, you want the steaks to fry, not boil.

Cook the steaks to your liking. I prefer medium-rare, so I usually fry 1-2 min on each side depending on thickness of the steaks, and then cover the steaks with aluminum foil or a lid for another couple of minutes to rest before serving.

Finally, serve the steaks on heated plates (I usually microwave the plates for a couple of minutes, or leave them in the oven for around 5 min at 100C) with the greens and mushrooms. Top the steaks with the frying juices and a knob of the seasoned butter.

Enjoy!