Spuds!

Last year, I enthusiastically planted 34 nests with potatoes. They all came up and as the weather got drier and drier, I kept watering and watering. They didn't grow as I'd expected. And after we came back from our holiday in July, all traces of the potatoes had disappeared. Eaten by slugs and snails, so I didn't bother with them.

Yesterday, I bought some new plants and one of them I planted in the middle of one of the old potato nests and guess what - there were a couple of spuds in there. I tried another nest and there were more potatoes. I ended up digging through 14 of the nests and had 1.750 kg of small potatoes - some the size of a peanut. This was a very pleasant surprise and certainly made my day.



Lundulph is on a business trip, so I'm waiting for him to come back and we'll try out our very own potatoes. This also means that I haven't been cooking anything interesting either. I made another vegetarian gyuvetch overnight, this time no potatoes, but Jerusalem artichokes and turnips. I've never had turnips before, so I thought I'd try it out.

Another thing I got from Waitrose the other day is a dragon fruit. I spotted these weird, unreal looking fruits on the top shelf of the exotic section and the pink colour looked so artificial, that I was compelled to buy one. It didn't have any instructions on how to eat, so I just cut it in half and peeled off the skin. Inside, the dragon fruit had white flesh with black seeds scattered everywhere. As Lundulph put it, like a kiwi fruit gone mad. And white... The texture and the crunchiness was definitely that of a kiwi fruit. But it didn't taste of anything. So all looks and no substance. Still it's very different looking and would be useful for decoration, both whole and sliced.

Bulgarian Moussaka

Yesterday my good friend Simon came over for dinner. And so I made moussaka, I hadn't done that for a long time, so I was looking forward to it and indeed, I got a bit over-excited and used too much potatoes.

Ingredients

2 large aubergines
1 - 2 tbsp grapeseed oil
2 medium sized onions
3 - 4 tbsp grapeseed oil
1.5 tbsp sweet paprika
1 - 3 dl water
500 g potatoes
2 medium sized carrots
500 g minced meat
1 x 400 g can tomatoes
salt, black pepper, parsley and savoury

Method

1. Wash and slice the aubergines, about 1 cm thick, then fry them lightly in a little bit of oil. Best is to just brush the pan between rounds. Then put aside.
   
2. Peel and dice the onions. Peel and dice the potatoes, about 1 cm cubes. Peel and cut the carrots finely - I normally slice it first about 3 mm thick, then quarter the slices.
3. Fry the onions in the oil. When they turn translucent, add the paprika and stir quickly for about 1 minute.
4. Add the potatoes and stir well. Pour 1 dl water and let simmer for 5 minutes.
5. Add the carrots and stir in.
   
6. When the vegetables begin to soften, add the minced meat and stir in well, until it has browned.
7. If it seems a bit dry, pour in 1 - 2 dl water and let simmer for another 10 minutes.
8. Now add the tomatoes - either crushed or blended. Also add the salt, pepper, parsley and savoury.
9. Leave to simmer and in the mean time, line an oven-safe dish with half of the aubergines.
10. Take the mince mix off the heat and turn over to the dish. Cover with the remaining aubergines.
11. Bake in the oven. Start at gas mark 6 (200 degrees C) and when it starts bubbling, reduce the heat to gas mark 4 (175 degrees C) and leave to cook for 45 - 60 minutes.
12. Now prepare the topping

Topping

3 tbsp grapeseed oil
3 tbsp plain flour
3 - 4 dl milk
3 eggs
grated cheese or feta cheese (optional)
salt

1. Heat up the oil and add the flour, stirring quickly.
2. Slowly add the milk, still stirring it in.
   
3. When all the milk has been incorporated, take off the heat. The consistency should be of a custard cream.
4. Leave to cool a bit, then whisk in the eggs and the optional cheese. If needed add also salt.
5. When the moussaka has finished baking, take it out and cover with the topping, then put back in the oven, turn up the heat to gas mark 9 (250 degrees C) until it gets golden in colour.

Over the last few years, my parents have very kindly given me a collection of small painted terracotta pots which are very good for making portion sized moussakas - very good for dinner parties and this is what it looks when you use them.

Vegetarian dishes

I've gone through most of the recipes and labeled them with the new functionality of the blog. So, you may wonder why some of the meat dishes have the Vegetarian label. Well, it happens mostly on the Bulgarian dishes and the reason for this is that very often, the meat can be replaced with potatoes or rice or just not added at all. If you use the same herbs and spices for seasoning, the difference won't be noticeable. In fact, my Dad and Sister rarely notice when they have run out of meat stuffed peppers and moved onto the vegetarian ones.

Mushrooms are also a decent additive, when you remove the meat from a recipe.

Vegetarian Gyuvetch

Yesterday we were at a party with lots of people and several of the guests, including me, brought some dishes. Since no one else was catering for the vegetarians, I thought the following might be nice. It is called gyuvetch, because that's the name of the dish it is cooked in, a large terracotta pot. Mine takes about 5 litres, so the amounts below really filled it up. If you remember, I cooked our Christmas bird in it, but this is it's true use. Generally there should be pieces of meat in there as well, but going through my Bulgarian cookbook, pretty much any ingredients can be used. One other exciting thing was that I tried out the slow cooking facility on my cooker, so I cooked this overnight, in total of around 12 h, which I believe makes a huge difference.

Ingredients

1.5 dl vegetable oil
5 medium sized onions
4 medium sized carrots
4 large Jerusalem artichokes
5 large potatoes
2 tbsp paprika
3 - 4 dl water
2 large aubergines
3 large courgettes
200 g okra
4 small peppers
1 red chili
1 x 400 g can whole button mushrooms
100 g peas
10 g fresh thyme
15 g fresh mint
15 g fresh dill
salt, black pepper
2 x 400 g cans of whole tomatoes

Method

1. Peel and clean the onions, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes. Dice the onions coarsely, slice the carrots, cut up the Jerusalem artichoke and potatoes in bitesize chunks.
2. Wash and clean the aubergines, courgettes, okra, peppers and chili. Remove the "tails" of the okra, i. e. where they held onto the plant. Cut up in bitesize chunks, apart from the chili, which I cut into as small pieces as I could.
   
3. Heat up the oil on medium high heat and fry onions, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes, stirring regularly, for about 5 - 10 minutes. The vegetables should release some liquid.
   
4. Add the paprika and stir in quickly so the vegetables get covered, then add the water and leave to simmer for another 5 minutes.
5. Place the other vegetables into the gyuvetch, add the mushrooms, peas, herbs, salt and pepper, except the tomatoes. Try to mix them up a bit.
   
6. Transfer over the fried vegetables and mix in as well.
7. Place in the oven on the slow cook setting (gas mark S, or 110 degrees C) and leave to cook overnight. Alternatively, cook at gas mark 6 (200 degrees C) until the potatoes and the other vegetables have gone soft, about 45 minutes I should think.
8. Take out only the tomatoes from the can, not the juice, and blend. Add to the gyuvetch and stir in, then put back in the oven for another hour or so on the slow cooking or 10 minutes on the faster cooking variant.

Putting the chili in made it spicier than I anticipated, but it was very nice. Also I forgot to put in parsley, but that didn't matter too much.

Bip's Fruit Sponge Cake

Going to a party this week-end and everyone is supposed to bring a dish. I'm bringing a vegetarian casserole (recipe tomorrow) and a sponge cake.



This is one that my sister Bip told me a few years ago, when she cake to visit, it's super easy and is good with any fruit you have at hand. I've done it with blackberry today, but bananas are very good and it would definitely be nice with pineapples as well. The amounts below result in a very large cake which fits perfectly in my large cake tin, but for everyday use I recommend half of everything.

Ingredients

4 large eggs
4 dl caster sugar
4 dl plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
500 ml blackberries
unsalted butter

Method

1. Line the cake tin with baking paper.
   
2. Whisk the eggs and sugar into a white fluffy froth.
3. In a separate bowl, blend the flour and baking powder well. Or use self-raising flour, I personally don't see the point of it.
4. While continuing to whisk the egg mixture, add the flour a bit at a time into a nice smooth cake mixture.
5. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 (or 200 degrees C for electrical ovens). Pour the mixture into the tin. It should only fill about one third of it.
6. Now cover the surface with berries, it's really up to you how much fruit you use. The fruit will sink in a bit as the cake bakes.
7. Now with a cheese slicer, cut thin slices of butter and cover the cake surface.
8. Place in the oven and bake until ready. This size takes about 1 h 30 minutes. Test with a skewer - when it comes out clean after sticking it in in the middle, the cake is done.
9. I plan to serve it with custard.
   

As I mention above, I don't like the self-raising flour, it feels like you don't have any control over it and so I'm suspicious and don't buy it. With just plain flour it can be used to thicken soups or when needed make sponge cakes by adding baking powder, I think it's more versatile. But don't let that stop you.

Kashmiri Meatballs With Tomato Sauce

I made these yesterday and made a variant on the Bulgarian tomato sauce today and we had it for dinner. The combination was not stunning, as I suspected, but was quite edible. My original plan was to make a vegetable curry, but I forgot to decide on one and hadn't bought the ingredients.



The recipe for the meatballs is based on the one by Madhur Jaffrey from her book Indian Cooking. The previous time I made these, I followed the recipe and was disappointed by the lack of flavour. And I hope it's just because of some major misunderstanding on quantities. Lost in translation or something. Also, it was too dark for me to go up to the end of the garden to pick bay leaves, so here is what I did yesterday.

Ingredients

1 kg beef mince
4 tbsp ginger purée
2 tbsp ground cumin
2 tbsp ground coriander
0.5 tsp ground cloves
0.25 tsp ground cinnamon
0.25 tsp ground nutmeg
0.5 tsp ground black pepper
0.5 tsp hot chili powder
2.5 tsp salt
3 tbsp plain yogurt
4 tbsp toasted sesame seed oil

Method

1. Combine all the ingredients except the oil and mix well.
2. Get a bowl of water to wet your hands in and a sheet of baking paper and make the meatballs oblong like sausages. About 2 x 2 x 10 cm. Place on the baking paper.
3. From the above, I made 26 "koftas".
4. Heat up half of the oil in a non-stick frying pan and fill it with koftas, making sure they don't touch.
5. Turn them regularly until done. Keep replacing with new ones as space becomes available, they tend do shrink a bit.
6. Add more oil when needed.
7. When removing the meatballs from the pan, place them on kitchen roll to soak up excess fat.

This is the recipe without the sauce and with all spices doubled, except the cinnamon. Yesterday, I doubled that too and it was dominating the flavour, so I've left it as in the book in the listing above.

As for the tomato sauce:

Ingredients

4 small onions
2 small cloves of garlic
0.5 dl vegetable oil
3 x 400 g cans of tomatoes
1 x 400 g can of mushrooms
salt, black pepper, mint, thyme and chili flakes to taste
1 tbsp plain flour

Method

1. Peel and dice the onions.
   
2. Heat up the oil and fry the onions. Press in the garlic as well.
3. Purée the tomatoes and add to the onions.
4. Slice the mushrooms, if not already sliced and add to the sauce.
5. Add all the spices and stir in well.
6. Leave to simmer on medium heat for 20 minutes.
7. Add the flour to thicken a bit.

Lundulph has now frozen the remaining meatballs and I'll add some tuna to the tomato sauce and we'll have it with pasta on Thursday.

"Hm, root soup, I cook!"

"For a Jedi, it is time to eat as well".

Well, in the Sainsbury's lottery in February, I won a free packet of sweet potatoes. I've never cooked these and only had them once in a quiche together with regular potatoes, which was very nice, so I've been thinking of trying them out for a while.

Also the trend I started with making large amounts of soup to take for lunch are really good and I fancied potato soup for next week.

Ingredients

5 small onions
1 dl vegetable oil
900 g sweet potatoes
900 g potatoes
4 large carrots
1.8 l boiling water
3 tbsp chopped mint leaves
3 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp dried dill
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tbsp Vegeta
black pepper

Method

1. Peel and dice the onions, sweet potatoes, potatoes and carrots.
2. Heat up the oil and fry the onions until translucent.
3. Add the vegetables and stir in well, so they get coated in oil.
4. Add the boiling water, then add all the herbs.
5. Leave to simmer for 20-25 minutes under cover until the roots are soft.

This was highly experimental and I had no confidence at all in the concoction, but actually it wasn't too bad. One thing is that the sweet potatoes were well over-done and went mushy in the mouth, whereas the potatoes and the carrots retained some crunchiness.

Also it's surprisingly filling.

A hot tip from Simon: add the sweet potato later so it keeps it's crunchiness. Next time I'll try adding it after 15 minutes of the cooking time.

Pancake Day

This is Shrove Tuesday and it seems that in English speaking countries people eat pancakes. In Sweden it's called Fettisdagen (fat Tuesday) and people eat special buns called Semla, which are filled with marzipan and whipped cream. My experience with these has been hit and miss, so I really like the English tradition.

Now, pancakes. In Sweden they are eaten traditionally on Thursday after a lunch of pea soup. They come with strawberry jam or drottningsylt ("queen's jam") which is made on raspberries and bilberries/blueberries. And of course whipped cream. Most school kids and many adults tend to skip the soup part.

In England, Lundulph has told me, pancakes are eaten with just sugar and lemon juice, which is surprisingly nice.

In Bulgaria, you have pancakes for breakfast and the ultimate is with home made white cherry preserve. This preserve is such that the cherries remain whole, so that you can line them up on the pancake, then roll it and work your way through the cherries. Mmmm.

This year, Lundulph had to work late on Tuesday, so we postponed the feast to Wednesday. And it was a feast, Lundulph could barely move afterwards and neither could I.

He also said that it's a bit silly to put a recipe for batter in the cook blog, but I'm very proud of it because I've worked it out all by myself, without any outside influences and it's taken time to master all parts of the procedure. Though that's probably because we only have pancakes once a year. This recipe gives just over 6 pancakes, enough for two people to really pig out.

Ingredients

2.25 dl plain flour
2.5 dl water or milk
3 eggs
oil for frying

Method

1. With an electric whisk, blend flour, water/milk and eggs to a smooth batter.
2. Brush a pan with oil and place on high heat. When it's hot, pour about 1 dl of the batter and swirl it around the pan quickly to cover it and form a thin cake.
   
3. I use a non-stick pan, and less than a minute later the edges of the pancake come loose, so I quickly flip it.
4. About 30 seconds later, the pancake is ready and I move it to a plate. Then brush the pan with oil again, before the next one.

The above amounts don't take long, but I recommend that the oven be preheated on low and that the ready pancakes are kept warm until all are done. They taste so much nicer when they are warm. And the crucial thing is to fry the pancakes on high heat and use a little oil for each one.

Now for the serving part. Last night we had a happy merger of Bulgarian and Swedish traditions. White cherry preserve (my Mum made some especially for us last year) and whipped cream. Also I used full milk, because it's the greasiness that makes it taste so nice. And I got Gold Top whipping cream. This is another interesting thing. The milk from cows from the Channel Islands, like Jersey and Guernsey, has a higher fat content than on the mainland UK and in old fashioned milk deliveries, the bottles would have a golden cap to differentiate from the regular silver ones. Well, they also make whipping cream and it is actually quite yellow in colour too. I whipped it with a little icing sugar, 1 tbsp per 1 dl cream. And here is the result, it was ever so tasty.

Bulgarian Meatball Soup

This is the third week of making lots of soup to take with me as lunch to work. I must say it's great. The story behind this soup is that it's the only meat soup that I would eat as a child. And Lundulph can eat it without having to go hungry an hour afterwards.



Ingredients

Meatballs

300 g minced meat
1 egg white
salt, pepper (finely ground!)
plain flour for rolling

Soup

1 medium sized onion
1 - 2 carrots
1 segment stem celery
4 tbsp oil
1 l water
3 - 4 potatoes or
2 - 3 tbsp pudding rice or
1 dl noodles
salt, pepper, fresh chopped parsley

Method

1. Peel and finely dice the vegetables. If you are using potatoes, please keep them separate.
   
2. Blend the minced meat with the egg white, salt and pepper. Then take a grease proof sheet of paper and cover well with plain flour. Now make small balls (small enough for a child to eat in one bite) and place on the floured paper. When all the mince has been rolled , gather up the four corners of the paper and shake carefully around, so the balls get covered.
   
3. Fry the onion, carrots and celery in the oil for a few minutes.
4. Add 1 l of water, and bring to the boil. If you can boil it in a kettle beforehand and add immediately, this will speed things up a bit.
5. When the water boils, add the meatballs and let simmer for 5 - 6 minutes.
6. Now add the fried onion and carrots and potatoes/rice and leave to simmer for another 20 or so minutes to make sure everything is cooked. If using noodles, add these after 10 - 15 minutes.
   
7. Finally add salt, pepper and parsley, stir in well and take off the heat. Ready.

Additional to be done after the soup is off the heat.

Variant 1

1 egg yolk (from before)
1 egg

1. Whisk these together in a cup, then carefully add some of the soup into the cup, a little at a time stirring constantly. Then pour everything back into the soup dish and stir through.

Variant 2

1.5 dl cold water
1 tbsp plain flour

1. Whisk the water and the flour together to completely dissolve it, then pour into the soup and stir in well.

Since I don't like any form of celery, I never buy it, but I had some Jerusalem artichokes and I put one big one in instead.

Also, I had 500 g of minced meat, so I used 2 egg whites and used both yolks in the additional first variant.

Crumble fruit pie

Lundulph has been asking for an apple pie for ages and I was originally going to do Delia Smith's recipe, but I can't be bothered with making a pie crust, so I decided to do the crumble instead.

Today I made one with apple and blackberry and one with just apple. I have two square pyrex dishes where the amounts below fit perfectly

Ingredients

750 g apples
250 g blackberries
4 - 6 tbsp caster sugar
ground cinnamon

7 dl plain flour
2 dl porridge oats
1.5 dl caster sugar
300 g butter at room temperature
3 dl corn flakes

Method

1. Butter the dishes and distribute the apples, a bit less in the dish where the blackberries will be added.
   
2. Sprinkle 2 - 3 tbsp caster sugar over each dish. Then sprinkle cinnamon.
3. Spread the blackberries evenly in one of the dishes.
4. In a deep bowl, mix up flour, oats and sugar, then add the butter and rub it in until evenly mixed. It shouldn't be possible to form any dough, but it should remain in small crumbles.
5. Add the corn flakes and carefully blend in, so they don't get too crushed.
6. Cover the fruit in the dishes well and bake for 50 minutes at gas mark 7 (220 degrees C) in the lower middle of the oven. Time depends on how thick the crumble is, keep an eye on it and take it out when the crumbles are golden brown.
   
7. Serve hot with vanilla ice cream or custard.

The apples I used today are Bramleys from Lundulph's parents' tree. Lundulph had peeled, sliced and frozen them last autumn. I had done the same with some of the blackberries I picked. Because both apples and blackberries are fairly sour tasting, I've increased the amounts of sugar. Generally I'd use dessert apples for this crumble, like Golden Delicious and the amounts can be reduced a bit.

I think this pie would be good with pears or rhubarb too. Some raisins or other dried fruit could be added. Maybe chopped nuts too.

Due to the nature of these pies, serving them won't look very nice, unless they are done in individual ramekins.


I bought ready made custard, which I heated up before serving, but if I find a good recipe, I'll post it here too.

Tomato Sauce

Today is general cooking day, so that we have a variety of dishes to eat during the week, without having to cook them after a long day at work.

So I made a pizza this morning, a bean soup is on it's last 15 minutes and I'll make a crumble pie in a moment.

The pizza is the recipe I posted earlier, but like never before, I took the time to make a tomato sauce, rather than just blend the tomatoes.

Ingredients

2 small onions
1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 can (400 g) tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato purée
salt, black pepper, oregano, sage, thyme, crushed dried chilies (optional)


Method

1. Peel and chop the onions and fry on low heat in the oil, press in the garlic.
2. Blend the tomatoes and add them to the onions, when they have become translucent.
3. Add the tomato purée and the spices and leave uncovered to simmer on low heat until it thickens. I didn't time it, but I think it cooked for about 25 minutes.
   

I made the pizza dough in the bread machine and brushed the pan with vegetable oil before I put the dough in. Then I brushed the dough with oil again before I put on the tomato sauce. This way, the dough didn't go soggy.

The good thing about this sauce is that you can add finely diced potatoes to it and it makes a very nice sauce for Bulgarian meatballs.

Lamb Steaks with Potato Wedges

Lundulph really likes lamb, have I mentioned that before? Well, I got some nice, lean lamb steaks the other day and cooked them yesterday.

Ingredients

1 tsp oil
4 lamb steaks
3 small onions
1 tbsp dried rosemary
black pepper


1 dl vegetable oil
1 kg roasting potatoes, I used Maris Piper
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp mild chilli
1 tbsp chilli flakes
1 tbsp dried rosemary
1 tsp salt
2 tsp garlic granules


Method

1. Peel and cut the potatoes in wedges. Then steam or boil for about 5 minutes.
2. With half of the oil, grease up a deep baking tin.
3. Mix up all the herbs and spices
4. When the potatoes are done, transfer them to the baking tin, spread the spice mixture, drizzle the rest of the oil over and carefully turn the wedges around so that they all get a bit of grease and spices.
5. Bake in the middle of the oven at gas mark 6 (200 degrees C) for about 50 minutes, stirring the potatoes around once or twice.
6. Now, cut out two sheets of aluminium foil and lay the one on top of the other in a cross.
7. Put 1 tsp of vegetable oil on the top foil and spread it on the surface required for the steaks.
8. Peel and chop the onions coarsely and place half of the foil, then sprinkle half of the rosemary over them along with some black pepper.
9. Place the steaks on top, then cover with the remainder of the onions, rosemary and some more black pepper. The steaks I got were quite small, but had almost no fat on them, so didn't shrink.
10. Wrap first one of the sheets of foil, then the other into a fairly air tight packet and bake at the lower middle shelf at gas mark 6 (200 degrees C) for about 30 minutes.

And here is the result:


Obviously I forgot the vegetables. I'd bought broccoli, mangetout and baby corn, but I'll have to use them for a stir fry or something.

Both Lundulph and I liked the potatoes so much that we had them for desert as well and put away most of them last night.

Having just discussed the potatoes with my Mum she recommends using margarine or butter instead of oil. This will prevent the wedges sticking to the baking tin. She has found a type of liquid margarine that works very well for this. I'll try to find some and experiment. My own idea on reducing the amount of fat used is to just brush the wedges lightly with oil, then add about 1 dl of water to the baking tin and cover with aluminium foil and then bake them. I think this will partly steam the potatoes and partly roast them. Then take off the foil when they are almost ready and bake them until they get some colour. I'll try this out as well and update the post on the results.

Bulgarian Lentil Soup

I made this last Sunday, and thought I'd already added it to the cookbook, but apparently not, so here it is.

Ingredients

1 medium sized onion
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp sweet paprika
1 l water
250 g unpeeled green dried lentils
2 - 3 cloves of garlic
1 large carrot
2 small green peppers
1 small celeriac or 4 - 5 Jerusalem artichokes (optional)
salt, pepper, parsley, dill, savory

Method

1. Soak the lentils for at least 2 h in water, preferably overnight.
2. Dice the onion, carrot, peppers and celeriac or Jerusalem artichokes, but keep each separate.
3. Heat up the oil and fry the onion in it. Press in the garlic as well.
4. When the onion/garlic have gone translucent, add the paprika, stir vigorously for about a minute and add the water - you need to have these ready, if the paprika is fried for too long, it burns and doesn't taste as nice. The water can be cold/room temperature, but it would speed things up a bit if it's hot. I never bother with that, though.
5. Add the soaked lentils and carrots and whichever of the herbs that are dried. Also add the celeriac, if you decide to use this. I don't like celeriac, so I don't use it.
   
6. Bring to the boil and leave to simmer for 15 - 20 minutes.
7. Now add the pepper and leave to simmer for another 5 - 10 minutes.
8. Add the Jerusalem artichokes and leave to simmer for further 5 - 10 minutes. Also add the fresh herbs, after chopping them. This is a new invention, I had some Jerusalem artichokes left over and I added them and it tasted really nice. You can skip them if you don't like them. It's important not to let them boil for more than 10 minutes, so that they don't disintegrate.

The soup is now ready and is nice on it's own. Some people add vinegar just before eating.

As usual, Lundulph needs meat and this week-end I got him a nice piece of unsmoked gammon, which I roasted as recommended in Delia Smith's 'How to cook'. I got two pieces of aluminium foil, placed them in a cross, put a bunch of thyme, sage and black pepper in the middle, placed the gammon on top, then put more thyme, sage and black pepper over it and wrapped up the foil into a parcel. Baked in the oven at gas mark 4 (180 degrees Celsius) for 1 h (Delia recommends 20 minutes per 1 lb meat + 20 minutes on top of that). Then I unwrapped the gammon, scraped off the herbs on the top and put it back in for another 30 minutes on gas mark 7 (230 degrees Celsius) to give it a bit of colour. Not sure if this was a good idea, it just seemed to try out. Lundulph said it was rather nice.

Next time he's asked me to cook the meat with the soup, so that it can pick up some of the flavours. We agreed to try thin strips of chicken or turkey breast.

I had the last of the soup today, so there's nothing to photograph. Sorry, will try to remember to add some next time.

Kyopoolu

This is a quintessential Bulgarian dish. Well, the name of the dish sounds Turkish, so the whole dish is probably Turkish as well.

It is eaten as a "meze", that is a starter to line the stomach for the rakia. Lundulph likes to dip bread in it. I like it as a spread on toast.



Note that the quantities are very approximate.

Ingredients

7 (500 g) bell peppers
2 (600 g) aubergines
1 large clove of garlic
5 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp chopped parsley
1 chili (optional)
3 tbsp chopped walnuts (optional)

Method

1. Roast the peppers and the aubergines. Lundulph and I took the trouble of bringing back a pepper roaster from Bulgaria. This is basically a cannon-shaped device with ceramic inner walls, metal outer walls and a lid. It is powered by electricity, when it heats up, peppers and aubergines are put in, the opening is covered with the lid and a few minutes later the vegetable comes out roasted. I've seen one of the celebrity contestants of Masterchef roast a pepper with a mini blow torch, but the easiest would be to roast the peppers and aubergines directly on the hob, if you have an electrical one, or on a dry pan on a gas hob. Putting them under the grill would probably also do the trick, they need watching and turning. They are ready when the skin goes black. Place them in a deep casserole dish and cover with the lid and leave for 15 - 20 minutes. The chili is optional, but if you choose to add it, it should be roasted in the same way. Alternatively dried crushed chili can be used.
   
2. At this point, it should be very easy to peel the peppers and aubergines. Remove also the seeds from the peppers and rinse off any remnants of skin. This is quite messy.
3. Now place in a deep bowl, add the garlic, olive oil and salt and blend to a cream with a hand blender. Or if you have a food processor, that works as well. Alternatively, chop everything very finely and mix thoroughly.
4. Add the chopped parsley and walnuts (we don't like kyopoolu with walnuts, so we don't put any in). Stir through.

If you do this quickly, the kyopoolu will still be warm when it's done and is very tasty with hot toast. But it's nice cold too. Store it in the fridge and stir through when serving after that.

I have successfully frozen it too, though it tends to go a bit watery afterwards. A better way is to roast peppers and aubergines, peel and wash them and then freeze in the right amounts. Then just blend together. As for garlic, if it's Friday, I tend to put more garlic in, as I like it as garlic-y as possible. Lundulph doesn't agree, reckoning the amounts I put in completely dominate the dish.

We had a Bulgarian meze dinner tonight with turshia, ham, toast and rakia, in addition to the kyopoolu. It was very nice indeed.

And what I fogot to mention is that on the picture above, I used 3 green, 2 red and 2 yellow peppers, which is why it looks a bit like poo. If you only use green peppers, the colour will be pine green and it'll taste less sweet. If you only use red peppers, then it'll be more orange in colour and taste sweeter too, of course.

An idea that just struck me is that if you cool it in the fridge, then pipe it onto small crackers or pieces of toast, it would make nice canapés.

Ingredients 2

Oils

Sainsbury's have stopped selling grape seed oil in 1 litre bottles. This is very annoying indeed. But according to my Mum, the thing to cook with these days is oil made from rape seed. The reason for this is that this oil is rich in Omega3. This is not mentioned in Wikipedia, however, the page on Omega3 fatty acids does mention grape seed oil specifically.

Of course, the Wikipedia content should be taken with a pinch of salt and Sainsbury's are selling a vegetable oil, that according to the ingredients is made of rape seed and I've bought a bottle to try it out.

Before Christmas, I also bought a small bottle of toasted sesame oil and another one with walnut oil. I've tried the walnut oil as salad dressing and it was very tasty.

As for the toasted sesame oil, I'll use it next time I make stir fry.

Foil baked salmon fillet with roast potatoes

After my first week at my new job, I'll have to say that there won't be much time for cooking during the week and sadly, I'll mostly only make updates on the week-ends when I have time to cook.

Lundulph asked for a roast dinner, while I was making plans to use up at least some of the many salmon fillets in the freezer. Also there is half a can of goose fat left over from Christmas.

So today we're doing an alternative roast Sunday dinner.



Ingredients

roasting potatoes
goose fat
4 salmon fillets, preferably with their skin on one side
grape seed oil
crushed chillies
fresh coriander or parsley
pesto
salt
black pepper

Method

1. First make the roast potatoes, because they'll take the longest, and Delia Smith's recipe is very good. Note that the link goes to a new version of the recipe with saffron. Just skip that bit and do the traditional ones.
2. Once the potatoes are baking away, start preparing the salmon fillets. For each fillet, take a sheet of aluminium foil, large enough to wrap it up into a packet.
   
3. Brush a little oil in the middle of each sheet and place one fillet in each.
4. As Lundulph doesn't like pesto, his fillets are brushed with a little oil as well, then I sprinkle crushed chillies, salt, pepper on top and cover with the fresh coriander. Then I wrap the whole thing up into a packet.
5. I like pesto, so my fillets just get covered with pesto and a little crushed chillies to give it a kick and wrap them up into a packet as well.
6. The salmon packets take 15-20 minutes to bake, so they can go in at the very bottom of the oven with the potatoes. Or bake separately at gas mark 5.

Swedish gravy

This is the famous "brun sås" that goes so nicely with Swedish meatballs. Literally it means brown sauce.
I have a large back of powdered stuff used in restaurants and it's slightly quicker to do, so I use that, but before I got access to the powder, I used the following recipe. It is from my home economics book, which it is for one portion only. The main advantage is that it won't have any nasty E numbers.

Ingredients

0.5 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp cold milk or single cream
1 dl meat stock (= the fat from whatever meat was fried + water)
salt, black pepper, soy sauce

Method

1. Blend all ingredients and bring to the boil.
2. Simmer for 5 minutes, until it thickens.
3. Ready.

This is assuming you are going to use the gravy along with the meat you fry. Now for the Swedish meatballs, they come ready made from the shop and frying them in a non-stick pan doesn't give any fat to speak of, so I'd suggest using some butter. I'll give it a go next time I make meatballs and extend this post if needed.

Bulgarian Meatballs/Meatloaf

One thing about my Mum's recipes is that one base can become several different dishes, I'm sure I've mentioned it before. This is one a like a lot. The mince mixture can be used either for meatballs or meat loaf. I think the meatloaf is more of a show off piece.

Ingredients

1 kg minced meat, pork is recommended
1 large onion chopped very finely
2 medium sized slices of dry bread
2 - 3 medium sized eggs
salt, black pepper, savory, parsley, cumin

Additional for the meatballs
plain flour
grape seed oil for frying

Additional for the meatloaf
2 - 3 hardboiled eggs
1 - 2 boiled carrots
1 can of whole button mushrooms
vine leaves in brine (optional)

Method

1. On the evening before you plan to cook them, dip the dry bread in water and squeeze out the excess. Then mix all the ingredients and leave to stand in the fridge overnight. At this point, the mixture can be frozen. It is very important that the onion is finely chopped, or the meatballs will fall apart.
2. For meatballs: make largish balls, about the size of a golf ball, flatten a bit, roll in flour and shallow fry in a pan.
3. For meatloaf: line a bread tin with vine leaves or baking paper, fill up to about one third with mince mixture, then line up the eggs, mushrooms and carrots, then top up with more mince. Cover with vine leaves, if you are using these.
4. Bake in the oven at 175 - 200 degrees C (gas mark 5 - 6) for 1 h.

Kept in the fridge, the meatballs will last longer than the meatloaf, but both can be frozen.

When you slice the meatloaf, you'll get fancy eggs, mushrooms and carrot shapes in the middle. For a more everyday version, the eggs, mushrooms and carrots can be diced and mixed in with the mince just before making the loaf. The vine leaves are quite salty and give a nice flavour to the meatloaf, so I recommend you use them if you can. The meatloaf can be served with rice or boiled potatoes and bechamel sauce or Greek yogurt.


I personally prefer potatoes. I think Hasselback potatoes would also be good for a dinner party.

For the meatballs, a tomato sauce is nice, I'll add a recipe in a later post. I think ratatouille would work as well.

Broccoli and Leek Pie

Hello and Happy New Year!

Lundulph and I went to visit my parents in Sweden and I've picked up a couple of new recipes.

Tonight I made one of them. Unfortunately I didn't watch my Mum make it and she wasn't too sure of the amounts, so I'm trying it out while I add some ideas from myself. So the amounts are a bit approximate.



Ingredients

Crust

150 g butter
0.5 dl grape seed oil
salt
4 tbsp water
50 g wholemeal flour
250 g plain flour

Filling

300 g broccoli
5 - 6 leeks (about 300 g)
4 slices of ham
2 tbsp grape seed oil
1 tbsp water
salt
black pepper
1 dl parsley

Creamy bit

4 large eggs
2 dl creme fraiche
3 dl semi-skimmed milk
salt

Method

1. Melt the butter and oil for the crust. This is essential to speed things up and make a nice smooth dough.
2. Mix up all the ingredients into a soft dough.
3. Spread it in a deep baking tray, 35 x 30 x 3 cm and pre-bake it for 10 minutes on gas mark 6 or 200 degrees C. Then take out and leave to one side. My pie crust cracked in a few places, but I don't think that matters much.
   
4. Wash and cut the broccoli and leeks into small pieces. Wash and chop the parsley coarsely.
5. Fry the broccoli, leeks and parsley in the oil. Add the seasoning too. Fry until the water has evaporated, but keep stirring every now and then, so things don't burn.
6. Cut the ham into small pieces and once the broccoli and leeks are done, take off the heat and mix in the ham.
   
7. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, creme fraiche, milk and salt into a smooth creamy mix.
8. Now spread the broccoli, leek and ham mix evenly over the pie crust, then pour the creamy mixture on top, making sure the pie is evenly covered.
9. Bake on gas mark 5 (or 200 degrees C if using an electrical oven) until the pie is golden brown.

There are two important aspects to the pie crust - first, the melted butter and oil makes it very easy to make the dough, rubbing solid butter into the flour takes a lot more effort. Second, the 10 minute pre-baking ensures that the pie crust will remain crunchy. If the fillings are done on top of the raw dough, it'll go soggy, possibly not even bake properly.

Adding the ham was my idea and it worked quite nicely. The wholemeal flour is optional and can be swapped for plain flour. My Mum didn't give any indication as to how much flour is needed. I thought 6 dl in total seemed OK, but I wasn't able to roll the dough. This could be due to using a bit of wholemeal or too much or too little flour on the whole. It was easy enough to just press into the baking tray.

Also tomato slices can be added on top and grated cheese.

Update 20th January 2007: My Mum has very kindly taken the time to measure the amounts for the pie crust and I've updated them above. The dough is not supposed to be rolled, but pressed into the baking tin, just as I explain above. Make sure it's thin and to make sure it doesn't crack, prick it with a fork here and there.

Christmas Eve

Today I built the gingerbread house. For the first time ever, I actually made the dough, cut out and baked the parts too.

I'm not too happy with the result of the decoration, but it'll have to do.



Merry Christmas to all!

Also I did a salmon pie.

Ingredients

400 g smoked salmon
2 packets puff pastry
4 - 5 leeks
400 g spinach leaves
20 g butter
2 tbsp grape seed oil
400 ml creme fraiche
fresh mint, fresh thyme, fresh dill and black pepper

Method

1. Cut the leeks in 2 cm chunks.
2. Melt the butter and oil together in a large casserole dish.
3. Add the leek and fry it until it softens, then add the spinach and stir until it wilts.
4. Add the herbs and take off the heat. Leave to cool.
5. Stir in the creme fraiche.
6. Lay out one of the puff pastry sheets on a baking tin. Layer the salmon on top of it, leaving 1 - 2 cm free along the edges. Spread the spinach mixture on top.
7. Cover with the second puff pastry sheet and press in the edges. Make holes to allow steam out.
8. Bake in the oven at 220 degrees C or gas mark 7 until the top puff pastry has puffed up and gone golden brown.

Do not use salt as the salmon tends to be quite salty.