Late Night Snack.

Worked until late tonight. Really tired. Really hungry. No inspiration. Just kidding.

I started of by slicing nice dark bread from Food and frying it with some olive oil. First layer. 

 Some nice avocado.

Sliced tomato. 

I didn't have any salad so i sliced cucumber really thin so it would act as the salad, a little bit of moist to the sandwich. 

Thinly sliced potato fried in baconfat until crispy. 

The bacon that produced the fat. Bacon fried in a pan. Cold pan, bacon in, THEN over the heat to extract the fat slowly and then fry the bacon in it's own fat. 

Misomayo. Like regular mayo only with some miso-paste and green chili. 

Lid on - et voíla!

Now leave me! Need to eat!! :)

Porterstek.

So this is a Swedish dish that is delish :) There is a classic recipe that is quite easy to follow but I didn't have the effort to look after it so I just went along in a way that I though was nice.

I had a piece of rump steak (i guess?) and with that I would boil some potato, leek, carrot and onion. As for spices I had some allspice, black and white pepper, bayleaf, thyme and caraway seeds. 

 The whole idea of making this dish was that I had a bottle of porter over that somebody brought for Christmas. That is kind of the important ingredient.

 

So I started by searing the seasoned meat in high heat all around.

Then I took it of and added the onions with a bit of sugar to caramelize. After that I added the rest of the ingredients.

Also the meat, beer and some beef stock. I let it cook for about 25-30 minutes until the temperature of the meat was about 60ºC in the middle. Then it cooled down and was in the fridge until the day after. 

Day 2 I started by browning some plain flour..

and when it got the right color I had some nobs of butter and worked it around to a paste. 

Little by little I whisked in the beautifuly flavoured stock from the day before and let it cook for about 5-10 minutes until the taste of flour was gone. Then I added the rest except for the meat and let it cook toghether. For extra flavour and correct salt taste I had some soy into it too. 

The meat was sliced A.T.A.P (as thin as possible) and layered onto a warm tray.

And then the veggies and sauce on top really warm. Some fresh parsley for garnish and some stale bread for dipping.
This was a real succes and the leeks specially were really sweet and tasty. Next time there will be much more leeks. Enjoy!

Koukouvagia.

This is a classic greek (from crete?) dish called koukouvagia (means owl). It's fantastic and really delicious. Basicly you need a handfull of nice ingredients. Much like Italian food, Greek food depends on the freshness of the  ingredients, them selves being the flavour.

This recipe is really easy. The only hard thing is to find the bread. It's a dry bread from Greece called paximadi. It's a hard bread with lots of flavour and wonderfull if you "cook" it right.

This is how it looks when it has been carried in your luggage all the way from Greece :)

So you start of by quickly rinsing the bread under cold water. I just ran it trough water out of the tap. But not too much so it doesn't get soggy.

There should also be one big red onion amongst there. Preferebly from Greece (so sweet, so good). But there isn't. Because I didn't have any at home. Sorry. I feel ashamed. 

Anyhow you grate the tomatos, the feta-cheese and the non-existing onion. Parsley is not classic, but it's good.

Pour some nice oliveoil over the bread and start of with the tomato. If this would be real Greek tomatos there would be juices running all over the place, but they aren't. They are from Spain and probably grown in a tent or something similar. Whaevva.

If you have onion (good for you!) put that on top of the tomato.

Then put on your grated feta-cheese. 

Finish of with a really HUGE glug of oliveoil and the parsley and of course some dried oregano. Voíla! Enjoy!!

How to do: Mjaddara.

So I've been getting a bit of critique lately that I'm not doing enough vegetarian meals. My answer to that is that many of my "dishes" could easily exclude the meat product and still be nice. Vegetarian meal tada!
Just kidding, I do quite a bit of non-meat dishes, but somehow they don't get posted on the blog. I try to skip meat/fish at least one meal a day. That can be a bit boring during winter though.

This dish is something I grew up with. So simple you really can't fail.

Rinse some green lentils in cold water and make sure there's no crap in it like stones and stuff.

Put them in water or broth of some sort and boil/simmer until done. You can flavour this however you want, but keeping it simple is many times the best way to go. The best scenario is that when the lentils are cooked you have them still a bit wet. Not like a soup and not dry. If they are like a soup you have to drain them a bit, but doing so you loose flavour.

Yes I forgot, but I'll tell you. The lentils take about 20 minutes to cook. When there is about 10 minutes left put a little bit of uncooked rice in there. Don't be troubled if the rice is not done when the lentils are, because you are cooking it a bit more in the oven. Also it's still a bit wet right? So no problem.

Slice one or two onions into rings and fry in a pan with oil. Fry and stir until they start to get a bit black, but not burned. 

Lay them on top of everything. This onion gets crispy and good when cooked properly. It's really the "thing" of mjaddara.

Drizzle a bit of oliveoil and put the baking pan in the oven for about 15-20 minutes in 175ºC/340ºF.

 Combine baking bread with cooking food to save the earth :)

Voíla! Really tasty and wonderfull. Put it in a buffé or eat it as it is with some pita-bread. Doesn't matter, you will enjoy.

Hopefully the vegeterians ran in to the kitchen to start cooking and miss this. I served my mjaddara with some fried roster thigh and a mint/sweet ginger-yoghurt.

Swedish Classic: Yellow Chicken Curry.

Yes so let's see how to do a Swedish classic dish that is called "Chicken in yellow curry". This is not classic like dated-200-years-old, but more like a modern classic. I would guess it came to life here in Sweden in the 60´s or 70´s.The main spice is yellow curry-powder also called madras curry.
Of course there is an easy way to do things, but as always I can't help evolving the recipe a bit.

To start with I had boiled a whole chicken the day before. Simply in water with a carrot, an onion, a leafe of bay, some thyme and white pepper. It had rested in its own broth over night in the fridge.

So i chopped some yellow onion, red pepper and cabbage.

 Fried of the onion in quite a lot of butter and some olive oil until softened.

Then added the cabbage and fried a bit more before adding the curry powder, some sambal oelek and tomato purée.

I gave the spices some life before adding a tablespoon or two of flour. The flour was mixed in good so there would be no lumps.

Then I added the broth that the chicken had produced. Magic to cook a chicken and get a "rest product" like chicken broth :) I can't say how much broth I took, but use less to begin with and add more if needed. The other way around is not that easy. Cook for 5-10 minutes to get rid of the powder taste of the flour.

I didn't have any cream to finish of the dish, so I used some coconut cream instead. As good as cream, although cream is the swedish way.

Then I added the chicken. Rinsed into small pieces without the skin. To balance the flavours I had some plum sauce and some japanese soy (sweetness and salt).

 Voíla! Some nice rice and pickled cucumber to go with.

You could also use pieces of chicken like the filet if you wanted but this is by far the best way.

Nice tasty salad.

So yesterday I wanted an easy dinner. I decided to make a salad although it really isn't salad-season. So I had to use some magic.

I boiled some potatoes and when it was about 5-6 minutes left i added two eggs. They say you shouldn't boil other stuff in the same water as eggs, but who cares?

I slices some cabbage thin and tossed it with vinegar, olive oil, a pinch of sugar, oregano and salt. As i mixed the dressing I kind of crushed the cabbage so it would soften quicker. 

Then i fried of some crutons in olive oil and butter. 

 

And just before they were done I fried of a couple of pieces chinese cabbage and added some parsley.

 

So i started with the crutons, chinese cabbage, marinated cabbage, sliced tomato and onion. 

Then I topped it with some blanched broccoli, carrot, an egg and some potato. The key here for nice flavour is to peel the egg and potato while they still are hot. Even the broccoli and carrot can be warm, because when you finish with a drizzle of olive oil and some vinegar and salt, the hot vegetables absorb all nice flavours and become really god. You could add some anchovy or even shrimps if you want to here.

Magic ;)

How to do: Flying Jacob.

So, here is a recipe for anyone that is not Swedish. You can't really say that this is a classic Swedish dish, although a lot of people cook it. Let's say it's a modern classic.

So what you need is this:

Chicken (the original is bought rotiseur-chicken. You can find that in supermarkets in Sweden)
Bacon (this one pre-fried)
Bananas
Cream
Peanuts

Ok, maybe you are thinking "no, I'm not continuing reading this because my name isn't Elvis". BUT! The combination is really good!. At least that's what I think. Many agree and some few (strange people) disagree.
Anyhow, let's do this.

I made a quick rub with some dried herbs like thyme, paprika, rosemary, yellow curry, a pinch of sugar and of course salt&pepper. The idea was to imitate the taste of roasted chicken. A little.

I fried of the chicken all sliced up with some onion and the spices. 

In a big oven-tray and started layering. Chicken first.

Then banana.

Peanuts.

Bacon.

 I whipped the cream thicker. You are supposed to add a ketchupy-similar sauce called chilisauce, but I din't have that so I added srirasha, tabasco and plumsauce.

A nice layer over. 

Ah un grataín!

Seriously, I think it's a really nice dish. The cream becomes a nice sauce and it's crunchy, sweet, salty. It's got it all :)

Be brave and try it!
Bless.