Friday, April 25, 2014

Grandma Lisa´s Loaf

I bake most of my own bread. I am a bread-lover, and what can I say? Once you start, it is really hard to go back to the store-bought stuff. Also, Sweden isn´t exactly known for its bread culture. When my father came to Sweden, he absolutely loathed the Swedish sweet loaf (which this is an excellent example of), and the German colony where he lived rejoiced when they found a bakery (miles and miles away, but closer than Germany) that made something called "German loaf" which was a sour-dough bread, baked in an old stone oven, with a chewy crust that resembled nothing I have tasted since. He bought a special, large freezer and filled it every chance he had. A family of six, we would finish one loaf a day. And I suppose that is why I love this bread so much - I only had it at grandma´s, so the taste, for me, is full of holiday feel and that special grandma love.

As it is, I am a pretty lazy sort of person. Or efficient, as the husband would say. I really don´t have time to spend hours and hours in the kitchen and messing with my hands in dough isn´t my idea of fun (although I know plenty of people who thinks that´s the point of the whole process). So, when I found this wonderful way of baking bread in an article in the Guardian a few years back, I adopted it immediately. I have hardly tasted a store loaf since.

I bake a large loaf on 1 liter of water, which I then divide into four pieces, freezing three for later. I also always use dry yeast, which my mum-in-law slightly frowns at, but really, it´s what you get used to. That´s the thing really, to becoming a prolific baker: get used to one way of doing it that suits you and adapt the recipes to your particular process.

Water temperature is crucial. 45- 50 degrees Celsius, which is a lot warmer than you would use for fresh yeast (and I understand that in many countries fresh yeast isn´t really available everywhere, as it is here). What I do is I take cold water from my tap (10 degrees) and mix with boiling hot water at a ratio of 3-2. So, typically 600 ml of cold + 400 ml of hot. Which makes perfect. In my house. If I use some left-over cream, say, from the fridge, which is at a temperature of 4-5 degrees, I´d mix it 50-50 with boiling water.

For grandma´s recipe, only one type of flour is used, which we call rågsikt. It´s a 50-50 mix of sifted rye and wheat flour that´s typical to Sweden. Of course, you could make your own mix. I put some flour in my bowl, add 2 envelopes/bags (12 g each) of yeast, 3 eggs, 300 ml of brown sugar (that´s one heaped cup), 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 liter of warm water. I use the dough whisks for the electric mixer, and keep adding flour until it looks a bit like whipped cream. Not liquid, but not as dry as a regular bread dough, either. Cover with a towel and leave to rise for 40 minutes.

When it has risen, pour the whole thing in a roasting pan. I have a nice, large one that´s about 40 x 35 cm (15 x 14 inches), which I line with non-stick oven paper. I powder it with flour, using a teaball, cover it with the towel and leave for 25 minutes, also turning the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (about 400 Fahrenheit). When it has risen some more, I prick the dough and shove it in the oven for 50 minutes. Every oven is special, so one just has to experiment.

It takes a few hours to cool, and you really should let it cool properly before you put a knife to it; it turns into sticky crumbles if you don´t.  Grandma actually used to make buns of this, but it tastes the same whatever shape you make it in.

It is excellent with butter and hard cheese, served perhaps with a meat soup of some kind. Or, as I did yesterday, with a yellow peasoup from the freezer. And a glass of milk, of course; because I´m Swedish!


Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Raw fish

Easter may be a lot about eggs, but for a Swede, any holiday when there is gatherings of many people, usually involve a good smörgåsbord, or as the English say: smorgasbord. What we are talking about is a buffet, a large selection of delicacies, from fish to meat to salads, and every family has their particular favourites and secret recipes.

This year, we weren´t doing any Easter entertaining ourselves, but had the pleasure to eat at a cousin´s place, and there was much to taste. I thought I´d mention, in particular, the Swedish fish tradition of pickled herring and spiced, or graved, salmon. None of these dishes are, by a Swede, considered raw fish, exactly, but of course they are in the sense that the fish is not cooked.

Pickled herring is first salted, which was the way the fish was conserved before we got the age of the freezers. Those who pickle themselves usually work with ready-salted and filleted herring, which you can buy in any store. Salting yourself takes about a month to do and is a heck of a job, I don´t know anyone who does that, but I have a recipe for it in the cookbook. Basically, just take a bucketfull of fresh herring, clean and gut by just wringing their heads off and pulling out the gut in one move. Rinse in salted water, then layer with salt in a bucket, where it sits for one to four weeks. Before you pickle them, you must fillet them and soak in water to get the salt out again. Like I said, one heck of a job, and probably smelly, too.

A basic pickle recipe from my cookbook uses 150 ml of water, 5 tablespoons of vinegar essence (12%), 100 ml of sugar, one onion, 10 allspice corns, 1 bay leaf, and dill. You heat water, vinegar and sugar until it boils and then cool it. Put the herring in a jar with spices and onion rings. Pour the solution over it and store the jar in the fridge for at least one day before you enjoy it. It keeps for a few weeks in the fridge, but don´t put it in the freezer.

There are countless versions of pickled herring, and there are classics like mustard herring, crayfish herring, onion herring, blackcurrant herring, and even garlic herring. My cousin-in-law has a wonderful speciality: tequila/lime/red chili herring. Basically, I think you can experiment your heart out. 

Our cousin also makes his own graved salmon, which means that you take fresh, filleted salmon, and for each kilo fish you mix 4 tablespoons of salt, 2 teaspoons of ground white pepper, and 4 tablespoons of sugar. You cover the fillets with the mixture and dill, put them on top of each other in a plastic bag in the fridge. Turn over every morning and evening for 1-2 days. It keeps for about a week in the fridge, but can also be frozen. You serve it thinly sliced.

We often eat graved salmon for dinner, with potatoes (boiled or mashed, or even gratined), with a salad and hovmästarsås (= steward sauce). This can be purchased in any Swedish supermarket, but it´s also very easy to make: you mix 3 tablespoons of mustard, 1 tablespoon of sugar, salt, pepper, and 1 tablespoon of vinegar. Then, add 100 ml of oil (rapeseed or something like that) while whipping the mixture hard, not unlike the way you make mayonnaise. Add some dill. This sauce works well with smoked salmon as well, or boiled crab, according to my cookbook. Boiled crab? We never do that.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Old Time Favourite

When the husband is away, I have a few dishes up my sleeve, tucked down in the freezer, that I love but he can barely stand the smell of. My number one came out the other day, and I have really been longing for it, as he has been home unusually much since Christmas. Ok, it´s nice when he comes back, too.

I am talking about that Swedish standard: blood pudding, made with pig´s blood, lard, milk, and rye. Love it or loath it, hardly anyone is indifferent to this speciality. When I was little, my mother used to combine it with fried liver, not on one plate, but serving the kids and herself pudding, and my father liver, as each team could not stand the other´s dish. I was on both teams, at different times, but nowadays I´m all for the pudding. Actually, that´s probably a question of availability. I can´t remember last time I saw fresh liver in the meat section at the supermarket. You probably have to order it to get it, these days. Pudding, however, is sold in large quantities. Unfortunately, my favourite kind is not made anymore (it had more texture than the regular ones), so I stick to local produce, in this case Hugosons.

Yorkshire pub pudding: red onions, tomatoes, and bacon.
You can find it in the UK as well, where it is called black pudding. Blodpalt is a dumpling eaten here in the north, made with reindeer or ox blood; I have never tasted it and should really try, but in some other company than immediate family, obviously.

I just make it simple: fry it and serve with lingonberry jam, or home-made rowanberry jam, which I happened to have. It is often also served with bacon, American (crispy, or "cremated" as the English say) or European, which is salty, smoky, fatty, but more substantially meaty (what Swedes would call stekt sidfläsk). In school, we would sometimes get a kind of lingonberry sallad, with cabbage mixed in, which was horrid, so I´m not going there!

I drink milk with it - naturally. I´m Swedish, after all. 



Monday, April 7, 2014

Left-over gratin

I am loathed to throw out any kind of food, and Mondays I usually have lots of left-overs. Depending on what I have, a gratin or a soup is usually what I go for.

Today I had four potatoes, one carrot, a bit of cheese (it has survived since Christmas - we bought a huge edamer that just never ends), half an onion, two bits of sausage (Norrlandsfalu - a boiled and lightly smoked sausage- and a spicy one I can´t remember the name of), 200 ml of cream, and some kebab sauce.

I put all the veg and cheese through the food processor, using the coarsest grater, diced the sausage, and put it all in an oven dish. I usually put in a layer of veg mix, then sausage, then the rest of the veg. I mix cream and sauce with a bit of spice, like tabasco and Worchestershire sauce and pour it over the whole thing. I then sprinkle some bread crumbs on top, to prevent the cream from burning and going all icky. This is traditionally done to Janssons Frestelse (= Jansson´s Temptation), a potatoes au gratin dish that is seasoned with anchovy (I will certainly do it later on the blog), and I really like the texture of the surface so I imported the technique to all my gratins.

I leave it in the oven for 50 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius, and if dinner is delayed I just turn the oven off and let it sit in the remaining heat. I serve it with a fresh vegetable, we seem to like cucumbers at the moment, and a glass of saft.

This size of gratin usually feeds the two of us and one person besides. I often put any left-overs on a plate, put a soup plate on top, stick it in a plastic bag and freeze it, for the next day when I eat alone (this happens most weeks). It´s like a home-made microwave meal, very handy!

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Proper Fast Food

Since I started on the subject of fast food, I thought I´d follow up with our local hamburger chain, Max, which started its first restaurant in Gällivare in 1968. They are so good that MacDonald´s have had serious problems trying to establish themselves in the area, and at present I think there is only one MacDonald´s, in the outskirts of town, near a motel and an industrial area.

Max is family-owned, has been early with environmental thinking, and now you can see on the menu how much carbondioxide everything you order releases, and some of what you pay for your food goes to re-forrestation and such. Lately, they have expanded and have restaurants all over Scandinavia.

On April 1, they announced that they were quitting potatoe fries, and of course everyone thought that was an April Fool´s joke. It was, and it wasn´t, as they have changed the recipe for their fries, and I suppose the timing of the announcement was a ploy to get some extra attention. The new fries are called Crispy Fries, are made from unpealed potatoes and seasoned with seasalt, and now that I have tried them, I must say: they are the best fries I have tasted. Excellent flavour, excellent texture.

Also, they have a new express system, where you order and pay through a terminal at the entrance. After a few minutes your number comes up at a special counter, and I kid you not, from the moment we opened the door to enter, to the moment we left, it didn´t pass 15 minutes. Of course, we did order an old standard, the Max Original burger meal. I´m not usually in favour of quick eating, but when you have somewhere to be, like a concert, or in this case, a basketball game, quick is good.

Max also keep their tables very clean and the people who work there are always cheerful. They used to give you a free coffee after your meal, but I understand they don´t any more. Anyway, the coffee is ecological and very good. I honestly can´t say, patriotism aside, that I have ever been to a better hamburger place.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Fast food, the Swedish way

Well, how to start this little food blog? With a Swedish classic, I think, gubbröra (= old man´s hash). Actually, it just happened that way, and that´s the way this blog is going to happen. I have no ambitions to impress you here, I just want to write about and post photos of what I actually eat.

Gubbröra is a classic smörgåsbord dish, and something that we associate with old-style Swedish principal town hotels. 

To feed two people: use two hard-boiled eggs, one half onion, 80 g of anchovy (a regular tin), a heaped tablespoon of sour cream, dill. Chop and mix. You can also make a hot version of this, but that is something I have yet to try - not as fast, obviously.

The best bread to use for this is a Swedish sweet rye loaf, and mine is home-made, grandma´s recipe. I will blog that soon, as I am planning to bring one to an Easter feast. But any kind of bread will do. Rye is best, though. Butter it generously. Add a vegetable for some crunch. I had a cucumber.

Beer would have been nice, but it´s a working day and it makes me sleepy, so we go with Swedish saft, which is a fruit drink made with fruit syrup and water. Not home made, but there is a good selection in stores these days. Our current favourite is Tillman´s ecological elderflower saft, which comes from Grangärde cider factory (I just realized this - I grew up there!).