Back to the roots – rehearsal

Our next RollinRestaurant is coming up and the theme is “Back to the roots”. Therefore I have been experimenting with different dishes including roots. We are striving to use different roots in each course. We already have an exciting beet dish so this one didn’t make it. However it was a great starter.

Mackerel, golden beet, horse radish, salicornes and lemon foam

Ingredients for 4 pers

• 1 mackerel
• 0,1 l vinegar
• 0,2 l sugar
• 0,3 l water
• 1 tbsp mustard seeds
• 1 onion
• 5 pepper corns
• 1 golden beet
• 50 g salicornes
• one lemon
• 0,2 l fish broth
• 25 g butter
• horse radish
• 2 tbsp creme fraiche

Start with the mackerel. Fillet the fish. Cook vinegar, sugar, water, onions and pepper corns for a couple of minutes. Let it cool. Add the fillets. Let it marinate 24 h.

Boil the golden beet in water until tender. Remove the skin, cut into small squares and marinate the beet in some lemon juice and olive oil.

Mix creme fraiche and grated horse radish. Cook the fish stock, and juice from 1/2 a lemon. Remove from heat and add butter. Whisk and just before serving, mix with a blender to a foam.

Cut the fish into pieces and arrange with the horse radish cream, golden beet, salicornes and foam.

Music: Listened to Mumford and Sons Liar

Colourful soup with smoked fish

We gave our selves a camera for christmas. The instructions contain 500 pages so we decided to just try it out. There are plenty of room for improvement but coming from me, this is a great picture.

It is a very simple but delicious starter, inspired by the Russian Borscht.

Beet root soup with smoked trout, apple, capers and horseradish

Ingredients

• 4 beet roots
• 1 tbsp Vinegar
• 1 tsp sugar
• starch
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 smoked trout
• 1 apple
• 2 tbsp creme fraiche
• 2 tbsp grated horse-radish
• watercress
• 1 tbsp capers

Start with the soup. Extract the juice from the beets in a juice separator. Heat with vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper. Add the starch for the right consistency. Let it cool and serve luke warm.

Mix creme fraiche with half of the horse-radish. Cut the apple in baton and the fish in smaller pieces. Arrange fish, horse-radish, capers, creme fraiche, apple and cress on a plate. Add the soup.

Enjoy!

Music: Listened to Blur Under the westway

The best Sweden has to offer

From Haparanda’s northern islands to just south of Piteå, the enormous flow of fresh water from the mighty rivers of Swedish Lapland has created the world’s largest brackish water archipelago. Here, and only here, do vendace provide the exclusive, deep reddish-gold caviar, Kalixlöjrom, the red gold of the Gulf of Bothnia.

Löjrom has an intense salty taste and a very pleasurable fish taste. If you get the chance to try it, take it. The most classic way of eating Löjrom is together with a toast or potato pancake, sour creme, lemon and finely chopped red onion. If it is served with potato pancakes it is my all time favorite starter and I have it every time I go back to Sweden.

You shouldn’t change a winning concept but here I did it with good result.

The Löjrom is served with cauliflower puree, pickled onion, apple baton, caramelized apple and dill. In the glass I had one of the best ales I had in 2012 Oppigård Winter ale and a Linie Aquavit.

Music: Listened to Tallest man on earth  - “1904“

A Swedish Christmas Carol

It is 4 PM. It is cold and it is dark but heading home thru my hometown a day before Christmas eve is a pleasant walk. There are plenty of lights in every window and you could see the positive expectations in the faces you meet.

24 hours later most of the Swedes are full, just stopped watching cartoons and are waiting for the Santa to arrive. Eating a huge buffet, watching cartoons and greet Santa are the traditional way of celebrating Christmas.  At 3 o´clock after the buffet most people sit down and watch one hour Disney cartoons. And the older generation has done this since 50 years! 50 years ago I have understanding for this habit, but today when every family can watch cartoons round the clock…I must admit it is a weird tradition. There are only two reasons I can think; 1) people need to lay down in the sofa and digest all the food they just consumed, 2) they are getting tired of their relatives and need a break.

After the cartoons, dad needs to go out and buy the newspaper. As if there was no better think to do on Christmas. Unfortunately he then misses the arrival of Santa.

However the most important tradition takes place before the cartoons and the Santa visit – the julbord. The julbord is a long lived tradition and the main ingredients have not changed over the year. It contains lots of fat fish (herring and salmon), smoked fish and meat and lots of different pork dishes. Therefore it takes an empty stomach to make it through all the delicacies.

Eating a traditional julbord, you should at least eat five different plates;

1. Different kinds of pickled herring
2. All other cold fish dishes, such as cured and smoked salmon,
3. Cold meat such as smoked and salted ham and sausages
4. Warm meat (Köttbullar, sausages, ribs)
5. Sweets (chocolate and sweets with traditional Christmas flavouring, ginger, cinnamon, clove).

In our family the focus is on herring. The last couple of years we have made at least 10 different pickled herring each Christmas. We try new tastes each year and this year’s favorites were a tomato and capers herring and ginger, fennel hering.

A julbord without Snaps is like a Italian dinner without wine – not an option. Our traditon is to purchase the special Aquavit Aalborg bring out each year. We are only allowed to drink these Snaps at Christmas and therefore it is hard to empty them. We started this tradition 1996 and so far we have emptied all bottles until 2002. The 2012 edition was one of the best with a nice touch of caraway and dill.

Do you wonder what happens after Santa has left? We bring the best of the Julbord on the table and eat it all over again.

Music: Nu är det jul igen

Winter cod

As you probably have noticed we love cod. It is extremly hard not to buy cod when you see the fresh fillet or the thick cod loins, at our local store often placed next to the lovely but so grey coalfish, and then the cod looks even nicer with it’s white flesh. Anyway this is not to be a declaration of love to all you Cods out there But make this dish, I promise that you will enjoy it. And you can of course use regular cod.

• 800 g Winter cod with skin
• 1 Leek, cut in 3 centimeter pieces
• 20 Hazelnuts, cut
• Butter
• 1 Black salsify
• 1/2 Cauliflower
• 1 dl Youghurt
• 2 Lemons, fruit flesh
• 1 tbsp Sugar
• 1 teespoon Salt

Start with the lemons; cut fillet and marinate them in their own juice together with sugar and salt.

Boil the cauliflower until it’s done, approximately 15-20 minutes. When done;  use a mixer, add yoghurt and mix until you have a smooth pure. Season with salt and pepper.

In the meantime peel the black salsify and cut it in half centimeter pieces. Wash the leek and cut it in 3 centimeter pieces.

Set the oven to 100 degrees Celsius. Heat up a pan and before adding butter fry both ends of the leek pieces until they are “sooty”, remove them from the pan and leave them in the oven until everything is done.

Add butter to the pan and fry the cod with its skin side down. When almost done turn it around just to get a nice colour on the flesh side, place the fish on to your plates. Add more butter to the pan to quickly fry the black salsify pieces.

At the same time use a small casserole; heat up butter and the cut hazelnuts until the butter becomes a nice golden brown colour.

Serve, and don’t forget to add the lemon fillet!

Music: Listening to Caligola – Back to earth

RollinRestaurant #4 Wild at heart

Last Saturday we opened the doors to the fourth RollinRestaurant. This time the nice restaurant Naked Lunch hosted the event.

The menu Wild at heart contained lots of great stuff from the forest and like the last time the menu had a Scandinavian touch. Many had their first experience with elk and we included lingonberries in different textures to each course. On the RollinRestaurant site you will find all details. We had a great evening and were very satisfied with the food we put on the table. Judging from the nice posts from Zoe & James (Uberlin) and Boris (Berlintourist) we were not the only ones having a great evening;)

What to eat the rest of my life

Among friends we often discuss the best five films ever or five albums to bring to a desert island. Of course we also discuss what would be the dish you would eat if you only could pick one to have everyday for the rest of your life. The last question is a tricky one. You need to find a dish that is tasty, but it should also be one that you could vary so that you are not bored til death after the first week. My pick so far is meat fondue. It’s delicious and variable.

The choice of starter is much easier for me. There is one starter that never disappoints me, Löjrom (vendace roe). The best roe comes from the water outside the small town Kalix in the north of Sweden but the americans also produce vendace roe. The roe has a salty, light fishy taste and should be served with sour cream, chopped red onion, lemon and either a blini or a potato cake. I prefer the latter one.

The Swedes are not the only fans of Löjrom. When the owner and star chef of El Bulli, Ferran Adrian, was asked to describe all players in Barcelona with a dish, he picked Löjrom to describe the new Swede Zlatan Ibrahimovic (At this point the Catalans had high thoughts of the Swede).

If you have not yet tried this delicacy, this is one of the top reasons why you should pay Sweden a visit.

Löjrom, sour creme, red onion, potato cake

Ingredients for 4 persons

• 50 g Löjrom (vendace roe)
• 4 tsp sour creme
• 1 chopped red onion
• 3 potatoes
• 1 lemon

Grate the potatoes, make for small thin cakes flavoured with salt and pepper. Fry in a buttered pan. Serve the potato cake with sour creme, chopped red onion and Löjrom. Arrange with lemon.

Serve with a beer and a snaps. Enjoy!

Music:  Helan går

My favorite winter vegetable served with zander

I had a teacher in the high-school called Zander. She was old and reminded me more of the old pike than a quick zander. Zander or pikeperch is a real delicacy and one of the few game fishes that you could fish in the rivers and seas surrounding Berlin. In this dish the fish is accompanied by my favorite winter vegetable, jerusalem artichoke and chanterelle. This is a dish that everyone could prepare. Enjoy!

Fried zander with chanterelle and puree of jerusalem artichoke

• 700 g zander fillet with skin
• 0,5 liter chanterelle
• 100 smoked pork belly
• 2 shallots (finely chopped)
• 300 g jerusalem artichoke
• 200 g potatoes
• 0,1 liter creme fraiche
• 1 l chicken broth

Start with the puree. Peel potatoes and artichokes and cut into pieces. Boil in chicken broth. When the vegetables are done, strain and mix the potatoes and artichokes with the creme fraiche. Flavor with salt and white pepper.

Fry chanterelle, smoked meat and shallots in butter on high heat for 3 min.

Fry the zander on the skin side in butter for 3 min. Flavor with salt and pepper. Turn the fish around and remove the pan from the heat. After two minutes the fish is ready to serve.

Arrange the mushroom mix on a plate. Put the fish on top and serve with the puree on the side. Enjoy!

Music: Listened to Fishes by Cat Empire

Smashing pumpkins

The menus and the stores are crowded with pumpkins. I love the thought of cooking with mainly seasonal ingredients, but I must admit I have problems with pumpkins. For me it is like sweet potatoes, no real character just sweet.  Since so many people eat pumpkins there must be something wrong with me. To convince myself that pumpkins are gods gift to all gourmets, I don’t give up, but try new recipes. This one is the best so far and it is a perfect starter. The secret is the old swedish conservation method – vinegar and sugar. With the spices it makes the pumpkin more tasteful and not that sweet. Try it.

Ingredients

• 200 g pumpkin
• 0,1 l sugar
• 0,2 l water
• 5 cl vinegar (12%)
• 1/2 cm ginger
• 75 g goat cheese
• 0,1 l chopped and roasted hazelnuts
• your favorite salad

Start with the pumpkin. Cook water, vinegar and sugar. Remove from heat  and add ginger in slices and pepper.  Cut the pumpkin in thin slices (use a mandolin/slicer  if you have). Marinate the pumpkin in the lukewarm liquid for at least 3 hours.

Arrange the pumpkin, salad and goat cheese on a plate. Add the roasted chopped hazelnuts and pepper. Sprinkle some pumpkin marinate on top.

Music: Of course we listened to my top 10 album all time, Siamese dreams by Smashing Pumpkins.

Summer memories – Mandelkubb (almond cake)

I was brought up on the east cost of  Sweden in the wealthy 70-80′s. We had 10 weeks of summer school holidays. My mum worked part-time in the summer and every sunny day we were picked up at noon in the old yellow Saab. My mum had packed the bags for the beach. My dad worked at Saab and they had a resort just outside my hometown. It was a peninsula with 20 small cottages, a swimming pool, rowing boats and a beach.This were the place we headed towards every day.

The same procedure took place every sunny afternoon. We arrived close to 1 pm and unpacked sandwiches, radio, coffee, syrup and mandelkubbar (almond cake). At 5 past 1 the genius radio program “Sommar” started . A program that have been broadcasted since 1959. Well known people get the air for 90 minutes to tell their stories, reflections, memories and playing their favorite music. We listened to the program while we had our sandwiches. After a long bath we sat down for coffee (me and my sister had syrup) and almond cakes. The cake gets dry very fast so we washed it down with the syrup. Never has a dry cake tasted as good as on the cliffs after a long bath.

Yesterday we baked mandelkubbar for the first time. They are easy to make and only takes 30 min including oven time. You should enjoy them when they are still warm from the oven.

Ingredients for 20 mandelkubbar

• 50 g almond
• 12 bitter almond
• 125 g butter
• 2 dl sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 dl yoghurt (use filmjölk if you live in Sweden)
• 5 dl flour
• 2 teaspoons hartshorn salt (hjorthornssalt, Hirschhorn salz)
• egg, chopped almond and pearl sugar for decoration.

Heat the oven to 200 ⁰ C. Chop the almonds and grate the bitter almond and put aside. Whisk sugar and butter. Add egg, yoghurt to the sugar mixture. Mix flour and hartshorn salt and add together with the almonds to the mixture. Make 20 rectangular cookies and put on a plate covered with oven-paper. Whisk the remaining egg and sprinkle on the cookies. Add chopped almond and pearl sugar. Bake for 12 minutes.

When the Mandelkubb gets dry, and this will only take a couple of days, you could use them for this easy-to-make dessert.

Split two almond cake in smaller pieces. Marinate in 1 dl Amaretto. Put the marinated almond cakes, strawberries and ice-cream in layers.

Enjoy!

Music: Intro to the radio program Sommar i P1