With a small baby at home it has been quite difficult to find the time to blog but now we’re giving it another go. We still do eat a lot of good food though 
For example yesterdays menu from the latest Rollin Restaurant.
Dear followers
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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;)
A A Gill reviews the restaurants of Stockholm
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
A great start of the year!
We haven’t been that active at all on the blog the last couple of weeks. One reason is that we went to Sweden to celebrate Christmas and had lots to prepare. Each year we are having a traditional Swedish julbord (buffet), and you should fill up at least 10 different plates. My favorite is the herring and in my family, this is where we put our focus. This year we served eight different marinated herrings. Unfortunately we had too much snaps, so there were only very blurry photos. We’ll try again next year.
When back in Berlin we were really tired of herring, ham, meatballs, etc and therefore payed our local butcher Filetstück a visit. We bought two huge dry aged entrecôtes, wich we grilled and served with a handful of fried padrones, salt and pepper. So easy but so tasty! We promise to blog more actively in the future.
Music: Listening to Happy New Year by Abba
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
Extraordinary wines
A year ago I received a mail from my friend in California. He was planning his 40′s birthday and wondered if I would help in the kitchen. The dinner was going to take place in Sweden this autumn. I hesitated until I read the prerequisites. Since he is a true wine nerd and his birth year is 71 he had, over a longer time period, collected rarities from the great wine year 1971. Those bottles were going to be consumed together with a the food we came up with. The hesitation was gone and I was in.
When planning a tasting menu I normally come up with the dishes and then find the wines. This was the first time the wines were given and I needed to find the suitable dishes. My friend had already set up three courses and I added another three. The food was great and together with the fantastic wines the courses tasted even better. However for me, the most important thing apart from making my friend satisfied was to enjoy the one in a life time wine menu. If you know your way around wines, start drooling.
Some of the wines we had
This was what we had
- Appetizers – Dom Perignon 1971
- Parsnip soup with tender smoked whitefish (we had a special Swedish sweet water fish) – Schloss Eltz Riesling Auslese Rauenthaler Baiken 1971
- Goose liver creme brulee – Château d’Yquem 1971
- Frozen Gazpacho – water
- Ravioli stuffed with eggplant and truffles, brown butter and fried sage – Borgogno Barolo Riserva 1971
- Cheeks of beef, red wine sauce, potato puree flavored with truffles – Château La Mission Haut-Brion 1971 and Beaulieu Vineyard George de la Tour Private Reserve 1971
- Pear- and almond tarte with cardamom cream – Moulin Touchais 1971
Some comments. We were extremely lucky. All wines but one had survived the years and tasted wonderful. The one that had oxidized was the Dom Perignon that tasted more like sherry. In all, this matched my high expectations and I have never had such good and interesting wines in one evening. My two favorites were Ch. d’Yquem and Ch. La Mission Haut-Brion. To make sure we didn’t run out of wine if the 71 had oxidized, we had at least one back-up wine for each course. The back up wines we had normally play the leading role…
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.
Vacation = food trip
When planning where to go on our vacations, one of the most important criteria is the quality of the local cuisine. Therefore it may not come as a surprise that our last three vacations were spent in Italy. As food lovers we’ve rented apartments so that we have the possibility to try out the local ingredients ourselves. We just love visiting the local markets, the butcher, the cheese store, etc. Take our ingredients home, cook and pretend that we are locals.
We realize of course when booking that not everyone have the same interests as us and sometimes the kitchen utilities are quite disappointing; like last year in Sicily where you could have won the downhill gold medal in the frying pan. This year though we got lucky and had a kitchen full with knives, pots and pans, gas stove and an oven. The only thing missing was the grill – actually the reason why we choose the apartment in the first place, but that’s life… At least we had a griddle pan.
We have a newborn and therefore decided to do our own cooking in the evenings and only have our lunches at restaurants. We were very delighted with what was served, but were quite surprised that the Sardinians didn’t eat a lot of fish. Instead meat and shellfish seem to be the main ingredients. The prime dish is the porchetto – roasted suckling pig – that often needs to be ordered 24 h in advance due to the slow preparation. The whole pig is grilled over open fire which give a wonderful crust and an extremely juicy meat.
Porchetto
Another delicacy you should not miss is pecorino. With age the character changes much more than parmesan so you should at least try 5 different ages. Sardinia is really strong on wines. One of the biggest and best wineries is Sella & Mosca. We tried 5 of their wines and were very satisfied.
The most peculiar thing we had, was pasta with sea-urchins. It smelled like ammoniac but fortunately it tasted better (probably due to large amount of garlic). Interesting but not a dish we will order again.
To sum up our cooking. We did fairly well also without a char-coal grill. Every night we had at least two courses inspired by the italian kitchen. The local butcher delivered wonderful bisteccas, bresaola and tasty veal. The local pecorino producer provided us with 7 different aged pecorino and the supply of fresh sun-tanned vegetables were immense.
A selection of what we cooked
We can not only recommend Sardinia for the food, but also for the wonderful scenery, the beaches and the friendly people.
Vacation
Or culinary trip to Sardinia, it depends on who you ask. We hope you readers will have patience with us, and like us look forward to all the lovely Italian dishes we will present when we return at the end of October.
Ciao!
