Mr Salmon and his best friends

I am not a big fan of cooked or fried salmon. Cured, raw, salted or smoked however makes me drool. I love the combination of the fat fish with some salt and sour ingredients. In this dish, which was served during our pop up NordenBerlin, the cured salmon is matched by yolk, pickled onions, Swedish anchovies, horse radish, dill and chives. To add another texture we served it with bread crumbles. It is a very typical Swedish dish with the saltiness from the anchovies, sourness from the onions and the fat dill-marinated salmon.

Photo: Behance.net/Bastarte

Cured salmon, anchovies, yolk, pickled shallots, crumbles, horseradish, dill, chives

Cured salmon

• 1 kg salmon filet
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 4 tbsp salt
• pepper
• dill

Mix all ingredients but salmon. Rub the salmon side with the mixture. Put in a bag and keep in the refrigerator for at least 48 hours. Rinse the salmon before you cut it into pieces and serve it.

Pickled shallots

• 5 shallots
• 2 tbsp vinegar
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 0.1 L water

Mix everything but the shallots. Heat the shallots and let them simmer until they are al dente. Remove and cool down. Cut into quarters and add the mixture. Let is soak for at least 2 hours before you serve it.

Plate: Arrange the egg yolk, salmon, onions and the Swedish anchovies on the plate. Garnish with finely chopped chives, bread crumble (grinded pumpernickel fried in butter), dill and horse radish.

Music: Listened to Whitest boy alive

The beauty and the beets

It is game time. It is moist, cold and dark outside and if you are not a hunter, it is hard to appreciate this time of the year. I am glad there are lots of hunters in the forests of Brandenburg. The largest venison I have ever seen was delivered to us last Friday. We used the saddle and added lots of beets and some coffee and served as the main dish at NordenBerlin. I am very pleased with the result.

Photo: Behance.net/Bastarte

Saddle of venison, pickled & smoked & braised beets and coffee

• 600 g venison

Fry the saddle in a pan on all sides. Put in the oven and let it roast on low temperature (100 degrees) until the inner temperature is 54. Let is rest for 10 minutes before you serve it.

Pickled golden beets

• 2 golden beets
• 0.2 L water
• 2 tsp sugar
• 4 tsp vinegar

Cook the beets. When they are done (don’t overcook) cool down, peel and cut in sticks. Add to the mixture of water, sugar and vinegar.

Cook to red beets. Cut one in quarters and one in slices.

Smoked beet root pure

• 3 beet roots
• 1 g agar agar

Cook the beets and peel them. Smoke for 10 minutes and the use a juice separator to get the juice out of the beets. Heat and add agar agar while whisking. Cool down and mix to a creamy consistency. If you don’t have a juice separator or a smoker, cook beet root juice with smoked bacon and/or smoked salt.

Gravy

• 0.5 L Venison stock
• 0.1 L red wine
• 1 teaspoon coffee powder
• 2 tsp butter

Reduce the stock and wine to the half. Add coffee, salt and pepper. Let in simmer until the right consistency. Whisk the butter into the sauce shortly before serving.

Cook the beets. Peel and smoke for 15 minutes. Put in a juice separator. Heat the juice and add agar agar. Let is cool down and mix to a creamy consistency. If you don’t have a smoker or a juice separator. Buy juice from beet root and cook with smoked bacon and/or smoked salt.

Plating: Spread the pure on the bottom of the plate. Add beet root – slices and quarters – and the golden beet. Put some creme fraiche on the the slices and add espresso powder. Sprinkle the jus around the meat.

Music: prepared while listening to Fibes, Oh Fibes!

Asparagus with grey gurnard and lemon gnocchis

It is that lovely time of the year again – asparagus season. We do our best to help the region’s farmers. This is a nice one where you could easily change the type of fish depending on what your local fisherman has available. This was the first time I cooked grey gurnard (Knorrhane, Knurrhahn) and if you haven’t tried it, you should.

Ingredients

• 800 g grey gurnard
• 1 kg asparagus (green and white)
• 400 g boiled potatoes
• 0,2 l flour
• 1 egg
• 1 lemon
• 1 shallot
• 0,1 l olive oil
• parmesan

Start with the gnocchi. Work the boiled and riced potatoes with the flour, lemon zest and the egg to a roll of dough. Cut into pieces. Boil in salted water for 3 minutes (the gnocchi should come to the surface. Remove the gnocchi and put them in a bowl with icy water. Fry them in butter 2 min before serving.

Peel the white asparagus and cook for 7 minutes in water with a pinch salt and sugar. After 4 min add the green asparagus (leave two uncooked for the serving).

Make a sauce of the lemon juice, olive oil and finely chopped shallots. Add salt and pepper.

Fry the fish. Mix the asparagus with the sauce and the fried gnocchi. Slice the parmesan and the green asparagus and use for garnish.

Music: Listened to Graceland with Paul Simon

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

Countdown to midsummer Part III – Salmon tartar

Salmon tartar

• 200 g Salma salmon, without skin
• 2 tbsp Salt
• 5 dl Water
• 2 Dill sprigs
• 20 cm Cucumber
• 1-2 Granny Smith apples
• 20 small Dill sprigs
• 2 tbsp Roe from trout
• 1 slices of  Rye bread
• Rape oil
• 1 dl Sour cream
• 1 dl Yoghurt
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
• Salt and white pepper
• 1 dl grated Horseradish
• 2 tbsp Chives

Start with the salmon. Let salt and water let come to a boil. Add the 2 dill sprigs and let cool off. Add the salmon and let soak for 2 hours. After two hours; take out the fish and cut the fish in 1×1 cm cubes.

Peel cucumber and apples and remove the pips and the seeds. Cut both cucumber and apple in 1×1 cm cubes.

Make a sauce out of sour cream, yoghurt, Dijon mustard, salt and white pepper.

Roast the rye bread in the oven at 250 degrees Celsius with a little rape oil. The slices should be golden and crisp when done.

Serve as shown in the picture. Start with the sauce, then arrange the salmon, apple and cucumber cubes. Add roe and rye bread. Place the small dill sprigs and the chives and last, but not least, grate horseradish all over the dish.

Serve on a large platter for all your guests or serve on smaller side plates.

Music: Listening to

Countdown to midsummer Part II – Poached cold salmon

Believe it or not, not all Swedes like herring. When we were kids the children always had hot dogs for midsummer and the grown-ups that didn’t like herring got cold roast beef and potato salad. Nowadays the guests who don’t like herring get treated better. Here is one really tasty dish to serve at midsummer.

Poached cold salmon

• 800 g Salmon, without skin
• 3 Shallots
• 4 dl Tomato juice
• 2 tbsp Honey
• 2 tbsp Salt
• 4 dl White wine
• 1 Lemon, the juice
• 1 dl Olive oil
• fresh Dill

Cut the salmon in cubes 2×2 cm. Peel and slice the onions, put them in a sauté pan together with the tomato juice, the honey, the salt, the wine and the lemon juice. Let it come to a boil for a few minutes. Add the olive oil and the salmon cubes. immediately remove the sauté pan from the stove and leave the salmon to cool off.

Serve the salmon on a platter in its sauce and add fresh dill. We mostly eat our salmon with a really tasty bread.

Music: Listening to a traditional summer song by Evert Taube – Sjösala vals

We made sushi

We have made sushi at home before and it is not that hard as it seems. We went to our local fish store, Frische Paradies, and bought sashimi tuna, salmon and smoked halibut.

For nigiri we made it easy with salmon and tuna, but for the makis we experimented a bit.

We made four different makis:

1. Avocado, shrimps, spring onion, cucumber
2. Smoked halibut, spring onion, sesame seeds, black radish
3. Salmon marinated in beer and soy sauce, homemade mayonnaise with liquid smoke, cucumber, spring onion
4. Tuna, homemade mayonnaise, spring onion

Smoked halibut maki

Served of course with wasabi, soy sauce and pickled ginger, gari. We wanted to try an inside-out maki but didn’t dare, maybe next time. Definitely next time!

Music: Listening to the German group Alphaville and their hit

Two for one with rhubarb

In Berlin they really do practice seasonal food. We eat white asparagus April-June, we eat chanterelle in the autumn and we eat as much rhubarb as we can before they are all gone. Even though I sometimes miss strawberries, rhubarb and chanterelle, I like the idea of adjusting to nature – not the other way around.  We’ve made two different rhubarb desserts; one sweet and one with cheese.

Rhubarb sorbet with strawberries

• 500 g Rhubarb
• 300 g syrup of Sugar*
• 25 g Lemon juice, (squeezed from fresh lemons)
• 1/2 Gelatin leaf
• Strawberries
• Black pepper

Blend rhubarb, syrup, lemon juice and gelatine together. Use an ice-cream maker.

Serve on top of fresh strawberries and just before serving grind black pepper on top!

* Syrup of sugar

• 540 g Sugar
• 3 dl Water
• 100 g Glucose

Boil until 106 degrees Celsius, let cool off. Keep in the fridge.

Goat cheese with rhubarb

• 2 Rhubarb stalks
• White wine, enough to cover the rhubarb
• 1-2 tbsp Honey
• 8 thin slices of Baguette or Brioche
• Goat cheese

Cut the rhubarb stalks in pieces, cover them with white wine and let simmer for 10 minutes. They shall be cooked so as to still be firm when eaten.

Roast the bread in the oven, until they get a bit of colour.

Place the rhubarb and the bread on a plate, sprinkle honey on top of the rhubarb. Serve together with a piece of really fine goat cheese. (If you’re uncertain wich cheese to choose, ask if you can taste it)

Music: Listening to Emmylou Harris’ Hard bargain.

RollinRestaurant invaded Unter den Linden

Last Saturday Paul, Paul and I opened our second pop-up Restaurant. Like the first time in BetaHaus, Kreuzberg we invited 20 guests that all brought a friend with another nationality than themselves.

We switched the location from a rough cool former industry plant to a showroom in the fancy Unter den Linden.  Base_camp made it possible and the Team from Mokador set a fabulous table that impressed all tourists passing by the windows in the sunny afternoon.

We welcomed our guests with a strawberry cocktail. Apparently, that helped to secure a perfect atmosphere even before the amuse was served. Like the first time, it turned out to be a great noisy evening with a lot of laughs and many new acquaintances.

We had a challenge preparing the dinner – the Base_camp does not provide a kitchen. The solution: a cold menu that we could prepare at home. Isn’t a cold dinner kind of boring? Well, have a look at the pictures below.

Last preparation at the location.

If you want to try the courses, here are the recipes. They are all for 4 persons:

Starter: Marinated scallops, champagne glaze, truffle creme and spring salad

Ingredients

• 6 scallops
• 1 dl finely chopped dill
• 1 dl finely chopped chives

Glaze

• 3 tarragon leaves
• 1 shallot
• 2 dl pink champagne/sparkling wine
• 1 leaf of gelatin

Truffle cream

• 100 g Philadelphia cheese
• 50 g finely grated parmesan cheese
• truffle oil
• zest from half a lemon
• salt, pepper

Decoration

• spring salad
• olive oil
• lemon juice

Start with the scallops. Fry them very short in butter on each side. Let them cold and then mix them with dill and chives. Flavor with salt and pepper. Put the whole marinated scallops in the freezer for 2 hours. They should get firm so that you can slice them into very thin slices.

Champagne glaze: Half the onion and get it to boil with the champagne and the tarragon. Let it simmer for 5 minutes and then remove the onion and herbs. Put the gelatin in cold water for 5 min and then whisk it with the fluid. Put cold until serving.

Truffle crème: Mix Philadelphia cheese, parmesan, lemon zest, salt and pepper to a crème. Add truffle oil carefully. The crème should get a taste of truffle but, you should also be able to pick out the other ingredients. We used a teaspoonful.

Serving: Cut the scallops in very thin slices and arrange on a plate. ‘Paint’ the scallops with the glaze. Flavor the spring salad with lemon juice and olive oil. Arrange the creme and a spring salad on the side.

Main course: Vitello Tonnato goes Salade Nicoise

Ingredients

• 400 g fillet of veal
• 400 g  Tuna of sashimi quality
• 12 green asparagus
• 6 quail eggs

Tomatoes

• 6 cocktail tomatoes
• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped + a tbsp olive oil

Herb oil

• 1 dl olive oil
• 30 g rocket salad
• 30 g basil

Tuna sauce

• 0,5 dl mayonnaise
• 0,5 dl crème fraiche
• 1 dl can tuna in oil (oil removed)
• juice from half a lemon
• 1 garlic clove

Decoration

• 2 tbsp capers

Start with the cocktail tomatoes. Half each tomato and put it on a oven plate. Sprinkle olive oil and chopped garlic on top. Put in the oven on 80° for 4 hours.

Veal: Fry the meat very short on each side. Put the whole fillet in the oven on 120 ° C until the meat temperature reaches 56 °. Remove and let it rest for at least 30 min.

Tuna sauce: Mix the canned tuna, mayonnaise, crème fraiche, lemon juice and the garlic clove in a blender. Flavor with salt and pepper and put cold until serving.

Herb oil: Mix the olive oil (1 dl) with rocket salad and basil. Strain so that just the nice colored and flavored oil remains.

Tuna: Cut the tuna in rectangles with the height 3 cm and the depth 3 cm. The lengths depend on the tuna piece you got. Fry the rectangles on four sides very short. Should get nice fried surface but be raw inside. Put the rectangles directly in the fridge. Before serving, cut the rectangle on the length so that you get nice cubes 3*3*2 cm. See the picture.

Asparagus. Boil or steam the asparagus al dente (ca 3 min). Put them in ice cold water to avoid them getting soggy. Just serve the top of the asparagus.

Boil the quail eggs for 2-3 min. Peel and half.

Arrange the cold ingredients as in the picture.

Rhubarbs cooked in syrup, white chocolate mousse, rhubarb soup

Ingredients

• 200 g white chocolate
• 4 egg yolks
• 50 g sugar
• 3 dl cream

Soup and rhubarb

• 500 g+200 g rhubarb
• 5 dl water
• 2 dl sugar

Decoration

• 2 tbsp minced pistachio

Start with the mousse: Whisk yolks and sugar to a foam. Melt the chocolate carefully. Whip the cream to a light foam. Add the chocolate (not too warm) into the egg toddy and stir. Add the chocolate cream to the whipped cream and stir. Put cold for at least 3 hours.

Rhubarb: Heat the oven to 150 ° C.  Cook the water and the sugar to syrup. If you have thick rhubarbs, peel, otherwise place 500 g rhubarbs on an oven plate and cover with the warm syrup. Bake for 10 min. The rhubarbs should be firm but hold together.  Remove from the syrup and keep cold. Taste the syrup. If too sweet add water, if not enough taste from the rhubarb, add the rest (200g) and boil for 5 min. Let the rhubarb+syrup get cold before straining the syrup so that only the fluid remains. Keep cold until serving.

Servings: Cut the rhubarb in 4 cm long pieces. Arrange on a soup plate. Add the mouse on top or on the side. Top with pistachios. Pour the soup into the plate on the table for a nice special effect.

Even though some guests had three portions of the chocolate mousse, there was some left for the chefs.

A great thanks to Sachar and Robin for hosting us with such ease and to Tobias from Mokador who made the co operation so uncomplicated and professional.

If you like to take part the next time the RollinRestaurant open its doors, this is the place to keep updated. You could also follow me on twitter or send us a Email and we will let you know when the next event takes place.

Cod with kohlrabi and smoked potato purée

If you read the blog you might have noticed that cod is our favorite fish. In this recipe we use an ancient Swedish vegetable, kohlrabi, when cooked in butter gets a really mild and sweet taste. To make it a bit more exciting we added a smoked flavour to the potato purée.

Kohlrabi

• 2-3 Kohlrabi (depending on size)
• 1 Shallot
• 500 g Butter

Peel and cut the kohlrabi into 2 cm thick slices. Punch out as large circles as possible. Melt the butter, add the kohlrabi circles and the shallot and let them simmer until done. The kohlrabi should feel like a boiled potato.

Potato purée

• 3 Potatoes
• 1 dl Cream
• 1/2 dl Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Pour smoke shavings at the bottom of a large pot. Pour the cream into a stainless bowl and place it on top of the shavings. Put the lid on the pot and heat up the hob as warm as possible. When you have a heavy build-up of smoke, pull the pot off the hob a leave it for 10 minutes.

If you don’t want smoke in your entire kitchen you can also use a few drops of Liquid smoke or boil the cream with smoked ham.

Peel the potatoes and boil them in water and salt until they are soft. Throw the water out. Use an electric mixer and whisk the potatoes to a purée. Add the smoked cream, the olive oil and finally taste it with salt and pepper.

Cod

• 600 g Cod
• 4 teaspoons Salt
• 3 dl Water

Cut the fish in 4 pieces. Pour the water into a form, add the salt and make sure it dissolves. Add the fish and leave it for one hour. Make sure that the fish is covered in fluid, if not add another 3 dl water and 4 teaspoons salt.

Set the oven to 100 degrees Celsius. After an hour, wipe the fish dry with kitchen paper. Put the pieces onto something fireproof, for example a baking plate. Use a burner and “weld” your cod until it gets a nice colour on the surface. Leave your “welded” fish in the oven until it reaches 40 degrees Celsius.

Sauce

• 3 dl Fish stock
• 1 dl White wine
• 1 Shallot
• 1 tbsp cold Butter
• 1 dl Cream
• Garden cress

Fry the chopped shallot in butter. Pour over wine and fish stock and let boil until 2 dl fluid remains. Add the cream and let boil for another couple of minutes. Remove the sauce from the stove. Use an electric mixer and mix the sauce with the cress and 1 tbsp cold butter. Taste the sauce with salt and pepper.

Now you’re ready to serve!

Music: Listening to Veronica Maggio