Salmon with trout roe as a starter – beer week #7

In Sweden we have an excellent chef, Mathias Dahlgren. He has two fantastic restaurants in Stockholm, Matbaren and Matsalen, both at the Grand Hotel.

Mathias Dahlgrens motto is “Natural produce and natural taste are essential for the natural cuisine”. This recipe is from his last book “The Natural Cuisine”.

Salmon back in beer with trout roe

• 200 g Salmon back
• 100 g Porter
• 100 g Soy sauce
• 30 g Gari (pickled ginger)
• 25 g Sugar
• 20 g Trout roe
• 1 Spring onion

Smoked mayonnaise

• 2 Egg yolks
• 2-3 dl Rape oil
• 1 tbsp Mustard
• 1 tbsp Vinegar
• 1 teaspoon Liquid smoke
• Salt
• Black pepper

Make sure to buy a really fresh and high quality salmon. Cut the salmon in cubes and blend porter, soy sauce, gari and sugar together. Put the salmon cubes in the marinade and let marinate for 50 minutes.

Lift the cubes up and let them drain on paper. Decorate the salmon cubes with trout roe, flakes of salt and freshly grounded black pepper.

Make sure that all your ingredients for the mayonnaise have room temperature. Blend the egg yolks with mustard and vinegar. Use an electric mixer and pour the rape oil carefully in a fine squirt. Keep pouring oil until you have a good consistency. Squeeze a tbsp lemon juice in the mayonnaise, a teaspoon liquid smoke and add salt and pepper.

Make nice circles of the mayonnaise in between the salmon cubes and decorate with spring onions.

Music: Listening to Maia Hirasawa’s song “You are all I wanted”

Korean beef with udon nudles

It is getting colder and colder outside and the need for something warm to eat increases. Why not add spicy as well…

• 400 g fresh Udon nudles
• 600 g Beef
• 1 large Choi cabbage
• 4 Spring onions
• 1 Red Onion
• 1 Carrot
• 4 Eggs
• 1 Lime fruit
• fresh Coriander

Broth

• 1 l Chicken broth
• 2 Chili fruits
• 2 Lemon grass
• fresh Ginger
• 1-2 Garlic cloves
• 2-3 Kaffir lime leaves
• 33 cl Japanese beer

Start with the broth. Boil water with chicken broth and beer, add pieces of chilifruit, lemon grass, ginger, garlic and kaffir lime leaves. Let it simmer for 10-15 minutes. Strain away the spices. Cut and shred the vegetables.

Fry the meat shortly in oil so that it gets a nice colour. Cook the udon nudles according to the manufacturer.

Put the udon nudles in 4 bowls, pour the reheated broth over them and crack an egg in each bowl. Add the vegetables, slice the meat in thin slices and put them on top. Decorate with coriander, chopped cashew nuts and lime.

Serve together with Kimchi salad.

If you want a vegetarian dish simply exchange the beef for tofu and the chicken broth with vegetable broth.

Music: An old classic with Spice Girls – Spice up your world

Pickled gherkins

We haven’t been able to find pickled gherkins in Berlin. Salt pickled gherkins that is. What is a hamburger without pickled gherkin or your liver paste sandwich for breakfast for that matter?

We have to make our own and now it is the season for tiny cucumbers that we bought from the Farmers Market on Kollwitz Platz in Prenzlauer Berg.

• 1 kilo tiny Cucumbers
• 1 liter Water
• 4 tbsp Salt
• 2 teaspoons Sugar
• 2 1/2 tbsp Vinegar essence
• 2-3 heads of Dill
• 4 centimetres of Horseradish
• 2-3 centimetres of fresh Ginger
• 4-5 Black peppercorns

Scrub the cucumbers clean and prick tiny holes in them, so that they better absorb the flavours. Stir water, salt, sugar and vinegar essence together so that the salt and the sugar dissolves. Let it rest for a couple of minutes.

In the meantime slice the horseradish and the ginger in 0,5 centimetre slices.

Use a big jar, preferably a glass jar, or whatever you prefer. Put cucumbers, slices of ginger, slices of horseradish, the dill heads and the black peppercorns in layers. Pour the liquid carefully.

Let your pickled gherkins draw for a few days before you eat them.

Asian Tasting Menu

The menu was seven courses in the following order: (recipes and pictures below)

1. Edame beans with homemade garlic oil and salt (Fleur de Sel)
2. Tuna tartar with  wasabi cream and soy sauce
3. Steamed sugar peas with walnut dressing and scallops fried in walnut butter
4. Dumpling filled with shiitake mushroom, spring onions, garlic and lemon grass on a bed of marinated red onions and shiitake mushrooms
5. Filet of beef tataki style
6. Asian ribs with Kimchi
7. Ginger granite with ginger cream and fruits

Edame beans with homemade garlic oil and salt

• Peal the beans and steam them for about 5-10 minutes
• Pour 0,5 decilitre olive oil together with 2 cloves of garlic in a saucepan – warm up the oil until you feel the garlic scent – let it cool of a bit
• Dish up the beans on a plate, add as much garlic oil as you want and sprinkle salt over the beans

Tuna tartar with wasabi cream and soy sauce

Tuna tartar with wasabi cream

• 200 g Fresh tuna (sashimi quality), chopped fine
• 1 decilitre Crème fraîche
• 1 tablespoon Wasabi
• 1 tablespoon Icing sugar

Whisk crème fraîche together with wasabi and icing sugar. Put the finely minced tuna in four (4 portions) steel cooking rings and flatten the tuna with a spoon. Add the wasabi cream on top. Place the steel cooking rings on plates and carefully remove the cooking rings.

Soy sauce

• 2 decilitre Japanese soy sauce
• 1 piece of Ginger, peeled
• 1 Lemon grass
• 1 Tomato
• 1 Celery stem
• 3 tbsp Lemon juice or Ponzu
• 1 Orange, the juice
• 3 tbsp Mirin (sweet vinegar)
• 1/4 Cucumber, peeled

Mix all ingredients together with a mixer or in a blender. Strain the mix and you have your soy sauce.

Steamed sugar peas with walnut dressing and scallops fried in walnut butter

Walnut dressing

• 50 g Walnuts
• 1 tbsp Sugar
• 1 tbsp Japanese soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Saké
• 2 tbsp Water
• Salt
• Ground black pepper

Steam the sugar peas for a few minutes or boil them for half a minute. Rinse them in cold water so that the cooking process ends.

Mix all the other ingredients to a dressing, use a mixer or a blender.

Use a mortar and a pestle to pulp 3-4 walnuts and add them together with butter in a frying pan. Fry the scallops briefly in the walnut butter. Use frozen or fresh scallops, one for each guest, depending on their size.

Dumpling filled with shiitake mushroom, spring onions, garlic and lemon grass on a bed of marinated red onions and shiitake mushrooms

Dumplings

• 4 Wonton wrappers
• 6 Shiitake mushrooms
• 1 Spring onion
• 1 clove of Garlic
• 1/2 Lemon grass

Chop mushrooms, spring onions, garlic and lemon grass. Put it in a frying pan together with butter and fry shortly. Add approximately 1 – 1 1/2 teaspoon to each wonton wrapper. Use an egg yolk as glue on the wonton wrapper, gather the corners together and make a little swirl.

Put the wontons in a bamboo steamer and steam for 10-12 minutes.

Marinated red onions with shiitake mushrooms

• 1 Red onion, in thin slices
• 1-2 tbsp Water
• 1/2 Lemon, juice
• 1-2 tbsp Hoisin sauce

Put the red onion slices in the marinade for about 30 minutes. Fry the shiitake mushrooms in a pan with butter. Add the fried mushrooms to the red onions and let them soak for a couple of minutes.

Filet of beef tataki style

Rub

• 1 tbsp Lemon grass, dried
• 1 teaspoon Chili, dried
• 3 Kaffir lime leaves, dried
• 1 teaspoon Coriander seeds
• 2 teaspoons Coconut flakes
• 1 teaspoon Brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon Rose hip powder
• 1 tbsp Fruit tea

Mix all the ingredients to a powder.

Sesame sauce

• 2 tbsp Soy sauce
• 2 tbsp Sugar
• 2 tbsp Red wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon Mustard powder
• 1 teaspoon Sesame oil
• 1 clove of Garlic
• 2 tbsp roasted Cashews or peanuts
• 1/2 teaspoon minced Ginger
• Tabasco
• 1 teaspoon Sesame seeds

Mix everything together except the sesame seeds to a smooth sauce. Stir the sesame seeds in to the sauce.

Soy sauce

• 1 decilitre Soy sauce
• 2 tbsp Ponzu or lime juice

Stir together.

Rub the filet of beef ( 200 gram) with the rub and fry it quickly in oil in a frying pan. Put the fried beef int the freezer for 30 minutes, then cut thin slices of the beef.

Add sesame sauce and soy sauce to the beef and decorate with Galia melon and spring onions.

Asian ribs with Kimchi

• 300 g Pork belly
• 2 Cinnamon sticks
• 5 Star anise
• 2 tbsp Sichuan pepper
• 3-4 Chili fruits, dried
• 30 g minced Ginger
• 1/2 decilitre light Soy sauce
• 1/2 decilitre Hoisin sauce
• 1/2 decilitre Soy sauce
• 1/2 decilitre dry Sherry
• 1-2 decilitre Water
• 1 decilitre brown Sugar
• 2 tbsp Red wine vinegar

Cut the pork belly into 3 centimeter dices, put everything in a pot and boil for 30 minutes under a lid, remove the lid and let it simmer for another 30 minutes. The meat shall be beautifully glaced from the sauce.

Serve together with Kimchi.

Ginger granite with ginger cream and autumn fruits

Fruit

1. 6 Plums
2. 2 Pears
3. 2 Blood oranges
4. 2 Nectarines

Cut the fruit in nice looking variable sizes.

Granite

• 2 cans of Root beer
• 1 Lime fruit, juice
• 1 decilitre Syrup (50/50 sugar – water)
• Fruit pulp, (“left overs” from the fruit cutting)

Mix the lime, the syrup and the fruit pulp in a blender, strain it and add the root beer. Freeze it, in a baking tin or a dish.

Ginger cream

• 5 Egg yolks
• 20 g Maizena flour
• 2 1/2 decilitre Milk
• 50 g Sugar
• 15 g Butter
• 1 centilitre juice from fresh Ginger
• 2 decilitre Whipped cream

Whisk the egg yolks, the sugar and the maizena flour until it’s white. Boil the milk and the butter and add it to the egg-mixture while stirring. Pour the mixture into a new casserole and boil it until it thickens (approximately 5 minutes), it’s very important to whisk the entire time so that the mixture don’t burn. Strain it and let it cool down.

Add the ginger juice and whip the egg cream together with the whipped cream so that it has a light, fluffy consistency.

When serving add a little fresh ground black pepper on top.