China Crumpet

So Christmas is over and your fridge and freezer, if they are anything like ours, are stuffed with leftovers. Here is my favorite things to do with the mess that’s left:

Munch Munch...

What do you do with your holiday leftovers?

My waitress didn’t accept this bill tonight. Took me a while to figure out why. Can you?

Breakfast is one of those things that you always miss when you are not at home, isn’t it? I consider myself pretty adventurous when it comes to eating but nothing for me beats a good old Swedish breakfast of warm rolls, a selection of hard and soft cheeses, deli-meats, some sliced veggies, home made jam, a soft boiled egg and a glass of orange juice. And the paper of course.

Here in Beijing, breakfast has been a particular challenge. We quickly ruled out you tiao, baozi, tea soaked eggs and warm soy milk. Although they are all delicious and it is nice to once in a while experience a true Beijing breakfast experience, the taste profile of that particular breakfast is not what I get out of bed for.

Lining up for some delicious shaobing and soy milk

For a while now, we have settled the matter by making oatmeal porridge with chopped dried fruits, fresh milk and cashew nuts. It has been a good healthy start to the day and yummy enough to have lasted a while.

Our usual brekkie

On the weekends however, when there are a few extra minutes to spare, I have recently found out that baking breakfast rolls is not as hard as it seems. Plus, with home made butter and jam, it’s almost like home!

To try your very own Swedish breakfast experience at home, boil an egg, buy some oranges and squeeze them for some lovely, fresh juice, get some cheese, jam and butter, brew your favorite tea and make a load of Källarfranska (Swedish breakfast rolls).

I usually cheat a bit and make the batter and roll them out the night before I want to eat them and then bake them in the morning. That way I can sleep in instead of having to spend the morning kneading dough and the house will still be filled with the gorgeous smell of newly baked bread while I enjoy the latest copy of the Economist.

Hot rolls on a smoggy morning

For 16 rolls you will need:

14 g instant dry yeast (swedes, this is the equivalent to a 50 g package of fresh yeast)
1/2 litre (2 cups) water, room temperature or slightly tepid
1 tbs sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 tbs oil
13 dl all purpose flour

Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle.

Mix a couple of tablespoons of the water, the sugar and the yeast in a small bowl until everything is dissolved and leave it until you see tiny bubbles forming on the surface of the yeast mixture.

Pour the yeast mixture, oil and the rest of the water into the well you made in your flour and work the liquids into the flour with your hands. Knead the dough on a floured surface until you have a smooth, springy dough which isn’t too dry or too sticky. Add a little more flour if you need to.

Form the dough into a 50cm long sausage and cut it into 16 parts. Roll the balls slightly and then flatten them so you get 16 roundish dough lumps. Give them a flour coating by gently turning them in a bit of the flour you have on your work space. Put them, well spaced out, on a well oiled or buttered oven tray.

Now you can either put the tray in the fridge with some cling film over it and bake them (without the cling film) straight out of the fridge in the morning or you can let them rise for 40 minutes under a clean kitchen towel.

40 minutes later or the next morning, set your oven to 250°c and bake for 15 minutes or until golden. When they are finished, they should sound hollow when you tap them.

Enjoy with all your different spreads and toppings (if you really want to be Swedish, enjoy your bread with butter, a sharp hard cheese and a thin layer of apricot or orange marmalade) while reading your favorite mag or the paper.

What’s your favorite breakfast?

Hello, my name is Ingela and I am a cooking show addict.

So, after watching the whole 5 seasons of (the British please!) Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsey, I can now honestly say I absolutely never want to ever own a restaurant.

However, I have learnt that chefs often cook with cheap ingredients and use recipies that actually aren’t that complicated. Otherwise, they would not ever have time to serve their customers and they would loose money. That’s what Gordon says anyway.

Baring these new revelations in mind, I embarked on a culinary adventure into the minds of some real chefs and discovered recipes they have seen fit to trust us lowly home cooks with. And believe me when I say, Gordon was right. Nothing could have been more straight forward. All the recipes were found on Food and Wine magazine’s website and a couple have been slightly adapted due to China availability issues.

On Monday, we started with Ferran Adrià’s “toasted spaghetti with clams”, a huge success.

toasted spaghetti.. who knew THAT could be good??

We then moved on to what both hubby and I agreed were the best ribs we have ever had. Sticky and fall apart tender, “Mo’s sticky ribs recipe” by Fred Donnelly are definitely worth making AND (for all of you living in China who don’t have an oven) borrowing a neighbor or friends oven for!

finger lickin'...

Today, we made Eric Ripert’s “Sautéed Spanish Mackerel with Black-Eyed Pea Salad”. Again, we were not disappointed.

delicious, and healthy!

And now, to you, I now pass on the culinary wisdom I have learnt. Go ye and make home made glaze!

Aren’t these pretty? I have been eating them non-stop for the past few weeks. Delish!

Since I am unable to access facebook to change my relationship status (the horror!) I shall have to announce it here. I am now happily married. The wedding was lovely and although Sweden showed it’s pretty summer side, I am now enjoying being back in quiet Beijing again with my husband.

Pictures will follow as soon as we have some kind of reasonable internet access at the same place as we have all of our wedding pictures.

Living in China is both a blessing and a curse for the waist-line. There is so much cheap, delicious and deep fried food here that can wreak havoc on any diet but there are also such fantastic high fiber, delicious, low fat options AND great raw produce to be bought that staying fit shouldn’t be an issue.

For me though, staying fit is unfortunately always an issue. I love to eat, cook, think about food, come up with new recipes and even dream about food. It pains me to leave that last morsel of sweet and sour pork on the plate and I tend to always over order, over grocery shop and finish up the leftovers.

This has all had to change though, I realized on a recent trip to Chile (when I had to don my bikini for what would otherwise be winter but for the Southern hemisphere was summer), and enough really and truly had to be enough. Didn’t help that the Chileans actually BBQed cheese. Seriously.

Anyway, my vanity has gotten the better of me as my nuptials and the old wedding dress deadline draws near and I have also realized that my outfits and holiday photos will all improve greatly if I manage to shed some excess pounds. Enter the gym.

I have always liked the idea of going to the gym much more than actually doing it. I buy in to the idea of “pampering oneself” by working up a good sweat and then chilling out in the sauna. Unfortunately, the saunas here are too gross to hang out in which means a brisk and sweaty walk back home in the cold for a shower. No matter though, Jonas and I have been dragging our lazy behinds to the gym loyally for a while now and lo and behold, I actually have a bottom. I also no longer have a sack attached to my front that shirts and pants won’t cover.

I have discovered however that the goal of weight loss alone is not enough to motivate me to get my new bottom and I off to the gym every day so Jonas devised an evil plan. He told me how fast he runs and bet I couldn’t do it. It was a cunning and evil plan, so simple that it had to work. And it did.

So, for the first time in my life, I entered a running competition last week. I did not don a cute outfit or nice hair (as you can see) but I managed to finish not last. Pride abounds… and I have realized that 5 km (and perhaps more!) is not impossible. Jonas managed to run in record time of course but he will have a worthy opponent soon enough. I will keep you posted on my progress but until next time: I race on!

On your marks....

I was surprised by today’s dooce post to read that she too had succumbed to the online survays circling facebook lately. This one was however fitting, since my life right now revolves around my coming nuptuals in August so I caved and filled it in, sucker that I am… feel free to continue the chain of cheesiness.

What are your middle names?
My middle name is Christina and his middle names are Erik Olof. 2-1, he wins.

How long have you been together?
Three and a half shiny years.

How long did you know each other before you started dating?
About six months, but I knew he would be mine from pretty much day 1.

Who asked whom out?
Hah! I have never been one to procrastinate announcing my feelings of affection, my philosophy is that the worst thing that can happen is that they are flattered and I get over it. Anyway, in this case, let’s just say my blatent declarations of love and my persistence paid off.

How old are each of you?
He is 31 and I am 28 (almost 29). A good solid age difference.

Whose siblings do you see the most?
Well, since we live in China, my siblings live in Sweden and Belgium and his live in Sweden and California we see them all around once a year. Perhaps that’s why we all get along so well…?

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
Low blood sugar.

Did you go to the same school?
Nope! He is a tech-head and I am a tea clutching, blanket wearing hippie.

Are you from the same home town?
Kind of. We are both from the Malmö-ish area but he is from posh Lomma and I am from ghetto Kroksbäck.

Who is smarter?
I’m the brawn and he’s the brains in all matters, including work, friends, pub fights and arm wrestling.

Who is the most sensitive?
Let’s just say that he has resorted to laughing at me when I cry.

Where do you eat out most as a couple?
The “ten kuai place”, local Chinese around the corner. We try to venture out to posher pastures sometimes but it’s just so convenient, delicious and cheap!

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?
Chile. A 30 hour plane trip from Beijing but the best trip ever.

Who has the craziest exes?
Me. But he has the funniest ex-stories. Mine are just scary.

Who has the worst temper?
Both of us are really scared of conflict which makes for a wonderfully peaceful household.

Who does the cooking?
We both do. It’s our biggest hobby and a constant source of creativity, inspiration, conversation subjects and happiness.

Who is the neat-freak?
He has actually begun to enjoy doing dishes so I guess some of my obsessive compulsion is rubbing off.

Who is more stubborn?
Definitely him. I don’t even try any more.

Who hogs the bed?
Me. I am a bed hogger, a sleep talker and a general nuisance maker when I sleep.

Who wakes up earlier?
We’re both sleepy heads. He is better at getting up though.

Where was your first date?
We never went on dates, we just hung out.

Who is more jealous?
Neither of us are jealous because we’re both flirts. It just wouldn’t work if we got jealous.

How long did it take to get serious?
About 2 minutes.

Who eats more?
Me. I also eat faster and with worse table manners. He often compares me to labradors or fairy tale monsters at the dinner table.

Who does the laundry?
Xiao Li, our help.

Who’s better with the computer?
See the answer to the question about what schools we went to.

Who drives when you are together?
Since I moved to Asia before I got my license and Jonas is a petrol head, he has to. And wants to. I will hold out for a personal driver and a rolls royce. (Jonas just told me to edit this because Rolls Royce should be spellt with capital R’s.)

The end of an era. This is how I often feel when confronted with a career change, and this time especially. Over Christmas, I not only went back to Sweden and had obseen amounts of food (and gained a few pounds) but also mulled over my life and decided to quit my job as manager and sales executive at a neurosurgical stem cell clinic. Reading that last sentence, I wonder if I am at all sane… but then I think back on the past year and I think about the coming year of the ox and I relax again, well aware that I have made the right choice. Anyway, on January 1st I wrote to my employer and, as politely as I could, informed her that I would be leaving at the end of the month. Since Chinese New Year is early this year, it means this week is my last. And so, with no regrets, I went in to the office today and had a little cheese cake on paper plates and got my celebratory bunch of flowers. Yay.

Tomorrow I leave for Paris-Copenhagen-Lomma and not a moment too soon! China has been eating on my nervs and I know there is nothing better than a cold and wet Swedish Christmas to make me see that my life actually is pretty good. Either that or I will fall head over heels in love with my new little nephew, eat too much yummy christmas food again and see long lost friends which will make it difficult for me to return to my smog ridden current residence. I guess the high prices will snap me back to reality, and I hope my relatives will give me a harder time than usual to ensure no a good and healthy dose of China home sickness. I’ll keep you posted…

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