China Crumpet

a lunchtime hit

Lunches are always so hard for me to come up with. Usually, I just have leftovers or a sandwich but sometimes, lunch too calls for a little original cooking. Thank goodness then for girls like Lotta Lundgren who are creative and interesting enough for me to love their simple, global and delicious cooking. This is one of hers. As long as you make it with lean pork (we are lucky enough to be able to mince from whole pieces at our local market so we know it’s lean) it is healthy and bursting with asian flavour. The fried rice gives crunch and an extra nuttiness. Topped with a fried egg, it feels like something you would eat in an asian hole in the wall – only a lot fresher.

Naked springrolls:
1 dl raw jasmin rice + ½ dl oil for frying
400 g minced pork
5 garlic cloves
1 large piece fresh ginger
3 tbs dark Chinese soy sauce
1 tbs sugar
2 carrots
½ head cabbage
1 tsp sichuan pepper, whole
1 – 2 dried red chiles
1 – 2 limes

Heat the oil in a pan. When it is hot, carefully pour in the rice, making sure the rice is completely covered in oil. Remove from heat when the rice starts to pop and turnes golden brown. Drain on a napkin or a piece of kitchen towel.

Fry up your minced pork.

Chop garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant. Add the mince, soy sauce and the sugar. Peel and grate the carrots, julienne the cabbage. Crush the sichuan pepper and chile in a pestel and mortar, press the juice out of the lime and add to taste.

Mix in the fried rice and serve with toasted cashew- or peanuts, limewedges and steamed broccoli. If you like, top with a fried egg.

nuggets of heaven - ready in ten

It has truly been a gorgeous day in Beijing. The skies have been blue, there has been an ever so pleasant September breeze and the sun has been blazing in the sky. In the distance, the new China World tower has been gleaming and the birds have actually been singing with pure joy.

We, however, have been hunkered down inside working our little fingers to the bone in order to meet our mid-September launch deadline. No sun for us. Actually, not true, we sped down to the local supermarket to buy chicken. Needless to say, I would have loved to prepare a basket of fabulous sandwiches, grilled chicken drumsticks and a bottle of home made lemonade and gone to the park for a picnic dinner but, alas, fate had not thought it so.

Instead, we made dinner in a hurry and hurried back to our computers. It took ten minutes. It was delicious. I was enormously pleased.

Caramelized black pepper chicken
adapted from Food & Wine Magazine

1 dl dark brown sugar
About 1/2 dl fish sauce (nam pla)
1/2 dl cup water
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
2 fresh Thai chiles, chopped with seeds
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 scallion, diagonally and thinly sliced
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces
cilantro to taste

4 servings fragrant, jasmine rice

Pop the rice (and water and salt of course) in a rice cooker. When there is about 10 minutes left on the rice mix the sugar, fish sauce, water, rice vinegar, garlic, ginger, pepper and chile in a bowl. Heat the oil and fry the scallion until fragrant and soft, add the sugar/fish sauce/vinegar mixture and chicken and cook until done. Serve the chicken atop the rice with a nice handful of fresh cilantro. Easy peasy.

Enjoy.

Mouthful of yumminess

Hubby and I are busy. Not only are we busy procrastinating the thank you cards for the wedding, we are also in the middle of a very exciting project which I can’t talk about yet. It is extremely fun, very exciting and absolutely exhausting, not to mention time consuming (and before you ask, no, we are not trying to have a baby). Add to that a sweltering Beijing summer and you have a perfect recipe for not wanting to hang out in a hot kitchen for too long. But there was a problem today. There was a delicious looking sea bass in the fridge which would go bad unless we did something wonderful with it. Unfortunately, both hubby and I were craving greasy junk, not delicate, flaky fish.

We decided to compromise and cook the fish, make a simple lime aioli, fry up some fries and serve the fish on toast on a bed of rocket and a with a thick slice of ripe, fragrant tomato. Like an upscale version of fish and chips. Writing this is making me drool, it was perfection on a plate.

For 2 largeish sandwiches you will need:

For the fish

350g white flaky fish (we got 2 biggish filés out of our fish so we just used one of them and fried it whole)
2 tbs flour
1 tsp Cayenne pepper
Salt and white pepper to taste (a large pinch or so)
a lug of olive oil or (even better) knob of butter for frying

For the lime aioli

2-3 tbs mayonnaise (home made, if you have it or feel ambitious!)
1 tbs Lime juice
1 large garlic clove
salt and black pepper

2 slices of whole wheat toast, toasted until golden

Fresh spicy rocket

A couple of thick slices juicy, ripe tomato

Mix up the flour with the cayenne and salt/pepper, put the fish in a freezer bag or ziplock along with the flour mixture and shake until the fish is completely coated. Heat a pan with the oil or butter and fry the fish until done. It should be lightly golden and cooked through. Crush the garlic and mix up the ingredients for the aioli. Toast your bread and assemble as you choose. We started with toast and then went on to add rocket, tomato, fish and drizzled aioli over the whole thing.

Serve with hot fries and a cold drink.

Thank goodness winter is here (just kidding). Seriously though, winter, dispite all it’s coldness and drab gray skies, has a good side: piping hot soup. So when I saw the recipe for Veselka’s Cabbage Soup on Smitten Kitchen and since I absolutely adore sauerkraut (and because we just bought way too much to have with the handmade sausages we’ve found at our local german butcher) I thought I MUST have it. We made the tangy cabbage and pork soup and had it with zuccini and thyme melted cheese toast. By the way, I had it again for a lunch at my desk today and the prospects of this day not sucking after all are looking much brighter.

So back to the original soup making evening, convincing Jonas to cook for three hours by himself was impossible and I had found the recipe anyway and wanted to make it myself. So we made it the day before we were going to have it and it was simply divine, even a day later.

Something about eating a Russian cabbage soup in communist China duirng cabbage season was also slightly comforting…

Veselka’s Cabbage Soup
Courtesy of NY Magazine and Smitten Kitchen

Serves 6 to 8

1 pound pork butt, cut into small cubes
1 1/2 quarts chicken stock
4 cups water
3 allspice berries (I substituted equal parts of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg)
3 bay leaves
1 tablespoon dried marjoram (I substituted fresh thyme)
1 cup sauerkraut, plus around 4 tablespoons juice
1 large potato, peeled and diced
2 carrots, minced
3 stalks celery, minced
1 small onion, diced
2 cups fresh cabbage, shredded thin

Place the pork in a medium pot with the chicken stock, water, allspice, bay leaves, and marjoram. Bring to a boil and then simmer on low heat for about 2 hours. Remove the pork and set aside on a plate to cool. Skim fat from stock, leaving a few “eyes” of fat for flavor.

Add sauerkraut and simmer for 20 minutes. Add potato and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the carrots, celery, onion, and cabbage and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the pork and simmer for 10 more minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add sauerkraut juice.

The best zuccini and thyme melt

Makes 4 toasts

4 thick slices country bread
4-5 slices zuccini per bread slice
4 handfulls of slightly sharp cheese
Fresh thyme, leaves picked
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil

Heat your oven to 200 degrees. Heat a skillet with some olive oil and fry the zuccini slices with some salt and pepper in olive oil until they start to colour. Place them on the bread slices along with cheese and thyme. Put the assembled toasts on a baking tray and bake until they crisp up and become slightly golden on top.

We found ourselves mentally drained this weekend, completely exhausted after a long week and unable to think straight. Add to that the fact that there was christmas shopping to do for the big trip home on Saturday and the fact that it was bitterly cold and you have a recipe for disaster. Luckily we also had a recipe for success stuck up our sleves in the form of a fatty rack of pork ribs. The Chinese make the best ribs in the world, but I wanted to make some that were a little more fusion than just your average sweet and sour.

Have I told you how much I love sweet and sticky meat? The kind that falls off bones and melts in the mouth? Well, this turned out exactly that way and I ate until I was slightly sick. We had it will a red cabbage cole slaw and fried potato cubes.

1 rack of short ribs, choose ones with plenty of meat
3 dried chili’s
A couple of plump garlic cloves (to taste), chopped
1 small handfull of good quality dried apricots, chopped
1 small handfull of good quality prunes, chopped
Plenty of salt and pepper
Olive oil

4 tbs honey
4 tbs balsamic vinager

Mix up everything except the honey and the vinager and bash it to a paste in a pestle and morter. Rub the meat with the mixture, getting it in to all the nooks and crannies. Put the meat in an oven dish and cover with foil. Bake in 200 degrees for an hour and twenty minutes. Mix up the honey and vinager and pour over the ribs and bake for another 20-30 minutes basting every now and again until the outside of the ribs are crisp and caramelized and the meat falls off the bone.

Eat and enjoy.

Today, we celebrated a century old Skånish tradition, Mårtensgås. It was my first time, so I was very excited. Jonas was excited too and we had a blast in the kitchen cooking this up. Mårtengås is a holiday where you eat a main course of roasted Goose, apple sauce, red cabbage and potatoes with “black soup” made of pigs blood as an appetizer and apple cake (tart, crumble… I don’t know what to call it really) with vanilla custard for dessert. We are substituting the black soup for a crab soup, as I don’t really trust Chinese pigs blood… call me crazy. This means however, wrestling a couple of fine young crabs to the ground, cutting their guts out and eyes off and chopping them in half alive. Gruesome but true. Now they’re in the freezer getting all nice and numb… Viscious! The meal is definitely not slimming but we never eat butter or cream any more so tonight we thought we’d treat ourselves. It’ll probably make us sick, but I’m used to that so it should be fine.

Mårtensgås is celebrated in honor of St. Martin, a French saint. It is said that he once tried to hide away in a goose pen because he was a hermit and the town had just elected him bishop – he was too shy to face the crowd. Anyway, the geese thought he stunk so they started cackling and gave him away. He was so pissed off at the geese that he declaired they should be eaten once a year, as punishment. Nice guy.

Anyway, we thought this was wicked good, so here you go world, have fun cooking and enjoy!

We begin with the apple’s, a humble little treat, perfect for autumn:

3 medium-large apples
butter
1 tbs ground cinnamon
3 tbs castor sugar
2 tbs plain, white breadcrumbs

Peel and slice the apples, arrange the slices in a greased, ovenproof dish with a diamiter of about 30cm, dolloping a bit of butter between the layers as you go. Mix up your dry ingredients and pour the mixture over the apples, finishing off with another dollop or two of butter. This goes in the oven at 175 degrees celcius for about 30 minutes or until the apples are soft and the sugar/cinnamon mixture has caramelized into a crusty layer on top.

For the custard you will need:
1 egg
2 tbs castor sugar
1 tbs potato or corn starch
4 dl milk (full fat)
1-2 tbs vanilla sugar
Whipped cream to taste

Whisk together the cold egg, castor sugar, starch and milk in a saucepan. Heat the mixture carefully until it thickens a bit, making sure it doesn’t boil. Leave to cool. When the mixture is cool it should be quite thick. At this point add the vanilla sugar and whipped cream. Don’t use an aluminium whisk for this or the mixture will turn a sickly gray colour.

Super simple but delicious crab soup

Get a couple of nice big crabs. They should be very alive! (You can use crabmeat and ready made stock for this but that totally takes the fun out of it… I mean, who can resist a bit of goo and gore??). After you clean the crab and take it’s meat out, boil the leftover shell for AT LEAST about 20 minutes to make a strong crab stock. Pour the stock through a sive, making sure there are no shell bits in the stock. You should be left with about 2-3 dl of strong crab stock. In order to make the rest of the soup you will need:

4 dl milk
1 dl cream
Your crab stock
a small pinch chilli flakes
a sprig of chopped, fresh dill
Your crab meat
Salt and Pepper to taste

This soup is super simple… you did the hard part with the crabs. Basically, just pour it all in a saucepan and heat up, cook for about 5-8 minutes or until the crabmeat is done. Make sure to season it well, you may need to add some fish stock.

The Goose!

We got a 5 kg goose from our bird lady, she is awesome… she cleaned it all up for us and chopped off/pulled out all the yucky parts. To cook simply:

Clean off the goose and pat it dry. Rub it with half a lemon, inside and out, and season it with salt and pepper, also inside and out. Cut up a couple of apples roughly and stuff the goose with them, along with some prunes. I used about 2 apples and 15 prunes. Secure the cavities, with toothpicks, string, whatever you’ve got, so that the stuffing doesn’t fall out. A lot of cookbooks called for “sewing up” the bird, but I thought that was overkill so I just used toothpicks. Place in a baking tray with tall edges and stick a meat thermometer, if you have one, into the meatiest part of the goose (we chose the breast). Pour some chicken stock around the goose into the bottom of the baking tray. Your oven should be on 180 degrees centigrade and the Goose will need a few hours in there with basting every half an hour or so. Ours took just under three hours to cook The temperature on your meat thermometer should read about 80-85 degrees when the bird is done. If the goose starts to look to brown (happened to ours after 45 minutes), cover with some aluminium foil. When it’s done, take it out and let it rest for a while. Voila! Not as hard as I had imagined.

Apple sauce

Why people don’t always make their own apple sauce is a mystery to me. All you need to do is cut up some apples and let them cook in a bit of water and sugar for a while. I even do it without sugar and use the sauce on my porrage in the morning. Anyway, for the goose condiment, cook about one and a half chopped, peeled and cored apples in some (just cover the apples, no more) water, about a tablespoon of sugar, another tablespoon of brandy and a very tiny pinch of chilli flakes. Cook until tender and saucy.

Swedish red cabbage

This is awesome. You will need:

a head of red cabbage (about 1 kg)
half a dl of syrup (golden, not maple)
half a dl of red wine vinegar
half a dl of water (or red cooking wine)
a good pinch of salt and pepper
8-10 whole cloves

Slice the cabbage into fine, long strips. I usually do this with a cheese slicer but Jonas does it with a sharp knife so I guess whatever works. Put it in the saucepan with all the other ingredients, mix well and cook it on low heat for about an hour.

Potatoes

Peel em, cut em up into small cubes and fry in a frying pan with a good pinch of salt until golden brown. Finish them up in the oven (while the goose is resting and you are

eating the soup) if not cooked through.

Sauce

3 tbs butter
1 tbs plain flour
4 dl goose juice (leftovers from the baking tray, after the goose is done)
1 dl cream
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter and stir in the flour making sure it becomes a smooth mixture, add your goose juice and whisk until smooth and light brown, add the cream and season. Easy peasy.

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