Real Chocolate Wafers

It's a bit of a mystery why these are called "Real Chocolate Wafers" since they're actually made with cocoa. But apart from that they are good, basic chocolate cookies, made with your normal chocolate cookie ingredients, rolled out and cut into different shapes.

I made these for my sons birthday about a month ago. The cut-out letters are the first letters of the names of the kids invited to the party. The cookies are a little bit bitter from the cocoa, but the kids really loved them and gobbled them up in no time at all. The big rounds I've put in the freezer, they're waiting for the right occasion to become ice cream sandwiches.

Roasted Squash Soup with Cocoa Bean Cream

A great thing about "Bittersweet" is that there is an entire chapter of savoury foods using chocolate and cocoa. I love the idea, but I've had some mixed experiences about using chocolate in food before so I thought it would be really interesting to see if the recipes here would work or not.

The first dish I've tried out is "Roasted Squash Soup with Cocoa Bean Cream". This soup is made by roasting a butternut squash in the oven with some olive oil. The squash is then mixed with some stock and sage, drawing on the classic combo of pumpkin and sage. Then the twist is added, by first boiling some cocoa nibs in cream, ladling the cream on top of the soup, and then sprinkling some cocoa nibs on top as well.

This soup was divine. The flavours came together and played off one another just beautifully. The squash contributed sweetness, the sage was dry and, well, herby, the stock was salty and the cocoa nibs added bitterness and crunch. I'm really intrigued by the chocolate and sage combo. I don't think I've ever seen them together before. I've been thinking of using it again in all kinds of preparations. What about "Dark Chocolate and Sage Truffles" or "Milk Chocolate and Sage Pannacotta" or in home made ice cream? There is just an universe out there waiting to be explored!

Bittersweet by Alice Medrich

Time to pick a new book. As I've been talking about nothing but chocolate for a while, the natural choice for a cookbook is "Bittersweet" by Alice Medrich.It's a 370 page book containing nothing but chocolate recipes.

 

Chocolate Festival Loot

My main objective, going to the Chocolate Festival, was tasting lots and lots of chocolate, preferably for free, and maybe buy a few morsels as well to take home. The exhibitors were, of course, all into selling chocolate, luring innocent (or not so innocent) bypasses into spending lots of money on their warez by offering a first little taste for free. A marriage made in heaven!

I had set myself a mental budget of 500 Swedish Kronas (=74 USD). That much I could spend without having to feel bad about my chocolate habits. And I ended up on nearly exactly that. I also had a plan to skip most of the ready made pastries, truffles, boxes of chocolates etc. and instead go for more baking ingredient like stuff that can be harder to come by doing the everyday shopping.

First, the chocolate. Before going I had my mind set on buying a couple of Valhrona bars, but after a big tasting around I found this label, Barry Callenbaut. It was half the price from Valhrona and I thought it tasted at least as good. Also, the pellet format is much handier when baking, so I got these ones instead. There is 200 grams in each bag, and the chocolate is made from beans from Grenada, Madagascar, Ecuador, San Tomé, some palce starting with an F that I cant make out and then there is a bag of common white cooking chocolate as well.

"Plaisir Miel", a chocolate and honey paste. Similar to Nutella but with a more caramel like taste. According to the vendor, great in cakes and pastries.

Italian Licorice powder. Also for use in baking. I have never used it myself but it's supposed to be divine used in ice cream, panna cottas etc. I'm dying to find out.

Chocolate and sea salt covered almonds. This one I've already given away to my mother in law who babysat my 4 year old, giving me the free time to go to the chocolate festival.

Filipino unrefined sugar. I've been meaning to buy one of these for a long time.

I'd never seen one of these before so I bought it out of pure curiosity. The vendor told me they're commonly used in savoury dishes in South America. It contains cocoa and spices such as nutmeg and bay leaf and you're supposed to grate it in order to use. Will be interesting to try out!

Not chocolate at all, but salty licorice with a salmiak, chilli and cranberry flavour. This is, seriously, the best salty licorice I've ever had.

Chilli spiked fudge cake

Fudge cake (Kladdkaka) is a Swedish modern classic. If the food at high school had been bad, me and my friends used to make a fudge cake after coming home and preferably gobble it up before our moms came home and gave us a lecture about what would happen if we kept on ruining our appetites on food with questionable nutritional value.

This cake is based on a recipe I've used hundreds of times, with a little twist - the addition of cocoa nibs and ancho chilli, in order to make more interesting.

Chilli Spiked Fudge Cake

100 grams butter
2 eggs
3 dl sugar
2,5 dl flour
pinch of salt
4 tablespoons cocoa
2 tablespoons of Santa Maria Cocoa Chilli mix (if you don't know this brand, see my approximation below)

Stir everything together.
Pour into an oiled pan.
Bake for 18 minutes in 200 degrees C (=400 degrees F). It's supposed to be very sticky.
Serve with whipped cream alongside a cup of freshly brewed coffee.


Santa Maria Cocoa Chilli Mix approximation

1,5 tablespoons cocoa nibs
0,5 tablespoons ancho chilli flakes
0,5 teaspoon cassia cinnamon
Splash of vanilla extract.

Stir everything together.
Use in fudge cake.

Scandinavian trends in chocolate

Last Friday, me and my friend Anna-Karin visited the Chocolate Festival that is held annually here in Stockholm. The exhibitors are a mixed lot, there are bakeries and patisserie shops, chocolate importers, manufacturers, magazine companies and a big stage with live pastry making going on. A great place to be if you love your chocolate, that is :)

The far biggest trend this year was using salt, licorice and salmiak with chocolate. About every vendor had some truffles sprinkled with flaky sea salt or chocolate bars with salt ground in with chocolate. "Salty licorice" was another big thing, it's a traditional Swedish licorice preparation where the licorice is spiced up with salmiak. I'm not sure if salmiak is used at all outside Scandinavia, I've never seen it abroad. It's a very intense tasting salt that takes the skin off your tongue if eaten to much.

The main coming thing, I think, is preparations with raw cocoa. There have been bars with cocoa nibs around for a while, but now there were bars made from just pressed raw cocoa of different granularities and brown sugar. I suppose it's an extension of the global "going natural, no additives" trend.

Chilli was the biggest thing last year, there were still lots of chilli preparations, but I felt that one has peaked by now.

Summary - The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook

Time to wrap up my Italian Vegetarian theme. I found these dishes very useful for a quick lunch for myself but my son was unfortunately not very impressed with the veggies...

The author of the book, Jack Bishop, has a blog containing lots of  vegetarian recipes at: http://captious.wordpress.com/

Quick data:
Title: The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook
Author: Jack Bishop
Length: 568 pages
Recipe quality: 5 out of 5
Recipe complexity: 1 out of 5 (seriously, they are very easy)
Organization: 2 out of 5
Index quality: 4 out of 5
Food Porn Vale: 2 out of 5

Pros:

• LOTS of very easy to prepare vegetarian recipes. As long as there is one vegetable in your kitchen I can near guarantee you that there will be a recipe in this book you can cook.
• All recipes come with serving suggestions
• Italian + vegetables = Healthy but hardly ever bland or boring.
• I'd say this book is very useful even if you're not a vegetarian. This is the best resource for Italian style side dishes  I know of.

Cons:

• This book is WAY to big. Each recipe gets at least a page, even if the text takes up just half the page, and lots of recipes are very similar. I'd liked more master recipes with variations, in order to make the book easier to carry around in the kitchen.
• I would have liked more main courses. This is an issue with all my vegetarian cookbook, there is lots of salads, soups and sides but the main course chapters usually have a somewhat lesser feeling about themselves.

Salad with Orange Juice Vinegraitte and Toasted Walnuts

A super simple green salad made from fresh leaves, roasted walnuts and shallots with a dressing made of fresh orange juice and walnut oil. Not the bite you normally expect from a vinaigrette type of dressing, but much softer and more mellow. The toasted walnut add spine and direction to what would otherwise be a rather bland mixture. 

Orange and walnuts are a combo I usually associate with Xmas food, and I think this salad would be a great addition to all the salty and fatty foodstuffs people in Sweden love to stuff themselves with at Christmas time. I've put a Xmas tag on this post, and hopefully I'll remember it in December.

 

Fava Bean Purée on Crackers

These beauties I picked up at the farmers market this weekend. I'm not sure what they are called in English, in fact I don't even know what they are called in Swedish, but I decided to put them to use in a recipe for "Crostini with Puréed Fava Beans". That couldn't be to far off the mark.

Green beans

A starter recipe with lots of steps, first, the beans had to be shelled:

Shelled beans, aren't they beautiful?

Then, they had to be boiled.
After boiling, the thick white skin on each bean had to be removed by hand, and an "inner bean", all spring green, revealed itself.
The "inner bean" was then mashed with salt and olive oil.
The last step was smearing the purée on crostinis, but since I didn't have any crostini on hand, I used crackers, like in the third pic:

Spread on crackers

And the taste? Well, they were ok. A bit like those dried green peas on can buy as snacks. But a lot of work considering the outcome.

Red Wine Risotto with Rosemary and Garlic

Risottos are not something that I do a lot. I've tried it a few times but, in fact, I've never been happy with the result. Therefore I couldn't wait to try one out from "The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook" and hopefully add it to my repertoire of "black dress" dishes (stuff that goes with anything).

However, risottos are tricky. Not really technique-wise, it's all about boiling rice. The problem is that this rice needs to be stirred and have stock added to it for at least 30 consequent minutes. And that is a very long time when you have 2 hungry little kids competing for your attention!

But I tried to be organized and plan ahead. My 4 year old, I placed in the sofa in front of the TV with a big supply of tomato wedges and cucumber slices. My baby girl (she's only 3 months old and hasn't started to eat solid food yet, that's why I don't mention her a lot in the blog), I put in her little baby chair where I could look at her and talk to her all the time, making sure she was well fed and recently changed.

Then I started to cook. First, the rice is fried in oil with garlic, rosemary and scallions. Then half a cup of red wine is added. When that is absorbed stock is added little by little until the rice is all soft and done. At the end, lots of grated  parmesan cheese is added.

And, I managed to pull the dish off. The fried garlic and rosemary made the kitchen smell magical. I served the risotto with chicken and it was absolutely delicious. The only negative comment I have about this is that the colour of the risotto was very dull. I had expected something more ruby-ish, as I used red wine, but it turned out a rather unappealing shade of brown. Maybe the stock had to much yellow turmeric in it. I use a Swedish vegan brand that tastes very good, but the next time I might use another brand, or simply add some more wine at the very end of cooking.

Pasta with Sautéed Fennel and Fresh Tomatoes

Can't have an Italian cookbook without some pasta dishes in it! In the "Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook" there are 41 pasta recipes, and several of the side dishes or polenta toppings would work out great as pasta toppings as well.

The pasta dish I chose to try out is made with fennel and fresh tomatoes. It's a fast and simple dish, anyone who has figured out how to turn on the stove will be able to cook it.

Start out by sautéeing the fennel in olive oil with some garlic. Throw in the tomatoes and cook until everything is done and  the tomatoes have gone all mushy and saucy. Toss with pasta and serve with some parmesan cheese, black pepper and nice olive oil on the side.

Most of the pasta recipes in the book are built around one or two types of vegetables that get cooked in an optimal way, pasta sauce wise. They can be stewed in a tomato sauce, simply tossed with olive oil, roasted in the oven or tossed with ricotta. Note though, as in most recipes that contain few ingredients, each ingredient gets a lot of exposure. That means that this dish will taste just as good (or bad) as the quality of the ingredients used.

Creamy Carrot Soup

Here is a great meal for cold autumn nights. A simple puréed carrot soup, the first dish in the Soup chapter of "The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook".

The recipe is straightforward. First, slice some carrots into pieces. Sautée them quickly with garlic and shallots in butter. Add vegetable stock and boil until carrots feel soft. Then, add some cream and purée everything in a mixer. Taste, then add salt, pepper, lemon or whatever makes the soup sing.

This is one of my favourite technique to showcase a single kind of vegetable, and I've tried it on lots of different vegetables before. Some good ones to cook this way are:

• Peas
• Leeks and potatoes
• Jerusalem Artichokes (my favourite)
• Spinach

Actually, I can't think of a single vegetable that wouldn't turn out good puréed as a soup.

My son loves raw carrots and he loves his "välling", a kind of loose milky porridge commonly fed to small children here in Sweden. I figured that this soup would be a neat hybrid of those two favourites of his so he just HAD to like it. Did he? No, not at all. He thought it was an awful way to destroy good carrots. So I'll be feeding him his carrots raw now onwards.

 

On a closer look the soup is not completely puréed, it's full of small chunks of carrot. That's what happens if you're not patient enough to let the carrots cook until they are all really soft and not just "kinda softer than before". The toppings, feta cheese and parsley worked out nice. And, some home made bread (this is the "10 Grain Torpedo" from The Bread Bible) was the perfect accompaniment.

The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook by Jack Bishop

For most part of the year it's just not possible to get locally produced vegetables here in Sweden, but in September and October there is a great little farmers market not very far from where I live. I love to go there, buy whatever looks nice and them go home, look in my cookbooks and figure out how to cook my new acquisitions.

Actually, the only food shopping I like more is being drunk in an ethnic store, buying whatever seems like a good idea at the time. Dont worry! I don't do this a lot, actually it has only happened once, but I'll never forget the look in my husbands face the next day, holding a half kilo package of tofu skins, asking, "And how did you say we were going to cook these?"

But, never mind, returning to my original veggie track, the next cookbook I'm doing here is "The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook".

It's a huge book, containing lots of relatively easy preparations for vegetables. As veggies are generally not a big hit with my son, I'm hoping to find some new preparations that he (and my husband and myself) actually like.

Flu Fighter Sorbet

Here is a recipe I want to share that I worked out myself. Honey, ginger and lemons are all well known cold remedies, and I figured putting them into a sorbet just had to be the best thing for treating a sour throat.

• 4 dl water
• 1/2-1 dl honey (or more to taste)
• 2 big knobs of ginger (the older the ginger the hotter the flavour)
• 3 lemons (or more to taste)

Cut the ginger into pieces. You don't have to peel it.
Heat the water until boiling.
Throw in the ginger pieces. Remove the pot from the heat.
Add the honey, let it melt.
Chill the mixture to "refrigerator temperature".
Squeeze in all the juice from the lemons.
Taste! If you like it sweeter, add more honey. If you like it tarter, add more lemon. It's supposed to taste good ;)
Strain the mixture through a sieve to remove ginger and lemon pips.
Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker.

Note 1: About the amount of honey, preference for sweetness is highly personal.  1/2 dl honey does not make a very sweet sorbet at all. I like it this way because I'm raised in Sweden on lättmjölk and lördagsgodis (low fat milk and eating sweets only once a week), but I think most people will like at least 1 dl of honey, if not more.

Note 2: If you're to lazy (or desperate) to wait for the mixture to first cool down, and then freeze, you can of course drink it warm as a herbal tea. Just pour the lemon juice in along with the honey.

Starting up the ice cream maker

Summary - Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen

Ok, I'm done with this one for now. It's a great book, the best I've seen for getting into Vietnamese cooking from a European standpoint. I'd recommend it to anyone serious about making tasty Vietnamese food at home.

Quick data:
Title: Into the Vietnamese Kitchen
Author: Andrea Nguyen
Length: 344 pages
Recipe quality: 5 out of 5
Recipe complexity: 3 out of 5 (ranging between 1 and 4.5)
Organization: 5 out of 5
Index quality: 4 out of 5
Food Porn Vale: 4 out of 5

Pros:

• Great variety, there actually even is a charcuterie chapter! But I haven't tried making my own sausages yet.
• Clear instructions and explanations.
• Nice anecdotes and stories of the authors family.
• All recipes I've tried work, although not all dishes are "me".

Cons:

• The only thing I can think of is that I'd like more vegetable/vegetarian recipes. Common cold weather vegetables like cauliflower, carrots and cabbage are considered "fancy" in South east Asia so I'd love to get more ideas how to cook them.

Fresh springrolls

The Vietnamese take on "taco night". You choose basically whatever stuff you like,  wrap it into a soft little parcel of rice paper, then dip the whole thing into sauce and eat it. In "Into the Vietnamese Kitchen" there are 3 different takes on springrolls; there are "Southern Salad Rolls" with shrimp, pork, noodles and herbs, "Beef and Jiacama Hand Rolls" and "Shrimp and Crab Rolls".

Filling the spring roll

We chose to make real simple ones, containing shrimps, noodles, spring onion and herbs. The wrapping is bought in hard dried sheets that you soak in water to soft them up. These work great with my (now) 4 year old son, we just make sure that there is some stuff he likes and then let him manage his rolls on his own.  

Ready to eat

Egg, shrimp and scallion pancakes

These little fellas, that really are more of omelets than pancakes, are one of the easiest recipes in "Into the Vietnamese Kitchen". Just whisk together some eggs. Throw in some shrimps and chopped scallion pieces. Some salt and pepper and that's it. With rice and Vietnamese dipping sauce they are a great little lunch.The dipping sauce is crucial though, without it the pancakes just wont shine.