Winterfood- Flæskesteg

Flæskesteg- roast pork the Danish fashion with bayleaves and salt.We eat it with Brown potatoes (caramelled small potatoes) , white potatoes, lots of gravy, picked redcabage and hmmmm...the crispy crispy skin is the best..and always reminds me of xmas and winter and snow and mmmm...

When the snow is falling..its time for homemade waffels

When the snow is falling and the kids walk hom from school for the first time alone  in the white and crisp snow and their cheeks are burning red from the cold,  its time a good mummy gets up and makes hot chokolate and waffels with whipped cream and blueberry jam.)

I make a dough of eggs, milk, a tiny bit water, a pinch of salt, sugar, vanilla and some flour, and small teaspoon of baking powder- mix it up well and then add some melted but cooled  butter and mix it in. Let it stand for half an hour before cooking the dough in your waffel iron. I use an old fashioned one, the kind you put on your stowe and turn around as u bake it. Its messy and more work, but its good..like good wafels should be;)

An old woman I have known all my life told me a trick from the southern part of Denmark where she comesa from: put a couple of spoonfuls of snow in the dough just before baking it- makes them fluffier and crispier!

You take one duck and inflate it!

Peking duck! This has to be the silliest thing I ever cooked. The recepy  it self was sooo funny..starting with the following instruction:’ You take the duck, dry it up, inflate the duck with a bicycle pump.... ‘. It took me days and it was so much trouble for a little housewife like me- but it was worth it. It didnt presented itself  like a real Peking duck, but then again..I am just a housewife;) But I read somewhere to my own consolation that a Peking Duck chef works for 10 years before actually getting to cook a duck! Its an art! This is my homemade art:

Anyways..so I took the duck...dried it in front of a ventilater for a day or so..inflated it..and NO..the bycycle pump didnt work, so I just sort of blew some air in with a straw. The trick is to get the skin as crispy as u can and still have the meat as tender as can be. When you dry the surface of it..the skins starts to loosen from the skin and the reason why you force air in is to make a pocket of air between the skin and the meat. Then I basted it in some sauce and cooked it and voila..served with spring onions, hoisinsauce, and cucumber- and not to forget the mandarin pancakes to roll it all up in...mmmm....its sooo good once you had it, you will always want more! In real Peking Duck kitchens you get the meat and the skin served seperately- the skin is so crispy its unbelievable and the meat so tender and moist! My skin wasnt that succesfull so I just sliced the duck very thinly;)

Apetizers with olive tapernade

So this is a little snack to be served with a drink or just as an appetizer- they are quick to make, you can freeze the unbaked rolls and thraw them just before you bake them! Easy and tasty and looks so good;)

Get a roll of Puff pastery, lay it out flat on the table. Take a jar of black olives ( they are more deocorative) mix it in a small blender with a clove of garlic, a few pieces of sundried tomatoe, some lemon juice, some lemon peel, a pinch of salt or a few salted anchoves and some red chilie if you like;)

 Blend and spread out on the puff pastery- and roll it up. Leave it cool for a couple of hours till cold and harden- then cut it out thinly and bake in oven will light brown and crispy.

Sticky Rice with banana and black beans

Sticky rice in bananaleaves- also called Khao Tom Madt in Thai is a very common snack/dessert you can buy from streetvendors. They taste wonderfully sweet from the coconut milk, the soft ripe banana and then the contradiction, which is so common in Thai food:  little salty black beens in the middle of all the sweetness.

Thai desserts/ snacks are often this funny combinations of contradictions: sweet/salty/sour/.
Sticky rice ( glutinous rice) is eaten in many different ways- sometimes you roll it to a ball and dip it in sauces, sometimes its steamed in bananaleaves and fílled with sweet or savoury things- like here banana and black beans and sometimes, rolled to a triangle with chicken, beans and hot stuff. I have read somewhere that sticky rice makes you very tired so never eat a handfull or you'll be very tired! But if this is actually true or not I dont know;)


Here is yet one of my unprecise recipies:

1 kg Sticky / Glutionus rice
1-2 cans of coconut milk
Sugar (sugar cane sugar or palm sugar) lots of it

Some salt

Black salted beans

Bananas/ plantaine

Banana leaves ( to steam in.)

The rice:

1. Leave the rice to soak in water for 5-6 hours.

2. Steam them in a bamboo steamer i a nice even layer on some damp cloth or some baking paper for about 30-40 minutes.

3. Cook the rice with coconut milk, sugar and salt to taste ( it has to be sweet yet a tiny bit salty) cook untill all the coconut milk has been absorbed in the rice. They shouldnt get too hard or too soft- they must never be soggy!

Preparations of the leaves and wrapping:

 1.Cut the leaves into pieces that are appropiate, put them in the sink, pour boiling water over them and dry them carefully with a clean cloth. Grease the pieces of leaves so the rice wont stick to them.

2. Place a suitable layer of rice, a little piece of banana and some beans in the midle then rice on top. press it together to a small cake and wrap the package as you see on the picture. Continue till you run out of rice.

The Steaming:

Place the wrapped rice in a bamboo steamer and steam them till they are done- maybe 10-20 minutes, depending on the size.

You can freeze them and reheat them in a steamer or the microwave- this snack takes so long to make it seems more economic to make a lot of them and freeze them;)

Pan Forte!!!

So..its Italien, its delicious, its hard, its tasty, it's nutty, its sweet..its just soooooo goood

I bought mine in Irma, and its was so nice that I have to share some pics to make u all run down and buy one- or make one!

Sarah Bernhardt...simple as can be

Its doesnt get any simplier than this! It doesnt get much better than this either! Its takes a while as many good things but its not difficult and it cant fail!

1.Take half a liter of  full fat cream ( the kind you can whip!) melt 300 gr of dark chokolate in it, always make sure it doesnt stick to the buttom of the pan- leave it to cool for a couple of hours. Note: I didnt disolve the chokolate completely this time, as I wanted to try with some small bits of chokolates, but normally it has to be completely disolved.

2. Whip the chokolate cream and top little ( or big) macaroons witth stiff chokolate cream as shown on the pic- use a knife and just scoop it on and form it to a cone. Put them in the frigde for at least a few hours until cream harden again

3..coat the cones with dark chokolate and decorate with a small candied violet! Keep them cool- and watch out..they disappear before u know it!

Mmm cant wait..my fridge is full of them!!

Sweets - with love from Greece!!

This is a fantastic Greek candy my Greek friend M. send me for xmas: Chalvadopites. She tells me they make it during all seasons and its soft to begin with- and as times goes it goes harder.

She knows how much we love them, so this year she send us 5!! The first time we tasted them, we just loved them at once- they are amazing nougats and I actually kept one from when she came to visit last- not wanting to eat the last one, as I knew it was very speciel- but now as we have so many, we'll eat the delicious candy!! mmm

And chewing gum!!

My friend S send me some wonderful cookies from a famous bakery- traditional  xmas cookies- and they are wonderful- even the youngest who doesnt really like cake, loves them! We fight over the last crumbs!

Melomakarona and kourabiedes

Melomakarona ( meli means honey in Greek)

Kourabiedes, mmm....very light, very delicate, incredible crunchy and crumbly- my all time favorite! I once tried to make the kourabiedes myself last year, but I have to admit..they were no where near as good as these, but they sort of looked almost right, didnt they?

These are my attempt last year;)

Um...I am in love!!

Every 23.nd of December we spend with some close friends Mr. and Mrs. H. - we drink Glögg and eat sweet stuff and relax before xmas starts - and again this year Mrs H. brought her sweet littlebrother to visit and once again he brought us the most wonderful box of chokolates I ever saw.

 This year he brought all the way from Schweiz the most fantastic box of chokolates - a golden box with icecrystals, where the pattern was so superbly matched that the pattern on the lid continued on the box it self!

It really doesnt get any better than this!!

Kleiner- Danish cakes/ cookies

Kleiner- Danish cakes for xmas

So, I made Kleiner from a recipy I got from a collegue who got it from her mother! They are thinner and crispier than the Kleiner you buy - I have to admit, I prefer this to the fat, soft ones we buy. Kleiner are made of a dough, you roll out thinly and then cut it- fold it and then fry it on boiling oil. They must be really fattening, but to our defense, we only eat them once a year!

The recipy will come as soon as I remember where I put it-but here you can see the some of the steps: 1. the cutting the pastery, the folding and the finished cakes.