Brussels Sprouts w Lemon
Brussels sprouts are really cute. They look like tiny little heads of cabbage and often when I see them in the store, they’re just begging to be brought home. But when I do, I often find myself at a loss with what to actually do with them. I often end up just slicing them and putting them in a salad.
But today I decided to cook them and butter is always a good bet when Brussels sprouts are concerned. Match the butter with a bit of lemon and add a hint of chili and you have a pretty awesome dish, to be eaten along with couscous like I did or as a side dish. If you are a meat eater, I think it’d go very well with chicken.
You need:
250 g Brussels sprouts
25 gr butter
the juice of 1/2 lemon
1 chili, chopped
a pinch of salt
- Rinse and clean the sprouts and cut them in halves.
- Mash the butter with the lemon juice, the chili and the salt. Don’t worry if it doesn’t mix that well, it’ll all come together once the butter has melted anyway.
- Put the Brussels sprouts in an oven-proof dish of appropriate size (i.e. not too big).
- Spread the butter on top of the sprouts.
- Put in a preheated oven at 220 °C (425 °F) for app 20-25 min. Stir occasionally so that all the sprouts get baked in the butter. Make sure it doesn’t burn.
If you want, you can add a little extra butter before serving. Enjoy!
Kale w Cream and Garlic
This is very similar to a traditional Christmas dish from the south of Sweden, served along with ham for Christmas dinner. Being native Stockholmers, my family never makes it for Christmas though, but I love this variation of it with pasta. All sorts of cabbage tend to be underrated – which is a pity because treated the right way (aka not just boiled until mushy), cabbage is actually very good. And kale is actually a fabulous vegetable. It’s very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C, lutein and zeaxanthin and reasonably rich in calcium. Not to mention full of fibres, very tasty and quite pretty (at least until cooked).
Here’s how to:
About 300 g kale
1 tbsp butter
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 cup vegetable broth (strong)
1/2 cup cream
2 tbsp pasta water
salt, pepper
- Tear the kale leaves from the stems and rip it into pieces – not to small. Through away the stems.
- Heat some butter in a pot and and when it’s golden toss the garlic and the kale into it. Turn down the heat. Let the kale soften a little. Keep stirring and make sure it doesn’t burn, but it should turn slightly gold brown in places.
- After about 5 minutes, pour the broth onto it and put on a lid. Allow to simmer for about 20 minutes.
- Drain the cabbage and put it back into the pot. Add the cream and the pasta water and heat it until it’s on the verge of boiling.
- Take it off the heat and taste with salt and pepper.
Serve with pasta and if you wish, a little Parmesan and/or pine nuts.
Carrot Variation
After eating a lot of heavy Christmas food I felt I needed something light; something crunchy and preferably sour and spicy. But I didn’t really want to go out either – I wanted to stay inside where it’s warm and cosy and I had my Christmas books and my furry slippers. And to be perfectly honest I didn’t really want to have to work to hard either.
Luckily, I had carrots, cilantro and some beautiful chilies that I bought right before Christmas for no other reason than that they were pretty.
So the result was a variation on a recipe I’ve posted before. The last one was inspired by Middle Eastern food, but with very few modifications I ended up with something that was very close to Thai food. And it was spicy, slightly sour and full of carotene so I was perfectly happy.
Here’s how to (for one person):
2 carrots
1 clove of garlic
1/2 – 1 chili (depending on how hot it is and how spicy you want it)
1 – 2 tsp tahini
the juice from 1/2 lemon
a pinch of brown sugar
a pinch of salt
some cilantro/coriander leaves
a little olive oil
1 tbsp peanut, chopped or crushed
- Peel and grate the carrots.
- Chop the garlic and chili very finely.
- Heat a little oil and fry them until the garlic turns golden around the edges.
- Put in the carrots and add lemon juice and tahini. Stir until carrots are softish – they should retain a slight crispiness.
- Taste with some salt and a little sugar.
- Chop the cilantro and sprinkle it over the food (or simply cut it with a pair of scissors over it; that’s my way of doing it).
- Finish by spreading the peanuts over the dish.
Serve with rice.
Peanut & Strawberry Chocolate Treats
I had great plans for Christmas and had planned to post a few recipes I’ve made, but instead I’ve spent the last few days trying to cope with Christmas AND the worst cold in the history of humanity. If I don’t make an astonishing recovery I probably won’t be able to tell what any of the food tastes like. Which quite frankly sucks. But at least the others will be able to enjoy the stuff I made.
Before I was hit by Killer Cold I made a batch of Swedish TV-chef Leila Lindholm’s Rocky Road, which you can find in English over at Anne’s Food. 
And because it was yummy and I wanted more yummy I improvised a variation (and I didn’t measure anything so sorry for the inexact recipe):
100 g milk chocolate
2 handfuls of salted peanuts
50 g of dried strawberries
- Cut the strawberries into halves (or if they’re big, in even smaller pieces).
- Melt the chocolate. There is a thousand ways to do this, and most people seem to prefer the microwave, but I don’t feel I have enough control that way. I prefer the way my mother used to do it – boil some water in a pan, turn it down so it simmers and put a plate on top. Put the chocolate on the plate, a little at a time until it’s soft and completely smooth.
- Stir in the peanuts and the strawberries.
- Pour in a lined tin of appropriate size and if like me, you live in a country with proper Christmas weather, put it outside to settle. Otherwise, use the fridge.
- Cut it into pieces and enjoy.
It’s best to keep this in the fridge, because they melt pretty easily. And as candy goes, it’s quite sweet, but the salty peanuts keeps it from being too sweet. Salt and milk chocolate is actually an awesome combination!
Merry Christmas!
pea soup on the go
I noted recently that my friends on Facebook have voted me “most organized”. I found that highly amusing, because anyone who knows me well, knows that I am anything but. If I’m anything, I’m the Queen of Organized Chaos.
One of the ways this manifests itself in is that I’m often startled by the fact that, gee, I need to eat today as well! And as I also get hugely cranky when I’m hungry I need to get something fast!
This soup is the result of one of those “feed me quick”-moments.
You need (for 4 cups):
2 cups of vegetable stock (or water with 2 stock cubes)
2 cups of frozen peas
1 tsp forest spice blend
1/2 milk
Wasabi yogurt:
Greek/Turkish (that is fat) yogurt
wasabi to taste
- Put the stock in a pot together with the frozen peas and the spice blend. Bring to boil.
- Meanwhile, mix yogurt and wasabi to the strength you prefer.
- When the stock is boiling, remove from heat and add the milk. Mix it smooth, preferably with a stick blender.
- Pour in a cup and add a dollop of wasabi yogurt. Drink and enjoy!
Greek Yogurt (a love story)
There are some things I just cannot do without. As far as ingredients go, one of them is Greek or Turkish yogurt.
When I grew up, yogurt was thin and runny and mostly fruit-flavored, but as time went on and our area got more ethnically diversified, I discovered that yogurt wasn’t just for breakfast and dessert, but for cooking as well. Back in those days, you couldn’t buy the proper kind of yogurt, so I would buy ordinary, plain, one and strain it for a few hours until it was thick and creamy. These days, however, I can not only choose between a variety of brands, but also between Greek or Turkish yogurt. My local store even has the sheep milk option available. And they say that progress is an illusion…
Anyway, the important thing is the level of fat. 8 % is OK, but 10 % is ideal. When that fat, it handles heating pretty well, and it has the creamy texture and rich flavor you need to make a nice tsatsiki or my favourite Indian spinach dish or a gazillion other things that I eat on a regular basis. Or, try it with a little vanilla to accompany your apple pie or simply with some, golden sticky honey and maybe some walnuts. The world’s easiest and possibly tastiest dessert!
