potato pancake
Quite frankly, I don’t eat as much potato as I should. It’s an excellent root vegetable; cheap, nutritious, can be bought locally grown almost anywhere… And you can make so many good things with it. Still, I don’t use it much. I think it’s the peeling that keeps me from it. Peeling potatoes isn’t fun and since I’m allergic to raw potato (true!) my hands get red and itchy unless I use kitchen gloves.
Anyway, a while back I had an exchange with a friend about all the good things you can make with potatoes and I brought up the traditional Swedish potato pancake – the råraka! I promised I’d post the recipe here but after I made them, I felt sort of silly. There isn’t really a recipe because it’s just potato!
You need:
3-4 potatoes a person
LOTS of butter
How to:
- Peel the potatoes and grate them finely.
- Salt.
- Then (and this is the trick) let them rest for at least 15 minutes.
- Heat a pan and melt about a tsp of butter. Let it turn golden and turn the heat down.
- Put some grated potato in the pan and flatten it until it’s very thin. It doesn’t matter if it’s full of holes and looks like it won’t stick together – it will. I think it’s the starch that does it.
- Let it fry on a pretty low heat for about seven to ten minutes.
- Turn it and let it fry until golden brown.
- Add a little butter before each pancake or it’ll stick and turn into a potato heap rather than pancake.
You could serve these little suckers with almost anything, instead of say french fries or potato gratin, but the traditional Swedish way is to serve them with salted fatty pork or bacon and lingonberry jam. They’re also excellent topped with fish roe and smetana à la blinis or with smoked salmon or whatever you can think of. Melting a little cheese on top is a nice variation too. As a vegetarian option I tried them with Arugula/rocket leaves and my standard sweet & sour sesame soy sauce. It gave them a very un-Swedish flavor, but turned out to be excellent! As the sauce is quite salty though, you should be quite careful not to overdose it.
quick pasta
Maybe size doesn’t matter, but shape sure does. I’m talking about pasta now of course. I’m very particular about what shapes I like and don’t like. Now, you might say that they all taste the same, but quite frankly, that’s not true. The texture is different and so is the ability to catch the sauce you’ll most likely add. Some shapes only goes with certain suaces too.
These curly macs are one of my favorites. They’re called cellentani (at least that’s what Barilla calls them) and unfortunately, my local store only has the integrali kind. I prefer the traditional pure white, fast-carb kind but what do you do if that’s not available? I know what you don’t do – you don’t get farfalli instead (my least favorite kind, blerk)!
Anyway, here’s a way to use left-over pasta (of any shape):
1 portion of pasta
50 g tofu, very finely diced
olive oil
blue cheese, about 1 tbsp
salt, pepperpine nuts (about 1 tbsp)
- Heat the oil until very hot and fry the tofu in it until golden.
- Add the pasta and stir. Keep stirring until the pasta is hot.
- Toss in the pine nuts. Stir.
- Add the blue cheese and let it melt.
- Taste with salt and pepper.
Fake Tarte Flambée
So I haven’t posted in ages. My excuse is sickness (meaning one whole week on nothing but tea and a few nibbles of toast), travels (all over England) and now more sickness (I currently couldn’t tell curry from saffron, that’s the kind of cold I have). But now that I’m back I’m going talk about one of my absolute favorite dishes. It’s versatile, quick and easy and, while admittedly not healthy it’s good. I’m telling you, it’s reee-al good.
It all began a while back when I was travelling through Germany and France with a friend and I discovered the traditional Alsatian Tarte Flambée (in Germany it’s called Flammeküchen, but it’s basically the same dish). It’s sometimes called an Alsatian pizza, something that I’d like to object to as I don’t like pizza. This is nothing like it. Well, yes, you have a flat bread with filling on, but the dough is quite different from pizza – a lot lighter and puffier – and the filling is based on a mix of crème fraiche and fromage blanche, which forms a rich, creamy and yet surprisingly fresh background for whatever you want to add. Traditionally this would be lardons (cubes of fatty bacon) and onions, but the possible variations are endless. For example, I read one recipe with mushrooms, which the author claimed was how it was usually prepared in the rather sizeable Jewish community of pre-WWII Strasbourg.
Anyway, after I returned home I kept getting cravings for this dish so I decided to try to make something similar. Now, I was much too lazy to make real Tarte Flambée dough (but if you want to try it, there are several good recipes on the internet), so I used ready-made puff pastry. And since I don’t have any fromage blanche I made do with Greek yogurt. Being a vegetarian, I’ve also excluded the lardons. My two favourite fillings so far are one with smoked tofu and Chinese chives and then one with potatoes and asparagus.
For the base, you’ll need:
enough puff pastry to cover a baking sheet (rolled thin)
3 tbsp crème fraiche
3 tbsp yogurt
Filling 1:
50 g smoked tofu, cut into tiny cubes
about 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
Chines chives, cut into 1 – 1 1/2 inch long pieces
asparagus (optional – I used deep frozen) about 4-5
salt, pepper
truffle oil
Filling 2:
1 tsp dill
about 4 potatoes, sliced really thin
asparagus (I used deep frozen) – about 5 -6
salt, pepper, a little olive oil
- If the puff pastry comes already thin, put it on a lined baking sheet. Otherwise, roll it until it is very thin (the easiest way is to put it on the lined baking sheet and roll it there so you don’t have to move it).
- Mix yogurt and crème fraiche. If you make filling 2, add the dill.
- Spread the yogurt/crème fraiche evenly over the pastry.
- For filling 1: Distribute the tofu cubes and the mushrooms evenly. Put the asparagus on top of them (if you go for the asparagus option), and finish by sprinkling the Chinese chives on top. Add salt and pepper, and, finally, drip a little truffle oil over the tarte.
- For filling 2: Put the potato slices on the tarte, slightly overlapping each other, until the whole thing is covered. Add the asparagus, salt and pepper and finish with a little olive oil.
- Bake in the oven at 220 C for app 20 minutes.
Eat while hot. It’s delicious!
Crèpes Suèdoises
OK, so I could have called this Swedish pancakes but crèpes Suèdoises sounds a lot more elegant, plus “pancakes” is sort of misleading. Swedish pancakes have very little to do with American pancakes. They don’t contain baking powder and thus they’re not “fluffy” like American pancakes. But they’re pretty similar to French crèpes, which is something I love. Whenever I go to Paris I make sure to get myself over to the area around Gare Monparnasse where you’ll find some of the best crèperies in France. But then, the best crèpes I’ve had was in Reims, I think…
Sorry, got sidetracked! Back to Swedish pancakes.
Traditionally, you eat them with jam and maybe a little whipped cream on Thursdays after having pea soup. When I grew up I would put butter on the hot pancakes and then just spread sugar on top of them, but these days I love them with savoury toppings of all kinds too.
The recipe for pancakes is my mother’s and she has this annoying habit of giving it per person and then, at the end, adding: “and an extra egg” when I’ve already written it down (I keep losing this recipe so I keep calling her to get her to repeat it to me), but I’m giving what she considers suitable for two people (including the extra egg). I would have to be two very hungry people because it makes about 15 pancakes, but who am I to say how much you should eat?
You need:
3 eggs
4 dl milk (1 2/3 cup)
2 dl all-purpose flour (3/4 cup)
pinch of salt
1 tbsp melted butter + butter to fry
- Just whisk the eggs together and add the milk and finally the flour and salt.
- Whisk away any lumps and let it rest. I normally only give it about 15 minutes.
- Add the melted butter and you’re ready to go.
When you fry them, take care not to make them too thick. And since cold pancakes are no good, I always put a plate over a pot of simmering water and then put the pancakes on top of it. That way, they’ll stay warm and nice until they’re all done and it’s time too eat.
Now, like I said, savoury toppings are very nice – like, for example, poached spinach, Roquefort cheese and a little crème fraiche, bit this… This is beyond nice. Orange, chocolate and cream. It’s the perfect combination.
juice of 1 orange
2 tsp cointreau
whipped cream
chocolate sauce (recipe here)
- Mix the orange juice and the cointreau.
- Sprinkle it over the pancake (not all of it, just a tsp max).
- Put some whipped cream on it and coil a little chocolate sauce over it.
Enjoy it as dessert or with a cup of coffee, hot chocolate or other hot beverage of your choice.
Baked Potato Halves w Cheese and Chives
When I was making this dish I as reminded of a book I haven’t read in years and years – and I realized just how much that particular book is to blame for my food obsession. You see, when I was a child my mother would read the entire Little House on the Prairie-series to me and my older sister at least once a year. She claims I was just three the first time and I don’t know how much I actually understood of them that first time, but be as that may – over the year’s they’ve seeped in to my subconscious until they almost seem like memories, not of books read, but of events taking place.
Anyway, Farmer Boy was always one of my favorites. Leafing through it just now I realized that it’s one of the most sensual books I’ve read. There’s constant eating going on and it’s described in great detail – spicy, soft apple pie, crunchy pork and thick, rich cream. I still remember trying to feel all those flavors in my mouth as my mother read to me. Laura Ingalls Wilder is definitely partly to blame for this blog!
What brought the book to mind today was the incident when little Almanzo is baking potatoes in the open fire out in the cold and one of them explodes and almost blinds him. That story has served to make me a bit wary of hot, baked potatoes and you should be too. Otherwise I suggest you pick up Farmer Boy right now!
This dish doesn’t necessarily have to be made with a hot potato though. In fact, it’s perfect for when you have left over baked potatoes. If you’re lucky enough to have that, skip to step 2.
You need (per person):
1 Russet potato
3 tbsp crème fraiche (you might use sour cream instead but crème fraiche is thicker and fatter)
3 tbsp grated sharp cheddar cheese
3 tbsp chopped chives
salt and pepper to taste
Step 1:
- Wash the potato and make some holes in it using a fork (so as not to explode as poor Almanzo’s did).
- Bake it in the oven at 200 °C (400 °F) for about 40 – 60 minutes depending on size and shape. The important thing is that it’s soft all the way through on the inside.
- Let it cool somewhat. Don’t turn off the oven!
Step 2:
- Mix all the ingredients for the filling.
- Cut the potato in halves.
- Hollow the halves using a spoon so that you only leave a little (1/3 inch or so) potato lining the skin.
- Mash the potato you’ve removed with the filling and put it back into the potato halves. Since you’ve added some stuff, there’ll be more stuffing than fits into the potato, but that’s as it should be. Just spread it evenly over the potato.
- Put it back into a pre-heated oven at 200 °C (400 °F) and let hem bake for about 30 minutes.
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.
