The Elderflower collins

A simple cocktail, for complex times.

1.5 oz. St. Germain's
1 oz. Gin
1/2 oz. lemon juice.
Shaken
Poured into a tall glass
Over ice
And topped with soda water
Then stirred vigorously.

Lemon Cake with lavender cream topping - from the front porch, please!

It is SO nice to read, cook, eat, hang out with good friends and really - not do much else. So that's all we're doing (that and swimming with the jellyfish here and there). This somehow consumes the entire day. Here's Anna in front of the lavender bush - which we threw in the dessert today...

I came back from an afternoon walk to find cake waiting for me. It was more than half-eaten, but *SCORE* - there was some left for me! :) Rakel decided to use a left-over lemon from last night's cocktails - to make cake. This is the kind of 'use whatever is around' creative cooking that is going on around here… She also threw in some of the red currant berries from the garden for added color - not too many, just a few - all sitting on the bottom of the pan as a sort-of 'base'. They left a pretty reddish-pink color on the parchment paper afterwards...

What really surprised me was the topping. I guess Rakel had her eye on the lavender growing outside the window for a few days, and decided to put some in the whipped cream she made to plop over the cake. THAT was interesting and totally delicious. She just made a basic whipped cream, beat in some lavender (and some more currant berries) and spooned it onto the cake. This may sound unusual - but it tasted great.



Here's a quick recipe for basic lemon cake/loaf:

125 grams butter
1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
1 large lemon - juiced and rind finely grated
2 eggs
1 1/2 self-raising flour, sifted
1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350, grease a 9x5 pan. Using electric mixer, beat butter, lemon rind and 1 cup of sugar until fluffy, then slowly beat in eggs and milk. Stir/beat in flour the same way. Bake for 45-50 minutes - or until knife goes in and comes out clean!

Combine 1/3 cup lemon and remaining sugar. Pour over hot loaf while still in pan and let it cool before cutting a slice!

For Whipped Cream:

1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 TBSP sugar

Pour heavy cream over sugar - beat or whip until stiff! And if you're Rakel - pick some lavender, throw a small amount in along with some currants, then beat until a pretty pink color - ready! AND DELICIOUS! :)

Rakel eating her cake. She needs another spoonful of lavender whipped cream...

Danish Snails from the forest...

So today Rakel (Danish name - equivalent in the States to 'Rachel') left to take a walk on the island, and when she came back she was carrying a container filled with leaves - and also big, fat, Danish snails she collected on the hike. This was completely unexpected and fit in perfectly to my blogging agenda on local food!

I have to admit, I was a bit sensitive to the whole snail experience. I've eaten them at many restaurants (in Paris and elsewhere), but I've never seen them live, getting prepped as food, and Danish snails are quite large.  If you leave them alone for a while, they will escape, despite how slow they move (see picture to the right).  They actually did when we set them down for a few minutes by the front door. One or two got into somebody's shoe but were quickly retrieved and put back in the bowl...

I remember seeing some random video (online of course) of snails mating to some ethereal-sounding Debussy, and it was so beautiful the video convinced me that snails are affectionate creatures who experience love in a similar fashion we do. Yes - I'm an easy target. I sure wasn't about to focus on that, though, because we were getting ready to eat them. But I'm supposed to be blogging about Danish food and not my feelings, right? I DID find this article, which both tells you how to collect/prep snails from your own backyard, and also gives ecological reasons for doing it in this manner. I strongly recommend reading this before collecting your own backyard snails as it has a lot of important info on the subject. And yes, it did make me feel better about eating them.. :)

To continue - Rakel came back with about 8 snails. It turns out you have to let them hang out for several days (with food) so they can poop out all the gnarly 'toxins' they have ascertained on the ground.

We did that. For food during that time, we provided them with veggies from the garden - carrots, marigold flower petals and snap peas. They ate all of it, and boy was the container dirty by the end.  Please note: you must put them in a container that will breathe, but you also have to keep them from escaping - we sure learned our lesson (somebody's shoe got slimed on their initial escape). Snails can lift about five times their weight, so we chose to securely tape two bowls together with breathing holes for ventilation, and it worked just fine. The article (with link above) gives other great suggestions for containing your garden snails..

Once the two days were up, Rakel proceeded to open the (very dirty) container and start cleaning them with water.  We noticed with our online research that some people clean them by soaking in vinegar and water (or salt and water) to de-slime, but we skipped that and went straight to boiling as I was squeamish about their 'suffering'. Rakel was a Pro, though - she put each individual snail in there and boiled them for a good 15 minutes, then took them out to cool.

After this, she removed them completely from the shell - using only a small fork. You can do this with a Danish Snail, as they are quite large. If you get your snails from some backyard in southern Spain, I think you'll need a toothpick as they're much smaller ;).

Rakel looked it up and said that we could only cut off and eat the head - that the longer, curlier part (intestine included, obviously) was not for eating. In the picture to the right, the white part includes the 'head'. See how big these guys are!! Much bigger than the French escargot variety. She cut those and made sure there was no slime left. You must de-slime your snails either by scraping the slime off while boiling and/or soaking them in water and salt before boiling (soaking like this helps get all the slime released that may be in there). ARE WE READY TO EAT SOME SNAILS NOW? :)

Now for the last bit! After de-sliming (mmmmm), Rakel separated the end from the intestine, and proceeded to boil the snail 'ends' in a pan with stock, parsley, basil and onion - for a good two hours. Meanwhile, she carefully cleaned out the snail shells (so she could stuff the finished product back into them when done).

They looked beautiful when she brought them out, and they tasted fantastic. There was some griping about 'a lot of effort for a small amount of food', but if you are doing it up at your house for a dinner party and want to impress your guests, this is a pretty cool way to do it. I'm sure glad we did it for the experience. And although I know Rakel is as much of a softy as I am, she was brave enough to handle all the hard parts of cooking them with the usual grace I've noticed she is abundant with.

Rakel

Katy devouring snails

Cast of Danish Friends at the Summer House, Danish Meatballs and JellyFish...

I can't blog more about the food we're making until I introduce the cast of characters on this summer house vacation in Denmark.

First off, we have Anna Lidell - my friend and fellow songwriter/producer, whom invited a number of people to 'drop in' while we are here in this nature-laden place - photos of her are all over the last entry.

Then there's Rakel, Anna's girlfriend - who arrived shortly after we did (our Chinese expert and general Encyclopedia on most subjects), adding serious grace and serenity to the household. Bergliot (I call her Berg) - arrived several days later. Aside from being intelligent, I've already been made aware she is a serious cook and I'm ready to eat anything she makes (of course). Berg made me feel less alone by yelling every time she punched or kicked a jellyfish (fortunately none of the stinging ones) while we were swimming in the sea - mine was more like a scream. I also yelled out every time I got down to my neck in the cold water. I'm not usually fond of cold water, but I will make an exception in this instance..

Lise was the last to arrive (pronounced almost like 'Lisa' for the Americans) - she is actually a cook at a cafe in Copenhagen in addition to her studies. All these ladies are students at the University of Copenhagen and have been fun and easy company. To add to this, they all love food or at least know how to cook it, and there is a garden. I'm in a good place right now… :)

This particular evening, Anna Lidel's father, Andres Blinkenberg also joined us (bringing much-needed groceries - thanks Dad) :). I whipped up a pre-dinner cocktail while others went to the garden for dinner ingredients.

Now for the Danish element - Rakel got to work on her own version of Danish meatballs - which by the way, are quite varied from household to household. Some of the basics are in most of them - red ground meat, bread crumbs and egg - but Danish (as opposed to Swedish) meatballs often have pork mixed in. Or so I've heard...

So as I mentioned - Danish meatballs are quite varied (in terms of what they throw in there), but in this case, Rakel added basic (low-fat) ground meat, egg, salt, pepper and also threw in (from the garden) parsley, onion, red currant berries, garlic, and a hot chili pepper (I think a habanero) that was purchased at the grocery store. :) Rakel is not afraid of experimenting with different ingredients, I've come to find. And so far I'm not complaining.

You mishmash all of this (usually by hand) together in the bowl, create little meat balls, then fry them up in a pan. Rakel managed to do this without squishing the red currant berries. They're pretty supple and strong, though, so I don't think it was too hard.

After a very short time (and our round of cocktails), we set the table and were ready to eat.

Rakel Danish Meatballs

Our side dish was very simple and from the garden - boiled potatoes, served with fresh dill and a salad with lettuce, fried pumpkin seeds and a light vinaigrette dressing. We ate this with beer and it was filling but not heavy - and it was rather quick. The meat was low-fat and not much oil was used to cook it, and the potatoes had their skins on and with the fresh dill, didn't need much else - so healthy, too!

All this with a beer and we were pretty satisfied. Special thanks to Andres for letting us pillage his garden for our nightly food parties - glad you could join us for one of them! :)




Next entry - Snails - from nature's backyard (or at least that is where we got them), not from the garden, where you might be able to get yours wherever you live...

Danish Peoples from left to right: Bergliot, Anna, Andres Blinkenberg (keeping warm in the robe), and Rakel :)

Denmark - Local Food and Danish Friends

I'm back! And this time I'm in Denmark for a few weeks, yet again falling in love with Scandinavia, but mainly here to work on a new music project with danish songwriter Anna Lidell (my new collaborator and friend). We'll be posting songs soon… 

I landed in Copenhagen about two weeks ago, but quickly left with Anna for Denmark's larger land mass west - specifically to an almost-island called Helgenaes - which is made up of rolling hills surrounded by the sea. There is some farming here, but mainly Danish summer houses, which I am told can only be bought on the real estate market if you are Danish - they don't sell to foreigners. I get to be a lucky guest at Anna's family summer house this trip. So basically we are picking food from the garden, cooking/eating, swimming and making music. Life is so HARD sometimes…I HAVE skinned both my knees on the rocks and the water IS very cold here… :)

The summer house comes with an enormous garden - built from scratch by Anna's Mother and Father - Elisabeth Lidell and Andres Blinkenberg. So far they have filled it with apples, pears, black and red currant berries, beets, potatoes, onions, carrots, lettuce, chard, zucchini, pumpkins, marigolds (we threw those into some of our salads to brighten them up), radishes and blackberries. I'm sure I'm missing something else, but...

Oh - and rasberries also just happen to grow alongside the road all over the island. If the deer don't get all of them, you can get a fair amount on a decent walk. Here's Anna with her shovel - I will be forcing her to be my model this whole trip. ;)

We have had many adventures cooking so far while here. The first night we arrived we ate mostly from the garden, which for me was some kind of therapy - stomping around in the dirt pulling up potatoes, onions and dill for a side dish and black currant berries for the next morning's oatmeal. Collecting it all in a basket and walking up to the house to prepare for dinner gave the whole process added satisfaction. 

Plus, for a city girl like me it's fun to eat most of the healthy stuff straight from your private garden.  It's certainly in line with current Danish cuisine - where high quality local produce is the focus and basis for all recipes. I'm particularly fond of the black currant berries - which I've never really had fresh. They have a strong, dark flavor unlike berries I've tried elsewhere. When I was in Norway two summers ago, I didn't snag any of these… I really want to make them with some reindeer or something… :)

One thing I've started to eat here and enjoy is oatmeal (I know this sounds boring), of all things, but it's true. Anna makes it every day for breakfast - which leads me to believe this is a common Danish breakfast. I also saw a guy in Copenhagen pour milk over dry oats for breakfast - Anna now tells me this is more normal than oatmeal. The French would protest...

I've never been a big fan of oatmeal, but if you cook it with sugar and milk, add spices (like cinnamon) and fresh black currant berries with fried sesame seeds (in butter) - it's a healthy sort of yum - Lidell has now got me somewhat hooked. Put a little butter or salt on top and it becomes hard to stop eating. We had this almost every day for breakfast. I'm always looking for healthier food to incorporate into my diet, so I'm thinking of making this a staple for breakfast.. If I can remain that disciplined..

More posts soon. For now, enjoy this photo of a microphone stand Anna and I built from scratch with tape and wood (because we didn't have one) from her Dad's tool shed. We were quite proud of our construction.

MORE LATER: Snails (from the hilltops), home-made ice cream and Danish meatballs...

a clear winner: rainbow swiss chard

Rainbow chard, in repose

Hard to argue with hearty swiss chard. Eight plants produce gorgeous leaves and stalks and a weekly vegetable serving. Here's to hoping it is the perennial that my neighbor claims it will be.

The Endless Aperol Apertif

Aperol and Tonic for the Masses

In the summer months, I struggle often with what to have when I come home. The six o'clock hour is a mild one in my garden. The daytime warmth is enveloping, but the sun has set behind the big oak across the way, making the heat more comfortable than overbearing. It is during these times that I want a drink both refreshing and stimulating. I tend toward an acidic white or rosé, but it tends to leave me parched. A gin and tonic is also refreshing, but can often knock me out.

So I made up this. 2 oz. Aperol, 1 oz. tonic syrup, 2 oz. soda water. Stir. Add ice. Top with soda water. Garnish with lemon peel that is broken and expressed so that citrus hits the nose immediately.

The first few sips are all soda water. Then you start to catch the Aperol and tonic misture. Just as you do, top off with soda water.

Standing up

What one ends up with is a constantly refreshing drink that allows for ups and downs in intensity. I can usually get 24 oz. of water into this mixture before I have to make another. It's a different take on the cocktail/water back combination.

Tonic Water #7: Machine in the Garden

baby lemongrass

I'm ready for a change. I've been making variations on tonic #3 for some time, pushing the coriander to give the resulting tonic a little spice. Now I'm moving into the garden. For this flavor profile, I cut down lemongrass and lavender.

The only problem is that my lemongrass is not fully grown. So I had to use anemic stalks. Alas.

lavender in bloom (on the right)

The lavender is also not prolific. It is being crowded out at present by the bee balm, which I would get rid of if I didn't like having the explosion of purple in my front planter. It's nice and all, but it prevents my other herbs from growing.

I had about a handful of lavender and about eight tiny stalks of lemongrass to use.

The big change was that I added them last. So it looked like this

Bring 4 cups water to a boil, covered. Add:

1/4 cup citric acid

1/4 cup cinchona bark

1/4 tsp salt

Reduce to a simmer, covered, and let simmer for 40 minutes.

Then, cut heat and add lemongrass and lavender.

Muddle. Stir.

Allow to steep for 2 hours. Or however long. Stir periodically, if desired. Move to fridge.

I will let it sit for exactly two days before running it through cheescloth and pressing the lavender/lemongrass/cinchona mixture to extract any last flavor. Then I'll let it sit for exactly two more days clarifying before running it through a paper filter.

My hope is that this produces a more fragrant, nose-centered tonic. One that you feel good smelling before you put in the drink and that gives it just a little more pop. I fear, however, that the cinchona bark is unforgiving and only takes dark flavors, like cloves. But then again, I can always up the amount of lavender and lemongrass if this proves a noble failure.

Oh Kale... (and garden updates)

Just a summer update on the status of my garden, which has chugged away this spring and summer with surprising alacrity. After last year's massive disappointment™, the Georgia sun has smiled upon us, and given us just enough growing days both to maximize the early lettuce crop and get the tomatoes off to a running start.

Among the biggest hits this summer are sugar snap peas. Sweet and punchy, and so delicious that my seven year old has devoured them almost as fast as they have grown up. More than once we were able to send them in her lunch. Given how well these delicate climbing vines like the cold weather, I want to take a run at fall growing in greater numbers.

Winterbor in summer

Kale has been resilient and prolific and as tender as this thick green leaf can get. We planted two varieties. The superior plant was Nero di Toscana, an Italian heirloom that produces almost beveled leaves, long and flat and dark green. The other is Winterbor Kale, a hybrid that is, surprise of surprises, winter-hardy.

The Toscana leaf does have a superior taste, no question. This might be why the bugs like it. At least, I presume the leaves have been somewhat mauled by the bugs. While that does not affect flavor (there is plenty of leaf to go around), it does lessen the aesthetic effect. Effectively. But I might try more marigolds with this next year.

The Winterbor leaf is actually the prettier of the two. It produces a curled blue-green leaf that almost shimmers in the light. And while the Toscana leaf has a superior taste, both in depth and texture, the Winterbor is formidable in its own right. If one likes Kale, one loves this Kale. At least from my garden.

I have no idea what is to become of the Kale as summer grinds on. I don't know if it will return or if I must replant it. We shall see. If I do, then I must take care to listen to the instructions and plant 12 to 24 inches apart. My plants are too crowded at present, and it stunts leaf production.

Cobbler, anyone?

The rest of the garden soldiers on. The tomatoes are popping up quickly and flowering and fruiting. I'm guessing another 30 days to some good production.

The blueberries are looking taut. And tasty. Let us pray. The strawberries have already produced and will continue to produce. They are sweet and soft.

cuke in the cage

It's a good garden year. The cucumbers are up and running. The broccoli has been tender. The radishes peppery.

Getting the Mojito Right

Peppermint and Applemint Mojito, with Candymint Garnish

Maybe two summers ago, I confidently proclaimed the summer of the Mojito. I'm sure it was. But this simple drink always seems to elude me. The proportions are difficult to fix. Standard recipes use vaguely different recipes. I am usually left adjusting recipes every time I make the drink. Perhaps this is fine--an experimental mojito of sorts--but it gets me down. I'd rather be able, like with almost every other drink I make, to lay out the correct jigger and mix it down fast and accurate and consistent-like.

Alas, it is not to be. The mojito will always be an experiment. Lay out the proportions--3 oz. gin, 2 oz. lime juice, 2 tbsp. sugar syrup--in a boston shaker. Muddle with mint. Good mint is a must. This might seem obvious, but I'm sure that mint comes down to whatever is handy for most, or whatever the store was stocking. This is why I have now planted four kinds of mint in my garden. My mainstay is peppermint. I also have apple mint and candy mint, both of which are spearmint varieties and more sweet than spicy. I prefer the latter in my juleps. Peppermint stands out more in the mojito, which is not a subtle drink and does not showcase the rum the way a good julep showcases the whiskey. Don't over-muddle. The sugar syrup, I find, tends to eat up the mint oils. I add a half dozen cubes of ice to the boston shaker and give it a good hard shake, sixteen or so worth. Then start testing. I use the straw method to avoid any contamination. Adjustments can then be reshaken or stirred in.

Rival this

Once shaken, the mojito can sit in the Boston shaker while the ice is prepared. This is a laborious process, at least for me.  Crushed ice is a must. I have found that the ice must be durable and thick, with as little air content as possible. Even crushed ice must have a backbone or the drink will become flaccid. My Rival Ice-O-Matic Electric Ice Crusher does a nice job, even if it is a little messy.

I prepare the glasses with ice, add an appropriate amount of soda water to the mojito mixture, and stir that up. Then I pour out the mojitos, adding ice if necessary so that it touches the rim. Pop a straw in and serve.

This summer will be beyond the mojito--beyond any one drink, actually--but it is nice to start here and feel utterly comfortable mixing down a classic.