Tonic Water #8

This is a lemongrass tonic water--no real difference from earlier ones, except I am trying to be more precise in my measurements. And the Lemongrass came from my daughter's school.

4 cups water (plus 1/4 cup excess)
1/4 cup cinchona bark (1.4 oz. cut bark, fairly large grain)
1/4 cup citric acid
1 tsp salt (kosher)

45 minutes simmer.
cut heat.
break lemongrass. 4 stalks. Add. Steep for 2 hours. Stir.

Refrigerate for 2 days.

Cognac Cherries

Cherry season is upon us. Because the window is so limited, I almost always miss out on the ability to turn fresh cherries into cocktail components. But not this year.

I looked up a variety of recipes and found an unremarkable amount of consistency in proportions. In the end, I followed this formula:

for a quart of cherries

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1/2 cup cognac
2 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
8 cardamom pods

Pitting the cherries was tedious, but not overly so. I found that a paperclip did the job well.

I heated the water and sugar, added the spices, and let it come to a simmer. Once the sugar was dissolved, I let the mixture simmer for about five minutes, turned off the heat, then added the cognac. Then I poured the mixture over the cherries. Then I put them in small jars, lidded them, and put them in the fridge. We'll see how they turn out!

Tilapia Tacos

on a whim, I decided to turn salmon-and-sushi-rice night into tilapia-taco night. The impetus was the trip to the fish counter and its disappointing salmon offerings, but also my daughter's admonition that my meals are becoming boring. The tilapia looked good, so I bought it.

I could not find a suitable recipe for tilapia in tacos. Bittman was uncharacteristically silent. Rick Bayless's cookbook was empty. I could not score an internet recipe without some ad company trying to take over my web browser. So I ditched it all and made up my own recipe.

For the marinade:

2 1/2 tbsp lime juice
zest of 2 limes
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 tsp. ancho chili powder
1 tsp. cumin
1/4 cup olive oil
cracked black-green-white-pink peppercorns
WHISK until smooth

I marinated the tilapia in a bowl for about thirty minutes while preparing the rest of the meal, which involves:

heating tortillas (from freaking Sonoita!) in the oven.
dicing green onions
dicing radishes (alas, I didn't actually do this, and it was the one thing missing!)
making fresh pico de gallo (I bought it fresh at Kroger--not bad!)

Remove tilapia from marinade, season with salt, dredge with flour, shaking off the excess.

Pan fry in 1 TBSP of olive oil--enough to cover the bottom of the frying pan and leave about 1/8 of an inch in the pan. The oil must be hot but not super hot--I heated it at 7 on the dial until it was shimmering. I did not have to reduce the heat during cooking, but I did have to add some oil for the second batch.

cook, 4 minutes per side.

Good and filling. Served with Ottolenghi green beans with hazlenuts.

padrón pepper jelly

I recently harvested about forty padrón peppers and an additional 20 jalapeños from what had been a particularly fruitful fall garden. Particularly prolific were volunteer cherry tomatoes, which popped up out of the ground all over my front yard and yielded two or three pints a week, depending on how constantly I went to picking. It's all gone now, sadly. We had a recent polar blast that forced me to harvest what I could in preparation for a week of perpetual freezes--hence the bounty of hot peppers. This was sad because my romaine seeds took forever to germinate and only started spouting in early November. If the frost had held out, I might have harvested about twelve heads of the stuff. The arugula was also ready for a second sprouting before the freeze, but the rocket had already provided us with a month and a half of weekly salads.

padrón me, jalapeño

But I digress.

It was time for two batches of hot pepper jelly. I followed my old formula of circa 20 peppers (majority padrón) for each batch. I chopped them coarsely, dropped them in the blender along with enough seeds to be mildly terrifying, added one cup of cider vinegar (white vinegar in the second batch), and processed.

I dropped that mess into a pot, added another cup of cider vinegar (again, white vinegar in the second batch), 6 tbsps of dry pectin, and brought to a rolling boil. Then I added 5 cups of sugar, boiled for one minute, and removed from heat.

Each batch filled six 8 oz. canning jars. I cleaned and sterilized the jars ahead of time, and then let them sit in hot (very hot) water while I cooked the peppers. Then I brought out six jars (for each batch, added the jelly, tightened down the lids, and returned the jars to the hot water. The water was too hot to touch comfortably, and I did not allow the water to touch the actual lid--that is, the water came up to the mouth of the jar. I let each batch sit for about ten minutes, then pulled them out and dried them off. As the jelly cooled, it sucked down the lids of each of the jars.

So there it is. My recipe diverges from the standard ones in that it uses about a cup less sugar. Granted, the pectin I used advertised that you need "no sugar" or "less sugar" than normal.

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.