<3 Belgian Pralines

I'll say it plainly ... the best chocolates in the world are fresh pralines from Belgium.

This is a box of Marcolini chocolates:



When my boyfriend flew to Belgium for work, I told him if he didn't bring me a box of fresh pralines from Belgium, I wouldn't let him in the door!

Though Marcolini is only one of many fine establishments holding to the fine chocolatey ways of the Old World, I'll just have to wait for another visit to Belgium to enjoy them.

However, there is a Marcolini in New York! If you're fortunate enough to live in Belgium, Paris, London, Kuwait, Tokyo or New York make sure you swing by and savor a few of these delights for me.

Not So Fast Quiche Redux

Forgive me for no pictures of late, I'm out in the countryside without the appropriate connective elements.

The restaurant Bla Porten is a famous old establishment on Djurgarden in Stockholm. My newly vegetarian friend ordered the quiche (a dish I often overlook), and it was full of spinachy-feta goodness. Since I like my eggs sooooo many ways already, adding a quiche to my repertoire was not my first thought, but a season has passed, and I had some puff pastry stashed in the freezer, and for the first time in ages I had bought feta.

Because of the Vasterbottens mini pies I had made earlier, it wasn't such a far leap to think of a spinach and feta based pie either. I looked up some recipes, but ultimately had to come up with my own - spicier and with a dash of Asian panache. Unfortunately this recipe is not nearly as fast as I would like it to be, but during the summer I presume you could bake it in the morning and then keep it chilled during the day and bring it up to room temperature before serving it for dinner, this recipe of course, makes more sense if you're feeding a larger group of people.

The Non Quiche Quiche

two sheets of puff pastry
50 grams spinach (1 1/2 oz) squeezed of water if frozen
1/2 white/yellow onion minced
1 t sesame seeds
1/2 t red chili flakes
50 grams (1 1/2 oz) feta
2 eggs beaten with a dollop of sour cream
1 T salted butter
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 F/200 C.

Thaw puff pastry sheets (about 20 minutes).

While the puff pastry sheets are thawing, mince the onion and saute it in butter over medium high heat. When the onion starts to look translucent, add the sesame seeds to toast and distribute evenly. Add the 1/2 teaspoon of chili flakes and stir for a minute. If you have defrosted spinach squeeze all the juices out before adding it to the pan. If you have fresh spinach, fry it in the pan until the mixture is quite dry.

Fit pastry sheets to a pie form, trimming as you go. Prick the crust all over with a fork and bake for 10 minutes.

Blend eggs with a dollop of sour cream (milk is an acceptable substitute). When the pie crust is ready, add the onion and spinach mixture to the crust, crumble the feta over the spinach, and pour the egg mixture evenly over the top.

Bake at 375 F/175 C for about 20 minutes, or until egg mixture is set.

Serve with a salad and some chilled melon for a summer meal. I have to say that the chili flakes and toasted sesame seeds give the regular spinach-feta taste profile a new zing. Toasted pine nuts would also be a great substitution if you have them already in your pantry.

It's the Butter ...

On a 80 F degree day -- a temperature which Sweden hardly ever sees, I remembered how much I was charmed by the little ceramic butter containers when I ate lunch at Bouchon in the Time Warner building at Columbus Circle, and then once again saw at the restaurant Helsingborg in Stockholm.

The only dilemma is this, rustic or tres elegant style? The boyfriend falls on the rustic side and I fall on the impeccable French one. What do you think?





Hmmmmmmmmm ...

Happy Belated

Midsummer's!

Here in Sweden they celebrate on the Friday closest to the solstice (it's totally cheating, I know).

In any event, this is what you can expect to see on your plate on a regular Midsummer's Eve lunch.



Several kinds of pickled herring, fresh potatoes overlaid with dill sprigs, Swedish crispbread topped with Swedish butter (yum) and Västerbottens cheese, a boiled egg, and my own personal favorite -- a slice of Västerbottens pie.

Given that interpreting Swedish language in the grocery store is uneven, I wound up buying puff pastry instead of pie dough, but the results were still fabulous.

Västerbottens Mini Pies

2 eggs beaten
200 grams of Västerbottens or something like a extra sharp cheddar grated
1/2 c heavy cream
defrosted puff pastry sheets
muffin tins

salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
smattering of chopped chives or other fresh herbs for topping (optional)

Set oven to 200 C/400 F. Lay pieces of puff pastry dough in the muffin tins. Prick all over with a fork (to prevent over-puffiness). When the oven is hot, bake for 10 minutes.

Combine beaten eggs with cream and salt and peppar. Evenly distribute grated cheese into each muffin tin (now lined, of course with puff pastry shells), and then pour over the egg/cream mixture.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until the pies are set. Garnish if desired.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

The reason the pies are so rich is because Midsummer's involves a lot of drinking of schnapps, and having a full belly prevents more than a little mayhem.

Sourdough Non-starter

Over the weekend, my friend brought some fabulous walnut and dried apricot bread from her local bakery. I was so smitten with the idea, I wanted to try to replicate the bread from home since her local bakery is about an hour away. I do love bread, but a two hour round trip is still a little much for me.

In Sweden, there are not a whole lot of sourdough bread lovers. The tendency is more towards molasses sweetened breads which have a nice chewy texture (from the oat flour), but sourness is seldom a trait from the more staple types of breads here. They're very into rye and crispbreads (as Sweden and Finland are rather famous for).

When researching breads, I realized that I did want that bit of a tang in my bread and realized I needed a sourdough starter. I had made it once before a zillion years ago, but my then boyfriend wanted to throw it away (why are Swedes so paranoid about the refrigerator?), and I succumbed to the pressure.

In any event, now I have lots of ingredients (I'm planning on a walnut, golden raisin and apricot bread), but no bubbly starter. I have a cup of water combined with a cup of normal white flour in a plastic yoghurt container with my rice serving spoon stuck in it (you're not supposed to use metal), and about a 4-7 day wait for my starter to start going.

I guess the most useful thing I learned today is that bovete is buckwheat, which I accidentally took for oat flour havregryn. Galettes for everyone!

Yeah, it tastes like spaghetti ...

Yesterday I was test cooking again a recipe I wanted to try to tweak for the culinary memoir I'm working on, and I knew I wanted to include some steamed squash.

I had picked up a very orange section of a hewed squash from my local grocery store labeled, "French pumpkin."

Since I was very busy making a paste for the recipe, and fixing the rice, and couldn't find a spare pot at the moment, I did the unthinkable.

Ages and ages ago, I had made spiced pumpkin cupcakes (search my blog for the entry) with cream cheese frosting. Hum, now that I think about it, I should have used some molasses to get a darker taste, but anyway, I had stumbled across some literature that proposed microwaving the pumpkin. Back then, that was unthinkable, but yesterday it seemed very thinkable.

I microwaved medium thin slices of squash on a plate in the microwave covered for 3 minutes on high. No go, 3 minutes more, looking better, 3 last minutes and voila, it was perfectly cooked squash.

Imagine my surprise when it happened to be spaghetti squash -- a squash I had only eaten once before during a leaf strewn fall in Amherst.

I waited for my boyfriend to come home to try some of it. "It's called spaghetti squash."

He asked, "Because it tastes like spaghetti?"

I just sat and smiled, "You'll see."

He ate a bite of it and said, "That's strange it kinda tastes like spaghetti."

I threw up my hands, "Silly boy, it's shaped liked spaghetti."

Yes, the moment your fork hits the squash, small "noodles" of the cooked vegetable seem to come out of nowhere.

Anyway, I'm pleased the fridge is stacked with vedge. Now what to do with all my frozen wild blueberries?

how to make Thai Ice tea

Ever live somewhere were Thai Ice Tea is nearly impossible to find?

Thai ice tea - a sweet milky tea concoction colored brilliantly orange, is hard to be found in this area of the world (Stockholm). I would step in and out of Thai restaurants (there are like six in my neighborhood) and ask for Thai ice tea and they would shake their heads at me and my limited Thai vocabulary.

But:




I finally found it

Turns out I'm too lazy to take a pix of the tea I'm drinking now, but here's a picture of it from a former post.



I seep about four teaspoons of Thai tea with 3 teaspoons of sugar, then I strain it with some paper towel or cheesecloth like item (it will get stained orange though, to note), and then pour it over ice and then add unsweetened condensed milk, and then add water until it's suitably thinned.

There is a distinct danger of drinking too many Thai ice teas in a row when it's suddenly so accessible.

Test Cooking

Test Cooking for yourself isn't very fun.

Don't get me wrong, I love to cook, but I love to cook in conjunction to cooking for someone. Sharing the experience of good food is one of my absolute favorite past times. And, of course, it's no wonder that cooking for one doesn't have that same dimension of pleasure.

Today is day 3 of the Thai food test cooking marathon. The snack green mango is what started this blog in the first place, but if you rifle through my archives, though Thai food and sensibility has had a great influence over what I eat and cook over the past years, Thai food is still an adventure to me. Which is what my book is about.

Anyway, test cooking recipes for my book is proving to be both interesting and helpful in understanding the cuisine (and filling).

I can't help but think again that Thai and Italian food have the communality of very good produce which is a substantial boost to any dish. While pounding the latest curry paste (sans the creamy grey shrimp paste this time which kinda icks me out), I remembered that my aunts would throw in the whole garlic clove (they were so tiny to begin with) and pounded together even the thin skins of the tiny purple garlic cloves. This reminded me of the Animal, Mineral, Vegetable book by Barbara Kingsolver, and her short writing on various kinds of garlic, which in turn made me want to grow my own garlic. Garlic is already a marvelous addition to many dishes, but even more flavorful garlic? Be still my heart!

Pounding curry pastes quickly becomes a meditative process like kneading dough. It takes time, and you could use a machine (I couldn't, my food processor is out at the country house), but when you reap the rewards -- a much more flavorful curry soup, than one using the store bought kind, there's a glowing satisfaction to the whole process.