Spring, Moss, and Half-Rye Sourdough Bread

Considering my recent silence, you have undoubtedly wondered if I have been eaten by crocodiles by now.  Or maybe polar bears.  It’s Sweden, and the polar bears must be hungry.  Or some other grisly fate.  The truth is, however, very prosaic – I have simply been busy.

It happens to all of us, and I am entirely unapologetic for having a life outside the blog, much as I love it.

And besides, to quote a recently-seen on the internet and absolutely brilliant photo:

“IT’S SPRING.  WE ARE SO EXCITED, WE WET OUR PLANTS!”

As you can see, the plants are happily blooming – at least some of them, and others look like they are preparing to, and if you are like me and like houseplants, then it’s exciting.  What can I say, I am easily excited.  I think that’s a good thing.  Surely beats sitting there looking bored and feeling blasé about the world.

So um, yes.  I have been busy, it’s spring, which means my plants needed more attention, my studies are kicking back in, and I have not had so much time to cook anything impressive, nor, mostly, to photograph it.

I did bake a half-rye bread on the basis of my two-fifths rye no-knead recipe, and it turned out gorgeous.  I have, again, let it proof entirely too long due to the same reason (I went for a walk and returned later than planned), but it was delicious and lovely nonetheless.  One of those days I will actually bake it in time and see if it can be made taller, but between the high rye content and the high hydration of no-knead method, I am not sure.  On the up side, the narrow slices make fantastically elegant open-faced sandwiches with slices of cheese, salami, dried ham or cured fish.  Anyway, no recipe here – merely a note that the two-fifths rye recipe works exceptionally well with a half and half split between the types of flour.  And, I will try a closer to 65 or 70% split in favor of rye next.

And then there is my newly-found fascination with moss.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of conflicting and downright bad information about how to grow it on the internet.  And doubly unfortunately, I managed to spray the two original moss-homes I made with the wrong water spray bottle.  What’s so wrong about the wrong spray bottle?  Well, it used to contain agricultural soap-and-oil mix for treating bugs on one of my orchids last summer.  As a result, I think one or two applications of that instead of water are killing the moss slowly, which made me very sad.  It is still alive and struggling to stay so (and I am helping), but I am not sure it will win the battle, and it is entirely my fault.

So, I did a lot more reading, and gathered more moss.

And then I followed several other new instructions which changed or negated the things I originally found.  For example, I did not use any potting soil on this round.  Instead, I made a base out of aquarium-filter activated carbon, and piled sterilized gravel bits, re-sterilized bark chips (from my orchid potting bark bag), and pieces of terracotta (broken flowerpot that did not survive the winter freeze) on top of that.  Added aged tap water with some activated carbon swirled in it via my new, clean spray bottle, and arranged the moss on top, above the water level.

Note: to sterilize rocks and bark chips, soak in boiling water, let stand, pour water off and repeat.  This won’t sterilize them for purposes of neural surgery, but it should kill most mold spores and random microfauna present on and in them.  If you want to be more sure about it, boil a pot of water and toss them in there for a while.  Do not salt.  ;)

The second thing I found important is having a lid for your moss-growing dish.  A more reputable moss-growing website owner mentioned in his blog that he covers his moss dishes overnight and leaves them to air out during the day – so, upside-down flat candle plates were found to cover the little terraria, to maintain good humidity with periods of drying-out and fresh air.  Since, unless your moss is swamp moss (mine isn’t, it came off rocks and tree stumps), it doesn’t want to sit in a swamp.  (Deep wisdom right there, for various houseplants other than moss as well!)

And a third thing was washing the moss when I had initially brought it home, removing all debris and clinging dirt under running water, and then quarantining it in sandwich boxes with partially-shut lids for several days before using it in the arrangement – to make sure no pests or molds surface in the meantime.

The new terraria are now a few days old, and are so far doing well.  I’ll just avoid spraying them with insecticidal solution by accident and see what happens.

So, there it is.  Coming soon(tm) – posts about vanilla, and about the two entirely new to me white whole wheat flours (That is not a typo – they are whole wheat flours made from white, not red wheat!) that I have just received in the mail and all excited about – but obviously, first I need to bake something from them and see how that works out!

Moss Dish Garden Experiment – Day 1

UPDATE:  Please see this post for more and more correct information regarding moss dishes!

Today’s post is not at all about food, but about spring, and green growing things.  I love greenery, I’ve mentioned that before, but when the days turn sunny and the chill in the air is no longer a biting cold but a refreshing breeze, my fascination with the green stuff goes into overdrive.

I literally cannot have enough green things around the apartment, and preferably new and interesting ones at that.  Yes, I did say apartment – had I had a house, and a garden, there’d be a lot more green things around.  As it is, I have to fit my desire to see things grow into a city apartment.  Which means, windowsills and tabletops and maybe balcony… actually definitely balcony, as my lavender bushes not only survived the winter outside unprotected except by what snow fell on them, but are alive and sprouting happily.  I’ve trimmed them down and fertilized them and can now look forward to an abundance of purple and white flowers and a heavenly fragrance… but I digress.

Yesterday, a friend of mine informed me that if I do not yet have a moss dish garden, I need one.  Need.  And she showed me some photos, and I realized that yes, she is right and I do indeed need one, right now.  Right then it was too late in the day to go gravel-gathering, or moss-hunting, but that is precisely what I did this morning.

Why?  Because it’s green, it’s alive and because it is incredibly beautiful, at least to those like me who think just about anything in the forest short of animal poop is beautiful.  And a moss dish garden is very far from that end of the spectrum indeed – it is as small as you want to make it, elegant and stylish, and has the certain quiet beauty much admired by Japanese gardeners (who have encouraged moss to grow in their gardens for centuries before we have gotten the idea to do this – probably from them).  And it’s supposed (supposed does not = works out that way) to be pretty low-maintenance.  This latter part, we’ll see about.  Once it establishes, that is.

Important: before you rush out and strip the moss off the nearest boulder, first make sure that it is not protected or endangered wherever it is you live.  If it is, then you may be better off buying some from a nursery or get some (legally sourced) spores online.  Of course, collecting it in your own garden or in a garden of people you know works too.  Just – make sure you aren’t breaking the law and ruining the environment by gathering an endangered species – after all, the point of this (at least to me) is to grow something beautiful because you love green things, not to destroy what is possibly irreplaceable!  For reference, in Sweden, some lichens and mosses are protected, but it is legal to gather a little bit of other varieties for personal (non-commercial) use in public forests.  The variety pictured above is a species of Hypnum genus of mosses, a very common forest and bog moss.

After the ethical and legal concerns are out of the way, putting together a moss garden is apparently very easy – you just need a ceramic or glass dish, some gravel and pebbles, a bit of non-alkaline potting soil, and the moss.  However, and that’s a big however, I imagine it will take more than just putting it together to get it to establish and thrive.  So, this is my moss dish garden experiment – day 1.  I will update over the next several weeks on how the mosses are doing before I pronounce this a success *knocks on wood*.

So, what does one need to make a moss garden?

Apparently, not that much.  Mosses don’t like alkaline environment (at least most of the common ones don’t), and they dislike direct sunlight but like a bit of light all the same.  They also do not develop true roots the way higher plants do, and so must be kept moist but not waterlogged (except bog mosses that sometimes just float in bogs).  Most websites recommend watering with filtered or rainwater.  I agree in theory, but in practice, the tap water in Stockholm is clean and soft enough that it should not be a problem.  I did put a bucket outside to collect a bit of rainwater should it fall, but in the meantime, the moss will get the same water as my orchids do.

The basic idea is a layer of pebbles in the bottom of a shallow dish, then a bit of gravel (this is to provide a place for excess water to drain into, and also a reservoir for keeping the soil moist), then a little bit of soil on top of it, and then the moss itself.

After I have put everything together around lunchtime today, it looked like this:

It hasn’t rained for over a week before I went out today to collect it, so the moss was looking a little dry but not dead – we have a beautiful patch of untouched forest behind our apartment building, a landscape feature I love about Stockholm.  It’s very common here to build around old boulders and between them, leaving the actual forest biome intact between the houses.  It makes for a beautiful view out the windows as well.

So, as per instructions, I constructed the base, watered it thoroughly, and then gently pushed the moss patches onto the soft and wet soil.  For a while, nothing visible happened.  I took the above photo, then sprayed the moss thoroughly with a spray bottle and wandered off to do other stuff.

Then, after a few hours, I came back and looked at my dish garden – and the somewhat-unexpected (but not unwelcome!) has happened:

On left, photo taken at half past noon. On right, photo at half past four in the afternoon.

The moss has soaked up water, plumping up visibly – and turned a beautiful lush green!  And while I know it’s too early to be happily assuming that the moss will survive, it certainly does look happier already, which means I am happier too – how can you not be, looking at something turn beautifully alive nearly before your eyes?

All that remains now is an exercise in patience.  Check moss daily for drying out, mist and admire.  Water weekly (or as soon as the glass container looks dry on the side) by pouring water in.  Wait to see what happens.  I’m sitting on the edge of my seat here with impatience – I have never been the patient sort, ever.  I’ve always been told that patience is a virtue.  I suppose at least where growing moss is concerned, that has got to be true.

Wish me – and the moss! – luck.

A Postcard For All The Winter Holidays

Happy Whateveritisyoucelebrate!

I have considered making an upcoming Christmas post, a Hanukkah post, a New Year’s post and then I realised that I also have friends who are Taoist, pagans of several different descriptions, atheists, agnostics and you name it.  Can you tell I don’t pick my friends based on their faith (or lack thereof)?  In the season of celebrations, it’d be silly to single out some and not the others, so this is a postcard to everyone, for whatever – really! – it is you celebrate.

I am posting this now because cannot promise to write with any regularity during the holiday season – the food that gets made between parties is generally leftovers, shortcuts and the like, and the food that gets made for parties may or may not get photographed, and then I may or may not have time to blog about it.  In fact, there are several things which I have wanted to write about, and a post which I had planned to reblog (with permission) that I will still write about as well – possibly after the holidays, when everyone is in New Year’s resolution mode (except me, I don’t do those).

I decidedly reject the commercialized nature of the holidays.  I’ve proudly bought a heap of holly twigs and some glittery spray-painted birch from a corner flower stand, and arranged it myself.  I will not cave to the plastic non-shedding tree fad!  I have found a couple of fir branches and hung them up on the wall to scent the apartment like evergreens.  But, that’s what I like.  Have you considered, for example, the color selection for napkins?  Red for Christmas or blue for Hanukkah?  Or white for … boringly politically correct stuff?  Bugger it, I like red and it’s not like Christians have a monopoly on Santa Claus or his red suit.  Or holly.  Because you know, some pagans I know may have a prior claim… so decorate your home as you like, celebrate what makes you happy, and above all, don’t forget what it is all about.

So with this, I will wish all of you a wonderful holiday season, glittering parties, beautiful clothes, eating too much and likely drinking too much (stock up on Alka-seltzer or Samarin, depending on where in the world you are!), utter absense of any hangovers, and in general, a wonderful time spent with friends and loved ones.  Let us all be thankful for the life we have and how amazing it truly is – because this, this is what there is to celebrate.  Best of happy whatever-holiday wishes to you all!

Party Leftovers – Streamlining The Fridge

It’s that time of year again!

The fridge is groaning from the load of everything you’ve shoved in there like an advanced level of tetris – including all the tiny bits of leftovers from the party the night before that you fear are going to slowly go bad before you figure out what to do with them.  Your kitchen looks like a disaster zone after same party, and you are groaning because you’ve been running around in circles preparing food, then entertaining people, and then trying to clean up after the aforementioned (and possibly giving up after one dishwasher-load).

Yep.  We’ve all been there.

And the last thing you want to do after you have done all of the above, is to cook something complicated from scratch.  Or, at least that’s the last thing I want to do.  What I want to do, is, frankly, is lie down on the sofa, eat something fresh and something comforting, and hope that Disney was right, and if I just hum some stuff off-tune, my forks and dirty cutting boards will march into the dishwasher and/or sink and scrub themselves.

Leaving drug-induced sentient kitchenware hallucinations aside, I have found that party leftovers can and do make the easiest of comfort foods, provided that you have something to use as a vehicle.  What I mean is – what is usually left over after a party?  Well, I am not entirely sure about you,  actually, but after my parties, the refrigerator usually contains a selection which looks sort of like this:  a quarter-pack of dried ham and/or sliced cured salami of some sort, a large assortment of tiny bits of expensive cheese, half a loaf of random bread, and some fruit which was supposed to have been put on a fruit platter, and didn’t make it.

So what do you do with 2 tablespoons of one cheese and 3 slices of the other, and a few half-dried-out bits of Prosciutto di Parma?  You take that hunk of tough bread, slice it as thin as it’ll go, butter the buggers, and slap the cheeses and meat onto it in some semblance of order.  You know, so they don’t clash too much.

This here isn’t a recipe, because there just isn’t one.  You preheat the oven to about 225°C,  search the fridge, hope there is any butter (in a pinch, a drizzle of olive oil would do if the bread is too tough to go without), and put these together.  Then, you season them according to your taste.  In my case, the goat’s cheese bits got a drip of honey, and the slices of random cheese on parma ham got black pepper.  I didn’t even have any runny honey, so I improvised with a spoon warmed in a cup of tea, set honey and my finger to push it off the spoon.  Whatever works.

Then, you put the whole thing into a preheated oven and give it a few minutes – and I really mean “few”, not “many”.  As soon as the cheese is melted and bubbly, or in case of goat’s cheese, browned at edges and puffing up, out it comes.

Slice up that fruit which went forgotten when canapes were getting munched and booze was flowing, set it on the side of a platter, stick a napkin on the platter, and transfer these onto the napkin.  I used a pair of tongs, because sandwiches, when they come out of the oven, will be hot (personal experience here!).

Drag to your sofa/laptop setup, add a humongous mug of coffee, and look outside at the pitch-dark sky of 3:30 in the afternoon.  Feel good about the streamlined contents of your fridge.  Keep hoping the dishes will scrub themselves.  Or, if that fails, after being refreshed from having had something to eat and a bucket of coffee, attack them with a sponge.

Works every time!

First Snow!

We have waited long enough!

White Chocolate Fudge – With or Without Mix-Ins

To me, winter is the season of fudgemancery.

White chocolate apricot fudge with apricot brandy

Among other things, of course – there is a lot more to winter than fudge.  It is more that fudge is so much more of a winter dessert than one for the rest of the year – I neither crave its rich sweetness when it is hot out, nor do I want to deal with the heat of the molten sugar in summertime.  Besides, things you could have year-round, but normally don’t, the sorts of things reserved for holidays, are all the more special for that.  My homemade fudge is one of those things.

I make several sorts of fudge, usually some dark chocolate, and some white, and some plain sugar-and-butter fudge with booze in it, too, but this year I ended up making two batches of the white chocolate in a row, and even managed to photograph them before they were all gone.   And so, it was fated that I would write the recipe for the white chocolate fudge here.

Actually, it was my friend Niklas’ fault.  I’d tasked him with finding and bringing me evaporated milk (not a commodity easily found in Swedish supermarkets), and he gleefully returned with about 3x the amount I’d asked him for.  Broadly hinting that… there should be more fudge in everyone’s life.  Including his.  Obviously.

I’ve read countless fudge recipes which tell you that you can’t, can’t, can’t do it without a candy thermometer.  Frankly, that’s bulls**t.  I own a meat thermometer as of recently and I do not own a candy one – which interferes with me making fudge not at all.  It is very easy to test fudge syrup for doneness – all you need is a glass of cold water on the stove next to your pot.  Drip a drop of syrup into the glass – if it forms a nice ball, which is soft when poked with a finger, you are ready to go.  If it splats and dissolves – not yet.  Simple.

I’ve also read and tried to use several recipes for fudge with mix-ins (dried fruit, etc.) which have failed miserably.  I am not naming any names, as usual, but please, people – think!  If your syrup is just right and you mix in something which has liquid in it (such as dried apricots or not-entirely-dehydrated raisins), it will change its temperature – and the % of water in it!  This recipe corrects for that, again, without any fuss.

This recipe is adapted from a supermarket (Tesco) magaine that I’d picked up a couple of years ago in the UK.  Most of the credit for it being fuss-free and fool- Veronika-proof goes to them.

So, without further ado – how to make white chocolate fudge right on your stovetop, without a thermometer.

Note about working with molten sugar syrup:  DO NOT TOUCH IT WITH YOUR HANDS, OR GODS FORBID, DO NOT LICK THE SPOON!!!  The sugar syrup always looks rather cool, and drips slowly but it is at over 120°C at that point.  Please be careful, and do not be tempted to touch it with your fingertips or anything you want unblistered.

Equipment you will need:

• Apron.  Or a high-necked top.  You don’t want chest splattered with molten sugar, trust me!
• Your glasses or goggles of some sort (recommended for all work with molten sugar – I use chemistry laboratory glasses).
• A stainless steel or other non-reactive pot.  I do not recommend teflon as it’s neither needed, nor likes too-high temperatures.
• A silicone spatula or spoon.  Or a wooden one.
• A baking form (such as a cake form).
• Baking parchment.
• Scale and measuring cups.  Though I guess you could approximate the sugar amount by taking 1/3 of a 1kg bag plus 2 tablespoons.  Or use one of those measuring cups that has sugar marked in grams as well as volume.  In any case, you want this to be fairly precise.
• Timer and a glass of cold water.

Ingredients:

• 300g white chocolate (It must, must, must be real chocolate – not cake coating, not “bakers’ block”, but real chocolate – dessert-making grade from the bakery isle is fine, but make sure it is chocolate and does not contain starches or other thickeners, or your fudge will be ruined!)
• 350g white caster sugar
• 25g unsalted butter
• 175ml (one small can or measure out of a large can) evaporated milk (this is not the same as condensed milk and will not work interchangeably here!)
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar (I use real vanilla vanilla sugar) or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100g of whatever you like to mix in (dried cranberries or chopped dried apricots work really well with white chocolate)
• Alternatively or in addition to mix-in, you can zest 1 orange and use the zest as flavoring
• 1 tablespoon of your favorite liquor (optional)

What to do:

• Line the bottom of your cake form (I use a springform pan for easy side removal) with baking parchment.
• Put on your apron or top.  No I am not kidding.  In fact, if you’ve got glasses put them on.  I use my chemist’s eye protection gear when I work with molten sugar.  I’d like my chest and eyes not burned by a stray splat, and I know I am clumsy.
• Put butter, sugar and evaporated milk into a pot and heat on medium-low heat, stirring gently from time to time, until all sugar is dissolved.
• Allow to come to a boil, stirring occasionally.
• Once the mixture is boiling steadily, set timer to 5 minutes.  Keep watching and stirring.
• After 5 minutes, test syrup by dripping into cold water.  It should ball up.  If it doesn’t, boil another 2 minutes before retesting.
• Once the syrup has reached soft ball stage (as above), mix in first your vanilla extract, then liquor (if using), and then zest (if using), and the mix-in (fruit etc.).  Note:  sugar will boil up and splat a second or two after addition of liquids.  Stand back a little and don’t put your face over the pot when you pour in.
• Mix and boil another 1-2 minutes.  Retest syrup.  It should ball up.  If it does not, boil and test at 1-2 min increments till it does.  Do not worry – last time I made fudge, I had to retest 2x times (boil 4 extra minutes) before the mix-in, but it turns out fine.
• Turn off the heat and drop in the chocolate.  DO NOT STIR!  Stirring white chocolate as it melts will cause it to seize.  Don’t.  Just stare at it for a bit.  You can poke the pieces which are on top of the syrup deeper into the syrup with a spoon.
• When you see that most of the chocolate has dissolved (top pieces are getting meltey at the edges), take that spatula or spoon and stir the heck out of the mix.  It should become homogenous after one or two vigorous stirs.  Stir a few seconds more till the mixture begins to lose gloss (this will happen very quickly), and then pour into the prepared parchment-lined form.
• The mix should start to set almost immediately.  Do not touch the form as it will get very hot.  Let it cool and set for 3-5 hours or overnight before unmolding and cutting.
• Unmold your fudge and gently peel off the parchment (it comes off easily).  Cut it into bits of desired size with a sharp knife, wiping or washing the blade if it becomes too sticky.
• Spread fudge pieces on some baking parchment and let dry a few hours to a couple of days until dry to touch before putting into cellophane bags and giving away.  Or, you know, just eat it all.  Only… don’t eat it all at one sitting.  I don’t speak from personal experience, oh no.  I’m virtuous like that.

White chocolate orange fudge with tequila. Tequila! :D

Happy Holidays!

Mini-Pizzas – Canapes For The Hungry Guests (And Hosts)

Many holiday parties aren’t actually dinner parties – they are an invitation for drinks (of whatever description), and canapes (snacks, hors d’oeuvres, whatever you want to call them).

Tiny canapes are well and good, and I actually love eating them, and even making them (though perhaps not for a very large number of people at a time!), but for me, it goes against the grain to not give my guests (and myself!) something substantial to munch on, however, and these, found and adapted from my now-much-used holiday edition of a Swedish baking magazine, are one of the better solutions.  First, who doesn’t love pizza?  Ok, I’ve met one person who doesn’t, but she’s an exception – most people love pizza.  Second, they aren’t difficult (or expensive) to make, and third, they are delicious, with just the right combo of crunch and chewiness to the crust, and a savory bite of the toppings.

The dough is yeasted, but it only (really!) does take about an hour to rise, and it’s made with plain (non-high-protein) flour, which makes it very easy to work with.  And think of it this way – even if the dough rounds look a bit clumsy before raising and baking, they all puff up deliciously and look great afterwards!

What you need (makes ~20 palm-sized pizzas):

• Dough:
• 1/4 packet dry yeast (about 1 heaping teaspoon)
• 2.5 dl (1 cup+ 2 teaspoons) finger-warm water
• A pinch of sea salt
• 1-2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 7dl (3 cups) plain flour
• Toppings (what I’ve used):
• Extra-virgin olive oil and a pastry brush to brush it on
• A handful of oil-packed sundried tomatoes, cut into thin strips crosswise
• ~10 slices of spicy cured chorizo sausage (the large-cross-section salami sort – if you have a thinner cured one, slice it thinly and use as much as you need)
• A couple of handfuls of shredded hard cheese (parmesan, romano, asiago, gran moravia or grana padano or whatever you like)
• Dried oregano to sprinkle
• Black pepper or chili flakes to taste
• Other suggestions include:
• Some pitted and halved olives of your favorite sort
• Pine nuts
• Chopped parsley leaves

What you do:

• Mix all dry ingredients of dough together (including dry yeast) in a bowl.
• Add the water and then the oil, and mix together.
• Allow to stand 10 minutes, then knead (I use a handheld mixer with dough hooks but a stand mixer or your own hands would do) until smooth and elastic.  The dough will become “friendly” (stick to itself more than everything else) but will be quite soft.  If you must add flour, do so sparingly, you do not want to make the dough hard.
• Place in an oiled bowl, turn, cover with cling film (plastic wrap), and a towel and place in a warm place to rise for 30 min to an hour or until doubled in size.
• Preheat oven to 200°C  (Ovens vary.  Mine has the no-fan option which is what I use).  Cover two baking sheets with baking parchment.
• Prepare your toppings – shred cheese, cut tomatoes, scizzor slices of chorizo or salami into 1cm square-ish bits.  Put in the fridge (mostly for sake of cheese here, so that it doesn’t get warm and soggy).
• Punch down the dough, knead it lightly, and roll into a sausage.  Cut into halves, then again and then into ~5 pieces each to make 20.
• Roll the bits into balls and allow to sit under a slightly-damp kitchen towel while you work (to prevent drying).
• Take balls of dough one by one, and gently flatten them with your hands, then pull the edges gently to enlarge the circle until they are about 10cm on a side.  Place them on the baking sheets a few cm apart.
• (This step is entirely optional – but helped me.) After you have finished all the rounds, it helps to start with the ones you did first as they had some resting time, and pick them up and stretch them a bit more if it looks they could use it.  The dough will be easier to handle at this point – do not tear.
• Place the re-stretched pizza bases on the sheets (still spacing them out to allow for expansion), cover with cloth kitchen towels, and allow to rise for about 20 minutes.  They will puff up visibly.
• Brush each round with a little bit of olive oil, leaving approximately 1-cm margin (this is roughly, if you splat oil around it’s not a problem of any sort), and then top with a few squares of salami or chorizo, and a couple of strips of sundried tomato.  Or whatever else you like.
• Sprinkle with dried oregano and grind a little bit of black pepper on top.  Add a small heap of shredded hard cheese onto the middle of each pizza.
• Place sheets in the oven.  I did this sequentially, but you could also up the temperature to 210°C and put both sheets in, and swap them top to bottom halfway through baking.  Bake for about 10 minutes, but watch the pizzas the entire time – as I’ve mentioned many times, ovens vary and I do not know yours!  The cheese can burn really quickly if you leave them in.
• When pizzas are puffed up more, crust is golden and the cheese is melted and golden as well, take out and cool on a rack.  These are fine to serve warm or at room temperature – they get a wonderfully crunchy crust when they cool down just a little.

Enjoy!  And if a stray guest wanders in having not had dinner, then just hand him or her a few of these, and problem solved!

The Scent of The Holiday Season – Saffron, Almond and Marzipan Buns!

The holiday season is here!

No, please don’t go after me with a frying pan!  I don’t usually start it this early, but you see, a couple of fantastic friends are coming to visit me next weekend from over-the-puddle England, and I won’t have time to decorate 4 weeks before Yule, so we’re starting to prepare and decorate now.  Also in preparation to that, I’ll be awol for the remainder of this week and possibly early next week, so I figured that I ought to leave you with something wonderfully festive and lovely that Swedes munch on during the holiday season, and which is (sadly and unfortunately!) little-known outside Scandinavia – a situation I wish to remedy: lussekatter or St. Lucia buns – yeasted beautiful saffron-scented golden creations which are the thing you want to eat with your afternoon tea or coffee when by said time the sky outside is pitch dark.  Or at least, I do.  And I recommend them.  A lot.

Saffron is known as the queen of spices for a reason – it is the singularly most expensive (per unit weight) spice in the world (or was last I heard).  But, don’t let that put you off because the reason it’s so expensive is that 1 – a little goes a really long way! and 2 – the spice itself is the stamens of a flower, Crocus sativus – and as such, is both, difficult to cultivate and even more difficult to harvest.  Why bother then?  Well, because the flavor – and the gorgeous deep golden color it imparts – are more than worth it.  And as I’ve mentioned, you really don’t need a lot!

So, if you’ve baked with saffron before, you can probably imagine how lovely these are, but if you’ve never baked with saffron, you should.  And I don’t just mean these buns – later, when I’ve had a chance to bake and photograph it, I’ll post a saffron cake recipe as well – but in the meantime, to start the holiday season up right, you should absolutely make these.  They are soft, moist, amazingly aromatic from the saffron, marzipan and the optional cardamom (only if you like it!), and they just tend to fly off and disappear off plates.  I’ve not actually met anyone who didn’t like them – in quantity!  They are also moderately easy to make – that is to say, a bit more complicated than things I call “easy”, but still entirely doable and by no definition difficult – and entirely, entirely worth the effort!

And – and this bit is not to be underestimated in its value! – they scent your home with the most amazingly delectable luxurious holiday scent as they bake.  The sort that no scented candles can compare to, no matter how much the manufacturers try.  Not that I am putting the scented candles down, you know – I love candles! – but in this case, both are better than one.  And very few things compare to baking saffron buns in the scent department.

Before I get to the recipe – a note about saffron.  You should buy it in threads rather than the powdered form, as it keeps better, and you will need a small stone or ceramic mortar and pestle to grind it.  If you don’t have a small smooth mortar (those huge granite ones won’t work, you’ll just hammer the safron into the stone grooves), then buy it powdered, but only as a compromise.  Better powdered saffron than no saffron, after all!  Saffron threads you buy should be a deep red color, not pale yellow – which is why I buy mine in clear boxes.  But to be frank, supermarket-sealed foil packets have good quality saffron as well, and I am no snob.  Another thing to know is that saffron tends to absorb water from the air, and should be kept in airtight containers – but even then, it should be dried before use (directions follow).

Note about yeast – in Sweden, you can buy specialized yeast for sweet doughs.  It’s a different strain of yeast which can tolerate more sugar in the dough and still rise well.  However, if you can’t buy yeast that is specifically sugar-tolerant, the recommendation is to use more of the regular yeast (I have done so myself when I lived in USA), and it works well.  If you use regular yeast, use 1.5-2x the amount specified.

This recipe is translated and adapted from a Swedish baking magazine “Hembakat”, which is not available on the net (nor in English at all afaik).  Adaptations include more instructions on saffron, swapping types of nuts, and halving the recipe because I’m not a mother of a huge brood and unless I am throwing a large party, I don’t think I need fourty saffron buns in one go.  Or, I wouldn’t mind eating that many of them, but my mirror…   In any case, you can double the recipe if you want more of them, after having tried and gotten addicted!

So what do you need? (makes about 20 buns, but the number depends on how large you slice them!)

Zoe at Dare to Eat a Peach has done an excellent adaptation of this – and posted the recipe in American measures if that is what you prefer.

• 8-9 dl of flour – plain, or a mix of 1/2 bread flour and 1/2 plain.  I used plain.  Possibly a bit more, depending on moisture levels of your flour (and kitchen air… you know how that goes).
• A generous pinch of saffron threads – approximately 0.5g (check how many grams are in your package and gauge from there)
• 50g unsalted butter, melted on hot water bath
• 2.5 dl milk, warmed to 37°C (finger-warm)
• 25g fresh yeast for sweet doughs, or ~40g regular fresh yeast (or equivalent measure of dry granulated yeast)
• 125g 10% fat quark cheese (like Kesella), sieved ricotta, or 10% fat yogurt
• 75ml caster sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
• 1 teaspoon finely ground cardamom (optional but very nice)
• Filling and Topping Ingredients:
• ~150g marzipan or almond mass, shredded on a coarse cheese shredder.  If yours is too soft to shred, open it and place in the refrigerator for a while – it will harden.  Store shredded mass in the fridge until needed to avoid it getting sticky.
• ~100g chopped blanched almonds, pistachios or other nuts of choice.
• Pearl sugar (if you can get it) to decorate
• 1 egg yolk and 2-3 tablespoons milk, beaten together into egg wash (boyfriend is allergic to egg whites – you can just beat a whole egg with a drop of water if you aren’t)

How-to:

• (Skip this if you have powdered saffron.)  Place your saffron threads in mortar and heat the oven to 75-100°C.  Dry saffron in the mortar placed in oven for about 5 minutes, until mortar is very warm to touch and saffron crackles a little when you mash it.  Pound the saffron till it’s powdered.
• Melt the butter in a small bowl half-immersed into boiled water.  Add the saffron powder, mix and allow to sit on the water bath.
• Crumble the yeast into the warm milk and blend to disperse.  Let stand for 5 minutes.
• Mix all the remaining dry dough ingredients together (flour, sugar, salt, optional cardamom powder) in a bowl.
• Add the saffron-infused butter to the milk, and mix the milk+butter and quark cheese (or alternative) into the dough.  I use a handheld electric mixer here, but I imagine it can be done by hand as well (with a bit more effort).
• Continue to knead the dough with the mixer until it is soft but elastic and releases from the bowl with not too much effort.  The dough will be somewhat wet, but do add a little flour if necessary.  Note that sweet, fatty dough tends to take longer to develop gluten so don’t rush with adding the flour, but it may be needed towards the end.
• Transfer the dough ball into a clean and very lightly oil-brushed bowl, cover with cling film and a towel and leave to rise in a warm place for 40-90 minutes (depending on how warm your kitchen is), until about doubled in size.  I did a couple of stretch-and-folds throughout that time to help with the gluten development a little, but if your dough is well-behaved, this is not necessary.
• Preheat your oven to 225°C, and prepare 2 baking sheets with baking parchment or those silicone non-stick mats on them.
• Turn dough out onto a floured surface (you may want to prepare a sheet of lightly floured baking parchment to place it on once rolled), and stretch and then roll it out into a large (rough) rectangle.  Place on parchment if using, sprinkle the filling (chopped almonds or other nuts and shredded marzipan) evenly over it, then carefully roll the dough up along the longer side into a sausage and pinch the seam shut.
• Slice crosswise into 2-3cm thick slices and lay them gently on the baking parchment-covered sheets, leaving at least 4cm between the slices (to give space to rise).  Allow to rise under a kitchen towel for about 30-40 minutes (again, depending on the temperature in your kitchen), brush with beaten egg wash, sprinkle with pearl sugar and bake for ~10-12 minutes until beautifully golden on top.  I baked one sheet then the other, rather than risk burned tops/bottoms from having 2 sheets in the oven and the awkward swapping of them to boot.  The baking process is short enough for it to not be worth it – to me.
• Take out of oven and cool on a rack.

These keep for a couple of days in an airtight container or bag in the fridge, and I’ve heard they freeze reasonably well but I’ve never had enough of them left over to freeze, you know…

Honey-Ginger Tea (for when you’ve got a cold or just feel under the weather)

Oh, October, how beautiful you are, bringing the harvest, my lovely favorite quinces, beautiful colored trees, and the sniffles to my boyfriend’s nose… oh wait, that part is not so nice.  At all.

It’s also totally true that if you treat a cold, it goes away in a week, and if you don’t, it takes seven days.  However, no one ever said that said week has to be totally miserable.  I’m a big believer in not taking antibiotics for every sniffle you get – and an equally strong believer in yes, taking decongestants orally (so they don’t dry out your already abused nasal membranes).  I also know there’s a lot to be done to make a person with a cold much, much more comfortable than they’d be otherwise.  Like, by offering them a blanket, a book, a box of those (oh miracle invention!!!) tissues with balsam in them, and a cup of something warm to drink.

This incarnation of our kitchen's honey jar comes from Gotland

And this is definitely the cup you want to offer.  Or have offered to you, if you are on the receiving drippy end of the cold situation.  Unless you are allergic to honey, or hate ginger or both, in which case, go suck on a sugared lemon.  I mean it, I do that occasionally myself – but if you don’t hate ginger or honey, then you ought to make this.  In fact, if you’ve got a large teapot and the person who’s dripping is not yourself, make the large teapot and share it.  It’s really, really nice when you aren’t sick, too.  I’m eyeing the remains in my boyfriend’s cup right now and regret using the small teapot.

The recipe is essentially what it says above – a good piled spoonful of best-quality honey (you can really taste it in this!) you’ve got, and a finger of ginger, peeled and sliced thinly across the fibers.  I normally keep ginger root and lemons in my fridge, and we always have at least one type of honey around.  A good local set minimally-processed honey is a staple, and sometimes we also splurge on something like Provencal lavender honey, or Tasmanian leatherwood honey (mmm, now I want to order some of that again!).  So, chances are that I have the ingredients for making it on hand at any point, since ginger root keeps nearly forever in a plastic bag.

This (entire piece sliced) is enough for small teapot

Plunk the honey and the ginger into the pot.  Add a slice of lemon if you are so inclined (today boyfriend wasn’t), pour in freshly-boiled water, stir the honey off the spoon, close pot, cover with towel and let stand about 10-15 minutes.

A cork stand under pot helps keep the heat better, but it's not necessary

Why let it stand?  This isn’t an instant drink, people!  It’s raw root that you are steeping in boiling water to leech some of its juice and essential oil out.  It takes a bit of time, and the hotter you keep the pot, the better.  So stick that cozy on it, put a towel over it, whatever.

After the time (I recommend the full 15 min) is past, stir the contents of the pot and pour into cups.  If your pot is worth the ceramic it’s made of, it’ll still be hot, so don’t go burning tongue on this (ouch!), but you don’t want this to go cold – you want to drink it as hot as possible, because it’s nicer to your sore nose and throat, and also tastes better that way.  At least in my opinion.

Now, I sincerely hope you don’t get a cold.  Or a flu.  Which doesn’t mean you won’t, but hey, best wishes and all – it also shouldn’t deter you from making and drinking this, because it’s just nice as a good-night non-caffeinated drink.  I mean, even a faithful worshipper of caffeine such as myself can appreciate something I can guzzle down at half past midnight with no danger of having trouble sleeping afterwards.  Besides, it tastes good.  Really really good.

So yeap.  Make it.  I suspect it will go really well with some fairly plain shortbread cookies alongside it, too – the flavor is very warm and more than a little spicy, so you don’t actually need anything too strongly-flavored alongside.

Of Fresh Yellow Dates And Good Manners

Looking at my pale skin (it goes translucently pale-ivory under the Nordic skies), my friends sometimes forget that I am not (entirely) from around here.  And then we walk by a tiny vegetable stall with a huge vaguely Middle-Eastern or Indian guy presiding over it, and I squeak and run and pick up a bunch of something that to them, looks like yellow plastic things-on-a-string, and wave them around in apparent excitement, drawing blank stares.

Dates - the fruit of the Phoenix dactylifera (isn't that a gorgeous name?!)

Then, they remember.  Having lived in Israel, and shopped at a traditional shuk (market) on a regular basis, I tend to bless every deity between Jerusalem and Tokyo and some other ones on top when I find a good fruit and veg stall, one that’d stock proper pomegranates, quinces (yes, I am a quince nut!), and, among other lovely fruit that is not found in a Western supermarket, fresh yellow dates.

Dates are the fruit of the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera), one of the oldest cultivated crops in history.  It is a beautiful tree that is both tough – it can take salty soil and dry climate and heat, and also produces an amazing fruit, which eventually ripens and dries to the soft, brown glazey consistency that most Westerners associate with dates they buy.  But, in the initial stages of ripenness, dates of a lot of the varieties (especially the more recently-developed ones) are also sweet, not too tart, and absolutely lovely to eat.

You can take a small bite and pull the pit out, then munch!

Fresh dates that are sold in this manner are not intended for ripening further at home (some people have tried it, but I’ve not heard stories of it being too successful, nor have I tried it myself as I like them fresh).  They are crunchy, with a texture reminiscent of a very firm pear, a lot of juicy sweetness, and just a tiny hint of tannin in the flavor.  I can go through a couple of stems of them without realising it, because they are utterly addictive, similarly to how good grapes, or anything sweet in small bites tends to be.

Now, this post isn’t a recipe, precisely – but that is because I do not think these need one.  Wash them in some running water, drain them so they don’t make a puddle, and eat them on their own, or alongside some tapas or antipasti (they go great with the salty charcuterie that I tend to favor).  I’ve heard they are also good pitted and wrapped in bacon and then fried, which I am yet to try – and plan to, and will write about once I have but as these have a short season, that may not be until next year.

Why?  This is why.

om nom nom NOM NOM... wait, where'd they all go?

That was the state of my plate hours ago.  By now, the situation has reached its inevitable end.  And so did all the dates I’d bought.

Perhaps if I go back to the stall this week there’ll be a little more of them left?  I can hope…

Yes. I want more of them.

And, while I am on the subject, I would like to again, thank all the immigrant-catering vegetable stall and small Mid-Eastern and Indian and Chinese grocery owners in the Western Europe.  Thank you.  Without you, I’d have been utterly deprived of all the yummy foods which I am used to, or at best I’d be paying utterly insane prices at the fancy market hall downtown.  I think more people should eat these wonderful things – and I certainly tell all my friends to frequent the veg stalls rather than the supermarket isles.  The small greengrocers do us a service, and their job is a hard one – the least we can do is patronize their establishments.

And this, this brings me to the ranty part of this post.  While googling dates and fresh dates to get references for this post, I ran across a blog which shall remain nameless (because I am polite like that).  Said blog also mentioned a person who encounters fresh yellow dates at a Middle-Eastern grocer, and then… this blog proceeds to slam said grocer’s dress sense and manners.

Now, I wasn’t there and I can’t say anything about the manners of the older gentleman that she so mocked.  Though, to me that still sounds rather suspicious, as even the West, most Eastern shopkeepers tend to adhere to their own style of doing business.  They offer a taste, they tend to be friendly, and they are happy you are shopping with them and not the supermarket 20 meters away.  Heck, the owner of our neighborhood dry cleaners always finds time to talk to us, and presses candy, and on a recent rainy-day visit, hot, freshly-brewed coffee on us.  So unexpected rudeness from one of those people is just that – unexpected.

I don’t even think I need to mention that mocking someone’s dress sense when you don’t know just where they manage to get their clothes, and for how little – probably because they are feeding kids or saving for their education – is such a trashy, common thing to do, I don’t have words to properly address it.  Not polite ones anyway.  And I’ve been taught proper manners, unlike some people.

To sum it up – visit your ethnic market or shop.  Ask the shopkeeper about things they are selling that look good.  Buy them.  Try them.  Who knows, you may discover something else you like that’s just as addictive as baklava and hummus, which by now have taken the West by storm.  Like halva.  Or golden or green raisins.  Or, these dates.