Hot Cocoa For Grownups

Autumn.  Shorter daylight hours.  Hot chocolate.

Spiked and with cream, how else?

Need I say more?

Ok, in this age of hot cocoa coming from an instan-drink box and having, thus, lost its appeal to those above age twelve, perhaps I do.

I love hot cocoa and hot chocolate (the two drinks are not the same, though they can be drunk rather interchangeably – it’s the composition that differs***), but I rarely make either one at home.  Why?  Well, usually because when I reach for a hot drink, I want my fix of caffeine, or something to go with dessert – whereas these two are dessert in themselves.  But this is not me trying to tell you when to or not to drink anything.  Rather, I suspect I am just being my under-caffeinated self and thus babbling.

***Note: The difference beetween hot chocolate and hot cocoa is that hot chocolate is made from actual shaved chocolate – meaning, it has the cocoa butter in it.  Hot cocoa is made from cocoa powder, which had the cocoa butter removed from it – making the drink no less wonderful, especially if you have full-fat milk or cream on hand.  Or, preferably, both.

Where was I?  Ah right, hot cocoa.  You should make it.  It’s rich, it’s luscious, it satisfies the chocaholic in you me, and it’s easy to put together from on-hand stuff.  To me, it’s an instant (or well, taking a few minutes, but nevermind that!) fix of a dessert when there is absolutely no dessert at home, and I can’t be bothered to bake.  I don’t know about you but I always have milk at home, and heavy cream (it keeps well and goes into many good things!), and there is always a box of cocoa lurking in the back of my pantry even when the supplies of chocolate have dwindled (or else I may just dwindle those on their own right out of existence!).

If you have that, a pot and a whisk, you have the makings of really good hot cocoa – and with a few other storecupboard things like vanilla sugar and the booze of your choice (Rum!  Rum is amazing in cocoa, says I… you can plonk in what you like!), it becomes a really, really amazing thing on a darkening autumn (or winter!) evening.

So, how do you make hot cocoa?  I do not recommend microwaving the milk.  One, because then you’d have to pour it into a pot anyway, and two, because milk can heat unevenly, form a film on the surface while the bottom is cold, etc.  Not worth the bother.

• Put your milk into a small cookpot and start heating it on medium heat.  While WATCHING it and stirring it with a whisk.  THE ENTIRE TIME.  I really mean it – my beloved boyfriend had near-ruined three perfectly good pots by putting milk into them, putting that on the heat and promptly burning it to the bottom of the pot by ignoring it.  So, watch the milk.
• When the milk begins to steam gently and foams some when beaten with a whisk and it hot to touch when you touch it with a finger, it is hot enough.  You do not want to boil it.  Turn heat down to medium-low and add 1 slightly-heaping teaspoon of cocoa powder per each 1dl of milk, whisking furiously after each spoonful.  To avoid the cocoa clumping, don’t dump the entire spoon into the milk but scatter the cocoa a little, and whisk-whisk-whisk.
• After whisking all the cocoa in, add the desired amount of sugar or arificial sweetener (I go for the latter), whisk until sugar is dissolved completely, and turn heat to minimum to keep the cocoa warm.
• In the meantime, whip 1 dl of cream with 1/2 teaspoon vanilla sugar (I use real-vanilla vanilla sugar, but heck, use what you’ve got.  Or a drop of vanilla extract and a teaspoon of powdered sugar if that’s what you have.) until soft peaks form.
• Stir the cocoa, mix in 1-2 tablespoons of your favorite booze per each 2.5dl (1 cup), turn off the heat, and ladle it into your mugs.
• Top with whipped vanilla cream.

Drink.  Achieve cozy cat-on-blanket state of bliss.

Five Luxuries Pasta

This recipe was born years ago as a version of a simple carbonara, but in my pursuit of making it even better, it has gathered ingredients and became something which the purists would no longer recognize as pasta alla carbonara – so I won’t call it that to avoid offending said purists.

Cream, garlic, white wine, parmesan... I could go on - could you resist?

Pasta (usually spaghetti, but I also like linguine) alla carbonara is an Italian recipe, though its origins are somewhat unclear.  The story I’d heard was the one referencing it as a dish which was invented by charcoal-burning workers which needed to make do with things which one could keep for a while – hence eggs, pancetta (bacon) and Parmigiano-Reggiano (parmesan) cheese.  Wikipedia and other online sources have their own opinions, and I am certainly not here to argue which one is right (I have no idea), and what details of recipe are more authentic than others.  Instead, in the Italian manner of following the spirit rather than the letter of the law, erm, I mean recipe, I have created something of my own.

This pasta is my over-the-top Italian-style luxury.  And by luxury I do not mean you-can’t-afford-it luxury (though some of the ingredients aren’t the cheapest), but more in the sense of indulgence.  To quote something I’ve read on the net – “isn’t everything better with cream?“

Well, maybe not everything (no cream in my tea, please!), but pasta usually is.  By same principle, to the basis of carbonara, I have added everything else I love in pasta that would go well together: white wine, garlic, sauteed shallots, cream and white truffle oil.  The result is truly magnificent, although I’d not eat it every day.  Or week.  For the sake of my trousers-behind relationship.  So, this is not the lowest-in-anything (except possibly sugar) recipe, and I’m not making any health claims except for that of simple joy of eating it.  Which is worth something in its own right.

The five luxuries referred to in the name specifically are:  cream, pancetta, egg yolk, parmigiano-reggiano and white truffle oil.  Now, don’t you just want to go and make it right now?

What you need to serve 2:  (all ingredients at room temperature)

• Pasta – I use wholegrain spaghetti or linguine, because I like those.  Shape and variety are truly up to you.
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon rapeseed, peanut or light olive oil
• 1-2 shallots, peeled and chopped finely
• 3-5 cloves of garlic
• ~150g cubed pancetta or good bacon (lardons)
• 75-100ml dry white wine
• 2-2.5dl heavy (single) cream – no heavier than 40% fat
• 4dl (fluffed up, not packed) finely shredded parmigiano-reggiano, pecorino, or other hard cheese
• 2 free-range* egg yolks (separated, left in their half-shells until serving time)
• White truffle oil, to drizzle
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• A little finely chopped parsley (optional)

*Note about eggs:  Egg yolks in this recipe are used raw, that is to say, uncooked.  In Sweden, eggs do not contain salmonella as a rule (it’s against the local livestock law), but in many other places that is not a requirement.  I would recommend buying free-range highest-quality eggs you can find for this, as they have far lesser chance of contamination (not to mention they taste better), but if you are concerned about the possibility of salmonella presence in raw egg, please feel free to substitute pasteurised egg yolk or eat this at your own risk.

How-to:

• Boil a large pot of salted water, and cook your pasta according to package instructions while preparing the sauce.
• Once pasta is cooked, drain and let stand in a colander covered until sauce is ready.
• Warm a couple of pasta bowls by placing in a warm turned-off oven.

• In a large non-stick frying pan, on medium heat, melt the butter and add the oil (latter to prevent burning) till butter is foaming but not browning.
• Add the chopped shallots and cook for a few minutes until translucent and barely beginning to color.
• Turn heat up to medium-high, move shallots aside in the pan and add bacon.  Cook until browning gently, then mix in the shallots.  Cook until shallots are golden and bacon is cooked through and browned.
• Add garlic and cook a few seconds until bright white, fragrant and just beginning to color.
• Pour in the wine and stir.  Reduce heat to medium.  Allow to reduce by 30-50%, then add the cream and heat until beginning to simmer.
• Add 2/3 of the  cheese, sprinkling it over the sauce and stir in to melt.
• Once sauce is thickened, add the pasta and mix in thoroughly.  Add chopped parsley if using.  Place in warmed pasta bowls.
• Season pasta with freshly ground black pepper to taste, sprinkle with remaining cheese, and drizzle with truffle oil.
• Carefully make an indentation in the pasta mound with a fork and place the yolk in it, preferably without breaking its skin, and serve immediately.

I love a glass of white wine alongside to cut the richness of this, and a strong hot coffee afterwards.  You do as you please – as always!

Strawberry Fields (Not Forever, Just For The Summer!)

Strawberries are in season.

It is, in my not at all humble opinion, the only right time of year to eat them – whenever they are in season where/near where you live, that is.   Although the ones shipped from far away can still look pretty in mid-winter, they sadly tend to have no aroma, and with strawberries, aroma is everything.  If they don’t smell good, they won’t taste good, since they have very little natural sugar, and, deconstructed, are essentially just some fiber, water, red pigment, a few vitamins and their utterly heavenly scent.

Now, to be honest, I am perfectly happy to eat them raw out of the box they came in.  Or chopped and splashed with cream.  Or with whipped cream if I have a spray can of that or can be bothered to whip it (though all right, it takes a couple of minutes max with an electric mixer!), but cream can be too cloying when it is hot and sunny out, and so one must come up with a solution.  For me, this is it.  It hardly takes longer to make than whipping the cream (well, you do need to let it freeze for a few hours, but that is no effort on your part unless your fridge runs off a hand crank!), and it is beyond worth the minimal effort (and the wait).

I won’t even begin to pretend that this is either low fat, low sugar or low calorie.  It’s none of those things, and it’s certainly not to be counted as one of your portions of fruit or veg a day.  No, this is sheer and utter indulgence, in all of its silky, creamy glory, and I am unapologetic for it.  Some things in life are not eaten for their health potential, but for the joy of them, and in that sense, I suppose this is rather substantially contributing to one’s mental well-being, but I’d be the last person to prescribe a 1L tub of ice cream to anyone as a depression treatment.  Eat this shamelessly, happily, as a celebration of summer and all the good things the world brings us to eat, or don’t eat it at all.

The basic ice cream recipe used here is based – loosely and with modifications – on Nigella Lawson’s no-churn ice cream recipes.  It is adjusted for using 40% whipping cream (she uses English double cream which is 48% fat, but you cannot get double cream here in Sweden unless you bother with a specialty store).  It can, in my view, stand being made with any none-too-acid fruit such as apricots, peaches, sweet mango, or possibly an aromatic pear.  I plan to experiment more as the summer goes by and all those come into their seasons.  And I do know this will work just as well with any sort of berries – raspberries or blueberries (wild if you can be bothered to pick!), and possibly blackberries as well (those tend to be more tart, but this does have enough sugar to compensate).  I haven’t tried making it with sea buckthorn or cloudberries (not a seasonal thought, but you can buy those here frozen – and they are hard to find fresh anywhere and anytime), but the thought has occurred to me now, and it is not easily dismissed.  Anyway, the strawberry heaven pictured above is simple and easy to make.

What you need:   (Yield ~ 1.3L of ice cream)

• A working freezer.  One that goes to -18°C or below is advantageous here.
• 1 – 2L worth of plastic tubs with airtight lids.  I used an empty Lindahls Mejeri Turkish yoghurt bucket and a smaller plastic tub I had around.
• 500ml of 40% fat whipping cream, chilled
• 150-175g (3dl) powdered sugar
• 1dl (2 hugely heaping tablespoons) Turkish or Greek yoghurt.  I imagine the new Russian would work as well, so long as it’s 10% fat or over, and no less!
• 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar.  I use Dr. Oetker real vanilla one, but I guess vanillin-based one would also work (if maybe not quite as well)
• 200-300g fresh, aromatic strawberries.

Here is what you do:

• Blitz strawberries and vanilla sugar in a food processor.  If yours is large enough, add the powdered sugar and mix, otherwise tip into a bowl and whisk in powdered sugar.
• Add yoghurt and whisk to combine.  Set aside.
• Whip cream in a large mixing bowl until it forms soft peaks.  Slowly tip in strawberry-yoghurt mixture and continue whipping until the mixture is uniformly colored (in case of strawberries it turns out a lovely delicate pink) and stands up in fairly stiff waves.
• Scrape into your tubs and freeze for 3-5 hours or until you are ready to eat it.

You can set the ice cream out of freezer (into fridge) for 15-25 min to take the worst of the chill off before serving, or just attack it with more gusto out the bucket the way I do.  Either way, it’s strawberry-cream heaven, and in my very humility-deficient opinion, one of the best things about the start of summer.