Insalata Di Caprese, and Then Some!

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

I was thinking to post about my chocolate mousse for the dubious occasion of Valentine’s Day, until I realized that 1. the mousse post would be late anyway, as it would be ready to photograph too late for anyone who’d want to make it for this specific Valentine’s day (I am not one of those food bloggers who makes food just to take pictures of it!), and that 2. the mousse is a fantastic recipe to post anytime, and not just when the entire internet is drowned in chocolate recipes for Valentine’s day.

So therefore, you get chocolate mousse with bourbon later, and today there is a post about another one of my favorite-ever things to eat: Insalata Di Caprese.

Insalata Di Caprese, at its most basic, is a ripe tomato, a good ball of mozzarella sliced thickly, and basil leaves, all dressed in a simple extra-virgin olive oil.  The marriage of textures and flavors is perfect, and the way tomato and fresh greens infuse into the trembling softness of mozzarella is… well, there is a reason why the salad is famous the world over.  It is not actually known if the recipe originated on Capri, but when something tastes so amazing, do we really care?  I certainly do not!  Nor am I one of those snooty purists who say that adding anything at all other than the above ruins the salad.  I never believed that some fresh garlic, black pepper, bacon or parsley did it any harm, and I love it with the peppery bitterness of arugula in particular.  Since arugula, tomatoes, mozzarella and good bacon are all fridge staples in our home, this makes arranging the lunch that much simpler – and yes, we do eat endless variations of it on a fairly regular basis.

The testament to how great this is, is that for all we eat it often, it is still enough of a favorite that I turned to it without a second thought when it came to figuring out what to do for a light and festive Valentine’s Day lunch for T and I.  And, going by the adage that bacon makes everything better, I decided to add some crisped slices of really good smoked local bacon – and the celestial pigs sang hallelujah, for we ate it and it was very, very good!  The smokey and not-too-salty crunch of the pork set off the tart sweetness of the tomatoes and the milky mozzarella di bufala campagna, and made for a salad that was both, fresh, savory and satifying – a perfect lunch to precede the likely indulgence of the evening meal.

Oh what, you need a recipe for this?!  Fine, then!  This will serve two.

• A few handfuls of arugula with a few optional basil leaves mixed in.
• A ball of good-quality mozzarella (buffalo mozzarella being the luxury for today), sliced gently.
• 10 thin slices off a piece of dry, warm-smoked bacon (or any bacon of your choice), fried slowly on low heat to render the fat until they are crisp.  I found that scooping the fat out of the pan as it renders, makes these crisp a lot faster and better.
• 1-2 ripe tomatoes, sliced.
• A drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, a sprinkle of flaked salt, and some dried lavender or black pepper to taste.

Toss the greens into wide salad bowls, arrange the sliced mozzarella on the greens, and the tomato on the mozzarella.  Sprinkle with salt and spices and drizzle with olive oil.  Top with crisped bacon.  Serve.  If the boyfriend hadn’t had to work in the afternoon, a bit of sparkling wine would have gone amazing with this!

Review: Sushi 66 Kvadrat

I’ve mentioned before how Årsta (that’s a suburb of Stockholm where we live) has amazing food.  Actually, I specifically said it has amazing grub, which is also true, but I am not sure sushi can be termed ‘grub’, really.  Especially not when it is as good as this.

Sushi 66 Kvadrat (click linky for more pictures) is a tiny place (one of a chain of 3 across Stockholm, I think).  By tiny, I mean tiny – the one we go to has a dining room about 3x4m with 2 tables and a window bar.  It’s clean, it’s simple, the decor is in shades of dark to light grey, black, white and red, and the rather generic but pleasant music is piped at a comfortably low volume, so that you don’t have to raise voice to talk over it, or strain to hear the person across the table from you.

There is one downside to this place:  they do not serve tea.  In my mind, sushi is simbiotically linked with green tea, and so I always feel a little disappointed by this (though this can, of course be remedied by taking the sushi home).  On the upside, this is the only downside I’ve found about this place.

The menu is pretty basic and short, as I imagine it’s geared towards family take-out for none-too-adventurous with seafood.  This is not a high-end place serving soft-shell crab and dragon rolls, or fatty tuna.  From what I can tell, they order a limited variety of seafood, however – and here we get to the crux of the matter and why I feel I should say a few words – that seafood is always fresh and fragrant and downright amazing.

In fact, let me start over and say it – the sushi they make is amazing.  By that I mean that the rice is perfectly cooked and molded.  The nigiri are not too small (I’ve encountered the tiny-nigiri in many sushi places before which made me wonder whether those people are in the business of starving rather than feeding me).  I’ve also encountered rice so dry it scratched my throat when eaten, and in a far more pricey sushi place here in Stockholm, to boot (we avoid that one now).

But, 66 Kvadrat do it right.  Their nigiri are plump, their avocado is fresh and unoxidized, their scallops are tremblingly-soft and translucent, and their salmon is served glistening and gorgeous and so fresh it drapes over the rice like a silk scarf.

The sushi literally melt in your mouth into seafood bliss.

Pictured: Standard sushi plate, medium

What, you want more upsides?  Well, there are a few.

Their soy sauce is good.  I don’t ever complain when I’m served Kikkoman which is standard, but this place uses something called Sakura, and it is pretty darn delicious.

Their miso soup is good.  I’m not a huge miso soup connosseur, but it’s delicious and not too watery (as miso soup goes), and the greens are fresh.  What more can you ask?

T ate most of his before I snapped a photo... obviously, mine was long gone.

They make good yakiniku.  I am not a connosseur of that either, but T routinely orders that as a hot meal alternative at Japanese places, and this one is one of the better ones we’ve had.

They are inexpensive.  Not cheap, per se, but not expensive, and certainly not as expensive as you’d get 15 min from here in the city.

So yes.  If you are in the area, and you want good sushi for a good price, this is it.  As simple as that.

Note:  In case anyone is curious, no, nobody has paid me to write reviews of their products or eateries.  I write about the ones I like enough to recommend to friends (or not, but usually the ones I do think are good).  In fact, all the things I’ve reviewed so far, have been items I’d bought and paid for (be it food or consumables or cookware).

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.