Food and Recipes

Fika (coffee brakes)

coffeebrake

At Zetas. Photo: ©nini.tjader.2015

This time of the year, I enjoy having a coffee brakes, or “fika” in Swedish, outside. If it is in a commercial place, like the above which is at Zetas garden shop, I usually take a large coffee with milk in and a glass of water.

coffeebrake

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2015

Not necessary to have anything but the coffee and the water.

coffeebrake

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2015

If at home, during summer, when weather permits, the coffee brake is on the bench on my outside place. Sometimes including cake (berry cake this time, done yesterday), sometimes not. Always including a book or a paper. Yesterday was one of those days when it started raining as soon as I sat down. This summer has been like this. Not hard though, so I stayed in cover of the balcony above. A short while later the rain stopped again and the sun came out.

danish, pekan

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2015

If I buy something to have with the coffee it usually is a Danish pastry with pecan nuts. That’s my favorite. The berry pie is so easy to do though, and fast, so usually no need to buy anything. Recipe in Swedish here.

berrypie

Berry pie. Photo: ©nini.tjader.2015

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Two days before Xmas

adventsstake, fjärde advent

Today, two days before Xmas, it is warm and windy outside, no snow, and on radio and TV it is all about Xmas. Outside is almost sunny.

skinkmacka

Have eaten the first “skinkmacka” (sandwich with cooked ham à la Xmas) on “vörtbröd” that I made yesterday.

It was delicious.

vörtbröd

The inside of the bread.

vörtbröd

Straight from the oven. Yes it is supposed to be brown.

If Armand had still been alive, today would have been his 75th birthday.

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Baklava and other not so swedish stuff

baklava

Baklava

Suddenly the local Lidl store in Tumba sold baklava. I bought 2 boxes with the above content. After having tasted it I went back and bought two more boxes. They were delicious. Love it.

It wasn’t all that long ago that baklava was hard to come by in Sweden. I learned to love it first in Israel, then in Greece. Just a few years ago you could only get it in MIddle Eastern shops where they on Fridays had some local house-wife bake it and sell it in the local shop. That was the situation when I lived in Vårby Gård. Then they appeared at the lebanese restaurant at the food court in Skärholmen. And now Lidl has them. Progress.

It has to my delight become so much easier to find mediterranean and middle eastern food stuffs nowadays. When I moved back to Sweden (from Israel) in 1974 it was even hard to find aubergine and squash. Not now. They today are found among the regular veggies in any supermarket. That’s good.

Baklava, or kadaifi, or kunafa… all very similar sweet things, name depending on which part around the Mediterranean they come from. Delicious with coffee, or with a glass of red wine (yes they really are). I have a few recipes in Swedish here for making them yourself. (Want me to translate them? Just ask, or use Google translate. My old site there doesn’t work as supposed to so Google Translate might not work directly on the page, but I plan to remake the pages any time soon now).

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Harvest and jam time

You want the recipe for mirabelle jam? I published this here about two years ago.

mirabelles_2014

It is that time of the year again. The trees are full of them this year (last year almost none). The mirabelles. Mirabelles are cousins to plums and taste very similar. They don’t keep if you just pick them and plan to eat them later. They go bad very quickly. So jam is about the only thing I know that you can make from them.

mirabelles_2014_4

We have a few trees with the red variety in the neighborhood, More with the yellow ones. If you ask me, the red ones are the most delicious. But both are good.

mirabelles_2014_2

The other day I picked 2,5 kgs. Didn’t do anything with them until the next day as I realized I had to go to IKEA and buy an 5L big pot to be able to make jam from them.

mirabelles_2014_1

So they rested in the kitchen until next day and new pot bought. By then some of them had gone bad and went into the trash. Still had 2kgs of them though. So, yesterday I made jam. Seven jars of it.

mirabelles_2014_3

Remains to find a place to store those jars… Ideally that would be the fridge. It is pretty full in the fridge though.

Also remains to pick the yellow ones before they fall off the trees by themselves.

mirabelles_2014_5

You want the recipe for mirabelle jam? I published this here about two years ago.

Posted by nini in Food and Recipes, Garden and Nature, 0 comments

Harvest time for the mirabelles

red mirabelles

Red mirabelles

It is harvest time for the mirabelles. The red ones (above) got ready first, but the yellow ones (below) aren’t far behind. They are now falling off the tress all by themselves. The slightest wind or rain (not to mention the hail the other day) makes them drop to earth. Plopp, plopp, plopp you hear…

The mirabelles are relatives to plums so whatever you can do with plums you can with mirabelles. More here.

So, what do I do with them? Jam is the answer. Have done one batch of the red ones so far but will do more. Here is the recipe (which also can be used on plums):

500 gram mirabelles
500 gram preservationsugar (with pectin in)
1 vanilla-pod
juice and grated orange-peel from one orange
the juice form one lime (I am sure you use a lemon if you don’t have a lime)
0,75 dl water

Rinse the mirabelles and remove eventual stems.
Put mirabelles, sugar, and water in a saucepan and add grated vanilla-pod, the peel and juice of the orange and the juice of the lime. Buil – stir all the time – for about 20 minutes. Approximately then the seeds start to get up and float to the surface of the jam and can be removed. The jam is ready. Before you put into hot and well-cleaned jars, check that all the seeds are removed. Let cool.

It’s delicious.

If you want to see how the tree looked when in bloom, go here. I didn’t know at the time that they were mirabelles.

Yellow Mirabelles

Yellow Mirabelles

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Testing Lindahls Rysk Yoghurt

Lindahls Mejeri I’ve applied to become a yoghurt tester, testing a new brand of yoghurt. Application page for Lindahls Rysk Yoghurt test is here. (Page is in Swedish).

Why you might ask?

Well I’ve always loved yoghurt.One of the few milk-products I can eat without feeling nauseous.

Primarily I use the Turkish yoghurt from Lindahls, not the “light” one, but the fatter one. I find it more tasty.

I’ve also tried the Greek one which is a bitter thicker than the Turkish one. I prefer the Turkish one though. (I make Greek tzatziki with Turkish yoghurt, oh yes).

I use yoghurt for a lot of things.

Thought it would be fun to test the new Russian variant.

How do I use yoghurt?

  • with breakfast cereal
  • on top of strawberries
  • for making tzatziki (recipe in Swedish on my website)
  • for various sauces
  • for certain fish dishes in the owen
  • in certain deserts
  • as a replacement for creme fraiche
  • on small pancakes with chopped onions and caviar (like smetana)
  • probably for more things I’ve forgotten…

So far have just applied to be a tester. Has to become approved too.

It would be fun to get approved.

Lindahls Rysk Yoghurt (Youtube-video).

Posted by nini in Food and Recipes, Thoughts, 3 comments