Humble Breakfast Rolls

Hello...?

Anybody there?

...

Didn't think so. I'm barely here myself, so I can't really hope for any of our dear readers to drop by either. But now I'm back, and hopefully my lovely co-blogger Daniel is too, in spite of working all the time.

Like I told you before, we've moved. Or rather, I moved, and Daniel came along to work during his summer vacation. He's going back to Munich in less than a month (eek!) while I'll be staying here in Stockholm to study. Hopefully, this will make our little blog even more important to take care of -- if I can't see him in person every day, at least I can read about what he's eating!

During the frantic Birthday Week (16th, 18th and 20th of August were his youngest sister's, mother's and middle sister's birthdays...) we got home late every night, almost falling asleep with our clothes on. But one night -- I think it was half past one in the morning -- I went into the kitchen and prepared a dough to sit in the fridge overnight. I didn't really measure anything, but I mixed about 500 ml water with 25 g fresh yeast, added equal amounts of graham and wheat flour, about 150 ml each of rolled oats and millets, about 100 ml each of sunflower seeds and flax seeds, and about a teaspoon of salt. Since this made the dough way too dry, I also added a good dollop of yoghurt and a splash of milk. I didn't really knead it for too long, since I was tired and lazy. I covered the dough with cling film and let it rise in the fridge until next morning.



After rising, I divided the dough into about 15 parts, rolled them out and placed them on a baking tray. I baked them for about 10 minutes in an oven pre-heated to 250 C / 480 F, until they were lightly browned. I let them cool off for about two seconds until I proceeded to cover them in butter and devour. Yum!

Stay tuned for a real Swedish classic -- coming soon to a blog near you!

Grattis på födelsedagen, Angelica!

Last Friday was Angelica's birthday. In my family, birthdays are the "go!" signal for some serious gluttony. True to this tradition, me and Angelica decided to make not one, but two cakes for her birthday.



Since a student dorm room isn't the perfect place to host a birthday party with eight adults, an infant and a dog, we commandeered my parents' kitchen for the cooking. It sure was a change to work in a well-equipped kitchen for once.

Long-time readers and people who read the comments at FXCuisine will know that we do things old school here at Butter & Beans: we make our own sour milk products, we cure our own salmons, we make ice cream without machines, and we even whip egg whites by hand.

Well, not this time!



Meet Kenwood Major, my mother's kitchen machine. This baby has been in my mom's service for 33 years, making it 10 years older than I am (and in better shape, too)! Affectionately known as "the hell machine", the loud grinding noise of old KM makes me think of cinnamon buns and other goodies from the kitchen.

As for the cakes, Angelica wanted something Pavlova-inspired and maybe with mangoes. I was all ears, but knowing that my sisters can be a bit... let's say "picky", we thought we'd play it safe and make a sponge cake with berries and cream, too.


Sponge cake

This sponge cake is a great basis for loads of simple cakes. It's not as elastic in texture as most "stand-alone" sponge cakes, which makes it perfect in cakes, and as an added bonus the cakes made with it taste even better the day after they're baked.

4 eggs
200 ml sugar
100 ml potato flour (cornstarch is probably fine too)
100 ml flour
2 tsp baking powder

Set oven to 175 °C (350 °F).



Crack eggs into a bowl, then add sugar in a theatrical manner.



Beat until light and white.



Mix starch, flour and baking powder together. Sift them if you feel like it, but as you can see, we don't bother.



Fold the dry mixture into the wet one, pour into a greased 26 cm (10 inch) pan, and bake for about 30 minutes.


Assembly

This is how we made the cake this time. Of course, you can substitute other jams and/or berries. Add sugar to berries as necessary.

1 sponge cake
200 ml homemade/high quality black currant jam
250 g bilberries or blueberries
250 g raspberries
250 g strawberries
300 ml heavy cream



Whip the cream rather stiff, taking care not to make butter. Cut the sponge cake horizontally in three layers. Place the bottom layer on a large plate. Spread jam evenly, add another cake layer. Spread the bilberries over the cake layer, and place a small amount of the cream on top. Add the last cake layer, cover the top and sides of the cake with the rest of the cream. Decorate the top with the raspberries and strawberries.


Fruit topping

"Pickling" the fruit in sugar and lemon juice makes it release its own juices and you'll get fruit drenched in the most delicious syrup. And all with just a few minutes of work.

3 ripe peaches
1 mango
juice from half a lemon
50 ml sugar



Halve and thinly slice the peaches.



Halve mango, cut grooves lengthwise, then crosswise to make a grid pattern. "Turn it inside out", then cut the pieces loose.

Place the fruit in a bowl. Add the lemon juice and sugar, mix well, and let sit for at least an hour.


Meringue/Dacquoise

Based on this recipe from Whisk: A Food Blog.

When baking this meringue, we thought the amount seemed way too generous for the puny 23 cm circle the recipe called for, so we spread it quite a bit larger. However, it deflated on us, turning into more of a dacquois, so in the end, we just cut it in half and stacked the pieces on top of another to give it the desired height. You have the chance to get it right from the start, so just do the 23 cm version.

6 large egg whites
1.5 tsp potato flour or cornstarch
1 tsp vinegar
seeds from half a vanilla pod or 0.5 tsp vanilla extract
1 ml salt
350 ml sugar
175 g hazelnuts
60 ml boiling water

Heat oven to 175 °C (350 °F). Spread the hazelnuts on an oven tray and brown them for 10-15 minutes in the oven, giving them a shake or two during this time. Remove from the oven, let cool for a few minutes, then grind them in a food processor or other suitable apparatus.

Get a squeaky clean bowl, preferably stainless steel. Crack the eggs one by one over a cup, and separate the yolk from the white with your hands. After each successfully separated egg, pour the white from the cup into the bowl. If a yolk ever breaks, discard that egg, get a new cup and try again. It is absolutely imperative that there is no trace of egg yolk in the whites--it won't rise!



Add starch, vinegar, vanilla and salt to the egg whites and beat them until they form soft tops. Gradually add the sugar while beating, until stiff tops form. Get the boiling water and add it in small batches, to avoid curdling the eggs. The meringue should now be beautifully glossy.



Add the ground nuts, and fold them into the meringue. Place a baking sheet on an oven tray, and spread the mixture in a 23 cm (9 inch) large circle on the baking sheet (it will be very thick). Place in the still hot oven, and bake for 10 minutes at 175 °C, then lower heat to 100 °C (200 °F), and bake for 75-90 minutes.


Assembly

1 meringue
300 ml heavy cream
1 peach/mango mix
mint leaves



Whip the cream and spread over the meringue, top with the fruit and decorate with mint leaves.

Excuses, excuses...

Our two days in Öland were full of tasty food. Here is some lovely smoked shrimp from the local fishmonger.

It's been really quiet here at Butter & Beans for a while, what with the moving and vacationing and all that. I started school again, and Daniel started working, and there really hasn't been any time for cooking or baking, let alone blogging.

But this will all change as soon as I've dragged myself over to IKEA to stock up on some kitchen equipment. I have plenty of ideas I want to share with you all, so just hang on for a little while longer!

Vacationing and moving

It's been a busy week or two. We flew up to Sweden last tuesday, stopped by Angelica's parents for a day, then had two days with my family on Öland, a large island off the Baltic sea coast in the southern parts of Sweden, and then came up to Stockholm, where we installed ourselves in a student dorm.

Naturally, we haven't had much time to cook and even less to take pictures of food. But it feels rude not to give you anything at all, dear reader. So I dug up a couple of nice shots from Öland, one of the dog, and one of my first own apartment, 2.5 years and six addresses ago.


View Larger Map

This is the location of Böda on northern Öland, where my family has been vacationing for several decades.




Himmelsberga is a very typical Öland village, now preserved as an open air museum.




Öland is a unique place, very beautiful and calm. Depicted here is Ramsnäs, a beach on the west coast of the island.




Tesla, named after legendary Serb inventor/scientist Nikola Tesla, is the last of the once three-dogs-strong pack that my parents keep. Luckily, the rumors are telling me there might be a puppy in the near future, to keep Tesla company. This picture shows Tesla engaging me in one of her favourite activities: you loop a finger around her fang, and she tries to pull you towards something fun, like a ball.




Moving homes is always a stressful activity. I left my parents' home in January 2006 in order to move to this little student room with the beautiful view. Since then I've lived in two locations in Stockholm, and three in Munich. Since this weekend, I'm at my third address in Stockholm, and as of September, I'll move into my fourth apartment in Munich. It's a nomadic life, but at least it means I make sure to travel light, and don't hoard unneccesary stuff. It's also helped me learn to utilize my sparse kitchen equipment to its full capacity, instead of perpetually buying new gadgets.

Bavarian Comfort Food: Käsespätzle

Wow, it sure has been a while since I posted now. As the semester moved towards its inevitable conclusion, I was increasingly swamped in homework, then cramming, and lastly a little crescendo of exams. I did manage to get through it relatively unscathed, but I did feel a bit like a character from an old cartoon: all confused, and with a flock of little birds flying around my head, chirping something about statistics and stock portfolios.

This tuesday, however, it was finally over, and I could go back to spending all my time either thinking about, cooking, or eating food. Which I happily did, and as the weather took a turn for the worse, what better way to come back down to earth than some hearty comfort food?

Allgäuer Käsespätzle are the local, and much better tasting, version of Mac and Cheese. With the little knobs of slightly firm pasta known as Spätzle, mixed with crazy amounts of cheese and topped with fried onions, Käsespätzle is stringy, gooey, rich, comforting and delicious.

If you live in Bavaria, and are feeling lazy, you can easily buy decent Spätzle in any supermarket, but that's not how we roll here at Butter & Beans, oh no. Back in March, I lived in another student dorm, and when I realized one of my lovely neighbours there was an honest-to-God Allgäuer, I forced her to teach me the fine art of Spätzle making. This recipe is dedicated to her; thank you, Tanja!


Allgäuer Käsespätzle
Serves about two people.

If you ever pass through Bavaria, or know someone from the area, get them to set you up with a Spätzlehobel, and this will all be much easier. However, the recipe below will use the Real Man method, without need for special tools.

When it comes to cheese, if you want this to be real Allgäuer Käsespätzle, go for a mix of Allgäuer Emmentaler and Bergkäse. You could also use Appenzeller, or Le Gruyère, or basically any Swiss style cheese of alpine descent. Use a mix of mild and sharp cheeses to get your perfect taste profile.

Ingredients

250 g flour
5 eggs
2-4 Tbsp water
1-2 tsp salt
150-200 g cheese
1-2 onions, red or yellow
butter

Instructions

Mix flour, salt and eggs in a bowl, and add water little by little until you reach the right consistency. The batter should be rather firm, but still somewhat fluid. The ideal texture is slightly wetter than a bread dough, and quite a lot firmer than a pancake batter. Beat the batter with a wooden spoon until it goes smooth and starts forming air bubbles when beaten. Set it aside to rest for 20-30 minutes.

Meanwhile, grate the cheese, bring water to boil in a large pasta pot, and then slice the onions in thin rings or half-rings. Melt a large knob of butter in a skillet, and fry the onions on a medium flame until they get brown and crispy. Don't do it too quickly, or the onions will go bitter. Let the onions drain on some paper towels.
Heat oven to 175 °C.

When the dough has had its nap and the water is boiling, salt the water rather heavily, as for any pasta. Bring the water to a gentle simmer.
Spread the batter across a cutting board, and enjoy its lovely weird elastic texture.
Now use a knife to scrape small scraps of the batter straight into the simmering water. Work as quickly as you can, but don't worry too much if it takes a while.

When the Spätzle rise to the top, they're done. Remove them in batches with a slotted spoon, and set them in a small ovenproof tray. Between layers of Spätzle, layer in some of your grated cheese, and top it all off with the last of the cheese.
Place the tray in the oven until the cheese has melted nicely, then remove, sprinkle with the onions, and serve with a green salad.

Don't tell your cardiologist I gave you this recipe.

Olof Viktor's Sourdough Bread

I really love bread. There is nothing as satisfying as kneading a dough, feeling it change character and consistency, shaping it, watching it rise, and finally placing in the oven to bake. And when it's ready, and you take it out of the oven and smell it, your mouth waters. Once you've taken your first bite, you sigh, and enter heaven.

Home-made bread always tastes great, but some taste better than others. That trusted old recipe you've used so many times you never bother measuring anything anymore because you know it by heart, is always tasty, but sometimes you just want more. And more is what you'll get if you buy the book Bröd (means "Bread", and is available in English), written by Swedish pastry chef Jan Hedh. The recipes are quite time-consuming, and probably what you would use in a professional bakery, but you will get great bread every time.

I highly recommend buying a bread/pizza stone, since the bread will be so much better when baked on one -- you won't get closer to wood-fired oven baked bread than this (if you don't have a wood-fired oven, of course). I made the mistake of leaving my bread stone back in Sweden, and I've missed it every single day.

The first recipe I tried from Bröd is a white sourdough bread. It takes at least two days to make, but it really, really, really is worth it.

Oh, the crust!

Oh, the texture!

Oh, the taste!

It is quite amazing how a simple wheat bread with a wheat sourdough can come out tasting so much, but this bread really is chock full of flavour. Simple, yet complex, and oh, so delicious! I'm also quite proud that I managed to make it look so good, but that's beside the point.

Olof Viktor's Sourdough Bread, from Bröd by Jan Hedh, page 43

The instructions assume you have a kitchen appliance with kneading hooks, but you can knead it with your hands (I did). This will take a bit longer, and your arms will get really tired, but see it as a form of exercise.

Day 1

Prefermented dough

2 grams fresh yeast
150 grams water
200 grams high-gluten wheat flour
2 grams salt

1. Dissolve the yeast in the water, and add to the flour you've put in a large bowl. Knead on low speed for 10 minutes.
2. Add salt, increase speed and knead for another 5 minutes.
3. Place dough in a lightly oiled container and put it in the fridge for 24 hours, or leave it out for 3 hours.

Day 1 or 2

Final dough

15 grams fresh yeast
500 grams water
1000 grams high-gluten wheat flour
350 grams wheat sourdough
20 grams sea salt

1. Dissolve the yeast in the water and pour over the flour, preferment and sourdough, and knead for 13 minutes. Add the salt, increase the speed and knead for another 7 minutes.
2. Place dough in a lightly oiled container and let rest for 60-90 minutes.
3. Sift a thick layer of flour onto a baking tray. Gently divide the dough into four parts, without pressing the air out of them, and place on the tray.
4. Gently fold the dough -- and again, be careful not to press out the air -- and place with the "seam" down, facing the tray.
5. Place the baking tray in the fridge, and let rise over night, or for about 14-16 hours.
6. Pre-heat the oven to 250 C / 480 F, with either baking stone or a baking tray inside.
7. Bake the bread, two at a time, with the seam facing upwards. Spray them generously with water, or place some ice cubes/a cup of water on a tray in the bottom of the oven.
8. Lower the heat to 200 C / 390 F after 5 minutes. After another 10 minutes, let the steam out by opening the oven door. Repeat twice.
9. Bake for a total of 40-50 minutes, then place the bread on a cooling rack.
10. Spray the bread with some more water, for a crackly crust.

Repeat with the remaining bread.

Check out YeastSpotting over at Wild Yeast, for all of your bread needs.

Comfort In A Bowl

...and just like that, the weather turned on us. A week or so ago, me and Daniel went to Unterföhringer See for an evening swim, and the sun shone beautifully, with hardly even a breeze in the air. While enjoying the sunset and waiting for the bus to take us back home, a storm blew in from nowhere. In about two minutes flat, the weather went from serene, quiet and warm to howling-mad raining, with thunder and lightning as company. By the time we got home we were both soaking wet from running in the rain, trying to avoid getting hit over the head by pieces of old trees having got caught by the storm.

Thank God for the wine and Midsomer Murders episode we had waiting for us at home.

Although the weather calmed down a bit, it has stayed pretty much the same for a week or so, and everyone's missing the sun. With this kind of weather you don't really want to eat salads or fresh pastas, but rather something more comforting and warming. And what can be better than soup?

Daniel's mum gave me a wonderful cookbook this past Christmas, called Soppor, bröd och röror (Soup, bread and spreads), written by the two sisters Lisa Eisenman Frisk and Monica Eisenman. The book is divided into three parts (guess which ones), and every recipe comes with a suggested soup, bread and spread. Daniel suggested we make the lentil soup, and I'm not one to turn down lentils, so I jumped at the opportunity. The recipe was very simple and straightforward, and it turned out just lovely.

As you can probably guess from the picture, I made pita bread to go with the soup, and Daniel made a lovely hummus that I can't stop thinking about -- it was sooo good! -- but today is all about the soup. If you serve the it with bread and some sort of spread you can easily feed four hungry persons, but the soup alone will feed only two. Unless you're not that hungry.

Oriental Lentil Soup, from Soppor, bröd och röror by Lisa Eisenman Frisk and Monica Eisenman

1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 Tbsp oil, for frying
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp paprika
150 ml red lentils
1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
400 g / 14 oz can of chopped tomatoes
2 Tbsp tomato puree
1 medium carrot
1 red bell pepper
1 yellow bell pepper
2 stalks of celery
Salt and pepper to taste
Chopped parsley

Instructions

Peel, chop and fry the onion and garlic in a saucepan for a couple minutes, until soft. Stir in the spices.
Rinse the lentils and put in saucepan. Add the stock, chopped tomatoes and tomato puree. Let simmer for about 10 minutes.
Peel and dice the carrot, peppers and celery, stir into the soup and let simmer for another 10 minutes, or until the lentils are soft. If needed, add more stock. Salt and pepper to taste. Add the parsley just before serving.

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We both really loved this soup, and the pita and hummus paired perfectly and made the meal more substantial. The heat from the chilies that I missed in the soup, Daniel put in the hummus instead. Next time I'll definitely add some more heat to the soup, but unless you're a chili nut, you don't have to.