Hi. It's been a while. We moved back to the Twin Cities from internship. We were homeless for two weeks, traipsing to friends' houses, trying to not out-warm our welcome. The car broke down. School started. I couldn't remember how to be a student. Which made applying to PhD programs really nerve-wracking. So I almost broke down. Almost.
But I'm BAAACK! And I'm cooking again for the fun of it. Sometimes, it is the muscle memory of the feast that keeps us going until our next meal. There is nothing that duplicates the first time you forget yourself and let the candles burn down... or at least when it feels like the first time... again.
And it's fall, leaning winter, and it is one of my favorite times of year. It's great for wool sweaters, knitting, reading, writing, and studying, which is all to say it is the time of year for which I was born. SNOW IS COMING!
Now, for dinner.
Swedish meatballs... a la Ben and Mandy. They're typically poached pork and beef meatballs, but we don't like the texture of poached meatballs (seriously... little rubbery balls of something that was once meat... ew. Hardcore Swedes would tell me that means I'm overcooking them, but I think you actually have to be Swedish to pull these off). For the food nerds out there, we're having something between Swedish meatballs and their Danish cousin frikadeller. We're sauteeing the meatballs for texture, and we're having sour cream cardamom sauce from Swedish meatballs because it's delicious.
"Swedish Frikadeller" made by a German/Dutch woman and an English/French man. It's complicated.
1/2lb pork
1/2lb beef
1/4 onion, diced and sautteed a little.
1 clove garlic, crushed and chopped, sauteed with the onion.
1 egg
1/2c. breadcrumbs
1T milk
nutmeg
cardamom
salt
pepper
Put the pork and beef in a bowl. Add the egg. Pour the milk over the breadcrumbs and dump that in too. Grate some fresh nutmeg (really, don't buy the ground stuff; it will keep forever in its little nutty shell and you can use it later for homemade eggnog; the recipe for that will come closer to Christmas), grind some cardamom with your new mortar and pestle (if you haven't bought one yet, go tell your grandma or Aunt Edna that you want one; they will be so excited you know what a mortar and pestle is, they will probably buy you one) and put that in too. Add salt and pepper. Mix. With your hands. Ben seriously started mixing it with a fork tonight but caught himself before I could deride him. God gave us fabulous hands for getting messy and wonderful water for washing them. Use your hands. If you can't bring yourself to touch the stuff, find the nearest toddler or 4-year old, wash their hands (seriously, they have the idea: they use them for EVERYTHING, so wash them first before having them squish the mixture together).
Fry in a pan of hot olive oil. After the outsides are browned, put it in the oven (at 350 or so) for 15 minutes to finish cooking.
For the sauce:
1/4-1/2c. sour cream
Enough stock to make the sour cream sauce-y
Ben put in some heavy cream because it's delicious.
Salt
Pepper
More cardamom (!)
Mix in a pan, heating slowly. Taste. Reduce over medium heat until it's the texture of gravy.
With this, we are having mashed potatoes, kale, and lingonberry preserves, which taste a little like cranberry sauce, but they're much smaller and therefore much better (you can find them at Scandinavian stores, including Ikea, and lots of online purveyors).
For Dessert:
Tarte Tatin. It's French for apple pie (kind of... but not precisely... but it's so delicious all it should ever really translate to is "mmmmm").
Preheat your oven to 375.
I made a mini one tonight, so here's tarte tatin for two (adapted from From the Garden to the Table by Monty Don) double this for a 9-inch sautee pan:
1/3c APF (all-purpose flour)
2 T butter
1T sugar
1 egg yolk
1/4t salt
1-2T water
Put all of the ingredients except the water into the food processor (a good one is kind of spendy... Cuisinart makes one for around $100, but it paid itself off within the first three months with how much we used it). After the mixture looks kind of uniform (i.e. you don't hear the food processor chunking along), add the water slowly, just until the mixture starts to all stick together and make a ball in the processor. Wrap the ball in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.
For the filling:
5 apples, peeled and cut into fourths - BIG chunks!
2oz (1/2 stick) butter (seriously, stop it with the butter. You can eat salad or lentils for lunch tomorrow to balance the cholesterol).
2T sugar
Put the butter and sugar in a pan with a flat bottom (I used a 6" cast iron skillet and it worked beautifully). When they're melted, put the apples in and toss them to coat in the butter/sugar mixture. Cook over low-ish heat until the apples start to get tender. Then turn up the heat until the bubbles coming up between the apple slices become dark brown. When this happens, put a bunch of flour on a cutting board, put your dough ball on it, and roll it out into the closest thing you can make to a circle. I don't even try to make mine circles any more. I'd rather spend my energy eating.
Put the circle on top of the pan, pressing the sides under the apples slightly. You won't burn your fingers too badly; it's worth it to get a little brave (and, after the first several times, burning yourself isn't really that big of a deal. Cold water and aloe are really great solutions to that problem).
Bake until the top is browned. Take out of the oven, let rest for 5 min, and invert it onto a plate. If it doesn't all come out or is ugly, don't worry. Whipped cream is the solution to that problem. If it's really ugly, spoon it into a bowl and act like you did it on purpose. No one will know, and, even if they do, it's delicious enough they probably won't say anything. If they do, you might want to start looking for new friends.
Welcome home.
But I'm BAAACK! And I'm cooking again for the fun of it. Sometimes, it is the muscle memory of the feast that keeps us going until our next meal. There is nothing that duplicates the first time you forget yourself and let the candles burn down... or at least when it feels like the first time... again.
And it's fall, leaning winter, and it is one of my favorite times of year. It's great for wool sweaters, knitting, reading, writing, and studying, which is all to say it is the time of year for which I was born. SNOW IS COMING!
Now, for dinner.
Swedish meatballs... a la Ben and Mandy. They're typically poached pork and beef meatballs, but we don't like the texture of poached meatballs (seriously... little rubbery balls of something that was once meat... ew. Hardcore Swedes would tell me that means I'm overcooking them, but I think you actually have to be Swedish to pull these off). For the food nerds out there, we're having something between Swedish meatballs and their Danish cousin frikadeller. We're sauteeing the meatballs for texture, and we're having sour cream cardamom sauce from Swedish meatballs because it's delicious.
"Swedish Frikadeller" made by a German/Dutch woman and an English/French man. It's complicated.
1/2lb pork
1/2lb beef
1/4 onion, diced and sautteed a little.
1 clove garlic, crushed and chopped, sauteed with the onion.
1 egg
1/2c. breadcrumbs
1T milk
nutmeg
cardamom
salt
pepper
Put the pork and beef in a bowl. Add the egg. Pour the milk over the breadcrumbs and dump that in too. Grate some fresh nutmeg (really, don't buy the ground stuff; it will keep forever in its little nutty shell and you can use it later for homemade eggnog; the recipe for that will come closer to Christmas), grind some cardamom with your new mortar and pestle (if you haven't bought one yet, go tell your grandma or Aunt Edna that you want one; they will be so excited you know what a mortar and pestle is, they will probably buy you one) and put that in too. Add salt and pepper. Mix. With your hands. Ben seriously started mixing it with a fork tonight but caught himself before I could deride him. God gave us fabulous hands for getting messy and wonderful water for washing them. Use your hands. If you can't bring yourself to touch the stuff, find the nearest toddler or 4-year old, wash their hands (seriously, they have the idea: they use them for EVERYTHING, so wash them first before having them squish the mixture together).
Fry in a pan of hot olive oil. After the outsides are browned, put it in the oven (at 350 or so) for 15 minutes to finish cooking.
For the sauce:
1/4-1/2c. sour cream
Enough stock to make the sour cream sauce-y
Ben put in some heavy cream because it's delicious.
Salt
Pepper
More cardamom (!)
Mix in a pan, heating slowly. Taste. Reduce over medium heat until it's the texture of gravy.
With this, we are having mashed potatoes, kale, and lingonberry preserves, which taste a little like cranberry sauce, but they're much smaller and therefore much better (you can find them at Scandinavian stores, including Ikea, and lots of online purveyors).
For Dessert:
Tarte Tatin. It's French for apple pie (kind of... but not precisely... but it's so delicious all it should ever really translate to is "mmmmm").
Preheat your oven to 375.
I made a mini one tonight, so here's tarte tatin for two (adapted from From the Garden to the Table by Monty Don) double this for a 9-inch sautee pan:
1/3c APF (all-purpose flour)
2 T butter
1T sugar
1 egg yolk
1/4t salt
1-2T water
Put all of the ingredients except the water into the food processor (a good one is kind of spendy... Cuisinart makes one for around $100, but it paid itself off within the first three months with how much we used it). After the mixture looks kind of uniform (i.e. you don't hear the food processor chunking along), add the water slowly, just until the mixture starts to all stick together and make a ball in the processor. Wrap the ball in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.
For the filling:
5 apples, peeled and cut into fourths - BIG chunks!
2oz (1/2 stick) butter (seriously, stop it with the butter. You can eat salad or lentils for lunch tomorrow to balance the cholesterol).
2T sugar
Put the butter and sugar in a pan with a flat bottom (I used a 6" cast iron skillet and it worked beautifully). When they're melted, put the apples in and toss them to coat in the butter/sugar mixture. Cook over low-ish heat until the apples start to get tender. Then turn up the heat until the bubbles coming up between the apple slices become dark brown. When this happens, put a bunch of flour on a cutting board, put your dough ball on it, and roll it out into the closest thing you can make to a circle. I don't even try to make mine circles any more. I'd rather spend my energy eating.
Put the circle on top of the pan, pressing the sides under the apples slightly. You won't burn your fingers too badly; it's worth it to get a little brave (and, after the first several times, burning yourself isn't really that big of a deal. Cold water and aloe are really great solutions to that problem).
Bake until the top is browned. Take out of the oven, let rest for 5 min, and invert it onto a plate. If it doesn't all come out or is ugly, don't worry. Whipped cream is the solution to that problem. If it's really ugly, spoon it into a bowl and act like you did it on purpose. No one will know, and, even if they do, it's delicious enough they probably won't say anything. If they do, you might want to start looking for new friends.
Welcome home.
