Rustic Swedish Cookies

More Scandinavian stuff. Well, this recipe came from a recent (fall? winter?) issue of Bon Appetit magazine, so it may be fake Scandinavian. I'm just in the mood these days to try more cookies, after neglecting them for so long. And I made them while I still had Ikea lingonberry jam in the house.
First you whisk 2 cups whole wheat flour (ooh, up my alley already), 1/2 cup sugar and 1 1/2 tsp baking powder in a large bowl. Then you rub in 10.5 Tbsp room temperature salted butter - but I used unsalted because that's all I usually buy for baking, so I added some salt in with the dry ingredients for balance. In small bowl, whisk 1 egg and 1 egg yolk, then stir into the flour until just combined. Easy.


The recipe says to measure the dough by 2 Tbsp and then roll into balls, but who's measuring? It made about 18 cookies. The fun part is, you get to make indentations in the cookies and fill them with 1/2 tsp jam - lingonberry in this case. You know, because it's Swedish. Bake @400 for 12-14 min.

They ended up a little like shortbread - a bit crumbly, so the jam was nice to have. Unfortunately I either didn't make my indentations deep enough or just used too much delicious, tart jam, because it oozed out of some of the cookies. They also weren't as good the next day, so I would suggest eating them right away. A hardship, I know.

Hopgood Crab Dip

So the town's going crazy over most restaurants on Roncesvalles these days, including East Coast joint Hopgoods Foodliner. People are specifically going crazy over the chef's recipe for crab dip - served with Triscuits. Very retro/church basement. Now, I have yet to visit this establishment, but thanks to Toronto Life's first cookbook, a magazine-sized collection of recipes from Toronto's hippest restaurants, I was able to enjoy hot crab dip with friends in the privacy of my own home!
This is a cream cheese-based recipe, not my usual fare, but we were having people over for a dinner party and I wanted to impress with my cheesy appetizers. I started by whipping 12 oz softened cream cheese for about 3 min, then beating in 5 Tbsp mayo. I added 2 cups crab (let's not kid ourselves - I used the fake stuff, the crab-flavoured pollock or whatever it is. I don't care what you say, that stuff's delicious), 2 chopped green onions, and 1 grated garlic clove.
Some finishing touches - lemon zest and juice of one lemon, 2 pinches of cayenne, 3 dashes Worcester sauce (yum!) and a pinch of salt. Once in the warm dip bowls (this recipe filled two small ones) they were topped with a nice mix of 1/4 cup panko bread crumbs and 1/4 cup grated cheese. I used cheddar, but the recipe called for parmesan. Bake at 375 for 15-20 min so it can get warm and gooey.

Mmm this stuff was addictive. I served it with Triscuits, as per Mr. Hopgood, and it was a big hit. Very cheesy, meaty with crab, with some great flavours - maybe a little strong on the garlic, but that's easy to fix. The recipe did make a ton though - we had leftovers, but there was a lot of food that night so I won't blame my cheap, delicious imitation crab. Which I keep buying now to put in cold rolls. And just eat plain. Out of the fridge.

Tofu and Dumplings

I was flipping through Canadian Living magazine (yes, I am a middle-aged woman on the inside...) when I come across this Chicken and Dumplings recipe. I liked it for two reasons. 1) I had been eating a lot of Asian-flavoured things, Thai, Indian, etc and I liked the idea of something very homey, like Thanksgiving dinner and 2) it involved minimum work because the 'dumplings' were actually just gnocchi. Amazing.

Well, first things first, I skipped the chicken and made tofu instead. It's all bland protein anyway! So I fried up one package and set it aside. Then I put some butter in the pan and added the veggies in: 3 small carrots, 1 small onion, and 1 large parsnip. I skipped the celery but I'm sure it would be tasty. Then I stirred in 2 garlic cloves, 2 Tbsp flour to thicken things up and 1/2 tsp dried thyme, which smelled amazing and so like Thanksgiving.

I added in 2 cups chicken stock and 1 cup of water, brought it to a boil, and cooked the veggies for about 10 minutes. Then the fun part, throwing in the tofu, a package of gnocchi and some peas. Good thing too, because without the carrots and peas it wouldn't have been very visually appealing - so many white foods! My only complaint was that it was a little bland, so salt was needed, and a little spice would have been nice, like paprika.

Of course this Sunday dinner-style meal is probably meant to be shared with friends and family - alas, I ate it all by myself on a night in. Maybe I shouldn't have - alone, I ate about three servings at once. It was that irresistible. It was like a chicken pot pie filling - pure comfort food. I will definitely make this again, multiple times. Super easy and delicious and if you ignore the large amount of carbohydrates, sorta healthy? Right?

Stollen Muffins

I often get magazines from the library - we're usually only about a month behind and, well, they're free. Sometimes you find they've been tampered with - particularly with Food Network magazine, which comes with a removable booklet with 50 variations on some theme. But luckily for a recent holiday issue, the booklet was still attached - with fifty delicious muffin recipes. First up: Stollen Muffins.

I was excited about these because I really wanted to use the baking marzipan I found in a German shop on Roncesvalles. I've got a Swedish baking cookbook which is full of recipes that include almond paste, so I grabbed some when I finally found some. I figured this was an easy way to try it out. So I started by beating 1/3 cup of marzipan with 3/4 cup butter with 2/3 cup sugar.



This was actually more difficult than I had thought - the marzipan was quite hard, and it didn't really incorporate very well. It was definitely still in chunks. Oh well. After further beating in 2 eggs and 1 tsp each vanilla and almond extract, I mixed the dry ingredients in another bowl: 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt. The dry ingredients were then mixed into the butter, alternating with 1/3 cup milk. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

For a finishing touch, the muffins were brushed with melted butter and dusted with icing sugar. They were very dense, sweet, and almondy - but also surprisingly dry for something with tons of butter in it. But good! Just used to my oil-based cupcakes, I guess. Definitely not the healthy muffins I usually make. Like a dense pound cake. After looking at the Swedish recipes again, it seems marzipan is usually grated into batters - it is quite hard, no wonder I couldn't beat it into soft butter! It just meant you got a nice chunk of almond goodness in some bites. The good news is there is a chocolate/British candy store that carries the same marzipan, so I can try some Swedish recipes next time. Funny how this recipe was clearly based on German stollen but without the fruit or nuts...

Orzo Salad with Kale, Beets and Feta

I was inspired by Bon Appetit's Barley and Kale Salad with Golden Beets and Feta for two reasons. One - I don't make nearly as many grain salads in the winter as I do in the summer, and two - I don't cook beets. Ever. I picture them being too much work - and dyeing everything pink. Which they do... but they're delicious so I figured I'd give them a shot.

The night before, I did two things. First, I cooked my 5 small beets - though as it turned out, the 45 minute cooking time given was not sufficient and they were still a little crunchy. I also had to use the dreaded red beet as my veggie stand was out of the golden kind. Easy enough to cook though - cover with oil, wrap in foil and roast in the oven at 400. I also had to marinate the kale, since it was raw in the salad. This was easily done by covering it with a quick dressing made of olive oil, minced shallots (damn those are potent... it was quite oniony), some rice vinegar and a squeeze of agave nectar. Over 24 hours the oil helped soften the kale, allowing it to be eaten raw.

The next night it was quick enough work to peel and chop the beets and mix them into the kale, and then cook up some orzo - nothing against barley, I have made a lovely barley salad in the past, I just didn't have any. And I had leftover orzo from a dinner party, so there. And quinoa was just too much work that night. I sprinkled feta on top but there was no need to add extra dressing, as the recipe says - it was oily enough from the kale. A nice quick weeknight dinner before seeing a movie (BOND!).

Well two things. First - if you're leaving the kale overnight as I did, mix it periodically. The dressing of course fell to the bottom, and I should have given it a shake every few hours. It softened a little unevenly. Second - beets dye things! Like everything that was white in the salad - the orzo, the feta. I guess that's why they suggest golden beets. It was still fabulous but the colour was a little off-putting. Pink food... I dunno.

Frittata: Two Ways

I had a frittata craving awhile ago, and made two at once. Because, really, what can compete with eggs and cheese?

First up was the Norwegian Baked Cheese Omelette from the book Scandinavian Feasts by Beatrice Ojakangas. Despite the fancy title it's basically a frittata - but I was intrigued by the addition of Jarlsberg cheese, which I had never bought before, and the fact we actually had ham in the freezer - leftovers from a family dinner.




First I whisked 4 eggs with 1/2 cup water (oops, it was supposed to be 1/4 cup) and some salt. Then in a pan, I fried up 4 green onions, 1 cup diced cooked ham and 1 red pepper for about 5 minutes. Then I poured the eggs into the pan, sprinkled with diced Jarlsberg and baked it in the oven at 400 for 15-20 minutes.




Next up was the Salsa Frittata from the Sobeys website. I don't usually put potatoes in my frittatas, though I assume this is more authentically Spanish? I used both white and sweet potatoes, and since I was out of green onion, just fried up a yellow onion instead with the potatoes. I was a little impatient, I think, because the potatoes were not quite as soft as they should have been when I poured in the eggs.


  I had whisked 4 eggs with 1/2 cup salsa, which turned the frittata lovely pink shade. On top I sprinkled cubed cheddar cheese - the recipe calls for that pre-seasoned pre-shredded stuff but who wants to pay for that? Unfortunately after broiling for a couple minutes the inside was still raw (and liquidy because of the salsa) so I ended up baking it for 6-7 minutes at 350.

The Norwegian frittata won this round. The Jarlsberg was pleasantly nutty and the ham was delicious. The Salsa frittata was a little bland - next time I would put in a jalapeno or some chili flakes. But both were cheesy and eggy and, as I wrote at the top, you can't really go wrong with that combination.

Coconut Macaroons

Making these cookies was first of all a lesson in basic cookery. Check to make sure you have all of your ingredients! I set out to make something else with coconut, involving graham cracker crumbs, only to find out at the last minute that the box I thought I had was no longer in the cupboard - and hadn't been there for a year, probably. So what else do you make with lots of coconut? Macaroons!

I just followed a basic recipe from Canadian Living but with one difference - I toasted about half the coconut first, which I had never done before. Quite easy, just put the flakes in a dry pan on medium and watched it carefully so it wouldn't burn, as I'm sure it would do quite easily. Macaroons are pretty much the easiest thing to make - and I make a lot of easy recipes. Also, because there's no fat in them I don't feel guilty about stuffing my face with them.

In a bowl, whisk 3 egg whites (which are really gross, by the way... slimy), 1/2 cup sugar and 1 tsp almond extract. It gets nice and foamy. Then mix in 2 cups coconut (I buy medium unsweetened) and 1 Tbsp flour and let it sit for about 5 min for the liquid to absorb. They were still pretty liquidy, though. Form into balls and bake at a low temperature, only 300, for about 25 min. They will get delicious and browned on top - and, because of using toasted coconut in the recipe, brown on the inside too.

I'm not sure how Canadian Living got theirs to be perfectly spherical, since mine definitely flatten out a little in the bottom. But otherwise, they are a delicious snack - and one I convince myself is sorta healthy, right? Isn't coconut oil the big thing these days? Even my mom uses it!