Recipe swap (and other food related stuff)

[Viisikielinenkantele]

Sunflower asked if I could copy this here so here you go:


Hildegard-von-Bingen-nerve-cookies:

400 gram (spelt)-flour (can be substituted with normal flour)
160 gram Butter
80 gram sucrose
125 gram peeled grounded almond

1 yolk
1 egg

15 gram grounded cinnamon
15 gram grated nutmeg
15 gram grounded cloves

1 pinch salt

Put everything in a bowl and knead it into a dough. Put it for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.
Then roll the pastry into a plate maybe 1/8 inch high or thinner. If there is to much dough, you can cut a chunk off and roll this out. Cut out cookies and put them in the oven at 180-190°C. Bake them for 20-25 minutes until they have the colour of honey (when they are too dark, they will be bitter).

Because of the huge amount of spice the cookies are to be seen as remedies and it is recommended not to eat to many of those at once, not more than 4-5 a day.
And you should air your kitchen when you bake them, otherwise it can give you some bizarre dreams the other night...

Hildegard von Bingen said this about the cookies:

"Iss diese oft und alle Bitternis deines Herzens und deiner Gedanken weiten sich, dein Denken wird froh, deine Sinne rein, alle schadhaften Säfte in dir minderer, es gibt guten Saft deinem Blut und macht dich stark."

Translation: "Eat them often and all bitterness of your heart and your thoughts lighten, your thinking is getting happy, your senses pure, all damaged juices in you getting less, it gives your blood good juice and makes you strong."

[Aprillen]

I thought I'd just post the recipe for my squirrel shortbread cookies here, because of the special flavouring, which I learnt from an American living in Denmark and keep returning to because it's WONDERFUL. Squirrel tail hairs! No, sorry. Rosemary! And I'm using homegrown rosemary, so you could definitely grow it on Bornholm in sheltered places (I live in the southernmost part of Sweden).

This is a pretty small batch, since I live alone (except for my cat, and she doesn't eat cookies). One oven tray is enough.

I have no idea how much "a stick of butter" is so all the ingredients are listed by metric weight. "White sugar" means ordinary granulated sugar that is not brown or golden... um, but not icing sugar/powdered sugar (although that might work too for all I know). Also, I use spelt flour because it works better for my tummy, but plain wheat flour is the standard. I'm told you can substitute parts of the flour for rice or maize flour, so it probably doesn't matter much what kind of flour you use.

150 gr flour
50 gr white sugar
100 gr fresh salted butter (if you use unsalted, add a pinch of salt)
Rosemary -- either fresh chopped or dried crushed, maybe 5-10 ml? More if you use fresh. Experiment!

Mix flour and sugar in a bowl. Crushed dried rosemary can be added now as well.
Cut the butter in small chunks and mix it in with your fingers. Fresh chopped rosemary should be added toward the end.

Let the pastry rest in a cold place for at least ½h. Heat your oven to 150-160 ºC.

Now, the easy way to do this is to get a small baking pan lined with baking paper and just press down the dough into it, about ½ cm thick, and then prick it with a fork and bake it. This requires a longer baking time; depending on the size of your batch, probably somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes? (I haven't done it this way for a long time, so I don't remember, sorry...) After you take it out of the oven, let it cool for 5 mins and then cut it into smaller squares. 

For squirrels, you'll need a rolling pin, some cling film, a flat work space, and a squirrel cookie cutter. Roll out the dough on a lightly flour-dusted surface until ½ cm thick, use the cutter and gently transfer the cookies to a baking sheet with baking paper. They distort easily, so be careful. Rolling out the dough is easier if you do it between sheets of baking paper or put a peice of cling film over it. Prick with a fork, chill for a few minutes (optional) and bake for 10-20 minutes, until they just start turning golden at the edges. Let them cool on the baking tray for a few minutes and then transfer them to a cooling rack.

[Viisikielinenkantele]

I don´t know if this was already a topic, but the moose`s buns look suspiciously like the buns from a recipe out of the cookbook "parasta kotiruokaa" by Aura Liimatainen which I enjoy to bake regularly.
So I have translated it for you:

Pikkupullat ja Korvapuustit (little buns and cinnamon rolls)

Basic dough:

2 ½ dl milk
25 g yeast
1 egg
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ dl (about 45 gram) sugar (plain, white, not the powdered)
(optional 1-2 teaspoons cardamom)
6-7 dl (about 300-400 gram) wheat flour

preparation:

1. let ingredients in the kitchen heat up until room temperature
2. dissolve yeast in lukewarm milk
3. pour egg, salt, sugar, cardamom and the bigger part of the flour in the bowl with the yeast-milk-mixture, then knead with the hand and pour the rest of the flour gradually in the bowl until the dough can be formed into a ball and doesn´t stick to the fingers anymore (due to circumstances I cannot determine (maybe air moisture or temperature) the amount of flour you need is different every time, so don´t stick to heavily to the measurement above)
4. allow dough to rise until it has doubled in size

The basic dough is ready. Now you must decide if you want to bake buns or cinnamon rolls.

If buns, then:

Additional ingredients:

Egg
Sugar
Oil without strong taste of its own, for example sun-flower-oil

Preparation:

1. Shape from the basic dough 18-20 little balls, then cover with a blanket and again allow them to rise, until they have doubled in size.
2. Press with your forefinger a hollow in every ball, fill this hollow with sugar and a little oil, coat the dough with egg yolk (or ignore this, they taste good without egg too)
3. Lay them on a baking plate and bake in the oven at 225°C for about 12 minutes.

If cinnamon rolls, then:

Additional ingredients:

Oil, butter or margarine
2-3 teaspoons cinnamon
2-3 tablespoons sugar
Egg

Preparation:

1. Roll the dough until he is about 20-40 cm big. Coat the dough-plate with oil, butter or margarine, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, roll the dough to a coil, cover it with a blanket and again allow it to rise until it has doubled in size.
2. Cut the coil in about 1-2 cm big segments, coat the dough with egg yolk (optional, they taste good without it) and lay them on a baking plate.
3. Bake in the oven at 225°C for about 12 minutes.

I hope, you enjoy the results!

[Aprillen]

Also, just because Scandinavian food, here are a couple of recipes for traditional Swedish gingerbread cookies (pepparkakor), the first one from a classic cake cook book called Sju sorters kakor (Seven Kinds of Cookies/Cakes) and the second one from my personal collection of family-and-friends recipes. Be aware that there are TONS of variations on this recipe! These are eaten all year round, but mostly around Christmas, and people really only bake them up themselves at Christmas.

Tools required: A large work surface or clean table, rolling pin, baking sheets, baking paper, and cookie cutters.

Kryddpepparkakor (Spicy Gingerbread Cookies) from Sju sorters kakor
Makes ca. 100 cookies

100 gr butter
200 gr brown sugar (or muscovado)
100 ml suryp
100 ml fresh cream
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cassia cinnamon
2 tsp ground cloves
ca. 850 ml plain wheat flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

Stir butter, sugar and suryp until mixed together.
Add cream and spices.
Mix the soda with the flour and work that into the mixture until it forms a dough. Let it rest in a cool place overnight.

Roll out the dough thinly (2-3 millimetres thick) on a lightly flour-dusted surface.
Cut out shapes with cookie cutters and transfer to a lined and cold (not hot from the oven) baking sheet. They do expand a little during baking, so not too close to each other.
Bake for ca. 5 mins at 225ºC until evenly brown.

K's Great-Great-Grandmother's Gingerbread Cookies (from a friend of mine)
(I've halved it - probably makes 100)

100 gr butter
250 g granulated (white) sugar
150 ml dark syrup
2 tsp ground cloves
4 tsp ground ginger
4 tsp ground cassia cinnamon
150 ml fresh whipping/heavy cream
550 gr plain wheat flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

Put butter, sugar, suryp and spices in a large pot and bring to the boil, while stirring.
Add the cream.
Mix the flour with the baking soda and work into the hot mixture until it forms a dough.
Chill and place in the fridge at least overnight.

Dust the work surface with flour, roll out the dough thinly and cut shapes with cookie cutters, transfer to cold, lined baking sheets, and bake at 175ºC until they are an even brown colour (5-7 mins.).


A few notes:
Some of the ingredients are typically Swedish/Scandinavian, like farinsocker, which is a local variant of a really dark, moist, brown sugar, but is actually made from beet sugar and (I think) dark syrup (or molasses). Real muscovado sugar will probably do just as well.
Typical traditional Swedish gingerbread cookie cutters depict stylized men and women (but different from the American ones), pigs, billygoats and hearts. These days there are all kinds of shapes. Moomins! Moose! Squirrels!
Let them cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before transferring them, since they are soft when just out of the oven but turn hard when they've cooled down.
When cooled, they are often decorated with piped icing. This is made from an egg white, mixed with icing/confectioner's/powdered sugar until it forms a paste, and a drop of acetic acid (lemon juice will also do). Food colouring is not used traditionally. Here are a few (non-traditional) examples that I made a few years back.
The dough can be kept for a very long time in the fridge if you don't have the time to bake it all up in one go. It is also very yummy to eat as it is. I know people who make (or buy) gingerbread dough and then never get to actually make any cookies from it because they have nibbled it all up little by little.
Also, American teaspoons and tablespoons are apparently slightly smaller than metric ones, but the difference is very small, so I don't think it will matter.

[Aprillen]

How much is a cup? Are American and British pints the same? How many squirrels in a hogshead? How do those weird millilitres work?

Fear not! Here is a nifty Online Conversion site to help you out! OK, maybe not with the squirrels.

[Viisikielinenkantele]

We had this conversation in the General Discussion Thread about food and thoughts about historical recipes and what people were eating in the past arose. Maybe this is an interesting point to discuss here? Here are the relevant quotes:

Copied from the general discussion thread:

There are still some fairly old recipes floating around if you are really looking, at least here in my area...but I think, the everyday-food has been pretty simple and quite boring, such as oatmeal, oatcakes, stew...

That's been my general impression.  I'm something of a historical-food geek.  Some "olden days" dishes were quite elaborate and strongly flavored (even *weirdly* flavored for our modern palates, e.g. the medieval European habit of putting sugar in all sorts of meat and vegetable dishes, or Romans adding herbs, spices, and garum (fish sauce) almost randomly to everything). 

But other things were either so labor-intensive or dull by comparison that when newer ingredients and dishes came on the scene (and technology allowed more fresh produce, dairy, and meat), things such as corned beef or stockfish dropped in popularity.

If you want to follow up, let's pursue this discussion over in the Recipe (etc.) thread.  I'm happy to share recipes or take questions.

Uhm, there is still a little bit of sugar in almost all my dishes... am I living in the past? Seriously, I am honestly surprised now that you don´t add sugar to your vegetables.



Okay, we can relocate in the recipe-thread. I´m copying the relevant quotes.

[Viisikielinenkantele]

So, what traditional recipes still live on in your area?
In my environment there was a huge amount of dishes consisting mainly of flour ("Mehlspeisen"), for example pancakes, spaetzle, "Dampfnudeln" (uh, translation? The online dictionary says yeast dumpling?) and the like. Everybody had at least a few chickens, so they had always eggs, and flour was in the household too, whereas meat was dear and eaten only on sunday.
Unfortunately these dishes were considered "poor-people-food" so that in the post-war era many women wouldn´t cook them anymore and therefore many family recipes are lost but nowadays they undergo a renaissance and some restaurants even have special days when they will serve these dishes.

[Laufey]

So, what traditional recipes still live on in your area?

Sadly, almost all of them. If you ever visit Iceland and some food is called "traditional" and has the word "súr" in it be very careful, it might be cured in lactic acid. It's a fine way to preserve meat for a long time but the taste is similar to sour milk and not in a good way.

In particular avoid:

- sour whale blubber: gooey, milk-sour, looks like a pile of concentrated snot
- rotten shark: chewy, sour, indescribable, only a shot of black death will wash the taste away
- sour seal flipper: gooey, stringy, sour
- pressed sour ram testicle meat jelly: consistency is atrocious and tastes... yeast-ish

But do try:

- kleinur: the Icelandic donuts
- the pancakes: best when fresh off the pan
- if you're around during Christmastime laufabrauð is awesomest!
- dried fish if you at all like the taste of fish, we eat it as a snack
- if you eat meat lamb is very good
- if you eat meat and are willing, horse is delicious
- btw sheep heads are actually pretty tasty (if someone tells you you're supposed to eat the eye they're just wanting to see if you actually would)!

[Fen Shen]

Viisikielinenkantele, do you have a good recipe for Dampfnudeln? That sweet pastry with a salty crust at the bottom? I absolutely loved these when I did an internship in Heidelberg for 3 months, but sadly never got hold of one since then. Here, we only have Franzbrötchen, but as they date from after the Napoleonic wars they aren't that old/traditional.

[JoB]

If you ever visit Iceland and some food is called "traditional" and has the word "súr" in it be very careful, it might be cured in lactic acid. It's a fine way to preserve meat for a long time but the taste is similar to sour milk and not in a good way.

There are pronouncedly sour dishes in other regional cuisines as well, from Sauerbraten to Sauerkraut to Asian sweet-sour sauces. I'm a bumbling layman at cooking, but AFAIK the most prevalent trick to make all those enjoyable is to counter the acid with sugar. I take it that that was traditionally in short supply on Iceland, though?

[Laufey]

There are pronouncedly sour dishes in other regional cuisines as well, from Sauerbraten to Sauerkraut to Asian sweet-sour sauces. I'm a bumbling layman at cooking, but AFAIK the most prevalent trick to make all those enjoyable is to counter the acid with sugar. I take it that that was traditionally in short supply on Iceland, though?

No, sugar might work for other kinds of sourness but lactic acid has a whole different and very unpleasant taste of its own... Nothing short of a heavy amount of alcohol and actually feeding the stuff to someone else instead is ever going to make the foods enjoyable, unless of course you're already used to the taste, in which case you might even like it. We do have an annual celebration called Þorri during which sour foods are eaten, but not everyone celebrates it and - note - it does happen only once a year.

[Viisikielinenkantele]

Viisikielinenkantele, do you have a good recipe for Dampfnudeln? That sweet pastry with a salty crust at the bottom? I absolutely loved these when I did an internship in Heidelberg for 3 months, but sadly never got hold of one since then. Here, we only have Franzbrötchen, but as they date from after the Napoleonic wars they aren't that old/traditional.

Well, I can give you our family recipe...but I am certain it will taste differently since variations are abundant. Nevertheless, here it comes:

Dampfnudeln with Vanilla Sauce


Ingredients:

Dough:

500 gram wheat flour
¼ liter milk
80 gram sugar (plain white)
40 gram fresh yeast
10 gram butter
1-2 eggs
A pinch salt

Additional ingredients for cooking:

30 gram butter
¼ liter cream
3-4 apples
A pinch sugar
A pinch salt

Vanilla sauce:

1 liter milk
4 eggs
80 gram sugar
6 teaspoons starch
4 packets vanilla sugar
2 vanilla beans

Preparation:

Dough:

1.   Sift flour into a bowl. Make a hollow in the middle of the flour.
2.   Heat the milk up until it is lukewarm.
3.   Add a little milk and crumbled yeast in the hollow. Spread sugar, eggs and salt around the edge.
4.   Put a dishtowel over the bowl and let the dough prove for 15 minutes. In the meantime melt the butter in the rest of the warm milk.
5.   Knead yeast sponge from the outside to the inside of the bowl, add carefully the buttered milk. The dough is ready when it comes of the bottom of the bowl. If to sticky, add flour, if to crumbly, add milk.
6.   Put again a dishtowel over the bowl and let the dough prove for around 45 minutes.
7.   Form balls from the dough on a floured board (around 10-12), put a dishtowel over them and let them prove for 45 minutes.

Cooking:

1.   Put butter in a pot (it must be wide enough that the dough-balls are fitting side by side into it) and warm it up until the bottom is covered.
2.   Core the apples, peel them and cut them into slices (around a millimeter in width).
3.   Put a layer of apples into the pot, add a little salt, a little sugar and a little cream. Then put another layer of apples above the previous layer, add the rest of the sugar, salt and cream.
4.   Put the dough balls into the pot on the apple-layer, enwrap the lid with a dishtowel and put it on the pot (the dishtowel should be inside, the sides are hanging outside and can be wrapped over the top).
5.   Boil it almost up (if your stove has a scale from 1-9, the point would be 7), then drop the temperature quickly (to 5) and let it simmer for around 30 minutes. Let the temperature continually drop (until 2). The Dampfnudeln are ready when they “sing” (it´s a high fizzling sound, but the kitchen must be really silent for you to hear it). Don´t open the pot before you hear the Dampfnudeln sing! They will deflate otherwise.

Vanilla sauce:

1.   Separate the eggs. Put the yolk with the starch, the sugar and a little cold milk in a high bowl and stir it with a whisk until smooth.
2.   Put the rest of the milk and vanilla sugar in a pot. Slice the vanilla beans lengthwise and put them also in the pot.
3.   Boil the milk almost up. Get the vanilla beans out of the pot, brush the remaining vanilla grains out of the beans with a knife and put these grains back in the pot.
4.   Boil it again almost up and put it away from the heat. Pour the yolk/sugar/starch-mixture slowly into the pot, all the while stirring it with a whisk.
5.   Boil it again almost up.

The vanilla sauce is ready.
Note:
If you add additional 2-3 spoons of starch, you will get vanilla pudding, it tastes good too.

[Fen Shen]

Thank you for sharing your family recipe! Adding apples sounds delicious. I'll try it out in some weeks when I'm at my parents' again (because they have bigger and better pots and because I won't have to eat the results alone )

[Richard Weir]

No, sugar might work for other kinds of sourness but lactic acid has a whole different and very unpleasant taste of its own...

Though.... Yogurt gets its sourness from lactic acid, and is perfectly palatable when sweetened. I guess it's the amount of lactic acid, and there are sure to be other flavour compounds that clash with sweetening in sour meat dishes.

[Aprillen]

Here is today's food project, an annual tradition of mine, and incidentally also something Scandinavian post-rash survivors might eat in the spring: Nettle soup!

Nettle shoots are picked in spring when they are just starting to grow and are still young and tender, at 1-3 inches tall. You will still need gloves, though! (But don't worry, they don't sting once they are cooked.) And a pair of scissors*. You should also find a patch that is situated far from heavy motor traffic, since nettles are as good at absorbing pollutants as they are at absorbing nutrients from their environment. Nettles are rich in minerals and vitamins and also in protein.



On a nice spring day, go out and find a place where a lot of common nettles are coming up. They shouldn't be taller than 2-4 inches (5-10 cm), and the leaves still round and egg-shaped. Snip off the topmost inch or two of the young plants. It pays to be neat here, it will save you a lot of tedious picking-over later. You'll need about a litre or two for one to two people (depending on whether you're having it as an entrée or as your main meal).

Back at home, rinse the nettles in cold water, and pick them over to remove the pieces of moss and straw that inevitably have hitched a ride home with you. Also discard any nettles that are already nibbled on by someone else.

Bring a large pot of water to the boil and blanch the nettles for ca. 5 minutes. Put a colander over a bowl and drain the nettles, reserving the broth. Chop the nettles as finely as you can be bothered to.

Put the chopped nettles in a saucepan with some of the broth (which will be a greeny-purplish colour) and some chicken or vegetable stock (I use cubes, because I'm lazy), and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Don't use too much broth or it will be too watery. (Apologies for not having exact measurements, since this all depends on how much nettles you have.)
Make a thickening paste with flour and water or milk (or whatever thickening you prefer to use) and add to the soup. Season with salt (if needed, the stock is generally pretty salty), ground pepper and a little grated nutmeg. I usually add a splash of fresh cream or a dollop of sour cream, but that is according to taste. It's also traditional to serve nettle soup with boiled egg halves. In the above pic I've also sprinkled it with some finely chopped ramson, also growing wild close to where I usually pick my nettles. It adds a nice garlic flavour.

*The scissors may well be simple blunt ones -- if you forget your gloves, or (like I did today) brought gloves that were too warm, or don't have any gloves that you are prepared to risk staining, you can, if you are a bit deft, use blunt scissors like tweezers to pick up the nettle tips that you have just snipped off and transfer them to your bag/basket**.

**If you don't have a basket, paper bags work really well to carry the nettles in. In a cloth tote bag they may sting you through the fabric!

Also, if you do get stung (you'd be lucky to not get at least one small sting somewhere), dock leaves are great for relieving nettle stings.