Kroppkaka - piatto tipico svedese

On Sunday for the first time (in 10 years that I have been living in Sweden) I tried this traditional Swedish dish... kroppkaka (plural "kroppkakor"). Kroppkakor are delicious and they remind me a lot of "gnocchi", they are potato dumplings filled with onions and pork or bacon. Kroppkakor are from the Southern Swedish regions Öland, Småland, Gotland and Blekinge).

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Kroppkakor are serverd with melted butter or cream and lingonberry jam. There are regional variations to the recipe, specially when it comes to proportions of pre-boiled and raw potatoes to use and spices. For example the "Ölanska" kroppkakor do not boil all the potatoes, half is boiled and half is raw grated potatoes.

In March there is the vary famous kroppkakor dinner in Uppsala (just North of Stockholm) to honor this dish, this is arranged by the student organization Karmar Nation, named after the city Kalmar in Småland.

The recipe I have tried here is for kroppkakor from Småland...

KROPPKAKOR
(8 pieces)

Ingredients: 500 g potatoes, 2.5 dl flour, 1 egg, 100 g pork, 1 yellow onion, 1 Tbsp allspice powder (Jamaican pepper, "pimenta" in Italian, "kryddpeppar" in Swedish), salt and pepper.

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- Cook the potatoes in salted water. Take the skin off and press them.

- Blend the potatoes mash with flour, egg and allspice.

- Chop the onion and the cut pork in small pieces. Cook them together in a pan with some oil.

- Take some potatoes mash and form a thick disk, put some onion-pork in the middle and form a ball as big as your hand. Form all your kroppkakor.

- Cook them in salted boiling water until they come to the surface.

- Serve with lingonberry jam and melted butter.

Abbracci

I am now back after a wonderful holiday at the Eolie islands in Sicily... I already miss it. First of all I miss the sun, so warm... even at the beginning of September it feels like you are still in the middle of summer. I also miss the sea, so transparent, blue and warm... and of course the food. I ate delicious dishes from Sicily... fish every day, it was so good!
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My holiday in Italy also reminded me how much I miss the Italian breakfast, made of tea (or coffee) and biscuits... yes, biscuits! There are so many flavors and shapes. These one are one of my favorite Italian breakfast biscuits, they are called "abbracci", which means "hugs", because of the shape... they look like two couple of harm that hug each other.

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The recipe of these biscuits is on the packet, isn't it strange? Maybe they want to show they contain only simple and natural ingredients... well, they are very easy to make and they are so good.

I decided to reproduce them and the result was a successful. These biscuits are delicious! Much better then the ones you buy...
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I made few changes to the original recipe, for example used butter instead of margarine+butter. Here is my version:
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ABBRACCI (for 50 biscuits)

Ingredients for the cream dough: 250 g flour, 100 g sugar, 90 g butter, 3 Tbsp whipped cream, 1 Tbsp honey, baking powder, 1 pinch of salf.

Ingredients for the chocolate dough: 260 g flour, 120 g sugar, 90 g butter, 30 g cacao powder, 40 g milk, 1 egg, baking powder, 1 pinch of salt.

Put all ingredients for the cream dough and work it for a while, this is the white dough. Put all ingredients for the chocolate dough and work it a while, this is the black dough. Preheat the oven to 180C degrees. Shape the biscuits and bake them in the oven for 20 minutes.

Pastel de tres leches / Three milk cake - PERU

Few weeks ago some friends and I organized a Peruvian dinner, every guest had to make a dish from Peru and take it to dinner so that everybody could taste it. The event was really nice, talking about food and recipes and how to prepared your own dish... It was a lot of fun to search on the Internet, find stories about food and Peru... and test new recipes.

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My choice for this dinner was the delicious three-milk cake, this is the first time I have made it and the result has been very good, everybody liked it! I tasted this cake some years ago when I was in Peru for holiday, I rememebred it was really good but I thought it was difficult to make, when I read the recipe I was surprised... it was so EASY!

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PASTEL DE TRES LECHES

(rectangular pan 24x35 cm, for 12 people)

Ingredients for the cake: 6 eggs, 2 cups sugar, 2 teaspoons vanilla seeds (from vanilla pod), 2 cups flour, 3 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 cup fresh milk.
Ingredients for the sauce: 2 can (28 oz) condensed milk, 2 can (24 oz) evaporated milk (this quantity is when it is a fluid = water + evaporated milk), 1 pint whipping cream.
Topping: Fresh Peaches cut in thin slices.

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- Preheat the oven to 350 F (170 C) degrees.

- Beat eggs and sugar in a bowl until fluffy (aprox. 5 min), stir in vanilla seeds and beat well until smooth. Sift flour and baking powder, add them to the batter and mix well. Pour in the milk and mix well. Pour batter into the oven pan.

- Bake for about 30 minutes.

- Let it rest for 5 minutes. Remove cake from pan and pierce the surface with a fork. Blend the condensed milk, the evaporated milk and the whipping cream. Pour the three-milk mixture over the warm cake slowly until absorbed.

- Let it rest until cool and then put into the fridge for a day.

- Decorate with fresh peches cut in thin slices.
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The original recipe comes for Silvia's blog "Mama latina tips", she has many other delicious recipes from South America.

Sorbetto al melone / Melon sorbet

I bought a melon last week that was definitely too ripe to be eaten as it was. The first thing that came to my mind was... ICE-CREAM! I do not have an ice-cream machine so I was thinking how to do... I did some research on the Internet and found it was very easy to make ice-cream, even without ice-cream machine. The procedure to make ice-cream is a bit long but not difficult at all and I definitely wanted to try it.

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For the first time I decided to make a sorbet... the result was very good, I am really satisfied. It was a delicious melon sorbet! It was very ligth and soft sorbet. The main important thing for a good result is the melon, which has to be very ripe.

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MELON SORBET

(for 4 people)

Ingredients: 400 g flesh of Cantaloupe melon, 150 g sugar, 1 egg white, 400 ml water.

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Bring water and sugar to a slow boil, when liquid turns clear remove from heat, you have made a simple syrup. Let the syrup cool in the fridge while preparing the melon. Remove seeds and rind from melon and cut into chunks, place the melon chunks into a blender and puree until smooth. When syrup is cold add the melon flesh and mix well. Whip the egg whites until stiff, add then to the rest and mix gently. Pour into a metal bowl and freeze, stirring every 45 mins for about 3 hours.

Next time I will try to make melon ice-cream by using 1/2 water and 1/2 milk.

Pasta estiva con zucchine / Summer pasta with zucchine

This is a perfect for summer pasta... all ingredients are raw so you do not have to cook anything (just pasta of course).

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It is a very fresh pasta and super quick to prepare, here is the recipe:

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SUMMER PASTA WITH ZUCCHINE

(2 people)

Ingredients: 160 g pasta (short size pasta), 1/2 green zucchina, 1/2 yellow zucchina, 10 cherry tomatoes, 1 garlic clove, fresh basil, Cacioricotta cheese (from region Puglia), a very good extra-virgin olive oil.

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Put some water to boil and cook pasta "al dente" in salted boiling water. In the meanwhile you can prepare the vegetables, cut the zucchine in long stripes and cut in half the cherry tomatoes. Put them in a large bowl, add a garlic clove, extra-virgin olive oil and basil cut in large pieces. Mix well and let it rest while pasta is cooking. Grate the cacioricotta. When pasta is ready drain it and keep some of the water. Discard the garlic clove, put pasta in the bowl, add more oil and cacioricotta, mix well. Add some pasta water and mix well again.

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I hope you like this dish as I did, I enjoyed it a lot. It was just perfect for the past two very hot weeks here in Stockholm when the temperature reached 30 degrees... it was so perfect! Summer should be like this all the time but here in Sweden you never know how long it willl last ;).

Crostata alla frutta con crema pasticcera / Fruit pie with custard

I made two of these delicious pies in the last 5 days... I was invited to 2 barbecue dinners!

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With the nice weather, you might not believe it but it is 30 degrees and sun with blue sky in Stockholm, everyone is staying outside more and having BARBECUEs...

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FRUIT PIE with CUSTARD

Ingredients for the pie crust: 300 g flour, 100 g butter, 150 g sugar, 2 eggs, 1 lemon zest, vanilla pod, 1 tsp baking powder.

Ingredients for the filling: 500 ml lemon custard (quite dense), any fruit you like (strawberries, bananas, kiwis, etc...).

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Mix all ingredients and make the pie cough, let it rest about 30 minutes. Roll out the dough in a pie form and bake the pie crust in oven at 180°C for about 30 minutes. Let the pie crust cool down, then fill it with lemon custard and decorate with any fruit you like.

Sweet potato noodles... have you tried them?

Few weeks ago while walking in the centre I passed by a little Asian market... well, I could not stop myself from going in... I went back with my memory... to Singapore 4 years ago. I could find all the food I used to eat there and could not resist to buy some stuff...
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I also saw those sweet potato noodles, have tried them? I tried this very simple recipe... and used warm-smoked salmon, cherry tomatoes and parsley.

The result was quite nice but next time I will make a sweet potato noodle soup... what do you think? Do you have any suggestion?

Crocchette di pesce e scampi... per l'estate che è finalmente arrivata a Stoccolma

Fish cakes... I think this is perfect food to take with you for a pic-nic... and with the warm weather of the last couple of days it is so nice to sit in a park under the sun and enjoy.

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You can use any fish you like to make fish cakes, I used a white fish and scampi that enrich the flavour. You can use a mixer, put together all inredientds: white fish, scampi, 1 garlic clove, 1 slice of old bread that you have let it soak in milk, salt, pepper, 1 egg and fresh parsley.
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Then form small cakes, you can give them the shape you like, I made fish "crocchette", as we call this shape in Italy. Put a pan on high heat with some extra-virgin olive oil and fry the fish cakes.

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You can also cook then in oven, I usually do that but my oven does not work at the moment :-(

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Finally summer has arrived to Stockholm too with its 28 degrees... in one week it went from winter to spring and all flowers blooming to summer. Hope it will continue.

Every park in the city is crowded with people having pic-nic and just relaxing... the picture above shows an appletree field that has more then 50 different kinds of appletrees.

We rented a paddle boat yesterday and went all around Stockholm... so nice... and hard work.

Cornetti friabili allo yogurt di Anna Moroni

This morning I woke up at 5:00 with a sun ray directly into my face... there are no curtains in Sweden. I tryed to sleep again but I did not manage so I got up and decided to bake... and try this recipe that for a long time was on my desk.

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It is Anna Moroni, from the program "La prova del cuoco" on Rai1, that proposed this on TV. It is a very easy and quick recipe, in fact you can use a mixer to make the dough. Together with tea or coffee it is a perfect breakfast, it is delicious! Here is the recipe:

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YOGHURT CORNETTI by Anna Moroni

(for 16 small cornetti)

Ingredients for the dough: 250 g flour, 125 g butter, 125 g yoghurt, 1 Tbsp sugar, baking powder, 1 pinch salt.

Ingredients for the filling: jam or honey or Nutella or ricotta (sweetened with 1 Tbsp sugar) and chocolate (as I did).

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Pre-heat the oven at 200C. Melt the butter in a pot. Put all ingredients together in a mixer and make the dough. Let it rest for 20 minutes. Take the dough and split it in 2 pieces, roll it out in a shape of a circle and cut 8 slices (triangle shape). Put some filling in each slice and roll it to make a little "cornetto" (which in Italian means "small horn" for the shape). Bake cornetti in oven for 20 minutes, when they are ready let them cool down and then sprinkle with icing sugar or cacao powder.

Pasta con crema di asparagi e uova mimosa

Yesterday I came back from work quite late and when I looked into my fridge I saw the asparagus that I bought the other day. Then I saw the eggs, and I got the idea... I decided to combine the two, asparagus and eggs... a very good combination!

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PASTA WITH ASPARAGUS CREAM AND MIMOSA EGGS

(for 2 people)

Ingredients: pasta (short size pasta), Asparagus, 2 eggs, Grana Padano, fresh parsley (chopped), extra-virgin olive oil, salt & pepper.

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I put some water in a pot and cooked the asparagus, I took them out and made them into a cream with a blender, added salt and pepper, and very good extra-virgin olive oil. Then I used the same water to cook pasta. In the meanwhile I boiled 2 eggs, cut them in tiny pieces ("mimosa eggs" style) and add them to the asparagus cream. When pasta was ready I mixed it with the asparagus and eggs cream. I sprinkle with fresh parsley and Grana Padano and serverd.

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This is a delicious dish!