Goulash - Perfect for the depressing weather!

It's been raining all day and I wanted to cook something rich and nourishing, and I wanted to eat meat, so goulash seemed like a good choice. And it was! Inspired by: Food wishes goulash

Goulash, 2 persons

300 grams meat suitable for a stew
4 small onions
some salt, black pepper
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1 tablespoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
a pinch of spicy paprika
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
a little dried thyme
2-3 cups of chicken broth
70 grams tomato paste
1-2 garlic cloves
a little salt, to taste
1 bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Cut the meat in 4cm by 4cm cubes. Mix it with some salt and pepper. Roughly chop the onion.

Brown the meat in a pan. Put half of the meat in at a time. 

Remove the meat to a stew pot. 

Fry the onion 3-4 minutes in the same pan as the meat. 

Remove to the stew pot. 

Crush the caraway seeds in a morter. Add caraway, paprika, spicy paprika, marjoram and thyme in the same pan as the onion. Toast for a few minutes. Add some chicken broth to deglaze the pan. Add the spice-broth mix to the stew pot. Add tomato paste, pressed garlic, bay leaf, sugar and balsamic vinegar and some more chichen broth to the stew pot. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 1 1/2-2 hours until the meat is tender. If the stew has to much liquid, just let it simmer without the lid. Serve with rice and a click of sour cream on top of the meat!

Ginger Juice

The most annoying thing about Dutch weather is that it's so wet, raining most part of the day most of the time. It makes me supercold. You might think a Viking from the North ;) could handle it, being slightly warmer here than back home. NO! this humid stuff is too much, I don't mind it getting darker, but the wetness is driving me crazy. When it's raining I just want to stay at home and drink something. Like this juice I tested the other day, inspired by this: Cookingwithalia's Ginger Juice

Ginger juice, 1 cup

2 cm piece of ginger, chopped
around 150 ml pineapple juice
sugar to taste, I used 1 teaspoon

Put the ginger, juice and sugar in a bowl. Mix the ingredients with a mixer. Pour in a cup or glas and drink!

Swedish Meatballs

Exam week for the boyfriend, so I'm in charge of the cooking. He's been begging me for Köttbullar (meatballs) for ages. There was an action on minced meat at Coop; with 1 kilo minced  meat we have made fried rice with minced meat, bolognese sauce and now lastly Köttbullar. Served with cream sauce, potato slices, brussels sprouts and Swedish cucumber salad (I used the second version today) this is a hearty meal indeed!

Köttbullar, 2 persons extremely full afterwards

2-3 tablespoons bread crumbs

1/2 tablespoon potato flour

75 ml milk

about 350 grams minced meat (beef)

1/2 egg

plenty of salt

plenty of white pepper

plenty of dried majoram

For the cream sauce:

cream

soy

salt

Mix bread crumbs with the potato flour, add the milk and let the mixture swell for about 30 min. If it's still too wet, add some more bread crumbs.

Add the minced meat to the bread mixture. Add egg, salt, white pepper and majoram. 

Mix well until the meat strings have dissolved, giving you a grainy pink paste. If you use beef you can taste now and adjust accordingly if you want otherwise you can do that later.

Put water in a big pan. Bring it to the boil. Make balls out of the meat mixture, if you haven't tasted yet, make a small one and taste it and adjust the seasoning. If the taste is fine, make balls and put them in the boiling water, when they float up, take them out. Let them cool and dry a little. For this amount of meat, it took me two times to cook all the balls.  Have a bowl of cold water near by to wet your hands, then the rolling goes easier.

Put butter and oil in a hot pan and fry the balls until brown.

I had to fry them in two batches. Put some cream in the pan (still with the fat in it), add a little soy, let the cream boil and reduce a little, to thicken the sauce put a little potato flour in a cup, mix with a little bit of water, add this to the sauce in the frying pan. Salt to taste.

This is how I served the Köttbullar:

My plate, don't put the cucumber on the plate, it gets too wet :P

Boyfriends plate, notice the mayonaise ;)

This is not fast food, it takes about 1-2 hours to prepare, but it's worth it. Real Swedish comfort food!

I miss Swedish food!

Caffe Latte

One of my favorite things in my kitchen is a Bialetti Moka Express, which I use for making coffee almost everyday. Back in Sweden I used to drink a lot of filtered coffee, made by the awesome Moccamaster coffee machine. However filtered coffee doesn't agree well with me, the caffeine level goes to the roof and after a few cups of Scandinavian coffee and I act as the Duracell-rabbit and I also get very fidgety. 

Since I don't have the Moccamaster anymore, I only use the Bialetti and I've reduced my coffee intake also, to only a small cup in the morning. But this awful rainy Dutch weather made me get a craving for coffee. Also my boyfriend wanted late evening coffee, but he usually takes his coffee black, so more latte for me!

The amounts depend on the size of your mug!

Caffe Latte

sugar to taste
freshly made coffee
milk (more than the amount of coffee)

Tools needed:

Put some sugar in your mug. Put the coffee on. Warm the milk. 

When the coffee is done and hopefully your milk is warm by now also, whip the milk with an electronic coffee whisk until it's foamy, this you have to adapt to your own taste, me personally I don't like the foam to be too thick. Put the coffee in your mug and stir a bit, add the milk. Done. 

After giving the boyfriend some coffee I poured the left-overs on my latte for extra coffee flavour ;)

Chicken wings with honey soy sauce

Chicken wings was reduced in price at the C1000, dinner was an easy choice. I decided to try this recipe: Honey Soy Chicken Wings. C1000 didn't have hoisin sauce, so instead I used ketchup. Was too lazy to add scallion and sesame seed.

Chicken wings with honey soy sauce, 2 persons

10 chicken wings

2 tablespoons dark soy

2 tablespoon ketchup

4 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoon light rice vinegar

1 teaspoon sesame oil

big pinch salt

Put the chicken wings in a big bowl. Add soy, ketchup, honey, rice vinegar, sesame oil and salt to the bowl, mix well, make sure all the wings get coated. 

Marinate for a few hours (I marinated it for 2 hours). 

Put the oven on 200-230 degrees. Put the wings in a tin, save the sauce and put in the oven for about 40 min. This time my wings didn't get a crispy skin and I had trouble getting them finished. After half the time coat the wings with the remaining sauce. 

Serve by its own or with some rice with a garlic-cucumber salad. The sauce is sweet and really nice to put on some rice. 

3 things I like about Dutch food

When I first got here 1 1/2 years ago for my Erasmus, I really really disliked the food here in Holland. I thought it was tasteless, not that varied and that the Dutch lacked passion for eating. For me eating is life, you can't live without eating and eating just for the sake of nutrition is just boring.

I still don't understand the Dutch view on eating, how can you produce anything creative if you don't have any lunch and just snack on Boterham the entire day. I don't think I'll ever understand this and I can't live by it either, I just get too damn hungry!

However there are a few things I really really like, especially now after many visits, here's the list:

1. You can eat like a king here! 

Compared to Stockholm, the food here is really cheap. With the money I spend on crappy food back in Sweden, my boyfriend and I can eat really nice food everyday. Fish is more expensive here in Holland though, so I tend to go for fish when I go out eating here, because steak I can eat whenever I want. Back in Sweden I would go for steak when eating out, because eating that at home is simply to expensive. 

2. Patat, patat, patat - and mayonnaise!

French fries are awesome here and with mayonnaise it's so nice. In Sweden you can't get mayonnaise with your fries, mostly ketchup or bernaise sauce. In Holland, I have a craving for patat. Always, constantly.

3. Gegrillde Broodje at the Kaashoek in Zandvoort!

You wouldn't think a grilled sandwich would be one of the best things in the world, but seriously this sandwich is worth the trip to the village of Zandvoort outside Amsterdam. Cheese, chicken sausage, pickled cucumber, sauce - so good! Open Mon-Sat.

Kladdkaka or Swedish Mud Cake

Realized I haven't posted anything for a really long time, I was ill and then busy with moving abroad. Now finally settled in the Netherlands and started cooking again :) 

I have plenty of recipes I'd like to try and I'm also curious how to adapt Swedish recepies to my new country. A recipe that works excellent is Swedish mud cake. My boyfriend loves it!! I've already baked two this week. So here comes the recipe:

Swedish mud cake

100 g butter
2 eggs
300 ml sugar
250 ml flour
4 tablespoons cacao
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla sugar
a pinch of salt

Melt the butter. Beat the eggs with the sugar. 

Put the dry ingredients trough a sieve. Mix the butter with the egg-mixture. 

Add the dry ingredients, mix well, you dont want any spots of flour. 

Crease a tin with a removable edge, coat with bread crumbs. Put the oven on 200 degrees. Put the chocolate-mixture in the tin. 

Put in the oven for about 30 min. Be careful! You don't want the centre to set! 

Wait until the cake has cooled down until you eat it. You can eat it just as it is or with some whipped cream on the side. It's awesome with a cup of coffee. Typical Swedish fika!