Summery meatloaf

Today´s Swedish word: köttfärs. Means mince.

Perhabs a meatloaf seems like an odd choice for this time of year, but for me mince patties and meatloafs are very summery. The ultimate meal in summer is at my parents´veranda, with mince patties, potatoes right from the garden, sometimes there is grated beetroot in the patties also fresh from the garden, fresh dill, fresh salad, fresh tomatoes and our own milk. Luxury! I hope to be able to do the same in my own house as soon as we buy one. (Well, I will have to compromise on own milk).


This is my sister-in-law´s recipe for a meat-loaf that you roll up instead of filling it from the top. I don´t know where she got it from so cannot give credit, but whoever made it knows what she/he is doing. The sauce is particularly nice, but I also like a cold sauce with my mince - yoghurt or sourcream with herbs. From the garden. I can imagine that you can vary the filling in one million ways - use what you have on hand!

Meatloaf with classic Swedish cream sauce
Serves 4
400 grams mince
1 egg
3 tbsp breadcrumbs
50 ml water, boiling
1/2 tbsp concentrated veal stock
good pinch of salt and pepper

Filling:
10 button mushrooms, or chanterelles from the freezer
1 small onion
7 sundried tomatoes
125 grams of mozzarella cheese
fresh basil and /or thyme

Pour the boiling water over the tomatoes. Chop and sautée the onions and mushrooms. Chop up the soaked tomatoes, shred them and stir in with the chopped herbs. Put aside. Save the water for the breadcrumbs and let them soak for a couple of minutes. Stir in the egg, veal stock and the mince.
Put a large piece of plastic foil on the kitchen counter and spread out the mince in a rectangular shape. Crumble over the mozzarella cheese and the mushroom-onion-tomato mix. Roll it up using the plastic for support and dump it in an ovenproof dish. Bake in 180C for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the sauce...
250 ml cream, I use cooking cream
1 tbasp concentrated veal stock
2 teaspoons corn starch
pan juices
splash of dark soy sauce
salt and pepper
Mix the ingredients and bring to the boil. Let it thicken on low heat and spice to taste. You can add a splash of worcestersauce as well. When the meatloaf is ready pour the pan juices in the sauce for extra taste.
Serve with boiled potatoes and green peas for example.

Oooops

I had arranged for some posts to "magically appear" on the blog while I am away but seem to have done something wrong... Now you can see them all though! Sorry.

I am currently at a beachside summer´s cottage village in Estonia, it has been raining for a few days but we are enjoying ourselves anyway! Both Riga and Vilnius was fantastic and I had some great food.
Until I write again - enjoy your summer as well!

Wedding decorations: flowers

Today´s Swedish word: näckros. Means water lily.

I love being able to take proper photos again! This is a close-up of one of the table decorations for the wedding: a glass vase with a water lily, some pebbles and leaves... Simple and beautiful! When I arrived on Friday (sadly I had to go alone since A was sick) the one thing to do was to roll up the sleeves and get to work laying the tables for the party. It was held in an old barn with a gooood dance floor, and the colours chosen by the bride was light green and white.

Porridge

Today´s Swedish word: gröt. Means porridge.

This is my brother sitting at one of the best kitchen tables in the world: my grandparents´, in a little village up north. I associate this table a lot with summer breakfasts, and porridge. My grandfather very often made blueberry porridge for us, blueberries and rye. After all grandchildren had finished eating as much as we could usually there still was a lot of porridge left for grandpa to finish, which he always did squeezing in the last spoonfuls and saying: "ooooh, that was a lot of porridge I ate right there".

Now my brother has taken over the tradition of eating *a lot* of porridge, and he is even "worse" because he has to pour the milk in a bowl by the side to get room for all the porridge he needs to get through the day. This day was a really special day since we all were going to my cousin´s wedding, going on from noon until 3 in the morning. And yes, with great food. More to come on that...

We are on our way...

.... to Riga! This afternoon we will get on the ferry and go to our very nice neighbour conutry Latvia, and its beautiful capital RIga. We will stay there at least one night, and then go down to Lithuania to see either Vilnius or the coast, depending on weather. Then we will go back up to Latvia and further to Estonia, and go back to Stockholm next weekend. All in all nearly two weeks in one of the favourite parts of the world!

I hope you my dear readers will have a good time wherever you are, with lots of sun and delicious summer food, for example a trusty pasta salad like this one. I have no recipe, what goes in the salad depends on what I have in the fridge but I usually have some kind of cheese in it, and olives. I also always pour over the dressing, usually a vinaigrette while the pasta is still hot.

I will have some posts about the wedding appearing here while I am away, and hopefully by the beginning of the week after next I will be back with lots of nice memories from my holiday!

Wedding: the food!

Today´s Swedish word: tallrik. Means plate.

OK, so we have come to the food! All was prepared by relatives and friends for the buffet. This is my plate, loaded about a week ago...

• spring rolls


• tzatziki


• smoked salmon


• potato salad


• bean salad


• tomato salad


• roast beef


• "tjälknöl", another kind of cold sliced meat


• lamb sausages


• my uncle´s tapenade


• ... and I am sure I forgot something!

For starters we had my uncle´s lobster soup, served in jugs to pour over little bowls with crawfish tails and dill - a very nice way to serve this. After the buffet and before the dancing we had chocolate tarts with raspberries in them, decorated with rose petals.

Wedding decorations: crown

Today´s Swedish word: krona. Means crown.

More wedding decorations - perhabs some of you are interested... My aunt made a large "crown" from birch leaves and blueberry leaves with ribbons and paper water lilies: paper flowers are traditional to use at weddings both for the bride and the decorations. She also made the other crown, a slightly smaller one to put on the head of the bride. My cousins made long pleated garlands, which hung from the walls and up to this crown, with fairy lights and also white cloth ribbons which in fact is the kind of weave you use to protect your plants from cold nights. Handy and inexpensive! And soooo beautiful. The crown hung over the tables in the old barn where we had the party.

(I have not yet quite mastered all the functions of my camera so the photo is not very good but I hope you get the feeling of it.)

New camera!

Today´s Swedish word: apa. Means monkey.

My prescence here on the blog has been no less than a disaster lately - partly because I have been busy with Real Life and partly because of our lousy camera. It is just no fun blogging about food if the photos of the lovely concoction you just made looks like a blur.

But this Saturday I took the car and drove to a shopping center and bought a camera. Yay! I have however not cooked anything really this week so my motifs has been our lovely little nephew G and the lemur monkeys at Skansen. This photo is however a little food related, because the leumur seemed to want to have my friend´s cell phone for lunch.

Friend: give-it-back
Lemur: ooooh, yum yum. Gnaw gnaw gnaw, tug tug tug.

Well, I am off to prepare for the weekend. This Saturday my cousin is getting married up north and I have to get packing and rent a car because it doesn´t seem as my man can go with me; he is ill, and I don´t want to drive our own car alone - it has started to jump as a lemur on the road again. I will resume taking food photos this evening!