Kamut wheat salad

Oh dear dear, over a month since last time I managed to post something here! What a lousy blogger I am, compared to others who just keep writing and writing! But really, it is my blog and I´ll write once a month if I want to... Even if I hope to be more frequent for a while now, being ordered to rest by my doctor! Not much to do other than cooking and taking slow walks. Then in about six weeks The New Foodie will make his/hers entrée into our lives and then we´ll see what happens with everything!

I had some girlfriends over for Sunday lunch a few weeks ago and made lots of big plans of involtini with beef, or some finger food, or maybe a soup? It was a lot of fun to make plans but then my health started to sway and I went for a simple salad instead. No use to cook a large meal for friends if I would have to spend two hours in bed to recover! This meal was ready after just over an hour in the kitchen, plus some dessert preparations the night before (I will save that for a separate post).

Salads are really typical Clivia-meals - easy to prepare, fresh and always appreciated. I love to explore all the different kinds of grains and pasta and rice you can use, and then I just pair it with a good dressing and vegetables and a good bread. Then depending on the guests I serve meat or fish on the side, more veggies and often some different kinds of spread for the bread. This time my guests got home made foccaccia, creamed feta cheese and some salmon. The featured grain was a new product from the store I wanted to try: Kamut wheat. Apparently some grains were found in the Egyptian pyramids and now they grow it again! Very tasty, but maybe hard to find. You could subsitute spelt wheat, or bulgur for example. The recipe is from the back of the Kamut wheat box, we are into trying recipes from boxes right now since A made an excellent chicken curry after reading on the small box for the chicken stock cubes...

Kamut wheat salad
Serves 4

200 ml Kamut wheat, or other kind of whole or cracked wheat
400 ml water
2 carrots
a bunch of sugar snaps, trimmed
some fresh green asparagus
100 ml chopped fresh basil
50 ml chopped flat-leaf parsley
3 spring onions, chopped
100 ml of toasted cashew nuts
Juice from half a lemon
salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

Dressing:
100 ml olive oil
50 ml apple cider vinegar
1 pressed garlic clove
2 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp sugar
salt and pepper

Boil the wheat in the water until just soft, about 10 minutes. Rinse in cold water and stir in some olive oil. Put aside. Cut the carrots in nice chunks and boil them until just soft in salted water. Do the same with the asparagus and sugar snaps. Rinse in cold water.
Mix everything for the dressing.
Mix the wheat, veggies, nuts and herbs and arrange in a nice bowl or on a platter. Pour over some dressing and serve the rest on the side. Some olives never go wrong!

Another Pasta salad

Today´s Swedish word: matsäck. Means picnic.


Still many things going on in my life and not enough time for blogging, or cooking but I at least do it more often now than a month ago. I have been back to work for two weeks and it is OK considering I work part-time and hence have the possibility to enjoy the summer weather which of course showed up right on time for work to begin again.


This time of year we try to have a really quick dinner and then go out to the cottage or take the bikes and go for a swim after work. And sometimes we don´t even want to wait for dinner, but go immediately. This pasta salad was brought to the cottage last week in my beloved collapsible Tupperware bowl (you can even put it in the diswasher when it is flat like a pancake and it still gets clean!), paired with grilled chicken from the deli and the broad bean mash for dressing/dipping. Very good!

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!

First salad dinner of 2007...

Today´s Swedish word: kyckling. Means chicken.

I made this salad a couple of weeks ago when we had some friends over from the dancing group. It was one of the first really spring-like days and I felt like cooking something light, but still a little warming and filling.

The starter was served on the balcony: Anne´s very very tasty pitta chips with hoummos and feta cheese dip. I cheated and grated the cheese into a tub of ready hoummos, and mixed with some finely chopped red onion. I cannot recommend those chips enough! Very easy to make and super tasty. I spiced mine half with ancho chili powder and half with an Indian spice mix called Panch Phoran which I got from a friend and haven´t figured out how to use. For this it was perfect!

The recipe for the salad is from my trusted cooking guru Anna Bergenström and her book (written together with her daughter Fanny) Kärlek, oliver och timjan.

Bulgur salad with chicken and pine nuts
Serves 6-8

300 grams bulgur wheat
700 ml water + 1 tbsp olive oil
1 cube chicken stock
salt and pepper
4-5 tomatoes, cut in bite-size pieces
1 finely chopped red onion
1 large bunch rocket salad
1 small cucumber, diced
mint or basil (I used basil)
toasted pine nuts
Chicken: about three fried chicken fillets, 1-2 ready grilled. I used a bag of chicken legs which I simply cooked in the oven and cut in pieces.

Dressing:
zest + juice from 1.5 lemon
4-5 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper

Bring the water and olive oil to the boil and dissolve the chicken stock in it. Stir in the bulgur wheat, lower the heat and let simmer for 3 minutes. Stir a couple of times. Put aside with a lid on and let it sit on a wooden board for 10 minutes. Stir it up, mix the dressing and stir in. Let it cool.
Prepare the chicken as you like it, you can shred the meat or just leave the pieces whole.
Mix the bulgur wheat with veg and shredded meat, or put the meat on top. Arrange on a platter and put pine nuts over it.

I served a dressing on the side, from the same book. Very very tasty as well!

Yoghurt dressing
300 ml plain yoghurt
pinch of coarse salt, I use Maldon
black or shite pepper
1 tbsp vinegar, I used apple cider
1/2 tbsp runny honey
small pinch of herb salt
dried thyme or tarragon
1/2 pressed garlic clove

Finally, for dessert my trusted vanilla yoghurt panna cotta with blackberries. We finished the dinner in a very good mood, trying out Latvian and Estonian liqueurs and singing nasty Swedish folk songs. A nice start on the spring!

Salad with almond potatoes

Today´s Swedish word: potatis. Means potato

At first I headlined this post "almond potato salad" but changed it, thinking about all those who might think it is a potato salad with almonds in it and then be disappointed since it is not. I can assure you, however, that this salad is indeed just thrown together in a hurry but certainly not a disappointment!

"Almond potatoes", mandelpotatis, is a kind of potato grown mostly in northern Sweden where they also take much pride in it. The name refers to the shape - rather small, oval potatoes. They have a lovely, clean and strong potato taste and are very floury so if you want to use them as they are you have to boil them with peel on. Substitute a kind of potato you like for its flavour if you want to try this salad.

I am currently unemployed after a re-organization (long story, but if you need a information´s specialist with a passion for food in the Stockholm area - here I am!) and decided to go to Stockholm this Friday meeting a friend. Just when I was about to leave A. called and dropped the fact that he would bring a dinner guest for the evening and could I come up with something really tasty? Gah. But I will never let a dinner on short notice defeat me, besides the guest is super nice and I looked forward to meeting him. I simply bought a bag of these fine potatoes and paired it with this and that from the fridge and kitchen cupboards. I also bought some well-hung steaks that went into the griddle pan and it all went down well!

Wintery potato salad

Serves 4

about 1000 grams good potatoes, boiled until just cooked through

some white and some green from a leek, finely shredded

a fistful of kalamata olives, pitted and halved

50 ml capers

Dressing:

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar or other mild vinegar

3 tbsp canola oil, I used 2 tbsp cold-pressed and 1 plain

1 tbsp dijon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

Peel and cut the potatoes in nice chunks while still hot and pour over the dressing. Mix carefully with the other ingredients and serve immediately while it is still warm (it is of course just as tasty cold the day after) with steak or chicken for example.