Chicken dill casserole

I have written before about the very Swedish dish dillkött, a stew with a subtle sweet-sour taste and lots of dill. It is traditionally made from beef, but during my pregnancy I stumbled upon a recipe where you use chicken instead. The recipe is from the book "Mat för gravida och ammande", food for pregnancy and nursing, by Gunilla Lindeberg and Marie Löf.

Even though I like beef it just is a little easier to use chicken, not so much carving and trimming involved. Also, the mild meat is excellent to use in this stew and I have made it several times now...you try it too, wether you are pregnant or not!

Dill chicken
Serves 5-6

1 whole chicken, fresh or thawed
about 2000 ml water
2 tsp salt
5 whole white peppercorns
3 whole cloves
dill stalks
1 carrot in large pieces

Sauce
500 ml stock from the chicken
100 ml cream (or milk)
3 tbsp flour or 4 tbsp corn starch
100 ml fresh or frozen dill, finely chopped
1-2 tbsp vinegar or lemon juice
salt and pepper

Bring the water, spices, salt, dill stalks and carrot to the boil, put the chicken in and let it simmer for 40-45 minutes. Remove skin and bones and cut in nice pieces. Strain the stock and reduce to 500 ml, or take 500 ml and make it stronger with one of those very handy stock cubes. Whisk cream and flour together and stir in the stock. Let it boil for a few minutes until it thickens a little. Mix in the dill and spice to taste with the lemon juice or vinegar, salt and pepper.
Serve with boiled potatoes and some salad.

Always Estonia!

Back home again after almost a week in Estonia, as usual for us in summer. And as usual we have brought home some beer and salted cucumbers and lots of happy memories. The photo is from lovely Haapsalu, where you can see the men in my life walking towards The Wiigi Kohvik to have a light dinner. It was a lovely summer´s evening and we sat on the veranda having a salad of peaches and shrimps (me - it was a little too light but beautifully presented) and something with duck breast (my man - he liked it very much). The little man had some milk, so far he is more a gourmand than a gourmet.


Estonia is really special to me although I don´t have any family history there as A does. I like the nature, the sea, the beaches, the people, the food... And yes - I had the great pleasure of meeting Pille too!

Just salad...

A quick lopsided photo today: the kid is hungry! I was at my parent´s recently and went out to pick some things in the garden for dinner; when I came back in I noticed that it looked fantastic - just chives, salad, parsley and dill.

Summer is here!

P.S. Can you find the kitten?

Back again

I don´t know which time in order I say: "hello, remember me? I am back again, and this time I will really try to blog more often!" but it is my blog and I write when I want to. Or when I have the time, as is the case now when my life is changed rather profoundly by a very small person.

On March 10th I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, and we now spend the early summer days together in lots of lovely ways. Walking, eating, sleeping, changing nappy and then eating, sleeping etc. Life is sweet, simple and blissful with my little D. One of many many good things about him is that he lets me cook and bake almost as usual. Meanwhile he lies in his "gym" and play with the toys, or keep me company in the kitchen sitting in the baby sitter. My little sidekick.

On our way home from the hospital we bought some bread, but since then we have baked our own daily bread as a matter of fact. My man is rather absorbed by this bread-baking: keeps reading recipes and trying them, buys all kinds of flour and he also borrowed his parents large kitchen machine, I don´t know what it is called in English but you use it for kneading. They use it once a year, we use it once a week!

This is a very nice bread to make when you want a luxury breakfast or expects guests for lunch and want to greet them with the wonderful smell of fresh bread. The recipe is from Allt om mat, a well-known Swedish food magazine and an article on how to get going with your baking by the journalist Peter Streijffert. My man read the article over and over again and then tried this, and then some other breads. Thank you Peter!

Morning rolls
Makes 10

12 grams fresh yeast
50 ml cold water
1 tsp salt
100 ml graham flour, this is a wholemeal wheat flour
540 grams strong bread flour, "Vetemjöl special"

1. Crumble the yeast into a bowl, add some water and dissolve the yeast.
2. Add the rest of the water, salt, graham flour and the wheat and work the dough for a couple of minutes. It is supposed to be sticky: nothing to worry about!
3. Cover with cling film and put in the fridge over night
4. Warm the oven to 225 fan oven or 250 "ordinary" oven. Spoon out the dough on a baking sheet: 10 sticky lumps the size of tennis balls. Bake for 20 minutes in the middle of the oven. Let them cool on a rack.

The rolls have a lovely crust the first day, but then sadly they get a little boring so make sure to eat them all very quickly. Not a huge problem, really!

Poached pears with saffron, ginger and vanilla

For dessert when I had my girl´s lunch recently I decided to finally try poaching some pears, inspired by Pille who just had posted about ginger pears. Ginger pears are a real classic here in Sweden as well but I have never made it myself.

My recipe of choice this time was - surprise - one from my cooking guru Anna Bergenström. Here the ginger goes together with vanilla, saffron and spices in a delicious syrup! The recipe is easy and very practical, the pears can be made up to a week in advance! They can also be frozen in their syrup. Just make sure you try if the pears fit in the skillet before you start, and watch the pears carefully so they don´t get overcooked.

Ginger pears with saffron

Serves 6-8

6-8 nice, firm pears
500 ml water and 50 ml sugar
1/2 vanilla pod
about 2 tbsp fresh, peeled, chopped ginger (I think I used a little more)
a 5 cm piece of a cinnamon stick
0.5 grams of saffron, ground with a sugar lump in a mortar
(Then I get confused because the recipe mentions 1/3 lemon in slices but not where to put it! I just skipped it and it was fine)

Boil a syrup from the water, sugar and vanilla pod for about 5 minutes without a lid. Peel the pears but keep the stalks and the little thing on the other end where the flower was. This will prevent the pears from getting all mushy! And it looks pretty.
Put the pears close together in a skillet and pour over the syrup carefully. Add the ginger and cinnamon and let it simmer on very low heat, under a lid, for 20-25 minutes. You may want to turn them over once or twice but be careful! Put the saffron in the last 10 minutes. When the pears are all soft, but not more, let them cool in the syrup. The day after they will have a much more intense yellow colour!

Serve with a dollop of good vanilla ice cream.

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!

Nigella´s involtini

Getting rid of: cheese, aubergine, raisins


This is, seriously, one of the best meals I made 2007! Nigella Lawson´s Feast is a book I leaf through at least every other week, just to enjoy her excellent writing and compensate myself during hard times for not having time to cook or having parties.
When I came home in late November after a particularly hard day at work I reminded myself that I a) had two large aubergines lying about in the fridge from the veggie box b) should grab the opportunity to make something proper even on a Tuesday. Involtini is maybe not the thing you should attack under these circumstances, but the name kept floating up in my brain all the way home and since I had most of the ingredients I simply jumped to the task. Nigella´s recipes are never scary - that helped! But do make sure you have a sandwich or some nibbles on hand before you start off - this will take you at least an hour! Count in that when you are finished and the involtini has cooled enough to eat you will remember nothing from your hard day at work, it is all obscured behind a joyful time of cooking!

Here is Nigella´s recipe (for those of you who has not yet got the book) with my own tweaks and changes

2-3 large aubergines cut lengthwise in thin slices
1500 grams tomato passata (I used less, see below)
200 grams mozzarella (I used leftover filling)

Filling:
100 grams crumbled feta cheese
100 grams mozzarella
25 grams grated parmesan (I didn´t have any mozzarella in the house so instead I scraped together 225 grams of other mixed cheeses; feta cheese, another excellent salad cheese from Jarseost, and parmesan)
75 grams pine nuts (I used chopped walnuts or almonds if I remember correctly)
50 grams raisins, soaked in hot water for 10 minutes
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp breadcrumbs
1 garlic clove, crushed or finely chopped
zest from 1 lemon
a good pinch of dried mint
2 tpsb parsley
1 egg

Brush the aubergine slices on both sides with olive oil and grill them until soft and nicely patterned, I used my beloved cast iron grill pan for this. Put aside and let it cool.

Mix everything for the filling in a bowl, yes, raisins too. I was soo sceptical to these raisins! I am not a huge fan of Fruit in Food you see, and warm raisins are...yeurgh... But I decided to stick to the recipe the best I could and go with the raisins which really was t-a-s-t-y, surprise surprise. In the meantime I decided to make a cooked tomato sauce instead of just using passata, because I had so many odd aubergine slices and some old onions and whatnot in the fridge. I simply chopped it all up, sautéed in olive oil, poured in a packet of passata and let it boil with some dried thyme, salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar while I made the involtini. Put about a tablespoon of filling on each aubergine slice and roll it up firmly. Put in an ovenproof dish. When all the slices was gone I put the rest of the cheese filling in the tomato sauce and poured it over the involtini, and then baked in 190C oven for 25-30 minutes. The involtini should be served lukewarm according to Nigella, or cold - all but boiling hot from the oven! That way you will be able to really taste everything in these marvellous little rolls.

My new kitchen

This is me, or 2/3 of me, in our new kitchen on Gooseberry road. Since December 8th we live in a small radhus, which means a house connected to other houses in a row, I don´t know the correct term in English for it. We have four rooms and a kitchen and a small toilet and a bathroom and storage room in the front yard and a garden shed in the backyard, and a small pond and a glass room which will come in really handy April-October since it is so well built you can sit there while it is still a little too cold outside, or too hot, since we both have a fan and a heater in there. We also have a grill, and furniture enough to house 12-16 people for a garden party. Very nice!

For now we have to stay indoors though, and work to fit in all our belongings in cupboards and boxes in time for the baby´s arrival in just over three months (yikes, so soon!). Last week I crawled inside the kitchen cabinets to fit in a new basket shelf which you can slide out to reach what´s in it. I have already some problems reaching my own feet and in a month´s time I certainly will not be able to reach, say, a bowl from this cupboard which is very deep and very deep down. After much twiddling around I took the basket shelf and tried to fit it in - bah, the cupboard was 50 cm and the shelf was 60 cm! So I had to crawl back and take away everything and move it to the other cupboard and try not to swear too much, the baby can hear me now. We will have to go back to The Large Swedish Furniture Warehouse and buy a new shelf! Sigh.

But to make a long story short: I really like this kitchen even if we have slightly less space in it. It is what we call a parallell kitchen, stove and washing on one side and fridge and another working space on the other. When I am at the stove and need something from the fridge I simply turn on my heel and get it in two seconds instead of having to run some metres to the right and squeeze myself in between the kitchen table and the fridge (which also was smaller). This is so so much more practical! When you have all the shelves in place, mind. And above all, the eating area is just outside the kitchen and opens up into the living room - equals lots and lots of space for having lots of friends over who never again will have to hear the phrase "oh could you get up, I have to get something from the fridge".

Last year - I dared...nothing?

Hahaha, I just re-read my foodie resolutions for 2007 with a grin on my face. What has become of them? Absolutely nothing! But since I am good at forgiving myself for things I did (or did not) that didn´t harm anyone anyway I am simply putting them up again for 2008! Isn´t that neat? Some of them will be easy, some of them not. But then there is always 2009!

1. I will make my own pasta
2. I will take a class in how to handle and cook fresh fish
3. I will make sausages from scratch (that will have to wait until Christmas)
4. I will make sourdough bread
5. I will make wine leaf dolmadas
6. I will make pear preserves with ginger and lingonberries this autumn
7. (new) I will not feed my baby food from a jar unless it is an emergency

And I have made other things this year, really! I have further explored Lithuanian and Estonian cuisine, I have ordered veggie boxes, I made my own red cabbage for Christmas for the first time, I have become a cooking teacher... And above all I lost my job, got a new one, became pregnant and bought a house and moved. Christ, 2007 has been busy! Not sausage-making, though.

Tomato-fennel-beer soup

Getting rid of: fennel, crushed tomato, Estonian beer

So, it is official: in April next year a new baby foodie will be born! That means that I for example don´t drink alcohol anymore, and I am not allowed (sigh) to eat parma ham and cold-smoked salmon and other favourite things. But lucky me, I have lots of other favourites to enjoy while waiting, and some of the Estonian beer we bought a large quantity of this summer before we knew about my pregnancy can be used in, for example, this delicious soup!

Since I stopped working in Stockholm I don´t buy as much food magazines anymore which is very good because of a) my economy and b) I already have loads of magazines to read and re-read. But recently, after a particularly hard day at work, I treated myself to the latest issue of Laga Lätt, a fairly new and very inspiring Swedish food mag. The title is a play with words, the Swedish Lätt means both easy and light - and so are the recipes!
I had all the ingredients on hand and the preparation took just 20 minutes, then I had a warming and a little different tomato soup in a bowl, sitting on the couch in front of the TV...

Tomato and fennel soup
Serves 4

2 yellow onions (personally I think that one is more than enough in all recipes but...)
2 small or 1 large fennel
2 cloves of garlic (also here too much for me but that really is a matter of taste!)
canola or olive oil for frying
400 ml water
2 tbsp concentrated fish or veg stock (I used a cube, crumbled up in the hot soup)
300 ml beer
500 grams crushed tomatoes or passata
1 tsp sugar
salt and pepper

Chop the onion finely, finely slice the fennel. Press the garlic. Fry it all in a little oil until soft and shiny. Add water, stock, beer and tomato and let simmer for 10 minutes. Spice to taste with sugar, salt and pepper. Serve with a dollop of sourcream or creme fraiche, and a couple of sandwiches.

Astrid Lindgren 100 years

Off topic today: it is world famous author Astrid Lindgren´s 100th birthday today. Even though she passed away a few years ago she will live forever through all her wonderful books! I have read almost everything and cannot really mention a favourite - maybe Emil, and the Bullerby kids. And Ronja!

Oooh, it is not so off topic after all - today very conviniently also is the day of the cheesecake and I am sure Astrid has had a lot of cheesecake in her life, growing up in the same region as me: Småland.

Happy birthday Astrid!

A find in the fridge: Jerusalem artichokes

Getting rid of: Jerusalem artichokes, rice, mushrooms

Not only the cupboards but also the fridge and freezer is in need of emptying. This spring I got five small Jerusalem artichokes with my veg box and since these knobbly little thingys are one of my favourites I wanted to save them for something really special, since I don´t grow them myself anymore and they are rarely seen in the shops in my town. Well, of course I forgot about them and they have spent all summer rattling at the bottom of the fridge.

Last Friday night I wanted to treat my dear man to something extra since it was his birthday the day before and we didn´t have time to really celebrate. I decided to dig deep into our storages and make a variety of my favourite mushroom sandwiches, only now I used boiled rice instead of bread and served this gratin with some good thin steaks!

On the photo you can see the Jerusalem Artichokes laying peeled and sliced (on my trusted mandoline) on a layer of rice in an ovenproof dish. I had some fresh thyme on hand after the cooking class earlier in the day so I added some stalks and thought it looked so pretty. Then of course when you cover everything with a nice thick mushroom stew it is more taste than looks that matters!

When I make the sandwiches I slice the artichokes thicker and boil them for some minutes but I skipped that this time and it was fine. And I meant to take a photo of my plate before devouring it all but of course forgot all about it. You will have to visaulize the gratin with the mushrooms in brown sauce and a little grated cheese on top, a nice piece of steak browned in butter and spiced with just black pepper and salt, and a pile of organic salad, tomatoes and cucumber from the veggie box tossed in lime juice and olive oil...mmm...

Fruit salad

Getting rid of: fresh fruit, raisins, canned pineapple

Well of course I will continue buying fresh stuff even if we are trying to empty our kitchen - fruit and veg and dairy... But I know myself oh-too-well and fresh fruit tend to just be put in a bowl and looked at with pride in this household. See, we have a bowl of apples in our kitchen. Look how lovely they are! And bananas, mmmmm. And kiwi! Lots of vitamin C. They look so lovely that we somehow forget what they are really for: to be eaten! These past months I have been craving a lot more fruit, but even so especially apples just lies there - and it is such a shame! Every two weeks I get a delivery of fresh organic fruit and veg from Ekolådan and last time I got gorgeous apples: small, rather tart and very very apple-y if such a word exists. Most of the other things from the box is now gone, but a morning recently when I was making scones for my man the sad fruit bowl caught my eye. There was two rather browned bananas, a lonely kiwi and a pile of those apples...

Strange but true - fruit can be lying about for weeks here, but once they are turned to a fruit salad they are gone in just a day, sometimes just hours. My trick to make it extra juicy and tempting is to add a small tin of crushed pineapple in own juice, a cheap staple that is easy to keep at home (in the cupboards, oh my). Boring apples, or apples that will be boring in just days, and sad bananas turns into something luxurious, delicious and totally healthy!

No-knead bread

Getting rid of: flour, sunflower seeds, spices

As you can see I have changed my feature, from "Today´s Swedish word" to "Getting rid of". This will be my new theme for the upcoming months - getting rid of as much as possible from my bulging kitchen cupboards, fridge and freezer. Then, in December when I am installed in my new kitchen I can change back to my usual "Getting". Being a food nerd means "getting". You get stuff from EBBP parcels, you get stuff from friends who know you will love a food present for birthdays and Christmas, you get new and exciting things when you are out shopping with other food nerds, or indeed just popping by at Hötorgshallen for "just some sundried tomatoes" and coming back up the escalator laden with bags of dried fruits, pulses, herbs, strange-looking fruit and a smelly cheese. All this now occupies our kitchen and since we don´t want to carry too much while moving we will have to eat it, or throw it away which really is not an option unless something is helplessly expired...

Before my, and our for that matter, decision of getting rid of things I happily bought a large bag of flour and brought it home just to discover that I really didn´t need it. An entire shelf is filled with different flours, in two rows - meanwhile we have been buying our bread for months now! My baking goes in periods, sometimes I just bake and bake everything we eat, and then suddenly I stop for some reason and it is just so hard to get going again. Well, now I have to! This "No-knead bread" is an old favourite of mine and I made it long before everyone else started experimenting with cast-iron pots and minimal amounts of yeast a year or so ago when the ultimate recipe for no-knead bread was tried out by so many of us food bloggers. I, however, was not tempted because I already had the ultimate recipe: of course from my cooking and baking guru Anna Bergenström!

No-knead bread
25 grams fresh yeast
1tsp salt
preferrably about a tbsp of honey
400 ml tepid water
800-900 ml of wheat flour
100 ml sunflower seeds (optional)
1 tsp crushed fennel seeds or other bread spice that you like (optional)

Crumble the yeast into a bowl, add salt and honey and some of the water. Stir until the yeast is dissolved and add the rest of the water.
Pour in the sunflower seeds and the fennel and the flour and work it to a loose dough. Cover with a towel and let rise for 1-2 hours.
Line a baking sheet with paper or grease it, and carefully tip the dough directly onto it. No need to knead. Heat the oven to 250C and meanwhile let the dough rise, for about 20 minutes.
Bake the bread in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 125C and continue baking for 40-45 minutes.
Let the bread cool on a rack, loosely covered with a towel. Enjoy!

Hip hip hooray, maybe my blog will stay...

Oh yes, I am still alive. Too busy living as a matter of fact - this blog gets more and more neglected and I really have to think hard what to do with it. Maybe I should quit, or take a "real" hiatus instead of just disappearing for weeks, or maybe I should just try and get inspired again, participating in all the nice events available? That is what I am thinking right now.

But, no decisions made at the moment, today (forgot to post on the 17th though...) I celebrate this blog´s second birthday with a lovely flower photo shot at a restaurant in Riga where we consumed some - oh yeah - shots this summer! Two years of writing, taking photos, meeting incredibly nice people some of whom I have now met and count as real friends, answering questions about almost everything and learning loads, loads about food. Oh yes, while writing this I definitely feel that I just cannot quit blogging! What I need is a whole day, or a whole weekend when I can just cook and write and work on a good backlog for all those days and weeks when life just gets too much...

An exciting year lies ahead of me I can tell - the third year as a food blogger when also a lot of other things will happen in my life! We have for example bought a house, so in about two months´time Clivia will get a new Cuisine where new challenges will take place. So stay tuned, and thank you for your patience!

Cooking class

Today´s Swedish word: kurs. Means course, or class.


My life has been pretty intense these past months and I have had little time for food blogging and even cooking, sadly. But after my recent trip (see below) to Tallinn to meet my blogging friends I got new inspiration, and since four weeks back I have another source of inspiration: I have become a cooking teacher!

I have got a new job since april at an organisation which arranges courses for adults in everything from languages to yoga - a lovely job! Anyway, I don´t work full time and therefore had the possibility to take on a cooking class on Fridays, starting about a month ago. And it is so much fun! I only have three pupils but for a new teacher like me it is totally OK. We have great fun together and try many things - they are so brave and never turn a recipe of mine down! This has been on the menus so far:

Beetroot soup with sour cream and chopped pickled cucmbers, fake cheesecake for dessert

Stuffed peppers, some with lentils and some with mince and olives, Blå Jungfruns muffins for dessert

"African stew" with home made peanut butter, Gino for dessert

Fish stew with root vegetables, apple crumble

Salad with whole wheat, marinated in a vinaigrette with sundried tomatoes and garlic, loads of veg like cucumber, tomato, peppers and onions - served with oven grilled chicken. Dessert: ice cream with lemon marinated blackberries.

The upcoming Friday we will cook meatloaf. What next? I don´t know... Any ideas?

A lovely day in Tallinn

Today´s Swedish word: Estland. Means Estonia.

I have written quite a lot about Estonia here on this blog, a country I first visited in 1992 in a youth exchange. Then I met A, whose mother is Estonian-Swedish and that has led to me visiting this fantastic country many times. When I found Pille´s blog I was delighted, what a great way to learn more about Estonian culture and above all, food!


From the start I had a feeling that Pille must be a very, very nice person and a week ago I finally got to meet her and get that feeling confirmed! Anne, Dagmar and me arranged to go overseas with Tallink Victoria to our closest capital, Tallinn, for shopping and sightseeing - and meeting Pille of course. After a very calm night at sea we arrived in a sunny lovely September Tallinn on a Tuesday morning when everyone else was at work. Could life be better? We had a lovely day shopping, chatting, having coffee and eating and admiring the view from Toompea. Thank you so much Pille for guiding and feeding us, and thank you Anne and Dagmar for great travel company! Next time I hope we won´t have to listen to car alarms all night though (the journey back wasn´t nearly as calm as the first night...)


Read more about our day in Tallinn and see pictures over at Pille´s and Dagmar´s!

Everyday luxury: going to the market!

Today´s Swedish word: torg. Means square.

One thing I have seldom done before I started this blog is shopping at markets, and I haven´t had a clue about seasons - when to buy the best.
Well, now I do! I have had a vegetable box coming all spring every other week with organic fruit and veg but this time of year I prefer to buy everything myself. I have the great luck to work just five minutes walk from the market square here in my hometown - so every Wednesday and also Friday or Saturday when the vendors are there I go down to shop for fresh vegetables and fruit.

These are some very, very nice cucumbers I bought from my favourite stand, a very kind man who runs a small-scale business outside town and go to the square laden with fresh veg, flowers and potatoes on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I also bought some sprouted dill to use for pickled cucumbers - but no recipe yet. I have to try them before I can make any recommendations. Last year I failed with my cucumbers... For now it will have to make do with the pretty picture!

Vacation highlights: a cookbook find

Today´s Swedish word: kokbok. Means cookbook

We were a bit unlucky with the weather when we went to Estonia this summer - it rained, rained, rained... for days! And then it held up for a couple of hours so we could take a walk and then it started pouring down again. But I don´t complain, after exploring the big cities Riga and Vilnius and after a bumpy bus ride between Pärnu and Haapsalu I was more than happy to lie on the bed and read in our little cottage at Roosta Pühkeküla.

Anyway, on the third day of rain we decided to go into Haapsalu for a little shopping and then we stopped by a promising-looking café right beside the old castle.
I was standing in line when I saw a fantastic cookbook lying on a table and picked it up just to look at the beautiful photos. I don´t know any Estonian so buying cookbooks is not to think of. But then I realised, that this cookbook is written in Estonian and English. Perfect! I bought a cappuccino, a pastry and a copy of the book on the spot and then spent the afternoon and evening reading. And reading. And reading. And getting inspired... And learning lots of Estonian words!
This book is so, so nice. It is called Sapemaa Talu Köök, or The Kitchen of Sapemaa Talu. Sapemaa Talu is the summer home of the author Anni Arro, and the recipes are all "summer food" but highly versatile for the rest of the year as well. It is still on my bedside table now, I leaf through it almost every day to look at the pictures and drool over the recipes. The only downside is that almost every recipe uses garlic and I cannot use garlic because of A´s stomach but then again I am used to getting around those little cloves!

In the bowl beside the book is the result of my first recipe trial: broad beans cooked Estonian style as they are in the pods in heavily salted water. It appealed to me because de-podding broad beans is not my cup of tea and I love broad beans so I gave it a try. You should too, now while they are in season (at least here). Just put a large amount of broad beans in a big pot, cover with water and put in 3-4 tablespoons of coarse salt. Let them simmer for 30 minutes or a bit more until soft, drain and serve at once with a little sourcream. They were heaven! And it is good fun sitting around the table, picking and eating on a summer evening.

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!