cooking with dandelions

we live out in the country on 17 acres. and most of those acres are currently abloom with dandelions. after a long, dark winter, the bright sunshine yellow of those flowers is as welcome as the seldom sight of sunshine in the danish sky. i actually often joke that there's no word for "sun" in danish because it fell from use and everyone forgot it, but that's a slight exaggeration. there are a few elderly people who still remember it.

i'd never really tried eating dandelions before this year, aside from adding the odd leaf to a salad. i'll admit the bulk of the ones we pick actually go to our bunnies, as they're the bunnies' favorite food. they love the tender leaves and gobble up the golden yellow flowers like candy. bunnies are generally on a pretty healthy diet, so i decided they must be onto something and so i picked a colander full of the bright flowers and decided to give it a whirl.

the most time-consuming part is preparing the flowers. you have to cut off the stems and carefully peel away the little "eyelashes" of green that are stuck there - at least if you're going to make jelly or cordial. i like that amy left a bit of it on for her fritters and i'll definitely do that with the next batch. i think what's probably most important is to get rid of any of that bitter hollow stalk in the parts you're going to eat.

i've done my share of traveling the world and so i'm not afraid to mix flavors and cultures. the other night, i was making a stir-fry with black bean and garlic paste and i wanted a little snack to go with it. we love onion bhajis around here and tho' those are indian and i was making more of a chinese meal, i decided i'd give them a chinese twist by throwing in a bit of 5-spice powder. i had already decided to give them a nordic twist with the dandelion flowers, so what did another layer of culture matter?  i have to say it worked pretty well and i would repeat it.

chinese 5-spice dandelion & onion bhajis

3 medium onions, sliced

generous handful prepared dandelion flowers

2 eggs

120grams/4 oz. plain flour (or gram (chickpea) flour if you have it on hand - you can find it in indian markets)

1-2 teaspoons chinese 5-spice powder

oil for frying

slice the onions and separate them into rings. whisk together the eggs, flour and 5-spice powder in a bowl, then add the onions and dandelions and coat well.  if your egg and flour mixture seems too thick, you can add a another egg (our chickens lay rather small eggs, so i often use an extra one) or a little milk to thin it a bit. it should coat your onions and dandelion flowers nicely. heat up oil in a wok - i use sunflower oil, as it's lighter than olive oil and can tolerate high temperatures better than rapeseed oil. test with a little dollop of dough to see if the oil is hot enough. place spoonfuls of the mixture in the oil and fry in small batches.  serve it with chutney or chili sauce.

i've seen beautiful jellies made of dandelion flowers, but my family isn't into jelly, so the other thing i made with those dandelion flowers i slaved over was a cordial. i like to invent new cocktails and i used this as the basis for an early spring concoction involving vodka, fizzy water and a slice of lemon. it tasted just like a little ray of warm sunshine.

dandelion cordial

1 colander of prepared dandelion flowers

1.5 liters (6 cups) boiling water

1 kilo (4 cups) of sugar

juice of one lemon

place your prepared dandelion flowers in a glass or ceramic bowl and pour over the 6 cups of boiling water. cover with a plate and leave to set overnight. strain out the flowers using cheesecloth and a strainer and place the dandelion tea in a medium saucepan. add the sugar and lemon juice and slowly heat it to boiling. meanwhile, prepare your bottles - i generally run mine through a dishwasher cycle so they're clean and hot. then, for good measure, i rinse them with boiling water from the kettle. then i give them a little rinse with atamon, a preservative. pour in the hot liquid and seal immediately. i usually can fill one 750ml bottle and one smaller beer-bottle-sized bottle with a batch, but that actually varies - based on how much liquid you squeezed out of the flowers and how much evaporates. 

violet cordial and dandelion cordial

there's something about these foraged flower concoctions that is very satisfying. whether you're gathering violets or dandelions and preparing them, it simply takes time. there's no way around it - it takes the time it takes to pick and to prepare. and slowing down and just doing it, without trying to find an easier way or a shortcut is surely good for the soul.

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also posted on forage: east-west

cooking with nettles

i can't count the times i've sworn at the patches of stinging nettle around our property (and they are many) as they stung my hands or my legs. but i won't be doing it anymore. not now that i've learned how wonderful nettles are to eat! they're also really good for you - with one of the highest protein contents in the plant world and loads of medicinal uses (which i won't go into here, as i'm no expert and haven't yet tried them).

for each of the recipes below, i picked one colander full of nettle tops (not heaped, to the top is just fine). i wear gloves and snip the tender top sets of leaves with a little herb scissors. i can recommend that you do not let some temporary insanity come over you and poke your nose into your colander full of nettles and smell them. that can be rather painful and cause quite an interruption in your process.

to remove the stingy part of the nettles, get a pan of water with a pinch of salt in it on the boil and dunk your fresh nettles into the pot for 2-3 minutes (they should remain bright green). these early spring nettles have been clean and pretty bug-free, so i didn't do much rinsing before the boiling water bath. i might as the summer progresses. if you fish them out of your hot water bath with a strainer, the sand and dirt will sink to the bottom of your water anyway, so you'll be ok. after removing them from the hot water bath, transfer them back to your colander, it's ok to squeeze out the excess liquid with your bare hands now, as the sting has been taken out of your brilliant green nettles.

nettle pesto

100 grams toasted pine nuts

1 colander of blanched nettles, excess liquid squeezed out

2 cloves of garlic

a generous grating of fresh parmesan

salt and pepper to taste

olive oil to the desired consistency

toast your pine nuts (taking care not to wander away while you're doing this or they will burn). place them in the food processor with the blanched nettles, garlic, salt and pepper and several tablespoons of good olive oil. blitz it up. if it's not liquid-y enough, add more olive oil until it's how you like it. serve with fresh bread, over pasta, or as a healthy alternative to sauce on a pork chop or steak. i even coated a chicken in it recently before roasting it in the oven. it's very versatile. you may even want to just stand in front of the refrigerator and furtively eat a few spoonfuls when no one is looking.

nettle pesto

nettle hummus

250 grams chickpeas (canned or soaked dry ones)

1 generous tablespoon tahini

2 cloves garlic

1 colander of blanched nettles

olive oil to the desired consistency

put it all in the food processor and blitz it together. drizzle olive oil until it's a smooth, creamy consistency. great with freshly-baked bread or as a dip for veggies.

nettle hummus

homemade pasta always seems posh and as if you went to an extraordinary amount of work, but it's much easier than it looks. even if you start by making your own ricotta. i did so, because ricotta can be hard to find in our grocery stores, so i was missing this key ingredient when i wanted to make gnocchi with my nettles.  all it takes is milk, cream and a little bit of vinegar.

homemade ricotta

1 liter of whole milk

1/2 liter of cream

2 generous tablespoons of vinegar (use white if you want the ricotta to be creamy white, use apple cider vinegar if you don't mind it a bit more yellow)

pour the milk and cream into a heavy saucepan and heat gently until it just begins to bubble*. remove from the heat, add the vinegar and stir. it will curdle immediately. pour it through a strainer that's lined with cheesecloth or a tea towel and allow it to drain well. the longer you leave it to drain, the firmer it will be. i found that for the gnocchi, i didn't want it to be too firm, as it was harder to work with that way.  save the whey (the liquid you drain off the cheese curds) and use it the next time you bake bread instead of the usual liquid. it's delicious and nutritious! i just keep the whey in a jar in the fridge 'til i'm ready to use it.

*i read a lot of recipes for homemade ricotta and made multiple batches before arriving at this one - many of them are very fussy about the precise temperature of the milk, but i've found that didn't much matter, so i don't bother to use a thermometer. i'm all for keeping it simple.

ricotta and a jar of whey

nettle gnocchi

1 batch of homemade ricotta (it yields approx 250-300 grams/1 generous cup)

1 egg

1/2 C flour (i adore italian tipo 00 flour)

generous half cup of blanched nettles, finely chopped

salt & pepper

mix well. if the consistency is too liquidy, add a bit more flour. if it's too dry, add another egg. it all depends on how much you drain your ricotta and how much liquid you squeeze out of the nettles. if you buy commercial ricotta, you'll likely need a bit more flour. it should be firm enough to work with by hand. you roll it into a thick rope and slice it into small bite-size gnocchi. turn the gnocchi in flour to coat. put them into salted boiling water, in small batches, a handful at a time. they initially sink to the bottom and then rise when they're nearly done. i serve them very simply with a bit of butter and salt, or a spoonful of the pesto. simple and delicious. we've not yet had leftovers.

there are many other uses for nettles. i have yet to try tea.  i intend to dry some and make a seasoning salt.  sabin made nettle soup when she was in kindergarten, so we'll try that, cooking outdoors at some point this summer. when the stalks are larger and a bit more tough, it's possible to cut them, let them dry a few days and give them to your horse as a treat with their hay. they love it! i'm starting to feel downright lucky my yard is positively full of them!

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also posted on forage: east & west

hindbærsnitter - a little slice of heaven

hindbærsnitter - a perennial favorite in any danish bakery. small squares of crisp, buttery dough, stuck together by raspberry jam and topped with a simple frosting glaze and a few sprinkles. my child loves them and i often grab one of those packages of four that's temptingly laid out by the cash register at grocery stores that have a bakery. but no more will i be tempted by the kind the you buy, because i have discovered how sinfully and deliciously easy they are to make. and how much better the homemade ones taste, especially if you use your own homemade raspberry jam.

the ingredient list is not long, the effort is minimal and result absolutely delicious. they're sort of a danish version of a pop tart that doesn't need toasting.

hindbærsnitter (danish pop tarts)

the dough:

200 grams butter

100 grams powdered sugar

300 grams flour

2 egg yolks

raspberry jam

the frosting:

200 grams powdered sugar

a few tablespoons of milk

a little dash of vanilla

sprinkles

put the butter and powdered ingredients in your food processer and blitz them up until they are thoroughly combined and the contents look a bit grainy. add the egg yolks one by one. mix it only until it comes together into a ball of dough. my dough is very yellow thanks to the eggs coming from our own chickens. i have made these three time and on one occasion i needed to add 3 egg yolks to make it come together properly - but that's because some of our eggs are smaller than the kind you can buy in the store. you can see whether the dough has come together properly or not - if it hasn't come together in a ball, it probably needs an extra yolk.

divide the dough into two discs of equal size and refrigerate for up to an hour. roll out the dough between two pieces of baking paper into discs of roughly equal size and shape. bake them in a pre-heated (180°C/350°F) oven for approx. 10 minutes. keep an eye on them, as the dough is delicate and will brown alarmingly quickly! slide one crust onto your counter, keeping it on the baking parchment. spread it with a generous layer of raspberry jam. then, carefully slide the other disc of dough onto the top, fully covering the jam. i have yet to do this successfully - the dough is very delicate and will easily break - however, you can cover the cracks with frosting and it will not affect the taste, so it's ok. 

while they are cooling a little bit, mix up your frosting - you could use a squeeze of lemon instead of milk if you'd like a lemony touch to your frosting - put in only enough liquid to make an easily-spreadable/pourable glaze and put it immediately on top of your dough. add sprinkles if you like - i do it because it's traditional, but they don't really NEED the sprinkles.

brew up a fresh pot of tea or coffee and watch them disappear. my family is absolutely madly in love with them and they disappear like crazy around here. in fact, this is the last one and i'm off to make another batch right now.

rainbow cupcakes!

if you've been on pinterest at all in recent months, you know that rainbow cakes and cupcakes are all the rage. since it's sabin's 11th birthday tomorrow, i just had to jump on the rainbow bandwagon. today, we baked rainbow cupcakes to share with her class (thank goodness in denmark, it's still ok and even encouraged to bring homemade treats to school) and with our friends at the riding club. sabin's best riding buddy actually shares the same birthday, so it's even better!

i had been dutifully pinning rainbow cakes for some time, but was a little shocked to find that most of them called for a box cake (oh the horror!). i guess that would make it slightly easier, but honestly, when a scratch cake is as easy as it is, why on earth settle for box?

i found this recipe and modified it (of course) to fit my local ingredient availability (there's no such thing as self-raising flour in denmark) and the size of the eggs my chickens produce. it's also a remarkably small recipe, so i not only doubled it, i ended up making FOUR batches of the doubled version. i give you my revised rainbow cake here:

rainbow cupcakes

250 grams butter (i always used salted, but you can go with unsalted if you like)

1 cup of sugar (fill your 250ml measuring cup to the top, my metric friends)

5 medium eggs (fresh from under the hen if you can get 'em)

1 generous glug (that would be the technical term) of vanilla

2 cups flour (again, fill your 250ml measuring cup to the top if you're doing metric)

1/2 C (120ml) milk

2 tsp. baking powder

pinch of salt

cream the butter in your mixer, then add the sugar and further cream until it's smooth and light yellow. add your eggs, one at a time and then the vanilla. then add flour (+ baking powder and salt) and milk, alternating until they're well mixed.

separate into 5 smaller bowls to make red, yellow, green, blue and purple - i actually used two full batches for this, to have a good amount of each color and because i was making a lot of cupcakes. because i was making 60 cupcakes in total, i actually made four batches of the above recipe in total - but my cupcakes are pretty tall, so you could get more out of this recipe by putting less of each color in each cupcake.  but i started with combining two batches to get started. then, as we worked and realized it wouldn't be enough, we made another batch of batter and added to our existing colors - twice.

the original recipe gives how many drops you should add of food coloring. with the liquid food colorings that are available in denmark, these amounts were FAR too little. and adding red and blue together did not result in purple, but to our horror, an awful shade of grey. luckily, i had a stash of wilton paste colors and we got the beautiful vibrant hues you see here (only slightly enhanced by instagram on my iPhone). i HIGHLY recommend using the proper wilton colors - you only do a rainbow once in awhile, so go all out.  it's not THAT poisonous. :-)

once you've got five colors - put a spoonful of each into your cupcake papers. i started with purple on the bottom, tho' we experimented and tried it on top once, but it goes awfully dark and doesn't show how prettily purple it really is if it's exposed to the heat on top. my color order was purple, blue, green, yellow, pink. we also tried with yellow on top, but then they look a bit like an ordinary cupcake.  bake them 10-12 minutes at 180°C/350°F.

see how in the heat of the oven, the colors even out? tho' you can make them as messy as you like, it's really up to you. i really think you can't go wrong with this recipe.

as i write this, i haven't frosted them yet. but when i do, i will use my best and favorite white buttercream - the one that started with a cooked milk/flour combo and ends up a bit lighter than regular buttercream. sprinkles (rainbow of course) on top and we'll be good to go. i expect when i get home, it will be with an empty tray and a whole lot of these....

new nordic inspiration

"we do not stop the world when we eat, we go into it a little more deeply." - olafur eliasson

dandelion, nasturtium, seakale fruit and yellow beetroots

noma is the world's top restaurant. i've been reading their beautiful cookbook published by phaidon - NOMA: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine by René Redzepi. (it's so wonderful that i actually had to use capital letters.) :-) i'm not sure i'll actually try make any of the beautifully photographed recipes, as they are very advanced and some require special equipment (liquid nitrogen, smokers), but i will be using some of the raw ingredients they use. and i simply i can't remember the last time i got so much pleasure and inspiration from a cookbook. it's completely sumptuous and very thought-provoking.

truffle dessert

noma is a combination of two danish words "nordisk" and "mad" - nordic food. they use only fresh, seasonal ingredients from scandinavia and the book explores the early days of the thinking behind the restaurant. rené and claus meyer (another purveyor of new nordic cuisine) went on a voyage of discovery around scandinavia - from the farøe islands to iceland to greenland to norway, sweden and back to denmark - to put together the thinking and the menu. the cookbook includes excerpts from rené's diaries of the trip and is an inspiration.

radishes in a pot

the notion that our diet should be composed of things that are available and seasonal in our surroundings is at once both retro and revolutionary. our ancestors surely ate like that, but we've become accustomed to the availability of tomatoes and strawberries year-round. we can have what we like, whenever we like, because it's there on our grocery store shelves. but what if we returned to seasonal eating? what we ate more root vegetables and cabbage in the winter and only ate tomatoes in the summer? what if we used wild plants from our forests and ditches? what if we ate more game? more fish? what if we were more closely bound to our surroundings in our diet?

pork neck, bulrushes, violets and malt

i heard on the radio that there's a study going on that's focused on new nordic cuisine and tho' they aren't finished yet, one early result has been that those participating have lost 3-6 kilos, which wasn't one of the goals - but more wild, lean meat like venison and more vegetables from the area instead of pasta and rice have had an effect.

dessert of flowers

it might initially seem that to use only seasonal, local ingredients is limiting, but once you start looking around, there is a bounty all around us. and we are left feeling more connected the world that we inhabit. as olafur elliason says in his introduction to the book, "Whether we like it or not, what we eat affects how the world looks. And that affects the way we understand it. When we look at a  plate of food, we should see the greater ecosystem too. If we find out where the food comes from and where it goes to, maybe this knowledge can be made into a different kind of flavor-enhancer. ... Food can be political. Food can be about responsibility, sustainability, geography and culture."

if you get the chance, at least borrow this book from your local library.

egg-cellent

i never really saw myself as a chicken person - oh yes, i eat it, but i never thought i'd have chickens myself. i remember being a little bit surprised when i visited bee and found she had chickens, tho' they were posh, with fancy feathery feet, so i decided it fit quite well with her home in the english countryside. but me? have chickens? no way. fast forward nearly two years and we have 12 - 3 proud little roosters and 9 hens. and they've begun to lay eggs (well, the hens have anyway). and now i think i won't ever be without chickens again. the pleasure of going out and gathering the eggs (we're getting 2-3 a day, as they've just begun) and even just watching them is not to be underestimated. chickens are funny little characters. and the eggs, oh the eggs. they're just about the most magical cooking ingredient of all, aren't they?

squash, sage & bacon soufflé

despite that they only lay 2-3 eggs a day, that rather quickly ends up being a lot of eggs. so i've embarked on making soufflés and other egg-related dishes (we already eat an omelette at least once a week because they're so easy on a busy schedule). i was a little worried the first time, but already with the second one, i started to get a bit creative.  and i can tell you that soufflés aren't nearly as temperamental as you've heard.

the first one i made, i used molly wizenberg's classic cheese soufflé recipe, which she adapted from one by julia child, following it pretty much to the letter.  it came out perfectly and gave me the confidence i needed - it didn't even threaten to fall, it was light and gorgeous and even stayed up after we had taken it out a bit early, spooned into it, discovered it wasn't quite done, and put it back in the oven. a very forgiving soufflé. and a great base recipe, which i gave an autumn twist last night.

cheesy sage and squash soufflé

2 T finely grated parmesan

1 C whole milk

2 1/2 T butter

3 T flour

1 C baked squash

1 small package of bacon, diced and fried to crispy perfection

4-5 fresh sage leaves, sliced into ribbons

6 eggs, separated

1 C grated cheese (gruyère or something similarly meltable is perfect)

salt and pepper to taste

cut a small squash in half and de-seed it. bake it in the oven with a lump of butter in the cavity, until it's soft and done. allow it to cool and spoon it out. i used a hokkaido squash and it resulted in about a cup (metric folks, just fill a 250ml measuring cup) of squash.  if your squash is larger, safe the rest for another purpose (an autumn soup perhaps?).

dice your bacon and fry it to crispy perfection, set it aside. just before it's done, throw the ribbons of sage into the bacon fat and allow the heat to crisp them and release the sagey goodness.  grate your cheese and set it aside.

separate your eggs. my eggs are still very small, so i used 6, if yours are the jumbo size from the grocery store, you can probably do with 3 or 4. molly's recipe calls for 4 egg yolks and 5 egg whites, but i used all of all 6 eggs with good result (and no waste). set your kitchen mixer to whipping the egg whites until they're glossy and have high peaks. reserve the yolks.

preheat your oven to 200°C/400°F. butter a ceramic soufflé dish and coat the buttered edges with the grated parmesan. this makes the most lovely outside crust, so don't skip this step. gently warm the milk in a pan.

in a heavy saucepan, melt the butter and add the flour, whisking to make a roux. cook it 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly, taking care not to let it brown, but getting rid of that raw flour-y taste. remove from the heat and allow it to stand for a minute. return it to the heat, add the warm milk and keep whisking it over the heat until it's very thick - this should again take 2-3 minutes. remove from the heat and whisk in the squash and the bacon and sage. whisking constantly, add the yolks one at a time. set the mixture somewhere to cool to room temperature. season with salt and pepper to taste.

once the mixture is cooled, fold in a good-sized dollop of the egg whites and gently mix it to lighten up the yolk mixture. then gently fold in the rest of the whites and the grated cheese. transfer immediately to your prepared soufflé dish and pop it into the oven immediately. bake it for 25-30 minutes, taking care not to open the oven during at least the first 20 minutes. it's done when it's golden brown on top and has just the slightest jiggle visible in the middle. serve it immediately with a simple salad.

our salad consisted of a box of mixed leaves, diced cucumber, some of the last of the garden tomatoes, diced and the popping, ruby seeds of half a pomegranate. i made a simple creme fraîche dressing to accompany both the soufflé and the salad - just with a bit of chopped, fresh sage and some garlic pepper. it didn't last long, as you can see.

be adventurous, make a soufflé for dinner tonight. i guarantee it will impress your family and friends.

a berry good year

red currants (and proof that there was the occasional bit of sunshine this summer)

our rainy, cool weather this year was a boon for the berries. our strawberry season lasted a month and the red and black currant bushes were loaded with berries that i made into bottles and bottles of cordial for the winter. the blackcurrant cordial might be the best one of them all, tho' the more recent one i've made of elderberries is a close second.

blackcurrants

berry cordials

4 cups (1 kilo) of berries (red currants, blackcurrants, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, elderberries)

2 cups sugar

if you want to give it some zip, add some slices of fresh ginger root, or throw in a vanilla bean. i also mixed them occasionally - red and black currants together. strawberry and rhubarb (it's a classic), tho' i kept raspberries and elderberries alone, because they're so outstanding on their own. the elderberries have the faintest undertone of their spring version - the elderflower, but with layers of autumn on top. mixed with hot water and a dash of vanilla vodka (see below), they make a gorgeous, warming drink, for a nippy but clear autumn day.  i made several batches using honey instead of sugar, since we've also got our own bees and i had a lot of honey on hand - the result was a deeper, more complex cordial. 

autumn raspberries - they produced from august - october!

elderberries

"rumtopf" - with vodka, red currants, black currants, strawberries and sugar

i've been throwing a handful of whatever berry is in season into this jar and topping it up with vodka all summer  - it will make a lovely fruity tipple come christmas time - filled with the echoes of summer during that dark time of year. all you do is take a cup of organic sugar, all the berries you have at hand and keep them covered with vodka. whenever you add more berries, if they're not submerged, add more vodka. this one was started in june and i added the last berries in october (photo from the beginning). you can also use rum (hence the name - rumtopf), but we're vodka drinkers around here, so that's what we used.

black currant cordial

the cordials can be mixed with fizzy water for a sparkling drink. they're great with white wine or a dash of vanilla vodka. they can be quite tasty with lemon schweppes. they're also just fine with plain water - hot or cold, depending on your weather.  the limits are only those of imagination.

thanks to my buddy chris, who is a co-contributor over on the sustainable life blog, i ventured into making my own vanilla vodka. she was making vanilla extract and i've got a batch of that going as well, but decided to make some vanilla vodka for drinking as well - it tastes more natural than the absolut version. it's a very nice companion when you're using these cordials as the base for a cocktail. if you check eBay, you can find great prices on vanilla pods in bulk - i got 30+ for €11 including shipping. speaking of which, it's time to order them again, in preparation for winter baking.