Perfect Scrambled Eggs

I can't believe I haven't posted this yet. Gordon Ramsay shows us how to create the best scrambled eggs you've ever had. Enjoy.



And here's some I made a while back:

Semlor

It is said that King Adolf Fredrik of Sweden (Adolf Frederick in English) died after having had a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, saurkraut, herring, champagne and then no less than 14 servings of semlor. That night, he had a cardiac arrest and died, 60 years old, in his bed. Not quite as exciting as his son - Gustav III of Sweden - who was assassinated (well, he died from the wounds some time later) . The semla, however, has survived and is still one of the most famous desserts in Northern Europe.

Originally, it was a sweet bun (baked with cardamom) served in a bowl with hot milk and they called it "hetvägg", which literally means "hot wall". These days, there are some more...let's say expensive ingredients, like almond paste and whipped cream, but some people still serve it with the hot milk as originally intended.

According to reliable sources (eh, Wikipedia), the name comes from the Latin "semilia" which was the finest wheat flour. There seems to be no translation to English for the words generally used for this fine product (semla, fastlagsbulle or hetvägg), so I'll just use the Swedish word for it - one semla, many semlor. There, you learned some Swedish today!

Traditionally, these baked little wonders were only served on the last Tuesday before lent, while Sweden was still a catholic country. Then, in the 16th century, protestantism came to the country and there was no more lent. These days, you can usually find it in pastry shops starting around Christmas all the way through Easter and I'm sure some places sell them throughout the year. Since they're not available in the US and I still have some of the almond paste my family sent me for Christmas, I decided to make some from scratch.

The only ingredient I have difficulty finding is fresh yeast. Luckily, it's not that hard to use active dry yeast instead. In addition, the recipes all call for ammonium carbonate (a predecessor to baking soda and baking powder), also called baker's ammonia, and that's not easy to find in normal convenience stores either. No bother, I modified a recipe a little and the end result tasted just the way I remember semlor should taste, so I will call it all a success. Now: let's get decadent!

Semlor

4 1/2 tsp (2 packets) active dry yeast
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
6 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 cup whole milk
1 pinch salt

almond paste (marzipan)
heavy whipping cream
powdered sugar

Start by melting the butter in a small pot over medium heat on the stove. Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl (or the stand mixer's bowl if using). Once the butter is melted, add the milk and heat up to around 115 degrees Fahrenheit, or a bit warmer than lukewarm. If you burn your finger testing the liquid, it's too hot! Add the egg to the dry ingredients and mix well (use the paddle attachment if using a stand mixer). Once the liquid is warm enough, add it to the bowl and mix well. You are looking for a slightly sticky, smooth dough. Add flour as necessary to achieve this - use the dough hook attachment for the stand mixer if using.

Once the dough is easy enough to handle without clinging to the bowl, knead it for another few minutes, then place in a warm place (free of drafts) under a clean kitchen towel and let rest for 30 minutes or until doubled in size. Once done, turn the dough onto a clean baking board (or your counter top, just...clean, ok?) and punch it down. Divide into about 15 equal pieces, roll them into smooth buns and place on a baking sheet (either greased or covered with baking paper). Make sure there's some space between each bun.

Turn the oven to 425, cover the buns with the towel and leave for 30 more minutes. The should roughly double in size again. Place in the middle of the oven for 10 - 15 minutes or until golden brown (but watch out, you don't want to burn them!). Let rest under a kitchen towel until cool. This is important, or the top of the buns might get too hard.

Once they are cool, it's time to assemble the actual semla! Cut off a lid (see picture above), then dig out the contents of the bun, making sure you don't destroy the "walls" of it. Place the bread you removed in a bowl and combine with roughly an equal amount of marzipan (almond paste) and a small splash of milk, just enough to moisten the contents. Mix this together, then place it back in the bun. Whip enough of the heavy whipping cream to cover the bun, replace the lid and sift powdered sugar on top. Enjoy!

As mentioned before, some people serve this in a bowl with warm milk. Me? I remove the lid, dip it in the cream and then eat the bun, one big bite at the time and it's extremely yummy.

Keep the unused buns in a zip lock bag in the freezer. When ready to use, remove from the bag and place in the microwave at low power for a minute or so.

Pork Tenderloin with Gingered Sweet Potatoes

Pork rocks. If it wasn't on the opposite end of "healthy" on the "things that are good and bad for you" scale, I could probably eat bacon every day. I mean, any food where the leftover grease can be used for frying pretty much anything and making it taste much better is fantastic in my book. This isn't about bacon, though, it's about a great pork tenderloin recipe I decided to make. The pork came out very tender, the mashed sweet potatoes were a great compliment and broccoli is always tasty as a side dish.

A note about pork: the risk of getting sick from eating undercooked pork is much smaller than they seem to warn you about in every restaurant out there. As long as the internal temperature is over 140 degrees Fahrenheit, you're safe and most of the time, you'll be taking it out of the oven at 155 degrees and letting it rest (and thus letting it continue to cook internally) for 10 minutes until it reaches the desired doneness. Pink pork will not kill you, but gray pork will make anyone with a desire to eat good food shed a tear (or eat elsewhere). Enough talk, here's the recipe!

Pork Tenderloin

1-1 1/2 lb pork tenderloin
1 2-inch piece of fresh ginger
3 garlic cloves
3-4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
salt
pepper

Remove the silver skin, as it will not break down when cooking. Place the pork in a zip lock bag. Peel the ginger and cut the piece into smaller chunks. Crush the garlic. Add all ingredients (a couple of pinches of salt and pepper is enough) to the bag, close it and toss to coat. Leave in the fridge for at least 1 hour, preferably overnight. I did this in the morning and cooked at night.

When ready to cook, turn oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the pork on a rack in a roasting pan. I added a little bit of white wine and apple juice in the roasting pan together with some more crushed garlic and ginger, and basted the roast with it every 5-10 minutes, but this is not necessary. Roast for 30-45 minutes (depending on thickness), until a meat thermometer reads 155 degrees Fahrenheit. Remove from the oven and place on a plate. Cover loosely with tin foil and leave for 10 minutes before carving.

Gingered Mashed Sweet Potatoes

2 large sweet potatoes/yams
1 2-inch piece of ginger
1 cup heavy cream
salt
pepper

Bring water in a large pot to a boil, add salt. Wash the sweet potatoes and cut them lengthwise, once. Add to the pot and boil until tender enough that a knife easily cuts through them. In the meantime, peel the ginger and cut into smaller chunks. Add to a small pot together with the cream and bring to a simmer. Stirring frequently, keep simmering for at least 10 minutes, or the time it takes to finish the potatoes.

Once the potatoes are done, remove from the water and leave until cooler, but still warm. Remove the skin and place the potatoes back in the pot (you may need to rinse the pot first). Mash with a potato masher or fork. Add the cream and stir to combine. Salt and pepper to taste.

I serve the dish with oven-roasted broccoli. Wash a head of broccoli, remove the stem and cut into smaller pieces. Toss with a few tablespoons of oil, some salt and pepper in a bowl. Place in a oven-safe dish and roast for 10 minutes at 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Enjoy!

Request: Shrimp Fried Rice

I bought a wok a while back, after Jacquie told me she was craving some fried rice. Now, fried rice is very simple to make and the taste is wonderful, so I wasn't late to oblige. It's not the healthiest of meals, perhaps, but I don't always care that much about that.

This is for Stassney, who requested a fried rice recipe the other day. Enjoy!

Shrimp Fried Rice

1lb shrimps
1 sweet onion (yellow onion is fine as well)
4 cloves garlic
1 large head of broccoli
1 cup uncooked white rice
3 eggs
1 bunch scallions (green onion)
dark soy sauce
cooking oil
salt
black pepper

Start by boiling the rice. The Uncle Ben's I used said "2 1/4 cup water for 1 cup of uncooked rice" and I used just around 1 1/2 cups of water. You do not want to overcook the rice. Once it's finished, let cool and place in the fridge. You want it to be completely cold before putting in the fridge, to avoid spoiling other food in there - you can do this many hours in advance as long as you cover the cooked rice.

Peel the shrimp. Add a little cooking oil to the wook and put on the stove over medium high heat. Add shrimp, fry until just pink. Remove from wok. Add more oil if necessary to fry the vegetables.

Dice the onion, mince the garlic and cut the broccoli into (roughly) half-inch pieces - or larger if you like that sort of thing. Fry the vegetables for about 5 minutes over medium high heat, or until they start to get softer and the onion is becoming translucent. At this point, add the three eggs and stir until they have scrambled in the pan. (Jacquie thinks the egg pieces get too small by doing this, so she has me scramble them in a separate pan and add them to the wok at this point.)

Next, put a few tablespoons of cold water in the rice, stir it to make sure it's loose and add to the wok. Add a few dashes of soy sauce and pepper, and salt to taste. Stir frequently until rice is getting warm and everything is covered by the soy sauce. Add the shrimp and the finely chopped scallion to the pan, cook and stir for another couple of minutes. Serve immediately in a bowl.

This will keep in the fridge for 3-4 days, but is best eaten right away.

More pizza

I made pizza recently, and decided that it was time to post a picture since I didn't have time to take one last time. Yum yum.

Movie Night

We're having some people over tonight to watch The Big Lebowski - hopefully the first of many movie nights. We've decided to try to pair the movie with food and drinks, so we're naturally making White Russians, grilled cheese sandwiches (bowling alley food) and french fries (also bowling alley food).

I'm curious to see what food and drink pairings we can come up with for future movies. I think we're planning to have a "watch party" - seeing the two movies Night Watch and Day Watch - and I suppose we'll just have to go for Russian food with those two. And vodka, neat. Of course :)

Apple Crumble

I am fully aware that I posted a recipe for apple marzipan pie just a week ago or so, but I made an apple crumble the other day and it's very different from the pie so I decided to post the recipe. Now, a crumble is very hard to mess up and it's quick to prepare. Just make sure you have some vanilla ice cream or custard to serve it with, as that will double the deliciousness.

Apple Crumble

3-4 apples (use a variety, if possible)
1 stick very cold butter (8 tbsp, 125g)
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cups white sugar + a few pinches
ground cinnamon

Turn your oven to 425 degrees F (225 degrees C).

Start with the apples. Peel, remove the seeds and slice. A normal sized apple should make roughly 10-12 slices. The size isn't of a huge importance, and you can really dice them or cut them into little shapes that are vaguely reminiscent of Disney characters. It does not matter. I slice, because slicing is fun.

Next, grease a 9 inch form. You can use a pie form for this, or a square dish - as long as it's oven safe. I use butter, a little bit of vegetable oil would be OK too. Place the apples in the pan, coat with a few pinches of sugar and cinnamon.

Place the flour and sugar in a bowl. Add the chilled butter in small chunks and start crumbling with your fingers. Your goal is to get pea-sized grains of dough, but be sure not to over-work it. You're not looking to melt the butter and form a ball of dough here, we want crumbles. Once combined, drizzle the mixture over the apples. You don't have to completely cover everything, but you should be able to.

Place in the center of the oven for 30 minutes. Let cool slightly, but serve while still warm with some vanilla ice cream or cold custard to make it even better.