Cilantro and Lime Cauliflower Rice

Cilantro and Lime Cauliflower rice

I love the cilantro-lime rice from Chipotle, but when I'm trying to cut down on rice and pasta, I need a replacement. For the longest time I've been adding grated and steamed cauliflower to my rice to save calories. But replacing all the rice is new to me. 

You can make cauliflower rice in a lot of ways. You can steep the grated cauliflower in boiling water for a minute, and then drain it. Or nuke it in the microwave for 30 seconds.  Or fry the cauliflower up in a skillet. The latter is what I did in this recipe.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 head of cauliflower, grated
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 shallot, diced
• 1 lime, zest and juice
• a handful cilantro, chopped
• salt to taste

Directions:

Grate the cauliflower or using a food-processor pulse until cauliflower is rice-sized. Mince  garlic, chop shallot. 

Heat a skillet or sauté pan over medium heat, add oil, shallots and garlic. Sauté until  tender. Raise the heat to medium-high. Add the cauliflover and sauté while stirring until it's tender, but still have some bite. Season with salt. Remove from heat, add cilantro, lime zest and juice. Serve immediately.

The Danish version:

Blomkålsris med koriander og lime

Ingredients:

• 1 tsk Olivenolie
• 1 blomkålshovede, revet
• 2 hvidløgsfed, finthakket
• 1 skalotteløg, hakket
• 1 lime, skal og saft
• 1 håndfuld frisk koriander, hakket
• salt

Riv blomkålen, enten på et rivejern eller i en food processor, så blomkålen er på størrelse med riskorn. Hak løg og hvidløg.

Sæt en pande over medium varme. Kom olie, løg og hvidløg i panden, og sautér indtil løgene er gennemsigtige. Skru op for varmen og kom blomkålen i. Steg indtil blomkålen er mør, men der stadig er bid i. Smag til med salt.

Tag blomkålen af varmen og tilsæt koriander, limesaft og -skal.

Server straks. 

Chicken with preserved lemons & green olives

Chicken with Preserved Lemons and Green Olives

I love simmer food. We often had simmer food back home. Best of all is one-pot-meals they are easy to prepare,  just not as fast as I sometimes would like. 

I like to try out different cuisines, and getting “Mourad: New Moroccan” cookbook, I had to have a a Moroccan clay Tagine. Well I bought it because I wanted to make a lamb dish I once had. I never got that far, because I stumbled over this chicken dish, and I had to try this.

You get the best flavours if you roast and grind you own spices, but even though I have a spice grinder, I alway end up using the store bought ground spices - I don't know what I'm missing out on. 

You can make this dish in a tagine or in a ovenproof skillet with a lid. When using a tagine, be sure to use a diffuser over the burner, so the tagine won't break. 

This is my take on the dish.

Serves 3

Ingredients: 

• 2 teaspoons fat (duck or olive oil)
• 6 chicken thighs (I use boneless, skinless thigh filets)
• salt
• 3 onions (finely sliced)
• 2 tablespoons (11 g) ground coriander
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 2 teaspoons white pepper
• 1 teaspoon saffron treads
• 1 tablespoon chicken base (Better than Bouillon reduced sodium)
• 1 - 2 cups water
• 100 g green olives
• 4 - 6 quarters preserved lemons
• Italian parsley
• cilantro
• salt to taste

Directions: 

Salt the chicken and let sit for about an hour at room temperature.

Preheat you oven to 350 ℉ (175 ℃). 

Heat the fat in the tagine over medium heat. Add the chicken and sear it on both sides. Work in batches, so the chicken won't steam instead of browning. Remove the chicken from tagine. Discard the fat, and add a teaspoon new fat to tagine. Add onions and sauté for about 15 minutes or until they are tender and golden brown. 

Sautéing onions.

Add the spices and a pinch of salt to the onions and stir constantly for about 1,5 minutes to lightly toast the spices. Return the chicken legs to the tagine, add the chicken base and water, bring to a boil. 

Cover the tagine and put it in the oven, and cook for 30-40 minutes, or until the chicken is tender. Remove tagine from oven and remove the chicken from the tagine.  

Return the tagine to the burner, and let simmer for about 3 minutes to reduce the sauce. I thicken the sauce with some cornstarch diluted in cold water.

Add diced preserved lemon and green olives, let them heat through. Add herbs and season with sat. 

Serve the chicken with rice or couscous. 

Green Asparagus Soup

Green Asparagus Soup

Asparagus soup is white, right? I always thought so. The frozen and canned asparagus soup I've seen in Danish stores where all white. But why not use the tasty green asparagus for soup? It could be a healthier option than the white creamed soup that I've always known.

I got the inspiration from Giada de Laurentis cook book "Weeknights with Giada" where she made a green asparagus soup with goat cheese as a topping. I tweaked the recipe to fit my taste and this is my take on it:

Serves 3-4

Ingredients: 

Soup: 

• 2 teaspoon butter

• 150 g Leeks

• 2 cloves of garlic

• a pitch of yellow mustard seeds

• 2 bunches of asparagus

• 1/4 cup white wine

• 2-3 tablespoons chicken base (Better than Bouillon reduced sodium)

• 1 quart boiling water

• 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream (optional)

• 1-2 fresh squeezed lemon juice

• Salt and pepper to taste

Toppings: 

• dry chorizo, thinly sliced and fried to crispy

• asparagus tops (save some of the tops, and fry them briefly)

• Goat cheese mixed with finely chopped fresh basil and a splash heavy whipping cream.

Directions: 

In a 4- to 5-quart Dutch oven, heat the butter over medium-low heat. When hot, add the leeks and the mustard seeds, cook, stirring constantly until softened, about 3 to 4 minutes, be careful not to get any colour on the leeks. Add wine, stock, water, asparagus. Bring soup to a simmer and cook until the asparagus are tender about 7-10 minutes.

Blend the soup smooth with a immersion blender or a regular blender. Be careful when working with hot soup in a blender.  If you need a new blender, consider a Vitamix. They are expensive, but they are worth all the money. They can liquefy almost anything and makes soup and margaritas so smooth and creamy. But the best part, you can blend hot soups without having to clean the soup of all your kitchen cabinets afterwards. Just saying. ;)

Season the the soup with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

Serve the soup hot with the toppings. Enjoy! 

Perfectly Roasted Chicken

Perfectly roasted chicken.

Everyone can roast a chicken, the only thing you need is a oven and a chicken.

But getting a moist chicken with a crispy golden brown skin is more difficult. One option is a beer can chicken - roasting the chicken while is't sitting on a beer can (or roaster) filled with beer or wine. We always do this on the BBQ, but some days are not BBQ-ing days, at least not in Denmark. 

I wanted to try out Thomas Kellers way to roast a chicken in the oven. And to be honest I didn't read the recipe before the afternoon of making it. That was a mistake, a big mistake. I had to brine the chicken in the refrigerator for 6 hours. Well this didn't happen with this bird, but it turned out great. I don't think I've had a roasted chicken this moist ever. But some day I have to try to brine a chicken, I'll keep you posted.

This is how I made the roasted chicken. 

Serves 4-5 people. 

Ingredients: 

• 1 chicken  ( 2,24-2,50 lb)
• coarse sea salt (a fair amount)
• pepper
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 2 teaspoons thyme leaves

Directions: 

Clean the chicken, removing the layer of fat from the opening. Remove the giblets. I never rinse the chicken under water, this will spread bacteria such as salmonella. 

Preheat the oven to 475°F (250°C).
Pat the chicken dry with paper towels. Season the chicken inside with salt and pepper. I always take a handful of salt in a cup, and add some pepper, and use this for seasoning. If there is any salt left I discard it. There's no need to spread bacteria all over.

From Thomas Keller:  "Truss the chicken by placing the chicken on a tray with the legs towards you. Tuck the wing tips under the chicken. Cut a piece of cooking twine about 3 feet (1 meter), and center it on top of the neck end of the breast. Lift the neck end of the chicken and pull the twine down around the wings and under the chicken, then bring the ends up over the breast, towards you, and knot the twine, pulling it tight to plump the breast. Bring the ends of the twine around the ends of the drumsticks and straight up. Tie as before to pull the drumsticks together and form a compact bird; tie again to secure knot."

 I did it my way, and tried my best to get the compact chicken. Let the chicken rest for 30 minutes at room temperature.

Season the chicken with salt - you have to use a lot.

Heat a ovenproof skillet and heat the oil before placing the chicken breast side up in the skillet. This way the skin won't stick to the skillet.  Put the skillet in the hot oven, with the chicken legs facing the back of the oven.

Roast for about 40 minutes, rotate the skillet if the chicken is browning unevenly. Check the temperature by inserting an instant-read thermometer between the bird and the thigh. When the temperature is about  155°F (69°C), remove it from the oven. The chicken will continue to cook as it sits, and reach a temperature of about 165°F (75°C). Add the thyme leaves to the skillet, and baste the chicken several times with the juices and thyme leaves. Let it sit and rest for about 10 minutes.

Remove the twine and carve the chicken, and serve with your favorite starchy side or vegetables. 

Greek-style Lamb Meatballs - Græske Lammefrikadelle

Greek-style Lamb Meatballs

Everybody knows Swedish meatballs from IKEA. They have a danish cousin, they are not round but more flat and fried on a skillet in butter.

Growing up with moms meatballs, hard on the outside and soft on the inside, not my cup of tea. The taste was good, but texture-vise I needed something else. My moms meatballs was made with all-purpose flours as the starch component. But one of my friends said to try using rolled oats instead, and it made a big difference.

My old aunt from Jutland also taught me some of her secrets to good meatballs. You start by mixing the meat with salt, this makes some of the meat proteins water soluble, which acts like a emulsifier. She always tasted the meat to see if it needed more salt, I wouldn't recommend this. Try to fry up a small meatball to taste it. 

Divide the meat in quarters, lift one quarter up unto the other quarters. Fill the missing quarter with rolled oats. Put in finely chopped or grated onions, the eggs, milk salt and pepper and mix until you have a cohesive meat mixture. I use the same directions for these lamb meatballs

I like to experiment with the classic recipes, and wanted to try out a greek take on the danish meatballs. What makes these greek?  Making them with lamb and adding garlic, feta, olives, roasted tomatoes and rosemary gave them a greek twist. 

My husband loves these especially when I serve them with tzatziki and orzo salad.

Makes 30 meatballs

Ingredients: 

The Ingredients.

• 1 kg (2 lb.) ground lamb meat

• rolled oats

• 2 eggs

• 2 medium onions

• ⅓ cup milk

• ¼ cup roasted garlic

• 2 garlic cloves (fresh)

• ¼ cup pitted kalamata olives

• 75 g feta cheese

• ¼ cup roasted tomatoes

• 2 sprigs rosemary

• 1½ teaspoons salt

• pepper

• Butter and oil for frying

Directions:

The Process.

Mix the meat with salt.  Divide the meat in quarters, lift one quarter up unto the other quarters. Fill the missing quarter with rolled oats. Put in finely chopped or grated onions, the eggs, milk,  salt and pepper and mix until you have a cohesive meat mixture. Add the chopped rosted garlic, fresh garlic, olives, feta cheese roasted tomatoes and rosemary. 

Place a skillet over medium-high heat. Melt a couple of table spoons of butter in the skillet

Forming the meatballs dip a tablespoon in the melted butter and scoop up a good spoonful meat. Use the hand and the spoon to form the meatball.  The meatball should be oval an the size of a small egg. Placed the meatball in the skillet, repeat until you have a full skillet. Be careful not to let the meatballs touch each other.

Fry the meatball for about 3 to 5 minutes on each side, until they are well-browned and no longer pink in the center. Depending how big the meatballs are and how hot your pan is the time may vary.  When done remove the meatballs onto a plate, and set aside.

If you have a more meat mixture in the bowl, clean the skillet with a kitchen towel and add new butter and fry another batch.

The Danish Version

Græske lammefrikadeller

Ingredienser: 

• 1 kg hakket lammekød

• havregryn

• 2 æg

• 2 løg

• 3/4 dl mælk

• en lille håndfuld ristede hvidløgsfed

• 2 hvidløsfed (friske)

• en lille håndfuld kalamata oliven

• 75 g feta

• en lille håndfuld semi dried tomater

• 2 kviste rosemarin

• 1,5 tsk salt

• pepper

• smør og olie til stegningen

Bland kødet med salt. Del kødet i kvarte, løft en fjerdedel op op de andre. Fyld den manglende fjerdedel med havregryn. Tilsæt  finthakket eller revet løg, æg, mælk, salt og peber og bland indtil du har en sammenhængende fars. Tilsæt den hakkede ristede hvidløg, frisk hvidløg, oliven, feta, ristede tomater og rosmarin, bland det godt.

Smelt et par spiseskefulde smør på en stegepande, tilsæt lidt oile.

Brug hånden og skeen til at forme frikadellerne . Frikadellerne skal være ovale, på størrelse med en lille æg . Steg frikadellerne i omkring 3 til 5 minutter på hver side, indtil de er godt brunet og ikke længere rå inden i. Stegetiden varierer afhængig af størrelsen på frikadellerne, og hvor varmt din stegepande er.