Warm Cabbage Salad

Warm Cabbage Salad

I love cabbage. It's cheap, healthy and easy to make. You can use it raw or cook it. When you sauté it like in this recipe, you still get the crunchy texture and a mild flavor. You can pull the flavor profile in different directions, by adding chili, curry or keep it mild with lemon and parsley.

Serves 3-4

Ingredients:

• 1 medium head of green cabbage, thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 lemon, the zest of
• 1 handful Italian parsley, chopped
• salt to taste
• lemon juice or white balsamic vinegar to taste

Directions:

Melt the butter in a sauté pan, don't let it brown. Sauté the cabbage until it starts to get tender. You still want it to be crispy, but not raw. Turn off the heat, and mix in parsley and lemon zest. Season the salad with salt and lemon juice or vinegar.

Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Whole Roasted Cauliflower

Whole Roasted Cauliflower

Cauliflower was a weird vegetable for me growing up. My mom boiled the h.. out of it, and like many overcooked vegetables it went on my "I don't like that" list. Please DO NOT overcook and especially over-boil your vegetables. 
You can prepare cauliflower so many ways, or just eat it raw, but by roasting it whole like this you get a great nutty flavor, with a crispy surface with a tender and almost creamy center. It might be time consuming but its well worth the wait. 

Serves 3-4.

Ingredients:

• 1 large cauliflower, the one I used was yellow to start with

• olive oil

• salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven with a cast-iron skillet inside to 375℉ (190℃).

Break off and discard the outer leaves from the cauliflower. Cut off the bottom of the stem, being careful not to cut off any of the florets. Using a small sharp knife to cut out the hard core of the cauliflower.  

Rinse the cauliflower, not drying it again. Place the cauliflower core-side up on the cutting board, and drizzle it with olive oil. Rub the oil all over the surface, and sprinkle with sea salt.

Place the cauliflower core-side down in the hot cast-iron skillet. Place an ovenproof pan filled with hot water, to create steam in the oven. Roast the cauliflower for 1½-2 hours, basting it 2-3 times with more olive oil. You want to end up with a nice brown color on the surface and a nice tender inside. You can roast the cauliflower under the boiler for a brief moment in the end to add some more color.

Serve the cauliflower to your favorite protein.

Enjoy!

Mortens And - Roasted Duck

Duck roasting - from the oven cam.

Mortensaften - is celebrated on November 10th. 

The tradition that Danes and some parts of Germans eat duck on this night, dates back to before 1616. 

The story tells us that a monk called Martin or Morten in Denmark was forced to become a bishop, but he didn't want the job, so he hid in a pasture filled with geese. Not the smartest place, cause the geese honked and  Morten was revealed. As the tail goes Morten Bisp, now bishop ordered everyone to eat geese on November 10th as a punishment for the geese for ratting him out. 

Over time people switched to eating ducks, maybe because of the smaller size. 

The traditional way is to serve the duck with caramelized potatoes, pickled red cabbage and gravy, kinda the same way as the traditional christmas dinner/pork roast. To change things up, I caramelized an assortment of root vegetables and kept the red cabbage.

Ingredients:

Duck:

• 1 duck (7-8 pounds)
• 2 oranges
• 2 apples
• 2 handful of pitted prunes
• a handful salt and some pepper
• 1 star anise
• 3 whole allspice
• 5 whole cloves

Pickled Red Cabbage:

• 1 medium red cabbage
• 25 g butter, salted
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• ¼ cup balsamic vinegar (I mixed half balsamic and half blackberry-ginger balsamic for a sweeter taste)
• salt and pepper to taste

Caramelized Root vegetables:

• 3 large carrots
• 2 parsnips
• 3 sun chokes (Israeli artichokes)
• 1 small root celery
• 3 small beets
• salt
• a splash of oil for the baking
• sugar and butter for the caramelizing

Directions:

Duck:

Preheat the oven to 265℉ (130℃).

Chop the oranges and apples in the size of the prunes. Mix star anise, allspice, cloves and the broken cinnamon stick with apples, oranges and prunes. Have the salt in a clean cup.

Take neck and giblets out of the duck. Make sure that all feather sacks are out of the duck, you don't want a hard part of the feather in the crispy skin.

Pad the duck dry with some kitchen towel. Salt the duck inside, and fill it with the fruit mixture. Close the opening with a  trussing needle. 

Truss the duck by placing the duck on a tray with the legs towards you. Tuck the wing tips under the duck. 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 duck and pull the twine down around the wings and under the duck, 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."

Well, I did it my way, and tried my best to get the compact duck. Sometimes I just pull the wing onto the back of the duck, and use a cooking rubber band to tie the legs together.

Salt the duck with a lot of salt. 

Put the duck in the oven, breast side down, and cook it like this for 3-3½ hours. Have a pan under the duck, and put the giblets, neck and water in it. This water/drippings will be the base for the sauce. 

After 3½ hours turn the duck breast side up, and roast it for another 1½-2 hours until the temperature in the duck reaches 158℉ (70℃). If the skin isn't crispy, give the bird a few minutes under the boiler, be careful not to burn the duck.

Take the duck out and let it rest. Pour the drippings from the pan through a strainer into a saucepan. Skim the fat from the surface. I use a fat separator, which makes this process a breeze. Save the fat in the refrigerator or the freezer. Duck fat is a flavorful fat, and is perfect to roast potatoes in.

Add some cream, blue cheese and red currant jelly to the drippings and thicken the sauce.

Remove the twine and carve the duck. 

Red Cabbage:

Remove outher leaves of cabbage, and cut cabbage into quarters and remove the white core. Thinly slice the cabbage across the quarters width-wise. To get uniform slices I use a mandolin.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the cabbage and sear it for a couple minutes. Add vinegar and sugar.  Simmer the cabbage for 10-15 minutes until cabbage is tender.

Season with salt, pepper, vinegar and sugar. Serve heated to pork roasts or roasted duck. 

Caramelized Root vegetables:

Preheat the oven for 400℉ (200℃).

Peel the root vegetables and cut them into bite-sized pieces. Keep the beets separate even during baking, to prevent all the vegetables from turning red. Dress the vegetables in oil and season with salt. Bake the vegetables in ovenproof dishes for about 30 minutes until tender, but not soft. Cool the vegetables. Just before you are ready to serve, heat a large skillet over high heat, pour in the sugar and melt it. When the sugar has turned the color of light amber, add the butter and stir with a wooden spoon. Carefully pour the vegetables into the hot caramel. Lower the heat and make sure the vegetables get covered in the caramel and get heated through. Serve immediately, otherwise the vegetables looses the shine.

Enjoy!

Høns i Asparges - Chicken & Asparagus in tartlets

Høns i Asparges - Chicken & Asparagus in tartlets

Høns in asparges or Creamed chicken and asparagus in tartlets is an old Danish classic dish. Normally it will be served as a part of the traditional christmas and easter lunches. For sure this is old school Danish food, called mormor-mad (Grandmother food). And mormor-mad is peasant food, and not on the healthy side. But if you loose the tartlets and serve the dish with boiled potatoes, boiled carrots and some bread, you can have a regular meal. Creamed chicken and asparagus in tartlets is kinda the same thing as chicken potpie, if you serve it upside-down. 

Creamed chicken and asparagus was a big favorite in my house growing up, but wasn't served on a regular basis, so it was a rare but special treat.

Serves 3-4

Ingredients:

Sauce:

• 25 g butter

• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

• ½ cup (1 dl) chicken stock

• ½ cup (1 dl) milk

• asparagus water,

• salt & white pepper to taste

Filling:

• 1 jar white asparagus in water, save the water for the sauce

• ½ chicken, the meat prepared (I used the left over meat from my chicken noodle soup)

Tartlets:

Use  Tarteletter, savory tartelettes or make your own with puff pastry homemade or store bought. 

Directions:

Sauce: 

Melt the butter over medium heat in a sauce pan. Add the flour and a sprinkle of salt, stirring constantly, until all the flour is incorporated with the butter. You don't want it to get a golden. First whisk in the hot chicken stock, making sure to not to have any lumps left, then whisk in the milk, asparagus water and cook, whisking constantly, until thickened and shiny, 2 to 3 minutes. Add more milk if the sauce is too thick.

Cut the asparagus and chicken into bitesize pieces. Gently fold in the filling in the sauce, and season with salt and white pepper.

Serve the creamed chicken & asparagus in tartelettes, with boiled potatoes or with a slice of a good bread.

Enjoy!

Satay Sauce

Satay sauce is so scrumptious, the peanut buttery sweet slightly curried sauce is perfect with chicken and spring rolls. Because I didn't grow on peanut butter, this sauce is the best thing you can make with peanut butter, for me it's properly the only thing.

Ingredients:

• 1 can of full-fat coconut milk
• 4 teaspoons red curry paste
• 150 g unsweetened peanut butter (I used an old fashioned style crunchy peanut butter only containing peanuts)
• ¼ tablespoon Thai fish sauce (or use salt to taste)
• ¼ cup (50 g) palm sugar
• 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar 
• ½ cup water

Directions:

Put everything into a medium heavy-bottomed pot and bring to a very gentle boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Let the mixture simmer for 3-5 minutes over low heat, stirring occasionally. Be careful not to let the sauce scorch. Take the pot off the heat, let the sauce cool down to room temperature, and serve the sauce with satay or spring rolls 

This peanut sauce will keep in a container in the refrigerator for weeks. The refrigerated sauce will thicken up considerably, but just add some water, reheat it and it is ready to serve.  

Enjoy!