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. 

Lemon Scones

Lemon Scone

It's really hard to find really good scones. They have to be flaky and soft. One of the only places you can get these in Copenhagen is at Reinh van Haun bakery. Well you can probably get real scones in the UK.

Recently I had a really god and flakey scone at Tartine Bakery & Cafe in San Francisco, but it's not just around the corner from here, so I won't be hanging out there a lot. But if you're ever in San Francisco stop by Tartine, even if you have to wait in line, It's worth the wait.

I got this recipe at a cooking class in Sur La Table from Chef Nikki B. Frias. I'm sad to see that she's no longer at the Los Gatos Store - I miss you Nikki! 

Makes 10-15.

Ingredients: 

• 450 g all-purpose flour
• 85 g sugar
• 30 g baking powder
• 7 g  salt
• 115 g  cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 475 ml heavy whipping cream
• 1 tablespoon lemon zest

Topping:

• heavy wipping cream
• demerara sugar (raw cane sugar)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°F  (205°C) For a convection oven. Non-convection preheat oven to 425°F  (220°C) 

Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl, by hand. Add the butter. I used a pastry cutter to incorporate the butter in the flour mixture. Mix until the the butter resembles small pebbles.

Getting ready for the oven.

Add in your cream and lemon zest and mix until it just comes together and resembles biscuit dough. This step is very important because if you over mix, the dough will become dense. If you use berries in the scones, add them now

Using an ice cream scoop, take the scones dough and place the dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet.
Brush the top with heavy whipping cream and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for approximately 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown in the mottle of the oven.

Note: 

You can make the dough and set them on a baking sheet and then freeze them in advance. When you want fresh baked scones - just take the frozen scones out and brush the top with heavy whipping cream and sprinkle with sugar, and bake. No need for defrosting.

You can add fruit to the batter. Use about 115 g, but don't use strawberries, they contain to much water. 

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! 

Danish Hindbærsnitter

Hindbærsnitte.

Hindbærsnitter or 'raspberry bars' is a cake made of a shortcrust pastry, like the one you will use for a pie crust. Between the two layers of pastry there's a filling of a good raspberry jam. The cake is topped with an icing and colorful sprinkles.

You'll find hindbærsnitter in almost every bakery shop in Denmark. The quality may varies greatly, mostly because the bakeries doesn't make hindbærsnitter daily.

Hindbærsnitter has been one of my favourite cakes growing up. Even though that I, as an adult, don't like cakes to sweet, these hindbærsnitter will always be have a special place in my cake loving heart.<3

When you make these you'll find out that they won't keep, they will evaporate! 

Ingredients:

Pastry:

• 2 teaspoon vanilla paste

• 75 g confectionery sugar

• 150 g butter, room temperature

• 250 g All-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 50 g water (1/2 dl)

Filling:

• 200 g raspberry jam, in a good quality

glaze:

• 225 g confectionary sugar

• a little bit water

Topping:

• colorful sprinkles

Directions: 

Pastry:

Using a stand mixer with paddle attachment, mix together sugar, flour, butter, vanilla paste and baking powder. When the butter is mixed in well add the water, a little at a time, you might not need all of it. Be careful not to over mix the dough. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate dough for about 30 minutes.  

Rolling out the dough and when it's baked.

 Generously flour your counter, then place the chilled, unwrapped dough on the flour and flour the top of the dough. Roll you dough into a 8x12-inch (20x30 cm) rectangle. Re-flour your surface as needed, continually lifting and rotating your dough to make sure no parts are sticking. Lift the dough on to a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Cut the dough to a perfect rectangle and down the middle, so you get two 4x12-inch pieces.  Bake them at 400°F (200°C) for 10-12 minutes. They should be very light browned and look a bit undercooked. Cool the cakes completely. My rectangles were a bit to brown, an cracked a bit when I sliced them.

Spread an even layer of raspberry jam on one of the rectangles, put the other one on top to make a sandwich.  

Put the confectionary sugar in a pot over low heat. Slowly heat the sugar and add water until it becomes a thick paste. The icing should not be hot, just a bit warm, so it will dry quicker. Spread a thin layer of the icing on the sandwiched cake, and put sprinkles on top. Slice the cake into the desired size with a sharp knife. The cake tends to break a bit in this process if the cake is baked too much.

Serve the cake with a cup of the or coffee.