Green Pepper Sauce

Green Pepper Sauce

This green pepper sauce is a tasty but spicy sauce that pairs well with beef. You often get this type of sauce at steakhouses, and this is one of my favorites. In Denmark I’d never made it from scratch, I would just buy the Knorr powder version. But of course the real deal is so much better, so much worth the time and effort. I like that you can make the sauce-base well in advance, you can even freeze it.

This year we had green pepper sauce for our New Year’s dinner, and as a sauce loving creature it was front and center on my plate.😂

Serves 6-10.

Ingredients:

• 1 shallot, chopped

• ⅛ root celery, diced

• 1 garlic clove

• 2 teaspoons green peppercorn in brine (Madagaskar peppercorns), chopped

• 1 teaspoon butter

• 1 teaspoon grape seed oil (or another flavorless oil)

• 50 ml Cognac

• 250 ml beef stock

• 200 ml red wine

• 1 sprig rosemary (leaves only)

• 3 sprigs of fresh thyme

• 1 splash of Gastrique ( you can replace this with some sugar and a splash of vinegar)

• 100 ml heavy whipping cream

•  salt to taste

• 2 teaspoons green peppercorn in brine (Madagaskar peppercorns)

• Cornstarch - optional, mixed in cold for thickening

Gastrique (Adapted from Bobby Flay)

• 1/4 cup (80g) honey

• 1/2 cup (125ml) apple cider vinegar

Directions:

Gastrique (Adapted from Bobby Flay)

Heat the honey in a small saucepan over medium-low heat for 5 minutes, until it becomes deep golden brown. Add the vinegar and continue to cook, swirling the pan a few times - do not use a spoon. Cook it for about 15 minutes, until the honey/caramel is incorporated in the vinegar, and the gastrique has thickened to the consistency of thin maple syrup. Remove from heat. Keep the gastrique in a sealed sterilized bottle in the refrigerator, it will keep for months.

Sauce:

Sauté onions, celery root, garlic and the chopped peppercorns until the onions are translucent. Remove saucepan from the heat, move the pan away from fan, actually do not have lamps or any other things above it. Pour in the cognac into the pan swirl it round, and standing at a safe distance from the pan, ignite it with a long match or lighter. Gently swirl/stir your now-flaming pan to evenly distribute the alcohol. Let cook until the flames disappear, and the alcohol vapor burns off by itself in a few seconds. Add the beef stock, red wine, rosemary, and thyme. Let the sauce simmer for at least 30 minutes. Strain the now sauce-base through a sieve set over saucepan, pressing firmly on solids, getting all the good flavors out. Reduce the sauce-base to about half, you are aiming for a concentrated base. (All this can be made in advance).

Add cream, whole peppercorns and season the sauce with salt and gastrique. If you like a slightly thicker sauce, you can thicken it with some cornstarch dispensed in cold water. Serve the sauce with a nice steak or roast.

Enjoy!

Panettone French Toast

Panettone French Toast

The past few years we bought a panettone from Manresa Bread for Christmas. This traditional Italian Christmas bread is a mix between a bread and a cake. I’ve see the ones at the grocery stores for years, but it was first when I got interested in sourdough bread baking and saw the panettone at our Local Manresa Bread store, I wanted to try it. It is as yummy in the morning with coffee as it is in the afternoon with a glass of something sweet. But the panettone is a large bread/cake, so I wanted to see if you could use the leftovers in another way, and here, French Toast a very good option. I do like French toast, but often it is very sweet and I find it to lack texture. But the panettone version add a more complex flavor profile and the breads own texture and the dried berries make it a very delicious breakfast. But I like a bit of salt with my sweets in the morning, so we added some bacon to our plates, and it was just perfect. when serving people with a larger appetite, add a sunny side up egg to the mix.

Serves 2.

Ingredients:

• 1 large slice Panettone (1-inch/2-3 cm) thick (I used a ginger lemon cherry panttone from Manresa Bread)

• 1 egg

• 4 tablespoons heavy whipping cream

• ½ teaspoon vanilla

• 1 lemon, the zest of

• 1 pinch salt

Directions:

In a wide, shallow bowl, beat the egg, cream, vanilla, and salt together with a whisk until well-combined. Place the bread slice in the custard and gently press it down to help the bread absorb the custard, then flip it over and do the same to the other side of the bread. 

Heat a good amount of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the custard-soaked bread to the pan and cook until it’s browned, it takes about a minute. Flip the bread and fry on the other side until it is browned. Serve the French toast immediately with a light sprinkle of powdered sugar and a drizzle of marble syrup. I served with a couple of slices of bacon, to bring some saltiness to the plate.

Enjoy!

Truffles with Orange Zest

Truffles with Orange Zest (I used a cutie for the photo, I was all out of oranges.)

These truffles are melt in your mouth delicious. well they will melt in your hand too, so its a delicate chocolate. If you want them to be easier to handle when serving, you can use the truffle/ganache as a filling in chocolates, but may turn up the orange flavor a bit.

I used a cutie for the photo, I was all out of oranges.

Makes 20-30 small truffles.

Ingredients:

• 175 ml heavy whipping cream

• 175 g dark chocolate, I used Valrhona

• 1 organic orange, the zest of

• 1 tablespoon orange liqueur like Grand Marnier - optional

• unsweetened cocoa powder, I used Valrhona

Directions:

Chop the chocolate finely, and set aside. Zest the orange, and set it aside. Line a small loaf pan with parchment paper, and set it aside.

Heat the cream to the boiling point in a small saucepan. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir it until alll the chocolate is melted and the ganache becomes shining. Stir in the orange zest and liqueur. Pour the ganache into the prepared loaf pan and set in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours to firm up. Cut the truffles up in bite-size squares and cover them with cocoa powder. Store the truffles in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Enjoy!

Is-a-la-mande - Ice Cream a la Risalamande

This Ice cream is made to resemble the traditional Danish Christmas dessert Risalamande (Danish rice pudding). Some don’t like the risalamande (which I just can’t understand 🤷‍♀️😉), but making an ice cream should please most. I made this for a Danih Christmas Lunch this year. Adding 1 whole blanched almond, and the one who found the almond, got the almond-gift (mandelgaven) like with the normal risalamande. I think this was a great substitution.

Serves 8-10.

Ingredients:

Ice cream base:

• 200 g sugar

• 4 egg yolk

• 1-2 teaspoons vanilla paste

• 200 ml heavy whipping cream

• 400 ml whole milk

Filling:

• marzipan, in small cubes -I used Ren Rå from Odense (63% almonds)

• slivered almonds, toasted

• dark chocolate, I used Valrhona baking pearls

Cherry sauce:

• 340 g (12 oz) frozen dark sweet cherries

• 1 can Oregon dark sweet cherries in heavy syrup

• 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste

• 100 g (½ cup) sugar

Directions:

Ice cream:

Warm milk and ½ of the cream in a saucepan. Pour the rest of the cream into a bowl over an ice bath. 

Whisk the egg yolks pale with the rest of the sugar, then whisk in the vanilla. Add the hot milk in a little at a time, while whisking. Pour the mixture back in the saucepan. Slowly heat the mixture over medium heat while constantly stirring. You want the mixture to thicken slightly, but you don't want the mixture to come to a boil, this will coagulate the egg yolks. You do not want the mixture to exceed 174℉ or 79℃. 

Pour the hot mixture through a strainer into the cool cream. Stir until the custard is cooled completely. 

Freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.  When the ice cream is frozen to a thick ice cream, put into a container and mix in the filling. Let the ice cream rest in the freezer over night before serving. You can swirl in the cherry sauce as well, I just put some on top, and served extra on the side.

Cherry sauce:

Add all the ingredients to a sauce pan. Heat and stir until the sugar is melted. Turn the heat down a little, and reduce the sauce to about half, and let it sit too cool. Pour a little on the frozen ice cream, and serve the rest to the ice cream.

Enjoy!

Gingerbread Reindeers

One of the thing I remember from baking Christmas cookies with my mom, were making gingerbread men, women or pretty much all kinds of shapes. And the part where we got to decorate them with colorful icing. But I never thought to be this creative, turning the gingerbread man upside down, making a reindeer.

Makes a lot.

INGREDIENTS:

• 125 g butter

• 200 g dark syrup or molasses

• 150 g brown sugar

• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper

• 1 teaspoon ground ginger

• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom

• 3 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• ¼ teaspoon ground all-spice

• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves

• 2 teaspoons baking soda

• 1 egg

• 500 g all-purpose flour

Decorating:

• 150 g confectionary (powdered) sugar

• 1 egg white

• a spinkle og cream of tartar

• food coloring

DIRECTIONS:

Melt butter, syrup/molasses and brown sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat, and stir in baking soda and spices. Let the syrup cool down for a bit, before you add egg and flour. 

Add syrup to a stand mixer, and mix in the egg and flour and keep mixing until you have a smooth and shiny dough. 

Let the dough rest in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, before rolling out.

Preheat the oven to 355 ℉ (180℃).

Roll out the dough on a floured surface. The dough needs to be about 0.1-0.2-inch (3-5 mm) thick. Cut out the small gingerbread men and place them on a parchment lined baking sheet. 

Bake the cookies for about 5 minutes, and let them cool completely on a wire rack.

Royal Icing: 

Put all the ingredients in the bowl of the stand mixer. Whip the icing for 2 minutes, until it has an uniform consistency and is crisp white color. It starts off with a grayish hue.

Decoration:

Decorate the gingerbread men upside down like a reindeer with brown and white icing, red mini m&m's for the nose.