Danish Pancakes version 2 - Crepes

Danish pancakes.

Danish pancakes are thin like crepes, and is kinda of a dessert. But in my family we occasionally had pancakes for dinner. Maybe not an healthy option, but it was not on a regular basis.

I like my pancakes to be soft like the ones my mom made, but if you want the edges to be a little crispy (the edges mostly) then add a tablespoon regular beer, like a Pilsner. My mom didn’t do that, maybe because we rarely had any beer in the house, so I don’t do that either.

Right now this is my favorite recipe for Danish pancakes. I often make a double portion, and save the extra in the freezer, for an easy treat another day. When freezing fold each pancake in quarters, with parchment paper between each pancake, so you easy can defrost one or two at a time.

Makes 10-12.

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs

• 400 ml milk

• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or extract

• 4 tablespoons sugar

• 165 g all-purpose flour

• 1 pinch salt

Directions:

Add all the ingredients to the blender and blend it until a smooth batter. If you don’t have a blender, just whisk it by hand, until you get a lump free batter.

Heat a skillet over medium heat. Brush the skillet with a small amount of butter. Using a ladle, pour just enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan, tipping it to coat evenly. Place pan back on heat and cook until batter is set and turned light brown. Flip the crepe with a spatula and cook the other side for additional 30 seconds to 1 minute. Transfer cooked crepe to a plate and continue with the rest of the batter, brushing the pan with more butter as needed and stacking finished crepes on top of each other.

Serve the crepes with sugar, jam, or even ice cream.

Enjoy!

Spinach and Feta Pie a la Spanakopita

Spinach and Feta Pie a la Spanakopita

This is a simplification of the traditional Greek Spanakopita, a spinach feta pie or hand pie. It’s perfect for a lunch or light dinner. The crispness of the filo dough with the soft creamy filling is a great combination. An absolute favorite in my house.

Serves 4,

Ingredients:

• 100 g pine nuts, dry roasted

• 400 g baby spinach

• olive oil for sautéing the spinach

• 5 eggs

• 275 g feta cheese, crumbled

• 1 lemon, the zest of

• 1 pinch of cayenne pepper

• 9-10 sheets of filo dough (Store bought) defrosted according to instruction on packaging

• ~50 g melted butter for brushing the filo dough

Directions:

Preheat the oven for the 400℉ (200℃).

Take out a 10-inch skillet, and sauté the spinach over medium heat until it is all wilted, take off the heat.

Mix eggs, feta cheese, pine nuts, lemon zest, and cayenne. When the spinach is cooled a bit, add it to the egg mixture. Dry off the pan you used for the spinach, set aside.

Place the filo dough under a damp tea towel, this will help to keep the filo dough soft and workable.

Place a large piece of parchment paper on the kitchen counter. I crumble the parchment paper first, and straighten it out again, this way it’s easier for the parchment paper to fit in the skillet. Brush some melted butter on the parchment paper. Place 4 sheets of the filo dough on top of the parchment paper in a rectangle, you want them to overlap a bit. Gently brush with melted butter, and repeat with 3-4 more layers of filo dough. Carefully transfer the parchment paper with the filo dough into the skillet, so the dough is hanging out over the edges of the skillet. Pour in the egg mixture in an even layer. Gently fold the filo doughs edges in over the filling. Brush the edges with a little more butter, and bake the pie for 18-20 minutes until the dough is golden and crisp, and the filling is set.

Serve the pie warm with a simple salad on the side.

Enjoy!

Boneless Birds / Benløse Fugle

Classic Boneless Birds.

Boneless Birds is an old Danish classic, that you nowadays would call mormormad or Grandma food. It’s old school meat and potato food with a brown gravy. It’s a good comfort food on the heavier side. I served a side of lightly roasted carrots and some boiled fingerling potatoes along side, but other crispy vegetables and maybe a crisp salad would work too. But I still make this dish during the fall or winter months.

When my mom made it she used a piece of smoked speck instead of bacon, making the dish take a more smoky note. As a child the I really disliked the fatty piece of speck. Later she started using a thick piece of bacon, and the dish became more pleasing to me.

The name is kinda weird, but similar dishes, stuffed veal or beef, is known in France and England, where they are called headless birds or veal birds. And maybe beef were more common and cheaper compared to veal, so maybe that’s why veal birds became a beef dish.

I was lucky to get hold of a slap of nicely smoked bacon in the store, making me able to cut some thick slices that I cut into sticks, to roll into the beef. I have made a boneless bird dish earlier, but back then I used a smoked Gouda cheese for a more updated version.

Serves 4.

Ingredients:

• 4-6 slices of beef scallopini (thin slices of skirt steak)

• 4-6 thick slices of smoked bacon, cut into sticks the size of string cheese

• ½ medium onion, grated

• salt and pepper for seasoning

• 300 ml (1¼ cup) beef stock

• 3 bay leaves

• 200 ml (¾ cup) heavy whipping cream

• gravy browning

• gravy thickening (shake to mix some milk + 3 tablespoons flour+ pinch salt)

Directions:

Season the steak slices generously on both sides with salt and pepper.

Take a strip of the steak and lay it with the short side towards you. Place 1-2 sticks of bacon and about a teaspoon grated onion in one end, roll the steak up over the filling, securing it with a toothpick or trussing layers along the length of the roll. Repeat with the remaining meat slices.

Brown the rolls on all sides in a large sauté pan, making sure not to crowd the pan. Crowding the pan will boil the meat instead of searing. Add beef stock and bay leaves to the pan, and turn down the heat. Let the rolls cook on a low simmer for about 1 hour, until the meat is cooked tender. Remove the steak rolls from the pan, and add cream to the drippings/sauce. Let the sauce cook to a boil, and add the thickening and let it cook for a few minutes to remove the taste of flour. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, and add gravy browning to get a deep brown color. Place the rolls back in the pan, covering them with the sauce. Serve immediately with boiled or mashed potatoes.

Enjoy!

No-Cook Tomato Sauce

Spaghetti with no-cook tomato sauce.

Some of my neighbors gifted me some beautiful tomatoes from their yard. Right away I knew that I had to try making the no-cook tomato sauce, I had found on the Bon Appetite website a while ago. Next to eating a warm tomato straight from the plant, this sauce might be one of the best ways to eat tomatoes. And boy were I right. This sauce is honoring the flavors of the tomato, by complementing them without overpowering therm.

Serves 3-4.

Ingredients:

• 750 g ripe tomatoes

• 1 garlic clove, grated

• 2 tablespoons butter

• 4 teaspoons champagne vinegar

• ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

• 60 ml olive oil

• 113 g Parmesan cheese

• salt to taste

• 1 handful basil, chopped

Directions:

Remove the seeds from the tomatoes, this is easily done by cutting the tomatoes in half through the equator, instead of through the core. Then gently squeeze the tomatoes like you would squeeze a lemon to discard the seeds.

Roughly chop the tomatoes and transfer them to a large wide bowl. Mash the tomatoes with a fork or a potato masher, to release the juices. Add half the cheese, butter, vinegar, pepper, garlic, oil, combine and season with salt. Let the sauce sit covered on the kitchen counter for at least 30 minutes (not more than 3 hours) allowing the favors to blend.

Boil pasta according to instructions on packaging. Save some of the pasta water to stretch the sauce.

Add basil to the sauce and season it again. Mix in the hot pasta, and serve immediately with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

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!