by Sam Tackeff | Oct 10, 2012 | Baking, Breakfast, Lunch, Pantry Staples, Quick and Easy
The rains have come. This is, I assure you, better than the snow we could be having in October. But not by much. I took advantage of the day by staying cooped up, working from home, and getting many, many errands done.
My morning coffee was Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Spice again, in one of my new Miya boulder mugs. I picked these up at Abodeon in Cambridge last week. I love the matte earthy tones and cozy shape of each of these mugs – they make for new happier mornings! (Miya also makes them in jewel tones here.)
Mid-morning I made breakfast. Two eggs with the leftover vegetables from my slow cooker beef stew. I was busy playing with my phone, and thus didn’t notice the eggs overcooking on the stove. Shame on me!
In the afternoon, I took out my trusty stick blender to make some of Mel’s Sunshine Sauce from her cookbook Well Fed, which I love! Think of Sunshine Sauce as peanut sauce without the peanuts. The ingredients are lime juice, garlic, crushed red pepper flakes, coconut aminos, powdered ginger, rice vinegar, sunflower seed butter, cayenne and coconut milk. You blend and then you are done.
For lunch, I cooked some ground turkey and spinach, served it over the leftover spaghetti squash, and poured on a good amount of sunshine sauce. Yes, it looks odd, but again, delicious! Actually, shockingly delicious.
In the evening, I listened to podcasts and set to work building our new IKEA Expedit bookshelf in birch. This was of our IKEA pieces I was most sad to give up when we moved from San Francisco (the other being our soft and comfy Tylosand couch), and my books have been sitting in boxes for way too long. It took me about an hour and a half of slow and steady work, and I practiced my Olympic lifts by getting it upright and in the next room by myself.
For dinner, I had to figure out what to do with the tiny lean eye of round I had purchased from M.F. Dulock. When I asked what he’d do with it, the butcher replied “probably sell it to someone else“. I probably should have listened.
I seasoned it with mushroom powder, and seared it off in a hot pan. My plan of attack to was to crank up the oven to 500, cook it for about 10 minutes, then turn the heat off and let it cook in the residual heat for about 2 hours. (This wasn’t quite as foolproof as I’d have liked. At the end, terrified that I had poisoned us by not cooking it enough, I seared it off again to make sure it was cooked through.)
While resting, I cooked some shredded brussels sprouts with some pancetta, salt, pepper, and a good swig of apple cider vinegar.
When I cut the meat, I have to say I was pretty surprised at how moist it was in the center, despite a slightly dry exterior. I’ll definitely choose a fattier cut of meat next time. Devon got his with a big scoop of mashed potatoes from Whole Foods, and I got mine with some of their zucchini and tomatoes. (I have no regrets spending $5 extra on sides at Whole Foods when I’ve made a mostly home cooked meal – especially when it means that we can each have a little extra of something we want without having to cook several extra dishes!)
After dinner, I had planned all day to try one of these single serve microwave cakes all the cool kids are eating. I found a simple recipe – almond meal, cocoa powder, an egg, honey, salt and cinnamon.
You mix it all together,
Then microwave for a minute and a half.
And then pour on a splash of coconut milk (or cream if you can eat it).
And devour.
It was almost perfect.
A little too sweet (I’ll put less honey next time). A little dry (I’ll add a bit of coconut oil and maybe some coconut milk to the batter, and microwave less.)
When I perfect it, I promise I’ll share.
But after a month of nearly no dessert, it certainly hit the spot.
by Sam Tackeff | Jan 3, 2012 | Books, Soups
For quite some time, the prevailing mental association I had of Sweden was Jamie Lee Curtis in ‘Trading Places’ running around a train claiming to be “Inga from Sweden” – despite the fact that she was wearing Austrian lederhosen. I still find myself laughing hysterically at this film when it comes on TBS. If you haven’t seen it, please do.
As for my current Swedish associations, Inga has been replaced with IKEA, the chef Marcus Samuelson, Trina Hahnemann’s lovely Scandinavian Cookbook, and Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy. (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books).
This weekend we went to see David Fincher’s version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, which didn’t hold up for me as much as the Swedish films, which I adored.
What the movie did succeed in, was renewing my lust for the Swedish countryside. I became hungry for Swedish food. I wanted comfort food that reminded me of the simple, bare landscape. Also, I wanted comfort food that would help me to have the physique of Rooney Mara in her nude scenes of the film. Yes, I know that’s not going to happen. But loading myself up with healthy veg is a start.
So I picked up my copy of Clifford A. Wright’s “Real Stew: 300 Recipes for Authentic Home-Cooked Cassoulet, Gumbo, Chili, Curry, Minestrone, Bouillabaisse, Stroganoff, Goulash, Chowder and Much More” (what a mouthful! a tasty mouthful) which I got on a field trip to Harvard Common Press, and flipped to this Swedish Sausage and Brussels Sprout number. She’s not the most beautiful, but is chock full of tasty ingredients!
I’ve been cooking out of “Real Stew” for the past few weeks (beginning with a stellar recipe for “Classic Egyptian Lamb and Green Bean Stew). With New England weather the way it is, this cookbook came at the perfect time, right when I needed warming recipes for the quickly cooling weather.
I’m a big fan of any sort of soup, stew, or braising book, particularly when it is cold out and my strongest desire is keep warm and stir things for a couple of hours.
Real Stew isn’t full of glossy photos, but since stews aren’t usually the most photogenic, I wasn’t at all bothered. Wright does a marvelous job in the headnotes whetting your appetite for each recipe. The book is just as much a food history primer as it is a cookbook, and I learned a lot curled up in bed with it. (Although, this is unsurprising as Wright won a James Beard for food writing for his book A Mediterranean Feast. He is very good at the craft of cookbook writing.)
This is a very simple recipe that can be put together in under twenty minutes from start to finish.
I made this recipe almost to the letter, which wasn’t hard, as there were nine ingredients including salt and pepper. I used smoked Turkey kielbasa from Trader Joes, which made it tasty enough, but if you can get the Swedish sausage that Wright mentions, I’m pretty sure it would make this recipe spectacular. Rather than a bouillon cube, I used “Better than Bouillon”, which, unless you have home made beef stock on hand (and praise you if you do), is pretty much the bees knees.
Now, my one word of warning is: this soup tastes like Brussels Sprouts, which, may in fact be obvious, because it is one of the two main ingredients in the title, but you won’t convert Brussels Sprouts haters with this recipe. Which is fine, because that makes more for you.
Swedish Sausage and Brussels Sprout Stew
recipe by Clifford A. Wright, “Real Stew” p. 164
reprinted with permission from Harvard Common Press
makes 4-6 servings
“This stew is one suggested to me by my Saab mechanic Haken Wiberg, who tells me that this stew, called korv-och kal-gryta, uses a kind of sausage called falukorv (or falnkorv), which comes from the town of Falun, northwest of Stockholm. It is a thick, bologna-like sausage popular throughout Sweden and made of beef, lean pork, and pork fatback. Sometimes dried milk is added to it. It is then smoked before finding its way into stews. The Swedes are nuts about falukorv, as you will see by visiting www.falukorv.net on the Internet. In this recipe it is cut into chunks to cook, after peeling the skin off. A good substitute would be a small, one-pound mortadella sausage, such as that made by Arzuman (ask your store manager). Arzuman uses dried milk. If you prefer beef, try Hebrew National beef bologna. A Swedish housewife would typically use a beef bouillon cube, but if you do, make sure you don’t use more salt than called for because the cubes are high in sodium.”
1 pound small mortadella sausage or large cooked or smoked Polish kielbasa, skinned and cut into large dice
1 large onion, chopped
2 large carrots, cut into 1/4-inch-thick rounds
1 1/2 pounds small Brussels sprouts, sliced lengthwise into thirds
1 bay leaf
2 teaspoons salt
6 black peppercorns
2 cups Beef Broth
1 cup water
Finely chopped fresh parsley leaves for garnish
1. Put all the ingredients, except the parsley, in a stew pot, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium, cover, and cook until everything is tender, about 12 minutes.
2. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.
