week

Gravlax last weekend worked well – no recipe in SCforA but there was the mustard-dill sauce that is supposed to go with it – it was good! Used gravlax recipe from Foods of the World book. Made me wish for bagels, but it was fine on regular bread. It’s definitely on the menu.

ready to gift!

Got some blood oranges… starting a simple marmalade right now, total experiment. Debating whether to stick a bit of rosemary in now. Used some juice in a salad dressing last night with lemon, olive oil, and zatar. The salad was parmesan shavings, hella caramelized (to the point people thought they were bacon) shallots, mizuna, and lettuce.

Made apple sauce from the cook’s illustrated book for latkes this week, but haven’t made them yet… the cook’s illustrated was sort of the December book but I’m getting lots of ingredients each week that don’t show up in the scandi book…

color

This guy did something else. I am into it, hope to see more.

Wednesday is present day.

It’s like a present every week, even though I paid for it and know exactly what I’m getting… I have to use apples, bananas, dill, kale, orange bell peppers, carrots, butter lettuce, pears, and shiitake mushrooms this week. Hopefully I’ll try something with some of the fish too. I got dill specifically to try gravlax…. but the rest of the week’s produce will probably not be found in the SCfA index. I got some beef and pork as well, but I’ll have to put off Swedish meatballs as N already staked a claim on the beef for tacos tomorrow. For the shiitake I’m thinking some kind of sauté with onions on crostini…

I need to make invitations.

cheese

Tried making cheese for the first time yesterday… it ended up more like sour cream. I’m going to have to try it with raw milk and more precision next time. What I really want is goat cheese, but I only know how to find raw cow’s milk at present.

I used the whey in a butternut squash soup instead of stock. I don’t know if I imagined it, but it seemed a touch more custard-y…

Norwegian Meat Balls (aka Kjöttboller)

My first recipe from Scandinavian Cookery for Americans

N: “they taste like meat. salty meat.”

I like the instant gravy that comes from rolling the meatballs in flour and cooking them in broth (after browning), but these aren’t terribly flavorful, and the flour coating gets kind of gummy after cooking in the broth. This doesn’t happen with the beef stew I make all the time, meat also coated, then put into liquid… The Danish and Swedish meatball recipes seem a little more normal. They call for eggs, crumbs, onion, pork, etc. But I didn’t have pork in the house and I’m trying harder to cook with what I have, rather than going to the store every day for one thing and buying five that I don’t need. Although I’m not amazed, this recipe is super fast and easy, and I can see making it in a pinch.

Anyway, I put the meatballs and sauce in a pot of leftover roasted potatoes and we’ll heat that up for dinner tonight.

cookbook of the month

is Scandinavian Cooking for Americans by Florence Brobeck and Monika Kjellberg. I need to do some practice for the smörgåsbord.

new year, new meats

offal good
meatpaper