Weird things

Should I change the name of the blog? I don't do ordinary food. Nah, never mind. But still:

My children, and most other people that I know, consider me weird. Foodwise, at least. Just a week ago I got the comment: "you always make so weird things!!" I guess. I was drinking Kombucha. When you spend lots of time on the net scouring for information on fermentation and/or weeds, you feel like everybody does kombucha or rejuvelac. Combined with Stinging Nettles in one way or other, of course. No? Sure? Well, my friend also knew about my experiment with fermented Bishops weed and... that did NOT turn out well (I still want to repeat it though, I think that it just grew to old. The smell... well, I might just as well taste poo. It was awful!) He had also just seen me roast a rabbit over an open fire (is that strange?).

I'm a sucker for food trends. New as well as old. New, like the aquafaba trend, and old, like 19th century cookbooks, or intermediate, like living food from the 70's. And I go: "how can I blend this with my love for wild veggies?". Turns out, I'm not the only one. The combination is always there, someone has always thought the thought before me. Well, almost. I think I made my chai (post before last) up by myself.

When doing this all the time, there just isn't enough room in my head for ordinary food. My children get ordinary food at their father's, and when the love of my life cooks. But nobody can turn a child so sad with food as I can. I'm the master of weird food. Thankfully, I think my children love me all the same. The claim they do.

BTW: living food? I try, I do. I believe in fermentation and fresh vegetables. Once upon a time i studied microbiology, and fell in love with lactic acid bacteria, but then I turned to botany instead. It suits me well. But... It doesn't taste nice! Rejuvelac, for example... I drink it as medicine. But I can't say that I like the taste. I love sauerkraut, but that's an exception.

Strange item nr 1:
What will this be? Bugger if I know. But that doesn't stop me from trying.

Milk curdles easily in our fridge, sometimes days before expiration date. I can't throw it away, I don't like throwing food (or anything) away. Sometimes i make pancakes, sometimes scones, but I have recently begun to save the curdled milk in a mason jar as well. The solids smell nice, the whey not so much. Neither is kind to the taste buds. But I believe that this can be turned into cheese, I mean, it IS cheese, only very weird cheese.

But how?

My kitchen isn't for cooking. It is a laboratory.

Weird things

Should I change the name of the blog? I don't do ordinary food. Nah, never mind. But still:

My children, and most other people that I know, consider me weird. Foodwise, at least. Just a week ago I got the comment: "you always make so weird things!!" I guess. I was drinking Kombucha. When you spend lots of time on the net searching for information on fermentation and/or weeds, you feel like everybody does kombuscha or rejuvelac. Combined with Stinging Nettles in one way or other, of course. No? Sure? Well, my friend also knew about my experiment with fermented Bishops weed and... that did NOT turn out well (I still want to repeat it though, I think that it just grew to old. The smell... well, I might just as well taste poo. It was awful!) He had also just seen me roast a rabbit over an open fire (is that strange?).

I'm a sucker for food trends. New as well as old. New, like the aquafaba trend, and old, like 19th century cookbooks, or intermediate, like living food from the 70's. And I go: "how can I blend this with my love for wild veggies?". Turns out, I'm not the only one. The combination is always there, someone has always thought the thought before me. Well, almost. I think I made my chai (post before last) up by myself.

When doing this all the time, there just isn't enough room in my head for ordinary food. My children get ordinary food at their father's, and when the love of my life cooks. But nobody can turn a child so sad with food as I can. I'm the master of weird food. Thankfully, I think my children love me all the same. The claim they do.

BTW: living food? I try, I do. I believe in fermentation and fresh vegetables. Once upon a time i studied microbiology, and fell in love with lactic acid bacteria, but then I turned to botany instead. It suits me well. But... It doesn't taste nice! Rejuvelac, for example... I drink it as medicine. But I can't say that I like the taste. I love sauerkraut, but that's an exception.

Strange item nr 1:
What will this be? Bugger if I know. But that doesn't stop me from trying.

Milk curdles easily in our fridge, sometimes days before expiration date. I can't throw it away, I don't like throwing food (or anything) away. Sometimes i make pancakes, sometimes scones, but I have recently begun to save the curdled milk in a mason jar as well. The solids smell nice, the whey not so much. Neither is kind to the taste buds. But I believe that this can be turned into cheese, I mean, it IS cheese, only very weird cheese.

But how?

My kitchen isn't for cooking. It is a laboratory.

Using common couch on a sunny, warm birthday in November.

Common couch (Elytrigia repens)

or at least, rhizomes thereof. Usually a terrible weed, it spreads quickly thanks to its rhizomes. It's even called Kvickrot in Swedish, which means quick root. Not the gardener's best friend, by far. But the upside is that these rhizomes are very rich in carbs. This is something you can take advantage of, either by making flour from the rhizomes by driying, cutting and grinding them, or by producing a syrup by boiling them forever in water until almost no water is left. 

So I cleansed and boiled. Oh, I boiled. For a long time. Until nothing more than a little brown puddle was left in the pan, full of nice smell and taste. Tha acual aim was to see if I could make the rhizomes soft by boiling, and perhaps serve as spaghetti, but no. They remained hard. And since I had salt in the boiling water, the remaining puddle could be used as a broth instead of syrup. it had an amazing taste in itself! It just had to be good in cooking.

I used the broth in my soup. An ordinary lentil soup with carrots, celery and onion. Flavoured with wild marjoram (Origanum vulgare) from our garden . It was perfect. A delicius lunch. I served the soup with Swedish knäckebröd, a hard bread made from rye. 

Some outdoor pictures from home:

The hens are resting in the sun next to the Blackcurrant bushes.    

                    

The view from my kitchen window.

It is a wbeatifull day today, and my birthday as well. Usually a cold, dark and often snowy day, but today it is sunny and warm- an amazing +6 centigrades. It has been like this for the last few years. I know that I should't feel happy about it, the climate change is a negative thing with lots of awful consequenses, but this part of it I like.

The forest around the corner from home. The sun doesn't rise high above the horizon at this time of year. Vällnora is located between two lakes, and in the background you can see one of them: Lake Norrsjön.

Surviving winter. What to harvest and what to do with it. Conifer time!

Long time, no see! I’ve been away for a while, suffering from anxiety and exhaustion. I wanted to cook and write, but lacked the energy. I’m still not well by far, but seem to be having an energetic day today. Today is sunny but chilly here in Mid-Sweden. Still no real winter, thanks for that. I like winter, but life is a lot easier without the cold and snow. It is time for winter foraging in the wild anyway, summer is long gone.

 Needles from both spruce and pine are said to be very rich in vitamin C in the winter, and I really like how they taste so that’s the theme for today.

Last week I learned how to take down a tree. My first victim was a spruce (Norway spruce, Picea abies), and I brought some of it home with me. So far I’ve had it for tea, lovely but tends to be a bit strong and bitter, so today I wanted to try some other things. Google is my friend, and together with a book by the Swedish author and expert survivalist, Stefan Källman, Google shared lots of fun stuff with me.

Marinade

Making a marinade from spruce, salt, pepper (pink, black and white) and olive oil. Not easy to crush, though. I don’t know what to marinade it with, but it smells nice. How about fish..? I can imagine that working nicely. (from http://www.dagsattplocka.se/recept/?category=Seitan) In, Swedish, I’m sorry about that.

 Tea

Boiling tea from fresh pine needles (Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris) to put in an insulated bottle, boiling it the Stefan Källman way, for about 20 minutes.  Make sure that you don’t add the needles to the water before it’s boiling to retain the vitamins. Boil the brew carefully, I think simmering is best.

The sun is shining, I should be getting out.  

More pine needles, soon to be dried in the oven and turned into tea and/or green flour. I love pine neddle tea. But so far I have only tried it with fresh needles and a long boil, se above! I just read that you could try roasted needles and brew like normal tea. 

I roasted/dried them in 120 ͦ C oven till they were crispy dry, but not yet brown.  Result: It’s good but… harmless. The turpentine flavour gets less prominent and the tea is, well, more tea-ish. Tea from fresh needles tends to get very strong and bitter, which is ok if you want that, as a replacement for coffee rather than tea. You might even need to add some extra water to drink it. This, on the other hand, is tea. This is absolutely tea. From Henriette’s herbal: http://www.henriettes-herb.com/sv/sb-trad.html

(In the middle of the picture: a jar with sprouts-to-be. Fresh veggies all winter!)

According to Stefan Källman, you can boil young (outer) bark as well, and get yourself a nice beverage. I haven’t tried it, though. More about bark further below.

I managed to get out in the sun, eventually. As I walked around in the forest with my insulated bottle, sipping my tea in the cold sun, I felt that I could improve the brew. How about adding some chai spices..? Wouldn’t that blend smoothly with pine and/or spruce?

I just did.

Alexandra’s Spruce Chai

Yes, I just made something wonderful! And I made it up myself! And it’s the new love of my life! I give you  SPRUCE CHAI:

 I boiled spruce twigs in water with chai spices for 20 minutes:  one whole cardamon, one piece of cinnamon, some allspice and two star anises. I could have added clover as well, but forgot it this time. After boiling, I poured some in a mug, and topped up with milk. WOW! I was planning to add honey as well, but no. It’s perfect the way it is.

The taste is soft and lovely, at the same time as being intense and filling, so one (big) cup is enough.

Spruce chai. Yes, I know, the water should be boiling hot before adding the spruce, but this makes a better picture. ;)

Another tea tip: I tried mixing fresh needles with dried elderberry flowers one evening, producing a very nice evening tea.  I don’t remember if I used pine or spruce that time, but it’s probably ok with either.

Oil

 Would you like some spruce oil with your salad?

Yes, spruce oil, for use in cooking, soap and whatnot. I cut the twigs in small pieces (should I perhaps have tried using only the needles?), filled the jar to ¾ with them and then topped the jar up with a vegetable oil. I used rapeseed, but I think you can use whatever you want. Now it’s supposed to stand in a window for 2-3 weeks, and be turned daily. (Source: Shenet.se, a wonderful site! http://www.shenet.se/referens/eng.html)

Dessert

I must try this weird sorbet. Or, maybe not so weird, it actually sounds delicious:

http://www.recept.nu/gastrologik/efterratter_och_godis/_/mutzo_apple_tallbarrs_sorbet/

250 g sugar

250 g water

1 kg apples peeled, in pieces

20 g pine needles

Boil sugar and water, let it then cool down.  Add the apple pieces and the pine needles. Mix it thoroughly.  Remove bits and pieces with a sieve, then freeze. 

I'll get back to you on this. With a picure of the actual dish.

Another thing I would like to try: to make Flour

…but that harms the trees, ending the trees possibility of transporting solutes above the part which I have cut. So I don’t.

But if I would and could, I would use pine and remove the outer bark, aiming to harvest the inner bark, sweet and rich in nutrients. This I would dry and turn into flour. This kind of flour has been used through centuries in times of poverty and starvation in my part of the world. But some people used (are using?) it on a daily basis, like the Sami people, Native Americans,   people in Siberia, and Inuits (Source: Källman, again). There’s no gluten, so ideally you would mix it with at least half and half ordinary flour. But I want gluten-free flour, so it would suit me fine.

If you are interested in archaeology, and extremely lucky, you can find remains of bark-harvesting on really old trees.  But old trees are scarce these days.

More bark:

According to Källman, you can actually eat the bark- and now I believe that he means the outer bark- from really young pine trees, if you roast them first (150 ͦC, 20 minutes). Then they turn into something really sweet and nice. How about that?

(It is a wonderful book, it really ought to be translated into English. Stefan Källman, wild plants for food and medicine: http://www.bokus.com/bok/9789153426394/vilda-vaxter-som-mat-och-medicin/ I have only cited a little of all the valuable knowledge about pines and spruce in this book so far)

Alkoholic beverages

Swedish naturalist Linnaeus wrote of the pine trees in a certain part of Lapland; how they lay unused, apart from being used for distillation with Rowanberries. I don’t know how they did it though, I’m sorry.  He didn’t elaborate on that.

In my family we tried making spruce-flavoured mead a while ago, it turned out really nice. But it is still very young, not a year old yet, so we expect it to mature into something even nicer. 

Now, bye bye, and nighty night! Hope that we meet soon again!

A new beginning

First day of a new year, time for a new beginning. Never has that felt so… accurate and important. Last year was a tough one, we are living a new life, and 2014 was the year when the choice we had made showed its consequences. We moved from the easy, civilized life in a minor city to the countryside. The place we bought was beautiful and full of promise, but instead of living a dream we had to face reality with lots of work, little time for friends and not enough money. By far.

So this is a good day to look forward and “ta nya tag”, as we would say in Swedish. To start afresh. We love living here, we love each other and we want to live this life. It will sort itself out. The big issue is no problem: two families have merged into one, and that has gone almost without probIems. I say almost, because I can’t read minds- it’s of course possible that someone has been uncomfortable at some point, I just don’t know about it.

I’m not particularly fond of everyday cooking. The tired Whatshallwehavefordinnertonight combined with the whining Idon’tlikethis is no fun. What I do like is to experiment with food, cook with wild herbs and use historical recipies. And that I shall do here. With you. But today we just cook.

Yesterday’s supper was lovely and filling- so filling, that our guests begged us not to serve the last dish. That has to be good. The unwanted food, forgotten dishes and leftovers turned into lunch today after a wonderful walk- it is beautiful where we live even when snow is melting and the world looks grey. The walk was for about 7 km and we are almost certain that we saw wolf-tracks among all the other tracks.

Jan 1:

From my favourite cookbook author, Anna Bergenström and her daughter Fanny:

Ulla special

Boil 5 eggs for 4-6 persons 8-10 minutes. Peel them and mash them while they are still warm. Add 1-2 tbsp warm butter (room temperature, I presume), only a little salt and pepper. Spread the mash evenly in a cm-thick layer on a flat plate. Cover and leave to stand cold for a few hours.

Cover the egg layer with crème fresh (some kind of French sour cream, high in fat and tasty) mixed with finely chopped red onion. At the top spread a little can (100 g) of lumpfish roe (or whatever salty, tasty roe you can get your hands on). Garnish the edge with chopped dill (the authors wrote chives or parsil, but personally I prefer dill here). This is a very Swedish dish. Smaklig måltid!

(Picture credentials: SSDF, Sweden)

We also ate a dish that we forgot to serve yesterday. It is a French hors d’oevres based on celery root and mayo, from the same book.

Cut the celery root in very thin slices, like matches. Boil them quickly: one minute, not longer! Let them drip off in a colander and make the sauce. For 1 l celery root sticks: mix 1 ½ dl good mayonnaise with 1-2 tbsp French mustard and add about ½ tsp salt. The sauce is supposed to be quite strong. Mix with celery sticks and let the salad rest cold for a few hours before serving. Or, as we did, forget for a night.

With a leftover beetroot salad this became a meal in itself.