Homegrown & homemade garlic preserve

Fermentation is one of the healthiest ways of preserving vegetables; it turns them into a real probiotic powerhouse - especially precious if you've been taking antibiotics and your natural gut flora is depleted. Sauerkraut is a staple in my house, as are cucumbers in brine. I had never tried garlic preserved that way, but seeing as I had a bumper crop of garlic this year I absolutely had to try it!

Garlic preserved in salty brine tastes delicious and doesn't leave behind a stinky breath the way fresh raw garlic does. But most importantly, fermentation intensifies its healing properties, and eating just a couple of cloves a day will really boost your immune system.

Here is the recipe; all quantities are approximate and will depend on the amount of garlic you use.

Garlic cloves - peeled. I used 6 garlic heads to fill 2 small jars.

Dried herbs, about a teaspoon - I used basil and lovage, but any favourite herbs will work.

Whole mustard or coriander seeds, about a teaspoon.

Fresh rosemary, 1 sprig.

Brine:

Water - enough to fill the jars you are using.
Salt - use 1 tbsp per 1 litre of water (adjust the amount of salt accordingly, e.g. if using 500ml of water, only use half a tablespoon of salt).

Jars and lids must be scrubbed clean and dipped in hot (boiling) water to kill any microbes.

Place the herbs and spices in the bottom of the jar(s). Add in the garlic - a tight squeeze is fine.

Boil the water with the salt. Pour boiling water into the jars, making sure the garlic is covered. 

Screw the lids on and turn the jars upside down, and leave them until they cool down completely, then turn them the right way up and store away in room temperature for at least a week. The warmer the environment, the quicker it will ferment, so if your house is cooler, 2 weeks is probably the minimum.

The garlic can be sliced and added to salads, used in cooking, or eaten on its own almost like a ''pill'' when you feel you need an immunity boost.

Roast cauliflower and garlic soup

This warming soup is perfect for lunches on chilly October days. Chillies or cayenne pepper can be added to enhance the warming effect!

Ingredients:

1 medium cauliflower

1 medium carrot

1 large head of garlic

1 small onion, roughly chopped

1 vegetable stock cube

Olive oil

1 tsp fennel seeds

1 stick of cinnamon

1tsp ground coriander

Salt & pepper to taste

Method:

Divide the cauliflower into florets and slice the carrot. Place both on a roasting tray, add a glug of olive oil and mix with your hands to cover the veg.

Cut off the top of the garlic head, add a bit of olive oil and wrap the garlic head in tinfoil. 

Place the cauli/carrot mix and the garlic in a 200°C oven and roast for 30 minutes.

In a soup pot, heat up a little oil and add the onion, fennel seeds, cinnamon stick and coriander. Fry on a medium heat until the onion has softened. Add the roasted cauliflower and carrot, cover with boiling water (around 5 cups), crumble in the stock cube and cook for 10-15 minutes. In the meantime, squeeze the soft garlic flesh from their skins into the soup.

Remove the cinnamon stick and blend the soup with a hand blender. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve with a tablespoon of sour cream or a swirl of double cream.

Gołąbki - stuffed cabbage leaves

Gołąbki is my no.1 favourite Polish dish. They're cabbage leaves stuffed with a mixture of meat and rice, served with tomato sauce. The preparation is a bit time-consuming, but at the same time it's very simple and usually yields enough for more than 1 dinner. Gołąbki can sit in the fridge for a few days, and they freeze well too. Each Polish family has their own recipe - here's my take on it!

Ingredients for 12 gołąbki:

1 white cabbage - the largest you can find!

1kg minced pork

200g rice

Salt, pepper, marjoram

Optional: chopped & fried onion and garlic.

Cook the rice, let it cool down and mix it in a large bowl with the raw meat and the spices. Be generous with the marjoram, you really want to be able to taste it. Divide the mixture into 12 portions.

Meanwhile, take any damaged outer leaves off the cabbage. Put the cabbage in a large pan and cover with boiling water - set this on medium heat and leave for about 20min. This will soften the leaves and allow you to take them off the cabbage head one by one, without breaking them. You will need about 12 nice, whole leaves to make your gołąbki. Keep any damaged leaves aside - you will need them later as well.

Once you have your leaves ready, take a sharp knife and slice off the thickest bits of the stem on each leaf. This will make the leaves more flexible for wrapping and easier to eat.

Put a portion of the meat mixture at the bottom of each leaf, fold in the sides and roll it up like a burrito. Repeat until you run out of leaves and meat mixture. If your cabbage leaves are not very large, you may end up with more than 12 gołąbki.

To cook, line the bottom of a large pan with any leftover/damaged leaves you have left. Place your gołąbki in the pan quite tightly, in two or three layers. You may have to cook them in batches or use two pans at a time, depending on the size of your pan. Cover them with water, put the lid on and cook on low/medium heat for about 1.5 hrs.

Meanwhile, make tomato sauce - I made mine by melting some butter in a pan, adding a tablespoon of flour, mixing well, ten pouring in a box of tomato passata and some stock until the consistency was to my liking; I then added some herbs and spices. You can use a ready-made jar of tomato/spaghetti sauce as well.

When your gołąbki are cooked, served them hot with a good splash of tomato sauce. 

Mum's potato pancake - a quick and filling dinner for two!

Here's an absolutely delightful recipe my Mum shared with me recently. It's cheap, it's easy and it's very filling - a perfect dinner for two after a long day at work! Both S and I were surprised how good it tasted, and we will definitely be making it again. This potato pancake is crispy on the outside and soft and fluffy in the middle, and the pizza-like topping is an explosion of flavours.

Ingredients for the potato pancake:
3 large or 4 medium potatoes
2 eggs
2 tablespoons of flour
1/2 tsp turmeric
Salt & pepper
Oil for frying

Ingredients for the topping:
You can use any combination of these - a great way to use fridge leftovers!
Bell pepper
Mushrooms
Smoked sausage or ham
Onion
Garlic
Peas/beans/corn
Tomatoes
Grated cheese
A little oil or butter for frying

Grate the raw potatoes and transfer them, juice and all, into a bowl. Add all the other ingredients and mix well with a spoon.
Heat the oil in a large pan. Pour the pancake mixture onto the hot oil and fry on medium heat until the underside starts getting brown.
In a separate pan, heat some oil or butter and fry your selection of topping ingredients (all chopped small), except the cheese.
Flip the pancake using another frying pan or a large plate. Cover with the topping mix and sprinkle on some grated cheese. Cover and continue to cook until the cheese has melted. Cut in half and serve (I served it with the pickle I wrote about in the previous post). Delicious!

Quick fridge pickle - Danish style

The Danish Agurkesalat is one of my favourite ways to serve cucumbers. I make it quite often and serve right away, but last night for the first time I made it for the fridge - it should keep for about a week and the flavour is actually supposed to improve over time.

Here's how I made it:

Ingredients:
1 English cucumber
1/2 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp salt

Optional flavourings:
Whole black peppercorns
Mustard seeds
Dill
Garlic
Chilli

The recipe is very simple. All you need to do is put the vinegar, sugar and water in a saucepan over low heat and wait for the sugar to dissolve (stirring helps). Don't boil the liquid. Meanwhile, slice the cucumber thinly, sprinkle with salt and transfer to a jar (I doubled this recipe and made two jars). When the liquid cools down, pour it into the jar along with any flavourings of your choice. Put the lid on and place the jar in the fridge. Serve after a minimum of 3 hours. Keeps in the fridge for up to 1 week.

Christmas presents and cooking with Outlander

Santa was very good to me this Christmas, I got a tonne of books! As a fan of the Outlander TV series,  I was very pleased to discover the entire collection of the books it's based on, as well as a beautiful cook book featuring many of the dishes mentioned throughout the story. It's full of photos, excerpts from Outlander and recipes that I know I am definitely going to try. I have already made two things from the book: oat & honey bread (and rolls) and bridies.

The bread recipe yielded 6 rolls and 1 small loaf of bread. They came out really nice, soft, slightly sweet and full of oaty goodness. Great with cheese and pickle! I will definitely be making them again soon!

The bridies (filled pastries) were surprisingly simple to make. This recipe is supposed to make 8 six-inch bridies: 4 vegetarian and 4 filled with beef. I managed to get 12 and was still left with a huge amount of the veggie filling (enough for at least another 4!) but ran out of pastry. I think I will make them again as they were utterly delicious, hot or cold, but I will adjust the quantities of ingredients.

Christmas preparations: Making mushroom-filled uszka for the freezer

Uszka, small dumplings filled with wild mushrooms, are a must on my Christmas Eve table. A very traditional dish, they are served with clear beetroot soup as the first course. They freeze beautifully, so I tend to make them in advance an keep in the freezer. I made a batch last weekend and finally got to use some of those wild mushrooms I picked over the autumn months. They are really simple to make and require just a handful of ingredients, but they are quite time consuming. But it's all worth the effort!

Ingredients:
(makes around 50 uszka, depending on how big or small you make them)

For the filling:

- 300 g frozen wild mushrooms (or 30g dried ones, rehydrated in warm water for a few hours, or use the equivalent amount of regular mushrooms if wild are not available)
- 1 large onion
- salt & pepper
- a little oil for frying

For the pastry:

- 2 cups plain flower
- 0.5 cup very warm water
- 2 tbsp oil


Start with the filling.
Roughly chop the onion and place in a large frying pan along with the oil, and fry on low heat until translucent. Add the mushrooms and keep frying until they are fully defrosted, and all the liquid has evaporated. Add salt and pepper. Place the contents of the pan in a food processor and pulse a few times until everything is chopped very small, but before it turns into a completely smooth paste.

Next, make the pastry.
Place all the pastry ingredients in a bowl, mix and knead until smooth and elastic (or use a stand mixer).
Roll it out on a flowered surface quite thinly - about 2mm. Cut into even squares - the smaller the better - 3cm is probably about right. You can also cut out small circles using a cookie cutter or a glass - the final look will be only slightly different.

Start forming your uszka.
Place a teaspoon of the filling in the middle of each square, then fold it in half diagonally, to form a triangular parcel. Seal the sides by pinching them together.
Next, take the two ends on the longest side of your triangle, and join them together, pinching the pastry. All done.

You can now cook them straight away, or freeze them.

To cook, bring a large pan of salted water to a boil and gently drop the uszka in the water. When they come up to the surface, they're ready - you can fish them out. If cooking from frozen, give them an extra minute in the boiling water.

Serve in soup, or on their own with a little bit of melted butter and sour cream.

Quick and cheap kidney bean burgers

For quite some time now we have been trying to include more vegetarian meals in our menu, for both health and budget reasons. These bean burgers are great - we had them for dinner last Tuesday, and even S, who said he hadn't had ever tasted veggie burgers he liked, said these were actually nice.

It was based on a recipe from THIS blog.

Ingredients (makes 6 good size burgers):

2x 400g tins of kidney beans
1 large onion
2 carrots
2 teaspoons cumin
2-3 tablespoons flour
Fresh or dried parsley
Salt and pepper
Oil for frying

Method:

Drain and rinse the beans, then cook them in a pan of water for 10-15min until soft.
Meanwhile, roughly chop the onion, grate the carrot, and fry both in a pan using just a little oil, until soft. Add the cumin and parsley, mix well.
Put the cooked and drained beans, along with the onion/carrot mixture, in a food processor. Mix until it turns into a fairly smooth paste. Transfer into a bowl, add salt and pepper and the flour, mix well.
Optional step: Place the mixture in the fridge for a couple of hours, this will help it firm up. Otherwise you might need to add a bit more flour.
When ready, form six patties out of the mixture, sprinkle both sides with a bit more flour and fry, turning once, until both sides have browned. This doesn't require a long cooking time, as all the ingredients are already cooked.

Enjoy in a hamburger bun with all the trimmings, or with rice and a salad.

Christmas preparations: planning my Christmas Eve menu

Our area got its first snow fall of the season the other day. I couldn't help but think about Christmas... Every year in early November I like to sit down with my cook books and plan my Christmas Eve menu.  And with all the snow outside my window, it felt like the perfect moment to do just that.

I feel like I have the best of both worlds: where I come from, it is Christmas Eve that's celebrated with an elaborate meal. Where I live, it's Christmas Day - and I get to experience both. We usually host the Christmas Eve supper in our house, and then enjoy Christmas Day lunch at my partner's Mum's with my Scottish family.

The traditional Polish Christmas Eve supper, Wigilia, consists of 12 dishes. Each family has their own favorites, there are many options and variations to choose from, however all dishes are either fully vegetarian or fish based. The most traditional things you are almost guaranteed to find on the table are: beetroot soup, herring, carp fish (not in my house though as I'm not a fan!), a dish with cabbage and/or sauerkraut, a dish with wild mushrooms and a dish (most likely a dessert) with poppy seeds (though we won't be having it this year; trying something new instead!). 

Over the years, I have come up with my own list of staples that I cannot do without; some are the dishes I remember from my family home; others I have added out of my own initiative or adapted to suit our tastes. Every year I like to add one or two new things, and if they work, they get to stay for good, or come back every other year. 

So I got out my most trusted cook books and started planning. I have a wonderful book that was given to me several years ago - Swedish Christmas Cooking by Leif Mannerström. While in Sweden they traditionally include a lot of meaty dishes in their menu, the book has a multitude of fish recipes, most importantly salmon and herring, which I love. 

These books, a small chunk of my cook book collection, come out every year to help me with my menu planning.

After nearly 3 hours of planning, I came up with the following menu. It has a number of very traditional dishes in it, but also features a salmon dish which I have only been making for 4 or 5 years, as well as a couple of completely new things.

ROUND I

1. Barszcz

clear beetroot soup

2. Uszka

mini dumplings with wild mushroom filling

ROUND II

3. Grilled salmon fillet

served with fried apples and roast potatoes

ROUND III

4. Gubbröra

Swedish herring salad

5. Gypsy herring 

traditional herring salad with tomato sauce, pickled mushrooms, peppers and gherkins

6. Krokiety

croquettes filled with sauerkraut, wild mushrooms and onion

7. Potato salad

with hard-boiled eggs, peas and carrots

8. Beans with kale

butter beans baked with kale and spices

9. Fried cabbage

with wild mushrooms, cranberries and spices

ROUND IV

10. Yule log

11. Creamy baked cheesecake

12. Coconut macaroons

drizzled with milk chocolate

It is a lot of dishes and it's all made from scratch - but I will be able to make a couple of things in advance and freeze them. The rest will be made the day before or on the day. It's a lot of work but it's also great fun and probably the thing I love the most about Christmas. It always brings back my childhood memories... In my family home, my Dad would make majority of the savory dishes, while my Mum and I made all the desserts and the remaining savory ones. I remember all the peeling, chopping and stirring, for hours and hours, as it wasn't just 12 dishes, but in huge amounts, too. 

My Scottish family (my partner's siblings, parents and grandparents) have always been very gracious about my tradition, and my S has fully embraced it. It's not the first time that I feel blessed to be able to combine my own tradition with his, and experience and celebrate both. 

The salmon recipe in my Swedish Christmas Cooking book.

A number of traditional recipes in my Polish cook book.

***

The first snow fall this season!

Polish-style beans and sausages

Baked beans don't have to come from a tin. They are really simple to make. This filling and tasty dish (fasolka po bretońsku in Polish) used to be one of my childhood's favourites, and if served with a slice of home-made bread, makes a full meal on its own rather than just a side dish.

Ingredients:

400g bag of dried butter beans 

500g carton of tomato passata

1 onion, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

2-3 smoked sausages, sliced

A little oil for frying

Herbs and spices:

Marjoram (2 sprigs fresh or 1 teaspoon dried)

Oregano (2 sprigs fresh or 1 teaspoon dried)

3 whole dried allspice berries

1-2 bay leaves (dried or fresh)

1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds

Salt and pepper.

Method:

Place the dried beans in a large bowl and cover with cold water. Leave them to soak overnight.

The following day, pour the beans together with the soaking water into a large cooking pot, add 1/2 teaspoon of salt, cover and cook on medium heat for about 2 hours or until the beans have softened. You might need to top up the water during the process.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large pan and sauté the onions and garlic. Add the sliced sausages and fry for another 5 minutes.

When the beans are soft, check how much liquid there is left in the pot. You don't want more than about 1 cup of the liquid, or the sauce will be too runny. I just removed the excess with a ladle.

Add the onion/sausage mixture to the pot, along with all the herbs (if using fresh herbs, chop them up), and cook together for 5 minutes. Add the passata, cover, and cook for another 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Discard the bay leaves and the allspice berries before serving.

If the sauce tastes too sharp, you can add 1 tsp brown sugar and/or 1-2 tablespoons cream to make it milder.

More mushroom picking and chanterelle risotto

On our way home from our fortnightly grocery shop yesterday we noticed new birch boletes growing in the same spot as before. The weather recently had been perfect for mushrooms: several days of rain followed by a couple of days of sunshine, so I wasn't surprised, but nonetheless very excited!

Naturally we stopped to pick them. They turned out to be three orange birch boletes and one brown one - only four in total, but all fairly large. They probably would have been enough for a lovely sauce, but I chose to slice and add them to the ones already sitting in the freezer. I am going to need a lot for some of my Christmas recipes!

Still on the subject of mushrooms, last night's dinner was chanterelle risotto. It was a true gourmet meal, made very cheaply since the chanterelles came free. 

I make risotto quite often, many different ways, but in my opinion nothing beats a wild mushroom one.

I used:

2 shallots 

3 garlic cloves

200g arborio rice

1/4 cup white wine (I would normally use more but that was all I had)

3-4 cups stock (see how much liquid your rice can absorb). I used beef, but chicken or vegetable stock would be just as good

A good handful of frozen peas

180g chanterelles (mine were frozen)

Oil and butter for cooking 

Herbs - I had fresh rosemary and oregano, but dried herbs are just as good

Salt and pepper to taste 

Optional: a couple of tablespoons of single cream, cream cheese or grated parmesan to make it more creamy 

I started by heating the oil and butter (about a tablespoon each) in a pan. Next, I added the chopped shallots and garlic and sautéed them, then added the mushrooms. I fried that over medium-low heat until the chanterelles were soft. I then added the rice, chopped herbs, salt and pepper and let it fry for a couple of minutes until the rice became translucent, before adding the wine.

Once the rice absorbed all the wine, I started adding the stock, about 1/2 cup at a time, stirring and letting the rice absorb the liquid before adding more. Towards the end of cooking I added the peas and cream. After a couple more minutes I turned off the heat, put the lid on and let it sit for another 10 minutes. The dish is ready when the rice is completely cooked so you need to taste it.

Serve with a sprinkling of parmesan and a simple side salad.

Hebridean chicken - two ways

Most people (in Scotland anyway) have heard of a dish called Chicken Balmoral, which is chicken breast stuffed with haggis. But I hadn't heard of Hebridean Chicken until I met my S. He talked about it for years and finally made it last week. It was delicious!

He allowed me to take photos as he was cooking - it's more putting 3 things together rather than a precise recipe, but it was so tasty I really wanted to share it.

Hebridean chicken is very similar to Balmoral chicken in that it's chicken breast stuffed with haggis, but the difference is that Hebridean chicken is also wrapped in smoked bacon. I don't eat bacon, so S made it two ways and wrapped mine in smoked salmon.

The ingredients are: 1 chicken breast per person, 1 handful of haggis per person, and enough slices of smoked bacon/salmon to wrap the whole breast. That's it.

I think that if haggis isn't available, black pudding might be a good substitute. 

Take the chicken breasts and slice them open

Like so.

Next, take a handful of haggis and roll it into a sausage.

Stuff the chicken with the haggis sausage

And wrap the whole thing in slices of smoked bacon

Or smoked salmon

Hebridean chicken two ways!

Next, wrap each breast in tinfoil and place on a baking tray.

This is then baked in a preheated oven in 200°C for a minimum of 30min. Serve with mashed potatoes, peppercorn sauce and peas. I think whisky sauce would also go well with this dish.

The chicken comes out incredibly juicy; the smoked bacon/salmon gives it amazing smokiness, and the haggis acts as flavouring; no spices required. The whole combination is just delightful!