CHRISTMAS IN DENMARK

Last night my new Danish friends invited us to experience a typical
Danish Christmas dinner at their house.
As I am not cooking Danish dishes yet I share with you what they
prepared: the traditional pork roast with the crunchy skin,
"Flækesteg", served with a brown sauce....delicious!

On the table there were two typical side dishes: nice caramelized potatoes,
"Brunkartofler" and dark cabbage, "Krystkål"

For dessert they served a rice and almond pudding, "Riz a l'amande", with a spoon of sweet cherry sauce, "Kirsebæsauce".

We really enjoyed the evening with great food and fantastic company!!!


As I didn't have time to ask my friends for recipes I took them from other blogs. Enjoy it!

Flæskesteg

Ingredients:

- 2kg loin of pork with the skin on, and scored all the way down to just before the flesh in lines 1cm apart (ask the butcher to do this if necessary)

- 1 carrot

- 1 onion

- 1 or 2 bay leaves

- 400-500ml boiling water

- few strigs of thyme

Method:

- Preheat your oven to 250°C.

- Place the pork joint skin side down (yes, ‘upside-down’) into a roasting tray. Add just enough boiling water to the tray so that the skin is submerged.

- Put the pork in the oven for 20 minutes.

- Use a clean tea towel to hold the pork in the roasting tray so you don’t burn yourself while you carefully pour away the water.

- Turn the oven down to 160°C, then flip the pork over so it’s the right way up (skin up), and coat the skin with a generous amount of salt and pepper, making sure you get into the crevices created by the scoring. Be careful of your hands at this point, the pork will be hot! Stick the bay leaves into the crevices as well, then add the carrot, onion and thyme to the roasting tin, and pour 400-500ml fresh, cold water in.

- Put the pork back in the oven for about an hour or until it is done. Check about halfway through to see if you need to top up the water if it’s starting to evaporate too much.

- Using a meat thermometer, check the temperature of the pork after the hour. It should be somewhere between 68-70°C. Pour out the fatty residue into a bowl to use as stock for the gravy.

- Increase the oven temperature back up to 250°C and put the roast pork back in to make the crackling. This can take a good 15 minutes, so use the grill if you want to kickstart the process (but keep a close eye on it, or else you could end up with a burnt crackling).

- Remove the roast from the oven and check the temperature again. It should be between 70-75°C. This should mean it isn’t overcooked - pork can be terribly boring if you have to gnaw your way through it.

- Let the roast rest uncovered for about 10 minutes. While that’s happening, make the gravy from the fat and stock - use gravy browning if required.


Rice pudding

Ingredients:

3 dl water

180 g pudding rice (ca. 2½ dl)

1 liter milk

100 g blanched almonds

2 vanilla pods - the grains

4 tablespoonful sugar

1/4 litre whipped cream 38%

Accompaniments:

1 portion warm red berry sauce or cherry sauce

Boil water and rice in a pot. Cook the rice at even heat and while stirring in about 2 min. Add milk and cook the pudding at even heating, still stirring for about 10 min. Put on the lid and cook for about ½ hour - stir once in a while. Put the pudding in the refrigerator until cold - until next day.

Put one whole almond aside and chop the rest. Mix together the rice pudding, vanilla grains, sugar and the chopped almonds. Whip the cream and turn gently in the pudding with the whole almond. Put the dessert in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

RICE ARANCINI

My brand new friend Morgane, who I met at the school I attend to learn
Danish, asked me if I knew how to make Arancini.
It is an Italian dish that she likes a lot, and she would love to prepare
it at home for her friends.
Arancini, which means little oranges in Italian, originated in Sicily.
Name and appearance aside, arancini are not at all related to the orange fruit;
they're fried balls of risotto.
I usually don't prepare this dish because the rice balls are fried, but as today
I had some left over risotto, and I remembered about my friend's request,
I decided to surprise my family with a treat.

This is the way I made them, but I will also attach at the bottom the original
Sicilian recipe.


I used a bowl of left-over risotto (it was a butternut and provolone cheese one)

Then I prepared the ingredients for the dipping and the frying: 2 beaten eggs, one small bowl of flour, one small bowl of bread crumbs, vegetable oil

To the risotto I added 1TBS beaten eggs and 1TBS parmesan and mixed it well.
I gently formed small balls (1TBS rice) with my hands and I rolled them into the flour.
Afterwards, I dipped them into the eggs and I rolled them into the bread crumbs

The rice balls were ready to be deep fried in hot vegetable oil

When the balls were golden on both sides I removed them from the pan and put them on a plate lined with kitchen paper to absorb the excess oil.

I served them warm as an appetizer with a nice glass of white wine !

Mozzarella filled risotto arancini (from Epicurious)

ingredients
3 cups leftover cooked risotto
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
2 Tbsp heavy cream
2 Tbsp minced fresh flat-leaf parsley, chives, oregano, or basil
1 large egg yolk
Salt and freshly ground pepper
5 oz mozzarella or Fontina cheese
All-purpose flour for dredging
Egg wash: 1 large egg whisked with 2 Tbsp cold milk or water
1 cup fresh white bread crumbs
Vegetable oil for deep-frying
2 cups tomato sauce
preparation

In a large bowl, combine the risotto with the Parmesan, cream, herbs, and egg yolk. Season with salt and pepper.

Cut the cheese into 16 cubes. Scoop up about 3 Tbsp of the risotto mixture and pack it around a cube of cheese to make a croquette, a ball the size of a Ping-Pong ball. Repeat to form 16 croquettes.

Put the flour, egg wash, and bread crumbs in 3 separate bowls. Dredge the croquettes in the flour, dip in the egg wash, and roll in the bread crumbs. Chill thoroughly, 2-24 hours.

Pour oil into a tall pot to a depth of 5 inches. Heat the oil over medium-high heat until it registers 375°F on a deep-frying thermometer. Deep-fry the croquettes in batches, without crowding, until they are evenly browned, 4-5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon or tongs, transfer to paper towels to drain briefly. Serve on a pool of warmed tomato sauce.

From Cooking at Home by The Culinary Institute of America, © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

TALKING ABOUT BROTHS

Did you know that broths used to be a dietary staple, as were fermented
foods, and now the elimination of these foods from our modern diet is
largely to blame for our increasingly poor health?
Chicken broth and the vegetables one are very healing,
they are nutritious and an excellent source of minerals.
I personally prefer the vegetable broth and I want to share my recipe
with you.
You can put it in a glass jar and store it in the fridge for few days
or you can freeze it.
You can just drink it nice and warm or you can cook some tortellini
or small pasta in it.

VEGETABLE BROTH


Ingredients:
2 carrots, peeled and cut in halves
1 sweet potato or half butternut, peeled and diced
1 potato, unpeeled and cut in half
1 onion, coarseley chopped
1 cm piece of ginger, peeled
1 garlic clove, peeled
1 tsp origanum
1 piece of kombu
1 or 2 celery stalks
2 TBS chopped parsley
1 TBS miso paste
salt to taste
4 lt of filtered water....
and other veggies of your choice if you have them in the fridge

In a big pot put all the ingredients except the miso paste and bring water
to boil.
Simmer for at least 1 hour.
Add the miso paste and adjust salt.
You can then strain the broth and serve it as tea or you can use it for dinner,
cooking in it tortellini (filled pasta).