extra virgin olive oil

spaghetti

crushed dried red peppers

Fresh parmegiano reggiano

Sautee the garlic in the olive oil until it starts to change color very slightly. Boil up the water, throw some salt in there, when boiling, add the dried spaghetti. When it is cooked to the taste, scoop out 1/4 cup of the water and set aside. Dump the pasta, reheat the olive oil/ garlic mix very briefly, throw it over the drained pasta along with the 1/4 cup of water. Top with crushed red pepper (pizza pepper) and lots of parmesan.

You won’t have any friends the next day, but you sure will feel good!

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Ingredients

Two potatoes per person

Optional ingredients

• Milk or cream
• Butter
• Olive oil
• Dill
• Parsley

Fill a fairly big pot with water and get the water to boil.

Peel the potatoes.

Cut them into smaller pieces, for example quarters.

Put the potato pieces into the boiling water.

If the water stopped boiling when you put in the potato pieces, wait for the water to start boiling again and then turn down the heat a little. Let the potato pieces boil until they are soft when poked with a chopstick or fork. Pour off most or all of the water and add your favorite flavorings. Milk and cream give the mashed potatoes a smooth, creamy texture. Milk is healthier than cream, but cream tastes better, at least to most Western palates.

Pouring in milk.

If you’re lactose intolerant, you may want to skip the dairy altogether. Butter is delicious with all potato dishes, but isn’t very healthy. Make your own decision about how much butter to add, if any. Adding olive oil instead of butter creates a different kind of flavor than the dairy-inspired flavor types. Dill and parsley are added in some kitchens/homes for herb flavors. Mash the potatoes with a potato masher. (If you don’t have one, a fork can do the job, but it’s much more work because the fork is smaller than the masher.)

Mashing potatoes.

When the potatoes are done, there shouldn’t be any lumps of potato left (or only very small ones) and the potatoes should be soft but not runny. If they are runny, boil off some water until the mashed potatoes are thicker. Be careful that they don’t burn at this stage.

Mashed potatoes, shown here on a plate with a schnitzel.

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Ingredients
As many pieces of veal as there are diners
Breadcrumbs with no added spices or seasonings
An egg
Oil for frying

Whisk an egg. Pour out some breadcrumbs on a plate or some other flat and clean surface. (That’s easy to wash - there will be egg on it.)

Take one piece of veal per person. (Here, shown for two people.)

Dip the veal pieces in the whisked egg.

Put the veal pieces into the bread crumbs and tap them down into the bread crumb pile, so that the bread crumbs stick to the egg on the veal and cover the veal completely.

Not quite covered yet.

Covered.

Fry up the schnitzels in a frying pan with enough oil to moisten the breadcrumbs on both sides. The breadcrumbs should become a nice golden brown when the schnizel is done.

Just put in pan.

Golden brown - done!

If you’re not sure if they’re cooked all the way through, take a knife and cut a schnitzel open. The meat should be white-ish, not pink. Schnitzel goes well with potatoes in various forms, like boiled or mashed.

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This recipe is for classic truffles rolled in cocoa. Not healthy, but very tasty. The better quality chocolate you buy for this, the better the truffles. Buy chocolate that doesn’t have much fat or sugar added. Semisweet chocolate contains enough sugar to make the truffles suitably sweet for European (and probably Asian) chocolate taste. Americans may find the truffles unusually lacking in sweetness. Hand-made chocolate truffles are a completely different thing to store-bought chocolate candy. They are not supposed to be very sweet, but instead they should contain high-quality chocolate with many aromas and flavors and good-tasting fats. Although chocolate is eaten a lot during Christmas (my Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without chocolate), chocolates are eaten any time of year. A perennial classic is a cup of coffee of some kind (Brewed or espresso, with or without cream, milk or sugar) and a truffle.

Just the recipe

6 oz. semisweet chocolate (175 g)
3 tbsp milk (45 ml)
6 tbsp butter

Melt and stir together the chocolate and milk over very low heat. Be very careful to not heat too much, or the chocolate will burn and turn into little lumps. The thicker the bottom of your pot, the better, to protect from accidental overheating. Add the butter. Stir briefly until the butter has melted and the mixture is well mixed. Remove from heat. Refrigerate 4 hours or even overnight. If you refrigerate overnight, the truffles will be a little harder to shape.

Form into small balls, using teaspoon or your fingers. Mixture may seem stiff at first, but quickly softens from heat of fingers. You can cut the truffle mixture with a knife into bite-size pieces and then squish them into balls.

Roll balls in cocoa powder until totally coated.

Put each truffle in a little paper ‘container’ or on some other flat surface. The more the touch each other or something else, the more the cocoa gets absorbed into the chocolate. It’s supposed to stay on top.

Truffles will keep about a week in refrigerator, a day or more at room temperature.

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Making cream toffee takes quite a bit for stirring - count on an hour or so. The wider the pot is, the faster it will finish. The mixture will bubble up quite a bit during cooking, so don’t pick your smallest pot.

5 dl whipping cream

2 1/2 dl sugar

1 1/2 light syrup

1 dl peeled and chopped almonds

1. Mix cream, sugar and syrup in a thick-bottomed pot. (If the bottom isn’t thick, you will burn the toffee very easily.) Heat while stirring until the mixture starts boiling.

Before boiling.

Let the mixture boil until it thickens. The simplest way to know when it’s done is to use a thermometer. When the mixture has reached 120 degrees C, it’s done. If you don’t have a household thermometer, you can use the “ball test.” Get a glass of cold water. When you’re wondering if it’s done yet, pour a little of the mixture into the water. When you can make a little ball out of the cooled down mixture, it’s ready.

Not ready - cream everywhere, mixture dissolves into water.

Ready - no cream in the water and the mixture stays together in the water. When you take it out of the water, you can form the toffee into a ball.

3. Stir in the chopped almonds.

4. Cover a baking sheet with waxed paper, baking sheet paper, or the like. (Any paper designed to keep things from sticking is fine.) Pour the toffee onto it. If you can, try to make the pool of toffee as square as possible.

5. When the toffee has cooled, cut the toffee into squares with a buttered knife. (Buttered to keep the toffee from sticking. Thin and sharp knives work best.) Wrap the toffee pieces in the paper.

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The name of this dish is literally Jansson’s Temptation. I don’t know who Jansson (a common family name in Sweden) was, nor why this dish tempted him so incredibly that it was named after him, but it is very tasty. The “anchovies” called for in this recipe are not actually anchovies, but a type of herring found in the Baltic Sea. In the Nordic countries, cans of fish that say “anchovies” are herring in a spicy liquid. While flavorful, they are not nearly as strong in flavor as real anchovies. My mother discovered this in the States, when she bought a can of anchovies (real, unbeknownst to her) and they made this dish incredibly strong, overpowering all the potato and cream flavor. If you can’t get hold of these fake anchovies, ham is a common substitute. In the pictures, I’m cooking with ham for that reason. If you don’t eat pork and can’t buy fake anchovies, you can probably simply omit the ham.

½ kg potatoes (6-8 potatoes)
8 canned ”anchovies” or a little ham and a bouillon cube
2 yellow onions (100 g)
½ tbsp butter
2 dl cream

1. Wash the potatoes, peel them, and cut them into thin rectangles.

In Western home cooking, cut things any way you like that makes things the right shape. Here’s how to cut potatoes into strips quickly and easily.

First, cut potatoes in half.

Then, cut them in quarters.

Cut each quarter into slices.

Then cut across the slices to make strips.

2. Debone the ”anchovies” and cut them into pieces. Save the canning liquid. If using ham, cut the ham into little strips.

3. Peel the onions and cut them into pieces.

4. Butter a dish.

5. Put potatoes in the bottom of the dish. Layer anchovies, onion, and potatoes until you run out of ingredients, but make sure the top layer is potatoes.

The first layer.

Top layer is potatoes!

6. Mix half or all of the ”anochvy” canning liquid with the cream and pour the mixture over the temptation. If using a bouillon cube for flavor, dissolve the cube in some hot water and then mix the bouillon with the cream.

7. Bake in the oven approximately 45 minutes at 225°C. If the surface of the temptation is about to burn, cover the temptation with a lid or some aluminum foil.

Finished temptation.

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Just the recipe: Lanttulaatikkoresepti Rootabaga Casserole Recipe

A must-have dish with Christmas ham for me.

1 kg rootabaga
3 dl water
1 ½ tsp salt
an egg
2-3 tbsp syrup
½ dl breadcrumbs
butter for the dish

Wash and peel the rootabaga(s).

Cut the rootabagas into slices, then into strips.

Boil the water and put the rootabaga strips in to boil. Add the salt. Cover with a lid and cook until the rootabaga strips are soft.

Mash the rootabagas.

Add the egg and the syrup. Butter a dish.

Pour the rootabaga mash into the dish and sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top. Bake at 200°C about 30 minutes.

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Just the recipe: Joulutortturesepti Northern Stars Recipe [PDF]

Butter dough:
150 g softened butter
3 dl white wheat flour
approx. ¾ dl cold water

Filling:
Dried plum jam (made by boiling some prunes (dried plums) with some water until the prunes make a soft jam.)

For brushing:
An egg

1. Mix the butter and the flour with a wooden fork in a bowl.

2. Add the water and mix the dough into a smooth dough.

3. Roll the dough on a floured surface into a sheet about 1 cm thick.

4. Fold the sheet three times. Turn it facing horizontally and roll it into a cm-thick sheet again.

5. Repeat this folding and rolling procedure twice more.

6. Let the dough harden in the refrigerator.

7. Roll the butter dough into a half-centimeter thick sheet.

Cut squares with a side of 8 cm with a doughboy.

8. Cut slashes from the edges toward the center of each square.

Put a teaspoon of plum jam in the center.

Fold every other tip in toward the middle and push them sealed. Moisten the connection point with water.

9. Put the stars on a baking sheet.

Whisk the egg.

Brush the top of the stars with the egg, but avoid the cut surfaces of the dough.

I am using a silicone brush in the picture.

10. Bake the stars in 225°C in the center of the oven for 10-15 minutes. They come out very nicely in a hot air oven.

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Just the recipe: Gingerbread Paraisten Piparkakut [PDF]

This is a Finnish gingerbread recipe. It’s been in my family for a long time, and it’s delicious. The two key ingredients from an international cooking point of view are the butter and the syrup. The butter must become very hard in the refrigerator, and the syrup should be light baking syrup made from beets. Molasses can be substituted, but doesn’t taste as good.

250 g European-style butter
200 g sugar (2 ¼ dl = 225 ml)
an egg
100 g syrup (3/4 dl = 75 ml)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ground dried orange peel
1 ½ tsp baking soda
400 g white wheat flour (6 dl = 600ml = 0.6l)

Measure out the ingredients. Put the syrup and the spices in a pan, let it boil briefly, and then let it cool down. Mix the baking soda with the flour. Mix the butter and the sugar to make an airy whip. Add the cool syrup-spice mixture and the egg into the butter-sugar whip while mixing vigorously. Last, add the flour mixture. Knead into an even dough. Refrigerate the dough overnight.

The next day, take a small piece of the dough out of the refrigerator at a time.

The dough, a rolling pin, gingerbread cutters, and a piece of dough.

Roll out each piece out to about 2 mm thickness. Make sure the baking surface and the rolling pin are covered with flour. The dough is very sticky. If a piece of dough becomes so soft that it starts sticking to everything, put it back in the refrigerator to harden and work with another piece. Because you need to use so much flour on the table and rolling pin, the dough will eventually stop sticking together. You can only roll one piece of dough out a few times. When it won’t stick together anymore, you can eat it if you country’s salmonella infection rates are low. (Yummy!) If you might get sick from raw eggs where you live, just throw it away.

Almost done rolling it out!

Make the cookies with gingerbread cutters. Traditional shapes are men, women, stars, hearts, Christmas trees, and goats. Goats are traditional only in the Nordic countries, where the Christmas Goat used to bring presents for children. Goats made out of bundled straw are still used as Christmas decorations.

Peel away the dough between the cookies. If you didn’t use enough flour on the table and the cookies stick to the table, a spatula or knife can help getting them off the table. However, you will probably squish the cookies at least a little. If you used enough flour, they should come off the table easily, often lifting off the table inside the gingerbread cutter. The snow man shape is newer than the stars, hearts, trees and man.

Bake the gingerbread cookies in 200°C around 3 minutes. I tried 425°F in the States, and it worked fine. Be careful – they burn very quickly because they’re so thin.

These gingerbread are not done yet. They’re too pale. They’ve been in the oven about a minute. The peace dove shape is also new.

These gingerbread are done. If they had been left in the oven just a little longer, they would have burned.

Gingerbread are eaten on their own, but they are also eaten with glögg, glühwein/vin chaud. Glögg is Swedish mulled wine. Glühwein means literally ‘glowing wine’ in German and is called vin chaud, literally hot wine, in French. Continental European mulled wine recipes have fewer spices and lemon peel, whereas glögg adds vodka to the wine and has more spices but no lemon peel.

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