woodland birthday: pfeffernusse mushrooms

How cute are these? While the do look remarkably like little cremini mushrooms, these are pfeffernusse ("peppernuts"),  a spicy, peppery gingerbread. I have eighteen of these little guys to scatter around my woodland birthday table - and later this weekend, I'm going to attempt making a meringue version, as well!

My original inspiration for the pfeffernusse mushrooms was this post from Twigg Studio - but when I tried her recipe, I found it has a few crucial errors. As a second attempt, I tried this recipe from Bake Street, which is in Spanish (thank you, seven years of Spanish study!), and it totally worked. So, here I'll provide my own riff on this recipe. I should tell you; I like my pfeffernusse spicy - zingy! I like the tang and the burn of black pepper when paired with sweet spices. So feel free to adjust the spice volume down a bit, if you like something milder.

Pfeffernusse Mushrooms

Ingredients
3 large eggs
1 c. sugar

1 1/4 c. flour
1/2 c. almond flour
2 heaping/mounded Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 heaping/mounded teaspoons ground ginger
2 heaping/mounted teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 c. finely chopped candied orange peel

Instructions

In the bowl of a stand mixer, sift together flour, almond flour, cocoa powder, spices, and orange peel. Set aside.

*NOTE: I ran out of orange peel when the first recipe I tried failed. I substituted glaceed kumquats I'd made earlier this year when I made this recipe. I chopped them fine. They were a bit sticky, so I mixed up the flours, cocoa and spices, then added the sticky bits of  orange peel and tossed them in the flour, then worked each little sticky bit apart from its companions, coating them in the flour/spice mixture with my fingers to keep them from sticking back together. And it worked just fine. So feel like you can experiment a bit here. And if you don't like citrus, you could substitute finely chopped candied ginger ... or drop this from the recipe altogether.

In a metal bowl, combine the eggs and sugar and whisk together. Set over a pan of simmering water and whisk constantly, until the sugar has dissolved and the eggs have thickened. Both Twigg Studios and Bake Street suggested this would only take a few minutes; I left mine on the stove for 12 minutes (which is actually pretty standard for making a lemon curd, too).

After 12 minutes, remove the bowl from heat and continue whisking the mixture hard for two more minutes.

Combine the egg mixture and flour mixture and beat until thoroughly combined - about 3 minutes on low speed (1) on a stand mixer. The dough will be very sticky.

Shape the dough into a tube, wrap in plastic cling wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Bake Street suggested that leaving it overnight would make it easier to work; I tried this, but I found my dough was dry and crumbly and hard to work, so next time I will only leave it for two hours.

After your dough has firmed, it's time to shape it. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line baking sheets with parchment (do not oil or grease your sheets or the paper!).

Divide your dough into two halves. Working with the first half, form 18-20 balls.Flatten these balls slightly on the baking sheet to create mushroom caps. Use the other half to roll out trunks (one for each mushroom cap). Tap each end slightly to flatten so that your mushrooms will be able to stand up after you bake them. If you are having trouble with the dough sticking to your hands, gently dampen your hands (but be careful not to handle the dough with dripping-wet hands, as too much water will start to dissolve the dough and then you'll REALLY have a mess on your hands - ask me how I know!)

Place trunks and caps on the parchment and bake. Bake trunks for 15 minutes and caps for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and cool completely on a rack.

Decorating

After the mushroom pieces had cooled, I placed my cooling rack on my baking sheet (the same one I'd used to bake the mushroom pieces, and I left the parchment down). I place all of the mushroom pieces on the rack. I mixed up a glaze using approx 1 c. powdered sugar and just enough water (add it 1 tsp at a time, mixing thoroughly after each addition) to make a creamy glaze. I used a small silicone pastry brush to brush glaze all over each cap and around the sides (but not on the top or bottom) of each trunk. I set the pieces on the rack to drip-dry.

But before they were fully dry, I sprinkled a bit of dry powdered sugar and dry unsweetened cocoa powder over  and around the glazed mushroom caps and trunks. Then I let them dry. Once they were dry, I patted the sugar/cocoa in and around the caps and trunks to remove any excess powder.

Gills

An hour or two later, when I knew the caps were fully cured, I flipped them over. I melted 1 oz of chocolate (sweetened, but you could use baking chocolate if you want) in the double boiler. I spooned a little bit (maybe 1/4 teaspoon) onto the base of each mushroom cap and smoothed it around with the back of the spoon. I let it cool and harden just until it looked satiny (not shiny), and then I dragged a toothpick through the chocolate to draw the gills.

I left them for two more hours to set.

Assembly

Finally, I put the mushrooms together. This part was tricky, I have to admit. I mixed up more glaze (powdered sugar and water), but this time I made sure the glaze was as thick as sweetened condensed milk. I dipped one end of my mushroom trunks into the glaze, made sure each had a good dollop on top of the trunk, and then pressed the trunk into the center of the mushroom cap. I found it was easier to make them upside down like this; some of the caps were balanced on the drying rack; others I balanced on a hot pad...whatever it took.

Don't work too fast as you put them together. Hold the two pieces together for at least a minute before gently releasing pressure. Some of the trunks will slip and slide off or fall over, and you'll have to do it again. You've just got to keep at it; you've got to get them to stand on their own (or propped against boxes of salt or jars of jam) while the sugar dries and hardens the trunks in place - then you're all set (so this is why it helps if the top of your mushroom cap is a little flat, not too pointy!). And in the end, I managed to get all of them together and standing, their little trunks in the air, overnight.

 And this is how they looked the next morning, when I gathered them all together on a plate. I'm delighted; they really do look like a little plate of mushrooms!

And here they are in my hands. They're quite large, really, aren't they?

Now, final points: these things are rock hard after the first day. The trick with pfeffernusse is that you should make it in advance. It will be rock hard for at least a day. Stored in an airtight container, it will gradually absorb moisture and become a more tender cookie. These cookies can be stored (again, in an airtight container) for a month before serving - which is also rather convenient: you can make these guys well in advance of your party and then just pull them out and wow all your guests at your event.

I hope you try making these and that you enjoy them!

woodland birthday: moss

For years, I've wanted to throw a party with a woodland theme or woodland aesthetic. This year, I decided, I'd finally do it - for my birthday. There aren't any woodland-themed party activities; really, this is just about setting a pretty table of pretty bites for an afternoon of games and maybe a holiday movie, after a midday ice skating session.

Click here to see the wedding idea from Amy Wallen photography that is my table inspiration for this party. I went to the florist today to order three "pink mink" protea for the floral arrangement. I think the other bits and pieces - the eucalyptus, the limonium, the roses, even the ranunculus - shouldn't be too hard to find at my local grocery stores.

But you'll see there's a lot of moss there in that picture. And I thought that moss would be nice to tuck around platters and serving dishes on a table full of appetizers, to give a woodsy feel. And  since I live in the Pacific Northwest, with the shade of a grove of doug firs guaranteeing a regular crop of moss in the backyard, it was a simple matter of going out and harvesting clumps of moss and cleaning it (this did, however, take me an entire afternoon and evening), and then preserving it, to have a good amount of moss for my table (not quite as much as I'd like, but that's okay - I'm just being forced to practice moderation here... or heck, maybe I'll just go dig some more!)

I found the instructions for preserving moss at The Art of Doing Stuff. Basically, the moss is cleaned, allowed to dry, and then soaked in a mixture of vegetable glycerine and denatured alcohol (two parts glycerine are mixed with 1 part alcohol) for 10 minutes, then drained for 10 minutes, then left on paper towels to dry for a few days.

Above, the moss is clean and dry. Below is the preserved moss. What's nice about this (as contrasted with just drying moss) is that it stays nice and green, and it's pliable. Also, any little clumps of dirt that were stuck in the moss through the preserving process are just falling out as the moss dries, which is pretty cool. The downside, however, is that it kind of stinks like green, wet seaweed in our kitchen! I might transfer all of it outside tomorrow to air and see if that helps!

first fruits foraged 2014: salmonberries and strawberries (of the frais de bois variety)

Ah, last night! I'm sorry! I was scrubbing chair cushions and the front walk, managed to squeeze in my workout before Cass got home from work, started dinner while he went out for a short 15-minute session on the elliptical, then he came back and we ate and I was asleep maybe 30 minutes later. Woof! Such a day!

Today, not so much. The cool mornings make it hard to get up the motivation and I admit, I'm having one of those days when the unemployment situation really gets me down. It's hard to keep one's chin up. But let's not talk about that. It does no one any good and I'm doing my very best to keep myself cheered up today.

Instead, let's look at these beautiful ruby-red berries, shall we? I thought today merited a two-fer, seeing as I missed yesterday's second post (but I *did* take more pictures - and more today, too; if my improvised plan for dinner tonight turns out tasty - and not gross - I'll share the recipe tomorrow). The top is salmonberry jam. Not a lot of salmonberry jam, but a few jars. I also put one 12-ounce jar in the fridge for Saturday's panna cotta, which we'll serve with the alpine strawberry/wild strawberry/frais de bois (whatever you want to call it) compote below. There really is nothing like an alpine strawberry: they're tiny, and just packed with an unbelievable amount of natural sugar. They make a nice contrast to the panna cotta (which is slightly sour, owing to the inclusion of buttermilk in the recipe), and such a nice taste of the wilds. This is a big half-gallon jar. I actually canned and processed the strawberries this year, since we picked them two weeks before the party and I didn't want to risk the berries - or the compote - going off before the big event. I've been storing them in the fridge, though I suppose there's no real need to. I just feel weird having canned something with so very much space left in the jar.

Alright. More tomorrow! I will continue to be dutiful and get back on top of things around here! Keep your fingers crossed that dinner isn't a disaster - sometimes, when I experiment, it's not successful. I hope, based on the number of hours I've already put in today, that this isn't one of those times!

handmade holidays: libations

I don't think I ever posted a photo of the last round of cider! It was so good (and so affordable, and so pleasantly low in alcohol) that we already made another batch and I have six pounds of apples to grind up tomorrow and start another round of fermentation. The process comes from Yvette Van Boven's lovely little cookbook, Home Made Winter, which Cass bought for me last year and which is a really fun resource for these dark indoor months. I haven't tried making butter yet, but I want to - soon!

This process gave me the heebie-jeebies a little bit, at first, just because there is no boiling or sterilization of the food, just simple fermentation. Grated apples (cores, peels and all) are placed in a sterilized bucket with a bit of water and allowed to stand for seven days (you stir the mash daily with a clean spoon). After that, the solids are strained out and you add sugar, fresh ginger, and cinnamon sticks and let it stand another day. Then it is strained and put in a bottle. We put up four bottles in the fridge  to ferment (Yvette Van Boven says you can let it ferment for up to two months - our last bottles only made it a month before we drank them) and are drinking the leftovers tonight.

I really like this low-tech cider. It smells and tastes a bit of yeast (no yeast is actually added to the mash; the only yeasts present are the wild yeasts on the apples' skins), and over time it develops great fine bubbles (after a month, the bottles would fizz over fantastically when they were opened).

Happy Litha! Happy Solstice! Glad Midsommar!

Hello! Happy Solstice! It really is something to celebrate up here in the northern states; these long summer days, the sunlight that lasts almost until 10pm - it's glorious. Of course, it absolutely POURED all day yesterday here in Seattle - but it was a good day for a lot of cooking!

 

Cooking and cleaning are all I've been doing since submitting my dissertation and final paperwork. I graduated! I'm all done - really done - now; I even received my confirmation that my dissertation was accepted (read: the lady with the ruler approved the spacing of my title page, the format of my pagination and margins, etc.). And so, with that under my belt, the entire week had been devoted to party preparations - and let me tell you, I'm glad we still have two days because I'm POOPED. Making a smorgasbord for 40+  people is a LOT. OF. WORK. We won't make the meatballs or the turnip-and-potato mash until the day of the party, and I won't make one of the desserts (a salmonberry panna cotta) until tomorrow, so we have a few things left to do, but right now we are in pretty good shape. Most of the food has been prepared and is ready to go!



 

 

 

It begins with a shopping trip at the Scanselect import shop for cheeses, licorice, lingonberry preserves and wasa, and the fisherman's terminal for a beautiful fillet of salmon fresh from Alaska

 

 

We picked alpine strawberries (tiny, elusive, and super sweet) in the mountains with Cass' parents, and I turned them into compote. I plan to use some leftover salmonberry jam to make a big panna cotta; we'll pour this bright, sweet strawberry compote over it - that's just one of our desserts!

 

 

Here's the other: gooseberry cakes, that I am infusing with elderflower and cloudberry liqueurs for the party.

 

We'll also have a big bowl of fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Oh! And Anna's ginger cookies. And licorice candy. We always have all of those. Yum, yum!

 



 

After three days coated in salt, sugar, spices and buried under dill, the salmon had cured into gravlax. I washed it off, patted it dry and wrapped it up for the party. Look at that pretty red colour! Can't wait to slice it up and serve it with bright green dill-mustard sauce on slices of rye.

 

We'll also serve smorrebrod - open faced sandwiches - of herring and beets on slices of rye. Here's the herring in mustard sauce (there's even a little bowl of it made without dill, for my friend who is allergic to the herb), and this year I pickled tiny little cubes of rosy chiogga beets for a pretty colour.

We always have too many pickled beets left over, so this year we are serving most of the beets boiled and sliced, in that beet salad I made this spring (I even made a big jar of pickled rose petals just for the occasion). It's not traditional, but it's lovely, and I'm hoping it's going to be a big hit. It's so pretty and tasty, I think it's just the thing for a party.

 

Here's a half-gallon mason jar with quick pickled cukes, a favorite Swedish condiment. I think there might be room in there for one more cuke ... maybe? Or maybe half a cuke? We bought FIVE. The rest will just be sliced up and served fresh with cheeses and nibbles early in the party.

 

 

 

I baked two batches of rye this year, because we have a larger-than-normal list of attendees. This is always the challenge with the Midsommar party; either you have to be really strict and not invite some of the people you want to invite, or things just rapidly expand beyond what our little house can hold. FINGERS CROSSED THAT IT DOESN'T RAIN because this is shaping up to be a pretty big one this year.

And last but not least: the salmiakki! (Salt-licorice liqueur, made by grinding Faber's Turkisk Peber candy and dissolving it into vodka.) Skal!

Tonight we have to get some housecleaning done, and start buying all the flowers for the flower crowns. I have THREE women helping me make the crowns this year (awesome; maybe we won't be rushed?), but I still have to make all the wire bases for the crowns before Sunday.

Tomorrow is Herb's memorial. Kathy asked a friend and I to come early and serve as ushers/greeters and hand out programs, so I think the day is mostly going to be spent building the perfect updo to support the perfectly chic little hat I found in Spain last year. Only the best for Herb. Honestly, I'm looking forward to when the memorial is over. I don't know how I feel about it, if I even want to be there, if I want to weep in public with hundreds of others ... I don't know.  I started dreaming about Herb again this week. I miss him so much. It's still hard to believe that he is not in this world anymore, that I will never see him again, never hear his laugh again. Okay. Best not think about this too much now. It's going to be hard enough to get through tomorrow; I don't need to start the memorial tonight. I just wish he could be here. God, wouldn't he love it? I bet he really would have. All that food, all that gaiety, plenty of his students here to talk to. I've imagined how we'd toast to all of us who graduated this year. I like to think he would have been so proud of us.

another go at flower arranging

belatedly, some pics from the post-dinner equinox table: flowers! I was able to order hellebores at my local florist, and supplement those beauties with some spray roses and waxflower from Trader Joe's, and dusty miller from the garden. This was my view down the table, between two rows of candles.

The six green beeswax tapers I snapped up on big dipper's website for a song (factory rejects - some are ever so slightly curved or off-kilter), the candle sticks and vases from goodwill, glass boboches from the hardware store (not that we needed them in the end - no drips! )

The flowers lasted over a week, which was really nice!

I'm still waiting for a friend, who obligingly took pictures of each of our six candlelit courses in order, to post them on facebook before I snag them and recap the dinner here. I think it went down quite well, though - I believe I'm starting to get the hang of a more polished fete! And it was lovely to have a nice big party for a leisurely meal and celebrate the new season together.

more soon - cranking out baby t-shirts...

In honour

of my birthday, Cass created a holiday cocktail - it tastes like eggnog, which delighted this eggnog-lover who is allergic (alas) to the eggs:

The Saggitarian

1 oz coole swan

1 oz batavia arrak

.5 oz dark rum

.5 oz allspice dram (aka pimento dram)

ground cinnamon

combine all ingredients and shake over ice, then strain for a glass of holiday cheer!

A note on some of these ingredients: Batavia Arrack is a precursor of our modern rum, now considered to be the rum that sailors probably drank in the 18th century. Its ingredients remember European trade routes, as it is made from sugarcane *and* Indonesian red rice (the "east indies" meets the "indies"). It tastes like rum but with a distinctive earthy funk.

Coole swan is a dairy cream liquer. You could substitute Bailey's irish cream, but the whiskey flavour will be more pronounced in the drink.

so I can find it more easily

here's a recipe for a drink we came up with back in October - I had to scroll through a month's worth of posts on my facebook wall to find it! It definitely belongs here, where it'll be easier to access for the future. Cass is becoming quite the mixologist around here.

The Katydid:

2.25 oz vodka
1.5 oz rhuby
.75 oz grand marnier
½ capful green chartreuse
½ capful maraschino
Juice of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lime
Dash angostura bitters

Shake together over ice. Strain. Serve up in two glasses, with a maraschino cherry.

watch out - it tastes like a sweettart candy (remember those?) but it packs a punch! Drink water afterward!! =)

big day.

So the reason I haven't been posting much in the way of projects lately is because I've secretly been working on a surprise present for my friend Adrienne, who sang at our wedding and who is expecting her first child later this month. Her baby shower is today, and as I mused over what to make (love the "handmades and homemades welcome!" line on the invite!!), I happened to read this post over at Unruly Things, wherein a mother reminisced about the first days back from the hospital and how hungry she was when she was nursing, and how nice it was when friends brought her dinner.

Eureka, that's it!

Since we live in different neighbourhoods not easily accessible to each other by bus, I have made my friend and her husband about 3-4 weeks' worth of dinners, all separated into individual servings and frozen, so that she or he can take out as much as they would like at a time and just reheat.

my friend Samer says "food is love," and I couldn't agree more. Here's the love round-up for Adrienne and Gered and little Aria Vita:

a quart of acorn squash soup with sweet spices (star anise, ginger, allspice), and sesame cream (vegan, recipe from The Artful Vegan)

And then the parade of Italian comfort food begins with homemade vegan gnocchi with garlic and herbs (adapted from the sweet potato gnocchi with garlic and sage in The Millennium Cookbook); we froze on a cookie sheet and bagged individual servings of 15 gnocchi, with a little slip tucked inside each bag detailing ingredients and cooking instructions.

homemade arugula and three-cheese raviolis. Here's where I made one concession to time: I bought fresh pasta sheets for the ravioli instead of rolling my own. But I was just about out of time, only made these yesterday afternoon, so I'm sure I'll be forgiven! They are stuffed with a mixture of ground fresh arugula leaves, fat-free ricotta and fat-free feta and (not-fat-free) parmesan, with a touch of nutmeg and nutritional yeast to provide a nutty counterpoint to the cheeses.

A traditional lasagne with layers of bolognese (slow-simmered for hours on the stove, it drove me AND the neighbours crazy!), noodles, and ricotta (thickened with a bit of egg), topped with a good hearty layer of mozzarella. This photo is titled "no willpower" on my desktop as I couldn't resist tucking in to a small piece as it cooled on my table.

Another lasagne, one I haven't made in 8 or 9 years, but one of my favorites. This one comes from epicurious: Eggplant Lasagne with Parsley Pesto. It also has a garlic bechamel sauce in there, and the pesto has been mixed with ricotta. Not a tomato in sight, but such a wonderful dish, especially in the fall.

And that's it! It all just barely fits inside our cooler; good thing I checked in with her husband to make sure they have room in their freezer, eh? =) This is going to be a fun surprise!

our Midsommar traditions: floral flair

Another reason to love Midsommar: it is traditional to wear a flower crown, or flowers on your person, even if you are a grown-up. The last three hours before the party, a crack team of three of us were quickly whipping up crowns, headbands, corsages...

and boutonnieres for all the gents. Of course, it's Seattle, so you practically have to push any kind of attention-getting accessory onto people.

But the results are charming, no? That's me in the middle with two friends. We're all nearly 6' tall and as such, if you put us together, we're mistaken for relatives - or for each other, which is extra-amusing. One classmate's husband came bounding up to Natalie on the left there, in the green skirt, hugged her, and exclaimed how good it was to see her again (they've never met). She just went along with it, and then my husband, dying of laughter, pointed out that that girl was not the hostess. Ah, midsommar madness.

I keep hoping that some of my friends who had cameras will send me some more pics of everyone looking extra-darling with all these flowers! (We even broke out about a hundred golden sparklers later, to take the place of the traditional bonfire - you'd be surprised how fun it is to run around in the dark with a sparkler, even as a grown-up. It was great to see everyone making shapes and laughing together in the dark).

Happy Summer, everyone!

our Midsommar traditions: cloudberry cake

Once I decided to open our cloudberry preserves (thank you, IKEA!), I realized I wanted to be able to pretty much use up the whole jar. Even though real cloudberries aren't available to me here (not that I know of) in Seattle, I figured, what the heck, let's go for a cloudberry cake.

I made this recipe for a jam cake, adding a bit of Mexican vanilla, increasing the baking powder slightly, and cutting the crumb topping, but otherwise sticking to the instructions. Some reviewers, you will notice, said the cake was dry - GOOD. I wanted it to be dry.

I made four mini cupcakes for the two little girls who were coming, because the rest of this cake was soaked in cloudberry liquer. How much cloudberry liquer? Oh, probably a half cup or so (it's not a big cake). The night before the party a friend brought over the remainder of her cloudberry liquer from Denmark, and we started sprinkling the cake with spoonfuls of it. I kept doing this every few hours, whenever I thought of it, until the party.

This cake? Gone so fast, I should've made two. Cass didn't even get to try it - guess I'll have to find cloudberry liquer and make another one! (shucks!)

our Midsommar traditions: gravlax and herring

Hard to imagine a Midsommar party without these traditional foods. What is gravlax? Gravlax (or gravad-lax) is a dish of cured fish. Traditionally, the fish was salted and then buried in the cold ground and left to pickle/preserve in its own juices as the salt drew them out of the meat. Lacking a suitably chilly patch of permafrost, we use our fridge - and Marcus Samuelsson's recipe in Aquavit: And the New Scandinavian Cuisine. This book is dynamite. We received it for Christmas a few years ago and have absolutely LOVED every recipe we've tried. I highly recommend checking it out from your library and giving some of the dishes a go: the venison chops marinated in akvavit and juniper, with a berry chutney, is a particularly gorgeous and company-worthy dish.

Anyway, so you mix together salt, sugar, and cracked peppercorns (hence the morter and pestle; you want to crack, but not grind, the pepper), rub it into both sides of a beautiful skin-on cut of salmon (is that not a gorgeous piece of fish? I love living so near to Alaska), set it in a dish and sprinkle the remaining salt/sugar over, then cover the fish with fresh chopped dill.

It sits on the counter in a cool place for 6 hours, then goes into the fridge for 36:

When it's done, you simply rinse off the salt sludge and slice it up. We actually rinsed ours, then wrapped it in plastic wrap for another day until our party. This stops the pickling process before your salmon turns into jerky and as the meat has been cured, there's no problem wrapping it up for another day or two or three - even four, if there had been any kind of leftovers (there weren't; I barely got a scrap, myself).

And while on the subject of pickled fish, we also serve smorrebrod, a traditional open face sandwich, using this recipe from epicurious for a smorrebrod with herring in mustard sauce and pickled beets. I use Beth Hensberger's Bread Bible recipe for the Swedish Rye bread, and sneak in extra fennel, orange zest, and replace some of the water with extra molasses in mine. Then I bake it in many mini loaf pans so we can make cocktail-sized smorrebrod bites.

The beets, incidentally, kind of match the salmon for colour.Scandinavian cuisine sure is beautiful, eh?

our Midsommar traditions: black pansy sorbet

After enjoying dinner at The Herbfarm, I checked out The Herbfarm Cookbook from the library. I was so thrilled by the prospect of some of the dishes (like black pansy sorbet) that I immediately began culling Seattle for black pansy plants. I bought 3 little 6-packs, or 18 plants, three times the number of plants the cookbook advised having on hand for the recipe - and perfect estimate! When I culled all the blossoms before the party, I got 3 gently packed cups of blossoms, so I made a triple batch of this recipe.

the beautiful blossoms are ground with sugar into a paste in the food processor. Then you add a bit of water and keep grinding.

Next, you add quite a bit more water, and stir it up to make a syrup.

The fun begins when you add fresh lemon juice and the whole things turns a magenta colour - kitchen witchery, indeed!

I don't have an ice cream freezer, so I had to just pop mine in the freezer and keep scraping it up with a fork about once an hour.

The result was more of a granita than a sorbet, but how wonderful! It is sweet, pretty, and so unusual. I have a ton left; looks like we'll be eating flowers for a while!

our Midsommar traditions: may wine

This year we introduced some new traditional foods to our Midsommar dinner, and some were very special; I thought I'd tell you some more about them.

The plant above is known as Sweet Woodruff. It is a shade-loving groundcover, and yes, it is this bright green in my own garden. Now, the only problem with Sweet Woodruff is that it is an aggressive and invasive plant, and I'll soon have to start tearing bits of mine out, alas.

See all the tiny flowers there? They smell like jasmine - another plus for this plant. And they are the key ingredient in making may wine for a traditional maying celebration (or in our case, midsommar).

To make may wine, you need 24 of the little stems per bottle of wine. You don't want to use any more than this, because sweet woodruff can be toxic in higher doses, so stick to the recipe.

Now, open a bottle of a medium-sweet riesling or gewurtztraminer wine. Not too sweet, but definitely not dry. Pour out about 1/4 cup of wine to make a bit of room in the bottle. Stick your 24 blossoms in, and recork. Stick your bottle of may-wine-to-be in the fridge for two days. Be sure to strain out the blossoms as you pour your wine! We used a simple tea strainer held over each glass.

So, what does it taste like? Almost like cinnamon and celery seed have been infused into your wine. It's incredible! And it was a great pairing for our opening offerings: foie gras on toast with cloudberry preserves and home-cured gravlax (pictures forthcoming there).

You can also add a bottle of champagne to your bottle of may wine, and float some wild strawberries in the mix, you have a traditional may punch!

aftermath

This is all that remained of the best dinner party I think we've thrown. Of course (typical!) forgot to take pictures throughout it. One little apple galette has to bear witness to a 5 1/2 hour meal for nine. Great company (rowdy! fun!), great contributions (Katie brought a delicious local cheese and wine; Milan brought one back from Switzerland and wine; Matt and Laura brought fresh, homemade baguette; Jacinthe and Jeff brought three bottles of wine), and a super-luxurious winter meal.

Why so special? Part of it was what we ate. Though it was a bit of a risk using all new-to-us recipes, everything turned out perfectly - and came together on time.

First course (and the inspiration for the entire meal): foie gras from Le Petit Schiere in Paris on toast points with tokay gelee

Second course: chestnut and sherry soup with white truffle oil (instead of the topping in this recipe)

Main course: braised rabbit in grainy mustard sauce and brussel sprouts with wild mushrooms and fried shallots. I cut the brussel sprouts into chiffonade instead of roasting them whole. Cut the roasting time and made for a nice light texture. The rabbit was AMAZING. Might also have helped that my butcher got fresh (not frozen) rabbits in the same day that I needed them. And the brussel sprouts? Funny coincidence. Turns out that no one at that dinner likes brussel sprouts normally (including Cass and I); I am on a mission to learn to appreciate them. And this dish? Disappeared rapidly. Everyone exclaimed that it was the first time they'd enjoyed brussel sprouts. Can't argue with that!

Dessert: apple galettes with walnut paste (I substituted walnut paste both to fit with the loose "Normandy" theme of the dinner, and because I'm honestly not a huge fan of almond paste. I simply substituted walnuts for the almonds in this almond paste recipe - a bit oily to handle, but worked perfectly in the recipe.) I cut the caramel sauce, at Cass' insistence. Also, as my puff pastry came in rather small sheets so that, even with rolling it out, I couldn't fit five 5"-diameter rounds on each piece, my tarts were quite small. I obviously had to arrange the slices in a different manner because I couldn't get a fan of slices to fit on the top of the tart. Also, I cut the apples very thin so that they would cook through properly (see the reviews on the recipe; it seemed many had problems with this). I also didn't bother to remove the peels.

And to finish? 1984 Calvados we brought back from La Mere Poulard on Le Mont St. Michel.

Vive la France, non?

it's that time again!

Ah, the Midsommar smorgasbord. Sorry I haven't been around - I finished grading my students' papers and immediately had to get started on this. I've been baking and pickling for days to get everything done (the beets needed 48 hours, the gravlax 42, the terrine 12+, the herring 4, etc...) so how rewarding that Matt (who lived for a time in Sweden) and Mandy came this year and gave us props for authenticity. Nice!

the spread, from top:

crockpot contains yellow pea soup with mustard, tumeric, and white wine

to the left (clear glass bowl and white dish) = herring in mustard sauce and pickled beets

coming down (glass jar and white plate) = mustard dill sauce and gravlax

moving right (cake stand, white serving dish, teal-edged plate) = swedish rye and dill havarti, sausage and slice cucumbers, port salut cheese

further down, center and left (rippled glass tray and metal bowl) = goat cheese and tomato terrine with roasted garlic, arugula, basil and the chopped salad which accompanies it

left (white serving dish) = steamed asparagus (also enjoyed with the dill mustard sauce)

and finally: swedish meatballs, turnip and potato mash, milk gravy, lingonberries

black licorice tucked into a corner, but the salmiakki and akvavit didn't get pictured.

also not seen: dessert! A giant bowl of fresh sliced strawberries, lightly sugared, whipped cream with a touch of our mexican vanilla (Nam-hun's suggestion, and a good one), and Anna's ginger thins.

We ate, we drank, some of us got to play a viking game that's kind of like lawn bowling. At the end of the evening, we gave away bunches of fresh rosemary from our garden tied with linen twine. Its seemed doubly appropriate, both for its culinary attributes and its folkloric associations - which, if you don't remember your Hamlet, allow me to quote for you, as Shakespeare references this language of plants in Ophelia's famous mad speech: "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember." It seemed a fitting favour for two epicures' going-away party.

here's to you, friends. I will miss you, deeply.

skal!

happy halloween!

last weekend we had a pumpkin carving party. We had some 15 (more?) people, and 11 carved pumpkins at the end. I made a feast, we stuffed ourselves, and got to carving. I think the best part of the evening was being told, "This is so disgustingly cute, it really shouldn't be this much fun."

So there you have it. Proud to be bringing the joy back to graduate students and young professionals everywhere. That's right, people, it's time to kick back, risk looking silly, and enjoy yourselves!

Happy Halloween!