Potato Roll

Hi, today just a quick recipe - or actually, more like an idea. Basically, you just make a portion of mashed potatoes and flatten it out, add some filling and roll it up. That's it. I won't tell you how to make the mash, because I guess you can figure that out. Just make sure it's not too thin or runny. The filling I made was simply mixing canned tuna, baked red peppers, chopped green olives and a couple of boiled eggs which were all mixed together with a bit of mayo and tasted for salt and pepper. Once you have the filling and the mash, you're ready to go.

On a piece of oven paper you just pour out your cooled-off mash and then with your hands or a spatula you start flattening it until you have a rectangular shape about 1 cm thick. I'm sure your kids will find this task exciting. Get them helping. Then spread out the filling on top but make sure you don't put it all the way out to the edge or it will spill out when you roll it.

Carefully roll it by lifting up on the oven paper. It's not hard at all. Trim the ends for a prettier result or close them off with some extra mash. Place in the fridge until you need to serve it and enjoy it cold with a bit of mayo on the side or spread out in a thin layer over the roll. Enjoy

Woodshade Organics

You can't bribe me... except with food! And that's just what my sister did. She's working for an organic confectionary in Denmark called Woodshade Organics. They produce filled chocolates, raw marzipan, soft nougat and lots of other sweets and candy related products - all 100% organic. And every now and again she sends me some samples of their products to taste. So why not share my thoughts with the readers of this blog and do a bit of shameless promotion for their amazing products. Hopefully, that way she'll keep sending me stuff (But don't think I'm only praising them for personal reasons. They have actually won several prizes for their product).

I'll start out with a few products I received some time back and which are long gone. The first was a small box of mixed filled confectionery. Each handmade piece was a treat. In fact, they were so delicious that they had disappeared before it even occurred to me to write down my opinion about them (Sister, if you read this, you'd better send me a bigger box next time so I can give you a more detailed opinion... he he).

Also, she sent me a small bag called RAW Cacao Nibs containing 75g of raw, dried cocoa beans, crushed into small bits. The first taste of the raw bean was quite strange as I expected it to taste more like chocolate. Instead it was quite bitter and earthy at first, almost like coffee beans. But then a taste of a fruity cocoa too over the more I chewed it, and left a strange desire to have some more. I'm sure it's an acquired taste, but most people I offered to try it all agreed it was quite unusual at first but then all asked me for more. I read up on it and it turns out that raw cocoa beans are very healthy and good for you, and it should be mentioned that it's also a stimulant like coffee. Just a few nibbles are enough to give you a boost. My final verdict: It's a keeper!

Here are some of the other products she sent. I haven't opened the cocoa powder on the left yet, so I can't really comment. The box on the right contains (or at least what's left of it) 'nougat', a praline mix of chocolate and hazelnuts. I'm not really a big fan of nougat, or at least until I tried this. I usually associated the nougat I had in Denmark with a inferior kind of overly sweet and fatty chocolate which was used as a cheap filler in cheap chocolate pralines. But this nougat seems to have stricken a fine balance of sweetness and the nuttiness of the hazelnuts. The almost empty box speaks for itself.

And then their marzipan. Marzipan is a big thing in Denmark. We love it and put it in pies, cakes, ice cream and the traditional Scandinavian birthday/wedding/funeral cake, Kransekage, is made of baked marzipan rings stacked on top of each other to make a tall cone. And come Christmas and the Danes just go wild in marzipan, making small eatable figures with their children of the raw marzipan. And I'm a big fan of marzipan, so my expectations were high when I received Woodshade's award-winning organic marzipan. And I wasn't disappointed. Again, top products are all about getting a very fine balance right. And I think that's what Woodshade's Raw Marcipan manages just that. It's not too sweet like some marzipan I've tried but has a very full well-rounded flavour of almonds (65%). Perhaps because they use a mixture of cane sugar and honey to sweeten the Italian almonds. The result is a less synthetic and sharp sweetness which you find in some cheaper brands, but a more complete experience which carries, but doesn't dominate, the flavour of almonds. The taste seems to be wider and lingers more pleasantly in the mouth. They have also got the consistency just right. It's soft and moist like playdough but when you bite in to it you feel the crunch from the almond flour. I can't really speak highly enough of this product. Not just because I got it for free. But this product really is worth the money you spend.

Now, just this morning I received a new product: Their licorice marzipan. I've noticed that licorice is now popping up in all kinds of products from ice cream to chocolate. Some times with great success, other times not so much. I was a bit worried that licorice marzipan would fall in the latter category. In my mind the two flavours just don't seem to mix. But now that I've tried it I might have to rethink it. Admitted, the first bit was rather confusing. When you have certain preconceptions about how some food is suppose to taste you sometimes need a bit of convincing before you see the point. And this was perhaps such a case. Cutting a small bit off, it had an almost smokey smell to it. Then you bit into it and the first impression is one of reassurance as your brain tells you that it's just normal marzipan. The texture and the first hit of sweetness is very similar to Woodshade's regular raw marzipan. But then it transforms into something quite unfamiliar. More than licorice I'd describe the second wave of taste closer to that of walnuts, perhaps with an undertone of pepper. Then finally you get the licorice coming through. It's quite a ride and hard to explain. I guess you'll just have to try for yourself. It's very good, but if I should have one tiny objection it's perhaps that I don't yet see it's application for other than just eating it raw as it is. Perhaps it's just because I'm used to marzipan being quite versatile, because there's absolutely nothing wrong in eating it just as it is.

If you want to know more about Woodshade Organics, I recommend you visit their homepage http://www.woodshade.dk/ . It's in English, Danish and German.

Tortillitas de Camarones - Shrimp Pancake?

This recipe is one of my girlfriend's favourites. It's a dish from the South of Spain where they excel in frying all kinds of fish and seafood. It's really nothing more than a pancake with some baby shrimp mixed into the batter. Here's what you need:

1 small onion, spring onion preferred.

1 small cup of flour ( the original recipe calls for chickpea flower, which makes the tortillita more crunchy.

1 egg

1 tbsp freshly chopped parsley

1 small pinch of saffron

Salt to taste

Pinch of cayenne

200g cooked baby shrimp

1.5dl. milk

Frying oil

I didn't have spring onion so I decided to finely chop and lightly fry a small normal onion for a few minutes, just enough to take the edge off its sharpness.

Mix the rest of the ingredients with the fried onion.

Add the baby shrimp and milk. Stir to a batter.

Heat up a frying pan, add the oil and fry the tortillitas as you would fry small pancakes. You can make one and see if you need to adjust for salt.

Leave the on a paper towel to absorb some of the excess grease. Try a bite and dream away to the south of Spain...

Lemonade - when wife gives you lemons...

Madrid is so damn hot these days so you're constantly looking for ways to refresh yourself... and I think that with this lemonade I've found the formula. I went and bought the best sun-ripened lemons I could find and then went home and made this refreshing lemonade. There're no tricks really. It's lemons, brown sugar and water. That's it. Well, of course there are always a few tricks, but this is really straight forward.

Ingredients:

6 sun-ripened lemons, the sweeter the better

3-6 tbsp brown sugar (muscovado for example). Really, you need to "add to taste"

Water to taste

Ice cubes when you want it really fresh

Press and roll the lemons with the palm of your hand before squeezing them. This makes the process easier.

Pour the lemon juice through a strainer into a jar or a bottle. Add the brown the sugar.

Shake well until all the sugar is dissolved.

Crush some ice and dilute the lemonade with water to taste. Ahh... refreshing!!!

Fried Zucchini Flowers

Summer time and the zucchinis are in full bloom. I'm so lucky that my girlfriend's parents are zucchini fanatics. Not so much because I like zucchinis (which, to be honest, I find a mildly boring vegetable), but because I have access to all the zucchini flowers I can pick. Zucchinis have two types of flowers: those which have a thick stem and which will turn into zucchinis, and those with a thin stem which are the "male" flowers and are only good for pollination... almost! Because you can also eat these. It's apparently a big thing in Italy, where apart from just frying them like I did, they also stuff them with cheese and herbs. Try it for yourself:

some 12-20 zucchini flowers

1 egg

1 dl. of water

1 dl. flour

pinch of salt

pinch of cayenne

Some neutral oil for frying

Start by mixing the batter (all the ingredients apart from the flowers). Leave it to rest in the fridge while preparing the flowers.

You can either wash them and leave them to dry if you aren't sure how clean they are. I picked mine directly from their organic garden so I just brushed off any small insect I might come across. Then gently open the flowers and remove the stamen as it's quite bitter (I've read). It snaps off easily. Trim the stem back to a centimeter and break off those green leafs from the base of the flower.

Heat up a good amount of neutral oil on a non-stick frying pan. Dip the dry flowers in the batter and place them directly into the hot oil.

Fry them for a minute on one side then or until they look golden and crispy, then turn them.

Place on a paper towel to absorb the excess oil. Eat while warm and crispy.

Rabbit's Liver Snack

I bought a rabbit recently to use in a Paella and it came with these two good-looking chunks of liver which I thought would be a shame to throw away. So I decide to make a small tapas to start the meal. Here's how:

Ingredients:

Rabbit's Liver

1 -2 tbsp Lemon Juice

Pinch of thyme

Salt, pepper

Olive oil

Baguette

First, marinate the livers in lemon juice, thyme and a pinch of salt for about 20 minutes. Then slice them.

Heat up the oil in a frying pan until it's very hot (when you start to see the first whisk of smoke), and then just fry them very fast. Add freshly chopped parsley and be generous with the black pepper. You might also want to add a little flaky sea salt. Slice the bread, place the liver on top and drizzle with the oil from the frying pan. Absolutely delicious...