Blood Orange Cake (gluten-free)

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Signe

A hearty and happy new year to you all. I’ve started the year as I intend to carry on – having my cake and eating it. You won’t find any self-abnegation in the Johansen household and as January sees the bodacious blood orange in its seasonal prime, I stock up on them daily (sometimes twice a day) from Andreas Fruit & Vegetables – the best greengrocer in London who also delivers to my local supermarket in Bloomsbury. I eat these crimson babies drizzled with pomegranate molasses on Greek Yoghurt most mornings throughout the new year and yesterday used a squirt of blood orange in a little larder cake rustled up from a few odds and ends lurking in the fridge and cupboards.

See what you think. Obviously if you don’t have blood oranges simply use oranges, or try lemons, limes or bergamots for a citrus twist. I like Grand Marnier but you may not in which case omit the booze or substitute with what you like.

Cake and booze. What more can a girl as for? Here’s to a great year!

Cake

  • 200g Self-Raising Gluten-Free Flour (I used Dove’s Farm)
  • 150g Golden Caster Sugar
  • 50g Ground Almonds
  • 250ml Greek Yoghurt
  • 125ml Mild Olive Oil or Rapeseed Oil
  • 3 Medium Eggs
  • 2 tbsp Honey
  • 2 tbsp Grand Marnier
  • 1 tsp Orange Blossom Water
  • Zest of 1 Blood Orange (save the juice for the icing)
  • 1/2 tsp Fine Sea Salt

Icing

  • 250g (or thereabouts) Icing Sugar
  • Juice of 1/2 Blood Orange
  • 1 tsp Grand Marnier (keep the rest for swilling later)

Method

Preheat oven to 170 C. Lightly oil a 23cm round cake tin and dust with gluten-free flour.

In a medium-large mixing bowl place the flouyr, sugar and almonds. Stir a little so you don’t end up with one almondy end of the cake and a sugary end. Make a well in the middle and pop all the remaining cake ingredients in. Using n electric hand blender or your standing mixer, blitz all the ingredients for 1 minutes until you a have a smooth, thick batter.

Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Allow the cake to cool on a wire rack before making the icing. Place the icing sugar in a bowl and stir in the blood orange juice along with a smidge of Grand Marnier using a fork or small whisk. If you’re lucky you will have a deep crimson orange that will give you pink icing. If not the flavour will still be excellent and your boyfriend will look slightly less embarrassed eating it.

Ice the cake by drizzling the icing over. If it’s quite runny then just add a little more icing sugar or ice in stages. It will set in a cool room quite quickly so you can layer icing over it until you have the consistency you like. The cake will keep for a few days in an airtight tin or container.

Eat.

 

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Winter Wonderland In Røros, Norway

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Scandilicious

If only winter were this glamorous.

Er, well it would help if we had a winter to speak of in Britain rather than squalling winds we’re experiencing this week!

Having spent fifteen years growing up in Norway the whole notion of winter wonderland kinda means six long months of flumping, yes flumping around in layers of grey thermals, cute but itchy wool socks, wool hats to wreak havoc with your hair, traditional Marius jumpers knitted by your nan forty years ago (think Sara Lund’s fetching woolen ones in The Killing), not to mention giant snow boots and a layer of god-awful Gore-Tex to shield you from arctic winds. That’s the reality of winter in Nordic countries folks.

Forget sexy snow bunny, think giant, waddling yeti from October til March. Kids look adorable in all those woolen layers, adults less so. It’s a wonder the birth rate in Nordic countries doesn’t plummet between June and March each year, all that itchy wool is the most ingenious prophylactic to getting frisky.

Anyway. Last December I returned to Norway on a press trip and -18 degrees celsius weather. The cold was so discombobulating my cheeks froze and for a few minutes I wondered what the hell I was doing back on terra norvegia. Reader, the cold and I do not get along. Much as this girl loves the aestethics of snow and skiing, I would much rather bask in the sea and soak up the sun than flump around in minus anything degrees. Plus, feeling like an itchy, heavy-footed yeti doesn’t exactly make one want to leap with joy. Your cheeks may look rosy but you just feel BIG.

Shows what 11 years of living in a temperate climate does to you. And this wasn’t even as cold as it can get in central Norway – as a kid I had heard this little town in central Norway called Røros was famous for holding the record of coldest ever temperature south of Finnmark, a refreshing – 50.4 degrees celsius.

That’s MINUS 50.4 degrees. Unfathomable really. What compels polar explorers to spend months in such temperatures is completely beyond me. Norwegians get very excited about the cold. Perhaps that’s what keeps the birth rate up

So back to Røros. A town in central Norway that gets rather chilly in winter but also known for its picturesque wooden buildings and now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Røros is echt winter wonderland, replete with markets and festive cheer in the run-up to jul (as we say in ‘Weegie). And plenty of delicious, warming gløgg.

Back in Norway for the first time in a year and against my better, grumpy nature I was actually excited to see proper winter, and lots of appropriately clad winter folk (having left the cold spell in London where people seem to think wearing ghastly Uggs in snow is sensible). Also the country doesn’t grind to a halt when it snows, and after the press started reporting on potential food shortages across the UK I was reassured to find Norwegians still knew how to boss winter into submission.

It was an invigorating trip. Plenty of cold, dry air which strangely doesn’t feel as cold as the damp air back in Britain, adrenaline-pumping outdoor activities and great food. Local reindeer served with chanterelles and mandelpoteter (almond potatoes) at Vertshuset Røros was a particular highlight for me. It’s hard to find reindeer meat back in the UK and I miss this delicate, tender game meat. Vertshuset itself is old-school Norwegian with its bold red exterior and warm, cosy wooden interior. I’d love to go back and stay there for a few days. Next year!

We also met local producers – the region has a growing Slow Food movement which is encouraging, and Røros itself offers much more than the usual schmaltzy tourist experience with its quaint Christmas market, jolly, friendly locals and lots of hand-knitted wool items made from Røros wool – some of the finest in the country.

Feeling a bit nostalgic for Norwegian winters and rather pathetically drowning in work at the moment I thought I’d share some of the photos from our trip. Obviously I’m biased but I couldn’t recommend a visit to Røros more highly and would definitely return, if only for a reprise of the dog-sledding at Alaskan Husky Tours – the most fun I’ve had outdoors in years. If you don’t believe me, watch Tim Hayward’s report on our dog-sledding expedition. That’s what winter is about.

Hope you like the snapshots of festive Røros and its Winter Wonderland folks, and normal service will resume later this week with a round-up of 2011 cookbooks and a few Scandi Christmas baking recipes too. Better too late than never…

Traditional Røros building

The typography geek in me *loves* this sign

A typical Scandinavian Spark sled, beats BoJo bikes any day

How to use up all that ice...

Pretty wreaths

Slippers made from local Røros wool (photo courtesy of Hanne Knudsen)

A Norwegian Nisse! (cute but capricious little elf)

We love our nisse

Norwegian yule decorations

Couldn't resist snapping this pic could I?

Alaskan Husky Tours HQ

If my fingers weren't so frozen I would have been tempted to take one of these home...

Husky hiding from the cold

Raring to go!

Not really the recommended dog-sledding technique...

...and that grizzly Tim Hayward shows how it's done

Sami lavvu tent

Inside the lavvu

Blueberry soup with spiced sour cream

Røros at night

 

Dogsledding at Alaskan Husky Tours:

www.huskytour.net

Run by Ketil Reitan, world leading expert in dogsledding

Cost per person from NOK 890

 

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Autumnal Muffins With Stilton, Squash, Walnuts & Sage

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Signe

Stilton, Squash, Walnut & Sage Muffins

Ahh autumn. London’s trees, with their unusually rich hues of gold, burnished orange and moody auburn bear more of a passing resemblance to New England this year than any I can remember. Seeing Regent’s Park earlier in the week the romantic softie in me felt suddenly overcome by all the pretty colours on the trees. And no, my morning cuppa tea had not been spiked thankyouverymuch.

As a kid I really dreaded autumn, for all the predictable reasons you do when growing up. End of careless summers spent in the States – New England as it happens – back to boring school, the long Norwegian winter ahead, clocks going back, nothing to look forward to til, well, the following June when school finished. Bleak really.

Being a feckless, temperamental sort I haven’t quite overcome that sense of overwhelming doom when the leaves start turning. But I do have a newfound appreciation of the good things autumn brings us. Which might explain the unexpected swoon at seeing all those colours in the park the other day. Or perhaps I just need to take a vitamin supplement.

But enough musing and on to the recipe. These little beauties are really autumn in a muffin – strong, robust cheese such as stilton and pungent, heady sage mixed with perky butternut squash and crunchy, mellow walnuts. I do a variation on this theme now every autumn – last year it was with pumpkin and cheddar, this year stilton and squash. In our straitened times these savoury muffins make a delicious addition to any lunchbox, or as a sidekick to soups, salads and midweek suppers.

Do give them a try, I reckon bonfire night would be greatly improved with some cheese-y muffins and a glass of hot buttered rum.

Stilton, Squash, Walnut & Sage Muffins close-up

Autumn in a muffin

Perfect accompaniment to a bowl of soup, with a crunchy salad or as an afternoon snack

Stilton, Squash, Walnut & Sage Savoury Muffins Recipe:

Makes 12 pretty muffins

Ingredients:

  • 150g refined spelt flour
  • 100g wholemeal spelt flour
  • 50g oat bran
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cayenne pepper
  • 1/4 whole nutmeg, finely grated
  • 8 sprigs of sage, roughly torn, plus 4 whole ones for scattering on a few muffins
  • 100ml plain yoghurt
  • 50g melted butter
  • 2 medium eggs
  • 1 generous squirt of mild honey
  • 1 tsp English mustard
  • 250g butternut squash, roughly grated
  • 100g stilton cheese, broken into 1cm chunks
  • handful of walnut pieces
  • extra cheese of your choice for sprinkling on top of the muffins

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190 C. You will need a 12x medium-sized muffin tin. Line the muffin tin with squares of parchment paper or paper muffin cases.

In a large bowl mix all the dry ingredients and stir through with a large spoon to distribute the raising agents. In a medium bowl mix the yoghurt with the melted butter. Crack the eggs into a cup and beat with a fork. Add the honey and mustard to the eggs and stir again so you distribute the honey and mustard evenly.

Make a well in the middle of the larger bowl with the dry ingredients and pour in all the liquid ingredients. Stir through about eight times using a large spoon, scooping in figure-of-eight motions so you incorporate all the ingredients. Add the butternut squash, stir 2-3 times and then finally add the stilton and the walnuts. Stir through a few more times so you have an even mixture.

Use a tablespoon or ice cream scoop and distribute the muffin mixture equally between the 12 muffin cups. Sprinkle with extra cheese if you wish, some extra stilton or parmesan for example. Then place a few sage leaves on some of the muffins.

Bake on the upper middle shelf of the oven for 20 or so minutes, until the muffins look golden-brown and feel quite firm to the touch. Eat while warm. These savoury muffins keep well for a few days. Simply wrap in clingfilm or keep them in an airtight container. They make a fab alternative to a slice of bread with soup or with a crunchy autumn/winter salad.

 

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Gravlaks (dill-cured salmon)

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Signe

Gravlaks (salmon cured with dill, spices, sea salt and sugar) on Peter's Yard sourdough crispbread

While there always seems to be a frenzied rush this time of year to come up with the most ghoulish recipe for Hallowe’en I’ve been musing on the joys of that other orange-hued foodstuff: salmon.

Nothing makes me happier than a really good piece of oily fish. Seriously. Chock-full of omega fatty acids to keep your brain sprightly, your heart ticking (not to mention your hair, skin, nails growing & glowing), salmon is the best mood-enhancer as we head into the dark days of winter. Beats prozac any day.

So in between the pumpkin-stuffing and many baking experiments this autumn I’ve been curing away in my dinky kitchen. A Var salmon was delivered recently from the kind folks at Severn Wye, and although I had in my mind expected a couple of samples of smoked fish – lo and behold the entire fish arrived:

Var Salmon from Severn Wye

Quite the bruiser, eh?

Out came the fish filleting knife and I proceeded to elegantly (well, ish) fillet the salmon and made the most delicious gravlaks out of it. That’s gravadlax to those of you more familiar with the Swedish spelling. Us ‘Weegies call it gravlaks. This quintessential Scandinavian dish of salmon cured in dill, sea salt, sugar is so popular, every time I’ve made it during cookery classes or demos over the summer it’s  been the biggest crowd-pleaser. And you can see why – gravadlax from the supermarket just doesn’t have a patch on the homemade stuff so if you’re bored of stuffing pumpkins and other lurid Hallowe’en nonsense then give this a go.

The recipe I’ve shared with you here is from my book Scandilicious: Secrets of Scandinavian Cooking (Saltyard Books) and it’s super-duper easy to make. Works a treat for lazy brunches on the weekend just spread on Peter’s Yard sourdough crispbread, or keep in the freezer for midweek suppers. And although I loathe mentioning Christmas so early, if you are entertaining a large group of people then this might prove a lot more economical than buying in your dill-cured fish. Did I mention it tastes delicious too?

Gravlaks on Peter's Yard crispbread

What’s your take on curing fish? Do you like gravlaks/gravadlax? There are myriad ways of making it, adding some booze to the cure is always a winner – a snifter of whisky, brandy or gin will give your salmon a little extra depth of flavour. And of course you can vary the spices. Keep the salt/sugar ratio as specified here though, too much salt and that’s all you end up tasting. The sugar calibrates the flavour so you get the best of the dill, spices and the salted salmon.

From Scandilicious: Secrets of Scandinavian Cooking (a bargainous £10 on Amazon right now)

Gravlaks with dill mustard sauce*

 (* Ahem. I actually prefer this naked, or with a little freshly grated horseradish on top and some pickled beetroot)

The key to this classic Scandinavian dish is an exceptionally fresh fillet of salmon. If in doubt, freeze the fillet for 24 hours to kill any bacteria, then defrost it. This traditional gravlaks cure is slightly more sweet than salty, but you can always use equal quantities of sugar and salt if you prefer. If you’re feeling adventurous, try adding beetroot, alcohol (aquavit, gin or vodka) or juniper berries to the cure.

 Makes enough for 12-14 starters or 6-8 smörgåsbord brunchers

  • 1½kg salmon fillet, cut in half
  • 1 tbsp white peppercorns
  • 2 tbsp coriander seeds
  • 100g granulated sugar
  • 75g sea salt
  • 3 x 15g pack dill, chopped (for the cure)
  • 1 x 15g pack dill, chopped (to serve)

Dill mustard sauce

  • 1 x 15g pack dill
  • 3 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 3 tbsp white wine or cider vinegar
  • 3 tbsp demerara sugar
  • 3 tbsp mustard
  • ½ tsp salt

Method:

Dry the salmon, check for pinbones and then place both fillet pieces side by side, skin down. Crush the white pepper and coriander with a pestle and mortar and then mix in a small bowl with the sugar and salt. Spread the dill over the skinless side of the fillet halves, then spread the spiced sugar and salt in a layer on top. Sandwich both fillets together so that the the dill spice mixture is in the middle and the skin is outermost. Cover any exposed surface of salmon with any dill and spice mixture that tumbles out. Wrap very tightly in two layers of clingfilm and place in a small roasting tin to catch the brine that escapes the fish as it cures. Refrigerate for a minimum of 24 hours and up to 48 hours.

The dill mustard sauce is very easy to make. You just whizz up all the ingredients in a blender. You can then either use it straight away or keep it in an airtight glass jar in the fridge for a week or so.

When the gravlaks has had time to cure, simply take it out of the fridge, remove the clingfilm, wipe the fillet halves clean of the herby spiced salt with a paper towel, pat dry and put on a board, skin down. Put a layer of chopped dill on the skinless side of each fillet and press down as much as you can without squashing the fish. Slice on the diagonal from the tail towards the middle of the fillet and serve with hot new potatoes, rye or sourdough bread and dill mustard sauce.

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Nordic Masterclass and Tasting at Abergavenny Food Festival

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Signe

Gravlaks: a true Scandi favourite (photo by Debi Treloar, copyright Saltyard Books)

Ahh…Abergavenny. My favourite food festival. It’s packed with great stalls, producers, speakers, classes and debates, not to mention tutored tastings. This is the food festival as village fête: friendly, fun and replete with delicious food everywhere you turn.

This year I’m lucky enough to be giving not only a Nordic Masterclass but Tutored Tasting in all things Nordic at Abergavenny. The fab Trina Hahnemann is my sidekick and we’ll both be signing our cookbooks after each event.

If you’re planning on a visit to the festival anytime over the weekend of September 17th and 18th I thought I’d share with you the menu for both our events. If the weather provides I may even don a Sarah Lund-esque jumper. Though mine’s Norwegian, not from the Faroe Islands I’m afraid.

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Chocolate Hazelnut Brownies

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Signe

Chocolate Hazelnut Brownies

Brownies. What defines them? In recent years they’ve become ubiquitous here in the UK and to be honest, most of what you see is ersatz. The brownies you see this side of the Atlantic tend to be either slabs of barely cooked, oozing, molten, chocolate fudge bordering on the grotesque, or a thin-ish, cake-ish slice of dark chocolate-ish cake with an identity crisis. Iced brownies are a complete travesty so let’s not even go there.

The brownies I recall from summers spent in New England were neither gooey nor cakey. That’s just a false dichotomy folks. They were also nowhere near 5 cm tall, as seems to be the current vogue here, nor did they contain 500 g of sugar – I’m looking at you Nigella – in one single traybake. A fast-track to diabetes if there ever was one…

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Dark Chocolate And Orange Marmalade Quick Bread

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Signe
Dark Chocolate and Orange Marmalade Quick Bread

Dark Chocolate and Orange Marmalade Quick Bread

Need a spot of baking inspiration this weekend?

How about a squidgy and utterly more-ish dark chocolate and orange marmalade quick bread! Americans are great quick bread bakers and basically they’re just cakes baked in a loaf tin using raising agents such as baking powder and/or bicarbonate of soda instead of yeast. My predilection for loaf cakes stems from childhood birthdays when Mama J baked me a chocolate cake from a packet (always amplified with an extra spoonful of cocoa powder) in a loaf tin, slathered it with chocolate buttercream and decorated with Freia Non-Stop (Norway’s answer to Smarties). It’s just a riff on good old chocolate cake baked in a cake tin but somehow much, much more satisfying.

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A Scandi Midsummer Feast

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Signe

North Sea Prawn

Prawns, Lemon & Norwegian Mayo (from a tube no less)

Prawn Skagen Crisps on Peter's Yard ace sourdough crispbread

Wye Valley Strawberries & Rodda's Cornish Clotted Cream

Midsummer is traditionally marked across all the Scandinavian countries with celebrations, festivals and even bonfires – in some countries the festivities go on for the entire week of summer solstice, in others you’ll find the feasting restricted to the 21st or 23rd of June.

Flowers are picked, good food is shared and there is a steady trickle of booze to lubricate everyone well into the morning. Songs are sung and as long as the weather holds, much of the midsummer celebrations take place outdoors. Because it’s light virtually 24 hours at this time of year you don’t sleep much – something I relished as a child, using the excuse of midsummer insomnia to read all my favourite comic books late into the night, not to mention the excuse to snack on strawberries from my grandparents’ strawberry patch on their farm.

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Hansen & Lydersen smoked salmon

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Signe

Hansen & Lydersen smoked salmon, creme fraiche and dill canape at The Albion (photo taken by Neil Davey)

“The Best Scandinavians” according to my mother “are always the ones living outside Scandinavia.”

As an Anglo-American married to a Norwegian for nearly 40 years this has been a common refrain from the long-suffering Mama Johansen. She-who-must-be-obeyed would roll her steely grey eyes at the comedy of my father’s immediate family – most notably Papa Johansen’s charmingly eccentric sisters. It made my mother and I a little uncomfortable listening to their continual exclamations of Norwegian pride and how Norway was the best in absolutely everything.

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Competition Time…Win Six Iittala Coffee Cups And Saucers!

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Signe

Win six Iittala Korento coffee/tea cups and matching saucers. The Korento range is Iittala's latest launch and I love their bold, summery pattern of flowers and dragonflies

One of the things I miss most about living in Norway is the time-honoured tradition of sitting down and eating cake in the afternoon whilst enjoying a cup of strong coffee or tea. My grandmother always made sure there was a slice of something sweet to pick her up around 4pm, and if she didn’t have a cake already baked there was always the sour cream and vanilla waffle batter on standby for when guests dropped in at short notice.

If you’ve read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy you’ll be familiar with how much coffee we drink in Scandinavia. Someone once quoted me a statistic that more coffee is consumed per capita in this tiny region than anywhere else on the planet. Who knows if that’s true but we do love our caffeine!

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