Brownie Batter Dip

Brownie Batter Dip

Brownie Batter Dip, I kid you not, there is such a thing. A delicious, creamy, chocolaty dip perfect for all chocoholics out there. It's extremely easy to make, and a sinful way to eat apple and pretzels. Like you need an excuse to eat apples and pretzels.

Ingredients:

• 110 g (1 stick) butter, salted and melted
• 150g sugar
• 65 g all-purpose flour
• 30 g cocoa powder (I used Valrhona)
• 125 ml plain non-fat yogurt 
• 1 pinch salt
• ½ teaspoon vanilla paste
• 1 tablespoon cold, strong brewed coffee
• colorful sprinkles

Directions:

Whisk the melted butter with sugar, and vanilla until combined. Add cocoa, flour, salt and coffee, mix until combined. Mix in yogurt, whipping it in with a hand mixer, for a creamy and soft dip. 

Put the sprinkles on top and serve the dip with sliced apples and pretzels. 

Enjoy!

White Cream Sauce with Tarragon

White Cream Sauce with Tarragon 

This tarragon sauce is my favorite sauce to serve with baked salmon, often I serve it with rice and fennel salad. It might be a pale plate of food, but it is packed with flavors, and truly a meal worthy of a King or Queen.

Serves 4-6.

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, diced
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 knorr fish stock cube
• ¼ cup (½ dl) white wine
• 1 cup (2½ dl) heavy whipping cream
• 1-2 teaspoons tarragon 
• salt and white pepper to taste

Directions:

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat, cook the onions in the oil until translucent. Add the wine, cream, tarragon and fish stock, and bring it to a boil. Let the sauce simmer for a few minutes. Season with salt and white pepper.

Serve the sauce with baked salmon or another fish.

Enjoy!

Danish Hamburger - Dansk Hakkebøf

Danish hamburger or Hakkebøf med bløde løg, is a traditional danish dish. Normally it is served with a brown gravy made with the dripping from the frying of the hamburger and onions. I rarely make brown gravy, but my mom always made it, she put the onions in the gravy, making it extra yummy. But if you want to indulge you can serve the hamburger with béarnaise sauce.

A hamburger/hakkebøf is a cheaper take on a steak dinner, great for a weeknight.

Serves 3-4.

Ingredients:

• 1 Ib (450 g) ground beef (7-10% fat)
• salt
• freshly ground pepper
• 2 large onions
• oil for frying

Directions:

Form 3-4 round hamburgers season with salt freshly ground pepper. Fry them in a little oil or butter on a large frying pan for 5-7 minutes on each side.

Peel the onion and slices them thinly. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat, Fry the onions until they get soft, translucent and get some golden caramelizing. Season with salt. Add a splash of water to prevent to much browning.

Serve the hamburgers with boiled potatoes, the soft onions and petit green peas. 

Enjoy!

Overnight Bread

Overnight Bread

Bread will always be my kryptonite. After a long pause in my bread baking, I started up again with this simple overnight bread. 

Great tasting bread with a good crispy crust. An easier take on a sourdough bread, when you don't have time to bake a Basic Country bread a la Tartine. 

Makes 2 small round loafs.

Ingredients:

• 150 g whole wheat flour
• 500 g all-purpose flour
• 500 ml water
• 5 g live yeast (about ½ teaspoon dry yeast)
• 50 ml sourdough (leaven)
• 15 g salt

Directions:

Leaven:

Feed your sourdough or leaven the night(about 8-10 hours) before you want to start making the dough. 

To test leaven's readiness, drop a spoonful into a bowl of room-temperature water. If it sinks, it is not ready and needs more time to ferment and ripen. If it floats, it's ready to use. As it develops, the smell will change from ripe and sour to sweet and pleasantly fermented.

Bread:

Mix water, yeast, sourdough and whole wheat flour in a stand mixer. Add all-purpose flour and salt, and knead the dough for 10-12 minutes, to build up the gluten in the dough.

Grease a dough-rising bucket  with a thin coat of olive oil. Let the dough rise in the prepared bucket, lid on, for about 90 minutes at room temperature. Place the dough overnight in the refrigerator.

Next take out the dough, and pour the dough on a non-floured kitchen table, divide the dough in 2 and shape them into rounds.

Line 2 baskets with clean kitchen towels, generously dusted with flour. Transfer each round to a basket, smooth side down and let to rest, covered, at room temperature, about 1 hour before baking. Meanwhile preheat oven with the dutch oven to 500℉ (260℃).

Gently flip one bread into heated dutch/french oven. Score top twice using a razor blade matfer lame. Cover with lid. Return to oven, and reduce oven temperature to 450℉(235℃). Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove lid and continue to bake until crust is deep golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes more.

Transfer loaf to a wire rack, and let it cool completely.

To bake the second loaf, raise oven temperature to 500℉ (260℃), wipe out dutch/french oven with a dry kitchen towel, and reheat with lid for 10 minutes. Repeat the bake.

Enjoy!

Tomato Risotto

Tomato Risotto

Risotto has been a thing I have been reluctant to cook. I have always been convinced that it was a difficult dish to master. But after I have been cooking risotto a few times, I can't see what I was afraid of.  Somehow I might have been cooking risotto for many years. Well, not risotto, risotto. But the classic Danish dish Risengrød, is arborio rice cooked in milk, a sweet milky risotto sprinkled with cinnamon. And I have had Risengrød numerous times through my childhood.

This risotto embodies some of my favorite ingredients, tomatoes, wine, parmesan and basil, And of cause is was delisious. 

Inspired by Martha Shulmans Tomato Basil Risotto.

Serves 2-3 (4-6 as an appetizer)

Ingredients:

• 700 ml chicken stock, or vegetable stock
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 225 g tomato, grated (2 large tomatoes)
• 2 sprigs thyme, leaves only
• 130 g arborio rice
• 100 ml white wine (I used a Pinot Grigio)
• 2 tomatoes, without seeds, and diced
• ¾ dl (about ¼ cup) fresh grated parmesan
• 5 basil leaves, thinly sliced

Directions:

Grate the parmesan, set aside

Grate the tomatoes. Cut the tomato in half at the equator. Grate on the coarse side of a box grater, with the cut side of the tomato up against the grater. Watch your hands. Set aside.

Slice the basil, set aside. 

Dice onion, and mince the garlic.

Heat the stock, and keep it warm.

Heat olive oil in a wide sauté pan, sauté the onions until translucent. Add rice and garlic, cook while stirring, until all the rice are coated and they start to crackle. Add grated tomato and thyme, and cook until the rice has absorbed most of the tomato liquid. 

Pour in the wine, and let it simmer until the wine is absorbed. 

Start adding a small ladleful of hot stock at a time, letting the rice absorb the liquid before adding more. You want the risotto to cook for a low simmer, stirring constantly. Cook the risotto for about 25 minutes, until the rice are al dente, and they have a little bite, without being crunchy.

Add the diced tomatoes, basil and parmesan, making the risotto nice and creamy. Season the risotto with salt, to taste. Serve Immediately.

Enjoy!