Lamb shank

Ingredients could not be easier.

We are in the half of October and during fall and closer to winter food is getting heavier and richer in taste. Today I have tried something I have never tried before - lamb shack. I had this many years ago in England and I just love the long cooking time for the meat.

For 2 persons you need:

3 tbsp flour

a small bunch of chilantro

salt

pepper

2 lamb shanks

2 carrots

1/4 of celery root (one big slice)

1 red onion

1 dl apple juice

0,5 dl balsamico

400 g mashed tomatoes

2 tsp coriander seeds

thyme

4-5 cloves garlic

Mix the flour, chilantro, salt and pepper and roll the lamb shanks in the flour mix. Cook on a frying until golden brown. Take the meat from the an and place it in an oven pot.

After rolling the lamb shanks in flour mix cook them on
a frying pan until golden brown.

Dice the carrots, celery root and red onion. Cook the vegetables for 5 minutes with oil. Pour the apple juice and balsamico and cook until it is almost like syrupy. Add the mashed tomatoes, thyme and coriander seeds.

Pour the sauce on the lamb shanks and finally add the whole garlic cloves.

Cook in 130-140 °C for about 6 hours. Make sure you add a bit water if it starts looking dry. Once a while you can also pour the sauce from the oven pot on top of the meat.

Serve with mashed potates and salad.

After bout 6 hours you may enjoy your dinner.

Plum pie

Serve well cooled.

Summer went amazingly quickly and so did August. I have been busy with work and cooking. Now when the fall is here and it is plum season I wanted to try this amazing plum pie recipe.

This recipe is for a pie casserole of a 30 cm in diameter:

Pie dough:

140 g butter

1,5 dl sugar

1-2 eggs

3 dl flour

4 tbsp oat flakes

1,5 tsp baking powder

Filling:

150 g plums (sliced)

2-3 dl vanilla flavored quark

2-3 dl sour cream

1 egg

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp vanilla sugar

Set the oven for 175 ºC.

Mix the butter and sugar well together. Then mix the egg. Mix the flour, oat flakes and baking powder in a separate bowl. Mix the flour mix with the butter and sugar mix.

Spread the dough on a pie casserole that has been oiled.

Spread the dough on an oiled pie casserole.

Pour the vanilla flavored quark on the dough and spread evenly. Place the sliced plums on the quark. Mix the egg, sugar and vanilla sugar with sour cream. Pour the sour cream mix on plums

Slice the plums and place on the quark. After this pour the
sour cream mix on the plums.

Bake the pie in the oven for about 40 minutes. Serve cooled.

Bake the pie in the oven for 40 minutes or so.

Sweet cherry pie

Sweet and juicy cherry pie is good with ice cream.

This summer I tried something wonderful - a sweet cherry pie. The pie is really soft and juicy but I think it would be interesting to try the pie with a harder pie base.

Here is the recipe:

Pie base:
75 g butter
0,5 dl sugar
1 egg
1,5 dl flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla sugar

Filling:
0,5 l cherries (remove the stones)
2-3 dl sour cream (this depends on how moist you want the pie to be because there is a lot of juice in the cherries themselves)
2 eggs
0,5 dl sugar
1 tsp vanilla sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice

Set the oven to 175 °C.

Mix the butter and sugar well together. Add the egg and mix again. Mix the flour, baking powder and vanilla sugar and finally mix it together with the egg-sugar mix. Spread the dough to a pie casserole. If you have a bigger pie casserole than 24 cm in diameter you might need a bit more dough than in this recipe.

After you have removed the stones from the cherries add them on the pie dough.

After removing the stones place the cherries on the pie dough.

Mix eggs, sugar, vanilla sugar and lemon juice with sour cream. Pour the mix on the pie.

Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes in 175 °C.

Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes.

Red currant jelly

Perfect for cheese!

I got red currants from my mother-in-law without any idea what to do with them. Finally I found a recipe for red currant jelly and it was really easy to make.

For 1 jar of jelly you will need

1 kg red currants
2-3 dl water per kilo of berries
800 g sugar for a liter of juice

Add the water and red currants in a casserole and let them to boil under a lid on a low fire for half an hour.

Boil the berries in 2-3 dl water on a low fire for 30 minutes
under a lid.

Strain the juice from the cooked berries.

Let the juice to boil for couple of more minutes. I had about 0,5l juice so I only had about 300-400 g of sugar. Add the sugar slowly to the juice stiring it all the time until the sugar has dissolved.

Slowly add the sugar to the boiling juice.

Let the juice to boil for another 15 minutes and remove the white foam that appears on top.

Take some juice with a tea spoon and pour it on a cold plate. Draw with the spoon in the middle of the juice drop and if it gathers on the spoon the jelly is ready. If not, then add some more sugar and let it boil a bit more.

Boil the jelly jar before using it. Pour the ready jelly in a jar and close the jar immediately. Cool down before placing it in a fridge.

Red currant jelly is perfect with meat, cheese plate etc.

Lemon curd tart

Garnish with berries for example. My baby girl made the
finger marks on the top :)

I have made lemon curd tarts before and I have also published a recipe in November 2014 in this blog. Here is a new recipe with small variation compared to the old one.

Tart base:
170 g butter
1 1/4 dl sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla sugar
4 1/4 dl flour
(salt if you are using non-salted butter)

Lemon curd:

grated zest of 4 lemons
1 1/4 dl lemon juice
3,5 dl sugar
115 g butter
4 eggs
pinch of salt

Mix the butter and sugar together. Add the vanilla sugar. Mix the flour with the butter mix. Press the dough in to a pie pan and put it to the fridge for about an hour to cool down.

Set the oven to 175 °C.

Put a tin foil on the dough and fill it for instance with rice. This will prevent the edges of the pie to fall down when in the oven. Put the dough in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the rice and tin foil and let the tart be in the oven for another 20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool down the tart after taking it out from the oven.

Tin foil and rice will help you
to keep the edges of the tart
up.

For the lemon curd you need to grate the zest of the lemons. Avoid the white part because this will only give bitter taste to the curd. Take the lemon juice you squeezed from the lemons aside. Mix the lemon zest and sugar together. Add the butter that is at room temperatue and mix well together with the sugar mix. Add the eggs to the mix. Finally, add the lemon juice and salt. Mix well.

Mix the lemon zest and sugar together.

Heat up the curd on a low fire until it starts to thicken. Mix the curd all the time. Remove the thickened curd from the stove and pour it on top of the tart.

On a low fire cook the curd until it thickens. Do not let the
curd to boil!

Let the tart to cool down, place it in the fridge after this and serve it on the next day.

Just amazing yellow colour!

Kimchi fried rice

Serve with a fried egg.

Here is another recipe I have used the wonderful chili paste called gochujang. All you need basically is rice and kimchi.

You will need:

3 dl rice (it will be around 6-7 dl when cooked)
2 dl kimchi
1 dl kimchi juice
1 tbsp gochujang
0,5 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp sesame oil
spring onion
fried eggs

Cook the rice and sprinkle heated sesame oil on it. Mix the rice.

Squeeze the juice from kimchi, this will be the kimchi juice. Mix gochujang and soy sauce with with kimchi juice until completely dissolved.

Kimchi juice you will get by squeezing it out from kimchi.

Chop the kimchi and fry it on a pan until it gets brown. Mix the cooked rice with fried kimchi.

After stir-frying the kimchi and rice pour the kimchi juice
and mix well.

Now pour the kimchi juice mixture over the the rice and mix well. Cook until the color is brown.



Garnish with spring onion and place a fried egg on top. You may also season the kimchi fried rice with soy sauce if you need some more saltiness.

Gochujang marinated pork

Serve on rice and green salad and garnish with
chilantro and mint.

I saw on TV one cooking show where they used a Korean chili paste called gochujang. I had no idea how it would taste like but I had to buy some. The end result with gochujang marinated pork was excellent!

You will need:

400 g pork loin
0,8 dl gochujang chili paste
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp grated ginger
1,5 tsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce
0,5 tsp sugar
salt
pepper

2 dl rice
half an iceberg lettuce
1-2 tomatoes
half a cucumber
1 spring onion
chilantro
mint

Mince the garlic and grate the ginger and mix them together with gochujang, rice vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, salt and pepper. Mix the marinate with thinly sliced pork loins and let the meat to marinate about 2-3 hours or more.

Marinate minimum of 2 hours.

Cook the meat on a pan with some oil until the meat gets caramelized and is thoroughly cooked.

Cook until the meat is caramelized.

Cook the rice according to the instructions in the package. I used jasmine rice in this recipe.

The green salad you can do how ever you like but I used iceberg lettuce here. Chop the lettuce, slice the tomatoes, cucumber and spring onion.

Chop the chilantro and mint. Don't mix these with salad.

Place first the rice on the plate, then the green salad and finally the pork. Garnish with chilantro and mint.

So hot and spicy, but still so good.

Bon app!