Beatrice Ojakangas

Holiday Recipes

2007-03-19T18:02:00.001-05:00

HOLIDAY FAVORITE RECIPES FROM FRIENDS AND FAMILY

Holidays, for many people are laced with a web of memories, and these memories center on “together” times, be they a cookie making session, a coffee party, a family gathering, or just a get-together of friends.

Here, four special friends share their own favorite holiday recipes, each one is connected to family or friends in a special way. I offer, also, my family’s favorite memory.

Kathryn Martin, UMD Chancellor, shares the recipe from her Dutch grandmother. Kathryn writes: “My grandparents, Katrina and John VanZutphen moved to the United States shortly after the First World War, settling first in Kimberly then Little Chute, Wisconsin which was home to a significant number of immigrants from the Netherlands. My grandfather worked in a tannery and my grandmother ran a rooming house, both in an effort to save money to buy their dairy farm in Stanley, Wisconsin. Every Friday my grandmother baked fresh cookies, fresh bread and a variety of kinds of cakes and pies. But only at Christmas time did we have “Grandma Van’s Refrigerator Cookies”. Christmas for me is not complete without my Grandma VanZutphen’s Refrigerator Cookies, both as a recollection of wonderful family events, but also for my memories of helping her and my mother stir the dough and make the cookies.”

Grandma Van’s Refrigerator Cookies

1 cup butter

1 cup lard (can substitute Crisco, but do not substitute butter for this)

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup finely chopped pecans

5 cups all-purpose flour

Melt the butter and lard together. Add soda to the melted mixture and add the remaining ingredients in the order given. Form dough into sticks, either round or rectangular. (I usually make rectangular blocks about 2 inches high by 2 ½ inches wide). Wrap and chill overnight. Slice 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick and bake at 375 degrees F. until light brown. Time depends on how thick the cookies are.

Arlene Coco, restaurant owner, writer, and fellow “foodie” is of Southern heritage She says her mother would always make Jambalaya on Christmas Eve because it fed a crowd and she could keep it warm in the oven to serve when the family came home after Midnight mass.

Louisiana Jambalaya

Serves 12

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons butter (1/2 stick)

2 cups onions, diced (1 large)

2 cups celery, chopped (2-3 stalks)

1 ½ cups green pepper, chopped (1 large)

2 tablespoons garlic, minced (3 large cloves)

2 pounds of Boneless Chicken Breast, diced

1 can (28 ounce) diced tomatoes in juice

1 Tablespoon Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce

1 Tablespoon Cajun seasoning

2 teaspoons salt

1 pound smoked sausage, sliced thin

3 cups parboiled rice (Uncle Ben’s)

5 cups Chicken stock

1 bunch green onions, thinly sliced

½ bunch fresh parsley, chopped

Tabasco to taste

In a large Dutch oven or straight edge saucepan with a lid, melt butter over medium heat. Add onions, celery, green peppers and garlic. Cook until soft, about 5-10 minutes. Add chicken and cook slightly. Add diced tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce , Cajun seasoning and salt. Simmer 10 minutes more and add sausage and rice.

Stir until well mixed and add 5 cups of chicken stock. Stir again and heat to a boil. When boiling, turn heat to low and simmer covered for 30 minutes.. Add green onions and parsley. Season to taste with Tabasco.

Lise Lunge Larson, was born and raised in southern Norway, and brings her tradition of food and story telling to Duluth. For many Norwegians, Ribbe, Pork Rib Roast with red sweet cabbage (surkal), mashed potatoes, gravy and green peas is the traditional Christmas meal. Its status is a little like that of the Thanksgiving turkey for Americans. In other words, it’s just not Christmas without it. The fact that the roast should be seasoned and refrigerated for 1 to 3 days makes it very handy for the cook to get a large part of the meal preparation done ahead. And, the cabbage is best made a day ahead of time, too.

Norwegian Pork Rib Roast, “Ribbe”

Serves 6

One 4 pound pork rib roast with the rind and fat. The bones need to be cut every 2-3 inches by the butcher.

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

½ -1 cup water

If you managed to get the pork rib with the rind, place it fat side up and with a very sharp knife, cut through the rind and fat in a crosshatch pattern with 1 inch diamond shaped squares. Rub the meat all over with salt. Cover and refrigerate for 1 or 3 days.

Preheat oven to 400degrees F. Place the meat fat side up in a roasting pan. Bring the water to boil and pour over the meat. Cover with aluminum foil and place the roasting pan in the middle of the oven. Bake for 10-15 minutes.

Remove the roast from the oven. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees, remove foil, and place the roast on a wire rack inside the roasting pan. Return to oven, this time in the lower third.

Roast for about 1 hour, basting if needed to keep it moist. It’s a little difficult to say exactly when the ribbe is done as it will depend on how thick the piece is. Use a thermometer to check for internal temperatures.

If you managed to get the ribbe with the fat and rind, move it to the middle of the oven when it is done and turn up the heat to 400-425 and roast for about 20 more minutes, checking it frequently. You want to turn the crackling crisp without burning the roast. When the rind is brown and the squares have started to separate, it’s ready.

Cut the meat into 2-rib sections and serve with mashed potatoes, gravy made from the drippings, green peas and a sweet and sour red cabbage (surkal) dish for a colorful and festive meal.

Surkal

1 head of red cabbage

2 apples

2/3 cup water

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. caraway

2-3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar or more to taste

2 tablespoons red currant jelly

2 tablespoons maple syrup or more to taste.

Finely slice cabbage into thin, long strips. Slice apples into sections and layer the cabbage and the apples in a heavy bottomed pot with the caraway, salt, and maple syrup. Pour the water and the vinegar over and bring to a boil. Stir to mix and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook for at least one hour, till cabbage is completely tender. Add currant jelly and adjust the sweet and sour ratio to taste.

This dish is actually best when made one day ahead of time and is the perfect accompaniment to ribbe.

The talk at the Continental hair solon often centers on food, and when I mentioned this gathering of recipes for this story, Chuck immediately offered Bill’s recipe for Cranberry Pudding. This favorite of theirs was first served to them at a friend’s home, who shared it with Bill who makes it every holiday season without fail. The recipe, he thought came from an old Betty Crocker cookbook. Bill, however, always makes this steamed pudding in a metal loaf pan rather than a tube-type pan that is commonly used.

Steamed Cranberry Pudding

Serves 10 to 12

2 cups fresh cranberries

1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/3 cup boiling water

1/2 cup light or dark molasses

Sauce:

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

Lightly grease a 2-quart metal pan. Pick over the cranberries, wash and drain.
Sift together the flour and salt; dredge cranberries in the flour mixture. Dissolve soda in the boiling water and add the molasses. Stir and allow to foam up.

Add molasses mixture to the flour and cranberry mixture. Mix until well blended. Spoon into the prepared pan and cover with a double layer of foil. Fasten with a heavy elastic band or string.

Place into a deep saucepan and fill with water up to about half the way up the side of the pudding pan. Cover and place over high heat. Bring water to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for one hour. Remove from water and allow to cool. When ready to serve, invert onto a serving plate. Cut into 1/2 inch slices.

To make the sauce, mix together the sugar, butter and cream. Cook over medium heat until thick, stirring constantly. Add vanilla and pour over individual slices of the pudding.

I think my brothers and sisters would agree that Mom’s Raspberry Sauce is our number one Christmas food memory.

Back when our parents lived on Rose road, they had a huge raspberry patch. Every summer they froze ice cream buckets full of these beautiful, juicy, berries. Mom would use them to make Raspberry Sauce for Christmas Eve dessert.
On Christmas Eve we packed into their little house – there must have been a hundred of us, or so it seemed. The buffet was potluck and varied in offerings from hamburger casseroles to wild rice salads, fruit salads, a variety of Christmas breads and cookies.

What we all looked forward to, though, was the Raspberry Sauce Mom made from her frozen berries, and served out of a huge punch bowl. The sauce was a clear red pudding, which she usually thickened with tapioca. Cornstarch would have made it cloudy. We spooned the sauce into clear glass cups or clear plastic glasses and plopped a dollop of whipped cream on top. Even the babies loved this dessert!

Today, without the advantage of having buckets of home-grown raspberries, I make the sauce using raspberries from the supermarket and cranberry raspberry juice.

Mom’s Raspberry Sauce

Makes about 16 servings

2 quarts frozen unsweetened raspberries

2 quarts raspberry cranberry juice

1 cup minute tapioca

Sugar to taste

Sweetened whipped cream for serving

In a large 6 to 8 quart pot, combine the berries, juice and tapioca. Let stand for at least 15 minutes. Then, place over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring at first occasionally, but when the sauce comes to a boil, stir vigorously until it is smooth and thickened. Taste and add sugar.

Cover and set aside to cool. The sauce will thicken even more when it is cold.
Serve with sweetened whipped cream for dessert.

Pear and Apple Cobbler

2007-03-19T17:59:00.001-05:00

AN AUTUMN DESSERT – PEAR AND APPLE COBBLER

I have always enjoyed reading about old-fashioned desserts in my collection of old and antique cookbooks. Early American cooks were masters of fruit puddings, dumplings, cobblers, pandowdies, crisps, fruit grunts, buckles, slumps, betties and roly-polies that have doughs and batters on top or are rolled in dough. There is as much variety in the names of the desserts as there are opinions about how they should be made. It is impossible to define or distinguish, for example, a cobbler from a buckle, or a slump from a fruit grunt. Yet, among the cooks that still know the difference, there are those who would defend with their life the name of their favorite buckle or grunt. One reason for the different names is simply because we have people from many different backgrounds in our country. Many of these desserts were considered a meal in themselves, and often served as a Sunday-night supper.

Cobblers aren’t part of my background; our favorite cooked fruit dessert was a thickened “sauce” that we topped with thick, fresh cream. We probably learned this from our father who we called “Isa”, (father in Finnish). He preferred sauce for dessert to anything else. My clever mother, knowing that everybody loves a choice would ask him, “What would you like to have for dessert, blueberry pie, apple pie, custard pie or strawberry sauce?”

Isa would immediately reply “Strawberry sauce!”

She hadn’t baked any pies that day, but she knew his answer before she asked the question.

Well, my father would have preferred a Pear and Applesauce to a Pear and Apple Cobbler. Sobeit. This is a great old-fashioned fruit cobbler, which I like to think of as a hot version of a shortcake.

PEAR AND APPLE COBBLER

Makes about 6 servings

4 medium pears, peeled, cored & sliced into 1/4 inch wedges

4 medium cooking apples, peeled, cored & sliced into 1/4 inch wedges

1 cup lingonberry preserves

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1freshly ground cardamom seeds

1/4 teaspoon salt

Topping:

2 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup sugar

5 tablespoons firm butter, cut up

1 egg, lightly beaten

1/3 cup milk

Whipped cream or vanilla ice cream for serving

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter 3-quart shallow baking dish. In a mixing bowl, combine lemon juice and vanilla and add the pears, apples and lingonberry preserves. Toss to coat evenly. Combine the 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup flour, cardamom and salt toss with the apples and pears. Pour the fruit into the baking dish and arrange into an even layer.

In a mixing bowl or food processor, combine the 2 cups flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Cut in the butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Mix the egg and milk together and add to the flour mixture, tossing until dough comes together.

Roll dough out to 1/3-inch thickness and using a cookie cutter cut desired shapes (I used leaf shapes in the photo). Place cut-outs on top of the fruit mixture in the pan. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until the cobbler is bubbly around the edges and the topping is lightly browned. Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

Three Inspirations from Copenhagen

2007-03-19T17:53:00.001-05:00

THREE INSPIRATIONS FROM COPENHAGEN

It had been an exhausting flight to Copenhagen. Packed like sardines in a can, we flew over the Atlantic in the 43rd row (of 44) in the Northwest plane. Hardly conscious, we were transferred in Amsterdam to a KLM flight to Copenhagen, our destination. It was midday in Denmark, sunny and bright and we collected our bags, passed through various controls and into the airport. Dick’s crutches and leg brace brought us more assistance than we’d ever had before and we found ourselves on an electric cart whizzing through the airport with a smiling young Dane who was humming a tune. “If you sing, people treat you much better,” he said, “they don’t get mad at you if you make a mistake!”

He was a bit surprised that we didn’t have a hotel reservation. We relied on our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook, which instructed us to head for the tourist information desk just outside customs where we would find a hotel room at a discounted rate. We ended up at Hotel Alexandra on Hans Christian Anderson Street. It looked a little old and tired from the outside, but proved to be a delightful place. Connected to the hotel is a brasserie where we decided to have our evening meal.

The restaurant was totally organic and the food was delicious. We ordered every appetizer on the menu and that’s where the inspiration for these recipes came from. All three of these spicy accompaniments are simple to make and have a variety of possible uses.

Aioli Sauce on Baby New Potatoes

Steamed, unpeeled baby new potatoes were halved and tossed with this sauce and served as an appetizer. To save time, you could use a commercial mayonnaise (comprised of the first five ingredients), but homemade mayonnaise cannot be better, even though we need to cook the egg these days. This sauce is great on hot or chilled fish or shellfish.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

1 large egg

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 tablespoons water

1 teaspoon Dijon style mustard

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup each olive oil and canola oil

4 or 5 cloves garlic

1 pound steamed, unpeeled baby new potatoes, halved

Chopped fresh parsley

In a small saucepan, stir together the egg, lemon juice, water and salt over very low heat for 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and let stand 4 minutes. Pour into the blender container; cover and blend at high speed. While blending, add the garlic and very slowly add the oil, blending until the sauce is thick and smooth. Occasionally, turn off the blender and scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula.
Toss with the new potatoes and serve hot or as a cold potato salad.

Chili Butter with Grilled Corn

Of course, this tasty butter is delicious on all kinds of grilled vegetables. We had it on corn.

3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter, softened

1 clove garlic, pressed

1 tablespoon chili powder

Grilled or Steamed fresh corn on the cob

Blend all of the ingredients together. Shape into a log, wrap and chill. Cut into slices and serve with hot corn on the cob.

Smoked Tomato Sauce

This aromatic sauce is great on veal meatballs, but it is equally delicious on pasta, grilled or sautéed fish, shellfish, or chicken breasts. You start by smoking fresh tomatoes.

Makes about 2 cups

4 tablespoons hickory sawdust or black tea leaves

2 tablespoons brown sugar

12 fresh Roma tomatoes, halved and seeded

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cups chicken stock

Line a wok or large frying pan with foil. Sprinkle sawdust or black tea leaves and brown sugar into bottom of the pan. Place a cake rack on top. Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer on the rack. Cover and turn burner on high until smoking. Smoke for 15 minutes. Remove from the burner and let cool.

Place tomatoes, salt, pepper, olive oil and chicken stock into a saucepan. Bring to a boil and reduce heat; cook for 30 to 40 minutes. Puree in a blender or with a hand-held blender. Taste, and add more salt and pepper if needed. Serve over meatballs, cooked pasta, chicken breasts, fish or shellfish.

strawberry filled flapjacks

2007-03-19T17:47:00.003-05:00

June-July, 2006 Woman Today

STRAWBERRY CREAM FILLED FLAPJACKS

One of the pleasures of this time of year (there are many!) is the abundance of fresh, juicy, locally-grown strawberries. We eat as many as we can just plain, out of hand. For breakfast, they go on top of cereal with milk or cream. For dessert they’re a favorite with cream and sugar.

Personally, it seems a crime to cook these beauties into jam, or to mash them, strain them, and make jelly before you’ve eaten your fill of them just fresh and unadulterated.

Crepes sounds like a kind of fancy term for these pancakes, which our kids call “flapjacks”, and that I enjoyed as a kid. I had totally forgotten about them until one summer, not long ago, when they “slept over” at a cousin’s place, and their mom, Ann Snyder, made flapjacks for breakfast. It was a big hit – and as Ann says, you can hardly keep up with them when you get started. One at a time off the griddle, they’re buttered and cinnamon-sugared and eaten in seconds.

For this dessert, I make the flapjacks about 8 inches in diameter, stack them, and allow them to cool. Then I mix up the strawberry filling and roll them up with the filling in the center. At this point they can be refrigerated a few hours before serving if need be. Of course, they can be eaten immediately, too!

STRAWBERRY CREAM FILLED FLAPJACKS

FOR THE FLAPJACKS

1 cup milk

3 whole eggs

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

Nonstick Spray or Butter

STRAWBERRY FILLING

2 cups fresh strawberries, rinsed, hulled, and sliced

1/4 cup granulated sugar

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup powdered sugar

FOR SERVING

Additional sweetened, sliced strawberries

Whipped Cream

In a large bowl, whisk the milk, eggs, flour, 1 tablespoon sugar and salt together until batter is smooth. Place an 8-inch omelet pan over medium high heat until a drop of water sizzles in the pan. Scoop about 1/4 cup of the batter and pour it into the pan. Tilt the pan around to coat the bottom of the pan evenly. Cook about 1 minute or until the top of the flapjack looks cooked. Run a rubber spatula around the edge of the pan, then turn the pancake over. Cook about a half minute or until the flapjack has flecks of golden brown on the second side. Remove from the pan and place on a plate. Repeat to make a dozen flapjacks, stacking them on the plate.

For the filling and topping, combine one cup of the berries with the 1/4 cup granulated sugar. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese and powdered sugar until smooth and well blended. Stir in the reserved berries.

Spread a spoonful of the filling onto each of the flapjacks. Roll up. Serve topped with chilled, sweetened sliced berries spooned over and a dollop of whipped cream.

Makes 6 servings, 2 filled flapjacks each

strawberry filled flapjacks

2007-03-19T17:47:00.002-05:00

June-July,
STRAWBERRY CREAM FILLED FLAPJACKS

One of the pleasures of this time of year (there are many!) is the abundance of fresh, juicy, locally-grown strawberries. We eat as many as we can just plain, out of hand. For breakfast, they go on top of cereal with milk or cream. For dessert they’re a favorite with cream and sugar.

Personally, it seems a crime to cook these beauties into jam, or to mash them, strain them, and make jelly before you’ve eaten your fill of them just fresh and unadulterated.

Crepes sounds like a kind of fancy term for these pancakes, which our kids call “flapjacks”, and that I enjoyed as a kid. I had totally forgotten about them until one summer, not long ago, when they “slept over” at a cousin’s place, and their mom, Ann Snyder, made flapjacks for breakfast. It was a big hit – and as Ann says, you can hardly keep up with them when you get started. One at a time off the griddle, they’re buttered and cinnamon-sugared and eaten in seconds.

For this dessert, I make the flapjacks about 8 inches in diameter, stack them, and allow them to cool. Then I mix up the strawberry filling and roll them up with the filling in the center. At this point they can be refrigerated a few hours before serving if need be. Of course, they can be eaten immediately, too!

STRAWBERRY CREAM FILLED FLAPJACKS

FOR THE FLAPJACKS

1 cup milk

3 whole eggs

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

Nonstick Spray or Butter

STRAWBERRY FILLING

2 cups fresh strawberries, rinsed, hulled, and sliced

1/4 cup granulated sugar

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup powdered sugar

FOR SERVING

Additional sweetened, sliced strawberries

Whipped Cream

In a large bowl, whisk the milk, eggs, flour, 1 tablespoon sugar and salt together until batter is smooth. Place an 8-inch omelet pan over medium high heat until a drop of water sizzles in the pan. Scoop about 1/4 cup of the batter and pour it into the pan. Tilt the pan around to coat the bottom of the pan evenly. Cook about 1 minute or until the top of the flapjack looks cooked. Run a rubber spatula around the edge of the pan, then turn the pancake over. Cook about a half minute or until the flapjack has flecks of golden brown on the second side. Remove from the pan and place on a plate. Repeat to make a dozen flapjacks, stacking them on the plate.

For the filling and topping, combine one cup of the berries with the 1/4 cup granulated sugar. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese and powdered sugar until smooth and well blended. Stir in the reserved berries.

Spread a spoonful of the filling onto each of the flapjacks. Roll up. Serve topped with chilled, sweetened sliced berries spooned over and a dollop of whipped cream.

Makes 6 servings, 2 filled flapjacks each

Peruvian Flan

2007-03-19T17:41:00.001-05:00

Woman Today – Feb/March, 2007

Peruvian Flan
On a recent cruise, we took a land tour into the countryside of Peru, through Lima. Sightseeing was mainly through the vantage of a bus window. We did, however, have lunch at a plantation.
What surprised me the most about Peru was its modern-day sophistication combined with a sense of ancient history. The Inca ruins reminds one of the ancient Roman Empire, but that’s where the similarity ends.
Culinarily speaking, maize (corn), potatoes and aji (peppers) date back to the Incas and pre-Incas. The cuisine was later influenced by the arrival of the Spanish and other ethnic groups, although Spanish is the predominant language.
The potatoes were amazing! Deep yellow, white, and even purple potatoes grow well here. At a plantation luncheon, we were served a terrine/salad made with layers of different colored mashed potatoes, chilled, sliced, and served with a dressing – definitely an avant-guard concoction.
As in all of South America, flan is the ubiquitous dessert - not the flan we know that’s a pastry with a filling, but the Spanish type that is a custard coated with caramel. I’ve had flan baked in individual pans, and flans that look like a wedge of custard pie topped with caramel. In this Peruvian variation, the flan is baked in a ring mold, and I like this the best of all because it is so easy to make and serve. I like to fill the center of the ring with fresh berries. Think of this as a springtime dessert when the new, sweet strawberries arrive.
I often get questions about the difference between sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk. Sweetened condensed milk (Eagle Brand milk), is a mixture of whole milk and 40% sugar, heated until 60% of the water is evaporated. This makes the milk sticky, thick and sweet. Evaporated milk is concentrated milk, sold in cans and comes either whole or nonfat. If a recipe calls for condensed milk, it almost certainly refers to sweetened condensed milk.
This is a great recipe for a lot of people. If you’d like to make a smaller flan, you can cut the recipe in half and cook the flan in a 5 or 6-cup ring mold. Baking time will be slightly less.

Peruvian Flan
Serves 18 to 20
1 cup sugar
10 large eggs
2 cans (14 ounce) cans sweetened condensed milk
2 (12 ounce) cans evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 dash cinnamon
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Coat an 11-cup metal ring mold with nonstick spray.
2. Put sugar into a heavy skillet and stir over medium heat until sugar is melted and caramelizes. Pour the caramelized sugar into the tube pan and turn pan from side to side until the bottom and part of the sides are coated with the sugar. Set aside and allow to harden, (Set in a pan of ice water, if necessary).
3. In a large bowl, stir together the beaten eggs, sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, vanilla and cinnamon until well blended.
4. Pour egg mixture into the caramel-coated mold. Place into a larger pan with 2 inches of hot water. Bake for 1 hour or until custard is set.
5. Let cool, then invert onto a serving platter or plate.
6. Decorate with fresh berries or edible flowers.

Scandinavian Cardamom Braid (Refrigerator Method)

2007-03-19T17:35:00.001-05:00

Scandinavian Cardamom Braid (Refrigerator Method)

A sweet plaited cardamom flavored bread is a classic in all of Scandinavia and is always found both on the breakfast and the coffee “tables”. It is rich with eggs and butter giving it a tender crumb and a thin, golden crust. I bake this bread often, but have simplified the method to save time and effort, and to eliminate tedious kneading, I chill the dough after mixing. The chilled dough is easy to handle, making it simple to shape into braids. For the best flavor I recommend using freshly crushed cardamom seeds. Ground cardamom, regardless of the brand loses so much flavor you can hardly taste it in the finished bread.

2 packages active dry yeast
1 cup warm water, 105*F. to 115*F.
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
1/2 cup nonfat dry milk
1 teaspoon freshly crushed cardamom seeds
1/2 cup sugar
3 large eggs, slightly beaten
1 teaspoon salt
4 to 4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water and let stand about 5 minutes or until the yeast foams. Whisk in the butter, dry milk, cardamom, sugar, eggs, and salt.

Stir in flour, 1 cup at a time, until dough is very stiff, but still moist (depending on the time of year and humidity, the amount of flour you will need will vary.)

Cover and refrigerate at least two hours or overnight.

Divide chilled dough into 2 parts. Divide each of the parts into 3 parts. Shape each part into a rope about 30 inches long. Braid three ropes at a time together to make 2 loaves. Place the two loaves on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Cover and let rise until puffy, 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (325 degrees F. for convection oven). Brush loaves with a mixture of egg and milk and sprinkle with sliced almonds or pearl sugar. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden.

Tips for Preparing ahead:

The nature of this bread makes it a natural for “mixing up ahead of time”, as it needs to be stirred up and chilled at least for two hours. Once baked, the bread can be

A SCANDINAVIAN COFFEEBREAD - WALESBROD

2006-02-15T16:46:00.001-06:00

This is a very popular pastry that is neither Swedish nor Welsh and is known as Swedish kringle to some Scandinavian Americans. The word “kringle”, however, designates a pretzel shaped bread, which this is not. Some Americans call it Danish pastry, which to me is a misleading term. In Sweden and in Finland, the elements are shaped into round individual cakes, and then are called “Maria Pastries”.
If this description sounds mysterious and difficult to you, let me explain: Swedish Welsh Bread or “Walesbrod”, is a simple combination of classic bakery elements. It’s basically a cream puff pastry (Choux Paste to the French) baked on top of a flakey pie pastry, then decorated with an almond flavored icing. Sound familiar?

SWEDISH WELSH BREAD
Makes 2 pastries, 12 x 4-inches, about 8 servings
1 cup all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons firm butter
2-3 tablespoons ice water
CHOUX PASTE
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
ICING AND DECORATION:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons softened butter
2-3 tablespoons cream
1 teaspoon almond extract
about 1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds or filberts, chopped*

Measure the flour into a mixing bowl or workbowl of a food processor with the steel blade in place. Slice the butter and add to the flour. Cut in with a pastry blender or process using on/off pulses until the butter is the size of peas. Add ice water and mix gently until the flour is moistened. Press pastry into a ball and divide into 2 parts. Roll each part out to make a 12 x 4-inch rectangle and place on an ungreased or parchment-covered baking sheet.
Preheat the oven to 400*F. (375*F. for convection oven).
In a saucepan, heat water and butter to boiling. Add the flour all at once and stir until smooth and stiff. Remove from heat and add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition until dough is smooth and shiny. Add the almond extract. Spoon or spread the mixture over the two pastry rectangles.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until puffed and golden. Do not overbake. Cool.
Mix the powdered sugar, softened butter, and enough cream to make a smooth frosting. Add the almond extract and drizzle over the top of the pastry. Sprinkle with the almonds or chopped filberts.
To toast nuts, spread on a baking sheet. Place in oven set at 300F. and bake 5 to 10 minutes until toasted.

PEA SOUP MENU FOR WINTER PARTIES

2006-01-08T18:00:00.000-06:00

PEA SOUP MENU FOR WINTER FUN

This is the perfect time of year to settle in, simmer a pot of pea soup, bake a loaf of rye bread and read a book. Well, that’s what I dream about. I do get the pea soup and bread going, but there is always something that seems to come in the way of cuddling into a blanket and reading a book. Rather, I simmer the soup, bake the bread and read the book while I catch a few minutes on the stationery bike as I try to shake off that five pounds that crawled up around my waist the past few months.

Scandinavians on the other hand, are avid outdoor-sports fans – never mind the cold winter weather. By February, the days have become longer, though not much warmer and with more daylight hours people spend time outside, enjoying ice skating, sliding and cross-country skiing. I love the cross-country skiing, too.

Being the “Martha” of a group, I’m always thinking about what to feed people. I love to have impromptu parties, but need easy ideas for menus. This is one foolproof menu that doesn’t require a lot of last minute attention.

A pork roast simmers with the peas, onions and spices, lending its rich flavor to this rather unusual recipe for pea soup. The idea came many years ago from a friend in Finland. When the soup is done, you simply lift the roast out of the pot and slice it to serve as a topping for open-faced rye bread sandwiches. Add to the menu sliced hot house (from Bay Produce), tomatoes. Norwegian Apple Pie which is more like an apple crisp than pie makes a perfect, simple dessert.

PEA SOUP WITH PORK
2 cups dry yellow Swedish peas
3 quarts water
1 (3 pound) lean fresh pork roast
3 medium onions, sliced
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon whole allspice
1 teaspoon dried leaf marjoram
Salt and pepper to taste

Sort and wash the peas and place into a deep soup kettle with the water. Soak overnight. Simmer over medium-high heat for 2 hours or until the peas are softened. Add the pork roast, onions, ginger and allspice. Simmer two to three hours until the pork is tender. Skim fat from the surface. Add the marjoram and salt and pepper to taste. To serve, place the pork roast on a platter and cut into slices. Serve on top of rye bread slices. Makes 6 servings.

FINNISH RYE MEAL BREAD
1 package active dry yeast
2 teaspoons sugar
1-1/4 cups warm water (105*F. to 115*F.)
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons melted butter
1-1/2cups rye meal, dark rye, or whole wheat flour
1-3/4 to 2 cups bread flour

In a large bowl, stir yeast and sugar into the warm water; let stand 5 minutes to soften. Add the salt, butter and rye meal and beat until smooth. Beat in bread flour, 1 cup at a time until dough is stiff. Let rest 15 minutes. Turn out onto a floured board and knead about 5 minutes until dough feels smooth and well mixed. Place in greased bowl, turning to grease all sides. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 2 hours. Punch dough down and shape into a ball. Place loaf on a lightly greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise until doubled. Preheat oven to 375*F. (350*F. for convection oven). Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until golden brown. Brush top of hot loaf with butter if desir3d. Cool on a rack. Makes 1 large loaf.

NORWEGIAN APPLE PIE
1 egg
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup chopped pecans, almonds or walnuts
2 small, tart apples, diced (about 1 cup)

Whipped cream for serving
Preheat the oven to 350*F. (325*F. for convection oven). Generously butter a 9-inch pie pan; set aside. In a large bowl, stir together all ingredients except for the whipped cream until well blended. Turn into the pie pan. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until lightly browned. To serve, cut into pie-shaped wedges and top with whipped cream. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

MAPLE SMOKED SALMON

2005-04-18T10:28:00.000-05:00

Once a year we fill our freezer with salmon fillets we order from our friend, Dave Rogotzke who commercially fishes Alaskan salmon in June and July. Another of Dave’s projects is making maple syrup from his 5000-tree maple grove just north of Duluth. This makes a wonderful combination! Dave cures the salmon in a maple syrup brine before smoking it over charcoal. The recipe here is a combination of Dave’s and my ideas.
Lest you think this is a very ambitious project, I have to say that it isn’t difficult to make smoked salmon at home, It is definitely worth the effort - but you do need to plan your time so that you can allow 4 hours for the fish to cure. Once cured, you rinse the fish, place it on racks and allow it to dry, refrigerated, overnight. You smoke the salmon on your backyard grill using plenty of wood chips – but only for 20 minutes. Cook it too long and the salmon is dry instead of juicy.
This is what is called “hot smoking” which cooks the fish while it smokes. It works best on a charcoal rather than on a gas grill on which it is harder to control the results. Cold smoking is another process to try someday, but it is more complicated and requires a special grill. Cold smoked salmon remains raw (as in graavlax), and has a smoked flavor.
Hot smoked salmon is delicious served flaked on top of a bagel or toasted bread spread with cream cheese. You might want to try Dave’s favorite way – that is, to cut the salmon into 1-1/2 to 2-inch cubes before curing and smoking. This makes a perfect appetizer to serve with just a toothpick.

MAPLE-SMOKED SALMON
Makes 6 servings
2 pounds salmon fillet, skinned and boned*
1/2 cup coarse kosher salt
1 tablespoon ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup pure maple syrup (not artificially flavored syrup)

Cut the fish into 3 to 4-inch pieces crosswise. Place into a glass or ceramic pan. Mix the salt, pepper, allspice and ginger and rub the mixture into the fish. Pour the maple syrup over, coating the top and the bottom of the fish pieces evenly.
Cover and refrigerate 4 hours. If you allow the fish to stay in the brine longer it becomes unpalatably salty. Rinse the brine off the fish, pat dry, and place on a rack over a pan and refrigerate overnight, uncovered, to dry. (If you place the fish on the rack from the barbecue, rub it with oil or coat with nonstick spray so that the fish can be removed easily after smoking.)
Light a charcoal fire and place a drip pan in the center of the grill. Divide the coals evenly on either side of the pan. Place 1 cup of drained wood chips on each side. Rub the grill with oil or coat with nonstick spray and arrange the fish on the rack over the drip pan. Cover and smoke for 20 minutes or until the fish is firm to the touch but not dry. Transfer onto a serving platter to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature.
*If you skin the fillet yourself, save it and make a “salmon chips” from it. Simply brush both sides of the skin with oil – a flavored oil such as dark Asian sesame oil is wonderful. Grill the skin directly over the coals until crackling crisp, 10 minutes per side. Serve at once.

DAVE’S APPETIZER SALMON
Follow the directions for Maple-Smoked Salmon, but cut the fish into 1-1/2 to 2 inch squares before brining. Makes about 24 appetizer servings.

SOUP AND BREAD

2005-04-08T13:24:00.000-05:00

SOUP AND BREAD
Maybe it’s the farm girl in me, but a meal of soup and bread is comfort food. Growing up, it was almost always “mojakka”(a Minnesota Finnish stew) and rye bread. I still crave the combination.
Soup and simple bread is food of common folk that encourages conversation and relaxation. Just look into the ethnic foods of any country and you find ideas. Latin American black bean soup matches with cornbread. Indian Mulligatawni with pita bread, or Russian cabbage borscht with black bread are a few examples.
So, pick your menu, bring the soup pot to the table, put the bread on a board, light candles and turn down the lights. Here I’m offering a Southwestern soup and bread combination.
Although it is springtime, evenings are still chilly. What’s more, this time of year is busier than ever. But that doesn’t mean that you have to entirely abandon the idea of entertaining. If you, like I, want something tasty, economical, colorful, and not too time consuming to prepare – just give this soup and bread combination a try. You can make the soup ahead, cool and refrigerate and then reheat it for serving later. It makes a generous eight servings, so if you cook for just two or four, you have soup for more than one meal.
This Southwestern Chicken Tortilla Soup is like one that I enjoyed in Santa Fe in an outdoor café. It was served in wide bowls with the toppings on the side. This is my attempt at copying it. The toppings add color and freshness to the soup.
The Cowboy Beer and Cheddar Bread is my adaptation of a beer bread recipe I picked up last summer when I visited Colorado Dude Ranches. It’s incredibly simple to stir up and is good hot from the oven or sliced and toasted the next day.

SOUTHWESTERN CHICKEN TORTILLA SOUP
You can find dried ancho chilies in the produce section of the supermarket. The chili itself is mild, but the seeds are spicy. The flavor of ancho chilies rounds out the distinctive flavor of this soup.
Makes 8 servings
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
2 teaspoons ground chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
4 cups chicken broth
1 dried ancho chili
2 (15 ounce) cans diced tomatoes
Salt and freshly ground pepper
3 cooked, shredded chicken breasts
3 cups frozen whole kernel corn
Garnishes:
2 ripe avocados, peeled, diced
Tortilla chips or strips
2 fresh tomatoes, diced
Chopped fresh cilantro
Shredded Jack or Cheddar cheese
Sour Cream

In a 4-quart soup pot, heat the oil. Add the onion, garlic, bell pepper, chili powder and cumin and stir over medium heat for 5 minutes until vegetables are tender and mixture is aromatic. Add the chicken stock and ancho chile. Cook over medium-high heat for 15 minutes or just until the ancho softens. Remove from the soup, pull off the stem and discard the seeds. (If you prefer a spicier soup, leave the seeds in.)
Put the chile with the diced tomatoes into the lender and process until smooth. Add to soup pot and continue simmering 1 hour. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Before serving, add the chicken and corn and heat to serving temperature.
Serve the garnishes separately to add to each serving of soup as desired.

COWBOY BEER AND CHEDDAR BREAD
This is a stir-it-up bread that takes just a few minutes to mix. If you bake it in the convection oven, the baking time is reduced by about one-fourth.
Makes 1 loaf
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 bottle (12 ounces) beer, any kind will do – even non-alcoholic brands
Butter
Preheat the oven to 350*F. (325*F. for convection oven).
In a large bowl, combine the flour, cheese, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the beer and mix with a fork until all dry ingredients are moistened. Don’t overmix. Spread the dough into a 5 x 9-inch loaf pan. Bake for 40 to 55 minutes until a wooden skewer inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean and dry. Brush top of hot loaf with butter.

Welcome to my website!

2005-04-08T13:10:00.000-05:00

SALT CAKE
I was about five years old and I had already discovered that it was far more pleasurable to satisfy the wishes of my parents than to rebel. Maybe it was because my mother lost her mother at the age of five. She must have told me the story, though I don’t remember, but for some reason I carried this vision in my mind. I know she told me more about it later in life.
She always referred to “Stepmother” when she talked about the woman who had replaced her mother after her untimely death. “Stepmother never let us into the kitchen,” she would say, “I want my kids to know how to cook.”
So when she said I needed to learn how to bake a cake, I agreed. She took out the big tan crockery mixing bowl with blue stripes round the outside, the wooden spoon, and the essential ingredients: butter, sugar, eggs, salt, baking powder, flour, vanilla and milk.
The wood stove had been fired up so that the gauge on the front of the oven read “350*F.” It was winter and the stove was always hot and ready for baking.
She scooped an egg-sized sphere of butter and slapped it into the bowl. “About a half cup is right”, she said. Then she poked the butter with the tip of the wooden spoon making indentations that looked like so many commas in a row. This was to soften the butter, she said.
Then she added sugar in twice the measure of the butter, about a cup and stirred it until it was all creamy. She added eggs, two of them, stirring really fast so that the liquid of the eggs was whipped into the butter mixture. She went on to mix in the flour and baking powder, and explained that one teaspoon of baking powder to one cup of flour was the best proportion. Vanilla for flavor and enough milk to make a smooth, pour-able batter and the cake was ready for the baking pan.
“Taste it” she said, “If it tastes flat – add a pinch of salt. We did, and we mixed it in. Then we scraped the batter into the buttered pan and stuck it into the oven to bake until a straw plucked from the corn broom and stuck into the center of the cake came out clean and dry.
I tried to memorize all this. I hadn’t yet started first grade and couldn’t read or write so I couldn’t take notes.
It was some time later and my mother was in labor, not an uncommon occurrence – there eventually were ten of us. Dr. Van Valkenberg (Floodwood’s resident physician) and my father were in the bedroom with her. I wasn’t allowed into the room. The kitchen stove was fired up because they needed boiling water to sterilize stuff. My job was to open the side lid of the wood stove and add a piece of firewood every fifteen minutes or so.
I decided then to bake a cake for “Mummy”.
I took out the bowl and spoon and tried to remember all the ingredients. I mixed the batter as I remembered it. Last of all, I tasted it. It was flat. I added a pinch of salt. Still flat. I added another pinch of salt. Still flat. Finally I was tossing handfuls of salt into the batter and it didn’t help at all. The batter looked good. So I poured it into the pan and put it into the oven. Pondering what could have been wrong when the cake was half baked, I realized that I had forgotten the sugar.
The cake turned out golden and beautiful. It looked good! I proudly served my mother a square. She didn’t say anything about it being salty. She only said that it looked beautiful.
Many years later she admitted that the cake I had made was so salty it made her mouth pucker. That was Mummy - always encouraging and always looking for the best in others.

Apricot-Almond Danish Pastry

2004-09-17T13:00:00.000-05:00

December/January Woman Today
APRICOT-ALMOND DANISH PASTRY
With the passing of Julia, I (and the world) lost a friend, a mentor, an instant, generous, source of information.

I recall the day my sister, Lil, relayed a question to me from her friend who was too shy to ask me directly. This friend had come home from France with fresh truffles, and didn’t quite know how to keep them. I’d never had this problem myself, so I called Julia Child. We chatted a bit first, then I asked the question “what would you do if you had fresh truffles from France, - how would you keep them?”.

“Of course, they do spoil like any mushroom” she told me, and then that she would freeze them, or put them into oil and into the “fridge” although most experts wouldn’t like that idea too much, she said, “but then you have that lovely oil to use”.

Often, I get asked for the recipe I made with Julia in the television series “Baking with Julia”. The recipe was published in the book, “Baking with Julia” written by Dorie Greenspan. This is a perfect time to offer the basic Danish Pastry recipe because if there’s any time during the year when we like to bake special goodies it’s during the Holidays. This is an easy refrigerator version of Danish Pastry. You can use a variety of fillings and shape the pastry many different ways although I have room for only one example here.

Apricot-Almond Danish Pastry

This refrigerator pastry needs to chill overnight, so plan accordingly.

1/4 cup warm water (105*F. to 115*F.)

1 package active dry yeast

1/2 cup milk, at room temperature

1 large egg, at room temperature

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2-1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 sticks (1/2 pound) cold unsalted butter

Apricot-Almond Filling:

1 cup (packed) dried apricots

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract

1 cup toasted, chopped almonds

For glazing and baking:

1 beaten egg white

Pearl sugar or sliced almonds

Powdered sugar glaze (1/2 cup powdered sugar, 2-3 tablespoons hot coffee or water)

For the pastry, in a large bowl, combine the water and yeast; stir to dissolve and let stand 5 minutes until the yeast begins to foam. Add the milk, egg, sugar and salt.
Measure the flour into the work bowl of a food processor with the steel blade in place. Slice the butter into the flour, then using on/off bursts with the food processor, cut the butter into the flour until it is in pea-sized pieces. This takes about 8 bursts. Turn into a large bowl. Pour the yeast mixture over and fold the two mixtures together just until the flour is moistened. Cover and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.

For the filling: Stir the apricots, water and sugar together in a large microwave-safe bowl or a 4-quart glass measuring cup. Put the bowl in a microwave oven and cook at full power for 10 minutes, stirring a few times, until apricots are soft and puffed and have absorbed almost all of the liquid. Turn the mixture into the work bowl of a food processor with the steel blade in place and process until smooth. Stir in the lemon juice, almond extract and the almonds. Cool. Can refrigerate up to 2 weeks before using.

Lightly flour a work surface and turn dough out onto it. Dust the dough lightly with flour and shape the dough into a rough square with your hands. Roll out to make a square about 16 inches on each side. Fold the dough into thirds like a business letter. Roll lightly to flatten the dough and fold it again into thirds, closing the ends (the dough will now be in a square). Wrap the dough and chill for at least 30 minutes. Roll again into a 16-inch square Fold into thirds again, business letter style. Roll out a second time to make a long, narrow rectangle and fold up again in thirds to make a square. Chill again (to work on it later), or roll out to make a square 20 inches on a side. Cut into sixteen 5-inch squares.

Place a pastry square on the work surface. Spoon a tablespoon of the filling onto the center. Brush the uncovered edges with egg white and lift the four corners of the pastry off the counter and seal in the center of the square. Squeeze the corners together to give them a little pinch and a twist to create a small topknot. Place on a parchment-covered baking sheet.

Preheat the oven to 400*F. (375*F. for convection oven). Let the pastries rise, covered with a kitchen towel for 30 minutes until they look puffy (they will not double).
Brush the pastries with beaten egg white and sprinkle with pearl sugar or sliced almonds. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly golden. Transfer onto a cooling rack and drizzle with powdered sugar icing if desired.
Makes 16 pastries

ˇ

Bumbleberry Pie

2004-08-12T09:17:00.001-05:00

Bumbleberry Pie
Fruit pies are American comfort food. Summertime is when the abundance of berries and fruits call for the pie baker to get busy! With the rainbow of fruits and berries before us in June, July and even August, there is no lack of combinations to try.

If you opt to skip baking a pie only because the crust is a challenge, here is a simple recipe for a “press-in" pastry shell. It hardly takes more time and effort than pressing a commercial refrigerated pastry shell into a pie pan. What's lost in flakiness is gained in flavor (not to mention the comfort of knowing what's IN the crust itself!)

When you bake this type of crust, it doesn't shrink or change shape when you need a pre-baked pie shell. For a double-crust pie, I just press half the crumbs into the pie pan, and pour in the filling and top the filling with the remainder of the crumbly mixture.

A while ago I received a request for "Bunbleberry Pie". I had never heard of such a thing, but after some research discovered that this i s a category of pie which mixes fruits and different kinds of berries. I've tested the recipe with a variety of fruit and berry combinations, including blueberries, blackberries and strawberries, with or without rhubarb, with or without apples all with delicious results. Just be sure to have a total of 5 cups of fruit.

The idea of bumbleberries fascinated our grandkids so much that they asked for bumbleberries and cream for breakfast almost every morning. We just combined different berries in a bowl and they were perfectly satisfied! Now I’m thinking – maybe a bumbleberry coffeecake or a bumbleberry cheesecake would be fun. But, here’s the pie for starters.

BUMBLEBERRY PIE

Pastry for a double crust pie, either your own recipe or Press-In-Pastry (recipe follows)

1 1/3 cups white sugar

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

2 small cooking apples, peeled, cored and diced

1 cup raspberries

1 cup blackberries or blueberries

1 cup rhubarb, cut into 1 inch lengths

Water and about 1 tablespoon additional suga r for top of the pie

Preheat the oven to 425*F. Roll or press pastry into a 9 inch pie plate. Stir sugar and flour together in large bowl. Add apples, raspberries, blackberries, and rhubarb. Toss together, and turn into pie shell. Cover with top past ry (either crumb pastry as described in the Press-In Pastry recipe, or with your own rolled-out pastry). Seal the edges. If you use a rolled-out top crust, slash vents onto the top crust, if using crumb pastry, this is not necessary. Bake for 45 minutes, or until browned and filling bubbles. Makes one 9-inch pie, about 8 servings.

MIXED BERRY PIE

1 recipe Press-in Pastry

2 cups fresh blackberries

2 cups blueberries

1/2 cup fresh gooseberries or raspberries

1/8 teaspoon almond extract

1/4 cup sug ar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

Preheat the oven to 425*F. Prepare the filling and press half of the crumbly pastry evenly into a 9-inch pie pan. Combine the berries, almond extract sugar and cornstarch in a large bowl; toss to mix well. Turn into the u nbaked crust. Sprinkle with the remaining pastry crumbles, or press the remaining crumbs together to make a dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured board and using a cookie cutter, cut into leaf, flower or other shapes and arrang on top of the fruit filling. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until the filling in the center is bubbly and the crust is golden brown. Cool until barely warm or to room temperature before serving.

PRESS-IN PASTRY

2 cups unsifted all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter, or 3/4 cup vegetable oil

1 whole egg

Mix flour and sugar together. Cut in the butter (you can do this in the food processor) until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Stir in the egg until well blended. Press half of the mixture into the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie pan, pushing it firmly to make an even layer. For a pre-baked pastry shell, preheat the oven to 300*F. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until the pastry is lightly browned. Cool completely before filling.

For a double-crusted, filled pie, pour filling into the unbaked crust. Sprinkle the second half of the pastry mixture over the top. Bake as directed for a double crust pie.

Rhubarb time again

2004-08-10T20:48:00.000-05:00

It's that miracle again. We know it's spring when we begin to get excited about rhubarb.

One day it looks like there's nothing alive out there. A couple days later a pinkish knob pushes through the ground, and in a day or so, leaves appear. A week later (we're talking Northern Minnesota here in the middle of May), the stalks are six inches long.

Just when I thought my rhubarb was getting a good start, my neighbor and friend, Carol Settergren, is already giving it away! And now, the end of May, rhubarb season is in full swing. The rain hasn't hurt the rhubarb at all; it's crisp and there's enough for juice and pie and all kinds of desserts.

Rhubarb, this first fruit of the season, is riddled with contradictions. Botanically it's a vegetable, a member of the buckwheat family. It thrives in areas having cold winters and dry soil.

Those who love rhubarb, love it. Those who don't, don't. Another of its contradictions, the plant itself is both delicious and toxic. The thick, fleshy, celery-like stalks are edible -- the leaves and the roots contain toxic oxalic acid.

Somebody told me that if you have any weeds you'd like to kill, just cover them with rhubarb leaves -- although I haven't managed to get rid of comfrey that way. The leaves have even been used for cleaning aluminum pans and tanning animal hides.

Even those who don't particularly love rhubarb often grow it for its looks. It will grow almost anywhere in good soil or poor, with no attention. A real ``no brainer'' for landscaping, because it makes such a nice, green filler, hiding the contact zones around outhouses and barns. Some people line their driveways with it.

Rhubarb, which is native to Siberia, was brought to this country in the 1700s. It became known as ``pie plant,'' indicating the way the plant is most frequently put to use.

Today it is commercially grown in California, Michigan, New York, Oregon and Washington, although Utica, Mich., calls itself ``Rhubarb Capitol of the World.''

About growing rhubarb

The best way to get successful plants is to get a root from a neighbor, a local farmer or a nursery. These roots will have acclimated themselves to the local climate. Plant or divide rhubarb roots in the early spring -- for us that means anytime in May or June. Don't expect to harvest rhubarb until next year.

When you first plant rhubarb, it needs a lot of water until it establishes its long tap root. After that, it doesn't require care or attention at all, although the best fertilizer is one that is high in nitrogen (the best is ``manure tea''). When seed stalks and flowers develop, cut them off from the base of the plant as soon as they appear and discard them.

Harvesting rhubarb

Pull rather than cut the stalks from the plant. The county extension service recommends that you do your harvesting before July 4. (Do it quickly before you head off to the parade!) After the Fourth of July, rhubarb becomes coarse and dry. The plants also need time to recover for the next season's harvest.

Rhubarb lovers sweet on that tart

Pucker up, rhubarb lovers: You know how sour it can be, so make sure you've got lots of suger in the canister before you start cooking.

Keep in mind that the green variety tends to be more tart than the red variety. Select the thickest, lushest stalks for cooking. Pull off any strings, if you like, but it isn't necessary to peel them.

When I have an abundance of rhubarb, I usually cut it up, layer it with sugar in my Finnish steamer -- the ``mehu maija'' -- and make rhubarb juice. It's wonderful served hot, but it also makes a delicious punch simply mixed with ginger ale and poured over ice.

Rhubarb Juice in the Finnish juicer ("mehu maija")

Trim leaves and ends of the rhubarb stems and wash the stalks. Cut into 1/2-inch pieces; measure. Put the rhubarb into the perforated steaming basket and set it over the juice kettle. Add 1 to 1-1/2 cups granulated sugar for every 20 cups of rhubarb. Fill the water kettle and place over high heat. Heat until water boils and steaming begins.

Steam will rise into the rhubarb, and as it cooks, clear juice will drain into the pan. Open the drain tube to drain the juice. Refrigerate juice or drain into hot, sterilized canning jars, top with canning lids and process in a boiling water bath to seal. Yield varies with the juiciness of the rhubarb.

And if you don't have a mehu maija to call your own, you still can easily make Rhubarb Juice.

Rhubarb Juice

3 cups rhubarb, cut in 1/2-inch pieces (1 pound)
5 cups water
1 cup granulated sugar

Combine rhubarb, water and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cool, then pour through a fine sieve and chill. Refrigerate up to 1 week. Sweeten to taste and serve alone, or mix with ginger ale or lemon-flavored soda. Makes 5 cups.

Rhubarb Creme Brulee

6 cups rhubarb, cut in 1/2-inch pieces (2 pounds)
4 tablespoons granulated sugar
5 egg yolks
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 3/4 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
Brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-by-13-inch glass baking dish. Arrange rhubarb in an even layer in the baking dish and bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until the rhubarb is tender and the liquid has evaporated. Remove from the oven. Reduce oven temperature to 325 degrees.

Scoop the rhubarb into six (3/4 cup) individual ovenproof dessert dishes or eight (1/2 cup) custard cups. Sprinkle each with granulated sugar.

In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks, 1/2 cup granulated sugar and vanilla. Heat the cream to simmering. Whisk the cream into the egg yolks. Pour the cream mixture over the rhubarb, dividing the mixture equally. Place into a larger pan and add enough hot water to reach halfway up the sides of the dishes.

Loosely cover with foil and bake until set, about 50 minutes. Remove and cool on a rack. Just before serving, sprinkle 1 tablespoon brown sugar evenly over each custard and caramelize with a blowtorch, moving evenly back and forth just over the sugar until it's evenly melted. Or you can caramelize the sugar under the broiler. Set the dishes 2-3 inches from the heat until the sugar is evenly melted. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Ginger Rhubarb Compote

5 cups fresh rhubarb, sliced 1/2 inch
1 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons chopped candied ginger
Whipped cream

Combine the rhubarb, sugar and ginger in a 2-quart glass baking dish, cover and microwave at HIGH power for 5 minutes until rhubarb is tender; stir. Taste. Add more sugar to taste. Serve with whipped cream. Makes 6 servings.

Here's a recipe from my friend Carol Settergren -- a three-layer dessert consisting of a crust, a custard-like filling and a fluffy meringue on the very top. This luscious, light-as-air wonder will serve a crowd.

Aunt Minnie's Rhubarb Fluff

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, cut up
5 cups rhubarb, cut 1/2 inch
6 eggs, separated
2-3/4 cups granulated sugar, divided
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup undiluted evaporated milk
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Coat a 9-by-13-inch cake pan with nonstick spray. In a bowl or in the food processor, combine the flour, sugar and butter together and process or blend using a hand mixer until the butter is completely blended into the flour. Press the dry mixture firmly into the bottom of the cake pan. Bake for 10 minutes or until layer is firm to the touch but not browned.

Spread the rhubarb pieces evenly over the baked crust. Mix the egg yolks with 2 cups of the sugar, salt, evaporated milk and 6 tablespoons flour. Pour over the rhubarb evenly. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until the rhubarb layer is set.

Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy. Add the cream of tartar. With beater going at high speed, beat in the remaining 3/4 cup sugar until stiff.

Spread over the rhubarb layer. Sprinkle with the coconut. Bake for 10 minutes longer or until lightly browned. Makes 12 to 16 servings.

Rhubarb Strawberry Crisp

1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3 cups rhubarb, sliced 1/2 inch
4 cups strawberries, sliced
1 1/2 cups uncooked rolled oats
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter an 8-inch baking dish. Combine the sugar and cornstarch; add the rhubarb and strawberries and toss until fruit is coated. Spread evenly in the baking dish. Combine the rolled oats, brown sugar, butter, flour and cinnamon until crumbly. Sprinkle over the rhubarb and strawberries. Bake for 30 minutes until bubbly. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream. Makes 6 servings.

Carol also makes the old favorite apple pie squares with rhubarb replacing the apples, adding a bit more sugar. I tried it and we loved it.

Rhubarb Pie Squares

CRUST:

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powdefr
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or 1 cup lard
1 egg, separated
2/3 cup milk

FILLING:

1 cup cornflakes, measured before crushing
5 cups rhubarb, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons butter

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Mix in the butter until butter pieces are about the size of peas. Mix the egg and the milk and pour over the dry ingredients. Toss with a fork until all of the dry ingredients are moistened. Gather the dough into a ball and divide into two parts.

Roll dough out to fit into an 11-by-15-inch jelly roll pan. It may be easier to roll out dough to fit half of the pan at a time. Sprinkle evenly with the crushed cornflakes. In a large bowl, mix the rhubarb with the sugar and cinnamon. Spread the mixture evenly over the pastry lined pan. Dot with the butter.

Roll out the remaining dough and fit over the filling, sealing the edges all around the pan. Beat the egg white until soft peaks form. Spread the egg mixture evenly over the top crust of the pie. Bake for about 40-45 minutes until the pastry is browned.

While it bakes, mix the powdered sugar and lemon juice until icing can be drizzled. Drizzle over the top of the baked squares. Cool. Cut into squares to serve. Makes 12 to 16 servings.

The crunchy and sweet topping on these tender muffins balances the tartness of the rhubarb. This recipe comes from my rhubarb-loving sister-in-law, Kathie Luoma.

Kathie's Rhubarb Nut Muffins

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup canola or vegetable oil
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup fresh rhubarb, cut in 1/2 inch dice

TOPPING:

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Coat 12 muffin cups with nonstick spray. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt.

Make a hole in the center of the dry ingredients and add the oil, egg, buttermilk and vanila. Mix just until dry ingredients are moistened. Fold in the rhubarb. Scoop batter into the muffin cups. Combine the brown sugar, walnuts and cinnamon. Sprinkle mixture over the tops of the muffins, dividing equally. Bake for 20 to 23 minutes or just until a skewer inserted into a muffin comes out clean and dry, or until the muffin feels firm in the center. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack. Makes 12 muffins.

Mozzarella! Mozzarella!

2004-08-09T21:33:00.000-05:00

You'll want to shout it from the kitchen window when you discover how ridiculously easy it is to make fresh mozzarella cheese at home

Fresh mozzarella made by hand. Sounds complicated and expensive, doesn't it?

Surprise: Nothing could be further from the truth. You CAN make fresh mozzarella at home in less time than it takes to make a box cake mix. It isn't rocket science, and you don't need the computer skills of a 6-year-old to understand what you're doing.

We're talking firm, fresh cheese here, with a mild flavor, that can be sliced. Not at all like aged or ripened cheese.

Actually, though, ripened cheese starts its life the same way as fresh cheese, only it goes through a brining process and controlled temperature aging -- while fresh cheese goes right onto a bruschetta topped with fresh tomato or a pizza or into a salad, or onto a piece of buttered toast. And what a delicious way to eat your four glasses of milk a day!

What do you need to make fresh cheese? A non-aluminum pot that will hold a gallon of milk, a custard cup to dissolve the rennet, a spoon, a candy thermometer (or an instant reading thermometer -- I love my digital one) and a large slotted spoon or a small sieve. A glass bowl and a microwave oven are handy to further speed up the cheesemaking process.

Ingredients? One gallon of skim, 1 percent or 2 percent milk, citric acid, rennet tablets and regular table salt. One gallon of milk will produce about 12 ounces of cheese.

Citric acid and rennet are available by mail order -- or you might check your local pharmacy. Or you can order the supplies through the New England Cheesemaking Supply Co., 85 Main Street, Ashfield, MA 01330, phone: (413) 628-3808, or see the Web site at www.cheesemaking.com. I ordered their cheesemaking kit for $19.95, which comes with enough supplies to make 20 batches of mozzarella cheese or eight batches of ricotta (you'll love the fresh taste of homemade ricotta). One batch and I was hooked!

First encounter with fresh mozzarella

``Mozzarella! Mozzarella!'' is a moment etched in our memories.

Recently married, my husband, Dick, and I were driving through southern Italy and the cheesemakers were hawking their fresh mozzarella to passersby on a narrow country road. Excited to try it, we bought a bucketful of the soft fresh cheese scooped out of a tank of brine.

We were on a monthlong drive in our little VW and it would be three weeks before we'd cross the English Channel to our apartment in Oxford, England.

But in just a few days, the stench began. The car reeked of sour (rotten) cheese, and we had to throw our precious mozzarella away.

The lesson here: Fresh mozzarella is meant to be eaten fresh. Even packed in a brine, it keeps no more than a few days.

The cheesemaking tradition

This is the time of year I think of making cheese. It goes back to my farm heritage. Cows freshen in the springtime and milk was abundant on our little farm in Floodwood. As a teen-ager, I made an aged yellow cheese following the instructions in a St. Louis County Extension service pamphlet on cheesemaking.

I grew up idolizing Heidi in Switzerland, who spent her summers in the mountains drinking ``bowls'' of milk and helping to make Swiss cheese. I also heard colorful stories of Norwegian dairy maids in their mountain settings making kilos and kilos of cheese throughout the spring and summer. It was a way to preserve milk. (It takes approximately 10 pounds of milk to produce 1 pound of cheese.)

It wasn't until recently that the idea of making cheese in small batches gained interest across the country. So-called ``artisan'' cheesemakers, like my friend Paula Lambert, who founded The Mozzarella Company in Dallas, make high-quality fresh cheeses in small amounts that are sold mostly to restaurants and specialty shops.

However, if you make family-sized batches of cheese, like you would bake bread, you can add a whole new dimension to life in the kitchen. Or you might discover a rewarding activity to share with your children or grandchildren. I found that I can start the dough for either simple French bread or one of my fruit, nut or whole-grain breads (in ``Whole Grain Breads By Machine or By Hand''), and when the dough is done, I shape and set it to rise. By the time the bread is baked, I can have fresh cheese made, too!

I often get questions about special kinds of baked cheese, the kind that are traditional in the Scandinavian countries. I describe several in ``The Finnish Cookbook.'' One that those of Finnish and Swedish heritage remember is called 3ostkaka,1 or ``cheesecake.'' Unlike the cheesecake Americans are familiar with, ostkaka is made of baked ``colostrum'' milk -- the first milk after freshening.

Colostrum milk, which has the consistency of firm custard, was always a delicacy. To make it, we simply poured the colostrum milk into a heavy casserole dish with nothing more added to it. We used milk from about the third milking after the cow had freshened. This ``first milk'' is high in protein, so that when it is baked, it sets as if there's egg in it.

We'd set the casserole into a larger pan with hot water and bake until firm. If it was overbaked, it would get watery, much the same way a custard might. The custardy result was scooped into a bowl, and we'd sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the top and eat it for breakfast or dessert.

When colostrum milk was no longer available, we would make ostkaka or ``uunijuusto'' by adding rennet to fresh milk and then straining off the curds from the whey. The recipe I'm including here is from my friend Marj Bergeland, who grew up on a farm in west-central Minnesota. Marj says her Grandma Swanson always started out with several quarts of milk plus rennet tablets to make firm curds. She then strained the whey through cheesecloth. Marj has simplified the recipe by starting with small-curd cottage cheese.

Cooking and Baking with Fresh Herbs and Phyllo

2004-08-09T21:21:00.000-05:00

Do you remember when parsley was the only fresh herb anybody used? You put a sprig of it onto an otherwise colorless dish and called it “garnish”. Nobody ever ate the stuff. You never ate the garnish. That may have been why people didn’t think anything of decorating food with something poisonous like fresh daisies. The rule now is that you don’t put anything onto a plate that’s not edible.

Today, the garden outside my kitchen window is abundant with all kinds of herbs, including parsley, sage, basil, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, tarragon and thyme. We use these herbs for their flavor, though they do make great edible garnishes. I snipped garlic chives into a salmon quiche the other day and our curious grandchildren wanted a taste. That led to a tasting tour of the herb garden. Tarragon tastes a little peppery and licorice-like, basil leaves are sweet, lovage tastes like celery, rosemary tastes a little like a Christmas tree needle and sorrel leaves taste lemony. Sorrel turned out to be a favorite.

Herbs are one garden product that I feel really pay their way! I like to clip and dry them so that I have a winter’s supply far tastier than anything I can buy in a jar. Although I sometimes use a dehydrator, I like to hang herbs in bunches to dry the old fashioned way. It takes just a couple of days before I can crush the leaves ready for storage. I just want to be sure I pack them away while they’re still green and aromatic. Any herb whether in a jar or in the air that’s turned brown and smells like dried hay won’t do much to flavor anything.

We were talking about fresh herbs one day while I was getting a haircut. My hairdresser said he had clipped a recipe from Gourmet Magazine about twenty years ago for a phyllo-crusted pizza and he uses all kinds of fresh herbs from the garden. The idea sent me to the kitchen to do some experimentation. I loved the results. Eight layers of phyllo, each brushed with an herb and olive oil mixture with a sprinkling of freshly grated Parmegiano Reggiano, makes an irresistible base for a few simple toppings.

The advantage of baking this pizza in the convection oven is that the pizza bakes quickly at a lower temperature than in a conventional oven. For conventional baking, you’ll need to increase the oven temperature by 25*F. Although I prefer a rimless, dark, non-insulated cookie sheet, you can bake the pizza on a shallow-rimmed jelly roll pan. I avoid insulated cookie sheets of any kind.

Phyllo-Crust Fresh Herb Pizza
Makes one 12 by 17-inch pizza, about 6 servings or 24 appetizer squares

8 (17 x 12-inch) sheets phyllo dough
1/2 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
3 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs, basil, oregano, marjoram or thyme, or a combination
8 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan, preferably Parmegiano-Reggiano cheese
1 cup coarsely shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup very thinly sliced sweet onion
5 medium-sized tomatoes, cut into 1/4 inch slices
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1 tablespoon fresh or dried rosemary

Preheat oven to convection bake at 350*F. (or in standard oven, to 375*F.) Coat a rectangular, preferably rimless, cookie sheet with nonstick spray

Stack phyllo between 2 sheets of waxed paper and cover with a dampened kitchen towel.. Mix olive oil with the garlic and herbs. Lay 1 sheet of the phyllo onto the baking pan. Brush with some of the olive oil and herb mixture and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of the Parmesan cheese. Lay another sheet of the phyllo on top and press firmly so that it adheres to the bottom sheet, and brush with oil and sprinkle with the Parmesan, Continue layering the phyllo and brushing with the oil and cheese until all eight sheets are stacked. Brush with any remaining oil mixture and sprinkle with any remaining Parmesan. Scatter sliced onion, sliced tomatoes, oregano, thyme and rosemary over the top. Sprinkle with the mozzarella cheese.

Bake in the center of the oven for 18 to 23 minutes at convection bake or 25 to 30 minutes in a standard oven, or until the edges are golden. With a pizza wheel or sharp knife, cut the pizza into squares.