Risengrød + Risalamande

When I asked s what he would like to have for Christmas dinner, he said risengrød (rice pudding). He's had it as school lunch a few times. It always sells out if they have it as one of the two options! They serve it with cinnamon sugar and butter on top, but it is served as their main course.

 

This actually perfectly coincided with one of my own Christmas food wishes, which was to make risalamande (literally: rice with almonds), my style. It is a mixture of rice pudding and whipped cream and toasted slivered almonds, served cold with cherry sauce as Christmas dessert. It is definitely my favourite Danish Christmas food that I have found so far - but I hate cream, so the best ones I have had were plant-based. So my idea was to make my own version and experiment with what to add to the cold rice pudding to make a good taste / texture - perhaps greek yoghurt, perhaps plant milk or coconut milk, or a mixture of those. I had even already bought the pudding rice...

 

I looked at the recipes for risengrød and risalamande on the back of the packet of pudding rice, and realized that the Danish version of rice pudding is actually unsweetened - just pudding rice, salt, water and milk. So then I thought perhaps we could eat it like we do pancakes on pancake date - have a savoury round then a sweet round, and just have the plain rice pudding as the main thing (like a risotto), with lots of optional toppings / mix-ins for both rounds.

 

For the savoury round, I slow-roasted some cherry tomatoes, idea being that these and some grated cheese could be a good combo. We also had some surprisingly successful salt-baked root vegetables, so we didn't eat much of this in the end.

 

For the sweet round, we mixed up the risengrød and risalamande combos - so we had skyr (usually have this in the fridge, don't usually have greek yoghurt), toasted slivered almonds, cherry sauce (bought in a little tetrapak - easy but I am sure you could make a nicer one with real cherries!), and cinnamon sugar.

 

For the risengrød:

200 ml pudding rice 

250 ml boiling water

1/2 - 1 tsp salt (to taste)

1 litre milk

 

For risalamande, my way: 

Skyr (I think Greek yoghurt might be preferable but haven't tried it yet)

Slivered almonds, toasted (I used 100 g total to make about 3 portions of risalamande)

cinnamon sugar

cherry sauce 

To make risengrød, put the rice in a big saucepan, add the boiling water and simmer for 2 min. Add the milk, bring to a boil, and simmer gently for approx. 35-40 min, stirring frequently. Add salt to taste. Let cool completely if using for risalamande - or reheat as needed.

To make risalamande, take a good amount of risengrød, mix with about 2/3 the volume of skyr or greek yoghurt, lots of toasted slivered almonds, and a bit of cinnamon sugar to taste. Chill for at least an hour, and serve cold with cherry sauce and cinnamon sugar.

Pizza snails

s’s birthday wish was to have his class from børnehave over to play. They do this sometimes for birthdays - the whole room of kids goes to the birthday boy/girl’s house for a few hours in the morning during børnehave time, with a pedagog or two. But we haven’t tried it before… 

Apparently pizza snails (pizza snegle) are required for such gatherings. Like overnight bread rolls, these seem to be something every Danish mum can whip up with her eyes closed.

I asked two different Danish mums about how to make pizza snegle, and both directed me to the same recipe, this one. So that seemed like a done deal. 

(makes about 30 medium snails - including some slightly small/awkward end ones - about 20 acceptably similar ones)

For the dough:

50 g fresh yeast

200 ml milk

150 ml plain yoghurt 

2 eggs 

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp honey

100 ml olive oil

250 g / 9 oz wholewheat flour

400 g / 14 1/2 oz plain flour

 

For the tomato sauce:

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 400 g tin tomatoes

2 tbsp tomato purée

2 tsp dried oregano

Salt+pepper

 

To finish:

125 g (one pack) fresh mozzarella, finely chopped

1 egg, lightly beaten - for brushing

 

Make the dough:

Mix yeast in a large bowl with the milk. Add oil, yoghurt, honey, egg, salt and wholewheat flour and mix well together.

 

Add plain flour a little at a time until the dough is nice and flexible (it was a bit sticky). Put in a warm place to rise, with a tea towel over it, for about an hour or until doubled in size.

 

Make the tomato sauce:

Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté onion and garlic until soft and translucent. Add tinned tomatoes, tomato purée, oregano, salt and pepper. Simmer c 20 min until thick. Let cool, and keep in fridge until needed, esp if making in advance.

 

Assembly:

Roll out half the dough on a floured surface until c 1/2 cm thick rectangle/square. Spread half the tomato sauce out evenly on top, except c. 4 cm from one end. Sprinkle with half the cheese. Roll into a long roll and cut snails about 2 cm thick with a sharp knife. Put on baking sheets lined with baking paper, with a few cm between them at least, and make round and neat with your hands. Repeat with the other half of the ingredients. Let rise on the sheets for 30 min. Brush with beaten egg. Bake 16-18 min at 180C, until golden brown.

 

They came out well and looked legit. They didn't go down all that well with the kids (they preferred melon, salty popcorn and coconut water), but there were no major complaints so think I got them about right.

Rugbrød chips

rugbrød (slightly stale is fine, perhaps even ideal)

olive oil

sea salt

Slice the rugbrød and cut into small pieces - approximate squares about 5 cm across and 2 mm deep are ideal. Spread them on a baking tray lined with baking paper in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt. Bake in 180C oven for approx. 20 min, checking after 10 and 15 to make sure they don't burn. Let cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

Way better than normal chips. S and s both love these, and they are easy to make (if you have rugbrød!).

Snobrød

I don't even know the name for this in English: 'bread twisted onto a stick and cooked on a fire' is rather long winded. So, snobrød (literally translates to 'twisted bread') is something that it seems to me every Danish person has been making since kindergarten (børnehave), like building supercool ground-level treehouses out of sticks in the woods or making awesome morning rolls. But I had never made or eaten it. So it had become one of my dream-Denmark-goals - my American one was to see a skunk (realized just weeks before leaving after 5 years). We had been talking with our neighbours about making a fire in the garden together and making some snobrød, and finally got around to it a couple days before New Year's Eve, on a non-rainy afternoon after S+T had been cutting down some tree pieces. T had bought some special sticks (metal with wooden handles), and I made the dough using this recipe.

300 ml water

25 g fresh yeast (used c. 1.5 tbsp dried)

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp salt

500 g plain flour

Mix yeast and water in a large bowl. Add sugar, flour and salt and mix to a smooth dough. Add more flour if needed. Let rise approx. 45 min (or a bit longer). Take pieces of dough approx the size of a snooker ball, and roll into long thin sausage shapes before twisting around the end of a stick and squishing a bit into shape. Bake by holding over hot embers. Like marshmallow toasting, different techniques and tastes apply, but I think it best to be patient and go for browned on the outside / cooked on the inside. 

This was about the right amount for 4 adults and 2 three year olds, as a sort of afternoon snack. They were quite special - the crispy outside and soft inside is different from any other bread I've eaten. Next time it might be nice with seeds in the dough - sesame?

Overnight seedy bread rolls

My friend A-L makes delicious no-nonsense overnight bread rolls (morgenboller). I have a theory that every Danish person does this...

One of my lockdown goals, I decided, was to figure out my own overnight bread recipe. I asked A-L for her recipe, and she gave it to me, but it turned out she didn’t really have a recipe, it was more like the bake off technical challenges (‘add flour to make a dough’)...

I didn’t believe in my skills enough to start from her recipe, so I googled a bit and decided to try this one. I’ve made them a few times now and we love them!

(makes 12 medium-small buns)

250 ml water (1 cup)
250 ml milk (1 cup)
15 g fresh yeast (1/2 oz) - approx. 1/3 of a 50 g pack
2 tsp sugar
100 ml wholemeal flour (2/5 cup)
100 ml oats (2/5 cup)
100 ml mixed seeds / grains (e.g. sunflower seeds, linseeds, pumpkin seeds, hulled hemp seeds, poppyseeds, sesame seeds) (2/5 cup)
500 g plain flour (1,1 lb)
1/2 tbsp salt

In a large bowl, dissolve the fresh yeast and sugar in the cold water and milk. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead everything into a smooth and nice dough. Cover the bowl loosely and place it in the fridge for 8-12 hours (i.e. overnight).

Dip two tablespoons in cold water and use them to set buns on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Try to make them a little pointy - when they raise, they will flatten out a little.

Let the bread raise for an extra hour at room temperature. Heat the oven to 200C.

After the final raising, brush the bread with some beaten egg and decorate them with different seeds or grains.

Bake for 20-25 min, until golden brown. Move to a cooling rack to cool.

Carrot and sunflower seed bread rolls

Little S talks about bøller a lot. Essentially, it is his word for all food - although it really means bread-rolls. My friend A-L makes awesome, no-nonsense overnight bread rolls with carrot in them. I found this recipe after I asked her for hers, and thought I'd give it a go in the meantime.

50 g fresh yeast (2 oz)
550 ml lukewarm water
80 g sunflower seeds
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp vegetable oil
250 g carrots, peeled and grated
1000 g plain flour
2 tsp salt
extra sunflower seeds for decoration

In a large bowl, dissolve the fresh yeast. If you are using dry yeast then add this in the step together with the flour. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead everything into a nice and smooth dough.

Cover the bowl with a clean dish towel and set it aside to rise. Let it rise for one hour.

Divide the dough into 24 pieces and make them into nice buns. Place the buns on a parchment paper covered baking tray. Let the buns rise for another 30 min. Heat the oven to 210C. Gently brush the buns will a beaten egg and sprinkle them with some extra sunflower seeds. Bake for about 20 min.


These were quite nice, but I liked the overnight-risen rolls better - both flavour and method!

Syltede asiers (Danish pickled cucumber-marrows)

We first saw pickled asiers in the jar aisle of the supermarket ages ago - and weren't sure what they were. The picture on the label looked a bit like a cassava, the contents looked like thick-sliced peeled pears... Eventually we bought some, and S fell in love with them. Turns out they are crisp, chunky, sweet-pickled slices of giant cucumber. They are traditionally eaten on smørrebrod with leverpostej - but we like them with hard cheese like Pråst or mature cheddar.

A few weeks ago, we found some fresh ones for sale in Irma, and decided we should try pickling some ourselves. We used approximately this recipe. I'm still not sure if asiers are just a marrow version of the American kind of thick-skinned cucumbers, or a different kind of cucumber intended to be grown to marrow size - either way, they are a little different from your average pickled cucumber.

2 kg asiers (cucumber marrows)
50-75 g salt
150 g small red onions, peeled and sliced (or shallots)
2 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp black peppercorns
fennel seeds
chilli flakes

1.5 l vinegar (ideally white wine or apple cider vinegar) (5%)
750 g sugar
 
Peel the asiers, cut them in half lengthways, scrape out the seeds and cut into 1 cm thick slices. Sprinkle with the salt, cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and set aside in a cool place for 2–3 hours. Rinse the salted asier slices in cold water and wipe them lightly with kitchen paper. Place in sterilised jars, layering with the sliced onions, mustard seeds, black peppercorns, and fennel seeds and chilli flakes too if you like. Heat the sugar and vinegar almost to the boil in a pan, whisking until the sugar has dissolved. Pour over the asier slices in the jars until they are all covered, and immediately seal. Leave for at least a week before eating. Keep in the fridge.


There were some variations in different recipes I checked - for example, the asiers could be salted after just cutting in half and deseeding instead of after slicing; and they could be left for a day instead of just a few hours in the salt... Another option would be using 'atamon' - I had to look this up, but apparently it is a preservative with a strange label (with a caricature of a chinese face on it) that is often used in Danish pickles. So if I make them again, perhaps I'll try something a little different: with atamon+chilli (perhaps most interesting?), with atamon+star anise, and another one.

Also, these come out nice, but not really crunchy enough - should they be salted more or less? Or should I add something tannic?

Fresh hazelnuts / cherry bowl

The hedgerows are full of hazelnuts, and the frugt og gront shops have them too, fleetingly. I never ate a fresh hazelnut before. They are much softer and easier to crack. The texture is giving; taste mild. Might be interesting ground to a paste, but so far have done nothing but crack'n'snack... And look at them: so pretty!

Koldskål (kærnemælkskoldskål) med kammerjunker

Another Danish food we tried: koldskål is a chilled buttermilk soup, often flavoured with citrus. Cartons of it appeared everywhere on the first warmish day (we haven't had too many of those yet...). It is usually eaten with crispy biscuits (kammerjunker).

Oat buns

We have eaten so much good Danish bread. There is endless variety: traditional rye made with sourdough; versions with chia, carrot, potato for moistness. Various focaccia and baguette type things. And everything in between (lots of nuts and seeds!). Last weekend we went to Relæ with Y+M, and fell in love hard with the sourdough bread they serve there - it's from Manfred's, their other place over the road (also had the best beer I have ever had). S especially became a little obsessed. So yesterday we returned to Jægersborggade to try and track down that bread (after a very successful mission to a secret secondhand store). It turned out to be pretty easy: they were selling the bread as wholes and halves for quite a reasonable price, right from the restaurant. So we went home happy, with a bag full of tasty, stretchy, crunchy, wonderful sourdough (not to mention the radio, DVD/CD player, three jackets, one shirt and waterproof trousers we'd picked up earlier...).

So anyway, yesterday for some reason I was looking at the side of a packet of oats and became intrigued by the recipe there. Thought it was about time I tried to follow a recipe written in Danish. With the help of Google translate I figured it out. And realised we had pretty much all the ingredients. Including grahamsmel, which I hadn't been able to identify previously. So I made these oat buns, using up some slightly out of date fresh yeast, testing the grahamsmel, and with freshly made yoghurt. I think I could understand the recipe! One thing I noticed, that I remembered from some Swedish hagebutten soup stuff Anna had given me once upon a time, is that Scandinavians seem to measure volume in decilitres (1 dl = 100 ml) rather than millilitres.

(makes 10 rolls)

25 g yeast (gær)
200 ml (2 dl) lukewarm water (vand)
250 g plain flour (hvedemel) (used white spelt instead)
75 g graham flour (grahamsmel)
250 g oats (havregryn)
100 ml yoghurt
1 tbsp (spsk) sugar (sukker)
2 tbsp oil (olie)
1 tsp (tsk) salt
more yoghurt and some sesame seeds to finish

Dissolve (opløs) the yeast in lukewarm (lunkent) water, and add (tilsæt) the flours, oats, yogurt, sugar, oil and salt.

Knead (ælt) to a smooth (glat) and supple (smidig) dough (dej). The dough should be soft (blød). Form (form) the dough into a ball (kugle).

Let (lad) the dough rise (hæve), covered (tildækket), for about 45 min. Knock (slå) dough down (ned) and shape 10 buns (boller).

Set (sæt) buns (bollerne) on a baking sheet (bageplade) with baking paper (bagepapir) and let them prove (efterhæve) for about 30 min.

Brush with yogurt or water, then sprinkle (drys) with sesame seeds.

Bake at 200C / fan (varmluft) 180C for 12-15 min.


Came out tasty enough but not very well risen - perhaps the yeast was past it? Perhaps spelt flour was a bad substitution?

Relae, Copenhagen

We visited Copenhagen a week ago. A week or so before, we came across an article on top food destinations, checked out the recommended restaurants in Copenhagen, found that Relae does a vegetarian menu, and spontaneously booked a table online. Well actually, I had to apply some dedication and luck - we initially signed up to a waitlist, I checked the booking website some time after, found a dinnertime table free, and grabbed it. We never heard back from the waitlist, and I never saw another free table before or since, so what luck indeed. They are only open four nights (and two lunchtimes) a week, which goes some way to explaining the challenge.

Our booking was for our first night there (the only time they'd be open during our trip). So we were somewhat bleary from timezone crossing when we wandered in their direction. But sunshine overcame that weariness, with green spaces and bike buckets full of merry Danes. Relae is on a very lively street, amid shops of beautiful ceramics, interesting clothes, good coffee and so forth. Seems like a hip hood. We wandered a while before we reached our booking time and settled in.

Space was a touch cramped - passing between our table and the adjoining two person table almost impossible. But each table was a magic box - menus and cutlery hidden in a drawer. So when we sat the table was empty but for water glasses - on reflection, a good metaphor for the deceptive simplicity and elegant understatement of the food to come. Our meatlessness made ordering simple, although we did end up with an aperitif we weren't aware of ordering. We took the pre-snack too (intentionally in this case): one perfect spear of white asparagus, raw but coated in pistachios. Simple, beautiful and delicious: I'd eaten white asparagus only once before and been unimpressed by the subtlety of its flavour, but here not cooking it and treating it so simply let its taste stand out.

Then onto our four courses. First rolled red onions with Icelandic seaweed hidden inside and a smattering of birch syrup and salt crystals. Very pretty - a pinkish star on the plate. But a little disappointing - red onions are not made to be boiled or steamed, I find (bad camp food memories). Second was stunning: green soup of ramps and wild garlic, with leaf-thin mushroom slices balanced on top and cooked grains within. Nothing much to look at (chlorophyll-y DNA extraction-esque), but rammed with flavour and texture and perfect balance. Third was intriguing and clever and although not as immediately wonderful as number two no less full of depth. Purple carrot so dark you'd think it was beet, sliced so thin to be almost crisps, in a flowerlike form. Served with hollandaise scattered with oxalis (wood sorrel) leaves and flowers - so so pretty, yet still simple. Taken together the richness, sourness, sweetness and earthiness made it special. Last was ice cream: vanilla with orange. A swipe of perfectly smooth creaminess, with different driednesses of orange each bringing slightly different tastes and textures.

Fun, and clever, and thoughtful, but not overwhelming. Yesterday I noticed it is now the 53rd best restaurant in the world.