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.

Whipped feta

This came about as a good way to use up part of a block of feta left over from something else. I love feta but it doesn’t keep long after you’ve opened it, and there never seems to be exactly the right amount in the block for what you’re making… This is really quick and simple and the rest of the ingredients we pretty much always have. 

1/2 block feta
1/2 cup skyr
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
Pinch of salt
Little bit of garlic, crushed

Put all ingredients in a little blender and blend. Scrape into serving bowl and sprinkle additional salt, pepper and olive oil on top. 

Ice lollies: (1) mango; (2) acai

I got some ice lolly molds in my little lifts box when I was sick. 2 years later, s is into ice cream and I thought it might be fun to try them. We started with (1) mango lassi, a recipe from the box. And then (2) popped into my head - I'd bought acai powder a while back thinking we could make acai bowls, which has not yet happened... I thought ice lollies could be like little bitesize premade acai bowls (the molds are quite small)?

 Option 1:

 2 ripe mangoes, peeled, de-stoned and cut into chunks (defrosted if using frozen)

1 banana, peeled and cut into chunks

1 cup skyr

Blend mango and banana together til smooth. Mix in skyr. Freeze in lolly molds.

 

Option 2:

1 banana, peeled and cut into chunks

3/4 cup blueberries (defrosted if using frozen) 

3/4 cup skyr

c. 3 tbsp acai powder

1-2 tbsp almond meal

Blend all together, pour into lolly molds, freeze.

These are ace! s loves them, we can share them with his friend who doesn't eat sugar in the garden. And I don't feel guilty about letting s eat multiple ice lollies in a day, as they are (a) rather small, and (b) full of nothing but fruit and yoghurt! And they are so quick and easy to make, with no cooking - great for summer. Many more variations to come!

Wasabi yoghurt

We went to a wannabe Michelin vegetarian restaurant in Copenhagen. It was a looong dinner, with some serious ups and downs. Some things were delicious, others were just ridiculous. And there were some very long breaks between courses...

One of the things we really liked, and seemed like a simple but effective idea, was a thick wasabi - yoghurt paste. We made a simple version of it at home as a dip: skyr mixed with wasabi paste. And it was good. The amount of wasabi is down to personal taste. We used skyr so we wouldn't have to strain yoghurt. But that was it - a two-ingredient recipe.

Tzatzkiki

We ate this a lot in the summer, when cucumbers arrived in our veg bag often, and the walk to the grocery shop past the greek restaurant often reminded me to buy skyr or greek yoghurt. That's the only trick - to use thick yoghurt so it doesn't get too runny from cucumber juice.

1/2 cucumber, grated
1/2 clove garlic, crushed to a paste
approx. 1 1/2 cups greek yoghurt or skyr
squeeze of lemon juice (about 1 tsp)
pinch of salt

Coarsely grate the cucumber into a bowl, then squeeze out / drain off some of the liquid. Add garlic, yoghurt/skyr, lemon juice and salt. Mix up and taste for flavour balance and seasoning.


Great with some bread and a greek salad.

Beetroot and horseradish dip

This is very simple, but really surprisingly tasty. I don't know if it was a fluke, but the amount of horseradish came out just perfect: fiery but softened by the earthy beet and creamy yoghurt.

approx. 4 medium beetroots
3/4 cup skyr
2-3 1 cm cubes of peeled horseradish
lime juice
salt

Boil the beets whole until tender, then let cool (do this in advance if you like). Peel (the skins should just slip off) and chop into large chunks. Blend together with the remaining ingredients, adding skyr/yoghurt until the consistency is as you like it, and adding salt/lime juice to taste. Eat with veg sticks or crackers or bread.

New potatoes, peas, radishes and skyr

D+Sh visited last weekend. For the first time in ever. It was fun. It felt very different from any time we ever spent together before. They were on holiday, and if anyone was in charge it was S+me. Perhaps I am grown up at last.

We made quite a lot of adventures: the zoo, Louisiana (both really good), Relae. But spent a fair bit of the inbetween time chilling on our balcony (it was very hot out, like over 30C), listening to jazz drifting up from the bar across the canal, and more of it from boats floating past with bands on. We ended up having some nice salad+bread type meals on the balcony too - it was salad weather, and Danish bread is sooo good. This was one of the salads. It makes very pleasing use of in-season fresh peas, new potatoes, radishes and chives. Plus skyr, which forms a creamy dressing while remaining fresh and light and not overpowering.

20 or so new potatoes (adjust according to size / taste)
500 g bag of fresh peas, shelled
1 bunch of radishes, trimmed and sliced
1 tbsp chopped chives
4 tbsp skyr mixed with 2 tsp lemon juice and 2 tsp olive oil
salt+pepper

Cook the new potatoes until just tender and set aside to cool while you prepare the other ingredients. Blanch the shelled peas by pouring boiling water over them then draining pretty much straight away. Put all ingredients in a serving dish and mix together. Serve warm or cold.