Stikkelsbær og hyldeblomst / gooseberry and elderflower muffins (Danish summertime)

S came home with a punnet of gooseberries when he went on a chestnut rice related mission to Istedgade the other day. The previous lot of gooseberries (stikkelsbær) we had this season I had simply stewed and eaten, mostly with skyr. But I was a little unsatisfied - gooseberries are so tart they definitely need quite a bit of sweetener and/or dilution with something cakey or creamy.

This time, I was thinking of making muffins in the morning before N awoke, and S suggested doing gooseberry ones. I checked my Delia veg collection book and she didn't have anything with gooseberries, but the first recipe that came up online was a Delia one that I had all the ingredients for (including elderflower cordial I made a few weeks ago) so the gooseberries' fate seemed a foregone conclusion.

These were part of our 'balcony brunch', which also featured avocado on Manfreds sourdough toast with a softboiled egg on top, and tomato-mozzarella salad. I started with four eggs: one for the muffins and one each for the toast. Perfect.

(makes about 8)

150 g plain flour
1 level dessertsp (11 ml) baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 large egg
40 g golden caster sugar
2 tbsp milk
75 ml elderflower cordial
50 g butter, melted and cooled slightly
225 g gooseberries, topped and tailed

For the topping:
18 extra (approx 100 g) gooseberries, topped and tailed
1 heaped tbsp demerara sugar

Heat oven to 200C / 180C fan. Line a muffin tin. Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl with a fork. In a separate bowl whisk together egg, sugar, milk,elderflower cordial and melted butter. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and fold together until just combined. In the final few strokes add the 225 g gooseberries. Spoon the mixture into prepared muffin cups. Lightly press 2-3 of the extra gooseberries into the top of each muffin, and sprinkle with a little demerara sugar. Bake for 30 min until well risen and golden brown. Remove the muffins from the oven, and transfer them straight away to a wire rack to cool.


These are really good! The elderflower doesn't come out very strong but that's OK. Perhaps my homemade one isn't as strong as the shop bought one? My gooseberries were pink but green ones would be good too, These are really well balanced - the sugar sprinkled on top (I didn't have demerara so just used golden caster) is the final touch to offset the tartness from the berries.

Packed lunches

Since we moved to DK, S has been bringing his own lunch to work as well as me. He always bought food for lunch before, but the cafeteria in our building was closed when we first got here in Winter, so he started bringing packed lunches and so far hasn't stopped.

It's a new challenge keeping on top of interesting food for both of us. He eats a little more than me, so more than twice as much food is needed. And therefore tumbled-together leftovers from the previous night's cooking are less likely to cut it. To be honest, I have been pretty worn out from work in the evenings so haven't been generating much in the way of inspired leftovers. Plus, we have been eating a lot of stuff-with-bread for all meals, since we can't get enough of all kinds of Danish bread.

I do seem to have been bookmarking a few really useful packed lunch recipes - likely leftovers or quick to throw together the night before or morning of, and often good with bread! Some of these are also good for potlucks.

Bread with hummus (embellished with raw carrots/radishes/peas/peppers for dipping) / Greve cheese / cornichons
Bread with caponata (it keeps very well for a few days in the fridge if you have time to make it beforehand)
Red lentil dal or chickpea curry with rice or bread and yoghurt
Various lentil salads
Overnight couscous
Pasta salad (zazzed up leftover pasta)
Noodle salad (similarly treated leftover noodles)
Pesto rice salad
Summer rolls with peanut sauce
Sushi
Potato salad (if we have potatoes - not all that often)
Oat and seed bread

Date balls

We bought a couple of boxes of juicy dates (dadler) lately. They are so sweet, they are like candy. Halfway through the second box I thought of doing something other than just eating them as they are, and decided to try some kind of raw date balls. They perhaps don't sound that delicious, but they are really good - just enough chocolatey-ness from the cocoa, nice crunch from the almonds, sticky sweetness from dates. Not to mention, they (obviously) don't require any cooking and came together in about ten minutes.

(makes 10-12 depending on size)

1 cup pitted dates
1/3 cup whole almonds
2 tbsp cocoa powder
desiccated coconut for rolling (optional)

Put pitted dates, almonds and cocoa in a blender and whizz until reasonably pasty but still with nice chunks of almond. Switch off and unplug, and then scoop out teaspoon sized pieces with a teaspoon and roll into balls in your hands. Scatter some desiccated coconut (if using) on a plate and roll the sticky ball in it. Transfer to a storage box. Repeat for the rest of the mixture. Store in the fridge (if they get that far).

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.

Cottage cheese dip with lovage and chives

We visited Tower Hill Botanical Garden near Berlin while we were staying in Boston this last week or so. It was raining and perhaps closed, but we walked around anyway. They had a cool 'Systematic Garden', with plantings according to phylogeny, inspired by Arthur Cronquist. Among them was lovage, which at first glance looked a lot like angelica... or even celery. Sniffing a bit made it clear how similar to celery it is - it has a celery-like smell and taste, mixed with something deeper and spicier. Considering our recent obsessions with both celery and celeriac, it seemed like a nobrainer as something we should eat more of. But I've never really seen it anywhere to buy, so have only eaten it a few times, mostly in soup...

We are back in Copenhagen now, and I went to get supplies from the Frugt og Grønt store near Christianshavn metro, and found they had lovage (løvstikke) among their impressive selection of herbs. So of course I couldn't resist. We've had some in salads, S has added it to pasta sauce, and I put it in this dip as well, having also succumbed to a craving for cottage cheese.

(enough for two as a side)

4 tbsp cottage cheese
2 tbsp yoghurt
1 tbsp chopped chives
3 tbsp chopped lovage
1/2 tsp white wine vinegar
salt+pepper

Mix all ingredients together. Adjust for acid, seasoning and consistency. We ate with toasted brown pita breads cut into strips.

Simple fried rice

A very quick and easy, very tasty way to use up leftover rice. Taking advantage of yellow curry paste from our favourite Thai supermarket on Istedgade.

oil
spice paste (used yellow curry paste)
spring onions
cold rice
edamame

Heat oil in a large frying pan. Add the spice paste and spring onions and stir-fry until onions are slightly softened. Then add the rice and edamame and stir-fry some more, until the rice is slightly crispy in places and everything is piping hot. Eat straight away.

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).