Ulysses Cocktail (serves 4 people)

Ginger Syrup

• 3 decilitres (dl) cane sugar
• 3 dl. water
• 36 grams peeled and thinly sliced ginger

Mix sugar and water in a small saucepan and put on medium heat. When the sugar has dissolved, add the ginger slices and allow to reduce for about 15-20 mins. I like my syrup sort of thick so I can use it for desserts, smoothies and salads, but you can also cook it for a shorter period (depending on how big a portion you’ve chosen to make of course – just watch the consistency and flavour and you’ll be fine) and leave the ginger in to infuse until it is cold. Either way, remove the ginger slices and lay them flat on a silicone sheet or piece of baking paper to dry overnight. When they’re done you have something resembling pickled/candied ginger which you can throw in your chocolate muffins or ginger snaps. Pour the syrup into a disinfected bottle or jar and allow to cool before using.

Cocktail ingredients

• 1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced
• 1 bottle of Carl’s Special 33cl / Classic 33cl (or any ale that isn’t too overpowering)
• 12 ice cubes
• 2 dl gin
• About 5 tbsp ginger syrup
• 1/2 lime

Move the cucumber slices to a mortar and give them a good squashing with the pestle. Pour over a little of the gin (to make sure you get out all of the cucumber juices) and move the whole mixture to a large jar or cocktail mixer. Pour over the remaining gin, fasten the lid and give it a good shake (think Tom Cruise). If you are well prepared, you can do this an hour in advance for even more cucumber flavour. Add four tablespoons of syrup, the ice cubes, fasten the lid and shake. Then add three tablespoons of ginger syrup, the juice of half a lime and shake. Finally, distribute the cocktail mix evenly in four glasses, being careful not to splash the glass when the cucumbers come a rushin’. Top up with a drizzle of syrup and 1/4 of the beer in each glass.

And do try to resist the temptation to stretch the cocktails by adding more beer. When reconstructing the cocktail for the picture above I added a little too much beer. It is not supposed to be noticeable as a beer flavour, but just adds body, fizz and colour to the other ingredients.

Enjoy responsibly as they say (while really meaning “As long as you buy my alcoholic beverage I don’t give a donkey’s kong.”).

It is very tipsifying.

In my experience, there is this general (and admittedly very clichéd) difference between the two sexes and their approach to food. Mind you, with what I am going to say I can already hear the objections coming from all of the female exceptions to my theory (as well as anyone else who will rightfully point out that I am terribly old fashioned in my observations). Anyway, it goes like this: An average guy’s appetite tends towards rustic, meaty, filling dishes without too many frills, while the average girl likes variety, smaller dishes and not necessarily a huge slab of meat on the plate. And here’s where the sex business comes into the equation. When two people of the opposite sex are flirting at a random bar, the sexual images in their minds are probably something along the lines of this:

In the guy’s head: rustic (sex can take place anywhere, as long as it takes place), meaty (“I like a girl I can grab without feeling her bones”) and filling without frilling (satisfaction without foreplay). In the girl’s place: well, I guess you’ve got the gist of it by now. Come to think of it, maybe this is where my theory starts to crumble.

Be that as it may, tonight I thought I’d cook something for both sexes. Meatballs and an oven baked tomato sauce. A very guysey dish, but plated in a tiny portion and plenty of little frills. The recipe was a free interpretation of this old post.

This Saturday we invited a couple of friends over for dinner and some silly-time. It was a great excuse to go mad in the kitchen and so we skipped our fancy plans of museums and bicycle browsing in favor of shopping and cooking. Just my kind of Saturday.

First thing I did was to go through the folder of recipes I compiled during my recent months of BBC iPlayer-addiction. Luckily I found Lorraine Pascale’s lemon and blueberry millefeuille: Flaky caramelised puff pastry gently sandwiching vanilla cream, lemon and blueberry.

As any other self-important food blogger, I must stress that though the recipe is hers, I added my own invaluable twists to it. In Pascale’s version the cream filling is flavored with lemon zest and a bit of juice, but I opted for a mascarpone-vanilla-whipped cream drizzled with tangy lemon curd instead.

While her recipe was very easy and comparatively quick to follow (but do prepare the puff pastry in advance – takes a while if you want the right size), I did not get the part about the icing sugar on the puff pastry. Somehow it did not melt properly in the oven, but this is where my creme brulée torch came in handy. Turning the blue flame on the icing sugar really added some crackle and gloss to the layers – that is until I covered them with more icing sugar.

Lemon Curd (makes one large jar/200ml)

• 125 grams light brown cane sugar
• 60 grams butter
• 60 ml. lemon juice
• The zest of one lemon
• Two eggs (pasteurised if you’re in Denmark, normal eggs if you’re anywhere else)

Rinse a jar and pour boiling water over it or use whichever other method you like to make it suitable for long storage.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter and gently mix in the sugar, then add lemon juice and zest, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. In a separate bowl mix the egg yolks and whites together and add a good splash of the warm lemon-butter mix, mixing the eggs regularly with a good sauce whisk.

Then put the saucepan back on very low heat and slowly add the egg mixture to the rest of the lemon butter and mix carefully until it curdles. You know you’re done when you can cover the back of a spoon and the curd stays there – you can even speed up the process by leaving the curd-covered spoon in the fridge for a few minutes to see if it sets properly.

Pour into the jar, seal it and refrigerate allowing a couple of hours for it to set. Enjoy on toast, in tarts, muffins, cakes – there should still be plenty left after the millefeuilles.

Since I’ve been back from London, I’ve been amazed at the effects of “the tourist vision” as I like to call it. You know, when you’ve been away from your country and have been regarding every phenomenon you encounter as part of a strange and wonderful culture and then suddenly you turn those goggles on your own life. Before the effect wears off completely, I want to share this view from our kitchen which I think looks rather Danish: Bicycles, bare brick buildings, quaint old courtyard and then the lampshade as something of a centre piece. Having read this short article in The Guardian on the lampshade fetishism in the Danish TV-series “Borgen” (currently airing on the BBC), it makes me chuckle how in line we are. Just one blonde chick short of the cliché.

Picture borrowed from Kunst & Køkkentøj

We’ve been eyeing this Waring blender for years now, every time leaving the store convinced that this is the right buy, then inevitably deciding that it is too expensive, that we are not quite “those people” yet, who lash out 1800 DKK for an appliance. But now that we are, I’d love to hear what you’d use this baby for, if she were yours. Do you know any great soups, smoothies, cocktails, sauces etc, that will be even more smashing after a couple of minutes in her deadly embrace?

SOUNDTRACK TO THIS POST: I failed to embed it properly without Silas Bo at hand, so you’ll have to leave this page, but I know you’ll be back: Enjoy some Patsy.

Though I haven’t been doing much cooking while in London, I’ve managed to make these nuts three times and I think that calls for a celebration. Here’s a makeshift recipe so you can join in on the festivities:

Caramelised (Christmas) Nuts

• 200 grams mixed nuts (here I’ve used hazelnuts and almonds)
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon (don’t let the cinnamon scrolls below fool you – they’re just eye candy)
• A tiny bit of salt
• 1/2 star anise, ground or finely chopped (this one is the real deal – don’t resort to pre-ground stuff please)
• 1-1,5 dl. icing sugar (to be honest I’ve never measured it).

First of all: I really recommend that you use icing sugar and not granulated or caster sugar. Using icing sugar is what gives that shiny and thin crackling sugar shell, that sends out a wonderful music when you pour them into a jar. Very much like the sound of ocean water trickling through shells on a tropical beach.

Second: These nuts can be made with all sorts of spice combinations. I imagine sea salt and rosemary or maybe cocoa and orange peel could work but please let me know if you find a magic combo I shouldn’t live without.

Third: This recipe also works well for praline. Just follow the steps and chop into fine pieces that you can add to ice cream, mousses, nougat, marzipan etc.

Anyway, down to business:

Prepare a sheet of baking paper or silicone sheet on a cold baking tray. Crush the 1/2 star anise on a chopping board/in a mortar and mix with cinnamon and salt and set the spice mixture aside. Start toasting the hazelnuts first, just until they’re light brown and the skin peels off. I like to pour them onto some paper and rub the more stubborn specimens against each other until the skin comes off – but don’t do it in a tea towel unless you want brown stains on it. Then toast the almonds lightly (sometimes you can hear them cracking and that’s perfectly alright).

Throw the hazelnuts and the spice mix in with the almonds and shuffle them around a bit. Dust with some icing sugar and mix again. Then wait for the sugar to melt and distribute itself evenly on the nuts. You can repeat this several times until the sugar coating has the right thickness to your liking but make sure you stir and mix regularly – never on too high heat and always watching over it like a baby in its crib. It will look something like this shot below. Not my best photo I know, but I thought it might be helpful for you to see the condition of the nuts, pre-deliciousness:

If you find that some of the nuts stay white with unmelted sugar, you can always add a few drops (no more) of water to the single nuts to make the caramel cover more evenly. When all of the sugar has melted the nuts are ready. Pour them onto the baking paper/silicone sheet and try to separate them with a fork. Keep a glass of hot water handy in case you need to dip the fork to make it less sticky. Be careful not to touch the nuts with your bare hands until you’re sure they’re not too hot. When they’re lukewarm just pull the nuts apart before they turn into huge clusters – unless you’re using them for praline in which case it doesn’t matter. Leave to cool completely before pouring them into a jar. Crunch!

Still on my outpost in London, where the cold weather and lack of heating in my house has begun to made me homesick. Just this morning I felt the need to browse through some old photos of T, my friends and endless meals I’ve cooked and I stumbled upon these shots of another  thing I really miss: Danish bakeries.

Introducing a classic Danish pastry called “gåsebryst” (goose breast). The naughty combination of strawberry marmalade sandwiched between two delicate layers of soft sponge, then a layer of thick vanilla custard, a generous wave of whipped cream, topped off with a coating of soft white marzipan, a little blob of pistachio marzipan, some candied violet flowers and a pecan nut (not a classic choice of nut in Denmark). A delicious vice in itself, its name has also encouraged many a seedy joke from gentlemen who enjoy making young bakery ladies blush (“bakery virgins” = bagerjomfruer as they are actually called in Denmark): “Do you carry goose breasts, miss?”. Very clever. I might even have had the pleasure of that joke in my day as a bagerjomfru, though those cakes were definitely not worth the rush of blood to my cheeks.

The thing is, for many years now the classic craft of bakery seems to have gone down in Denmark. I mean no disrespect to the bakers who get up before the crack of Shawn and work their hairy asses off every night, but there have been too many cases of sad looking cakes in the shop windows, desperate for a new home with a family who cared. Luckily there has also been a surge of new (though expensive) bakeries in the recent 5-10 years with a fresh take on bread and pastry, so we do still have plenty of baked deliciousness around.  It’s just the classic craft and the classic recipes that are sagging behind and we really need them for everyday use. And as I see it, the Danish bakers have just experienced their final death blow: Andersen Bakery.

With a combination of classic Danish recipes and a Japanese sense of surgical precision and aesthetics, this bakery represents a huge challenge to the classic “craft baker”. As you might have guessed already, the goose breast above was not bought in a dime-in-a-dozen bakery, but at Andersen Bakery, where I find myself clapping my little hands when gazing at their perfectly sized selection of treats. I have never before lusted for a gåsebryst, but after seeing this baby at their shop, I have had wet dreams of sinking my teeth into its gentle softness.

At 22 kroner, this cake places itself somewhere close to the boring bakers at the supermarket Brugsen, while the quality is up there with the fancy old school bakery Rheinh. van Hauen (whose expensive cakes and great service I have raved about here). Furthermore, they have the most exquisite puff pastry ever, with endless layers of buttery flakes, only delicate drops or thin lines of icing, great custard filling topped with changing fruit (rhubarb or the single fat black cherry are my favourite).

(Just wanted to show the scale of their miniature puff pastry, which means you can easily have two before your coffee goes cold)

Embarassing to say, but I think they make the best Danish in Denmark, and they’re from Japan! It’s as if every single cake there is an hommage to the Danish bakers of yore. And what are the current craft bakers doing all the while? Probably running around the back rooms of the bakery, slapping each other with a wet tea towel as they did at my old job (seriously! The stories I could tell you from back then…). But certainly not making this.

That, and they make a killer sourdough loaf:

(Pretty cake sign in the background courtesy of Simone)

It’s like ra-i-ain on your wedding day

It’s a free ri-hi-de when you’ve already paid

It’s arri-i-ving at the cake competition

When they announce the win-nerrr.

That’s what happened and I feel only Alanis would understand.

I and my current partners-in-crime here in London had our hearts set on bringing a cake for some benefit at Wilton’s Music Hall. The general Sunday laziness and temperatures soaring above 20 made us an hour late with our entry to the competition: An orange and almond cake.

We pulled out the shiny object only to find that they had decided (probably for health reasons) not to judge by taste but rather by the amount of play-dough/hobby paint skills displayed in the final product which made our cake completely superfluous. Below are some of the other entries. Note our cake on the top left, just above one of the winners. My favourite is the open cavity with candied cherries on top. That one was hilarious.

So in the end we did the only decent thing: Handed in the cake and went straight up and bought half of it back while maintaining that we were just anonymous fans of “that cake with the shining stuff on top”.

Orange and Almond Cake (slightly tweaked recipe by Camilla Plum)

• 2 organic oranges
• 225 grams almonds, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 vanilla pod, only the seeds (keep the pod for another purpose)
• 225 grams sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 6 eggs

• 75 grams good dark chocolate (here: Green & Black’s organic cooking chocolate, 72%)
• 25 grams flaked almonds, lightly toasted

Put the whole oranges in a large saucepan, cover them with water, and boil them until the peel has turned slightly pale and it has all but cracked. It will take from 60-90 minutes depending on the stubbornness of the oranges. Meanwhile, peel the almonds, chop them coarsely, allowing a few larger bits if you like some resistance in your cake. Then slice the halved vanilla pod open, remove the seeds and mix them with a tablespoon of the sugar to separate them properly. Mix the almonds, sugar, vanilla, and baking powder in a bowl and set aside.

Turn the oven on to 160 degrees Celcius. Remove the cooked oranges from the saucepan. Now they should be soft enough to be pulled apart easily by hand. Make sure to remove any pips and then purée them into an even, kind of creamy paste, mix it with the dry ingredients and finally add the eggs one by one.

Use a regular sized round cake mould. If you choose the metal spring type, grease it with butter and dust it with regular flower before adding the cake batter, but if you have a silicone one you won’t need that. Bake on a tray just below the middle for about an hour or until the cake is soft but firm and nothing sticks to the fork. Be sure to check on it now and then as it does tend to scorch easily.

As soon as the cake has been removed from the oven, chop the chocolate coarsely and spread it out evenly on the still hot surface of the cake. You can choose to release the cake from the mould before adding the chocolate. That’s what I did here. Then, spread the melting chocolate and sprinkle the almond flakes on top. Done! Now skip off and be late for some do.

BONUS CELEBRITY AT WILTON’S: Barbara Windsor of Eastenders (who was being a really good sport):

Do you ever use a melon-baller? Well I do. It’s this fantastic thingamajig that makes the most pleasing little balls for your salad. The best thing is that you release whatever you’re carving from its original shape and render it open to reinterpretation – to the extent that when I served a melon/cucumber ball salad with chopped coriander last Friday, someone thought I had discovered a freakishly round kind of miniature potato. Anyhoot, the bad thing is, that you only get 20 odd balls from one whole melon (in this case a honeydew melon), leaving you with a good chunk of oddly shaped fruit leftovers to deal with afterwards. That’s when I got this brilliant idea: Why not blend it into a fine melon slush and add a splash of alcohol? Here’s what I did (and what I recommend that you don’t):

Honeydew Melon Cocktail (makes about four cocktails)

• 1 very ripe honeydew melon (to make sure, check if it has that honey-scent before you buy it – or leave it to ripen in the sun for a few days  - that helped in my case). Feel free to try out other types too. I bet this would also be great with a water melon. Found this instructional video for picking out the right melon at the shop.
• 3-4 generous splashes of alcohol (I used rum, but T and I agreed that a less sweet type of alcohol would suit the melon much better. Next time I am going to try vodka or gin. Let me know if you find the perfect match.)
• 3-4 squeezes of lemon juice
• Raspberries and lemon zest for serving

It’s dead simple. Obviously you don’t have to melon-ball it to use this recipe. Just cut the melon in halves and scoop out the flesh with a good spoon or slice it out with a knife, making sure to scrape off all of that beautiful juice on the inside of the skin. I ended up squeezing it like a lemon and it just kept on giving. Then add the melon bits and juice to a bowl and blend it into a fine slush. Finally add lemon juice and alcohol to your liking. Decorate with raspberries and lemon zest and serve as cold as possible. I am thinking it might even be good to freeze the melon flesh beforehand and blend it into an icy slush. Come to think of it, if you are having a party, try leaving your cocktail glasses in the freezer for about an hour ahead of serving. Enjoy!

I love flødeboller, I love chocolate mousse, I looove chocolate macaroons. Basically I just love anything that requires beating egg whites. That’s one of the reasons I can’t get enough of making marshmallows. Another reason is that I have finally figured out why my last couple of batches turned moist and sticky in no time: I left out the 24 hours of air-drying. Silly billy! Now that I know, I just had to make my own version of a brilliant sweet I tried in Tasmania last October: The Toasted Coconut Marshmallow.

The base for this recipe is from Foodbeam. I have chosen to soften and round off the flavour by using cane sugar instead of caster sugar, which complemented the vanilla a lot more in my opinion. Furthermore I was not completely satisfied with the vanilla flavour so I enhanced it by letting the vanilla pod cook along with the syrup. Finally, the lemon juice added some contrast and upping the amount of gelatine slightly gave a bit more bite to the marshmallows. Perfect! Especially with the toasted crunch of the coconut.

Toasted Coconut Marshmallows (makes about 30 depending on size)

Adapted and halved version of Fanny’s recipe from Foodbeam

• 3,5 gelatine sheets
• 1,5 egg whites (the equivalent of one “cup” pasteurized whites in Denmark)
• 125 grams pale organic cane sugar (please don’t opt for regular sugar)
• 1/2 vanilla pod (I used a de-seeded one and it yielded plenty of flavour)
• 40 ml water
• 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1,5 decilitre grated coconut (or dessicated, providing it’s not that awful almost powdered kind. There needs to be some decent sized coconut bits as you can tell on the photos)

Pour the coconut onto a pan and roast it on low heat, never letting it out of your sight as it will burn very easily. When the coconut has turned lightly brown, pour it onto a large flat plate or a baking tray to cool down completely (important, as we want them to loose some humidity).

Put the gelatine sheets in a bowl and cover them with cold water. Set aside. Then take a small saucepan and add the sugar, vanilla pod, water and lemon juice and bring them to a boil until the syrup reaches 120 degrees Celcius. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer in a separate metal bowl. Once the syrup is ready, remove the vanilla pod with a fork (don’t use your finger as it will burn) and proceed to pour the syrup into the egg whites in a thin strip close to the inside of the bowl. Be careful not to pour it directly onto the mixer – much too messy. Continue to beat the whites while taking the gelatine sheets and squeezing out as much water as possible. Then add the gelatine to the egg whites (again: into the whites and not the mixer) and keep beating until the bowl has cooled down considerably and the marengue mixture has turned very thick and keeps its shape. It will probably take 10-15 mins.

Sprinkle about a third of the coconut into a lined baking tin (20*30 cm) and scrape out the mixture with a silicone spatula and onto the coconut. Spread it out and into the shape you want. Sprinkle the top with more coconut (but not all of it) and set the mixture aside to air dry at room temperature at least overnight, preferably 20 hours. Then turn the marshmallow square onto a carving board, heat a sharp knife under hot water and pad it dry. Slice the marshmallow into smaller squares, repeating the knife steps so it doesn’t stick. Toss the squares in the remaining coconut and put them on a plate or tray to air dry for another couple of hours. Finally, put them in an airtight container and keep them at room temperature or – wrap them in a candy gift-bag as a present for your sugar-hungry friends to swoon over.