Lamb patties with a walnut salad and mint sauce

 My husband is out of town for a couple of weeks in his job and I am not a person that enjoy cooking for just myself. If I am by myself I can just as easy eat breakfast for dinner, or popcorn... But to get some ordinary, and more wholesome, food, I invited some friends over for dinner and immediately cooking became fun again! The fact that we had a glas of wine, or two, did not exactly make things worse either. 

Lamb patties

400 g minced lamb

1 crushed clove of garlic

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp paprika

1 egg 

5 tablespoons of breadcrumbs

salt

Walnut salad

mixed salad leaves

tomato

cucumber

walnuts

salt

Mix all ingredients in the minced lamb well and form into small patties. Fry the patties for about 8 minutes. While you cook the patties, you can start preparing the salad. Toast the walnuts in a hot frying pan to enhance their flavour. Mix all the salad ingredients and salt after taste. 

Mint sauce

180 g turkish yogurt

1 crushed clove of garlic

1 tbsp honey

6 mint leaves

salt

Measure the yogurt in a bowl and mix in garlic, honey and salt. Chop the mint leaves and stir the into the rest of the sauce.

Hot chicken wings

I've got a little hang-up on snacks. To try a little of everything at a buffet or tapas or meze is quite wonderful. I was at a, talking about something completely different, bread course the other weekend with Sebastien Boudet. We did not really bake so much ourselves, but to just listen to his knowledge and philosophy regarding bread was absolutely wonderful. I do not know if I will be using usual flours available in stores or regular yeast anymore. It's actually a bit wrong to bake with yeast, which is designed to give the dough steroids, and without flavor addition. It also feels a bit wrong to bake a flour that has so much additives that it really can not be classified as a flour.

But, hot chicken wings it was...

Hot chicken wings 

10 chicken wings

3 red chilis, deseeded

½ red bell pepper, deseeded

1 small bit of fresh ginger

1 tbsp sea salt

2½ tbsp garlic oil

2½ tbsp vegetable oil

some chopped up herbs for serving

 

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C. Mix chilli, pepper, ginger, salt and oil to a smooth paste in a blender or food processor. Smear the chicken wings with the mixture and let marinate for an hour, or you can even throw them directly into the oven. Make sure the wings are completely covered by the chili mix and place in the oven for about 40 minutes.

Chili salsiccia sausage

Now there is time for yet another salsiccia, but this time with chili in the form of the harissa I did previous. To my help I had Pauline and my friend Anders, but maybe their assistance mainly was to later eat the finished sausage.

Chili salsiccia

Minced meat of pork

Ingredients in the sausage:

• 1.5 kg pork, I used ham and some bacon to get a little more fat
• 2 tsp of harissa
• 5 grams of coarsely ground black pepper
• 25 grams of salt
• 1 dl of breadcrumbs
• 1 dl of water

Mix everything together with the minced meat into a fine batter.

Sausage batter.

 Form small meatballs to taste the seasoning before the sausage is stuffed in its casing.

Taste the seasoning.

 The sausage disappeared fast. Everyone was hungry.

Only a few pieces left.

Harissa paste

To make your own harissa paste might be to over complicate things a bit, but when I saw the original recipe I had to try. Having done it once, I will do it again. However, I might follow the original recipe a bit more thoroughly then.

Harissa with a seven star chili

Ingredients to the harissa paste:

• 4 oz of hot chili, I used a seven star chili I got from +Hua Yu Yang.
• 1/2 cup of ground coriander
• 1/4 cup of salt
• 1/4 cup of garlic
• 1/4 cup of ground cumin
• 1/2 cup of olive oil + extra olive oil

Ingredients.

As the picture above shows, I did not follow the recipe that well. Mostly because when I really read it, I had no time to soak the chili. That plus I used whole coriander and whole cumin which made the harissa quite crumbly. It also took quite some oil to keep it together, but it tastes really good.
The recipe is easy if you only have time.

1. Start by soaking the chilies in warm water for 2 hours. Then rinse them.
2. Mix all ingredients in a blender and have the extra olive oil until it becomes a thick paste. For a finer consistency rub paste through a sieve.

But as I show it is possible to modify some steps and still get the great taste. It is clear, however, that my blender does not work as good as a mortar on the coriander and cumin. There I failed somewhat for trying to save time.

Harissa and chili

no bake chocolate and peanut butter cake

It's amazing how cooking can make you so happy. Me and Johan have had our food inspiration nights a couple of weeks and we get so much of it! Not just because we get to try new recipes, but because we spend time together in a different way than we do in everyday life, when we mostly just watch masterchef australia. It is so much better than the Swedish version. It's not someone who cries or gets a nervous breakdown every week and the participants, plus we who are looking at it, may actually learn something!
This cake has nothing to do with masterchef but it was a dessert that I tried one of our food inspiration nights, apparently I have a craving for peanuts right now.

No bake chocolate and peanut butter cake

200 g heavy cream

400 g milk chocolate

200 g shortbread biscuits

150 g peanut butter

 

Bring the cream to a boil in a saucepan. Chop the chocolate into small bits and place them in a bowl. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and let stand for about 5 minutes. Line a loaf pan, or something similar, I used a washed thai take away box since I halved the batch, with baking paper. Stir the cream an chocolate until it is smooth and well combined. Pour the melted chocolate into the base of the cake, enough to cover the bottom. Place a layer of shortbread on top of it and cover the biscuits with peanut butter and one or two pinches of sea salt. Cover with another layer of biscuits and pour the rest of the chocolate over it. Refrigerate for about 8 hours. Or do as i did, if you live in a country which gets degrees below zero, put the cake out on your balcony or porch, this speeds the process quite a bit.

Peanut butter hummus and malaysian flatbread

I'm totally hooked on hummus and I can eat it anytime and anyway. Regular hummus is one of the greatest thing ever, but I think I've found something almost better yet, peanut butter hummus. I was in heaven when I tasted it. The saltiness and the smoothness from the peanut butter took the hummus to new heights. What I most preferably have with hummus is a flat bread and this flat bread is not something you should look past, but the peanut butter hummus is the all time star of this collaboration.

Peanut butter hummus

400 g chickpeas
1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
3 tablespoons smooth peanut butter
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp salt flakes
1 tsp ground cumin
5 tbsp Greek yogurt
some chopped peanuts, for serving
1 tsp smoked paprika, for serving

Rinse the chickpeas and drain them. Add everything except the yogurt in a food processor and pulse until you have a puree with some chunks in. Add the yogurt and run the food processor again until you have a consistency that you like. Add  more oil or yogurt if you want a smoother texture. Season to taste with more lemon juice and salt. Serve in a bowl and sprinkle with chopped peanuts and smoked paprika.

Malaysian flat bread

1 egg
100 g water
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
1 tbsp brown sugar
300 g  flour

Crack the egg into a bowl and add luke warm water. Then mix it up with salt, oil and sugar. Add the flour and mix until you have a smooth dough. Let rest overnight but if you do not have time for that, let it at least stand for an hour. Divide the dough into bite-sized pieces, about 6 pieces and roll into balls. Roll them out fairly thin and make sure the pan is really hot when you start frying them. Fry for about 3 minutes on each side.

 

Cranberry smoothie

I read this recipe when going through my mother's saved recipes. It is from a perhaps 20 year old weekly Swedish magazine, hemmets journal, and I felt compelled to try it.
I like avocado and raspberries a lot, but it is not the first thing I usually mix and together with cranberry juice it could be either only be good or weird. It was good.

Cranberry smoothie.

Ingredients to a glass:

• 2 dl of cranberry juice
• 1 dl of raspberries, frozen
• 1/2 avocado

Ingredients.

 Peel the avocado and chop it up into smaller pieces. Put everything in a blender.

Before using the blender.

 Run the blender until it becomes smooth.

After using the blender.

As a weekend breakfast can be a bit more fun to serve in a more unusual glass.

Served and ready to enjoy.