Easter rabbit

This year the Easter rabbit arrived early. It was tasty.

All joking aside, I have eaten rabbit stews few times in a restaurant before, but now it was time to try to cook it myself at home.
The recipe comes from a Jamie Oliver book, Jamie's Italy.

Straight from the oven.

 Ingredients:

• For the rabbit
• One medium rabbit
• 14 slices of pancetta
• olive oil
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 sprigs fresh rosemary
• For the filling
• 2 Italian sausages, I used my sage salsiccia
• a handful of bread crumbs
• shredded zest of 1/4 orange
• a handful of shredded sage

Place the pancetta slightly overlapping on an oiled greaseproof paper and place in the fridge. The oil makes the pancetta release easier later. The pancetta is needed so that rabbit does not become dry in the oven.
Preheat simultaneously the oven to 200 degrees.

Rows of pancetta on an oiled greaseproof paper.

Mix batter and be a bit cautious with how much orange zest that is used. I kind of accidentally used 1/3 from a large orange and it broke through in taste a little too much.
When it came to the Italian sausages, I used my sage salciccia. It seemed Italian enough.

Stuffing.

Before the filling is placed in the rabbit, it may be a good idea to look inside it to see if there are any surprises to the chef. In the rabbit I had the heart, liver and kidneys where still there. I roasted these to have tried it and to get the chef treat while waiting for the rabbit to finish in the oven.
Rub then the rabbit with oil, salt and black pepper.
After these steps are completed rabbit with stuffing.

A stuffed rabbit.

Take out the pancetta from the refrigerator and place the stuffed rabbit on it. When the rabbit is rolled in the pancetta, you need to tie it down with a little string.

All rolled up ready to be tied.

Insert rosemary sprigs and place the rabbit in a roasting tin. I also tied the legs together a bit so that everything would fit better in the oven.

A few twigs of rosemary and it is ready for the oven.

 After a hour in the oven the rabbit is ready to eat, here with some potatoes and carrots.

Ready to be enjoyed.

Cupcakes with orange and elder frosting

Now it has been a week since I baked the Cissi and Selma's lovely store. It was so much fun and the event was very successful with many visitors, all my 150 cupcakes disappeared. I forgotmy camera in a car that was parked a good distance from the store, lucky that there are other people who have camera.

Cupcakes

about 40 minicupcakes
3 eggs
200 g sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
100 g butter
100 ml milk
180 g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 pinch of salt
zest and juice of 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 175 degrees F. Melt the butter and then mix the milk in it. Whisk eggs, sugar and vanilla essence until fluffy. Stir in the milk and butter into the egg mixture. Mix together the dry ingredients, sift it into the batter and carefully turn it down. Mix in the grated zest and juice of 1 lemon. Place the molds on plates and fill the molds with 2/3 batter. Bake in center of oven for about 12 minutes. Allow to cool.

 

Elder frosting

150 g white chocolate
125g soft butter
160g icing sugar
2 tablespoons concentrated elderflower lemonade

Melt the chocolate in the elderflower lemonade. Beat butter and icing sugar then mix in the chocolate.

Orange frosting

50g soft butter
150 g cream cheese
7-8 cups powdered sugar
zest of 1 orange
450 g icing sugar
Beat butter, cream cheese and mix in the icing sugar a little at a time. Tear down the orange zest and mix.

Cupcakes for Cissi and Selma

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to bake cupcakes for Cissi and Selma, a boutique which sells retro clothes. They have recently released their very own line of clothes and today they are going to celebrate it. I have already made the cupcakes, except for the frosting, and now they are occupying half of my kitchen table. I just realized that there is a lot of strangers who are going to taste my cupcakes, scary, but fun! More pictures from the event and a recipe for the cupcakes will be posted on the blog in a couple of days.

Caramelized onions

A few weeks ago I bought a "make sausages"-book. I did not buy it directly for how to make sausage or the sausage recipes in it, but for the accessory recipes within it. This recipe is a modified recipe from the book.

The book is called "Gör korv, korta långa råa starka", in Swedish of course, by Johan Åkerberg and Jesper Lindberg. 

Caramelized onions

The ingredients I used were:

• 2 yellow onions
• 2 small cloves of garlic
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 50 g butter
• 1 dl of lager beer
• salt and pepper

Garlic and yellow onions

 When the butter has melted in the medium hot pan, I add the garlic and the onion.

Butter, garlic and yellow onions

I thought it was still a bit much texture left after only 10 minutes in the pan so I let the onions lie in little more than 20 minutes before I added the sugar and beer.
The onions will become sweeter the longer it gets cooked and I have seen recipes for onion soups where it will caramelize for 40 minutes. I guess it needed less sugar the longer the onions are left in the pan.
Although we did not eat sausages the day I made ​​the caramelized onions it had to be tasted. It worked great for burgers.

Burger with accessories

A hearty hamburger with egg, salad and caramelized onions.

Yet another way of dressing the burger

Duck breast with nutty salad

I have managed to eat pretty well so far, even though my husband are out traveling. No blog material but it has only been popcorn for dinner once while he was away. This may in itself have something to do with that I ran up to my parents for a weekend and were served lots of tasty food. There is almost nothing that beats your parents' food.

Duck breast with nutty salad

2 duck breasts
salt
pepper
different lettuce leafs
tomato
cucumber
pine nuts
walnuts

 
Preheat the oven to 150 degrees C. Cut the skin side of the duck in a checkboard pattern. Salt and pepper the duck breasts and fry with fat side down for about 4 minutes. Turn over and cook the underside. Place into an ovenproof dish and cook in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes. Let the meat rest for 10 minutes. While the meat rest, roast the nuts.

Sourdough bread with wheat and rye

Now I've finally got started with baking with sourdough again after the course I went to with Sebastien Boudet. It's so much easier to bake with sourdough after listened to him and his visions. I've always been under the belief that it's super tricky and time consuming to bake with sourdough. But it's actually quite the opposite, a sourdough does not get mad at me and then over ferment if I happen to forget it for a few hours and the efficient baking time I spend with the sourdough is maybe ten minutes. It does not mind at all to ferment slowly at it's own pace in the fridge, it can stand there for a few days if it feels like it. It's almost as if I need to change the blog's name, "naturalyeastornoyeast", but, sadly,that isn't quite as catchy as yeastornoyeast. 

Sourdough bread with rye and wheat

300 g sourdough
1 ½ kg flour (optional what kind, I used 1 kg wheat flour and rye flour ½ kg)
1 liter of lukewarm water
20 g salt

 
It's as simple as to mix together all the ingredients. After that, let the dough rest for 1 hour so that the flour have time to take in all the moisture and the gluten to have time to start being formed. Then knead the dough until it starts to drop off the table. Drop in any form with lid and let rise in refrigerator at least 12 hours. Take the dough out and shape it, or add to a prove basket. Here you can either put it in the refrigerator for another few hours or days to ferment it longer or you can bake it immediately. This particular recipe will be about 3 large bread. I baked one part of the dough in about 40 minutes after i took it out and the other part I let stand over the day in the fridge and then baked it in the evening. Spray a little of water in the oven before putting the bread in to help the crust along the way. Let cool on a rack.