Kladdkaka

Hej!

So this is a request for a member of my Swedish language group on livejournal (probably where all of my readers are from). I'll be honest and say that I've never heard of kladdkaka until that time. I looked it up and lo! and behold! The kladdkaka is actually popular in America, known as the dense brownie.

This recipe was fun to do because I couldn't find any English recipes and had to move on to translating Swedish. Of course, doing the conversions from decileters to cups was a bit annoying, but in the end it was all worth it.

This recipe was a great success with my room mates, my boyfriend, and I. I poured the batter into a 9x9 pan which resulted in a thinner brownie. Being the cook that I am, I figured that I can just cut it in half and stack them to make a double layer, yum-yum kladdkaka. I also added a layer of blackberry jam in the middle. Not traditional, but really completed the flavor.

Kladdkaka

Ingredients:
1.5 cups flour
1 cup sugar (or vanilla sugar if you have it)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (I used kakao because it's a little healthier.)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla (omit if you're using vanilla sugar.)
9 tbsp vegan butter, melted
3 tbsp syrup (I used maple)
1/2 cup of vegan milk (I used soy)
Jelly (optional)
almonds or hazelnuts (optional)

P. Preheat oven to 400ºF
1. Sift and mix together the flour, sugar, and cocoa.
2. Mix the butter and syrup together until very well blended. Add the milk and mix thoroughly.
3. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry the ingredients and mix mix mix! (this is the fun part)
4. Grease a baking dish and pour the batter into, making sure the top is as smooth as possible.
5. Add the almonds or hazelnuts to the top if you have them.
6. Put the kladkaka in the oven for NO MORE than 20 minutes (mine was in for about 16 minutes before I turned the oven off and let it sit inside for the next 4 minutes)
7. Take out and let it cool. If the outside doesn't harden a little, put it back in the oven for a few more minutes. Let it cool again. (mine was soft when I took it out of the oven the first time and got a nice stiffness as it cooled off.)
8. If you want to double layer it, cut the kladdkaka in half and put a layer of jelly of your choice on top of one half. Place the other half on top.
Enjoy with sweetened soy milk, coffee, or chai!
Be warned that this recipe really sits in your stomach like the dense brownie that it is. Not good to eat before doing anything other than relaxing.

Skål!

Skandinavisk Inredning

This post was deleted because it was poorly written . I'll replace it by writing a new blog. Until then, look at this wonderful wallpaper. I NEED IT!

Lefser

A lefse is a Norwegian potato pancake. They differ from other potato pancakes from around the world due to their flatbread-like state (They're flat). They're usual large in diameter and very thin. I've read that some more traditional Norwegian families have an electric lefse cooker. The electric ones look like a pizza pan on 3 legs with a little gauge to change the temperature. Of course, I only had a large skillet and they came out just fine!



I had mine with hjortronsylt (Swedish, I know. But I wanted to use the rest of it up before I came back to Boston.) A lot of time strawberries are eaten with them. I've also heard the cinnamon and butter are really good on them. You can also eat them with savory toppings, such as thick cream (like sour cream) and dill, chives, cheeses, meats, and veggies. I went a little American with the leftovers and added peanut butter and banana. It was delicious.

Without further adieu, here is the recipe that I used.

2 cups plain mashed potatoes, cold
2 tbsp soy milk or another non-dairy milk (I used vanilla soy milk)
1 tbsp margarine
0.5-1 tsp salt
3/4-1 1/4 cup flour
oil for frying (try to use an oil-free pan. You want to fry them, not deep dry them)

Mix all the ingredients together, adding flour as needed to make a dough and knead it briefly to mix well. Divide dough into 12 balls of equal size. Roll out into very thin pancakes (you will need to keep the surface and the rolling pin well floured to avoid sticking. Don't use so much that a bunch of flour goes with the lefse into the pan. That happened to a few of mine and it added a powdery texture to the outside of the lefse. Nasty).

Fry in oil in a frying pan or skillet on medium to medium high heat, 1-2 minutes per side. Stack on a plate with a paper towel between each pancake. Can be served hot or cold. Also stores well in the fridge or the freezer. Serve 2-3 pancakes per person (making 4-6 portions out of this recipe).


Skål!

Pannkakor!!

Sorry for not posting much lately. It's been a crazy week. Friends came up, my office is moving locations, and I'm going to Pennsylvania later today (I hate flying...). So I've been running around, getting things in order before the flying coffin takes off. But! Things are packed, I'm hungry, and found a wonderful recipe for pannkakor.

This is originally a crepe recipe which I made a little thinner and cooked a little longer. It still doesn't imitate the first batch of (non-vegan) pannkakor that I had, but it's the best that I've had. This recipe is for savory pannkakor, but you can make it sweet by adding a little bit of sugar. Top it with some smör and lingonsylt and you have a wonderful fika! (Or for whatever meal you eat them for).

1/2 Cup Soymilk
2/3 Cup Water
1/4 Cup Earth Balance, melted
1 Cup Flour
1/4 tsp Salt
4 Tbs Water, to thin if needed (add 1 tbs at a time)

Place all the ingredients in a bowl. Whisk until smooth. Transfer to a 2 Cup measuring cup (for pouring) and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

When you're ready, melt a TINY pat of butter on a frying pan and pour the batter in a spiral pattern until they're as big as you want (I like 'em bigger). Wait until the edges are golden and slightly crispy and flip. Fry them on this side for a few minutes (they should be easy to lift and check for golden-ness after a minute). Stack them on a baking sheet and store in an oven at about 200ºF until the last one is ready, OR you can serve them immediately if you have impatient pannkakor guests.

Skål
Erik

Short Leave

I probably won't be able to post for the weekend. My boyfriend comes home in a few hours from his little vacation in Texas, I'm currently playing Cinderella on my dirty, little apartment, then I have friends coming to visit me from Pennsylvania until Monday. So I'll be showing them around the quaint little city of Boston, entertaining them, etc etc.

In the meantime, enjoy this little clip


Hej då
Erik

Sju skönsjungande sjuksköterskor skötte sjuttiosju sjösjuka sjömän på skeppet Shanghai

You knew it was coming. This is the bane of every non-Scandinavian-learning-a-Scandinavian-language's existence, and the best way to poke fun at utlänningar. I'm speaking, of course, about the diphthongs sj, kj, and sk.

When I first heard the letter 7 a shiver shot right down my spine. "How do these two letters make that sound," I thought, rethinking my passion for Sweden. A conversation with a Swede went like this (imagine Me bastardizing the word beyond recognition):

Me: Sju
Swede: No
M: Sju
S: No
M: sju
S: Ssssjjjjjjuuu
M: sju
S: sju
M: sju
s: sju
M: I give up.
S: Good.

I'm sure anyone who has asked a Swede about those letters had the same conversation. Left with a sense of despair, I would repeat, what I would name, "Satan's Sound" nonstop until I got tired. When I would read something in Swedish out loud and see the sj, kj, sk I would regard it with a look of contempt and skip it. I grumble and curse the language!

But alas! There is hope! During one of those nights when I can't sleep, I decided to do some research on the sound. Then I found this website. It's amazing. It gives you the English sh sound, then the Swedish sj/sk/kj/skj etc etc sound. I listened to the girl say, "Shoe, sju," about 80 different times. Now it's my mantra. I often lay around saying, "Shoe, sju. Shoe, sju. Sju shoe!" While my Korean housemate gives me a funny look and skurries off to the bathroom.
http://www2.hhs.se/isa/swedish/chap9.htm#sjsound

I hope that site helps any learners out there. Keep strong my brothers and sisters. We'll pull through! We just have to stick together!

Adjö

p.s. If a Swedish reader can record them saying the tongue twister in the title, please post it online so that I can put a link to it on my blog. I think we'd all get a kick out of it.

Karin Dreijer Andersson

I'm sitting in the kitchen, waiting for my tofu poppers to be done. I'm drinking coffee and stressing about the incompetence of a few idiots at my work (I'm only 20 years old, just started the job 2 weeks ago, and already /facepalming at the veterans' stupidity.) So what do I do to destress? Listen to music!

I was going to make a post about the elusive vegan pannkakor (seriously! If you have a good recipe, let me know. All 5 recipes I have tried failed miserably). But then I realized I was listening to Swedish music (which isn't that uncommon. Swedish indie-pop = win). So I've decided to write about Karin Dreijer.

Many know her from The Knife. The best known song is Heartbeats. It's a good song, quite catchy with the thick eurotrash synths opening the song. José Gonzalez, another famous Swede, did an acoustic version of the song which is what brought The Knife closer to the mainstream. This video is NOT heartbeats, but a song I like better. It's called Pass This On.




Then Karin decided to go off and do a solo career under the pseudonym Fever Ray. I fell in love with this project right now. It's the type of music that changes how you feel inside and makes you think. There's something so primal about this music. The first single was when I grow up. I highly suggest you look it up. This song is one that I can listen to nonstop and never get sick of it. Keep The Streets Empty For Me



The latest project is by the Knife. An opera about Darwin called Tomorrow, in a Year. They don't sing in it, but they created the music. I don't have much to say about it, as I haven't had too much time to sit down and listen to it fully. But here is the best quality song on youtube that I could find.



One last video. This is actually Röyksopp, a Norwegian electro band (you Americans might remember them when they had a song in a Geico caveman commercial: Doesn't Remind Me.) They asked Karin to sing the vocals of this song and it came out superb. This is What Else is There. Make sure you watch the video, it's pretty intense.



What do you think?

Hallongrottor

So it seems that vegan recipes were what people were more excited about. One person said he would be curious to see vegan hallongrottor, as he has tried and failed in the past. I found a few recipes, bookmarked them, then moved on thinking I'd do it later. Then I got a craving for them (damn you!). I searched a few more recipes and the majority of them had a lot of complicated ingredients. Then I found this recipe. The comments were positive, it came from a vegan Swede, only 5 ingredients, all of which I had. So why not? They're currently in the oven, waiting to be done and eaten.

The dough was a bit difficult to work with. It crumbled very easily. As a result, I had to make bigger cookies. Now, onto the results.

They're pretty good. The cookie came out soft and melted in my mouth. It crumbled a little too easily for my liking. But for having only 5 ingredients, they're pretty damn good. Pretty, too. If I had a working camera I would have taken a picture. I suggest eating them with a cup of soy milk or coffee. I'm having coffee with them and it's very satisfying!

Definitely something to add to the smörgåsbord.

Here's the recipe (by vegbitch)
Vegan Hallongrottor:

* 450 ml (just under two cups) flour
* 100 ml (just under ½ cup) sugar
* 200gr (7 oz) (just under 1 cup) vegan margarine
* 1 tsp vanilla extract (I used 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1/2 tsp almond extract)
* raspberry jam (I didn't have this, so I used lingonberry jam instead)

Turn oven to 175 C or 350F. Cream sugar, margarine and vanilla extract together. Mix in the flour and work into a dough ball. Fridge the dough for about 20 minutes. Roll the dough into about 30 little balls about 2 cm in diameter (or about an inch), flatten them a little and put on parchment paper on a baking tray. Make a little thumbprint in them (make the print bigger for more jam!) and fill them with some jam. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes (mine were in for about 20 minutes. Every oven is different) until they’ve turned just a little bit golden.


If you made these, tell me what you thought, send pictures, etc.
Hej då!

Mat

I remember reading once that you can learn a lot about a country based on their food. I'm sure Sweden is no different, but I'm not sure what the food is trying to tell me. I mean, what does surströmming, lingonsylt, knäckebröd, and köttbullar say?

I guess you could say they're of a social type with their smörgåsbordar and fika. They're a bit traditional with julbordar and kräftskivar and the Thursday pannkakor/ärtsoppor. But these aren't really foods so much as ways to consume the food. There is one thing that I've seen in almost all traditional Swedish plates, though. Potatoes.

Boiled new potatoes with dill, mashed, boiled with cream sauce, dumplings, mixed in with meats, made into pancakes. If you can do something with a potato, Sweden has done it. A direct quote from wikipedia*, "Potatoes are eaten all year around." This wouldn't be funny if that line wasn't standing alone as it's own paragraph. At least I got a chuckle out of it.

Meat also seems to be a big part of their diet, but there's not one meat that stands alone. It seems that every animal has a place on the table changed into nearly every shape. Balls, sausages, steaks, pate, chunks, patties, etc etc. Hell, even feet are welcomed.

As a vegan I'm faced with quite the challenge. I've found some vegan Swedish recipes, mainly meatballs, but for the most part I'm on my own. I'm fine with that. It's fun converting old favorite recipes into new vegan ones. I imagine it will be just as fun finding new and exciting ways to make rotmos med fläsk as a vegan entree. I'll be sure to share what I find.

Until next time
Tack så mycket
Erik

*I, by no means think that wikipedia has all of the answers, but it's a nice and quick go-to guide for basic information.

Intro

Hello,

My name is Erik. This blog will be a concrete collection of my adventures with nordophilia, a passion for the nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark). I'll mainly be discussing my trials and tribulations with learning the Swedish language and on becoming a student of Scandinavian studies.

I've been teaching myself Swedish for the past year and have scattered notes and logs laying about in various notebooks and journals that I have lying around. If you can't tell, I'm pretty unorganized. I'm currently an English major at a school that does not offer Scandinavian studies. Well, kind of a student. I'm taking a small bit of time off. Though, should things move smoothely, I'll be back soon to finish gen. ed. requirements then transferring to a school where I can major in Scand. studies. But I digress...

We'll start things off with food.

So, enjoy, relate, etc.

Tack så mycket,
Erik

Note: by nordophilia I don't mean being sexually aroused by people from the northern countries. It's the whole country that turns me on.