Northern European Foods

[The Mersey's Watcher]

I'm sure there was a recipes page on the old forum and I think we need one here.

Over the past few months I’ve gotten really interested in cooking. I usually used to leave the cooking to my parents and whenever I cook for myself it's usually something simple like, eggs beans and chips (which is great :D ). But I hope to move out soon (with any luck) and so will need to learn to cook properly.

What I’m really looking for is soup recipes. I think soups are the easiest meals to cook so it's a good idea for a novice. So has anyone here got any traditional northern European recipes for soups?

[pinlighter]

GENERAL RECIPIE FOR SOUP




Cut up some vegetables you think go well together, or what ever you have. Throw them in the pot.

Throw in some bones (chicken, beef or what have you).

Add salt to taste.

Add water

Bring to boil

simmer (put lid on pot and adjust heat till JUST bubbling).



Remove bones before serving.



For a stew, just throw in some large chunks of meat





Real soups/ stews take a long time - 2 or 3 hours.

Like most simple things, the longer and more gently you cook 'em the less likely they are to burn or go wrong, and the better they taste.

[Hveðrungur Kveldúlfsson]

Most of the time when I made a soup or stew I dont really go in with any recipe I just use whatever I have but one of my favorites to make when I do have everything I want goes something like this.

What you'll need:

Water (duh :p)
Carrots
Cabbage
Celery
Potatoes (non skinned)
One or two cans of Stewing tomatoes
Stewing beef (however much you want)
Seasoning salt
Pepper
Barley
Onions
Crushed red pepper flakes (If you want)
Corn starch (If you want a thicker stew)

How to make it:

I usually get a big pot (or a small one if your not making much stew) and put water on to boil (adding salt to your water causes it to boil faster). I take my carrots and skin them then chop them into chunks and put them into the water. Then I take my cabbage and chop it up into giant chunks and do the same as I did with the carrots (Eventually the cabbage chunks come appart when it starts to cook and you stir it). While my cabbage and carrots are in the water and im waiting for it to boil I will take a frying pan and fill it with water and throw my stewing beef into the pan to cook it a little without the meat getting fried.

After the water is boiling with the carrots and cabbage and the meat is somewhat cooked I will put it into the water with two cans of stewing tomatoes and chop up a few stocks of celery and one extremely fine chopped half onion and throw it in with the stewing tomatoes.

While all of that is cooking I will take a few giant potatoes and wash the outsides then stab them all over with a fork, after that I will chop them into chunks with the skins on and throw them into the pot to cook.

After the stew has been boiling for some time when the meat is cooked and I can stab my carrots and potatoes with a fork knowing their cooked I will take some seasoing salt, pepper and some crushed red pepper and put it in.

Depending on how big a pot of stew is I will add barley to it and wait for it to cook, by this time your onion (if you chopped it fine) should be basically melted away in your stew.

If you want a thicker stew then when you think your stew is cooked and ready take a water bottle or something and add a little cornstarch to it with some water and shake it up. Once its shaken up good add it to your stew and stir it for a few minutes. It will thicken it which is better for bread dipping in my opinion :D


I know the "recipe" might seem a little weird but its something I made up from just cooking over the years and ive made for my family when I cook supper for them and it always turns out good (at least that what they tell me :p )

All of this will probably run you about 2 hours cooking time so be patient and let everything cook!!

[The Mersey's Watcher]

Thanks pinlighter. Thanks Hveðrungr, i'll tell you if it's just you, or if your recipe truly is weird after i've tried it :D .

[Hveðrungur Kveldúlfsson]

Aye, give 'er a try and let me know what you think. Its best to bake some fresh bread to go with it though, its allways good when you add the cornstarch to thicken it out and use the bread to dip. Stew of the gods :D :p

[aud_friggsdottir]

We need to get Jodi on this board...she is a wealth of awesome Icelandic recipes :)

FFF

[The Mersey's Watcher]

Cooking some Icelandic food would be interesting :) .

Well Hveðrungr I tried your recipe, and I messed up :( . It was slightly burned which ruined the taste a bit. And also I used too many tomatoes and too few potatoes. I think I should have used a bit more onion as well. Practice makes perfect though and I might do it right next time :D . (O, and also my chunks where way too big)

Just so you know, if I hadn't burnt it, and I did use the right proportions of ingredients, from what i've tasted so far, I can say it would have been very nice (but still slightly weird :p ).

[pinlighter]

IF you want a stew, you HAVE TO SIMMER IT. You can't cook it fast.

Get it to the point of boiling, cover it with the lid, and stew it for 2 or 3 hours so that it is just bubbling all the time, stirring occasionally. Do something else and come back every 20 minutes or so to stir it for just a few seconds.

Do that, you can't go wrong. Don't do that, you can't go right.

[The Mersey's Watcher]

IF you want a stew, you HAVE TO SIMMER IT. You can't cook it fast.

Get it to the point of boiling, cover it with the lid, and stew it for 2 or 3 hours so that it is just bubbling all the time, stirring occasionally. Do something else and come back every 20 minutes or so to stir it for just a few seconds.

Do that, you can't go wrong. Don't do that, you can't go right.

Sound advice. I defintley had it on too high and I didn't stir it enough.

[Sigurd]

Hmmm...sorry...this maybe slightly off topic but I shall just have to say something. i actually tried to, for two weeks only live from what our ancestors could have cooked as well 1000 years ago.

Apparently, it is hardly possible: there was no coffee, chocolate, potatoes, sweetcorn nor pepper; food tasted quite odd like that.

Anyway, back ontopic, the recipes got something to it. Were I be more skilled with pot and hearth, I might actually try some of them out.

[Hveðrungur Kveldúlfsson]

We need to get Jodi on this board...she is a wealth of awesome Icelandic recipes :)

FFF
YUSSS!!!! That would be great Kathy, I havent talked to her in some time though. Next time you talk to Jodi give her my MSN username Hvedrungr@Odinist.Com as my MSN contact has changed since me and Jodi last talked to eachother.

[pinlighter]

OAT CAKES




Makes 8



6 oz Fine Oatmeal
2 oz Flour
1 teaspoon of Salt
10 fl oz of Warm Water



Mix the oatmeal, flour and salt together.
Slowly add the warm water.
Roll out the mixture on a floured board and knead until 1/4 inch thick.
Cut into triangles.

Cook on a pan or griddle until golden on both sides. Dry out in a cool oven at 150C/300F until crisp - basically you toast them first, then leave them in a low oven for 1/2 hr or so.

eat with butter.




(You'd better have your teeth FIRMLY screwed in to eat this stuff :D)

[pinlighter]

http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikbagels.html



"I designed these buns to enhance the Viking atmosphere at Dofinn-Hallr Morrisson's Laurel vigil at East Kingdom Twelfth Night, A.S. 26 (January 1993). The contents and proportions of the grains are based on analyses of buns found in ninth- and tenth-century graves at Birka, Sweden; the bagel shape is lifted directly from a Migration Era grave find, also Swedish. The technique I adapted from an unleavened barley bread recipe I found in The Tassajara Bread Book, which happily uses flour proportions very like the Viking ones."


The Recipe

* 2 cups barley flour
* 4 cups whole-wheat flour
* 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
* 4 tablespoons oil (I used cold-pressed sesame)
* 3-1/2 cups boiling water

In a heavy pan over medium-low heat, roast the barley flour in 1 T. of the oil until it smells good and turns several shades darker but is still off-white; flour should not turn brown. Mix barley and wheat flours with salt and remaining oil in a big bowl, using fingers to rub in oil, until it's of uniform consistency. Add the boiling water all at once and stir up quickly.

Being careful not to scald your hands, take out a small clump of dough and work it between hands until it's uniform, glossy and translucent. Repeat with rest of dough, then work it all together into one smooth lump.

Divide lump into into 24 smallish balls. Shape into bagels; poking a hole through the ball of dough works well. Arrange on oiled sheets (they won't rise much).

Let sit overnight. (Still look just the same, don't they?) Bake in 450 oven 20 minutes, then reduce to 400 and cook until "done," about another 45-60 minutes. They'll have hard, dark brown undersides. There is a fine line between gummy-undercooked and done-but-impossibly-hard; good luck finding it. I recommend testing one every five minutes after they've cooked an hour.

[Katia]

Perfect Lemon Curd


"Wonderfully tart, classic English lemon curd ... perfect with scones and tea." Original recipe yield: 1 2/3 cups.

INGREDIENTS:

· 3/4 cup fresh lemon juice

· 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

· 3/4 cup sugar

· 3 eggs

· 1/2 cup unsalted butter, cubed



DIRECTIONS:

1. In a 2 quart saucepan, combine lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, eggs, and butter. Cook over medium-low heat until thick enough to hold marks from whisk, and first bubble appears on surface, about 6 minutes.



Note:

You can make curd up to one week ahead of use. Cover surface with plastic wrap, and store in refrigerator.



Note from sender: This stuff Is awesome with scones. You can also make it creamier and go farther if you mix it with coolwhip – it makes it fluffy and light – also great on scones or unsalted crackers.

Something unusual to serve your guests.

[The Mersey's Watcher]

I'll have to give those Oat cakes ago, sounds like I can't go wrong with them. After that i'll move onto the lemon curd.

Also for making soups; no one has mentioned it yet, but my dad, who used to be a chef, said that before you make any kind of soup or stu you should lightly fry the all vegtables your going to use first. The reason for this is that it get's rid of the starch in the veg, and thus makes a nicer soup.

[pinlighter]

1. Peel or scrub the parsnips.

2. Cut into approx 2 inch lengths.

3. Heat a little oil or lard in a roasting tin. Put parsnips in and toss them to cover with oil

4. Roast the parsnips for 30-40 minutes at 200c / 400f / gas 6. Cook until crisp and golden, pouring a little fat over them half way through (basting them).



You would not want to eat roast parsnips by themselves, but they are an underappreciated vegetable, sweet, meaty and delicious. They need to be THOROUGHLY cooked - not burned, but crisp outside abd soft inside.

(Big parsnips some times have a hard woody core. Cut this out))


Parsnips are genuine European vegetables, we have probably been cooking and eating them for 20,000 years


http://www.sallys-place.com/food/columns/fussell/parsnips.htm

[Hrafnas]

Wasn't there a show on PBS about Scandinavian cooking by a Norwegian guy? Can't remember the name of it but there was a cookbook that was put out to compliment the show. :confused:

edit:
http://scandinaviancooking.com/ (http://scandinaviancooking.com)
there's one address........

[gwynyvyr]

OLLEBROD

Excellent for those bad times when you're recovering from a bit of a hangover. In medieval times, the Medical School of Salerno was already recommending the hair of the dog:

Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini
Hoc tu mane bibas iterum, et fuerit medicina
or
If an evening of wine does you in,
More the next morning will be medicine.

Serve this belly-calming soup hot to 4-6 people.

* 8 slices pumpernickel bread
* 2-3 cups dark ale (preferably Danish hvidtol):1 20-24 ounce bottle works
* 1 cup water
* grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
* sugar
* whipping cream, plain or whipped or sour cream, whipped a bit

Break the bread into small pieces. Put them in a deep saucepan and pour in the ale, mixed with water. Soak at least 3 hours, or overnight.

When ready to serve, simmer the soup over low heat until it thickens.Take soup off heat, pour into blender or whip with whisk until pureed, stirring in the lemon rind and juice, and sweeten to taste. Return to the saucepan, bring to a boil, then serve immediately--spooning on plain or whipped cream or sour cream as a garnish. Nice to throw some crumbled bacon on top of the sour cream, too.

[pinlighter]

Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini
Hoc tu mane bibas iterum, et fuerit medicina
or
If an evening of wine does you in,
More the next morning will be medicine.
.


Sounds the thing for me!!

[pinlighter]

From Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead,




"If a warrior is wounded in the abdomen, they feed him soup of onions and herbs; then the women smell about his wounds, and if they smell onions, they say, 'He has the soup illness,' and they know he shall die."

Later, after Buliwyf kills and is wounded by the mother of the wendol in the thunder caves, "A bowl of onion broth was brought for him, and he refused it, saying, 'I have the soup illness; do not trouble yourselves on my account.'" And, indeed, despite a last rally, he dies in battle and his body is sent out to sea in a burning ship.

[pinlighter]

3 lbs onions, sliced thick

4 oz butter

2 pts beef broth (from OXO cubes or whatever)



1) Bring onions to boil in 3-4 pts water.

2) Simmer ("just boiling") over low heat for 3 hours, stirring every 1/2 hour or so. At the end of this time you must stir more frequently

3) Add 10 cups beef broth.

4) Heat gently to boiling again and stir.



Serves 5 or 6. Reduce quantities as suitable for fewer.

.

[Der Einzelgänger]

I'm gonna have to get my girlfriend to try and make some of these ;)

[pinlighter]

1 cup apple juice

1/2 pinch mixed s pice
1 microwave



Heat apple juice in microwave (or by any other means), do not quite boil.

Add s pice




Delicious!!!!


For unauthenticity, use orange juice. :D

For correct spelling of ****e, turn off board naughty word filter!!!

[gwynyvyr]

Hey Pinlighter...ever had Chai Tea? Get some chai tea bags/mix and use apple juice or apple cider instead of water...WOW! Especially good with hard cider(just heat until nice and hot but don't boil it!)

[Canuck]

Yum, chai tea. I like to make my own from scratch, here's a recipe if I remember correctly:

Bring some milk to a boil and toss in some cinnamon sticks, some cloves, some nutmeg, and some black tea.............there's something else I'm forgetting, I just know it.

Just another interesting idea: My mother makes muffins with almond flour instead of wheat flour, she grinds the almonds herself. It makes for some heavy muffins, but they're a good snack with some butter or cheese. I imagine they're packed full of nutrients too, being made from almonds.

[pinlighter]

Almond flour is great stuff but I dunno about being "Northern European".

It's kinda Southern and decadent - the sort of thing one would expect to be served up by sloe-eyed servant girls in Micklegard, maybe. :D




MARCHPAIN

To Make a Marchpane


Take two pound of almonds blanched and beaten in a stone mortar, till they begin to come to a fine paste, then take a pound of sifted sugar put it in the mortar with the almonds, and make it into a perfect paste, putting to it now and then in the beating of it a spoonfull of rose-water to keep it from oyling; when you have beaten it to a puff-paste, drive it out as big as a charger, and set an edge about it as you do a quodling tart, and the bottom of wafers under it, thus bake it in an oven or baking-pan; when you see it white, and hard, and dry, take it out, and ice it with rosewater and suger, being made as thick as butter for fritters, so spread it on with a wing feather, and put it into the oven again; when you see it rise high, then take it out and garnish it with come pretty conceits made of the same stuff.



1/2 lb icing sugar

1 lb ground almonds

2 tablespoons rosewater



Work sugar, ground almonds and rosewater to form a stiff paste, knead until quite smooth.

Place the rest on a sheet of greaseproof paper.

Roll about 1/4 inch deep, slip onto a baking sheet and bake in cool oven (150ºC, 300ºF gas mark 3) for 15 mins.

Turn off oven and open door and leave for another 15 mins to "dry".


Cut out into diamond shapes, glaze with a little rose water and icing sugar

[pinlighter]

[continued]
I made this in the SCA & it was delicious.

"MARCH PAIN" = "Mars bread" = Marzipan.






"Chai tea" sounds nice - any one got the proper recipe??

I guess one could ****e drink with rose hips and stuff to be authentic


.

[pinlighter]

I think I posted this on the old board


Wholemeal flour

A very little salt

Water




1) Make dough

2) Shape into flat cakes about 1/2" thick

3) Bake hard - about 30 min at gas mark 5


That's it. It requires great courage to eat :D

[pinlighter]

For pastry:


1 lb wholmeal flour
1/2 lb self-raising flour
1/2 lb butter
as little water as will make it mix
a pinch of salt


above is for 4 pasties





Rub the butter in to the wholmeal flour until it is all absorbed, mix in the self-raising flour, and add just enough water to make a flexible dough (too much = liquescent horror).

Roll out on a flat floured board into disks about 7 inches across. This quantity makes about 4.




For filling:

any mixture of:

Cheese
Meat (ground/ cut small)
Potatoes (cut small)
Onions (cut small)
Other veg (cut small)
Anything else you fancy . . . .

pinch salt, pepper



About 12 oz per pasty


Mix the filling up, put the filling in the center of the pastry disk, fold it over, seal the edges by wetting them and pressing together.

Bake for about 1 hr on 4 or 5



Some recipies say you need to pre-cook the filling, but it's OK not to provided the individual pasties are small and so get thoroughly cooked through, and privided you cook them on a low heat so the heat has time to soak rught through.

As always with simple baking, you can't go wrong if you bake for a long time on a low heat.

[pinlighter]

Oh, one more thing with pasties - poke a few holes in them to let the steam out before cooking.

[Hengest]

Are Pasties known outside the UK or are they specifically a British thing?

[pinlighter]

Are Pasties known outside the UK or are they specifically a British thing?


I think they are a UK thing mostly. The traditional pasty was sort of a meal-in-one for a working man.

[pinlighter]

* 2 lbs. ground beef
* 1/2 onion, chopped
* 2 cups beef gravy
* 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
* one 9" pie shell, pre-baked

Sauté ground beef and onion together until beef is completely cooked. Discard fat and grease. Mix the beef & onion thoroughly with the gravy and place in pie shell. Top with the cheese. Bake at 350º F until pastry is brown and cheese is bubbly.

Serve hot or cold.



I love pies ;) :dance:

[Canuck]

We do have pastries in the colonies, in Canada at least we havn't reverted to barbarism yet. ;)

[pinlighter]

* 1 bottle sweet white wine
* 1 cup honey
* 1 tbs. each cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, pepper, or other spices



Boil the wine and honey together, skim off any scum

Sweeten to taste (this is a sweet hot drink)

Stir in spices

Pour into cups (try to leave spices in the pan).


Drink!!!




If you want you can filter this, cool it, and keep it bottled to drink later



Don't waste expensive wine on this - cheap wine gives the same taste.

.

[Booga]

Ah... You missed out on so many tasty things...
First a summer special!
Crayfish!
This is a simple one. Just take the live crayfishes and put them in boiling water with alot of dill. Boil them until they are really red and pretty(about 5 min.). Take them out of the water and let them cool off. Eat them cold with bread and butter. And alot of brännvin(vodka) of course. This is a summer dish supposed to be eaten in late july/early august.

Fremented Baltic herring
This is a hard one to do yourself. But if you guys have an IKEA close to you I understand it might be possible to get hold of that way.
It is exactly what it sounds like. It is baltic herring that is first salted and then put into barrels where it is fermented for a while. And then it is canned where it is let to be fermented a little bit more. This makes the cans look really funny as they look like they are about to blow up. :)
You eat it with potatoes and red onions on buttered crispbread and pour it down with brännvin. This is an early autumn dish. It is not supposed to be eaten before the third thursday of august. And be prepared of the fact that many think it has a bad smell. Personally I think it has a strong smell. :)

Palt
You make a goo out of mashed raw potatoes, wheat flour, grain flour and salt. Work on it until you can make small balls, about the size of a small fist, out of it without the balls sticking to your hands. Then you take pork that has been chopped into small pieces and put them into the balls. Put the balls into boiling water and let them boil until they float up to the surface. Eat them with real butter and lingonberryjam.

Hmm... It was harder than I expected to explain all this in english so if you want more you will have to tell me... :)