Swedish Meatballs

I wanted to finish off our jar of lingonberry jam and an opened package of sour cream, so the logical choice was to make some Swedish meatballs. I figured I could count that toward the AtWCC since it didn't look like I had made Swedish meatballs for that yet (even though I remembered making them at some point before). I picked a recipe from Damn Delicious, got some Impossible Burger to take the place of the ground beef and pork, and then made a very decadent, heavy, but tasty version of Swedish meatballs.

Making Swedish meatballs in 2020

And then I did some looking through old posts and found something from the 2020 cooking challenge where I made Swedish meatballs for the retro recipes challenge... and it turns out I followed and adapted the exact. same. recipe. this time. I guess I hadn't counted that one for the AtWCC because, although we liked it, I was going to give it another try to get closer to the taste of the Ikea meatballs. We had used turkey there instead of beef/pork and wondered how it would go with Impossible Burger, which I did use this time without even remembering that was something I wanted to change. Going to count it now since we've made it twice and given it a good effort.

Swedish meatballs in 2023

The meatballs were good - made with Impossible, onions, panko, flax eggs, allspice, nutmeg, salt, and pepper - accompanied by a gravy of butter, flour, beef broth (also had used chicken bouillon here last time instead of beef, but had it this time), and sour cream. Overall, it was good, and I'm glad I made it (again), but still far easier to just get the frozen ones from Ikea if we want a Swedish meatball night at home.

Week 12 - Banana

Pineapple is a pretty controversial ingredient on pizza here (we like it), so I can only imagine how people would react if shops started putting bananas on pizza. I was skeptical, but banana curry pizza is so popular on Swedish pizza menus that I felt like we had to give it a try for the banana challenge. I've made banana curry before (for the bananas challenge in 2015 and a few times after that), which was delicious, so I hoped this would be similarly delicious.

I didn't really follow a specific recipe for this, but just read a bunch of different ones (my favorites were these two) and then put together my own version. The ingredients for our version of banana curry pizza were:

- 1 lb of pizza dough

- 1/2 jar (about 7 oz) of pizza sauce

- most of a bag of pizza blend shredded cheese

- 3 slices of black forest ham, torn into pieces [would do more next time]

- 1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

- 2 bananas, sliced

- curry powder

- avocado oil spray

The steps for making the pizza were:

1. Prep - slice onions, slice bananas.

2. Line baking sheet with parchment paper, and spray parchment paper with oil spray.

3. Stretch pizza dough to fit baking sheet. [This was harder than I remembered because it was so elastic and I kept stretching holes in it. I think I need a pizza-making class to learn how to do this properly.]

4. Add toppings in the following order, spreading as evenly as possible over the pizza dough: pizza sauce, pizza cheese (about half of it), ham, red onions, banana, curry powder, rest of the cheese.

5. Bake at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes, until crust is starting to brown and cheese is bubbling.

The pizza was fantastic. We all loved it, and the combination of the bananas, curry, ham, cheese, and sauce just worked. I would definitely make that again. In doing this research, I read that Swedish pizzerias generally have over 50 varieties, so I'm excited to see what other tasty pizzas they've come up with. I can see us making a lot of pizzas for the AtWCC, which I'm sure would be fine with B since he loves pizza so much. I have my eye on a kebab pizza that sounds amazing, so maybe that one will be next!

Week 35 - Nordic

Our feast for the Week 35 Nordic challenge didn't fully come together until the day I made it. I had decided earlier that I would make some Lindström patties (based on this Guardian recipe page, but with turkey instead of beef), and figured I would follow the Guardian's suggestion and just serve it with pan-fried potatoes and a vegetable side dish (although I planned to do peas instead of mangetout, which I hadn't known at first were snow peas). The day I was going to make the patties, I decided to search to see if there were any Scandinavian potato recipes and came up with a recipe for sugar-browned potatoes on Epicurious. Since that only had basic ingredients that were already in our pantry, I decided to do that for our potatoes side, especially curious about how it would be since it had been published in House & Garden back in 1964.

Lindström Patties

The ingredients for the Lindström patties (adapted a bit) were:

- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.99)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)
- 2 egg yolks ($0.20)
- a little more than 1/4 cup of cornichons ($1.35)
- a little more than 1/2 cup of pickled beets ($0.85)
- 2 spoonfuls of capers ($0.25)
- about 1 tbsp dried chives ($0.10)
- 1/2 medium onion ($0.25)
- butter for pan-frying ($0.25)

The total for the patties was about $8.29, not too bad for turkey burgers.

The steps for making the patties were:

1. Prep - finely chop onions, finely chop cornichons, chop capers, finely chop beets, and measure out chives.

2. Add ground turkey to mixing bowl, season with salt and pepper, and add the 2 egg yolks. Lightly mix together with hands.

[Note: The original recipe said to also add some water here, which I did, despite my instincts telling me not to. I thought the vegetables had more than enough water content, but followed the recipe anyway. As soon as I poured the water in, I knew it was a mistake (at least for the ingredients we had), as it was like the ground turkey was swimming in soup. It was going to be way too watery after mixing in the ingredients, as there would be nothing to bind it or soak up the water, so I drained most of the water out, and then added more pepper to replace the stuff that got washed away.]

3. Add all the chopped vegetables into the turkey mixture and mix together well with hands. (Don't overmix, but just make sure everything is evenly distributed.)

4. Form the turkey mixture into patties. (To make them all fit on one plate, I made them into meatball shapes and then flattened them out when pan-frying them. I had to squeeze the water out when making the meatballs and then again when flattening the patties. Way too much water.)

5. Melt some butter in a frying pan, and then pan-fry burgers, a couple of minutes on each side until cooked through. (I had so many that I ended up doing them in 3 batches.)

It was sometimes hard to tell whether the patties were done because they were still pink from all the beets. I ended up cutting one patty from each batch open to check them, and they were cooked through. (It also gave us an excuse to eat a few patties before dinner since it was late.)

Overall the patties were really good. There was sweetness from the beets, saltiness from the capers, and a nice sour flavor from the cornichons that all worked together really well. It was nice eating patties with so many vegetables inside, as they tasted so healthy.

Sugar-Browned Potatoes

I followed the original recipe for these potatoes pretty closely, other than using baking potatoes instead of small boiled potatoes, mostly because we had the giant bag from Costco. The ingredients I used were:

- 2 large baking potatoes ($1)
- 2 tbsp sugar ($0.15)
- 2 tbsp butter ($0.20)
- sprinkling of salt ($0.05)

The total for the potatoes came out to $1.40. Paired with our vegetable side (5 large mushrooms, a couple cups of frozen peas, and the other half of the onion cooked in olive oil) and the patties, the total for dinner was approximately $12.94. It made a lot of food, and there were some potatoes and vegetables left over for lunch the next day, so it seemed worth it.

As far as making the potatoes, the process was pretty easy. Boil the potatoes until fork tender and then drain. Melt butter in a pan, add the sugar, and stir constantly as the sugar browns (but doesn't burn). Add the potatoes, coat them in the sugar, and keep stirring until potatoes are browned or as done as you want them to be. When they're done, take them off the heat and sprinkle with salt, and mix some more. Because of the constant stirring, I was really glad I had A's help so I could fry the patties at the same time.

The potatoes were really good, and when we first tried them, we could definitely taste the difference. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about sugar-browned potatoes, thinking they might be too sweet, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the taste. They weren't super sweet (not like candied yams or anything), but the mild sweetness of the sugar helped the flavor of the potato come out. The subtle sweetness was really good. We were impressed. No wonder this recipe from 1964 is still floating around out there.

Overall, our Nordic night dinner was a really good meal. We would make both of these dishes again (the vegetables are pretty standard and we make stuff like that all the time). It was a little time-consuming making 3 different dishes at once considering the size of our kitchen and amount of usable counter and stove space, but it was really delicious.

An Ikea Feast

As we headed over to Ikea in Brooklyn this weekend, A and I talked a bit about our first experiences with Swedish food. Unsurprisingly for both of us, the first Swedish food that we remember having was from Ikea, and it was, of course, the meatballs. I'm not sure I could even tell you what else Ikea offered back when I used to go there with my parents a lot in the '90s. Just Swedish meatballs.

After living in Chicago for a few years which had an incredibly vibrant Swedish community in Andersonville, it's been surprising to us how little Swedish cuisine there is in New York. There's quite a few Swedish (or general Scandinavian) spots at the higher end of the spectrum, like Aquavit, but on the more casual side, they seem to be mostly coffee shops. It would have been so easy to hit up a casual Swedish restaurant in Chicago to check the Swedish box for our Women's World Cup challenge, but it was more difficult here. So we went to Ikea. They're a Swedish chain, so they count.

We were so hungry by the time we got to the cafe on the day we went (it was late and we had sat in traffic for about 30 minutes (while hungry) to go less than a mile; we could have walked faster) that we ordered a serious feast of Swedish food for lunch. I'm not sure we've ever gotten that much to eat at Ikea before.

A ordered the Swedish meatball combo ($7.99 with the Ikea Family card, which is free so why wouldn't you get one?), which came with 15 meatballs, gravy (cream sauce), mashed potatoes, and lingonberry jam. This is the plate that Ikea's had for as long as we can remember, and it pretty much tastes the same to us as it always has. We love these meatballs, the rich gravy, the creamy potatoes, and the sweet and tart lingonberry jam. Ikea's the first place either of us had ever tried lingonberries, and they're delicious.

The combo came with a drink (we got lingonberry juice, a lot of it) and our choice of soup or a basic garden salad. The soup was aromatic chickpea soup, so of course, we got that. Despite being the middle of June, it was quite cool and in the 60s outside, so soup was welcome. The soup was just okay, probably our least favorite part of our feast. It wasn't bad, just not as "aromatic" as we were expecting. There was some black pepper and some herbs with the chickpeas, but it wasn't as herbal or flavorful as we thought it would be. But it did seem healthy, so it balanced out a lot of the other stuff we had.

I ordered the chicken meatballs (and A and I swapped a few meatballs from each of our plates). This was the first time we'd eaten at Ikea since they introduced the chicken meatball option, so we wanted to check it out. The chicken meatball plate ($4.99) also comes with gravy, mashed potatoes, and lingonberry jam, but there are only 10 meatballs instead of the 15 regular ones. The chicken meatballs are a little bit bigger than the original ones, a little softer and spongier in texture, but full of chicken flavor. They were tasty meatballs, and I would consider getting this again instead of the original one in the future.

Normally we would just get meatballs, but we were so hungry that everything looked good as we walked past the refrigerated cases. I picked up a plate of the gravlax salad ($4.99), since gravlax is one of the most Swedish foods there is and we like salmon. This was good, but definitely not the best gravlax we've ever had. It came with a side of mustard sauce, some sprigs of dill, and a pile of arugula.

To finish off our Swedish meal, we indulged in a slice of Swedish apple cake ($2.49). The pastry part of this was soft and a bit dense, and the apples were sweet and delicious. We also tasted hints of spices in there, possibly cinnamon or cardamom and maybe some others. It came with a vanilla cream sauce. All together, it was a pretty good slice of cake. We were glad that we were so hungry that we picked up dessert since we don't usually try it there. The apple cake was flying out of the refrigerated case and luckily we got the very last slice. Now we know why it's so popular!

It was great to take a break from the frenzy of Ikea and dismal weather to grab some Swedish food, and it knocked another place off the Women's World Cup challenge. Unfortunately, it's now kicked up our craving for Swedish meatballs, and we didn't bring any home from Ikea!

Week 13 - Potatoes

Week 13 of the 52 week challenge was potatoes week. I decided to make two different dishes for potatoes week: hasselback potatoes and twice baked chili cheese potatoes. Both were new recipes for me (as I hadn't even made a regular twice baked potato before), and I was excited to try them. 

TWICE BAKED CHILI CHEESE POTATOES

These twice-baked chili cheese potatoes (based on the recipe here) were like making 3 dishes in one: baked potatoes, chili, and mashed potatoes (for the "twice baked" part). The estimated time to make them was two hours, and it took me even longer than that since I am still quite slow in the kitchen (somehow). They were a lot of work, but they were tasty.

Part 1 - baked potatoes

The first step was to bake potatoes. For that step I needed:

- 4 russet potatoes ($1.96)
- olive oil for brushing ($0.20)
- sea salt for sprinkling ($0.05)

Clean the potatoes. Prick them with a fork on all sides. Brush with olive oil. Sprinkle with sea salt. Bake at 425 degrees for 45 minutes. They should be soft and easy to poke holes in with a fork when they're done. This part of the recipe (other than the potato scrubbing since they were so dirty) was easy and relatively quick to prepare.

Part 2 - chili

The second part of the process was to make the chili. For that I needed more ingredients:

- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.17)
- 1 yellow onion, chopped ($0.60)
- 2 small jalapeños, diced ($0.70)
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced ($0.10)
- taco seasoning (see below) ($0.35)
- 1 small can of tomato sauce ($0.33)
- 1 can of kidney beans ($0.70)
- 1 can of diced tomatoes ($0.89)
- salt to taste ($0.05)

Rather than buy taco seasoning, I decided to make my own using a slightly adapted version of this recipe for homemade taco seasoning, which makes about 2 tablespoons of seasoning.

- 2 tsp chili powder
- 1-1/2 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1/2 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp oregano
- 1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
- pinch of cayenne pepper
- pinch of crushed red pepper

First, brown the turkey and onions in a skillet.

Add the taco seasoning.

Jalapeños and garlic.

Tomato sauce, beans and diced tomatoes.

Add salt and seasonings to taste. A very quick and simple chili. Set it aside and it'll be ready to go once the potato mashing and mixing is done.

Part 3 - mashed potatoes

The final step prior to assembling the twice baked chili cheese potatoes was to make the mashed potato filling for the potatoes. Once the potatoes are cooked through, you scoop out most of the insides, leaving about 1/4 inch on all sides of the potato. For this step, you also need:

- 2 tbsp butter, thinly sliced ($0.50)
- 1 tsp salt ($0.05)
- 1 tsp pepper ($0.05)
- 3 green onions, chopped ($0.40)
- 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese + 1 cup cheese for assembly later ($1.25)

Once the potato pulp is in a large bowl, mash the potatoes. Then add the butter, salt, pepper, green onions and cheese. Stir to combine.

Part 4 - assembly

To assemble the final product, stuff each potato half with the mashed potato mixture up to the top of the potato skin.

Top with the chili.

And a generous helping of cheese. (It's completely fine if some of the cheese misses the potatoes. Those baked cheese crispies are always a nice bonus.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes until the cheese is melted. Top with sour cream if desired when serving.

The potatoes were really good, but a twice baked potato without the chili would probably be just as good. I think we're going to try that next time. The cost of the potatoes (which made plenty of leftovers) with the chili and some sour cream to top them was about $12.50. Without the chili (63% of the cost), the potatoes would have been much more affordable. Substituting a can of chili instead of making it from scratch would also cut costs. This recipe did make a lot of food since we ended up with 8 potato halves and some leftover chili, but it also took a lot of time.

The potatoes were our "main course" for dinner that night with a side of some simply sauteed vegetables. It was a hearty and filling meal.

HASSELBACK POTATOES

I had been wanting to make hasselback potatoes for some time, so they were a "must do" for potatoes week. They always look so fancy but didn't sound hard to do. I had no idea they were a Swedish potato preparation until I started researching recipes for them. I decided to use this recipe from What's Cooking America for the potato dish.

To make the hasselback potatoes I needed:

- 2 russet potatoes ($0.98)
- 3 tbsp melted butter ($0.75)
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese ($0.75)
- 1/2 cup bread crumbs ($0.60)
- 1 tsp paprika ($0.05)
- salt to taste ($0.05)
- cilantro for garnish ($0.50)

The first step after peeling the potatoes was to cut the slices, which weren't supposed to go all the way to the bottom of the potato. The goal was to leave about 1/4 inch of potato at the bottom. The recipe I followed suggested leveling the potato by cutting off a narrow slice from the bottom, then placing each potato between wooden chopsticks and cutting down to the chopsticks. That worked most of the time, but some slices still almost went all the way through the potato. I didn't make the slice cuts as narrow as I probably should have. Some people suggest 1/4 inch cuts, but the sizes of mine varied. I should have been more precise.

Once you cut the potatoes, rinse under cold water and try to open the potato cuts a little bit. Dry the potatoes, then brush the potatoes with butter. Mix the Parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, about 1 tbsp of butter, paprika and salt together in a bowl and then pat the mixture all over the potatoes.

Place in an oiled baking dish and bake at 450 degrees for 30 minutes, covered in foil. Then take off the foil and bake another 15 minutes (at least). Garnish with cilantro.

The two hasselback potatoes cost about $3.68. Not that expensive to put together, but we just weren't that impressed with them and they didn't feel as special as we thought they would. Perhaps I needed to make smaller, thinner cuts in order to get the potatoes to really fan out, because they certainly didn't do that on their own. The only reason you can even see the fanned out slices in the picture is because I physically split them to serve them. In the end, they just tasted like potatoes with bread crumbs and cheese.

POTATO WEEK

The potato week challenge was definitely interesting. Potatoes are one of those versatile ingredients that can be used in so many ways, and they're a good food when you're eating on a budget. Between the two, we liked the twice baked chili cheese potatoes better, but probably would just make regular twice baked potatoes next time.

Gravlaxomelett Med Örter

I love the cookbooks section of the library. I don't really need more recipes since, thanks to the internet, I have hundreds of recipes saved to my computer like a big searchable cookbook, but I love reading cookbooks and gazing at the gorgeous photos. I also love books that specialize in cuisines of different world cultures, providing collections of recipes from different regions in a more cohesive unit.

One of the cookbooks I borrowed this fall was The Swedish Table by Helene Henderson. Although so many of the recipes sounded appealing, I didn't save that many of them, since there were a lot that required immersion blenders or lots of butter, neither of which are primary elements of my cooking style (to the extent I have one). Both A and I went through the book and most of the recipes we chose to try ended up being the same. The first one we've made from the set was Gravlaxomelett Med Örter (fresh herb omelette with gravlax).

Ingredients:

This was the perfect recipe to make since we had bought a package of smoked salmon slices from Costco after Christmas, we had dill and eggs that didn't have much left to their shelf life, and it was time for the egg theme in the 52 weeks of cooking challenge.

- 4 eggs, lightly beaten ($1)

- 1/2 cup assorted fresh herbs (dill and chives), finely chopped ($0.80)

- salt and pepper ($0.05)

- butter for skillet cooking ($0.25)

- crumbled goat cheese ($1)

- 5 slices of smoked salmon or gravlax ($1.70)

- 1/4 cup red onion, finely minced ($0.30)

Total for the recipe was approximately $5. Not bad for a light dinner including salmon.

Process:

1. Prep work. This was relatively simple - just onions and herbs, finely chopped/minced in each case.

2. Lightly beat eggs and mix in fresh herbs, salt and pepper.

3. Melt butter in small nonstick skillet and add the egg/herb mixture. Cook until eggs begin to set.

4. Add red onions and goat cheese.

5. Add smoked salmon slices.

6. Fold omelette in half and allow to cook for a few seconds longer on each side.

I repeated the process to make the second omelette but since the pan was much hotter this time around, it came out much more well done. I'm not sure I'll ever make an omelette that looks as good as that first one ever again.

Review:

This recipe was perfect for a light dinner, easy to make and fairly healthy. We loved the red onion, goat cheese, smoked salmon and herbs combination. Everything worked really well together. So fresh and light. It reminded us of one of our favorite breakfasts of lox, cream cheese and red onions on bagels. The chives and dill were great additions to the eggs. I don't know if I ever want to make omelettes without fresh herbs again.

We would definitely make this again (although I should probably use a smaller pan). We still have more smoked salmon, but we're out of eggs, so I guess it will be bagels, cream cheese and salmon going forward (no complaints here!). Glad to have another omelette combination for our repertoire.