Meet Elsa. Our daughter. She is exactly two days old and we can’t stop looking at her. Therefore we will keep this post really short – so that we can continue to drown her in hugs and kisses.

We will be back soon with more green recipes. But this time it’s all about her.

I haven’t had any food cravings during the first eight months of my pregnancy (David has had constant liquorice cravings though, but that doesn’t count). This last month I have developed some serious cravings for citrus fruits – oranges, blood oranges, grapefruits, lime, clementines and many more. I’m not talking about a three-fruits-a-day kind of craving, this is much more serious.

In one of those weak moments David made me this Moroccan inspired Citrus Salad with pistachio nuts and green raisins (they have a wonderful smoky taste). The salad is at the same time sweet, sour, bitter and fresh, therefore you can eat it as a dessert, as a snack, for breakfast or as a main course (at least if you are me). And doesn’t it look beautiful!?

We made a Cinnamon Yoghurt Dressing to go along with the salad. I need to spread the word if you haven’t tried it before: Cinnamon and orange makes a perfect combo!

Side note. Our baby is due today but doesn’t seem to have any urge to come out. The days feels longer and longer …

Citrus Salad

10 citrus fruits (we used oranges, blood oranges, red grape fruit, clementine and lime)
1/3 cup iranian green raisins
1/3 cup pistachio nuts (roughly chopped)
a couple of fresh mint leaves

Peel and cut all the citrus fruits in thin slices. Arrange the slices in layers on a plate. Sprinkle over the green raisins, pistachio and mint.

Cinnamon Yoghurt Dressing
4 tbsp yoghurt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp agave syrup
a couple of fresh mint leaves (chopped)

Mix everything in a small bowl and serve it with the citrus salad.

Waiting. That is what it is all about right now. Luise only has a couple of days left of her pregnancy and we are in some kind of vacuum of nothingness. Everybody tells us how life suddenly get a new meaning when you have your first child. So here we are, trying to be prepared for this big evolving change. Sitting around waiting for it, not doing much. Except from cooking lots and lots of food. Since last weekend our fridge has been stuffed with all kind of vegetables, beetroot burgers, mushroom loaf and this wonderful cauliflower soup. Maybe it’s a primal instinct to bulk up with all this food?

However, we have already shared the recipes of the loaf and the burgers. Here is the soup. The great thing about cauliflower, beside the lovely nutty taste and all the vitamins, is that the soup get a creamy thick consistence without using cream, potatoes or any other kind of thickener. By also adding lemon to the soup you get this fresh taste!

Cauliflower Leek Soup
Serves 4

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, mashed
1 pinch of chili powder
1 cauliflower
2 leeks
4 cups (1 l) water
1/2 to 1 lemon, depends on the taste (juice and peel)
fresh thyme
sea salt & pepper
roasted almonds (roughly sliced)

Add olive oil to a pot over medium-high heat. Stir in the onion, garlic and chili and cook until the onions soften. Add cauliflower and leek and let it fry for a couple of minutes. Add water and let it boil and then lower the heat and let it simmer until the vegetables are soften. Pour half of the water into a bowl and set aside. Use a hand blender to puree the soup. Stir in lemon juice and peel, thyme, salt and pepper. If the soup is to thick add some of the water.
Pour into bowls or cups and serve with fresh thyme, lemon peel or juice and roasted almonds.

As soon as spring arrives we will take a trip to our country house, fire up the barbecue and make some veggie burgers (with portabello mushrooms), yum!

Unfortunately spring has never felt further away. On the news they are talking about snow chaos, and a walk to the grocery store feels like torture. Not only is it freezing cold, you also have to look up to avoid getting hit by falling icicles. What happened, has Sweden moved closer to the north pole?

Inside our apartment we are however pretending winter is far away by trying a whole new spring burger recipe. We mixed beetroots and millet into sharp red colored gluten free burgers that we fried in a pan.
You can serve them in all kind of different ways, either as traditional burgers or with roasted potatoes, rice or a salad.

We put our beetroot burgers in an organic sourdough baguette and topped it with mashed avocado, tomatoes, cucumber, red pepper, mayo, red onion, asparagus and some thyme. Spring is here!

Beetroot & Millet Burgers
10 burgers

1 cup water
1/2 cup millet (rinsed in hot water)
a pinch of fennel seeds
salt

4 small beetroots
1/2 zucchini
1 large carrot
1 onion
4 eggs
1 handful  lemon balm (chopped)
sea salt & pepper

Boil the water in a small pot. Add millet, salt and fennel and cook it on low temperature for 10 minutes. Set the cooked millet aside and grate beetroot, zucchini, carrot and onion. Mix millet, the grated vegetables, eggs and spices in a bowl. If the mixture feels to juicy you can add some flour, oat or some more millet. We always start with test-frying one. Heat coconut oil in a pan and fry the burgers for a couple of minutes on each side on medium heat.

We all need a good loaf recipe. Especially in the winter when you are starting to get tired of all those soups, stews and pastas, but still feel like making something special. We’ve tried a couple of different ones and this is by far our favorite.

We have filled it with mushroom, hazelnut, leek and brown rice and it works perfect as a main course with salad, on a buffet table, as a starter, or sliced on bread the next day.
We like our loaf crunchy so we are chopping the nuts very roughly which makes it a little bit difficult to slice, but since we slice quite large pieces it’s not a problem. If you like thin slices you should chop everything thoroughly.

Mushroom & Hazelnut Loaf
Serves 4 -6

Olive oil
2 garlic
200 g mushroom (sliced)
200 g hazelnut (chopped)
200 g leek (sliced)
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp rosemary
salt & pepper

4 eggs
2/5 cup soya milk
1/2 cup brown rice (boiled and cold)
1/2 tsp nutmeg
salt & lemon pepper

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Pour olive oil in a frying pan and sauté garlic, mushroom, hazelnuts and leek. Add thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper. Let it stir for 10 minutes and set aside for a couple of minutes. Mix eggs, soya milk, rice and the spices in a bowl and add the vegetables. Pour everything into a non-stick loaf pan. (If you don’t have a non-stick pan you can use parchment paper or some oil). Bake it for 45 minutes.

Chokococonut pyramids
Makes around 12

10 fresh dates (seeds removed)
75 g dark unsweetened chocolate (roughly chopped)
30 almonds (25 g)
3 egg whites
1 tbsp coconut oil
200 g coconut flakes

Preheat the oven at 360°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix dates, chocolate, almonds and egg whites in a blender for about a minute and set aside. Melt coconut oil (can be replaced with butter) in a pot on medium heat. Add the coconut flakes and stir around for about a minute. Add the date and egg-mixture and stir until everything is mixed well. Use your hands to form small pyramids (or hearts) and put them on the parchment paper. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Remember my post about broccoli juice? This beetroot juice is another favorite! Though I must admit that I’ve learned to love it … it is really all about how and what you combine it with. We have added orange and ginger to make it taste more fresh and sweet. Strawberries and beetroots are also an interesting combo that we’ve tried. Except for having a beautiful color, beetroots are also rich in vitamin A, B and C and the minerals calcium, magnesium, iron and a lot more! Beetroot cleans your body and purifies your blood. What are you waiting for?!
/Luise

Beetroot juice
2 glasses

2 small beetroots (small to medium beetroots have the sweetest flavour)
3 oranges
a piece of fresh ginger

ice cubes

Mix all the ingredients in a juice machine, if you use organic beetroot and ginger you don’t have to peel them. Pour it into glasses, add ice cubes, stir and serve. You can also add 1 tbsp wheatgrass powder to boost your energy!

If you don’t have a juice machine try this beetroot smoothie instead.

Beetroot smoothie – Beat it
2 glasses

1 medium beetroot
1 handful strawberries (frozen)
1/2 avocado
2 handful spinach (frozen or fresh)
1 banana
a piece of fresh ginger
3,5 dl almond milk
1 tbsp oil (linseed)

Mix everything in a blender for 2 minutes. Enjoy!

This beetroot smoothie – beat it recipe is adapted from the danish juice book “High on juice”.

Every other friday we get a box of organic fruit and vegetables delivered to our door. It feels like Christmas when the box arrives and we dive right into it to see which vegetables we get each week. Some vegetables are like close friends – we meet them on a day-to-day basis. Other vegetables are more like distant cousins – we barely know their names. Last Friday we got chard. And strange as it might be we had never cooked anything with chard before. So we were excited to find out what we could do with it.

Chard has some similarities to kale and spinach. You can use it raw in a salad, you can saute it or use it in any kind of stew, pasta or risotto. After some consideration we decided to make a new version of our favorite spinach risotto. But since we try to cook food without using white rice and pasta we wanted to use something else than the usual arborio rice. We have tried switching the rice for barley with a merely ok result. We couldn’t get the arborio creaminess from the barley. We have seen some recipes and heard stories about successful barley risottos – and we will surely try it again some day – but this time we made it a lot easier for ourselves. We used canned cannellini beans! It turned out to be the quickest risotto we had ever made. And it tasted really good too. You could do a lot more with this recipe: not using canned beans, adding white wine and maybe some more greens, but this version worked perfect for us. Quick, tasty, creamy and simple.

Cannellini & Chard Risotto
Serves 3-4

1 1/2 cup vegetable broth
2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion (finely chopped)
2 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
1 chard (slice the leaves into thin strips, cut the smaller stems into 1/4-inch dice, discard the larger stems)
2 cans (2 cups) cannellini beans (rinsed well)
4 tbsp mascarpone cheese
1/2 lemon (juice and peel)
fresh thyme
salt and pepper

Bring vegetable broth to a bare simmer in a saucepan over medium heat and set aside.
Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat, add onion, garlic and the stems of the chard. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until softened. Add one cup of the broth, cook and stir, until almost absorbed. Now add chard leaves, cannellini beans and the rest of the broth. Cook and stir for a couple of minutes, then add mascarpone cheese, lemon juice and thyme. Season with salt, pepper and more thyme if needed. Top it with some grated lemon peel before serving.

We first adapted this recipe from the danish cookbook “Kernesund familie sådan”, and it’s something completely different from the normal whipped-cream-with-jam kind of cake that we often eat on birthdays in Sweden and Denmark. The meringue is sweetened with dates instead of sugar and baked with mixed almonds instead flour. It’s got a layer of hazelnut butter and is topped with a raspberry and mango cream and all together it’s sticky, nutty, sweet, fresh and fruity. Did we mention that it is gluten free?!

We brought the cakes to a dinner at our friends house the other evening and one mistake that we learnt from was to not put the raspberry cream on long before you serve the cake. It tends to become a bit lose after some time in room temperature and then they won’t look as appetizing.

One last thing. You can follow us on twitter to learn about our favorite food places in Stockholm, our kitchen failures, previews on our recipes and the upcoming baby …

Almond Meringue Cake with Raspberry Cream
10 round meringues

150 g almonds
175 g fresh dates
4 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla powder (not sugar)
a little bit of salt and pepper
mango & raspberry cream (scroll down for recipe)
hazelnut butter (or almond butter)

Heat the oven to 320°F. Mix almonds, dates and spices in a blender or food processor. Beat egg whites stiff and add the date/almonds mix slowly. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Drop meringue mixture by two tablespoonfuls and firm it round and flat with the spoon. Bake it for 15 minutes, when it’s done it should be soft and golden.

If you rather want one big cake, spread out the meringue mixture in what shape you like and bake for 20 to 30 minutes.

Mango & raspberry cream
1 mango
1 cup frozen raspberries
5 tbsp almond oil (you can use any kind of mild oil, sunflower oil, walnut oil, rapeseed oil)
a little bit of cardamom, cinnamon, vanilla powder

Mix all ingredients in a blender until thick creme consistence and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.

When the meringues are cold, spread with hazelnut butter and top it with the mango raspberry cream. Serve and enjoy!

David was here …

We are making our own muesli or granola once a month. The recipe basically stays the same but we try to change one or two ingredients or spices every time.

When the muesli jar started looking empty this time we had just bought home a bag of puffed buckwheat and began talking about making the muesli gluten free. We needed to find some more gluten free ingredients and went for a shopping spree at this great market “Hötorgshallen“. An hour later we were equipped with quinoa flakes, amaranth puffs and hemp seeds. And a bunch of different nuts, fruits and seeds.

We made the muesli in the same way as we usually do; giving the seeds, flakes and nuts a light roast in the oven, before mixing them with the dried fruit, puffs and spices.

And what did we think of the result, can the gluten free muesli compete with our previous muesli?
Oh yes! The light amaranth and buckwheat puffs make a great contrast to all the chewy nuts, seeds and dried fruit. The hemp seeds can normally be a bit bitter but when roasted the bitterness disappears. And the apple syrup that we used as sweetener worked great with cinnamon.

Except for being gluten free this muesli is super nutritious in many more ways. Golden inca berries, goji berries, walnuts, hemp seeds and mulberries are all rich in protein, iron, vitamins and antioxidants. We eat it with “filmjölk”, yogurt, oat milk or a fruit salad.

Oh, one more thing. While shopping for ingredients I had this fun idea on how to do another muesli. Green!
I’ve got pistachio nuts, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds and green raisins so far. Need to find a few more green ingredients, all ideas are welcome.

Gluten Free Muesli
2 big glass jars

2 cups quinoa flakes
1 cup hemp seeds
1 cup almonds (chopped)
1 cup pumpkin seeds
1 cup walnuts (chopped)
1 cup dried coconut flakes

4 tbsp apple syrup (with no added sugar or sweetener)
3 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Mix the dry ingredients with apple syrup and cinnamon. Spread them out on the baking sheets and let it roast in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Stir around a couple of times to keep it from getting burnt.

100 g dried mulberries (chopped)
200 g dried apricots (chopped)
100 g dried golden inca berries
100 g goji berries
100 g raisins
100 g green raisins

1 cup puffed buckwheat
1 cup puffed amaranth

While the dry ingredients are in the oven, chop the soft ingredients roughly and put in a large bowl. Let the roasted dry ingredients cool of before stirring it all together.
Store the muesli in large glass jars.