Vegetable salt

Hello there!

I miss a real herb garden. It's not that there's lack of space, the case is that I don't have the time to finish the building of it, a stone wall that will preserve the heat from the sun for the herbs to thrive. 

In the garden I had before this one, I had a bed for my herbs and made a very tasty herb salt every year.

This blog gave me the idea of making a salt of vegetable. It's in swedish, sadly for you foreign readers, but she has many great ideas about growing and cooking vegetables.

Anyhow, here's my version of veggie salt

1 onion

a couple of kale leaves

a bunch of tips from the sugar snaps

a grab of nasturtium leaves

A big bunch of basil leaves (the only herb)

two chilis (not the hot ones)

and a grab of maché lettuce

see photo below.

Mix all the ingredients above in a blender and pour 200 ml salt while still blending. The salt will absorb the juices and preserve the tastes of the greens.

Dry the salt in the owen with the door slightly open, the temperature should not be higher than 50 degrees Celsius. Store in nice glass jars.

This salt goes to everything and add a lovely taste to any dish. 

Hot and sweet tomato marmalade

It looks like two cans of sunshine and it's not far from the truth. This marmalade is easy peasy to make and you only need three ingredients to make it.

First of all, you need tomatoes. This tomato is a Russian outdoor bush tomato. It is easy to grow in buckets and it gives you plenty of golden mild tasting tomatoes.

Then you need a chili fruit. Just one. This chili is not very hot so I used a large one. If you use a hot chili, use only half of the fruit. The red one at the bottom was picked for this marmalade to give it some red decorative dots.

Recipe

1 kg peeled yellow tomatoes cut to pieces

1kg sugar with pectine (marmalade and jam sugar)

1 chili fruit finely choped

Add everything in a saucepan and boil on medium heat until the tomatoes "falls apart". Remove carefully any foam and pour in clean cans. 

I'm so happy for this years growing season. All my vegetables has been growing very successful this summer. Usually at least one wont thrive. The warm weather with watering everyday did the trick. Here's my bed with kidneybeans ready to be picked, enclosed by nasturtiums.

My sugar snaps has grown all the way up in the apple tree. It's over 2m height and still gives me crispy, sweet and stringless snaps. This is the best sort ever it is called English saber (but translated)

 This is how I treat my vegetable beds when the crops are harvested. I turn the tops and soil with a fork and mix it with grass clip.

 Do you grow your own veggies? 

Taking care of the harvest

It has been a great summer for my lemontree this year. I planted it in a huge pot and it growed wildly. I haven't seen any budding lemons though even if we got lots of flowers. Maybe it put all energy to grow branches and leaves. 

Anyway the branches became to long so I cut a few off and put them in pots to see if there will be any new lemontrees. Wouldn't those become a great christmas gift or birthday present?

 The leaves in front of the pots will be stored in the freezer. Yes these will be excellent for adding a hint of lime in a stew. You know you can buy those dried lime leafs in asian food stores? These are the same but when you put them fresh in the freezer you save all the essential oils for the stew. I get some clever ideas sometimes ;-)

Another clever idea when you get too many zucchinis. Chop them up and put them in the freezer. I chop them in slices and cubes. The slices are a great topping on a home made pizza.

I don't buy much canned or frozen vegetables during the winter season when I grow and store the excess my own.

Tea blend

Maybe a bit late for posting this. But if your garden is fresh still there is time to pick leaves for a tea blend.

Last years blend were only made of black currant leaves and raspberry leaves but this year I added rose leaves both flower and bush and flowers from red clover.

The leaves are poured over a oven tray with a parchment paper on. Let the leaves dry in room temperature on an airy space. Store the leaves in a tin can (not airtight). This will be my brew in the darkest months of winter when I need a sip of summer memories.

C-vitamin rich black currant juice

Another fluid post. As I don't get many berries this recipe is excellent for bringing out the best and most of  the small amount. 

You get a ruby coloured drink when mixing 1:4.

200 black currant leaves

1 L black currant berries

1 organic lemon in slices

600g sugar

2 L

Bring the water to boil with the sugar added. Pour the hot fluid over the rest of the ingredients, cover with a lit and let it stay in a cold place for 3 days. Strain and store in the freezer.

Cooling slushie

I recently posted this refresher on my other blog. For you who don't read it I post it here as well because I can't recommend it enough to you. It is soo soothing at a hot day.
A watermelon slushie. It's so easy and refreshing.

Cut watermelon in cubes, throw in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer. I buy whole melons and freeze the excess. If the cubes are deep frozen, let them soften for about half an hour. Put them in a blender and mix until you get a smooth slushie. If you like add water or soda.

Hot summer and zucchini harvest

Gosh, what a hot summer we had. It's so hot it's hard to keep the spirit up. Yesterday I was home with headache propably caused by the heat, sun and too little to drink. It's very important to drink and to eat something sweet and salty.

The positive thing though is that the veggies that thrive in this heat are giving lots of fruits, like zucchinis. I need to be inventive now. Zucchini can be boring, but the neutral taste gives you a wide range of flavours to combine it with. Today I made a frittata with basil sauce. Here's the recipe. Oh by the way. In this recipe you can gladly use those zucchinis that has grown too big.

Zucchini Frittata with basil sauce

Frittata

2 large zucchinis

1 onion

4 eggs

1 hand full of sundried tomatoes

50 g of feta cheese

seasoning

Put the sundried tomatoes in a glass of water to soak (I took my home made tomatoes and those are hard). Grate the zucchinis and onion and put in a colander. Pour over some salt and toss around. Whisk the eggs in a bowl and season with your favourite spices. Chop the feta cheese and the drained sundried tomatoes in fine bits. Squeeze the juice out of the zucchini mix to get rid of some water and mix everything in the egg bowl. Fry in a pan on low heat with butter or oil, put on a lid for a while to cook the top of the frittata.

Basil sauce

3 dl of sour cream

1 hand full of fresh basil leaves

1 garlic clove

salt and white pepper

Mix all the ingredients in a blender until you get a smooth light green liquid. This sauce works excellent with a salad or with roast beef, if you like. 

A taste of summer

We have reached that time of year when the season is somewhere between winter and spring. That time is very long here in sweden and can go on for abut two months. One day we have heavy snowstorm, another rain but we also have sunny days when the sun is warming our pale faces. 

This time of year cause every one to long for spring and green grass. 

Luckily, I have saved a bit of summer by drying black currant and raspberry leaves for tea. These leaves makes an excellent green tea.

Pour nearly boiling water over a heap of leaves and let them soak for a few minutes. You can easily pick the soaked leaves up with a spoon.

There you have it, a lovely and mild black currant flavoured green tea that fills you with a summer spirit.

Raw Valentine dessert: Mini chocolate and carob tartelettes and Vanilla pudding with cherry topping

It's Valentines day!! Of course we should give our loved ones some care all the year around, but I think it's good to celebrate a day like this by giving some extra love. 
I wanted to make something special, a not too sweet treat with those ingredients that is conected with love; chocolate and cherries.

This little tartelette is so deliscious. I wanted the crust to have a caramel taste by adding dates.

Crust for the tartelette, ingredients:
5 dates
0,5 dl oat
1 dle almond flour
1 tbsp raw coconut oil
0,5 dl sunflower seeds
Mix all ingredients to a sticky paste, make sure that the dates are fully dispersed, I used a mortar to this step. Adjust the thickness of the crust by adding the almond flour to perfect stickyness.

Fill two small mini pie forms and push the dough against the walls. Put the forms in the freezer. If you have leftovers from this step, you can fill dates with the paste or roll balls in carob or cocoa powder.

Caramel and chocolate is a perfect match. If you don't have any cacao butter you can use only coconut oil, but that will give the tartelette a very strong coconut flavour.

Filling:
20 g of Cacao butter
1 tblsp of raw Coconut oil
1 tblsp of Almond milk
0,5 tsp Honey
1,5 tsp Carob
2 tsp Cacao
a pinch of seasalt
The almond milk will make the filling a bit softer. Melt the butter and oil along with milk and honey on low heat. Pull the mixture of the heat and add carob and cacao and stir well. Add the pinch of seasalt. Oddly the seasalt makes the filling sweeter and enhance the chokolate taste.

Fill the crusts with the filling and put them back in the freezer to set. After half an hour put them in the fridge until serving. 

Chia seeds are perfect to get that perfect pudding like thickness of a liquid. It looks weird but the non existing taste of the seeds makes them perfect for adding any flavour  you like.

Vanilla pudding
1 tsp of honey
1,5 dl Almond milk
2 tblsp chia seeds
 a pinch of vanilla powder
Whisk everything together and whisk every 5th minute three to four times. Then pour the blend into your serving cup and store in the fridge until serving

Cherry topping 
2 dl Seedless Cherries (sour)
1 tsp honey
pinch of vanilla powder
Mix all the ingredients to a runny jam and stor in the fridge until serving

When serving the pudding you can choose to pour the cherry jam over the pudding, or in small glasses and serve at the side.

Note that each serve contains only 2,5 dates and 1tsp of honey, that's not much sugar if you compare what an ordinary dessert of this kind would contain. 
Have a lovely Valentines day <3