Food journal number 58: a better recipe for saffron buns

...and an ever better way to present it!

The recipe for saffron buns (Lussekatter / Lussebullar) that I shared last year required quark, which is difficult to find in some countries. Quark is a cheese product, so it makes the buns more protein rich while also making them more fluffy. But looking at it from another angle, quark is also a baking "cheat" since its another purpose is actually to make the dough easier to knead. Baking saffron buns without quark is not only possible – the result is actually more delicious (and traditional!). These are definitely the best saffron buns I've made so far. If, like me, you don't have a kitchen mixer, be prepared to knead for 30 minutes. Some regard it as therapeutic ;-)

Saffron buns without quark (Lussekatter / Lussebullar utan Kasella)

Makes 30 -40 buns. Finished buns can be frozen and then defrosted in the microwave for 10-15 seconds.

2 packets saffron (2 x 0.5 g)
1.5 deciliters white sugar
150 g butter
5 dl milk
50 g yeast (jäst för söta degar)
1/2 teaspoon salt
16 dl flour
raisins
1 egg for brushing

1. With a mortar and pestle, grind the saffron finely with 1 tablespoon sugar.

2. Melt the butter on low heat, add the milk and warm to finger temperature (37 degrees C).

3. Crumb the yeast into a mixing bowl, add the saffron and some of the butter-milk mixture and mix until the yeast is dissolved. Then add the rest of the butter-milk mixture, sugar, salt and almost all of the flour (save about a deciliter for kneading / shaping).

4. If you have a kitchen mixer, mix with dough hooks on low speed for 6-8 minutes until the dough becomes smooth and shiny. If kneading by hand, it takes around 30 minutes. The finished dough should feel supple, but not hard, and it should look shiny. If the dough is too soft, add some more flour. You can do a windowpane test – taking a marble-sized piece of dough and stretching it out until you can almost see light through it without the dough breaking apart – to test if it's kneaded long enough.

5. Let the dough rise under cover for 60 minutes in room temperature or overnight in the refrigerator.

6. When the dough has risen, transfer to a floured board, cut into two pieces, and then into rolls, until you form long logs as thick as your thumb. Form them any way you like. I made some into braids, some as traditional S-shapes ("cats", thus the name Lussekatter), and I shaped the rest of the dough into a long braid that I connected together as a wreath. Decorate with raisins.

7. Preheat the oven to 225 C and let the buns rise for 30 minutes under cover

8. Brush the buns / braids / wreaths carefully with a whisked egg before baking in the middle of the oven for 7-8 minutes.

9. Let cool under a baking cloth. The buns will get a better "bounce" to them when allowed to cool completely for some hours.

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The price of immunity

(That's not my arm, FYI)

As some of you might have already heard, a number of countries, including Sweden, have bought in H1N1 flu vaccines for their whole populations in anticipation of a possible next wave of (a stronger variant of) the flu. The risk groups – children, health care workers and people with chronic illness and their relatives – were the first to be vaccinated, and the rest of the population will start getting in line for it in the next few weeks. Even the university will vaccinate all students, teachers, guest students and guest lecturers. You bet they're really taking this seriously, even though (for now!) the threat still seems distant and conspiracy theories abound about the mass vaccine, not to mention news mistaking the temporary side effects of the vaccine for the real deal. In October, already a million (a ninth) of the population received their H1N1 vaccines; in our region, they said as much as 35% are already immune.

Marcus and I had our shots yesterday. The vaccination itself went fast and smooth, with not much of a queue either, as we would have expected. After filling and signing some papers, the whole affair was done in 4 minutes. What side effects were we told to expect? Well, aside from possibly having harmless cold-like symptoms, the nurse said a lot of people reported arm pain for several days. Several days!

We walked out of there thinking that we would probably have pain just on the spot where we got the injection. But now I realize that when she said arm pain, she really meant arm pain. I feel that I've been lifting heavy dumbbells all day with my left arm. Or got a bad punching. We read online that lifting stuff with the affected arm wouldn't cause any problems despite the pain, but right now just lifting the arm is an inconvenience; I don't feel that I have so much energy left there. It's also extremely sensitive and hurts when I put on clothes, soap the area, or move my shoulders. And last night (an experienced shared by many who already had their vaccines), we woke up several times oww-ing every time we had to turn in bed. Ha! You should have heard us, we were groaning like two old people with arthritis and I couldn't help chuckling through the pain. But this feeling for several days, huh! That's the price for immunity, it seems.

Got a Chinese food craving!

I love, love, love Chinese food. It doesn't matter what cuisine it is (Sichuan, Cantonese, etc.). I'm pretty sure that I could eat anything. Except chicken feet. And frog's legs. And snakes. But you get the picture. As long as it's normal Chinese food, I'd love to eat that.

I guess I've been spoiled by the relative abundance of good, cheap Chinese food in Manila that tastes – as far as I could tell without ever having been to China, if that were possible – authentically Chinese. Chinese food in Sweden, in contrast, is... well, decent, but it just doesn't seem to taste Chinese enough. I'm not just talking MSG. Unlike the wide variety of Chinese food you can get in Manila, it doesn't seem to matter where in Sweden you eat Chinese because the menus are pretty much identical. The staples include chicken-and-vegetable noodle stir fry, beef and broccoli, and fried shrimp balls (yes, to my disappointment, not real shrimp!) with sweet-and-sour sauce. Most "Chinese" restaurants don't even specialize in Chinese cuisine but serve Thai- or Indonesian- inspired food with curries and peanut sauces along with the Chinese-inspired stir-fries. And only once, up in Ljusdal, was the dessert a familiar piece of buchi (bean paste-filled balls wrapped in sesame seeds, yum!), rather than vanilla ice cream, which isn't even particularly Asian.

Of course, it's great that we have Chinese food at all around here, but I just think that the Chinese food front here would definitely win from having a few specialists who really know their Chinese cuisine, instead of dishing out a standard line of Westernized Asian dishes. If you know of someone opening an authentic Chinese food restaurant (hopefully near where I live, pleeeease?), that would be culinary heaven for me and I'd be so thankful. Just make sure they also serve beef wonton soup and shrimp dumplings (hakao), okay? (See the links to the pictures? They're killing me!)

Since I don't personally know a Chinese cook or know of an authentic Chinese restaurant nearby, I'm my own best alternative. Sad, but I can live with that. Actually, I used to feel bad that there weren't real Chinese food around here (as in no steamed dimsum at all!), but until recently, it hadn't occurred to me to cook my own. Three of my MA classmates used to do that, cook their own Chinese food. They actually were Chinese, though. But still, it challenged the idea that cooking authentic Chinese in "the West" had to be complicated or watered down. It seemed that all one needed were some basic ingredients (i.e. a good Asian store) and a good "authentic" Chinese cookbook (my classmates used the Chinese Google, but not that I could understand the recipes).

Good "authentic" Chinese cookbook: check!

Because he really understands how my mouth salivates with the thought of Chinese food, Marcus gave me this book for my birthday: Kina, matens rike (China, the Kingdom of Food) by Linlin, a Chinese chef that, interestingly, hosts a TV show in China on how to cook "real" Western food. As I understand it, this is the author's first book on Chinese recipes, and it seems authentic enough: she travelled around China asking chefs to cook their specialties, and tried to put cup- and spoon- measurements into what chefs explained to her as a matter of intuitive judgement (Similarly, all housewives that cook well, including my mom, seem to claim that exact measurements are unnecessary, but obviously, we beginners have to begin with some basic measurements so as not to get things wrong!). The book has a good variety of recipes representing different regions in China (and has lots of interesting facts about both the food and the places), using ingredients readily available at a Swedish grocery, with only some speciality items that can be bought from a well-sorted Asian shop. Actually, stores here in town are also expanding to include more Asian vegetables and condiments – and not just those pre-made mixes in bottles – which is a great thing. So, I might soon be expanding my Chinese cooking from the stir-fry category. I can see my own dumplings coming out of the kitchen within the week! :-)

Chinese condiments: check!

One thing that Linlin, the author of Kina, matens rike emphasized, was that you don't actually need a lot of basic ingredients to cook Chinese food. Still, because I couldn't keep my excitement, I visited a well-recommended Asian grocery in Stockholm on a recent trip there. It's called China Market (Olof Palmes gatan 12), but actually they specialize in both Chinese and Thai condiments. I spent a good part of an hour browsing through both familiar and exotic ingredients, and I really had to help myself not to buy things that I didn't need but might one day have a use for. I had a basic checklist from Linlin's book, but the only thing I can't seem to take hold of is chili bean paste (I should really have asked the clerk if I missed it, but oh well!). Otherwise, the store seemed very well-stocked. Besides Chinese and Thai, they even had a fair amount of common Filipino condiments, so I indulged some on buying tapa marinade (tapa are thin slices of fried beef usually eaten for breakfast with fried rice) and caldereta mix (caldereta being a thick beef- or goat stew). There wasn't any bottled crab roe, unfortunately. But that just makes the hunt even more exciting – I'll definitely be back in the area browsing the Asian groceries there!

Oh yeah, I know. Some people just insist on eating the food they've always been used to when they're abroad, even if – let's face it – it may not really be practical because most ingredients are hard to find. Partly, the urge to cook the familiar may be because (as was true for me in the beginning) the local ingredients may be really new to one. Well, after years of learning what local ingredients are good for and learning to cook Swedish food (which isn't all that bad, actually, depending on what you cook), I think it's actually great to rediscover Asian cooking, even by the long route. Besides, if you've had "authentic" Chinese food, you know that you can't really blame me for my cravings! Since I still have the palate for it, I think the cooking experiments will end up quite good...

...Then again, I think I'd still be really thankful if someone opened a dimsum and noodle shop in town.

Seasons change with the scenery

November 4, 2009

There are some things that never ceases to amaze / surprise / baffle despite all the years here, and one of them is the first snow of the season. Every year, even though we're already freezing in our clothes for weeks and complaining about how the radiators don't seem to compensate for the cold, there it comes, a messenger of colder days to come. "What? Snow! Already?"

Another thing is (and I really can't get over telling people this), how my body clock gets confused a few days after we move to winter time (which is actually "normal time"). After lunch, I do something for a few hours until it begins to be pitch dark out. I always think, "Better wrap this up in time for dinner!" or "Oh, I should prepare for bed soon!" and I always get a shock when the clock actually just reads 4 PM.

Today, when I looked out the window, it also surprised me how the trees, in a matter of a few weeks, already lost all their leaves. They were all thick and red when I was writing my blog posts on hiking; now it's a completely different landscape out there. I can see through the trees! I can even see through people's hedges!

(Yes, it's snowing in the second picture)

In the spring, I'll get surprised again when leaves and flowers start sprouting out of nowhere (but that's literally months and months from now!). Interesting though how the change of seasons – or rather, the change in scenery – makes the passage of time so tangible in a way. You can hear, feel and see passage of time, which otherwise remains invisible and abstract.

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November 6, 2009

This weekend, I turn 26 – another marker for time other than the seasons, I guess you could say. There are some things I'll also need getting used to: From then on, I'll no longer become eligible for youth discounts in the national train system. Four years more and I'll hit my 30's! My passport, with those visa stickers from all these years, looks like one of those interactive programs where you can change people's hairstyles and eyebrows. I can also judge that I begin to look, slowly but distinctly, older! Well, it's another ring in the tree of life for me. And, as a quote from Marcus' grandfather goes, "growing older is better than the alternative."

Oh, I bought myself an early birthday present, which I admittedly partly bought mostly to battle boredom in the train, even if I've been meaning to buy it since I've heard about it: Haruki Murakami's memoir, where he talks about running. I'm glad I bought it. It was funny, and at the same time that I felt I could relate to some things he described (through training for races), I enjoyed reading about the out-of-my-league experiences of a more superior, more disciplined runner (and he started marathons at 33! It's not too late!). Besides, I generally love reading about stories of self-inflicted marathon-, ultramarathon- and triathlon pain in Runner's World and similar magazines. This one was written in a similar style: the tempo, the asphalt, the pain and the mind's constant effort to keep the body going are just so immediate in the way they describe their runs.

Well, Murakami also talked about some analogies between writing novels and running, but since I'm not really a writer, I'll leave the artists to judge how he describes the pains of the writing process. However, he did also touch on growing old. Like the seasons, training for the yearly marathons were his measure for time passing, but eventually, as time did pass, he found it ever harder to beat his older results no matter how hard he trained. Like the rest of us, he's also getting older (come to think of it, it's easy to immortalize sports heroes, but they get older too). I dunno, I think the reviews at the back cover didn't give justice to that ageing perspective in the book. In fact, I think that's the real drama in it that makes it this an impacting memoir: this flesh-and-blood althlete who has a talent and love for running (which he even met relatively late in life), despite his worsening race times and ageing body, continues to run because he finds it better than the alternative. It's something of a smaller tragedy, but in it there's also something very inspiring.