My blog was hacked yesterday (Edit 091106: and again and again) and I strongly recommend all of you with wordpress blogs to update to the latest version to avoid the stress of repairing everything if you get hacked. It took a while to restore the blog and while checking that everything was OK I found a draft post from 2007 with baguette photos. Unfortunately the recipe is long lost (I really need to learn to write a complete draft every time I cook or bake) but I’m sure that these baguettes contained sourdough.

Langos with sour cream, chopped red onion and grated Västerbotten cheese.

Langos is a kind of bread, or actually deep-fried bread puffs. They are originally from Hungary and they are always for sale at festivals and events in Sweden. They are very popular and people stand in long queues to buy one instead of a boring hot dog or hamburger. You can choose between various toppings and I always choose sour cream, grated cheese and chopped red onion. They are really delicious. When I was a kid my mother used to deep-fry dough, long before we knew about Langos. Yesterday I was very hungry and didn’t know what to eat for dinner when I realized that I had yeast and sour cream in the fridge. So I dediced to do Langos. Real Langos contains cooked potato, but my Mother always used normal bread dough and so did I.

Quick and easy Langos

25 gr fresh yeast
250 ml lukewarm water
~500 ml flour
salt

Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add flour and salt, combine to a flexible dough. Add more flour if needed. Let the dough rise for 10-15 minutes.

Take a piece of dough and roll it out to a rather thin oval. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Heat oil in a pan and fry each Langos separately until both sides turn golden brown. Serve the Langos with sour cream, grated cheese and chopped onion.

I love cream cheese, especially plain Philadelphia. What goes best with that? Well, bagels of course. The problem in Sweden though is that they’re not common, at least not in Gothenburg. If you don’t want to go to the wonderful café “Bönor och Bagels”, the only option left is to bake them yourself. After reading Moira’s post, I thought that maybe I could manage to do them. And after Zarah Maria’s post where she tried Moira’s recipe I came to the conclusion that I definitely would succeed.

It started well. I did the dough and it rose just as it should. There was only one small fire, which was quickly extinguished… I cooked the 3 first ones and they turned out nicely even though Fredrik thought that they were rather roughly shaped.

When I cooked the next 3 ones I somehow forgot about the time, and I think (please correct me if I’m wrong) that they were over cooked. They looked perfect until I put them on the rack, after 10 seconds they turned small and hard… Just look at the below photo for the difference… :-(

I almost wanted to cry. I hate to fail in the kitchen and I was hungry and whiny. Last weekend I failed enourmously with a cake (I’ll write another post about that as I will give it a new try for the next SHF). The last 2 bagels were still big after the cooking, so at this point at least 5 of 8 bagels were OK. I sprinkled poppy seeds on 3 of them and sesame seeds on the last 2. I baked them in the oven and they turned out quite well. They were delicous together with a lot of Philadelphia, raw red onion and cucumber. But I’m still sulky… Next time (yes, there will be another one) I will make them perfect! And next time I will also let them to rise after forming the bagels, as I hope that they will be smoother then.

Hot Fish Curry and Naan Bread

Paper Chef is Owen at Tomatillo’s version of the Iron Chef. Compulsory ingredients (drawn from ingredients suggested by other food bloggers) are posted on a certain date and you need to cook a dish, containing the chosen ingredients, during the same weekend and then post it in your blog. This is my first participation in Paper Chef and I was very happy to hear this month’s ingredients: wheat flour, cinnamon, crème fraiche and oranges. I guess that most food bloggers will go for a dessert, but I immediately came to think about Indian food which I love very much, so I thought that I would do some kind of curry. The fish curry that I made today together with Fredrik was my best made curry dish ever (and my first one containing fish) , and it was even better than many dishes that I’ve had at Indian restaurants in Sweden. I will definately make it more times as is was very delicous; creamy and spicy. Unlike the fish curry, I used a ready recipe for the Naan bread as I didn’t want to experiment with the bread.

Fish Curry

400 gram Hoki fish, diced
3 Shallot Onions, chopped
2 Garlic cloves, chopped
1 Lemon Grass Stalk, shredded
2.25 tsp “Delicious Maldive Curry” (bought in the Maldives, December last year)
0.5 tsp Cinnamon
1.25 tsp Garam Masala (spice that contains cinnamon, cardamom, clove etc)
0.5 tsp Sweet Pepper powder
0.5 tsp Curcuma
2 tsp finely grated fresh ginger
200 milliliters Crème Fraiche
1 can chopped tomatoes
2 tsp Sharwood’s Tandori Curry Paste
1 tsp salt

fish marinade:
juice from 0.5 lime
juice from 0.5 large orange
2.5 tsp finely chopped fresh hot pepper

Combine the ingredients for the marinade in a bowl, add the fish and put it in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours.

Fry the Shallot onions, garlic and the spices . Add the tomatoes and let simmer for 10 minutes. Add the Crème Fraiche and continue to simmer for 10 more minutes. Add more spices, if necessary. At this point you can put the Naan breads in the owen (see below). Add the fish and some of the hot pepper in the marinade leaving the citrus juice, simmer for 10 minutes or until the fish is done. Serve with Basmati rice and newly-baked Naan bread.

Naan Bread

500 gram wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp bicarbonate
1 tsp salt
1 egg, whipped
2 cl butter, melted
125 milliliters natural yoghurt
200 milliliters milk
melted butter to brush on the bread
water to brush on the bread

Combine flour, baking powder, salt and bicarbonate. Add egg, butter and yoghurt. Add the milk, gradually, forming a soft dough. Cover the dough with a moist kitchen towel and let it rest on warm place for 2 hours. Knead the dough until it’s smooth. Divide the dough in 8 pieces and roll out every piece to a 15 centimeter oval. Brush with water and put the moist side down on a greased baking tin. Brush the top with melted butter. Bake in the oven, rather high, for 5 minutes in 225 degrees Celsius. Brush on more butter and serve directly.

Red Lentil Soup and Sesame Crescent Rolls

Today it’s time for the 11th installment of Is My Blog Burning? As I’m rather new as a food blogger this is my first online collective food blogging event and I have really been looking forward to it. So what is Is My Blog Burning, also known as IMBB? Each month a food blogger sets up a new theme with a central food component and all partipicants then come up with an appropriate recipe.

This month’s IMBB is hosted by Cathy of My Little Kitchen and the theme is beans. I don’t eat much beans, but I do eat lentils, especially red ones as they only demand 10 minutes of cooking. I wanted to come up with a great recipe, but as I’m unfortunately totally broke due to our trip to the Maldives in December, reality decided something different. I just had to use the ingredients that I already had at home, which resulted in a Red Lentil Soup and Sesame Crescent Rolls. The soup is really nice, BUT not after eating it almost everyday during the last week :-) It will take some time before I make it again. Sooner or later you get tired of food that you eat too often…

Red Lentil Soup

1.5 deciliter dried rinsed red lentils
1 onion
2 carrots
2 tomatoes
2 tps curry
2 stock cubes (vegetable)
1 litre water
2 bay leafs

Chop and fry the onion. Add the curry and fry for a minute. Add the rest of the ingredients and let simmer under a lid for 15 minutes.

Sesame Crescent Rolls

11 deciliters flour
4 deciliters water (37 degrees C)
1.5 tsp salt
1 tbsp oil
50 grams fresh yeast
sesame seeds

Dissolve the yeast in the water in a bowl. Add oil, salt and some of the flour. Mix well with a large wodden spoon and continue adding flour until the dough holds it shape and is smooth. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel, and let the dough rest warm until it has doubled in size (about 30 minutes). Heat the oven to 225 degrees C. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, add more flour if needed. Divide the dough into two parts. Roll the one half of the dough into a circle and cut the circle into 8 wedges. Roll up each wedge tightly from wide end to point, forming a crescent. Place the crescents point side down and slightly curved on a baking tin. Do another 8 crescent rolls with the remaining dough and put them on another baking tin. Cover the crescents with a kitchen towel and let rise until double in size (about 20 minutes). Brush the crescent rolls with water and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.

Machine Baked Walnut Bread

4 deciliters (~1,7 cups) flour
3 deciliters (~1,2 cups) graham flour
3,5 deciliters (1,5 cups) water
1 deciliters (~0,4 cups) chopped walnuts
1 tsp dry yeast
0,7 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil

Put all ingredients in the bread machine and switch it on. Then do something else until the bread is done and it’s time for a freshly baked sandwich with butter and some nice cheese.