In this, my first week in Denmark, I've become a little obsessed with skyr. I first became aware of it when I saw it on the menu at Grød, a cafe on the street I'm staying in, where it was offered as an accompaniment for porridge. Intrigued, I returned to my apartment and did a little research. It turns out skyr is a cultured dairy product from Iceland, dating back to medieval times. If that wasn't enough to make me go out in search of some immediately, it's also made with skimmed milk, so has an extremely low fat content but somehow the same delicious tang and texture as Greek yoghurt. On the way back from the supermarket with my Icelandic treasure, I passed one of the Middle-eastern fruit and vegetable stands scattered all over this neighbourhood and spied quinces for sale. Poached in a sugar syrup til ruby red (if you want the recipe for that, click here), with the skyr they were incredible. So incredible they were gone all too quickly. And that's where rhubarb came in.
Even though I'm bundled up in winter clothes, signs of spring are everywhere in Copenhagen: flowers pushing up through the frozen ground in the Assistens Cemetery, people sitting at sunny tables outside cafés, and at the farmers' markets at Torvehallerne, where I purchased the most stunning stalks of rhubarb I've ever seen: slender, pale pink, perfect. I wanted both a recipe that didn't mess with their natural beauty too much, and - of course - something that would go nicely with skyr. Nigel Slater had just the thing. The rhubarb is cut into short lengths, and roasted in a low oven with the honey, cinnamon, star anise, and the juice and squeezed halves of a blood orange. Thirty minutes later, dessert was ready. Or breakfast. Sweet and sharp, gently warm in spice and shade: the taste of spring.
A year ago I had a birthday cake festooned with little Danish flags. This year, I find myself in Copenhagen for my birthday. Just. Fresh off the plane, I'm still grappling with jet lag. Waking up at 3.30am has its advantages though in that you are somewhat justified in eating two breakfasts. The first - toast made with bread from the tiny yet amazing bakery in the street in which I'm staying, smeared with butter and boysenberry jam - I ate illuminated by the glow of my laptop before the sun got up. The second I ate several hours later at Grød, a café more or less opposite the bakery, that serves only porridge... albeit porridge embellished with homemade dulche de leche, roasted almonds and chopped apple. Good food is not hard to find in Scandinavia. Not on my street. And not in my little apartment either, which has a beautiful kitchen overlooking trees in bud just about to blossom.
The best way to feel at home in a new place is to cook. There are so many things I've marvelled at in these first few days - the unfamiliar sounds of children's chatter in the stairwell, the shoals of fast-moving cyclists in the streets, the fact that everyone here is ridiculously tall and good-looking - but nothing's given me more pleasure than roaming the aisles of a supermarket, selecting groceries, and bringing them home to bake a cake. Though I'm in Denmark, Copenhagen is in spitting distance of Sweden, so this particular recipe seemed appropriate for the location and occasion. Besides, I couldn't resist the name. In original language or in translation. The cake itself lives up to it. Dark, gooey, magnificent. A lovely way to land.
Summer is over. Well, technically. As of the 1st of March. But last I looked, the beaches are still packed, I'm still wearing shorts and stone fruit is still in the supermarkets. So I thought I'd best take advantage. Of the great bounty of summer produce, plums are a particular favourite of mine. They don't have the troublesome fur of peaches or apricots, the straightforward sweetness of nectarines, or the premium price of cherries. They're compact yet substantial and come in all sorts of pretty shades from blue black to pale yellow. I love them firm and somewhat sour, but soft and sweet is just fine too. Especially when used in cooking, whether a jam, a pie... or a cake, like the one I made last weekend. This recipe comes from Bill Granger, whose food I associate very much with Sydney summers: fresh, clean and bright with flavour. This is food to be eaten outdoors, perfect for picnics, or the rooftop deck of a Surry Hills terrace, where I found myself with friends on Friday night. After a hot and humid day, as night fell, you could feel autumn in the air. But the taste of summer was still on our plates. The plums, sandwiched between a rich, butter cake bottom and a crumbly streusel top, slump and soften while cooking, and cut the overall sweetness - and the pale golden interior - of the dessert with a tart thread of red. So it's goodbye to summer... and, for me, to Sydney for a while. I'm skipping autumn and winter and heading straight for spring. See you there.
The best bit of graffiti I ever saw was on the wall of a lift in an old apartment block in Bondi. It read "I love scones". I couldn't agree more. I love a scone. And by scone, I mean the kind that rhymes with "Ron", as opposed to the kind that rhymes with "phone". To be clear: I love both kinds, but they're different things. The former - round, modestly size, served with jam and cream, or slathered in butter and honey - are the traditional sort, as found in England and its far-flung colonies, like Australia. The latter, the giant triangular kind embellished with fruit, nuts and different kinds of flour and grain, are distinctly American. The first time I visited the United States I saw those then-foreign objects in the cabinet of a Starbucks with the familiar label stuck to them and curious, ordered one to go with my coffee. I may as well have been speaking Farsi as the woman behind the counter had no idea what I was saying. I quickly realised my mistake and tried a few alternate pronounciations before finally hitting on the right one, only to run into further difficulty with my own name when it was requested for the order. Server: Name? Me: Alice. Server: Alex? Me: No, Alice. Server: (louder) Alex? Me: (accepting defeat) Yes, Alex.
These days, I am bilingual in scone ordering. But these ones require no translation. At least not for me. They're Australian and the recipe comes from a cookbook written by my mother, and a good friend of hers, Judith McKay. There's not much in there I can make as it's an historical cookbook and it's not often I have a spare kangaroo tail on hand for a stew. But scones I can make. I like knowing that generations of women (let's be honest, they were all women) made this recipe before me: rubbed the fat with the flour between their fingertips, gently pressed out the dough, cut it into rounds and swaddled the baked result in a teatowel to keep warm.
I didn't mean to post - or bake - another pie so soon. But this weekend was the first one off I'd had in the last three weeks and I wanted to celebrate. I'd been invited to my friend Elizabeth's place for dinner on Friday night, I'd offered to bring dessert, and this recipe had been calling me ever since I got my hands on The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book early in the new year. Other than a dip in the ocean (which I also indulged in), what better reward could there be?
Salty/sweet is a truly magic combination. Here, the creamy custard of the honey filling is offset by fat flakes of sea salt so that the two flavours mingle in your mouth and draw you back for more, like siren song. That's what happened to us on Friday night. After consuming modest slices, we each went back in for just one more sliver...
Be warned: this pie is not for the faint of heart. There's a serious sugar component which is less a hit as it is a knockout punch. If this pie were a person (in contention for an Oscar next week), it would be Jennifer Lawrence's character Rosalyn in one of my favourite films of last year, American Hustle: seductive, surprising... and crazy dangerous. Don't make it in the science oven.
If you want an insight into my state of mind at any given time, just look in my freezer. If it's extremely well-stocked, chances are I'm feeling stressed. In my weird, wonky logic, as long as I have good food at my disposal, then the work will get finished, the deadlines will be met and the pressure to get everything done will feel a little less intense. At times like these I seek comfort and more than anything, this is what I make.
When I was a child, and was regularly asked "what's your favourite meal?" (when such questions were deeply important), my answer would always be
minestrone. My mother made it often in our house and when I left home I adapted it to suit my somewhat lazier cooking style. Instead of soaking beans overnight and frying them off with the bacon at the beginning of the cooking process, I add some pre-cooked beans at the end. Instead of homemade stock, I'm happy with store-bought. And with making a big pot and then freezing it in single serve portions for my time of need. That time is now. My freezer is full. Which means it's all going to be okay.
I had a six year old sleep over on Saturday night. Together, the two of us baked cookies, watched movies, played Scrabble (in which my opponent tallied scores post-match of me: 76, her: 6,710,000,000 - which I let slide as she'd impressed in the game by adding an EL to DAMS to form DAMSEL) and then, on Sunday morning, we made pancakes. I had a perfectly good pancake recipe already, which I've shared on this blog, but had been itching to try another I'd come across in my daily trawling of The Kitchn. The basic ingredients were the same - if in slightly different proportions - but the great innovation was the separation of the egg. Before you stop reading, let me assure you this was really no extra work because - to my great surprise - you did not even have to whisk the egg white (as many other recipes I'd seen advocate), but simply fold it in as is right at the end. Somehow this simple step results in pancakes that are wondrously light and fluffy without any extra effort or baking powder.
She had hers with raspberry jam and fresh raspberries. I had mine with yoghurt, berries, pistachios and maple syrup. In pancakes, if not in Scrabble, both of us scored equally well.
