Wedneday recipe: Klenätter or Swedish deep-fried Christmas cakes

Time for Wedneday recipes again and I wanted to share some great photos I took of O’s baking skills on Christmas Day, which by the way had been one of those “lost” days for me if it hadn’t been for the photos! The lost days are the ones that I can’t remember, I don’t know if it only happens to me but sometimes I just can’t remember what I have done on a particular day – just one or two days afterwards…

Very often the reason is because I haven’t done anything special but I find it really scary when my memory is failing me and I try to keep a brief journal to not lose days! Anyway, Christmas Day was one of those lost days until I found the photos and realised that O did some baking and we went for a walk + coffee in Starbucks… Nothing very exciting and I think we actually wore our PJs until we took that afternoon walk but I guess that is part of having holidays

.

First photo is unfortunately a little blurry…

Anyway, back to the recipe – first of all, I know that most people spell the name of the cakes in Swedish klenäter but I just think it looks strange with only one -t and my grandmother has spelt it with double-t in the recipebook she prepared for me. She also sometimes calls the cakes klenor instead of klenätter.

However, O didn’t use my grandmother’s recipe but a recipe from a cookbook in English. The same day I bought the Julie / Julia book in Borders I also found a book called The Food and Cooking of Sweden – how could I not buy it!!? (espcially as it only cost $4,99… I even bought two as I thought that they would be great as presents!) So, O got one of them for Christmas as he enjoys cooking and is very interested in Swedish food and traditions. The book has an initial chapter explaining the different traditions, geography, products etc of Sweden.

All in all it is a great book, but what really annoys me, as I am a bit of a spelling fascist* (heard of spell check, hello!?) is that there are numerous spelling mistakes in the Swedish names of the recipes and särskrivningar (words spelt apart that should be together – an English example is cook book instead of cookbook).

O chose to start with the recipe for klenätter because they reminded him of some Spanish deep-fried cakes – the Spaniards loooove deep-fried cakes such as churros. And he didn’t even know that it was one of the Swedish things I really missed the most at Christmas!!

The cakes turned out well but next time I will make him try my grandmother’s recipe – she puts lemon peel in the dough which gives that little extra flavour and deep fries them in coconut “fat / grease” … She also makes the cakes thinner and longer but O’s cakes looked very much like the ones in his cookbook so I was very impressed!

My grandmother’s klenätter / deep-fried Christmas cakes
3 egg yolks
1 egg white
1½ decilitre sugar
1½ decilitre cream
75 grams butter / margarine – melted
7-8 decilitres flour
Peel of one lemon – grated
cooking oil

Mix all the ingredients together and leave to rest for at least 2 hours (my grandmother wrote over night). Thinly roll out the dough and cut into 1 cm x 5 cm rectangles, cut a slit in the middle and fold each piece in half and then put one end though the hole and press down to flatten the cake (quote from the English book, I have never understood actually how my grandmother made the cakes into the shapes they have).
Heat the cooking oil on a frying pan to 180 degrees centigrade / 350 degrees Fahrenheit and drop the cakes into the oil. Fry them until golden brown and then turn them in some sugar. Let the cakes cool or eat them hot.

*) I am aware that I might not always spell correctly but I try to avoid spelling mistakes as much as possible, and at least I am not publishing a book!! And despite the fact that I insist on mis-spelling the name for these cakes in Swedish…

Fler onsdagsreceptbloggare: Marianne i Kairo, Anna in Stockholm…

La Vaca Brava – waiting 4½ hours for a huuuge plate of meat

Just after Christmas we were invited by one of O’s friends, J and his family to join them for an excursion to the mountains – to the famous restaurant Vaca Brava close to Barranquitas. We had heard so many good things about this place, and had been meaning to go for a long time so we were really excited – as well as looking forward to a social gathering.

A new bridge, el puente Atirantado, on the road from Bayamón to Naranjito

The weather had not improved since Christmas, it was still very grey and rainy but we were optimistic that maybe the sun would be shining in the mountains… We arrived around 2 o’clock to La Vaca Brava (the Brave Cow) after a break at McDonald’s in Naranjito where O and I were clever enough to eat a cheeseburger each, because we were in for a loooong wait for lunch!

The very steep entrance to the Vaca Brava

We were told that there was at least a 2-hour wait for a table for 13 people, which was expected – the restaurant doesn’t accept reservations and is wildly popular on the weekends. Efforts have been made though to entertain people while waiting; the location is almost like a small theme-park with life-size dolls showing country-life such as the roasting of a lechón, and there are stands selling drinks, pinchos (brochette / kebab – served on a skewer) and all kinds of products, and a play area for children – unfortunately it was still raining, and people were huddling together under the roofs. Spirits were high though, and we were treated to an improvised parranda with people singing and playing typical Puerto Rican Christmas songs, while we munched on some pinchos and had a few drinks.

La Vaca Brava park

Everybody seemed to have come in big groups, and every time a family or group of friends got their table big cheers were heard, and people called out how long they had been waiting! We heard that some people had waited for 4-5 hours before being seated, but then again groups of 30-40 persons were being accommodated – no wonder the long wait! And everybody ran into a friend or two – O met a few colleagues while we waited.

When we finally got our table ~4 hours later our group had grown to 17 and it was a great mix of different family constellations and generations. Fortunately the service was very quick, once we had sorted out our orders, and soon the huuuuge plates of meat arrived! Even though we had seen the big portions being served while we waited, we had still miscalculated the sizes and ordered one plate per couple instead of 1 plate / 2 couples which would have been enough!! They say that hunger is the best seasoning and in hind-sight the food wasn’t that good, but we were starving… The food is simple; no fresh veggies, just meat with fries or rice and some extra toppings such as bacon, cheese or mushrooms. Too bad that the mushrooms were canned – I absolutely detest canned mushrooms which don’t taste the slightest like fresh ones! It is also cheap if considering that you can easily share the big portions among 4 adults (our dish cost $29,99).

A huge pile of meat and fries

Conclusion: it was a nice excursion and a great opportunity to socialise (and speak Spanish for me) but we all said that “been there, done that” was enough – we don’t have to go back.

Happy New Year 2009!

I usually write a summary of the year in the form of a top list around New Year’s, but this year it will have to wait until next year (next week hopefully).

We have decided to stay at home tonight and celebrate just the two of us. First of all because it is actually our first New Year’s together! Last year O headed to Spain a few days after Christmas, and the two years before I was in Sweden, and he in Spain. But tonight we will be drinking some bubbly and eating the 12 grapes together at midnight! But first we are making a menu inspired by the Barefoot Contessa (Food Network’s Ina Garten) – marinated salmon, fresh asparagus, pear clafoutis…

The table set for New Year’s celebrations at my sister’s place in 2004

Happy New Year everybody and I hope that 2009 will turn out to be a great year for everyone, with lots of happiness and love!

New Year’s fireworks in San Juan 2008

A belated Feliz Navidad / God Jul: Christmas in the Caribbean

A very belated ¤ Feliz Navidad ¤ God Jul ¤ Merry Christmas ¤ Joyeux Noël ¤

Can you believe that it has almost been a week since Christmas already!? O is working again, but fortunately only for 2½ days before he has another week off from work.

The surfers have been out in the water every day during Xmas – enjoying the strong winds and high waves…

Both O and I wished that we could have been with our families back in Europe, instead of celebrating Christmas on our own in Puerto Rico… But it could have been worse and in a way it was good that it didn’t really feel like Christmas – we could just pretend that it was an ordinary Wednesday (except that O was not working)…

Photo from the Christmas fika we had a few weeks ago.

Nevertheless, we celebrated Christmas the best we could – on the 23rd (Lillejulafton or Little Christmas Eve as we call it in the south of Sweden and in Denmark) we had a traditional Swedish Christmas meal with Swedish B and her Puerto Rican husband N – who was very happy to hear the only Swedish Xmas song he knows; Just D’s Juligen

Our traditional Swedish Christmas meal on the 23rd

On Christmas Eve it was raining the whole day and our plans to spend the day on the beach were cancelled. We spent the day inside, opening presents (in the end we had quite a big pile under the tree), drinking glögg, listening to Christmas music – I actually cried a little when we listened to ABBA-Agnetha and her daughter Linda’s Christmas cd* and watching parts of the Swedish classic Fanny & Alexander while O dashed out to buy my Christmas present…

One of my breakfasts during December… enjoying left-overs from the Christmas fika!

In the evening of the 24th, we were invited to my Spanish teacher’s family’s house for a Puerto Rican Christmas – we brought a basket with Swedish goodies: pepparkakor (ginger snaps), glögg (mulled wine), sill (pickled herring), snaps (flavoured vodka) and some turrón (Spanish almond cake)! The dinner was yummy; arroz con gandules, lechón asado, pasteles (first time that O and I really enjoyed pasteles!) and both tembleque and arroz con leche for dessert. And of course some home-made coquito! Christmas Eve turned out really well in the end… great food and great company (minus the nasty mosquitoes – why always me??)

In the end we had quite a few presents under the tree!

I hope that you had a very merry Christmas wherever you were, and that New Year’s will be as good!

PS I have included quite a few photos from the last month since I finally found the usb-thing for uploading the photos from the camera…

Saffron buns

¤ Feliz Año Nuevo ¤ Gott Nytt År ¤ Happy New Year ¤ Bonne Année ¤

*) I have the album as a LP at home in Sweden but my parents had sent me the cd as a present – that cd IS Christmas for me!

The ugliest gingerbread house ever?

This year we are not baking ginger bread, and definitely not attempting to make a gingerbread house… Maybe last year’s result has something to do with it? O and my sister were the architects (or maybe just builders?) and since melted sugar is not allowed in our family, they tried to attach the parts with frosting, which didn’t want to dry in the tropical heat! I don’t know how long they spent holding the pieces together while waiting for it to dry…

Who got bored of putting M&Ms on the roof? And what are the two Manneken Pis-figures (Belgian bottle openers) doing next to the Lucia?

So, why are we not using melted sugar? Well, when I was a child we never made a gingerbread house, but in 1996 my brother, my sister and I decided that it was time to start a new tradition! On Christmas Eve morning we started baking the pieces and melting the sugar to use as glue… Our parents were running some last errands while we were busy in the kitchen (after all we were not that young, I was 21). The assembling of the house went very well but then we couldn’t decide what to do with the left over melted sugar… and somehow, probably when trying to pour it out in the sink, it ended up on my fingers!!

Needless to say that having melted sugar on your fingers is not a very good idea, and while my siblings panicked, I turned on the cold water tap and put my hand under it. I don’t know how long I stood there in the kitchen but at one point my father came home, and immediately came up behind me and I collapsed in his arms – probably fainting from the stress and the pain. I spent the rest of the afternoon on the sofa, in a lot of pain. My mother, who is a nurse, spoke to the burns unit at the hospital and they said that there wasn’t much they could do, so she bandaged my fingers with some wet compresses and told me to try to keep the hand high.

The blisters on four of my left-hand fingers (I am of course left-handed!!) were quite impressive and very painful – and not very practical… I couldn’t cut my own food, wash my hair or write! And I didn’t look very cool with a white glove on my hand, a poor imitation of Michael Jackson However, there was one thing I could do – play badminton since for some reason I always hold the racket in my right hand! After a week I remember trying to sleep while the fingers were hurting more than before – the reason for the pain was that the blisters were actually expanding!

To make a long story a little shorter – a university nurse in Linköping cut the blisters open after 2-3 weeks and somehow I managed to write an exam in January even though I couldn’t bend my fingers for a while (when I had the blisters I couldn’t straighten them). Eventually the fingers healed and nowadays I don’t even have one scar to show! But, I am very scared of getting burnt again and I will not go near any melted sugar ever again!

Friday theme / Show & tell: Christmas traditions

The last Friday before Christmas and today’s Show & tell theme is Christmas traditions, as chosen by Mia.

O and I haven’t had time yet to create our own holiday traditions as this will only be our second Christmas that we will celebrate together. However, I am sure that we will make a nice intercultural mix of Swedish and Spanish traditions, just like last year. We have been invited to celebrate Nochebuena (Christmas Eve / Julafton) with my Spanish teacher’s family and we are very much looking forward to experiencing the local traditions.

My idea for today’s post was to take the opportunity to remind you of some of the local Christmas traditions – I already wrote a post about the Puerto Rican Christmas traditions last year, but here is a short summary of the highlights:

• Parrandas / parandas (I have seen both spellings) are an integral part of celebrating navidad in Puerto Rico. A group of people play and sing Christmas songs while everybody claps their hands and maybe play the maracas (native instruments from Puerto Rico). Traditionally the parranda groups would go from house to house in the countryside and sing and play while being offered food and drinks. We had our first parranda for the season last week at a company Christmas event at the Hotel Normandie – they handed out mini-maracas with the company logo and somehow we came home with 4 A parranda set consists of maracas, güiro (I think we call it gurka (cucumber) in Swedish!?), tambourine and palitos (two wooden sticks) – we already have two sets at home.
• Coquito – Puerto Rican egg nog with coconut milk and rum. Our neighbours brought us a bottle of home-made chocolate coquito for our Christmas fika last Sunday, yummy! We also got two bottles of home-made glögg from one of our Swedish guests… so we are all set for a Puerto Rican / Swedish Christmas!
• Lechón asado – traditionally Puerto Ricans eat a lot of pollo but at Christmas the chicken is replaced by roasted pork. And yes, we have already had lechón twice this season!
• Tembleque is a typical Christmas dessert, a coconut pudding that got its name from the way it “jiggles”, just like a jelly (tembleque = shaking fit).
• El día de reyes or the Three Kings’ day (De 3 vise männen) is celebrated on Epiphany (Trettondagen), traditionally the day of receiving gifts in Spain. The Puerto Rican custom is that children put a box with grass under their beds on la víspera de reyes (12th Night / Trettondagsafton), and during the night the kings with their camels (hence the grass) will bring gifts. I asked the students at the Alliance Francaise Christmas party a few weeks ago about the tradition and some of them said that they only get presents for Christmas, some only for Epiphany and some on both occasions!
• Felicidades is the holiday greeting! Last year I thought that people were congratulating us for some reason, before I realised that it was instead of saying Feliz navidad, ha ha!
• Pascua is the Spanish word for Poin(t)settia (julstjärna) and is a Christmas flower here, just like in many other countries around the world. Pascuas is also another word for Christmas, which confusingly means Easter in singular. So Feliz Navidad / Feliz Pascuas / Felicidades are all valid greetings at this time of the year!

 
A Puerto Rican parranda

Read more about last year’s Christmas experiences in Puerto Rico under the category Christmas in the Caribbean. I will report back next week on this year’s Christmas celebrations!

Sometimes the decoration doesn’t look very professional… and in daylight just tacky!

If you are curious about other Christmas traditions, here are the Show & Tell participants:
Anki, Anne, Annika, Cecilia, Desiree, Erica, IngaBritt, Jemaya,  Lena, Leopardia, Lia, Mais-oui, Marianne, Marie, Marina, Mia, Mia D, Millan, Nilla, Petra C, Petra H, Saltis, Simone, Strandmamman, and Victoria.

The traditional Christmas fika – this time in Puerto Rico

When living in Brussels I used to organise a traditional Christmas fika* every year before Christmas for all my friends and colleagues. I used to ask people to bring a bottle of cheap red wine for the glögg (mulled wine) or a traditional Christmas cake / sweets from their home country.

It was always nice to see everyone gathered before we headed home for Christmas and we would eat saffron buns, pepparkakor (ginger snaps), turrón (Spanish almond cake), panettone (Italian Christmas cake), cannoli (Sicilian pastry), pain d’épices (French sponge cake made with spices and honey), speculoos (Belgian biscuit very similar to the Swedish pepparkakor – speculaas is the Dutch spelling) etc.

Last year we didn’t organise a Christmas fika since we didn’t know that many people in Puerto Rico but this year I decided that it was time for some julmys (Christmas cosiness) together! This is the invitation I sent out:

———————————————————————————————

JULFIKA*

Merienda de navidad/Christmas Snack/Goûter de noël

Les invitamos a la merienda sueca tradicional por navidad

el domingo 14 de diciembre a las 5 de la tarde

Traigan su espíritu navideño!

Please come to our traditional Swedish Julfika on

Sunday 14^th December at 17.00

Don’t forget your Christmas spirit!

*fika [feeka:] (noun and verb) is a very important concept in Swedish culture. It consists in coming together under relaxed forms for some chit-chat over tea, coffee or lemonade with some biscuits and sweet bread called kaffebröd (meaning coffee bread) or even a sandwich.
The most common coffee bread is bullar (sing. bulle, not to be confused with köttbullar – meatballs) = sweet buns. To go for or take a fika is a great way to get to know and make friends with Swedes.
Common subjects of conversation are the latest news, the weather and what one has been up to lately. Sensitive subjects to avoid with someone you do not know very well are politics, money and love. And of course Jul [Yul] means Christmas…

[I really don't know where I got this definition of "fika" from, I used it for my Christmas fika invitations in Brussels as well but can't find the source anywhere on the internet now]

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Christmas fika with a red book (Undantaget / The Exception by Christian Jungersen – very good!)…

As usual half of the people invited didn’t show up (this is just a fact of Puerto Rican life, and it happened quite often in Brussels as well – I don’t take it personally) but those who came seemed to enjoy themselves! The guests were our Puerto Rican neighbours S and J (who taught us to cook Puerto Rican food a few months ago), our very sweet relocation / real estate agent E, my French friend E from l’Alliance Francaise and FOUR** Swedes + 2 half-Swedes (children) and Puerto Rican husbands / wives.

It was actually the third Sunday of Advent yesterday but this is a photo from last year…

The glögg and Daim-chocolate (bought in Ikea in New Jersey) were definitely the most popular things on the table, but the arroz con leche / rice pudding / riz au lait / risgrynsgröt was not far behind in popularity. The funny thing about this dish is that most Swedes don’t seem to like it, even though it is the traditional Christmas dessert in Sweden! I love it, and so do most of my foreign friends – in Brussels it was always the only thing that we would run out of! Nowadays I make it a little sweeter due to a certain Spaniard who likes it made with a can of condensed milk… I was told that in Puerto Rico they make the arroz con leche with coconut milk for Christmas – maybe something I should try next year when we hopefully organise another Christmas fika somewhere else…

O and the children performed a very loud parranda, with Carola singing Nu tändas tusen juleljus in the background and the conversation was a confusing mix of Spanish, French, English and Swedish – just the kind of get-together that I like!

I wrote a post about Puerto Rican Christmas traditions last year but I will write more about the traditions on Friday (since the theme is very fittingly Christmas traditions!). Meanwhile, read more about our Christmas experiences last year under the category Christmas in the Caribbean – I will be adding new posts during the month of December.

I wanted to add some photos from yesterday but I can’t find the usb-thingy for the memory card (grrr, think O used it last time!) so you will just have to enjoy some photos from last year!

**) Opps, I counted myself – so actually only three Swedish guests, which is still quite impressive when living in Puerto Rico!

Starting the new year in beach style!

Just wanted to share some Puertorican New Year’s fireworks with you, before I head down to the beach – a perfect start to a new year!

 PS The photo was taken by my sister last night and she kindly let me publish it here..

Feliz año nuevo 2008!

Only five minutes left before the clock strikes midnight in Europe, but I have already wished Happy New Year to O in Spain and my grandmother in Sweden via skype – didn’t want to risk getting stuck without a connection when everybody else wants to call.

We are busy getting ready here, putting on some nice clothes – we are Swedes after all and we like to dress up for New Year’s and preparing the dinner. The menu is as follows:

• Starter: Prawn cocktail in huge locally grown avocados
• Main: Seared tuna steaks with tropical (mango and papaya) salsa
• Dessert: a good old English Trifle (layers of sponge cake, jelly, custard and jam)

At midnight we will be drinking Californian champagne – an interesting choice which I don’t take any responsibility for!

My brother is going to try to find the old time New Year’s classic Dinner for one  (Grevinnan och betjänten) on youtube…

I think that it will be a good New Year’s eve, even if we celebrate it 5 hours after everybody we know in Europe!

And I will make sure that we listen to the best new year’s song by ABBA:

“Happy New Year”

No more champagne
And the fireworks are through
Here we are, me and you
Feeling lost and feeling blue
It’s the end of the party
And the morning seems so grey
So unlike yesterday
Now’s the time for us to say…

Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have a vision now and then
Of a world where every neighbour is a friend
Happy new year
Happy new year
May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don’t we might as well lay down and die
You and I

Sometimes I see
How the brave new world arrives
And I see how it thrives
In the ashes of our lives
Oh yes, man is a fool
And he thinks he’ll be okay
Dragging on, feet of clay
Never knowing he’s astray
Keeps on going anyway…

Seems to me now
That the dreams we had before
Are all dead, nothing more
Than confetti on the floor
It’s the end of a decade
In another ten years time
Who can say what we’ll find
What lies waiting down the line
In the end of eighty-nine…

El día después de Navidad or Boxing day / Annandag Jul (CiC Part VI)

Christmas is almost over, or at least it feels so as O has gone back to work and it is a normal working day in Puerto Rico. However, there is still el día de Reyes (Epiphany or Trettondagen) in January when most Spanish and Puertorican children get their presents.*

We have just had some left overs for lunch – turkey, herring salad without herring (I just love the name of this dish) and arroz con leche (rice pudding / risgrynsgröt). It feels like we have eaten a lot this Christmas, as usual, but maybe not as much or as unhealthy as other years – or is that just wishful thinking? The Spanish lamb and patatas a lo pobre (poor people’s potatoes, fried potatoes with onions and then put under the roasting lamb/turkey in the oven) were finally served at around 23.30 on Christmas Eve while we played Trivial Pursuit! A great combination actually for a midnight snack Playing TP is a holiday tradition in our family.

Yesterday O and I finally took the family to visit Old San Juan for the first time. We had a nice walk around the city and the old fortress, El Morro together with other locals and tourists. It was a little more quiet than usual, which was nice – the main street Calle de Fortaleza is usually jam-packed with cars.

When we came back home, it was time to prepare the turkey for the oven – it was stuffed with dried mango slices (so yummy!), apples, lime, and fresh coriander. A team effort by my parents and O who made his poor people’s potatoes once again. I stirred the arroz con leche while reading a new book (Digging to America by Anne Tyler – very good)… it would have been too boring otherwise.

O surprised us with the starter: he had cut up some jamón, lomo embuchado (cured loin of pork), Manchego cheese, pickled calamar, fried gambas, spread a mix of boiled eggs, prawns and mayonnaise as well as some tapenade on crackers – we were almost too full for the turkey! Needless to say that the family likes Spanish tapas!

The evening was finished off with Pirates of the Caribbean, when we had finally concluded that no, ABC Family is not ABC and yes, we have the normal ABC channel as well!! I was the only one who had never seen any of the Pirates-films and frankly, I didn’t really like the film that much so when O tucked in for the night (as he had to get up for work this morning), I followed him and skipped the end of the film.

This morning I took a power walk in the sunshine, while the rest of the family was still sleeping. Unfortunately I can’t walk along the beach as there is no beach walk, but I start and end with the sea, as well as at my turning point half way. It was hot at 8.45 even though I had brought a bottle of water – this is why I don’t run if I don’t manage to get up earlier… I don’t want to run with a bottle of water and it’s just too hot for running anyway, even if you see lots of people jogging in the middle of the day here, crazy I say!

If O comes home early enough tonight, we might venture out to one of the outlet malls for some good old mellandagsrea, i.e post-Christmas sale (mellandagar must be such a Swedish expression, the in-between-days refers to the days between Christmas and New Year)…

*) The celebration of the 3 kings / wise men on 6th January, includes presents to the children in some catholic countries, just like baby Jesus received gifts from his far away visitors.