Month: January 2021

Table arrangements are so much fun!

On By MagdalenaLeave a comment

Lately, I have become more and more interested in table arrangements. It is so much fun once you get going 🙂 🙂There are so many different combinations of table decorations and at the moment I am very into eucalyptus leaves and light loops. Here I share some pictures from Saturday’s dinner table setting. 

Light loops hang down from the lamps
View towards the kitchen
Close-up of table setting – tableware: Rörstrand Grace. Candlestick: Friendship knot
Lovely snowy view outside the window
A beautiful bouquet in the middle of the table is the finishing touch
Fun to decorate with a beautiful table cloth
View from kitchen island towards dining room and living room

Dessert tip – white chocolate cheesecake!

Source: All About Food

We ate this really tasty dessert this weekend: White chocolate cheesecake! Perfect mix between sweet and sour and quite easy to make. We had in digestive biscuits and it was very good! Be careful not to add too much pomegranate syrup since it’s quite sour. 

The recipe for white chocolate cheesecake!

4 servings

Ingredients:

  • About 20 optional biscuits
  • 200 g cream cheese
  • 2 dl whipping cream
  • 0.5 dl icing sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
  • 100 g white chocolate

Marinate strawberries / raspberries

  • 250 g fresh strawberries
  • 100 g fresh raspberries
  • 3-4 tablespoons pomegranate syrup

Decorate:

  • Lemon balm
  • Strawberries
  • Icing sugar

Do this:

  1. Chop the chocolate and melt it in a water bath or microwave and allow to cool. Whisk together cream cheese and whipping cream to a creamy and fluffy consistency, add the melted chocolate and continue to whisk. Turn down icing sugar, vanilla sugar and whisk a little more.
  2. Put the biscuits in a freezer bag and crumble with your hands until everything becomes crumbs.
  3. Rinse and divide the strawberries, raspberries into smaller pieces and place them in a bowl. Then mix in pomegranate syrup.
  4. Wrap cookie crumbs, cheesecake batter and the marinated strawberries, raspberries in each glass. Then place in the fridge for about 45 minutes. before serving. Garnish with strawberries and lemon balm.
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Home decor and food

On By MagdalenaLeave a comment

The New Year celebrations are over and we had a calm and nice New Year’s Eve with close family! The focus was on good food and fixing decorations at home. It was the same over Christmas and it has really been the most stress-free holidays I have ever had. Really nice and relaxing – maybe this should be done every year !? There have also been a lot of watching TV-series and movies and here are two really good tips I can recommend: 

  • Queen’s Gambit – a miniseries in 7 parts about an orphaned girl who grows up in an orphanage in the 50’s and learns to play chess. She also develops a severe pill addiction that she needs to deal with as her chess career takes off.
  • Contagion – an American thriller film about a virus that is even more contagious and deadly than Corona. The film was made as early as 2011 but has been given new life in 2020 in connection with the Corona virus starting to spread around the world.

Because I had so much time over the holidays, I put a little extra focus on the New Year’s table setting this year. In recent years, I have really started to appreciate our older tableware, which we have previously inherited from relatives, but which mostly just stood in the cupboards and collected dust. 

This year’s table setting includes cornflowers – a tableware that I have collected since I was a teenager, telemark silver from Norway and beautiful old glasses that have been inherited for several generations.

Cornflower plates and telemark silver
Beautiful wine and champagne glasses inherited from family

In the middle of the table there are table decorations such as eucalyptus, white roses, and candlesticks.

A mixture of candles, small glasses with white roses in, eucalyptus, light strings and candle lanterns
Small light strings in stars hanging from the lamps
The entire New Year’s table setting

We prepared the food all day and had several dishes you could make in advance, such as artichoke soup and dessert – classic panna cotta with lime and raspberries. We could also prepare the other dishes by chopping everything up so that it could easily be prepared à la minute. 

Here is our entire New Year’s menu:

Pickled food : fried giant prawns, cheese balls and kale. A sweet and sour sauce was served with the prawns and cheese balls.

Starter : Artichoke soup

Main course : Veal roast with cooked and fried vegetables, red wine sauce and risotto with chanterelles

Dessert : Panna cotta with lime and raspberries

Pick food

Fried batter for the giant prawns – about 4 servings:

  • 2 dl wheat flour
  • 1.5 dl light beer
  • 1 egg white
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 0.5 teaspoon salt
When the batter is ready, dip the prawns in the batter and place in the fryer. When the color looks nice, the prawns are ready.
 
Fried kale: pick leaves apart into reasonably large pieces. Make sure the kale is dry before putting them in the fryer. To be fried at 130 degrees. When they are ready, place them on a platter and add some salt.
 
Starter 

Artichoke soup, 4 servings:

  • 500 g  artichokes
  • 3 carrots
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • butter
  • 1, 5 dl white wine
  • 0.5 l of water
  • 2 vegetable bouillon cubes
  • 3 dl whipping cream
  • salt and pepper

Peel the artichokes and carrots. Cut into pieces. Finely chop the onion and garlic. Fry the ingredients with butter in a thick-bottomed saucepan.

Pour over the wine and let it boil for a minute. Add water and add the bouillon cubes. Stir. Let this cook for 15 minutes, until everything is soft.
 
Mix the soup in a food processor or with a mixer stick. Stir in the cream and heat. Season with salt and pepper.
 
Main course
 
Veal roast
  • Turn the oven to 100 degrees, salt and pepper the meat and fry in thyme and garlic.
  • Grill the roast in the oven until it reaches 62 degrees. 
  • Take out the steak and wrap it in foil paper. Let it reheat until it reaches 65 degrees. 
  • Raise the oven temperature to 225 degrees.
  • Finally, add the garlic butter and let it fry in the oven for between 5-10 minutes at 225 degrees.
Red wine sauce (4 servings):
  • Fry 1 yellow onion and 2 garlic cloves
  • Pour on 3 dl red wine
  • Add bay leaves and thyme
  • Reduce to half
  • Strain the onion and then put in a click of butter and reduce
  • Add 6 dl veal broth and reduce to half

Cooked and fried vegetables

  • Cut carrots into smaller sticks and fry it with a little salt until soft
  • Fry Haricots verts in soy until soft

Feel free to decorate with the vegetables around the veal steak.

Risotto (recommend Saltå Kvarn)

  • 7 dl vegetable broth
  • 1 shallot
  • 4 dl arborioris
  • 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 dl white wine
  • 1 dl grated parmesan cheese
  • salt and pepper

Heat broth in a saucepan. Fry onion and rice in olive oil for 2-3 minutes. Pour on the wine and let it boil. Pour in 1/3 of the broth and let it boil slightly while stirring. Dilute with a little broth at a time while stirring until the rice has a pleasant chewing resistance (a little al dente is usually best). This process usually takes about 20-25 minutes. When ready, remove from the heat and pour in the cheese and season with black pepper and salt. Serve immediately.

Dessert

Classic panna cotta with lime and raspberries – 4 servings

  • 1 gelatin sheet
  • 3 dl whipping cream
  • 4 tablespoons powdered sugar
  • 1 vanilla bean
  • lime and raspberries
  1. Soak the gelatin leaf, meanwhile boil the cream, add the whole vanilla bean and sugar.
  2. Let this boil for a few minutes. Pull the pan off the plate.
  3. Remove the vanilla bean and wipe it dry. Divide it in half and scrape out all the black little seeds. Put the seeds back in the cream and toss the vanilla bean.
  4. Squeeze the water out of the gelatin leaf and let it melt into the warm vanilla cream.
  5. Pour into portion forms and let set in the fridge for about 3 hours.
  6. Garnish with lime wedges and raspberries.

Feel free to make raspberry sauce with it: boil raspberries and a little powdered sugar, add a little lime.

A new year has begun and it has been welcome! Finally, the year 2020 is behind us and we can look ahead. We can only hope that the vaccination goes fast and that we soon can start meeting normally again. 

Wish you all a healthy and happy 2021!