Recipe: Spicy Lentils

Today I posted a picture on Instagram of a lentil soup/stew I made and many people asked for the recipe. The problem is that I don't cook from recipes, I look around at home to see what I have available and then I try to make the best out of it. I put stuff in the pot and then I taste what might be missing (We can call my method Pour, Stir, Taste ;). Will do my best to write a kind of recipe below :) It ended up being very spicy and very very delicious. I used so much curry paste that both Johan and I were sneezing and coughing like crazy, heh.


SPICY LENTILS for a lot of people
Red curry paste (I put a lot as I looove spicy, and you put as much as you prefer)
2-3 tbsp neutral oil
3 onions
Some garlic
Some ginger
6 dl red lentils
A few potatoes
2 carrots
800 grams of canned tomatoes (mix them if you don't want chunks)
1-2 tbsp tomato paste
A tbsp of brown sugar or honey
Vegetable stock for 1 liter
As much water as you want, depending on how thick you want the stew/soup, I used about 1 liter
Chili flakes (if you want it even spicier)
Fish sauce (skip it if you want it to be vegetarian/vegan) (I use it instead of salt)
400 ml coconut milk (if you don't like it, use cream or something similar, you can also skip it completely - tastes very good also without)

Coriander/Cilantro to sprinkle on top.
I ended up putting some soy in it as well. And I imagine some lemongrass would also suit very well.


DO LIKE THIS (or as you want)
Chop the onions, carrots, potatoes and ginger into pieces you like.
Heat up oil in a large pot and let the curry paste simmer for a while, to get out all the flavours.
After a few minutes, throw in the onions, garlic and ginger.
Stir and take good care of the paste.
Throw in the lentils, potatoes and carrots and stir for a minute or two.
Pour in the canned tomatoes, the tomato paste, the brown sugar (or honey) + the vegetable stock.
Let it boil for a while and when you think it's too thick, start pouring water. Stir. Pour water. Stir and so on until you have the thickness you like (takes maybe 15-20 minutes to know, as the lentils will swell).
Throw in some chili flakes (optional) and pour about 1-2 tbsp of fish sauce (better a little at first, you don't want the whole thing to end up tasting like fish sauce - Pour, stir, taste. Pour, stir, taste.) or salt/soy (vegetarian/vegan).
When the lentils and potatoes have a nice texture, pour in the coconut milk and stir.
Sprinkle coriander/cilantro on top.


E A T !





If you followed this "kind of" recipe, please let me know if you liked it :)

Let's go to the Snake Mountain

Second second hand round was coming up on the day before going home. After Christmas, the first one we went to was closed and I said Let's go to Ormberget (the Snake Mountain").


It's not yellow, can I eat it?


This mountain is a small one for downhill skiing. I was once there to practice as I had been at another place earlier that day where I was failing all the time, people were shouting Game over! to me (I hadn't learned how to break and I have no balance and I suck at sports). I was, well maybe 15 years old, and a little kid comes up to me and asks Hey lady, weren't you at that other mountain earlier today?. My fifteen minutes of fame.


The view is spectacular.






It was a very beautiful moment to be there with my dad and Johan. Afterwards we went to a second hand store ;)

That's it for this time. Hopefully this year I will see Luleå in summer time, it's been... 8 years now, I think. I wanna see the sea sparkle, although it's also nice when it's covered with ice and you can be Jesus and walk on water.

Food in Sweden

Last year I started a project I call Food terror on my private Facebook page (here is my official page, feel free to follow :) ). When I travel somewhere I take pictures of everything I eat and post on my FB wall. Some of my friends like it, some don't. Will terrorize you with the pictures here! It's dark most of the time up there, so it's pretty difficult to take good pictures with the phone.

DAY 1
Pic 1. At Arlanda Airport we of course had some cheeseburgers at Max.
Pic 2. I failed immediately. Was so hungry when I arrived in Luleå that I completely forgot to take a picture of the leverbiff my mum had made me. Took a picture of the disgusting Christmas sausage instead.
Pic 3. In the evening we snacked on the cheese I brought, with cloudberry jam and figs.



DAY 2
Pic 1. Went on the traditional second hand round with my dad and Johan (came home with a bag of books and amazing shot glasses that I will show you if I remember) and the obligatory kebab pizza with orient dressing.
Pic 2. My birthday party with sandwich cake!
Pic 3. And saffron semla!



DAY3
Pic 1. This was the day before Christmas Eve and I had a bento box for lunch, so delicious.
Pic 2. In the evening my sister was preparing Christmas food, like Swedish meatballs and Jansson's temptation, which we of course had to try.



DAY 4
Pic 1. Christmas eve! It's the day when Swedes have the big celebration. This shows a part of the Swedish Christmas Smörgåsbord.



STILL DAY 4
Pic 1. Breakfast at my sister's.
Pic 2 & 3. My sister's and my plate. We prefer seafood, but there are also some meaty things. Kale salad with dijon mustard, parmesan cheese, hazelnuts etc made everything more fresh.



DAY 5
Pic 1. Christmas day, I didn't have a big breakfast ;)
Pic 2 & 3. Amazing dinner at my dad's. He made us moose meat soup with dumplings and also blood dumplings. I don't think I ever ate that much before, lots of soup and EIGHT dumplings.



DAY 6
Pic 1 & 2. Breakfast with Christmas leftovers and cheese.
Pic 3. Went to my mum's cousin Maria's birthday party and she fed us with pizza and lots of white wine.



DAY 7
Pic 1. I woke up with a hangover and decided to walk from my sister's place to my mum's. She was away swimming, Johan was sick and Thomas was sleeping, so I was snacking before our brunch. Sandwich and saffron bun.
Pic 2. Was still waiting, eating popcorn and drinking julmust (great hangover cure).
Pic 3. Yay, mum came home and we prepared everything! Was feeding Johan with broth, mr Fever.
Pic 4. In the afternoon my mum and I went to see my oldest friend at her parents' place, I hadn't seen her parents since the 1990's and it was so great to see them again. We had FIKA.
Pic 5. OK mum, I need to have more kebab pizza, so we went to a pizzeria and had an extra spicy one. Delicious, though very very fatty = stomach ache.
Pic 6. Went to visit friends who stuffed us with great snacks, bubbles and Gin & Tonics.



DAY 8
Pic 1. A small breakfast cause I knew we were going to end up at a Chinese buffet with my dad.
Pic 2 & 3. "Chinese" buffet. In Luleå you get pizza at Chinese restaurants. And sushi at this one.
Pic 4 & 5. My sister made fish soup with saffron in the evening after we had been bowling all of us, was so much fun!



DAY 9
Pic 1. Last breakfast, still with Christmas dinner leftovers, can't have enough.
Pic 2. Last meal in Sweden was the same as the first one, this time with fries as the brain was convinced that the body needed much more food after this week's food mayhem ;)

Happy weekend, all!

Icebreakers

This is my hometown Luleå.


And these are Oden, Ymer, Atle & Frej - old friends of mine ;) They are so majestic, those icebreakers.


I love being in Luleå. Can't really imagine living there again (moved away in 1999), but the heartaches I have from missing my family are getting worse the older I get.


My dad & a sick Johan.


This was the brightest moment during the week over there. The colours!!!


Kungsgatan (King's Street) with Dagobert's Sandwich Bar to the left, where I used to hang out during my high school years eating sponge like shrimp sandwiches skipping classes (maths, psychology and natural science). We didn't go there, instead we turned right to have Chinese buffet at Exotic. Very good name.

Glimpses of my visit in Luleå

My nieces had made us such beautiful pepparkakor.


This picture I shot wearing only my nightgown and curling boots and yes I was freezing. The other day I said to a friend I'm fucking cold!. His answer was Bitch, you're Swedish! and I answered I'm a human being! and how he laughed. One thing I've noticed is that my immune system is so much better than my Greek friends'; as soon as the temperatures here change, they get sick. I guess growing up in a very cold country had some benefits health wise ;)


A typical breakfast at my mum's & Thomas' place. I brought a lot of cheese with me (from Germany, France and Austria). We had an amazing amount of cured salmon every day. Johan made one of my favourite cured salmons: chili, vodka & fresh coriander/cilantro.


My mum, she was the craziest, most hyper active Santa ever. We were laughing so hard.

I love my family.
The second evening, they threw me an amazing birthday party with sandwich cake and saffron semla.