Krumkaker with blackcurrant ice cream

krumkaker, or cornets/cones

blackcurrant ice cream

the 30-year old Norwegian krumkake iron

recipe from 'Norway's delight' and cone cooling...

freshly churned blackcurrant ice cream

It's June, the sun's shining and Wimbledon's in full swing. So far it's been a blissful English summer - not too warm and only a shower or three to keep us on our toes. Picnics in the park, walks along the South Bank soaking up rays on a Sunday afternoon and a smattering of Pimm's with ginger ale...such is the stuff of summer ;) I know I'm romanticizing but who needs to go away when London's shimmering on days like today.

Of course nothing quite says 'summer' like an ice cream cone, with the ice cream dribbling down your chin, on your clothes, or in my case, somehow ending up in my hair. Last weekend I dusted off two relics from the Johansen kitchen cupboard - a Gaggia ice cream machine and a Krumkake iron to make cornets, or as my American cousins call them, cones. Krumkake is a Norwegian version of the cone, translating as 'crumbly cake', an apt description of this crispy cone. Both machines were pilfered from Ma & Pa Johansen, and after nearly three decades of use still work - though admittedly just as I'm about to plug in these prized posessions there's a moment when I worry whether I might be electrocuted or the machine will simply have ceased to function. Thankfully, both are still going strong.

As mentioned on a recent post on the Beyond Baked Beans facebook page, I'm an ice cream snob. Nothing quite raises the Johansen ire like commercial ice cream or mediocre 'homemade' ice cream in restaurants or ice cream parlours. The best stuff in London is certainly dark chocolate ice cream from Chocstar and pretty much anything from Odonno. Even supermarket offerings that are purported to be good, such as Haagen Dazs and Ben & Jerry's, are cloying, chewy and over-priced for what is effectively just a humble mix of milk/cream, eggs and sugar. So if you have the time and inclination, I really encourage you to try making your own ices this summer. For a basic fruit ice cream recipe, go to the abovementioned facebook page and play around with flavours and ingredients - I'm lucky enough to have a gadget for ice cream churning, but you can make perfectly good ice cream without one.

And as for the cones - try baking the mixture on a sheet in the oven as you would with brandy snaps. The key to getting the 'cone' shape is to work quickly once the cones are baked - recruit a few mates with asbestos fingers to help you with this task, and roll them up before cooling in a cup. You can of course vary the flavours, adding cinnamon or cardamom for a change, or replacing lemon zest with orange zest, or some vanilla extract/seeds. A sprinkling of cocoa or chocolate wouldn't go amiss either, but the classic lemon zest and nutmeg combo is a match made in heaven, so I confess to never deviating from this 'Norway's delight' recipe...

Krumkake Ingredients:

• 110g plain flour (or 4 oz for imperially-minded friends)
• 110g butter, melted
• 110g sugar
• 3 tbsp water
• 1 medium egg
• zest of 1 lemon
• 1/2 tsp of nutmeg
• pinch salt

Method:

Plug in your krumkake iron, or preheat the oven to 190 C and prepare a baking sheet with greaseproof paper. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the flour, butter, water in increments. Grate in zest and nutmeg. Beat together til there are no lumps - it should be quite a thick batter, the consistency of gloopy toothpaste.

Butter the krumkake iron and place a dollop of the mixture on the bottom of the iron, close the lid and cook for 3-4 minutes depending on how hot the iron gets. You want a pale brown colour, not too brown or they'll scorch. If baking in the oven, place on the upper shelf and leave for 5-7 minutes.

Remove the krumkake cornet when it's ready and - this is the tricky bit - shape into a cornet while still warm. You'll quickly develop asbestos fingers from doing this if you're not already in possession of a heatproof pair of hands. I find quickly shaping, then placing the cornets in a glass (my mother suggested a champagne flute!) or a cup so they hold their shape is the best method.

If making cornets proves exasperating - after all toasted fingers are no fun - simply make baskets instead by shaping the krumkake around the bottom of a glass, ramekin or rolling pin and folding up the edges like a brandy snap. Makes for a pretty basket, though more vulnerable to breakage when storing. The cornets are definitely easier to stack in a sealed cookie jar, and will keep for a week or two. These are ideal for serving friends at a dinner party, as indeed is the homemade ice cream. Simple really.

A Plum Job

Nearly a month has passed since I posted a note on baking here, an unintended hiatus of sorts. Between revising for exams, then sitting the verdamte things, an unexpected trip to Norway and one albatross of a PhD proposal looming on the horizon I've neglected all whisking and folding recently. Thankfully all the hard work has been mitigated with plenty of japes and frolics, so no need to indulge in spasms of self-pity. Just been a busy bee, that's all.

Anyway, earlier this spring a number of enquiries about gluten-free recipes arrived in my baking inbox, so I decided to test this plum+almond cake recipe yesterday for those who are coeliac or have a wheat-intolerance. It's a super easy and quick to prepare sponge, thus making it a perfect tea-time treat or served with ice cream manifests itself rather well as a dinner party dessert. The recipe is one I adapted from one I found on the Cook's Illustrated site, an awesome repository of recipes tested to the nth degree. You can't go wrong with their recipes, seriously - have a look. All recipes for a bona fide 4th July fiestanza can be found there: ribs, key lime pie, cornbread...

But I digress. What you don't eat of this cake at tea-time or after dinner, try for breakfast. In a moment of Marie Antoinette-esque hubris I abandoned the quotidien smoothie this morning for a generous slice of cake with a dollop of Greek yogurt and some leftover plum sauce. Ideally I would have been reading Wodehouse whilst scoffing such a delectable plum cake with aplomb, but settled for a scan of the news about Iran's nascent revolution.

Enough warbling, here's the recipe folks!

Plum+Almond Cake Ingredients:

• 2 punnets of plums (I only used 1, and that wasn't enough, you wan't this to be plummy)
  
• 3 tsp apricot jam (St.Dalfour is a tasty one, and is made with grape juice)
• 2 tsp raspberry+rose cordial (see photo above)
• 125g ground almonds
• 125g self-raising gluten free flour
• 250g caster sugar (light brown would also be good)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 100g butter, softened
• 200g half-fat sour cream
• 1 large egg + 1 fat egg yolk
• splash of vanilla
• pinch of salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C. Butter and flour a 9 inch cake pan.

Prepare the plums first by halving them. In a large saucepan or frying pan place the apricot jam and cordial, along with a little water (Cook's Illustrated suggests brandy - I didn't have this, but give it a go if you do). Bring to a simmer and allow it to cook for 2-3 mins until syrupy. Add the plums cut-side down and cook a further 5 minutes, basting them with the juices so the tops cook too. Once they're cooked, remove with a slotted spoon and reserve the excess syrup for later.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. In a separate bowl sift the flour, almonds, raising agent, salt. Beat the egg with the sour cream and vanilla in a cup.

Once the butter is creamed, add the egg mixture and dry mixture in increments, beating with an electric whisk if you have one. You want quite a dense batter for this cake to hold the plums in suspension.

Spoon the batter into your cake pan, bake on the middle oven shelf for 45-50 minutes and check it's cooked through by inserting a skewer. It should come out with crumbs, not wet batter.

Allow the cake to cool, then eat with gluttonous abandon

Syttende mai (17th May)

some of the loot I raided at the Scandi Kitchen

Last week I emailed a few friends inviting them round for a 'Syttende mai', or 17th May brunch at my Bloomsbury digs

To the uninitiated, I explained 17th May is Norway's Independence Day and joked that we'd be celebrating both Norway's independence (from Sweden? Denmark? who knows...) and, I quote, "Norway's victory in this years' Eurovision" - a contest that curiously enough Norwegians get quite excited about. Almost as excited as the winter Olympics when tall, strapping 'Weegie men and women win everything except the bobsleigh and that stupid game the Scots are so fond of

What can I say, it's a small country. There's moose, whale hunting and the singing of folk songs on dark winter nights to keep us occupied, but really what we secretly hanker for is glory on the world stage, even if it is a ghastly Euro song contest defined by truly appalling songs, louche dancing and twee choreography. Norwegians' love of Eurovision is a real litmus test - I reckon one of the main reasons I emigrated from this otherwise charming arctic country ten years ago was to escape the banality of small-country jingoism

But I digress. Lo and behold, Norway won the battle of the Euro warbling on Saturday night with a mono-browed kid fashioning himself as Peer Gynt, singing about fairy tales

And now the whole country's gone bananas

So yesterday my mates and I spent a happy few hours - actually we spent a happy eight hours - musing about the silliness of Eurovision, cringing at the songs we tracked down on YouTube and excavating songs from Eurovisions gone by. In sum, we got a little carried away despite professing a dislike of this terrible song contest. France's entry from last year, incidentally, is very very funny.

We also discussed the aphrodisiacal qualities of umami, but that is another story

Of course what we were congregating for was the food. And the bloody marys. I'll start with the food and get to the bloody marys...

Peter's Yard Crispbread, my new favourite 'knekkebroed'

In true Scandi style, I put on a smorgasbord for 'syttende mai'. In less Scandi-style, or at least Bergen-style where my Dad's from, I didn't invite everyone round for a 7am breakfast as we did when I was growing up in Norway. That would be why the Bergenese refer to themselves as the "last of the Vikings", they start drinking Aquavit at 7am

We kicked off not with Aquavit, but with a platter of crispbread snacks topped with 'kaviar' from a tube, a slice of hard-boiled egg and dill. Simple, frugal and delicious if I say so myself. The sourdough crispbread from Peter's Yard makes a great base for strong flavours such as the kaviar,and is seriously addictive - I get through wheels of the stuff in one sitting it's so moreish. If you're thinking, "eew, crispbread" think again, this isn't fibrous or dry like Ryvita, or even authentic Swedish brands which can be quite tough on the mouth and tummy. Nope, this is the real deal - handcrafted, full of flavour and not in the least bit dry or fibrous, thus making an ideal base for a snack to whet the appetite. You can find smaller packs of it in La Fromagerie and from the end of May, large tins like the one above in Fortnum & Mason

The kaviar, which you can see in the first photo above, is a divisive food - it's creamy and has a sweet and salty taste that we Scandis are fond of, which is admittedly not to everyone's taste, but with some egg and dill it seemed to go down a treat. Though I did receive a few bemused looks when I mentioned it was from a tube. Snooty Brits, don't you know there's a recession on?!

Anyway we sat down to an array of pickled herrings, some tasty trout and cured salmon - you might be able to detect a pinkish hue in the salmon below, that's a Russian beetroot cure. Adding to this aquatic Nordic feast were 'Abba' sweet and salty anchovies, which you can see in the photo above - again, not sexy food, but for me replete with nostalgia as it was my first solid food. My Dad always had toast with anchovies and a soft-boiled egg for breakfast, and claims as a toddler I once climbed up on his lap and gobbled up his breakfast in one fell swoop. So Mama J from that day onwards made two plates of anchovy and egg toast at breakfast, one for Dad, one for me. To this day anchovy and egg on toast is resonant of a happy childhood and a real litmus test of friendship - any friend who tries it and concurs with me that it's delicious is a true friend for life.

But back to the smorgasbord. Aside from herrings, salmon, anchovies and trout there was mackerel in tomato, another divisive food, but I added some Turnham Green ketchup to soften the blow for the mackerel-phobic and everyone hoovered it up. A little embellishment goes a long way with the fish-phobic I find.

With all that cured and pickled umamilicious fish I made a simple potato salad accompaniment with a sauce based on creme fraiche, trusty Heinz salad cream and given extra zinginess with Pommery mustard, lots of chopped spring onion and sprigs of dill. Perfect with the fish. Some side dishes of beetroot, gherkins, and plenty of wholemeal sourdough bread rounded off the smorgasbord, which we washed down with beer, white wine and - for the sensible few - pomegranate cordial. No Aquavit in sight, thankfully, the stuff is lethal

it was a dark, gloomy Sunday outside, at least it didn't snow

After scoffing with abandon we moved on to coffee and cake, another Scandi tradition taken very seriously in Norway. It's just not 17th May if you haven't consumed at least a few slices of cake and pastry, and ideally a few scoops of ice cream for good measure. I made a simple chocolate almond cake with no wheat as one of my pals is gluten-intolerant, and before I had a chance to snap it with my Finepix we demolished it. No time unfortunately for making ice cream this year

To complete the nostalgiafest however, I made a classic cinnamon bun cake, for which you can find the recipe on this blog (entry 16.11.08). If you look carefully in the first photo above there is a small yellow cube with 'Kron Jast" on it - this is a fabulous Swedish fresh yeast available at the Scandi Kitchen and I now use it for all my yeast baking. It imparts a much more discrete yeast flavour than dried yeast, and produces a really vibrant, springy dough. The cinnamon bun recipe's from Trina Hahnemann's Scandinavian Cookbook and is one of the most reliable cinnamon bun recipes in existence, I've tried many over the years and this one is most bona fide one yet. Without fail the buns come out perfect - fluffy and full of flavour - a mix of subtle cardamom in the dough and pungent cinnamon butter laced through the buns. Instead of making individual buns I placed the cut slices in a cake tin and baked them as a cake so that in the spirit of commensality everyone could commune over the cake by tearing off a bun. Predictably my polite British friends used a knife to cut slices, rather than tear the cake, to which I shall refrain from making any negative comment.

the breaking of buns

Eventually after copious cups of coffee, some more wine, and a bottle of prosecco we capped off the bruncheon with a pitcher of bloody marys. Somehow this seemed sensible at the time, but as I write my 'Syttende mai' entry I'm reminded of why we don't gather for Sunday brunch more often - the subsequent hangover's a persistent one. Suffice to say, there's no vodka left, we used an inordinate amount of tabasco, horseradish and worcester sauce and that was the end of our brunch, we might as well have drunk Aquavit! Everyone shuffled home at 7pm, with goofy grins on their faces reminiscent of the kid who won Saturday's Eurovision, and after cleaning up I tumbled straight into bed to read the remainder of this weekend's FT

So there you have it, a happy 17th of May was had by all ;)

I'm imposing a strict regimen for 10 days while revising for final exams next week, so there'll be less of the eight-hour brunches, more of the pondering...like the dude below. A reprise of Sunday's bruncheon shall have to wait til June, as will the baking. Until then, that's all folks!

p.s. in case you're wondering, the first photo also features a small black box of liquorice known as...'spunk'

In Praise of Profiteroles...

What a joyful picture - to you this looks like an allmighty mess and hardly worth a mention, but these chocolate profiteroles were sinfully good, so good in fact that I decided to post a note about them, despite not being their baker. Choux pastry, as I've mentioned on this blog before, is my favourite form of pastry - making it is straightforward and I don't feel like a total retard whipping a batch of choux together, in contrast to the endless rolling of layers for puff pastry I did at Leiths, when butter would ooze all over the place and my baked puff pastry resembled Carr's water biscuits. This is not to say I don't love eating other styles of pastry but when a girl's in possession of breadmaking hands she just won't have the knack of making really light puff, not to mention flaky croissants or even a relatively easy shortcrust. 

Brioche, filo and choux are the extent of my pastry skills. The first because it's more akin to breadmaking and thus makes sense to a bread baker, and the second because frankly the old-fashioned method of slapping filo pastry all over the place is so much fun that it doesn't feel like pastry-making but rather an exercise in kitchen comedy. Filo is a great way to let off steam. 

Choux has a curious hold on the imagination, inexplicably more so than the other two, which is odd since I didn't grow up scoffing lots of choux pastry - in Scandinavia it's not as popular as Viennoiserie-style pastry. Perhaps it's the quaintness of choux, or the way they're filled to the brim with custard. Favourite filling of the moment has to be passionfruit and vanilla custard, but I imagine other flavours such as violet cream, lemon curd, pistachio or coffee custard would make interesting twists on the traditional vanilla custard. Topping the choux buns with chocolate sauce is what constitutes the classic profiterole, but I'm thinking the next experiment with choux might have to incorporate a salted butter caramel sauce. 

Finally, the act of popping each little choux bun in your mouth is perhaps what makes them so moreish (and indeed sensual). I know in principle you can fill other pastry such as almond croissants, pain au chocolats and millefeuille but the texture of a thin, crisp choux bun giving way to sweet custard isn't easily replicated IMHO.

So this post is dedicated to the humble choux. And the photo above is from Saturday's wedding of two awesome friends, Nina and Finnbar. Their wedding luncheon was at the Bombay Brasserie where we ate, drank and celebrated in grand style. The chocolatey profiteroles were assembled in an auspicious French croquembouche, the dark chocolate acted as glue to keep the choux buns in place before hiding them under layers of creamy white chocolate that rippled like a helix down the croquembouche cone. A joyous occasion marked by a joyous tradition. 

Felicitations Nina and Finn, the wedding was a storming success.

One MIA baker...

'where did she go?'

A brief hiatus from whisking and folding this week.  After handing in the first two of three big essays last Friday I rusticated myself from sweet Bloomsbury, armed with a suitcase of books, highlighter pens and MacBook to spend some much-needed quality time with my Mamacita here on the Canarian island of Lanzarote. 'Tough life' you sniff, and I concur. The sound of the waves crashing in and the smell of intensely saline ocean spray is indeed restorative after the cacophany of my little urban bayleywick back in London, not to mention the gaggle of noisy undergrads in the library. Yes, I'm the archetypal grumpy grad student, irascible and easily ired with the bright young things of today...

Anyway, after twenty years of coming to this place, rather uncharitably referred to by some Brits as 'Lanzagrotty', it constantly surprises me how invigorating the island is. Must be something about the volcanic nature of it. The air is dry like the desert, and the water's crystal clear - if you have hunter-gatherer inclinations the ocean's replete with bream, bass and other aquatic wonders. Just wish I knew how to catch them (note to self - next time bring a fishing rod.) Seriously, my parents have a house here and it feels more like home than anywhere else. Free of distractions, noise and fanfare, I wouldn't dream of trading in this place for the Greek Islands or any of the other trendy Mediterranean hotspots. There is something unvarnished and really down-to-earth about Lanzarote, which is why some people love it and others don't really get it and choose to spend their holidays in Bermuda.

But enough quatsch.  One fat law essay on geographical indications awaits, so tally ho and all that. After this essay nonsense is over, a big chocolate Guinness cake is in the offing. Think baking with booze could be a theme for summer 2009's scandilicious baking experiments...

Claire Clark's Carrot Cake

This cake can't really be described as bona fide Scandinavian, but then what really is? We now get carrot cake all over the globe and everyone adapts this beloved American tradition to their own tastes and locally available ingredients. I decided to test a recipe from Claire Clark's book 'Indulge: 100 Perfect Desserts' (Absolute Press, 2007) Claire's the head of pastry at celebrated California restaurant The French Laundry and the book is a feast for confection-hungry eyes. Even if you don't care much for cake, have a look at her book, great recipes can be found therein for all manner of sweet things.

Anyway, Easter's come and gone. While most of Britain is seemingly defying the credit crunch by shopping like there's no tomorrow, my Dad and I spent the weekend with simpler, more frugal pursuits in mind. Long walks in the country, endless episodes of 'Seinfeld,' reading a few good books - couldn't have asked for a more relaxed weekend. Having had my 89-year old uncle over for the requisite Easter Sunday luncheon we're still feasting on leftovers of roast leg of lamb, roast potatoes, caramelised parsnips and broccoli. Leftover lamb on fresh spelt bread (yes I baked another one) for lunch yesterday was a treat - delicious with some mango chutney, beetroot and German gherkin. Easter pudding consisted of gently poached rhubarb, simmered in fresh blood orange juice and zest, a splash of vanilla and grand marnier, though we managed to demolish this with aplomb on Sunday so no leftover rhubarb pud.

Who said I don't take care of the men in my life ;-)

Anyway, back to the cake. I love the fact that Claire uses wholemeal flour in her recipe, something I'm converting to (as well as gluten-free flour for variation) - the taste of wholemeal is so good anyway, and combined with all that carrot, coconut, vanilla and sugar you won't know the difference. If you're looking for a slightly lighter texture sift the wholemeal to remove some of the bran...the brown sugar gives a hint of sweetness without making the cake cloying, and also keeps it moist for a few days. Will definitely be making this one again.

Ingredients:

• 250g wholemeal flour
• 25g baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 125g desiccated coconut
• 5 medium eggs
• 250g muscovado brown sugar (I used light brown as that's what I had...)
• 185g vegetable oil
• 500g carrots
• 125g raisins (soaked for 10 minutes)
• 1/2 tsp salt (recipe doesn't call for it, but have added it anyway)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180C

Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and spices in a medium bowl. Stir in the coconut. 

Using an electric mixer, whisk the eggs, sugar and oil together til the mixture becomes pale and doubles in volume (a large bowl will be needed for this)

Gently fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture, and then finally fold in the carrots and raisins.

Bake 35-40 minutes. Allow to cool before icing with cream cheese frosting (see the other carrot cake recipe on this blog for recipe) and sprinkle with coconut and crushed pistachios.

Spelt breadrolls

It's a glorious spring day outside, just warm enough to sit in the sun and soak up some much-needed rays after a long, cold winter. Today's luncheon was a real Scandi-nostalgia-fest: fresh wholemeal bread rolls like the ones I grew up with in Norway, topped with Swedish 'kaviar' from a tube (sounds gross, tastes heavenly. Scandies know what I'm talking about) and a soft-boiled egg. Delicious and nutritious. Not to mention thrifty.

Having raided the Scandinavian Kitchen of its fresh yeast supply last week (well, nearly all of it) and after the success of Friday's hot cross buns * I decided to make these spelt rolls. It defeats me why fresh yeast isn't readily available in supermarkets here. I once got a tip that the Sainsburys on Cromwell Road in west London sells fresh yeast, so off I went to buy some. This transpired to be the most absurd exercise in subterfuge and hushed voices I've encountered in a supermarket. When I asked for 50g of fresh yeast, the baker (I use baker in the most elastic sense of the word) questioned why I needed it - "erm, to bake bread," I replied. Not good enough apparently, the man proceeded to interrogate me on why I was really procuring fresh yeast, much to the bemusement of fellow shoppers who viewed me as some sort of reprobate. 

Anyway, good luck trying to buy fresh yeast in central London. I hear you can score some from bakers (real bakers that is) but it seems ridiculous one can't buy the stuff in a local supermarket, the way we can in Scandiland. Does the lack of locally available fresh yeast suggest Brits don't bake with yeast that much? Or are we Scandies just peculiar in our habits? Probably a bit of both.

Back to the bread though - this is a delightfully easy recipe and the breadrolls are a welcome change from the giant loaves of bread I've been baking recently...rolls freeze well and only require 5-10 minutes reheating in a 150C oven so it's worth making a large batch if you have the time and inclination to do so. And the fresh yeast imparts a much more mellow flavour than dried yeast, so worth hunting down if you care about such matters.

This recipe makes 12 medium rolls 

Ingredients:

• 500g wholemeal spelt flour
• 300ml cold water
• 12g fresh yeast
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 heaping tsp sugar

Method:

Mix the yeast and sugar in a small bowl, to see if the yeast is active. It should dissolve and look foamy.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt and make a well in the centre. Tip the yeast, oil and water into this and beat with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes. No kneading required, you just have to bring the dough together.

When the dough is thoroughly mixed and looking a little bit bouncy (give it a poke!) place some oiled clingfilm over the top and then refrigerate overnight.

The next day, take the dough out - it should have doubled in size - and knock back. Lightly oil a 12x small muffin tray. Make little even-sized buns by rolling them between your hands - it helps if your hands are wet, that way the dough won't stick to you...place each bun in a muffin hole and then cover again with oiled clingfilm and allow to double in size in a warm place.

Preheat oven to 220C, and place the muffin tray on the upper shelf of the oven. Bake for 5 minutes, then turn down the heat to 200C. 

You can of course glaze the buns, add seeds, nuts, etc. before baking but I kept these simple because I am a lazy slug. 

* see the facebook page of Beyond Baked Beans under 'notes' from April 3rd.

Mackerel & Marmite sandwich

"Is this an April Fools' joke?" you ask.  Read on, friend, read on...

One of sitcom's all-time greatest characters, George Costanza in 'Seinfeld', is a man seemingly always on the hunt for a good sandwich. In fact 'Seinfeld' is a repository of food anecdotes - there's the episode featuring the muffin top, then there's the quest for the perfect rye bread, and the epic episode 4: season 9 titled 'Blood' in which the hilarity (not to mention aphrodisiacal qualities) of pastrami is revealed. Am sure bagels feature prominently in several episodes too.

Anyway, back to the sandwich. Who knows if George would approve of this eccentric concoction, but last weekend's barley bread had been gobbled up by Monday, so I was at a loss what to do for lunch today. Inspiration struck - as it does - while reading about Japanese Zen arts. No, I'm not going to bake a green tea bread, but I concluded there must be something to eat in the kitchen, thus saving a trip to the supermarket, or worse, to those ghastly sandwich chains. 

A brief rummage through the store cupboard revealed Swedish rye crispbread, Marmite... and then I remembered the tomato mackerel I picked up at the Scandinavian Kitchen last night (brain a little fuzzy today after the wine tasting). 

Eureka!

So today's luncheon is an umami-lover's sandwich, with restorative properties (headache all but gone now). Who said frugal eating was boring?!

Ingredients:

• couple of slices rye crispbread
• discrete coating of marmite
• tomato mackerel with extra ketchup 
• some fennel fronds from a fennel I bought (parsley, dill, etc. would also be great)

You could of course gild the lily by adding anchovies, worcester sauce and parmesan for a really explosive umami-hit. All I can say is the result was a success, and that I prefer marmite on rye crispbread to regular toast...so there you go, a happy fusion of Scandi and Anglo-Saxon flavours!  

Enough musings on the joys of a good sandwich, library seclusion awaits. 

Watch this space for hot cross buns over the weekend, in anticipation of Easter ;-)