Freezer Cooking Meat Sauce Recipe

Pasta and meat sauce - one of the most popular dishes among Swedish families with children. The price of this dish has risen by 20% in the past year. In spite of that, it continues to be one of the most affordable meals. A family can still have a nutritious and filling meal with pasta as the basis.

Cooking more meat sauce than you need for a meal, and then freezing the rest for later, saves both money and time.

Last year, I posted a freezer cooking recipe of pasta meat sauce on this blog which could feed a very large crowd.

However, I don't want to store cooked food in the freezer for more than 3 - 6 months. Now I have scaled down the recipe.

INGREDIENTS:
approx. 2 ½ liters/2500 ml

* 1 kg/1000 grams ground beef
* butter + oil
* ½ tablespoon salt
* 1 teaspoon black pepper
* ½ teaspoon thyme or 1teaspoon oregano
* 1 bay leaf
* 50 grams celeriac, peeled and cut in very small dices
* 2 small carrots, cut in very small dices
* 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
* 2 small onions, chopped
* 1 stock cube
* 1 tablespoon flour
* 1 ½ dl/150 ml water
* 100 grams tomato purée
* 2 tins crushed tomatoes á 400 g
* 1 teaspoon sugar

METHOD:
1. Heat butter and oil over medium heat in a large cast iron skillet.
2. Crumble beef in the skillet with a wooden fork and brown - a little at a time.
3. Add onions and stir until onions begin to turn clear.
4. Stir in all the remaining ingredients and simmer on low heat for 1 - 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
5. Taste and adjust seasoning.

TIPS: This sauce also makes a good base for a soup. Use good quality stock cubes that isn't stuffed with mono-sodium glutamate/E621. Add leftover pasta and vegetables to make it filling. Don't use too much celeriac - also known as celery root, turnip rooted celery or knob celery. This root vegetable has a rather distinctive tangy taste.

Spiced Banana Cake

Is this a banana cake or a banana bread? I am confused with the cake/bread distinction in English. Pretty much the same. isn't it?

INGREDIENTS:
* 100 grams butter
* 3 dl / 300 ml caster sugar
* 2 eggs
* 5 dl / 500 ml plain flour
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon bicarbonate
* 1 teaspoon ground ginger
* 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 2 bananas, ab. 400 grams
* ½ dl / 50 ml strong cold coffee

* 1 spring-form pan 24 cm or 9 1/2 inch diameter

METHOD:
1. Preheat oven to 175°C / 347°F.
2. Grease the inside of the spring-form pan well.
3. Beat butter and sugar until fluffy in a large bowl.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well.
5. Sieve flour, baking powder, bicarbonate, ginger and cinnamon.
6. Add the sifted dry ingredients to the batter and stir until combined.
7. Mash the bananas with coffee
8. Spread the batter in the greased pan and bake for 40-45 minutes.
9. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then loosen spring form and remove.

I served the banana cake with a passion fruit sauce.

Recipe in Swedish:
Kryddad Banankaka










I left some bananas alone at home on a fruit tray for a three-day weekend. When I got home again, opening the front door, I could feel the smell of overripe bananas in our house. Their peels were brown and the pulp soft. Monkeys have no problem eating overripe bananas out of hand. Well, I have. Are monkeys wiser? The antioxidants in fruit increase the longer the fruit is allowed to ripen, according to Science Daily.

Swedish Oven-Baked Pancake

Nigella Lawson is back on TV here in Sweden again with time-saving meal ideas in her 13-part series 'Nigella Express'. After watching the first five episodes, I find that certain of the many store bought ingredients she uses are rather expensive and somewhat difficult to find in my local store.

Last but not least, I don't think that the delicious three-course dinners Nigella is cooking can really be work of moments - not without help.

When I am in a hurry, I make an oven baked pancake with or without bacon. The batter can be whipped up in minutes. I can even make the batter in the morning and leave the mixture to stand in the refrigerator several hours before I use it. I'm aware that some people eat pancakes for breakfast, but we have them for lunch or dinner.

This is what I use and it works for me. It's not a fancy dish. It would never win a 'food beauty competition'. (Sorry, the picture is too dark). Anyway, kids like it. Best of all, it doesn't cost a fortune. Perfect for kitchen no-hopers but probably nothing culinary experts would cook.

INGREDIENTS:
Serves 4-6

* 8 dl (800 ml) milk
* 4 dl (400 ml) wheat flour
* 3 - 4 eggs
* ½ teaspoon salt
* (optional) 150 grams small cubes of fried bacon
* (optional) 1 bottle cap rennin (is used to curdle milk in foods such as cheese and puddings)

*lingonberry jam (or substitute with your favourite jam)

METHOD:
1. Beat together half of the milk with the flour.
2. Gradually whip in the remaining milk.
3. Whisk thoroughly to avoid lumps and add salt.
4. Beat in the eggs - one at a time.
5. Add bacon if you like.
6. Pour the batter into a greased large oven tray.
7. Place the oven tray in cold oven, turn oven to 225° C (moderately hot oven).
8. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.
9. Cut into squares and serve with lingonberry jam and a salad on the side.

SALAD:
* 2 carrots, peeled and grated
* ½ small swede, peeled and grated
* 2 oranges, peeled and cut into dices

Oven-baked pancake means automatic leftovers. Don't toss into the trash. Divide into individual portions and freeze the pancakes.

Cool, place the wrapped leftover pancakes in a freezer bag or plastic freezer container, and freeze.

Eat within a month or two for best quality. Microwave briefly on medium heat.

I looked up the Swedish word 'ugnspannkaka' in a Swedish to English Food Dictionary. I found the word 'batter pudding'. I don't think that is correct. A batter pudding is a Yorkshire pudding, isn't it?

I spent some time in Great Britain in 1981. I had Yorkshire pudding in a restaurant. Maybe the ingredients are the same. How about the proportions between the ingredients? They can't be the same, can they?