Waiting for winter to return; or, Mustardization.

Oklahoma weather is crazy.

Our old mathematician-and-occasional-blogger will testify to this oft-repeated statement anytime after having spent 6 months in the Sooner State. (Gulp, he is 30 now-but let us quickly move on.) Indeed, the Oklahoman Swede-Pole recently entertained a visitor from Berkeley in sunny CA, and in order to welcome the Californian-Swede, Stillwater decided to cover itself with a thin layer of ice and a slightly thicker layer of snow on the day of his arrival. The two Swedes felt just like home! Talk in the math department given, Stillwater bar scene and classic beef restaurant in Oklahoma City experienced, our blogging postdoc's visitor departed, and less a week later, summer came to Stillwater.

Believe it or not, our hero spend most of yesterday outdoors, biking around and running errands. A high point of that 77F day was an hour spent in the shade of a tree outside his apartment, playing guitar and remembering those first summer days in Stillwater. So much has changed since then. As always, some changes may turn out to be more permanent than others, and they may not be the changes one would expect. Now a winter storm warning has been issued for tomorrow, so it may be a while before there's another opportunity for this kind of retrospection.

But some things are always present in our blogger's life, whether blogged about or not-music and food, for instance. Then again, a friend claimed that these two things are the only topics present in the Facebook status updates of our Swedish-Poles. (Include coffee in the food category, and this may well be an accurate statement.) In any case, between work and social calls, there has been little time for updating this blog lately, but now that the weather is taking a turn for the worse, it may just be time for culinary writing again.

This blog post constitutes self-plagiarism, in a way. Sitting under that tree yesterday, he felt an inexplicable craving for mustard, and, since it was essentially summer in Oklahoma yesterday, a French-style potato salad came to mind. Today, it was discovered that half a block of feta cheese was also available, and with a winter storm approaching, roasting root vegetables in the oven felt appropriate-again. (See a post from last year's blog.) Out of this confusion was born today's mix of wintry potatoes and carrots and summery capers and mustard.

Ingredients:

4 potatoes
1 carrot
1 red onion
3 cloves of garlic

1 block of feta cheese

Dijon mustard

baby spinach

olive oil
salt and pepper
thyme
pickled capers

Turn on the oven; make it hot. Wash the potatoes and cut them into wedges, leaving the skin on and chop up the carrot also. In a glass cooking pan, smother the potato wedges and carrot sticks in a generous amount of olive oil. Season with salt, ground pepper, and thyme. And then, into the oven the pan goes. (See an earlier blog entry for pictures.)

Now for the mustardy part of our meal. Slice the onion; we want thin rings here. Cut the garlic cloves in half. Then, in a frying pan, caramelize the onion and garlic. Use moderate amounts of olive oil, and try to get the capers a little crispy at the same time.

Once you're happy with the onion's state of caramelization, add a little mustard to the mix. Don't overdo it, two or three teaspoons should do it. Stir gently for a minute or so, and then remove the pan.

Take a little break and pour yourself a glass of wine. Then check on the potatoes; you want them getting crispy before proceeding to the next step. Once this is the case, chop the feta cheese into large cubes, add them on top of the potatoes and grill the mix until the cheese starts going soft and possibly crispy around the edges. Turn off the oven and take out the cooking pan.

Finally, return to the frying pan, turn up the heat, and sautee the baby spinach in the onion/mustard mix. The spinach leaves should be soft, but they should not lose all of their texture. An extra spoon of mustard might be a good idea. And then we're done.

Serving suggestions: Anna von Hausswolff, "Singing from the grave" on the side. A glass of red wine.

Lasagna and jazz, all in 2011.

"In these last few days I have thought a little about where things begin and how they end. It seems to me that although things may start and be maintained without too much consideration, they often require a lot of work to complete."

These are the first sentences of the preface of a certain KTH doctoral dissertation in math, written years before this blogger graduated from high school. (Not the kind of source you would have guessed, right?) I have always like this quote a lot, as it seems to apply to many different things. (And this is no doubt how it was intended.) I usually think of something else in connection with is, but it does apply, in a way, to this food blog as well.

Then, at the end of the same preface, the author extends his thanks to the master musicians of the past for composing the music that has comforted him during difficult times. I agree completely with this sentiment, but I would like to add that good music also provides a frame and soundtrack for happy times, crazy times, confused times, and boring times, the year 2011 being no different. This first post will feature this mathematician's humble attempt at music writing, before turning to the food itself. Hopefully, a reader or two will make it through. And hopefully 2011 will be a great year for Swedish-Oklahoman cooking!

In keeping with this blog's sometimes (always?) pretentious tone, I would like to take the opportunity to enthuse a little over music that has made me particularly happy lately: the brilliant work of saxophone great Pharoah Sanders. Take the track called "You've Got To Have Freedom" that I've been playing over and over-so great! Sanders' initial saxophone howls convey a sense of necessity and urgency; he will not be denied. It's a clarion call-we all need freedom, this is important! Sanders playing is often thought of as abrasive and extreme (his early work with Coltrane), but here I feel he is spot-on. Then John Hicks effortless piano playing takes over; fearless and confident, yet laid-back (that recurring but slightly changing falling figure at the end of his phrases!). Sanders then alternates between melodic solos and high-pitched screeches. Add a swinging rhythm section, that beautiful sax riff, and it's impossible not to feel happy and free.

This energetic recording provided the prefect soundtrack for tonight's vegetarian lasagna! It is effortless-try it yourselves.

Ingredients:

lasagna plates
2 large ripe tomatoes
1 green bell pepper
1/2 onion

cottage cheese
2 carrots

peppadew jack cheese

olive oil
salt and pepper

First, chop up the (half American giant, whole Swedish regular) onion and the pepper. Then, in a frying pan, sautee the onion and pepper in a little olive oil. Don't forget salt and pepper. Chop up the tomatoes without losing the precious juice. Add the tomato chop to the mix, and let stew for a few minutes.

Next, pour the cottage cheese (I used half a 24 oz. can) into a bowl. Peel the carrots, and let them meet their shredded demise at the hands of the cheese grater over the bowl. Add lots of pepper, and mix it!

Turn on the oven, medium temperature. It is now time for the layering of the lasagna. The experts disagree here, but I do it thus, starting at the bottom of a glass cooking pan:

plate
tomato sauce
plate
cottage cheese mix
plate
tomato sauce
plate
cottage cheese mix.

Once you're done, take out your favorite cheese.  I like something that has jalapeno in it for this; this time
i used peppadew jack cheese. Grate the cheese and sprinkle it on top of the last layer of cottage cheese. Add pepper and thyme, and into the oven it goes.

Relax for a while with some music, preferably jazz but traditional Italian canti might be ok. Check the lasagna with a fork. Once it goes right through without a crunch, and the cheese on top has deliciously melted, it is done! Enjoy.

Serving suggestions: "A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane on the side, a bottle of New Grist, a sorghum and rice beer from Lakefront Brewery, Milwaukee, WI.

Honey, Bacon, and Peppers; or, North, South, East, and West.

Over four weeks have passed since a Swedish-Oklahoman meal was recorded here. While the postdoctorally employed mathematician behind the Swedish-Oklahoman Food Blog has eaten since mid-October (fried catfish for instance!), the simple meals he has cooked for himself have not been very interesting, and hence not blog-worthy.

One explanation for this month-long silence is that the math guy behind this blog has entered a migratory phase. He has already spent a week in New York, a weekend in Tulsa, he is heading for Chicago and Ann Arbor, MI, and he will spend Thanksgiving in Berkeley, CA. Pictures from these travels East, South, North, and West may be made available elsewhere. As might be expected, traveling is great fun, but not very conducive to food blogging. Traveling also seems make our blogger reflect on the impermanence of things in general, and his current station in life in particular. (And "My Station Will Be Changed After Awhile", as the title of one of John Fahey's most gorgeous explorations on Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death has it, so who knows what will happen.)

A blog entry featuring a discussion of this last topic (as well as drinking in New York and Stillwater, red leaves and abandoned warehouses in New Jersey, and assorted pretentious metaphors) was in fact drafted about two weeks ago, pictures and all, and then abandoned for various reasons. (Mostly because the writing was bad. The brussels sprouts themselves were delicious. Eat your sprouts, children!) It seems The Great Brussels Sprouts Blog Entry is destined to remain unreleased material---conceivably to be posthumously bootlegged and/or exploited as a bonus blog to appease the hungry public. But most probably not.

Instead we get tonight's entry, featuring bacon (always a good sign, it is an ingredient that efficiently counteracts pretentious ruminations), locally produced honey, and peppers grown by one of our blogger's colleagues in his Stillwater garden. We take this opportunity to thank our generous sponsor. The idea here is to make a dish that is sweet and hot at the same time, and allows our blogger to make good use of the local Oklahoma ingredients currently in his house. While the small green peppers look like jalapenos, they were actually very mild. But tasty nonetheless!

Ingredients:

3 strips of Bacon
assorted bell peppers
1 large onion
2 ripe tomatoes

olive oil
honey
salt and pepper
dried Ancho peppers
ground chili

rigatoni

Start with the bacon! Take three strips of bacon and cut them into little squares. Then, in a frying pan, cook the bacon. Turn the heat way up so that the bacon goes all crispy. Yum.

Meanwhile, chop up the onion. When you are happy with the bacon's crispiness, pour away the surplus
grease, leaving the fried bacon in the pan. (You may want to do something with the grease. I do not.) Add a little olive oil to the pan, then add the onion and two teaspoons of honey. Season with a little black pepper and keep the heat up.

Slice the peppers, then wait for a minute or two, and add them to the pan. Since the peppers I had were so mild, I added one dried Ancho pepper and a little chili powder to make this dish a little hotter. Eventually, when the onion and the peppers start getting brown around the edges, turn down the
heat a little.

Next, chop up the tomatoes, and make sure not to lose the precious tomato juice. You guessed it-no passed tomatoes this time either. Instead, add the tomato chop to the pan and turn down the heat to let the tomatoes dissolve slowly.

While the sauce is simmering, prepare the rigatoni to go with it. It is not difficult, but do make sure to serve the pasta al dente. When the pasta is done, check on the sauce. If it is not spicy-sweet enough for you (this depends on your preferences and the hotness of you peppers), give it a final spice-up before you serve it. Done!

Serving suggestions: "Tonight's the Night" by Neil Young on the side, a Sierra Nevada Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale from Chico, CA.

Simplicity; or, Roasted & Squashed.

This blog post can be considered an addendum of sorts to last week's entry, addressing the same autumnal themes and also involving seasonal vegetables. Autumnal. It is a beautiful adjective, and one that this blogger intends to work into his everyday vocabulary.

Last weekend, three Stillwater mathematicians decided to attend jazz saxophone player Joshua Redman's first performance in Oklahoma in the OSU concert hall. (You see, we do have interests outside of math. We really do.) Along with another faculty member, our blogging math nerd was invited to a colleague's house, just outside of town, for a pre-concert dinner. Very nice! This colleague turned out to be not only an expert in the field of representation theory, a great cook, and an excellent host-he is also the owner of a beautiful garden filled with all kinds of interesting trees. (One of the trees was originally a sapling found in the gutter in Cambridge, MA, another sprouted from a seed imported from China.)

In his garden, our host the professor grows all kinds of vegetables and herbs. What immediately attracted everybody's attention were the very attractively colored butternut squashes. They were clearly in a perfect state of ripeness, and just looked so wholesome and healthy, growing on their vines and absorbing all the best stuff there is in the Oklahoma soil. Eating such a squash must surely be good for you! Now, being a very friendly guy indeed, the host presented each of his two guests with a  squash as we were leaving. Ooo, yum!

Cooking butternut squash is really simple-just roast it! But the end result is a very interesting experience, rich in texture and taste.

Ingredients:

1 butternut squash
salt & pepper
butter

Admire the magnificent squash!  Let its prettiness and autumnal qualities sink in.

Then, cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Put the squash halves in a glass oven pan. Turn on the oven; make it pretty hot.

Put a teaspoon of butter where the seeds used to be, and place small pieces of butter along the length of the squash. Sprinkle salt and pepper on it, and into the oven it goes.

Wait for about 25-30 for the squash to be roasted. Read your favorite book, and listen to some relaxing music. (I reread David K. O'Hara's article about the British autumnal folk movement, featuring acts such as Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan, and Heron.) Check the squash with a fork. When it starts feeling soft, take it out and turn off the oven. Done!

Serving suggestions: "Singles" by New Order and a cup of tea.

Oh, and the Joshua Redman show was great! Make sure to check him out if he plays in your town.

This Way to Fall; or, Let's Make Use of the Oven.

It must be said that fall is beautiful in this part of the country. After a few cooler days, the temperature in Stillwater, OK, is back in the 85F range and the sun is shining out of a clear blue sky. Our postdoctorally employed blogger experienced a moment of pure contentment and happiness today as he was biking back from the grocery store. His backpack was full of goodies soon to be part of this blog entry, he was full of Pumpkin Spice Latte purchased at the in-store Starbucks, and the sun shone in his face as he made his way up McElroy Road. Perfection!

As the attentive reader will have noticed, our Swedish blogger continues to ride his bike to Food Pyramid.  Indeed, he rides it most everywhere, and no, he still does not own a car. As a matter of fact, he came close to buy one at the beginning of this week, but the fact that the vehicle in question seemed to have received a little "plastic surgery" following what must have been an accident made our automobileophobic blogger reconsider the purchase, especially in view reliability concerns voiced by a reliable mechanic.

His failure to acquire a car does have the positive side effect of leaving funds available for travel. (And the exercise he gets from biking also seems to be inhibiting the weight gain commonly associated with turning 30.) The coming two months will be a migratory period of sorts for our blogger. He will be visiting New York, Chicago, Ann Arbor, and San Francisco, in that order. To some of these cities he has been invited, to others, he has invited himself; some of the trips are work-related, some are mainly social calls.

Anyone who has followed our Polish-Swedish mathematicians past travels closely (eh, hello, mom and dad) will note that he he has been to all these places before. This is true; and in the meantime he has still not been to the Pacific Northwest, up in New England, or down in Mississippi and Louisiana-places he has wanted to visit for years! Reading Mason & Dixon has also made him want to go to Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. But this will all be remedied during spring, hopefully.

In any case, a perfect day in OK such as this cannot be considered complete without some good food and drink. Here is a dish this Swede has been making for years during fall, back in Sweden.

Ingredients:
5-6 potatoes
3-4 carrots
1 rutabaga, a.k.a. swede (yes, it is a little funny)
fresh haricots verts

feta cheese (chunk)

olive oil
thyme
salt and pepper
1 dried Ancho chili pepper

Peel the carrots if necessary, then cut them into reasonably sized pieces (carrot sticks used for dipping are a good guideline). Wash the potatoes (but do not peel them!), cut them into wedges. Peel the rutabaga, and then chop it up. Turn up your oven to mid temperature. Then, in a glass cooking pan, mix the potato wedges, carrot sticks, and rutabaga pieces with a generous quantity of olive oil. Season with lots of salt and pepper, and thyme. Add pieces of the dried chili pod. And then, into to oven the pan goes!

It will take a while for these roots & bulbs to be cooked. Sit back and relax, pour yourself a glass of nice wine or beer, and read a magazine. (In my case, the October issue of The Believer. Sewer bears, hah!)
Periodically, check the oven to see if the potatoes are turning golden brown and crispy.

When this does happen, remove the glass pan. Wash and add the haricots, and a little more salt, pepper, and thyme, and give the vegetables a good mixing. Put the pan back in the oven, and wait a little. When the haricots are look like they've been cooked, remove the pot once more. Cut the feta cheese into little cubes and sprinkle them on top of everything.

Put the pan back in the oven again, and watch it closely. You want the feta to melt just a little, or get a little crispy (what happens at this point really depends on the quality of the feta). As soon as this happens, turn off the oven, remove the pan, and serve steaming hot. Done!

Serving suggestions: "Turns into Stone" by Stone Roses on the side, a bottle of Southampton Publick House Pumpkin Ale from Latrobe, PA.

Goat Cheese and Spinach Non-Hipster Cooking; or, Reminiscing with Huskers & Hobgoblins

The writer of this blog routinely gets accused of being a hipster, by friends and new acquaintances alike. True fact, ladies and gentlemen. In his defense, our blogger wishes to draw your attention to the following facts:

1) He is a mathematician.

2) He lives in Oklahoma, not Brooklyn, NY.

Is the reader satisfied? Is our blogger off the hipster list? No? Ok then.

The writer of this blog has, on several occasions and by independent parties, also been accused of telling long, meandering stories that fail to captivate the listener, provoking instead a certain desire to, well, hit our narrator in the head. With a stick. Repeatedly. Well, as he is pushing thirty (fast!), he feels that he has earned a certain right to, on occasion, reminisce about the past in a semi-organized manner. Especially when it helps him elaborate on why he is not a hipster. And what better forum for this activity than a blog.

Sooo. In his childhood, our Swede spent a number of summers in Mississauga, ON. And these two-months-or-so long visits seem to have had a lasting effect (a fascination with the North American continent, a love of Reese's Peanut Butter cups and other American candies,  an inability to learn to pronounce the word "water" correctly (ie. BE) in school in Sweden). 

During one of these stays, in 1988 more precisely, our blogger learned to love Marvel comics! On a random visit to a record-and-comic book-store in a nearby mall, he bought a couple of issues of the Amazing Spider-Man-and he was hooked! (He also heard a certain, back then pretty new, record playing in the store; more about this later.) He spent the next 6 or so years reading as many titles as he could get his hands on in back Sweden (remember that ordering things on the internet was not yet possible, youngsters!) Mostly Spider-Man, some Silver Surfer, and a little X-Men. In fact, it would be fair to say that whatever our temporary Oklahoman knows about the English language, he learned from reading Spider-Man. He certainly did not speak it when he started out. And surely, dear readers, that is not the hallmark of a hipster? Reading about grown men in yellow jumpsuits tossing exploding pumpkins at grown men in red jumpsuits with spiderwebs glued on? Nah.

An aside: for an in-depth analysis of Spider-Man and his significance in popular culture, we refer the reader to http://www.spideykicksbutt.com/
Especially the essays beginning with
http://www.spideykicksbutt.com/SquanderedLegacy/SquanderedLegacyPart1.html
are masterpieces of Spider-Man writing.

If you are still not convinced, one might add that our old non-hipster later got his undergraduate degree in engineering physics. Unexpected, given the above, huh? Hipster or no, he learned many things during those years (as one usually does when one goes to college); in particular, he learned to cook the following dish. One or two of our readers may recognize it (I'm thinking f-man, f-mbl, f-mab and f-psu on this particular occasion.) 

Ingredients:

1 roll of French goat cheese

1 package of (organic) spinach

2 apples

1/2 package of half & half

walnuts

pepper

olive oil

rigatoni

pumpkin

Wash and dice the apples. In a frying pan, saute the apple cubes with the walnuts in a modest amount of olive oil. I used about half a of a small bag of walnuts. Wait until the apple pieces are brown around the edges, and then add the spinach. You might want to add a little olive oil.

Wait until the spinach is soft and stringy (but still green of course, you don't want to deep fry things). Now add a little half & half (I used about half a pint), and let the sauce simmer. In the meantime, crumble the goat cheese into small pieces. Then toss them into the sauce and stir to make the cheese dissolve. Add lots of pepper to the sauce (but no salt). A little brandy is optional (I didn't use any this time), but it was part of the original recipe. Let the sauce simmer.

In the meantime, cook the rigatoni. It is not difficult; as usual, make sure to serve the paste al dente. Pour the water, then pour the sauce onto the pasta and mix. Done!

Serving suggestions: "Warehouse: Songs and Stories" by Husker Du on the side (yes! the very record that was played in the store in the mall, and later accidentally purchased for $1 at a record sale in Mörby Centrum); a glass of Tres Suenos, a Pinot Grigio from Luther, OK. Pumpkin for show.

Live Orange; or Chicken Cuts the Mustard

It has been a while since our postdoctorally employed Swede in Stillwater, OK, last posted something on this food blog. "Has he not eaten since August?", we may ask ourselves, worriedly. Fortunately, he has. For instance, a recent trip to Austin, TX, featured chilled cucumber soup, country-style toast, delicious Mexican cuisine, agave syrup drinks, and some very fine margaritas, chips, and salsa at Takoba in East Austin. Some of these treats were sampled in restaurants, some of them were prepared by friends; all were great.

Now that our hero is back in Stillwater, where Oklahoma began (Apparently.  At least this is what a wall downtown maintains.), and he will be staying put for a while. Hence he needs to feed himself once more, and just as before he will share the results of his efforts on the internet. Unlike the previous posts, this one will not be vegetarian, for the following reason.

Today is game day here in Stillwater. The OSU Cowboys are playing Tulsa, people are tailgating, feasting on assorted barbecued meats and, well, Coors and Budweiser, and generally rooting for their team. Football is a big deal here! "Live orange" is one of the slogans of Oklahoma State University, and while the Swedish mathematician writing these lines does not know much about football, he likes the idea of supporting his home team by living, or at least, eating orange. But what should he eat?

Tags on huge SUV style cars parked in the lots close by politely offer "May we suggest beef?" I should think not, this blogger thinks to himself, vaguely disturbed by the concept of a pumped-up, beef-eating SUV. Carrots and oranges? "Not very supportive of your team, are you Mister?" But maybe, just maybe, fried chicken might work for us. But we want something orange with it. Ah!-bell peppers come in orange varieties. So why not make the mustard chicken pasta with peppers some of our blogger's friends in Sweden have been exposed to on numerous occasions? Perfect!

In the store, our wannabe blogger/math guy is reminded that it's pumpkin season-those things are everywhere! Pumpkins. Pumpkins are orange. Hm, he thinks, let's go past Brown's Bottles on the way on the way home... and get some pumpkin ale.

Ingredients:

2 chicken breast filets (organic)
2 orange (!) bell peppers
1 onion
16 oz. sour cream
1 jar of Dijon mustard

olive oil
salt
pepper

fettucini

Starts by cutting the chicken into reasonably thin strips. Then, in a frying pan, fry the chicken in a generous amount of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. We are handling chicken here, so you want to make sure it is properly cooked before proceeding to the next step. Wait until the chicken strips have a golden brown surface-but don't wait to long. You don't want to burn the chicken or let it go dry. Turn down the heat for a while if necessary.

In the meantime, chop up the onion and the (orange!) peppers. Let them go the way of the chicken, into the frying pan! Note how the peppers orangely liven up the pan.  Turn up the heat a little and fry the chicken, peppers and onions until the vegetables are soft. You may want to add some salt and pepper.

Now open the sour cream and add some; I used about half a 16 oz. package. You want a creamy but not runny sauce. Next, add the mustard using a spoon. Use lots of it and don't be afraid-it's supposed to be strong! I used up about 1/3 of a jar of good imported Dijon mustard. Then let the sauce simmer for a while.

In the meantime, prepare the fettucini. It is not difficult, but remember to serve the pasta al dente. Read the instructions on the package or trust your instincts; it should typically take about 10 minutes. Serve the pasta and the sauce in a bowl, or possibly on a plate. Done!

Serving suggestions: "Monster" by R.E.M. on the side, a "Chuck's Pumpkin Ale" by Battered Boar Brewing Co., Oklahoma City, OK. (It is brewed using pumpkins and pecans.)