Scandinavian Dinner with La Crema: Skyr Mousse with Wild Blueberries and Sweet Gingerbread Crumbs

This post is sponsored by La Crema Wines. All opinions here are my own. You can find the companion recipes over on the La Crema blog.

Apologies for the quiet here this past month. Things have been busy, and cooking, writing, and reflecting have fallen by the wayside a bit. We’ve got 24 days to go until our wedding, which is both insane and kind of a relief. I’m feeling rock solid about marrying Trevor, which is 99.9% of the battle, but there’s still a lot of miscellaneous stress associated with hosting a party for 50 with all kinds of societal and emotional strings attached. I’ve got a lot of thoughts on weddings at this point, but I’ll save those for a later date.

Today, what I’m here to talk about is this Scandinavian dinner menu – my latest collaboration with La Crema wines. It’s inspired by my recent trip to Iceland: in July I finally took advantage of Boston’s relative proximity to Scandinavia and spent a long weekend there. Iceland has been at the top of my travel wishlist for years and I was so excited to finally be in the land of moss-covered lava and epic waterfalls. I have to do a real travelogue at some point, but suffice it to say that the Icelandic landscape is incredible (and here’s a few teaser shots!). One moment we were driving through an alien landscape of hardened lava boulders tumbling into the sea, the next there were pockets of geyser steam rising up all around us, and then, suddenly, we were in the midst of fields of lupine in front of massive glaciers.

Iceland is known for being pretty expensive. I certainly found this to be true, particularly when it came to food. The silver lining to this was that the price differential between cheap food and fancy food was much smaller than it is here in the US. While a gas station hamburger could set you back $20, a three-course meal with wine at a top restaurant only cost $60. So despite the expense, we managed to have some very good meals. Our most memorable culinary experience was a 3 course dinner at Forettabarinn in Reykjavik. It was our final night as a group (and a semi-bachelorette celebration) after a long weekend of adventuring in South Iceland. The food was creative and well-executed, the wine was abundant, and the company was unbeatable. That lovely dinner served as the inspiration for this one.

There are three courses to this menu. First, a super-simple Smoked Salmon and Rye Crackers appetizer. Everyone should have a few minimal-effort, but still fancy-feeling appetizers in their repertoire. This should be one of them. The only “cooking” is to whip up a little cream with capers, slice a cucumber, and assemble. It’s also very portable, so guests can easily grab one of these and a glass of wine while mingling. On that note, the wine to open for this course is La Crema’s Monterey Chardonnay. Its bright acidity and smooth texture stands up nicely to the fatty, smoky salmon and rich caper cream.

The main event consists of two parts – Mashed Potato Waffles with Horseradish Sauce and Mustard-Thyme Pulled Leg of Lamb. I don’t think I’ve ever had lamb served BBQ style before my dinner at Forettabarinn, but it’s so wonderful. Ideally, I would have liked to use a slightly more economical and fattier lamb shoulder for this recipe, but I couldn’t find one at my butcher. The result was still good – tender, falling apart lamb, completely imbued with the flavors of mustard and wine and paprika. It was delicious on top of the potato waffles with a bit of horseradish sauce and grainy mustard. For this course, I opened a bottle of La Crema’s Monterey Pinot Noir and it was so good together! Just tangy and juicy and yum.

For dessert, I whipped up a light Skyr Mousse with Wild Blueberry Sauce and Gingerbread Crumbs. If you’re not familiar with it, skyr is Iceland’s answer to yogurt, only it’s thicker and tangier. Similar to Greek yogurt, it’s rich in protein and very trendy here in the US. To turn it into mousse, I incorporated whipped cream and a hint of sugar. It was such a treat – light and airy with a distinct tang from the skyr. It was also so simple to put together. The only other recipes I saw for skyr mousse involved a fussy gelatin method, but I opted for a much simpler treatment here – whip cream, whip skyr, fold together, serve. With the maple-blueberry sauce and a sprinkling of gingerbead cookie crumbs it’s a more-than-the-sum-of-it’s-parts dessert.

You can find the recipes for the first two courses on the La Crema blog: Smoked Salmon Rye Crackers with Caper Cream; Mashed Potato Waffles with Horseradish Sauce; and Mustard-Thyme Pulled Leg of Lamb. The Skyr Mousse with Wild Blueberries recipe is below!

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Skyr Mousse with Wild Blueberries and Sweet Gingerbread Crumbs

A simple skyr-based mousse made from whipped cream and thick, yogurt-like Icelandic skyr. Served with wild-blueberry sauce and gingerbread crumbs.

Inspired by dinner at Forettabarinn

Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
Yield: 4 1x

Scale

Ingredients

1 cup wild Maine blueberries, fresh or frozen
1/4 cup maple syrup
juice from 1/2 lemon
1 cup heavy cream, chilled
4 TBS sugar
1 cup plain or maple flavored skyr (Icelandic yogurt), chilled
1.5 oz. gingerbread cookies, preferably Anna’s Swedish Thins
1 TBS brown sugar

Instructions

Place the blueberries, maple syrup, and lemon juice in a small saucepan and stir to mix. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium-low heat. Simmer the berries until they have burst and released their juices and the sauce is slightly syrupy, about 8-10 minutes. Keep a close eye on them to be sure they don’t burn. Remove from the heat, transfer the blueberry sauce to a storage container, and chill thoroughly.
To make the mousse, whip the heavy cream on high until stiff peaks have formed. Add the sugar and beat for a few seconds longer, just to incorporate the sugar into the cream. In a separate bowl, beat the skyr for 30 seconds until it is lightened slightly. Add half of the whipped cream to the skyr and use a spatula to gently fold together. Repeat with the remaining half of the whipped cream, folding just enough to mix the two together. Don’t overfold or your mousse may deflate. Chill the mousse until ready to serve.
Place the gingerbread cookies and the brown sugar in a small food processor and pulse several times to make crumbs. Set crumbs aside.
To serve the mousse, drizzle the chilled blueberry sauce on top of the mousse. Sprinkle with the gingerbread crumbs. Serve immediately

Salmon en Papillote with Dill Butter

March is a hard month for cooking. It feels like it should be spring – we’re so ready for the sunshine and for green to return to the trees! And, perhaps more pressing, we are ready for winter to be over. Even though I escaped Boston for 5 weeks in January and early February, I’m still ready for it to be over. We’ve had a handful of sunny days this month, but here in Massachusetts, it’s still very much winter. As evidenced by the windchill of -6°F this weekend and the Nor’easter bearing down on us today.

By extension, March is a hard month for food blogging. There’s no local produce to inspire, no major food holidays. Just a craving for summer mixed with the reality of winter. In past years, I’ve posted everything from Butternut Squash Carbonara to Apple Cider Doughnuts to Strawberry Balsamic Salad – no seasonal cohesion to speak of.

It’s a transitional eating period, but instead of the abundance of September and October, we’re left with the dregs of the root cellar. We’re still at least a month away from the first tender greens and peas. We’re no longer excited about brussels sprouts and squash. All we want is the first cocktail-on-the-porch Saturday afternoon.

So this year, I’m making a concerted effort to come up with and share recipes that are appropriate for March. Recipes that are warm and nourishing without being heavy and rich. Recipes that shift towards spring without leaving you unsatisfied. They all have an element of brightness. I hope they will help inspire you in the kitchen this month while we wait patiently for spring.

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Hoegaarden Seafood Dinner: Popcorn Shrimp, Ale-Steamed Mussels, and Salmon B.L.A.T.s

Wheat ales are hands down my favorite beers, and I particularly love Belgian ones. I love the hints of sweetness and citrus, the light body and easy drinkability. I know you all see a lot of wine around here, but there are days when a beer is so much more refreshing and casual and somehow just better. And on those days, nine times out of ten I am reaching for a Belgian wheat ale, and I’m never disappointed with my choice. So partnering with Hoegaarden (pronounced “who-gar-den”!), a brewery that has been brewing wheat ales in Belgium for almost 600 years, was an excellent chance to spend time working with a beer made by true experts of my favorite brewing style.

Light, citrusy wheat ales are a great match for seafood dishes, and since I’ve been building my seafood recipe repertoire after a lifetime of avoiding eating it at all costs (you can read more about that particular piece of my history here and here if you’re curious…), coming up with a few new recipes to pair with Hoegaarden was a fun challenge. When I think of seafood and beer, my thoughts immediately skew to summertime – images of seafood shacks lining long sandy beaches, the scent of just-greasy-enough fish sandwiches and French fries wafting over the dunes, frosty brown bottles brought to your lips while you survey the ocean through sunglasses, everything sparkling and blown out in tones of blue and blonde. But it’s October, and October in New England is all coziness and sweaters and crunching through leaves. How could I take that easy breezy summer beach feeling and make it appropriate for fall?

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Italian Seafood Dinner with La Crema

For the first 25 years of my life, I abhorred seafood. All of it. Yes, including lobster. Yes, including shrimp. I’ve written about it before so I won’t rehash it again. Suffice it to say, that through travel and the necessity of eating what’s available/local/good, I got over it. And in the past few months, the amount – and variety – of seafood that I eat has grown exponentially. I just got home from a week in Portugal where, not only did I eat some form of seafood every day, I ate, and loved, octopus, squid, and scallops. My mother wouldn’t recognize the girl who used to cry through meals when a “no thank you portion” of baked cod sat sadly on her plate.

This summer, I’ve been cooking lots of seafood at home, too – perhaps to make up for lost time, or perhaps because it just goes so well with a chilled glass of white wine. To celebrate my newfound love of seafood, I put together a little Italian seafood dinner paired with three La Crema wines. It’s the sort of meal that demands to be eaten outside at the end of a hot, sunny day, when the sun is just beginning to slip behind the trees and the breeze picks up again. It’s also the sort of meal that should be lingered over, with plenty of conversation and several bottles of wine on ice, within arm’s reach. It’s slow food. Continue reading →

Nights for One // Salmon, Asparagus, and Roasted Potato Salad with Pesto Dressing

While Trevor works on his Comp-Sci masters, he’s started working part time, primarily hosting at a local restaurant. Unfortunately for me, he works nights, which means I suddenly have an abundance of evenings to myself. I’d much rather have him to hang out with, but I’ve been trying to make the most of it by alternatively being productive and indulging in things I wouldn’t otherwise. One night last week, one of the indulgent nights, I was flicking through Amazon Prime looking for something to watch, and Out of Africa popped up, with a little footnote saying it was leaving Prime at the end of the month. I knew nothing about the movie, other than that it was old, and that it had Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, so I figured I’d watch it and write at the same time. Needless, to say, the writing didn’t happen – I was not prepared for how sexy an eighties movie about Africa could be! All this to say, if you have any recommendations for more movies I can watch on my solo nights in, preferably accompanied by a big salad and a glass of chardonnay, send them my way. I’m planning on enjoying my nights for one as much as possible.

Solo dinners at home have proved to be mostly positive for my diet – I’m much less likely to cook something major when it’s just me (although I will admit that I also feel less guilty ordering take-out). This salad is inspired by the spring offerings at Sweetgreen, an establishment I have a love-hate relationship with. How do they continually get me to pay $12 for a salad? Why do people wait in line for over an hour when you can order online 15 minutes ahead of time and walk in front of those poor suckers waiting in line, glaring at you? Why is it that their salads are so much better than any other salad offering within walking distance of my office? Whatever the answers, I love the new combination of salmon, new potatoes, and asparagus that they offer. I took it a step further at home, adding a pesto dressing, feta cheese and a soft-boiled egg. It’s not the world’s lightest salad – I wanted the potatoes almost poached in olive oil – but it’s got lots of good nutrients, it’s seasonal, and it makes a very satisfying meal. And it goes really nicely with Meryl Streep movies.

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Salmon, Asparagus, and Roasted Potato Bowl with Pesto Dressing

Inspired by Sweetgreen. Serves 4.

4 small Yukon Gold potatoes, washed and cut into 1/4 inch round slices
1/4 c. plus 1 TBS olive oil
sea salt and pepper to taste
1 lb. salmon fillet, deboned
4 large eggs
1 bunch of fresh asparagus, woody ends trimmed
4 oz. feta cheese
8 oz. fresh spinach or arugula
pesto salad dressing, such as this, or store-bought pesto thinned with olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Toss the sliced potato rounds with the 1/4 c. of olive oil and spread in a single layer on a roasting pan. Season with salt and pepper, and roast until tender, about 20-25 minutes, flipping potatoes once halfway through cooking. Remove the potatoes from the oven and set aside.
Increase oven temperature to 425°F. Line a small roasting pan with tin foil. Drizzle half of the 1 TBS of olive oil on the tin foil, then place salmon fillet skin side down on foil. Drizzle remaining olive oil on top of fillet and season with salt and pepper. Roast until cooked through, about 12-15 minutes depending on the thickness of your fillet.
Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Reduce heat so water is at a rapid simmer, and gently add eggs. Set timer for 6 minutes. Remove the eggs precisely at 6 minutes with a slotted spoon and run under cold water. Once eggs have reached room temperature, peel eggs and set aside.
Add the asparagus to the simmering water that you cooked the eggs in. Simmer the asparagus until bright green, about 2-3 minutes, then remove the pot from the heat, drain the asparagus, and rinse with cold water. Set asparagus aside.
To assemble the salads, divide spinach or arugula between plates. Top with a generous piece of roasted salmon, a few potatoes, the blanched asparagus, and a sprinkling of feta cheese. Drizzle with pesto dressing and serve immediately.

Katie at the Kitchen Door

Globally-inspired, seasonal recipes

Tagged with salmon