Ilse's Kitchen - culinary adventures of a girl who loves to eat

Pytt i Panna is a Swedish one-pan dish made of meat, onions and potatoes - traditionally served with beetroot and a fried egg. It’s a classic leftover dish, and a great use for your leftover boiled potatoes. I used to have it a lot - a friend once served it to me on one of my visits to Sweden and I came to appreciate the hearty flavour combination - and the fact that this makes a great hangover meal. My local IKEA used to sell it in big bags in its frozen food section, which made it even more effortless than it already is. When one day my IKEA stopped selling it, I started making it from scratch myself. Ingredients: 240g potato, peeled and boiled and diced 2 medium-sized yellow onion, chopped medium-fine 200g smoked bacon, diced 2 small pre-boiled beetroot, sliced 2 eggs knob of butter or dash of olive oil Instructions: 1. If you’re particularly lazy like I was this evening, you’ll not only use pre-boiled beets, but pre-boiled potatoes. It saves you some time, but it’s n...

This one was a bit of an experiment for me (ok to be honest, when aren’t they though). I’d been looking up rainbow trout recipes for over two days waiting to find something that appealed, and somehow nothing was exactly doing it for me. Until I found this recipe from Passion Spoon. It was just quirky enough, just unusual enough, to be really really tempting. Surf and turf, in the lightest, most refreshing way possible. Ingredients (serves 2): For the trout: 2 rainbow trout 120g bacon cubes 1 1/2 orange, sliced (you’ll need 6-7 slices for each trout, 3-4 to lie it on top of, and 3 to top). For the orange salsa: handful fresh basil handful fresh parsley bit of mint 1 clove garlic, chopped (optional - leave it out if you don’t like garlic) 2 oranges, juice and zest 1/3 red onion, chopped 2-3 tbsp olive oil  salt and pepper (*I actually didn’t have any basil, so I used a bit more mint and then added a tablespoon of basil pesto, which I did have. That inadverte...

Baked potatoes are always good. And then there’s hasselback baked potatoes - a ridged version that you can dress up by sticking all sorts of interesting things between the slices. Like bacon. And cheese. And garlic. You get my drift: yummmmm. They make a pretty handsome dish too.  Ingredients (serves 2): 2 large sweet potatoes 6 strips bacon 50g grated cheese (I used Gouda) 150 g sour cream 1 tsp chives to top Garlic herb butter: 1 tbsp olive oil 3 tbsp unsalted butter 2 cloves garlic, minced 1/2 tbsp fresh garlic 1/2 tbsp fresh parsley Pinch of nutmeg, paprika, salt and pepper Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Instructions: 1. Clean and pat dry the sweet potatoes. Slice the sweet potatoes into about 3mm slices, as uniformly as possible, without slicing all the way through to the bottom (leave the bottom 1/4 of the potatoes unsliced so that the slices don’t separate from the potato altogether). 2. Stir together the herb butter ingredients. 3. Li...

In the heat of a crazy 42° Celsius summer day when I was living in Bilbao a decade back, I was browsing some Spanish cooking blogs and found an irresistible recipe by Ana from menorcana.com: melon soup. It’s served chilled, and sounded refreshing. It tastes much like the classic Italian melon and ham, but then in liquid form. Perfect for summers - or for bright sunny days like today (she writes as the sunshine pours in through freshly washed windows). Ingredients (serves 2): 400 honeydew melon 2 tablespoon fresh lemon juice salt and pepper 2 strips Parma or Serrano ham, or 2 rashers bacon Instructions: 1. Cut the peel off the lemon and slice into chunks. Throw into a blender and purée until smooth. Add lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste, then place in the fridge until chilled. 2. Fry the cured ham or bacon until the strips are crunchy. Put aside on kitchen paper to get rid of the excess grease and let cool. 3. Pour the melon 'soup' into the glasses. Slic...

In a world that seems increasingly rife with people with gluten intolerance or on no-carb diets, pasta and rice made out of vegetables is becoming more and more common. By now most of my local supermarkets sell one version or another. I don’t have a problem with carbs, or with gluten, but I think this is a pretty great development - even if only for the sake of helping us eat more of those recommended veggies. Veggies are good for the soul. Of course, while pre-cut supermarkt versions are ideal for those with little time, I’d still rather do it myself. And in this case, time saved wasn’t much of an issue (at all). This dish is on your plate in even less time than it takes to cook up a regular plate of pasta.  Ingredients (serves 2): 1 large courgette 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 100g bacon 1 teaspoon chili flakes Parmesan cheese Olive oil Instructions: 1. Wash the courgette, and slice into very thin spaghetti-like strips. No need to peel it first - the p...