Jansson's Temptation (Janssons Frestelse)

One of the most charming Swedish traditions is vickning.  To understand the tradition, you have to understand that Swedes are enthusiastic drinkers when at parties and a good party will go on until the wee hours of the morning.  To help soak up the alcohol and to politely signal the end of the party, a small fat laden meal will be served.  Usually a vickning has at least one warm dish, along with the ubiquitous hard bread and cheese.  A luxurious vickning may have some hot meatballs or sausages along with a delicious hot  creamy potato casserole, Janssens Temptation.  A portion of Jannsens is a perfect armor for facing the elements on the way home on a cold snowy night.

Janssens Tempation is not only traditional for a vickning, but is also present on the Swedish smorgasbord.  Although, Janssens is rarely served in Sweden as a side dish for a normal meal, I think it is delicious on its own for dinner, served with a green salad.  It would also be a fine dish to accompany slices of ham or a meatloaf.

The subtle flavor of this dish is from tinned Swedish ansjovis fillets. While the obvious translation would be anchovies, the fish are actually sprats, a kind of small herring.  They are pickled in sugar and salt and flavored with spices.  This spice mixture is what gives the casserole its characteristic flavor.  If you don't live in Sweden then you can find ansjovis at IKEA or at specialty shops. These days, you can buy them on-line, as well.  If you cannot get the Swedish kind, do not despair.  Use about half of a small tin of regular anchovies in oil, discarding the oil.  Then mix 1/8 teaspoon cloves, 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/8 teaspoon ginger, and one teaspoon of sugar, with a tablespoon of vinegar and a tablespoon of water. Sprinkle this mixture in the recipe instead of the tinned juices.

If the idea of fish marinated in spices sounds strange and perhaps not appetizing, ignore those thoughts.  The finished dish has a subtle savory flavor and is not at all overpowering.  

6 medium sized potatoes (about 1 kilo)

2 large yellow onions

1 (4 1/2 ounce) tin Swedish ansjovis fillets

1 to 2 cups cream

4 to 6 tablespoons dry bread crumbs

2 tablespoons butter

Preheat oven to 425F (200C).  Butter a 2 quart shallow baking dish.

Peel potatoes and cut into slices, and then again lengthwise, so that you have stick-shaped pieces.  Peel onions and cut off either end.  Cut into half, length-wise, and then slice into strips.  Chop the anchovy fillets into little pieces, reserving the juice.

Put half of the potatoes in the dish.  Top with half of the onions.  Sprinkle the anchovy over the mixture.  Then, layer on the rest of the onions and then the potatoes.  Sprinkle the juice from the anchovy tin over the casserole.  Pour in cream until it is about 3/4 way up the potatoes.  Sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the top in a nice even layer.  Chop up the butter into little bits and sprinkle on the top.  

Bake in the oven for 45 to 50 minutes until the potatoes are tender and the top is browned.  This dish can be made up to two days in advance and re-heated.  In fact, it is actually better if you make it the day before and re-heat it.  The cream is absorbed into the potatoes and the flavors will beautifully meld.

Cauliflower Cheese

Today I saw a gorgeous cauliflower at the market which screamed at me, "Cauliflower cheese!" This is a classic English dish that I first had when living in London.  The dish is simply cauliflower covered with a cheese sauce and breadcrumbs and baked briefly to get a nice crunchy surface.  The taste is smooth and mild and comforting.  I like to toss in some pasta which allows for maximum usage of all the luscious sauce.  Some crusty bread to mop up the sauce would serve the same purpose.

For the sauce, I decided to use my new favorite combination of cheese, namely, cheddar, parmesan and American, which I use for my macaroni and cheese recipe.  The classic is just to use all cheddar.  I usually use whatever combination of cheeses that I have in the refrigerator at the time.

Serves 4 as a main course

1 large head of cauliflower

½ cup breadcrumbs or pankko
250 grams pasta of your choice

Cheese Sauce

About 30 grams

3 tablespoons flour

half a liter Milk

200 grams Cheddar cheese plus a handful to sprinkle over
100 grams parmesan
5 slices American cheese

A couple shakes of Worsteshire sauce

1 teaspoon Mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

Take the cauliflower and cut off the dry end of the stem.  If there are any leaves still attached to the head, you can leave them on if they are nice and fresh, or cut them off if they are starting to get dried out.  Put the cauliflower whole into a big pot and fill with water at least halfway up the side of the cauliflower.  Add a generous amount of salt into the water, put on a lid and bring to a boil.  Throw the pasta into the pot. Let the cauliflower cook for the amount of time it takes to cook the pasta (around ten minutes) or until it is tender.  Using a large spoon, carefully take out the cauliflower and place into a baking dish.  Drain the pasta and pour it around the cauliflower.

While the cauliflower is cooking, make a standard white sauce.  In a saucepan, melt the butter and then add the flour.  Stir and cook for two to three minutes to get the raw taste out of the flour.  Add the milk slowly, stirring all the time until all the milk is added and there are no large lumps.  Don’t worry if there are a few small ones.  These will melt away as you stir.  Use a wire whisk if you feel the lumps aren’t going away fast enough.  Bring the milk to a boil, stirring continuously.  If you want this process to go faster, then heat the milk up before you add it to the pot.  Once the milk comes to a boil, cook it for a further two minutes until the sauce is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.  If you feel it is too thick, you can add a bit more milk (or the water that the cauliflower was cooked in).  Add the cheese, the mustard, a few shakes of Worsteshire sauce, and salt and pepper to taste.  Stir until the cheese melts, taste, and adjust the seasoning.

Drain the cauliflower and put it in a baking dish (or use the pot that you boiled the cauliflower in, if it is oven-safe) to go into the oven.  You can either put in the cauliflower whole, which will make a nice presentation, or you can break it up into pieces, which will give you a higher crust ratio.  Pour the cheese sauce over the cauliflower. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs and cheese over.

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Put the dish into the oven with the broiler and bake until the top is browned (about 10 minutes).

Options:  Sometimes I like to put some sliced tomatoes into this, in which case I lay the slices over the top of the cauliflower.

If you want the dish extra luscious, you can whizz up some fresh breadcrumbs, add a slug of olive oil and some fresh rosemary and throw this on top.

Kladdkaka “Sticky Cake”

This cake is a Swedish classic and it can be found in most cafés, is served frequently for dessert at parties, and a quick version can be found in the freezer section of the grocery store.  It is very similar to an American brownie in texture, being slightly sticky in the center.  Like a brownie, it can easily be overcooked, in which case it will be a more ordinary chocolate cake, still delicious, but not a kladdkaka!  This version is from Lelia Lindholm, a Swedish baker, whose cookbook is one of my favorites. It is a simple recipe and is the best version of this cake that I have tasted.

It is so simple, that have relinquished the baking of this cake to my son Oscar.  Oscar and his friend Konrad whipped up the batch in these photos and had a great time doing it.

50 grams butter

½ deciliter cooking oil

2 eggs

2 deciliters sugar

1 deciliter granulated brown sugar (raw sugar)

2.5 deciliters flour

4 teaspoons cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla (or vanilla sugar)

1 pinch salt

50 grams dark chocolate  (use a good eating chocolate here)

Get into all the nooks and crannies when buttering the pan.

Put the butter in a bowl and melt it in the microwave, usually about one minute.  When the butter is melted, mix with the cooking oil, and set aside

In another bowl, beat the eggs, and two types of sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy.  Stir in the butter and oil mixture.  Add the flour, baking powder,cocoa powder, vanilla, and salt and stir the batter until well incorporated.

This recipe makes one cake but the boys doubled it.

Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan.  Chop the dark chocolate into small pieces and sprinkle over the cake batter.

Bake the cake for about 30 minutes.  When testing the cake, it should be still sticky in the center.  The cake will puff up, but then as it cools it will fall in the middle.  This is totally normal, so don't freak out.

Serve with whipped cream.

Quintessential Mac and Cheese

Gustaf and I decided to walk the perimeter of Sodermalm a couple of weeks ago, stopping at the Hornstull Marknad for sustenance along the way.  This market is a great place to try out the latest food trucks, including some of my favorites including burritos at The Good Gringo, sliders at Flippin Burgers, and crepes at Bon Coin. On this occassion, there was a lovely couple with a table set up serving macaroni and cheese.  It was such an unlikely thing to find at a Swedish market, we had to try it.  And it was wonderful.  Really wonderful.  Cheesy and creamy but not too rich.  It had a bread crumb topping and to top it all off, they drizzled it with some truffle oil and put some grated truffled cheese on top.  It made us very happy.  So happy, that I was a bit annoyed. OK, really annoyed. Up to this point, I had felt that I made a pretty good mac and cheese.  But this mac and cheese blew mine away.  Clearly I had to up my game.

On our walk, Gustaf and I discussed the qualities that made this mac and cheese wonderful. We decided that the following items were key:
1) The pasta needed to be cooked slightly past al dente.  Not mushy but yielding.
2) For crunch, buttery toasted bread crumbs for a topping
3) The cheese sauce needed to be silky and rich tasting but still mild with a good mouth feel. How would we achieve this?  I have always used a good quality aged cheddar for my sauce.  But in fact, cheddar is not a great melting cheese.  It has a grainy quality that keeps the sauce from being silky.  Finally, we decided that if we used a combination of aged cheddar, parmesan, and plain trashy American cheese, we might hit the right flavor and mouth feel.

Here is how we did it:

Serves 4 to 6 persons

Bread crumb topping:
3 to 4 slices white bread
25 grams butter
1/4 teaspoon dried herbs (like rosemary or thyme) or 1/2 teaspoon finely minced fresh herb
a pinch of salt

Cheese Sauce:
50 grams butter
5 tablespoons flour
3/4 liters milk
250 grams grated cheddar
100 grams grated parmesan
5 slices American cheese
1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard
salt and peppar to taste

500 grams pasta
Truffle oil, for an optional garnish

Make the toasted crumbs:
Prepare the crumbs by putting the bread in a food processor and blitzing until you have fine crumbs.  Mix the bread crumbs and herbs and salt together.  You can toast the crumbs in the oven or in a pan on the stove.
For on the stove:  Put the butter in the pan, with the heat turned up high.  When the butter is melted, add the breadcrumb mixture and toss until the crumbs are coated with butter.  Stir the bread crumbs in the pan until they are lightly browned and toasted.
In the oven:  Melt the butter in the microwave or in a small pan on the stove and toss the butter, breadcrumbs, salt, and herbs together until all the crumbs are coated in butter.  Pour the mixture onto a baking sheet and put in the oven at the highest heat or with the broiler/grill on.  Cook, stiring occasionally, until the crumbs are a golden brown, making sure you keep a close eye so that they don't work.
Set the crumbs aside to cool.

Cook the pasta:
Put a big pot of water to boil.  When the water comes to a boil, add a generous amount of salt and the pasta.  Bring the water back to a boil and cook it for the time as directed on the pasta box.  Taste the pasta and cook it one to two minutes longer, so that it is slightly past the al dente stage.  Drain, the pasta, reserving a cup of the pasta water, in case you want to thin the pasta sauce.

Making the cheese sauce:
While the pasta is cooking, you can make the sauce.  First grate all the cheeses and set aside.

With a pot on medium heat, melt the butter.  Add the flour to the butter and stir until combined.  Continue stirring for a few minutes. Add the milk and stir quickly with a whisk to get out the lumps. As you add the milk, the sauce will thicken quickly.  Just keep stirring. Don't worry if the sauce seems a bit grainy.  As you continue to stir, the sauce will become smoother.  Continue stirring until the milk comes to a boil and thickens.  I alternate between a whisk to keep the sauce smooth and a spoon to scrape the bottom of the pan.

Once the sauce starts to boil, turn down the heat to low and add the cheeses, a pinch of salt and mustard.  Whisk until the cheeses are melted.  Taste and adjust the salt and add a bit of pepper.

Pour the cheese sauce over the pasta and mix until all the pasta is coated.  If the sauce seems to thick for your taste, then it with a bit of the preserved pasta water.

To serve, scoop out some of the mac and cheese into a bowl. Sprinkle with truffle oil, if desired.  Sprinkle on a generous portion of buttered crumbs.  Eat while hot.

Chinese Cold Sesame Noodles

I am not sure how Chinese these noodles are but they serve them at every hole in the wall Chinese take-away place in New York city. 

These should be eaten from a paper cartoon, in your pajamas, with your best friend, watching TV or perhaps having a good gossip.  Shoebox-sized, cockroach infested apartment, optional.

½ pound (250 grams) dried egg noodles

2 teaspoons sesame oil

1 cucumbers, peeled, and cut into fine strips

1 carrot, peeled and cut into fine strips

A few cabbage leaves, cut into fine strips

2 scallions, trimmed and minced

¼ cup minced cilantro

1/2 cup tahini

1/2 cup peanut butter

2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar

1 1/2 cup chicken broth 
(or water with one chicken bouillon cube)

2 teaspoon soysauce

1 to 2 tablespoons sugar, depending on how sweet your peanut butter is

Black pepper to taste

Red chili flakes, to taste

Boil the noodles in a large pot of salted water until tender. Drain, and fill the pot of noodles with cold water, and then drain again.  Toss the noodles with sesame oil.  Cover and put in the refrigerator.

In a large bowl, combine the tahini, peanut butter, rice vinegar,
 chicken broth, sugar, black pepper and red chili flakes.  Whisk until smooth.  Taste and adjust the seasonings.  You can add a teaspoon more soy sauce if it needs more salt.

Add the cold noodles and toss until well coated.  Add the cucumbers, carrot, scallions, cabbage and cilantro.  Toss well and serve cold.

If you are planning to make this ahead of time, toss the noodles with a quarter of the sauce, so that it can soak in and flavor the noodles.  Save the rest of the sauce and the vegetables and toss together right before serving.  If you toss it all together, then the noodles will soak up much of the sauce and the dish will be a bit dry.

Apple and Blackberry Cake

Autum has decidedly arrived here in Stockholm.  I love these cold crisp days, particularly when the sun is out as it has been this past week.  This last weekend, Oscar and I went over to Farfar's house and picked the last of his blackberries and filled a basket with glorious red apples.

The Swedes use the word mysig to describe the feeling of coming into a warm house, after a fresh day outdoors, curling up on the sofa in front of a warm fire. Clearly a cake enhances the mysig feeling!

This is a homely cake with a rich buttery crumb, covered in spiced apples interspersed with a tart spurt from the blackberries. The edges are a bit browned and crispy, while the inside is tender. The batter is a cinch to whip up.  The only fiddly bit is peeling and cutting the apples and arranging them neatly over the batter.  You can certainly make this cake with only apples, which I do often.  It would also taste lovely with pears and raspberries.

About 8 to 9 slices

8 tablespoons butter (225 grams), at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 to 3 apples, preferably of a sour cooking variety

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon cardamom

1/3 cup golden granulated sugar

1 cup blackberries

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190C).  Generously butter an 8 inch square baking dish. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy.  Add the eggs and beat until well incorporated.  Add the flour, baking powder, salt

and vanilla.  Beat until all ingredients are mixed in.  The batter will very thick. Spread the batter into the baking dish, making sure that the corners are filled.

Peel the apples, slice into

quarters and take out the cores.  Slice each apple quarter into three or four slices, depending on how large your apple is.  Put the apple pieces into a bowl and add the cinnamon, cardamom and golden sugar.  Mix so that each

slice of apple is coated.

Press the apple slices into the cake batter in an overlapping patter in 3 to 4 rows.  Sprinkle the blackberries over the top.   If the blackberries are very sour, you can sprinkle a tablespoon more golden sugar on top of them. Bake for about 45 minutes, until the cake is golden brown, darker at the edges and a knife pressed into the batter comes out clean.  Serve warm or at room temperature. Gild the lily with a dollop of whipped cream or a drizzle of custard sauce.

P.S. Sorry about the terrible format!  The editor on blogspot seems to get worse and worse.

Swedish Cabbage Pudding (Kålpudding)

The other day, I was was at the absolutely lovely Ulriksdal slottsträdgården which is a huge kitchen garden where you can pick your own vegetables and herbs, as well as apples and berries.  As well as the gardens, they have a beautiful set of greenhouses where they sell plants and garden accesseries. Last but certainly not least, they have a great cafe where they have a vegetarian brunch which is cooked with the vegetables they grow in their own garden.  It is a very happy place.  I had my eye on some beautiful artichokes but they were all gone!  So, I settled for some corn and a beautiful cabbage.

With the weather here in Stockholm becoming colder and the rains starting, classic Swedish dishes start sounding very tempting.  So, I used my cabbage in a classic, very-old fashioned dish, Kålpudding. If you are a fan of cabbage rolls, then you will have an idea of how this tastes, since it is basically like a big huge cabbage roll.

In Sweden, cabbage rolls are called kåldolmar, after the Turkish dolmar using grape leaves.  The earliest Swedish recipe for dolmar is in a famous cookbook by Cajsa Warg in 1765 version, which I just happened to receive a few weeks ago in a suprise gift from my husband.  I really love kåldolmar, but it is a lot of work making all those little bundles, so imagine my joy when I came across this recipe from my favorite Leif Mannerström in "The Art of Home Cooking."

Kålpudding eptimizes what I love about Swedish cooking; taking humble ingredients, in this case mainly cabbage, potato and minced meat and turning it into something delicious.  As is often the case with these old-fashioned recipes, cooking with love can be time consuming.  So, while there is nothing difficult about this recipe, preparing the cabbage is time consuming.  But still, puttering around in the kitchen for an hour or two on a weekend is a small price to pay for deliciousness.

Here is my recipe, slightly adapted from Mannerströms:

Serves 4 to 6 persons

800 grams to 1 kilo of mixed beef and pork ground meat (blandfärs)
1cabbage head (white or Savoy)

1 large onion
1 medium sized boiled potato
2 dl milk
1 dl dried breadcrumbs
2 eggs
6 tablespoons soysauce
2 tablespoons syrup (ljus sirap, light corn syrup, or golden syrup)
2 tablespoons concentrated veal stock (kalvfond)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
butter for frying and garnishing
salt and pepper to taste

First put a big pot of water to boil that will fit your cabbage.  Core the cabbage by taking a narrow knife and carving out the car at the bottom.  Some of the outer leaves will fall out as you do this, and that is fine.  Add some salt to your boiling water and put in the cabbage head, including the outer leaves.  Cook for 10 to 15 minutes (closer to 15 if it is a white cabbage) until the cabbage has softened.  (If you do not have a leftover cooked potato, then you can add a peeled potato to the water.  Depending on the size, it may take about 20 minutes to cook) Take out the cabbage and let it drain and cool slightly. Remove each leaf carefully and cut out the hard central core.  Set the leaves aside, saving the core bit and the tiny leaves at the center.

Coring the cabbage.  It is not a precise art.

After boiling, separate each leaf, and cut out the thickest part of the vein.

A nice pile of leaves when you are done.

In a large bowl, put in the boiled potato and mash it with a fork.Add the breadcrumbs and the milk.  Stir and set aside to allow the breadcrumbs to absorb the milk.

Not very pretty but it will taste good.

Chop your onion finely and chop up the leftover cabbage bits.  Fry the onion and the cabbage in a blob of butter until it is soft and the mixture is just starting to get some color.

Onion and leftover cabbage bits frying.

In your bowl with the breadcrumb mixture, add the meat, the soysauce, the kalvfond, the syrup, the two eggs, and the onion mixture.  Add a generous grinding of pepper. Mix it well with a spoon.  In the frying pan, take a small blob of the meat mixture, fry it up and taste it and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Mixing the meat mixture with all the ingredients.

Get out a springform pan, if you want it to look elegant.  Otherwise you can use any kind of caserole dish.

In the frying pan, add a blob more butter.  Fry each cabbage leaf quickly on both sides.  They are done when they just start to wilt a bit more and get a tiny bit of color.  This is a fiddly job and takes a bit of time to fry all the leaves, but don't skip this step.  If you don't do it, the cabbage will not cook sufficiently and you will have hard cabbage not melt-in-your-mouth cabbage.

Fry each cabbage leaf on both sides until there is a slight big of color.

Put a layer of cabbage leaves at the bottom of your baking dish, roughly a third of the leaves.  Add half of the meat mixture and smooth it down, pressing it to make sure it is level and covering the whole dish.  Put in another layer of cabbage leaves and then the rest of the meat.  Put in a final layer of cabbage, saving some nice large leaves for the top.  Smear a bit of butter on the top and give it a nice grinding of pepper.  Then sprinkle some brown sugar on top. This may feel strange, but believe me that the sweetness goes beautifully with the cabbage.

Add the cabbage and meat in layers.

Ready to cook after a smear of butter and a sprinkle of sugar.

Put in the oven at 200 degrees C (400F) and cook for about 40 to 45 minutes in the lower half of the oven.  If you are using the springform pan, set it in another pan, just in case some of the juices leak out.  Check the pudding half way through to make sure that it is not burning on the top since the sugar will carmelize.  If you feel it is browning too fast on the top, you can put a piece of foil over it. It should be beautifully browned on top from the carmelized sugar.

The finished pudding! It looks a bit funny because I had some dark green leaves mixed with some light yellow leaves.

Let it sit for 10 minutes or so, and then remove the rim and serve it in wedges, hot.  Traditionally, Swedes would serve lingon jam with it and boiled potatoes.

This dish can be made in advance and then re-heated before serving.

Eat it with lingon if you are Swedish!

Swedish Meatballs with Cream Sauce and Homemade Stirred Lingon

Last weekend, the family was in the forest looking for mushrooms. We got a nice bunch of chanterelle but the forest was too dry for anything more.  To make up for the somewhat dissapointing haul, I decided to pick some lingon and make my own "rårorda" lingon, which roughly translates as "raw stirred". It was easy and satisfying to make the lingon conserve, although it took a bit of arm work stirring until the sugar dissolved. My solution to that was to make my son do it.

Gustaf loooooves stirring lingon.

And with the lingon, what should we have?  Why, meatballs, of course.  Meatballs are probably the most well-known of Swedish dishes.  And they are definately delicious.  They are made with a combination of pork and beef, which makes them both mild and juicy.  Served with a creamy sauce and eaten with the lingon, and mashed potatoes, it is one of my favorite meals.

These days, most Swedes buy their meatballs pre-made.  And while the store bought ones are pretty good, it is a pity because home-made meatballs are a treat.  They are not hard to make but they do take a little time because of all the rolling into balls.  Plus, you have to fry them up in batches.  Put the whole family to work rolling and frying, and mashing potatoes and you will all feel happy and content as you sit down to a great meal.

About 60 meatballs, serves 6 persons

Meatballs:

1 pound (500 grams) ground pork

1 pound (500 grams) ground beef
1 large yellow onion

½ cup dried breadcrumbs

2 eggs, beaten

1 ½ cups milk

½ teaspoon brown sugar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

2 tablespoons concentrated

veal stock (kalv fond)

Salt and pepper to taste

Cream Sauce:

1 cup cream

1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon flour

soysauce and/or kalv fond to taste

In a large bowl, pour in the breadcrumbs, milk, sugar, soy sauce and concentrated veal stock.  (If you don’t have the veal stock, skip it and add in a teaspoon of salt). Stir and let stand so that the crumbs soak up the milk.  Meanwhile, chop the onion finely.  Make it as fine as you can be bothered to do.  As these are meatballs, if you have large pieces they will stick out of your meatballs.  Put a pan on the stove and put in a generous knob of butter.  When the butter is hot, add in the onions and cook for a few minutes until they have softened.

 

Breadcrumbs, flavorings and milk don't look yummy.

Softening the onions.

Add the eggs, meat, onions, and a good grinding of pepper, to the breadcrumb mixture and mix until well combined.

It looks like a lot of liquid but it will all mix in.

I use my hands to mix it, if I am in a hurry.

Check the seasoning of your mixture by frying a bit of it in the pan and tasting it.  Adjust the salt and pepper, if needed. Shape the mixture into round balls, about walnut sized.  You can make the meatballs bigger, but the downside is they take longer to cook and it is hard to get them to cook nicely in the middle before the outside burns.

Fry the meatballs in butter, in several batches. Shake the pan frequently to get the meatballs as round as possible.  In between each batch, rinse out the pan with a bit of water, reserving the juices for the gravy.  I usually put the finished meatballs in a serving dish in the oven to keep them warm while I finish the rest of the meatballs.

If you are good, you can "toss" the meatballs.  I just use tongs.

When all the meatballs are done and set aside, put the pan juices back into your pan.  Add a tablespoon of flour and stir it in, cooking for about a minute.  Add in the water and stir vigorously, scraping the pan to blend in all the flour.  Add in the cream and let the sauce come to a boil, stirring all the time.  Taste and adjust the seasonings.  If it is a bit bland, you can add in a bit of the veal stock and /or soy sauce.  When the sauce is slightly thickened, it is ready.

All the browned bits will make your sauce tasty.

Serve the meatballs hot with the cream sauce over, with mashed potatoes and lingon (recipe below). 

That is a tasty dinner.

Rårörda (Raw-stirred) Lingon

5 dl fresh lingon

2 dl sugar

Put the sugar and lingon in a large bowl. 

You can adjust the amount of sugar to your liking.

 Stir until the sugar is dissolved and no longer crunches against your spoon.  Transfer to a clean jar and store in the refrigerator.  If you want to keep it longer than a few weeks, then sterilize the jar.

Have to pick more lingon next time so it fills the jar.