Good to see you, Demo

Grandma Emma's · Serves 4 · Preparation 25 min · Cooking 2 h 30 min

Ingredients

• 800 g beef shin, in large cubes
• 3 onions, sliced
• 2 tbsp lard or oil
• 2 tbsp sweet paprika
• 1 tsp hot paprika
• 1 tsp caraway seeds
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 1 red pepper, in strips
• 750 ml beef stock
• 2 bay leaves
• salt and black pepper

To serve

• 4 tbsp soured cream
• 1 small bunch parsley, chopped
• bread or boiled potatoes

Method

1. Pat the beef dry and salt it. Heat the lard in a heavy pot and brown the beef in two batches, without hurry, until it has a dark crust. Lift it out.
2. Soften the onions in the same pot over a low heat for a good fifteen minutes, until golden and sweet. Stir in the garlic and the caraway.
3. Take the pot off the heat before the paprika goes in, or it turns bitter. Stir in both paprikas and the tomato purée, then put it back and pour in the stock.
4. Return the beef with the bay leaves. Put the lid on, leave a small gap, and let it simmer very gently for two hours.
5. Add the pepper strips and cook for another twenty minutes, lid off, until the sauce coats a spoon. Taste, and season.
6. Serve with a spoonful of soured cream, parsley, and bread to wipe the plate.

Notes

Better the next day, and better still the day after. She never measured the paprika: she said the pot would tell you. If the sauce is thin at the end, a grated raw potato stirred in for the last ten minutes thickens it without anyone noticing.

From the blue notebook · Serves 12 · Preparation 40 min · Cooking 12 min

Ingredients

For the dough

• 250 ml milk, lukewarm
• 25 g fresh yeast
• 75 g butter, soft
• 60 g sugar
• 2 tsp cardamom, freshly ground
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 450 g strong white flour

For the filling

• 80 g butter, very soft
• 60 g sugar
• 1 tbsp cardamom, freshly ground

To finish

• 1 egg, beaten
• pearl sugar

Method

1. Crumble the yeast into the milk and stir until it has gone. Add the butter, sugar, cardamom and salt, then the flour, and knead for ten minutes until the dough leaves the bowl clean.
2. Cover it and leave it somewhere warm for an hour, until it has doubled.
3. Roll it out to a rectangle about the size of a tea towel. Spread the filling right to the edges, fold it in three like a letter, and cut it into twelve strips.
4. Twist each strip, wind it twice around two fingers and tuck the end underneath. Leave the buns on a tray for half an hour.
5. Brush with egg, scatter with pearl sugar, and bake at 225 °C for ten to twelve minutes, until deep gold.

Notes

She ground the cardamom herself, in the brass mortar, and so should you: the powder from a jar is a different spice. Eat them warm. They freeze well, though in this family they rarely get the chance.

Serves 6 · Preparation 20 min

Ingredients

• 6 pickled herring fillets, in pieces
• 4 boiled potatoes, cold, diced
• 2 apples, diced
• 1 red onion, finely chopped
• 3 pickled gherkins, diced
• 200 g soured cream
• 1 tbsp mustard
• 1 bunch dill, chopped

Method

1. Mix the soured cream with the mustard and most of the dill.
2. Fold in everything else, gently, so the potatoes keep their shape.
3. Leave it in the cold for at least an hour. Scatter the rest of the dill over it before it goes in the basket.

On the ferry to Gotland, Hildegard tried to feed a seagull a whole pastry and the gull won, with the pastry.

Allergic to nuts. Please, really, check the cake tins before you bring anything.

Christmas Eve in Dalarna, Granny Emma burnt the rice pudding and laughed so hard the almond was never found.