Tomato Soup with Pastis and Homemade Fishfingers

Wonderfull summerish dish with a very Meditaranian feel and and taste due to the Pastis / Anisseed Liquor in the soup. I guess it to some extent is a decontruct of typical Meditaranian Fish dishes, so no wonder.

1 kg very good tomatoes, othewise use good canned tomatoes every time!
1 small can double concentrated tomato paste
3 stalks Celery
½ a Garlic, get a Fresh one if possible. That would typically be like 8-12 Garlic gloves
1 small glass French Pastis, Turkish Raki or equivalent Anisseed Liquor
1 good sized bundle of fresh Thyme, Discard though woody stalks
½ cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 teaspoon Smoked Paprika
Cayenne pepper
½ a liter of water
2 tbsp Sugar. This can vary depending on quality of tomatoes.
Fresh boneless Fish, White fish is good
1 Egg
Breadcrumb
Salt & Pepper
1 cup Olive Oil for Frying

Cleanse and roughly cur Celery Stalks, With the flat side of a cooking knife gently press Garlic Gloves so that they are easy to peel, Rinse Thyme and remove woody stalks.

In a food processor make a fine pase from the Celery, Garlic, Thyme and Olive Oil. Pour this paste into a non stick pot and let the paste and gently cook for 5 minutes, actually some of the oil will come out and it will gently fry.
Add the Anisseed Liqour, Tomatoes, Tomato concentrate and water. Pour the whole thing back into the Food processer and give it another bashing until its a fairly smooth soup. Return the soup to the pot and taste with Salt, Pepper, Smoked Paprika and Cayenn, Let it simmer while you prepare the fish.

Cut fish into fishfinger like chunks and doublecheck that it is boneless. Whip an egg in a plate and pour breadcrumbs into another. Season Fish with salt and pepper, dip the fishfingers into the egg and then into the breadcrumbs. Only once, this isent Fish and Chips your preparing.
Warm the olive oil in a pan and add the fish and fry until light golden and fish is done. Again the cooking of the fish is more important than this looking like the dead haddock in a newspaper around the corner.

Pour the Soup and add a Fishfinger. Sprinkle with fresh Herbs if you got any, Parsley, Cervil or even Tarragon works great.

Enjoy!

Aunt Bineaus Brown Christmas Cookies

This is an old family recipe for traditional Danish Christmas cookies called "Brune Kager". Which directly translates to Brown Cookies. I find this confusing in English, as most would associate Brownie Style cookies, which they are not.
These should be flat (1 to 1½ mm.) and round in shape, if you bake them with kids you can make them funny shapes if you like.
They should also be very spicy! These kind of cookies is from a time where it was high status if you could afford many expensive spices. Today’s commercial "Brune kager" in Denmark is worthless, because the commercial bakeries took away all the spices to make them neutral and bland 
This recipe is the opposite. Full throttle on the wonderful spices!

Ingredients

500 grams of good Quality Butter
500 grams Brown Sugar
250 grams Dark Syrup
250 grams Almonds
100 grams Pickled Succade, Buy a whole piece
100 grams Pickled Bitter (seville) Orange, Buy a whole piece.
30 grams Dried Ground Ginger
7 grams Ground Gloves
15 grams Ground Cinnamon
30 grams Finely Chopped Pickled Ginger
15 grams Potash
Half a cup very strong coffee to dissolve the Potash in.
1 kilo all-purpose flour

Skin the Almonds and crush in a food processor. If you are a traditionalist, you will slice them very thinly by hand. Dice Succade, Bitter Orange and the pickled Ginger very finely. Dissolve the potash in the hot coffee. 

Now melt the butter, brown sugar and syrup in a nonstick pot. Add all ingredients, except flour, to the butter/sugar mixture in the pot. 
Lastly add the flour little by little while stirring continuously. The dough should now be warm but firm. Knead the dough on a table a bit to make sure it is well mixed. Remember to enjoy the great smell from the dough in your kitchen :-)

Cut the dough into 8 equal sized pieces and refrigerate covered with cellofane until the next day.

Next day roll the dough very thinly 1 to 1½ millimeter, cut them with a small glass or whatever shape you like, and bake them in oven for about 6 minutes, They should slightly turn darker, but just slightly. Take care they don’t get dark brown which completely ruins them.

Let them cool down, and taste a little bit of traditional Danish Christmas! Enjoy!
(NOTE: Don’t make these cookies without Succade. I know many people do not like succade. but Succade is an essential ingredient in these cookies. Chop it finely so people do not get big chunks of it that usually help)