Swedish-style hash browns with pea stoemp and kelp caviar
I guess I should start by welcoming the coming of Spring! While Sweden is quite a bit darker than the rest of the world for half of the year, we are now entering a period where it gets quite a bit lighter – so bring on the sun I say!
Ok, so what’s cookin’? Well this time round I made some Swedish style hash browns and topped them with a bunch of exciting things. Swedes have quite a few ways of cooking very similar potato dishes: potatisbullar, rösti and råraka to name a few. They all involve either grating or mashing the potatoes – either before or after cooking. I decided to go with “råraka” or Swedish hash browns, Sometimes they’re served with pork (blahhhh, I know!) and lingon jam, and other times with créme fraiche and caviar (equally yuck, but stay with me here!). What you see before your eyes is a slightly fancier, vegan version of option #2.
Even though the mashed pea part comes first, I’m sure many of you are already freaking out over the little orange balls that appear to be caviar. Caviar? On a vegan food blog?!?! Well, those little guys are kelp (seaweed) caviar – of course there will be no serving or eating fish eggs here. If you’re curious as to how it’s made, take a look at this informative video on Youtube. The video might seem a bit dated, but making caviar from seaweed is still something that most people haven’t heard of. There’s no longer any reason too keep sturgeon (black) and salmon (orange) eggs from growing into big fish!
So now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s back up a bit and talk about the “pea stoemp”. Stoemp is a Belgian dish, also made from potatoes – usually! Stoemp can be also be made from other root vegetables, such as carrots, or well, why not mash things up a little more and use some bright green peas! A typical stoemp also contains cream, shallot, herbs and spices, and since Swedish-style has browns are often served with créme fraiche and onions, this seemed like the perfect fusion of ingredients!
My hash browns turned out to be very brown this time around, but these fried spuds tasted delicious! These Swedish-style hash browns with pea stoemp and kelp caviar would make a good side dish or appetizer for 4 people, or a nice lunch for 2 hungry people.
Ingredients
-
Hash Browns
- 4-6 medium potatoes
- 2 Tbsps (30 ml) – butter
- 2 Tbsps (30 ml) – oil
- ½ tsp (1.25 ml) – salt Pea stoemp
- 1 cup (2.4 dl) – green peas
- ¼ cup (.6 dl) – white cooking wine
- 2 Tbsps (30 ml) – plant-based crème fraiche
- 2 shallots - diced
- 1 oz (28 gr or roughly ½ bunch) – fresh chives
- 1 cup (2.4 dl) – green peas
- salt and pepper to taste Topping
- 3 oz (75 gr) – seaweed/kelp caviar
- ½ a red onion – diced
- 1 oz (28 gr or roughly ½ bunch) – fresh chives
Instructions
- Peel and grate the potatoes using the largest holes on your cheese grater, and add the salt.
- Heat the butter and oil in a frying pan.
- Shape the grated potatoes into small, pancakes or patties and fry golden brown on both sides.
- While the hash browns are cooking, peel and dice the shallots and chives
- Boil the cooking wine and shallots in a saucepan and reduce until half the liquid is left.
- Add peas and crème fraiche and cook for about 5 minutes.
- Add the chives and season with salt and pepper
- Mash or blend the mixture using a wand mixer.
- Place some hash browns on a plate, spoon a little of the mashed peas onto each one, and top with seaweed caviar, some red onion and chives.
Lee | LifeNaturalee March 24, 2017 (11:46 am)
This sounds delicious! I’ve never tried (or seen for sale) kelp caviar but I guess it pairs beautifully here with the peas and the potato hash 🙂
Chris March 25, 2017 (1:12 pm)
Thank you Lee 🙂 Swedes tend to like their seafood quite a bit, so now some of the supermarkets here even have their own brand. Googled quickly and found that these are available from aMAZON uk https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cavi-art-Seaweed-Caviar-100g-Black/dp/B00Q9WQLKQ
Lee | LifeNaturalee March 27, 2017 (10:18 am)
Thanks Chris! Will try for sure I never liked the real thing so I’m curious to try this version 🙂 Plus, I found the video you’ve linked on your post to be really interesting – I love those “how-to” programs 😀