Right now we are at the height of ramsons season here in Denmark (ramsløg in Danish). I'd never encountered them before, and I assume it is because it is native to Europe and so not generally found in the US. They are quite fashionable in Danish kitchens these days. Ramsons are a member of the Allium family, kin to garlic, onions and chives. The flavor is a great blend somewhere between garlic and chive, and you can eat the whole kit and kaboodle: leaves, bulbs, and flowers. We've been using them in various ways from simply adding them as salad greens, to making a pretty kickin' pesto. They are great in a omelet as well. I've also heard tell of making ramsons capers from pickling the flower buds, which I'm dying to try out since I have a deep, deep love of capers and garlicy ones sound divine. I'm hoping to go bud picking this week since the buds are just starting to come up.

Read more about Ramsons: Garlic of the North

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale. I didn't decide to do anything locale-specific but since it is a beautiful summer here, I opted to make mine with fresh fruit, as a dessert pierogi. I'd never seen or heard of a dessert pierogi but it sounded like a fun little challenge.

I had a little bit of an advantage on this one because Camilla made her challenge for dinner for us before I got around to doing mine. That gave me an opportunity to assess the general pierogi-making experience and things to keep in mind in my go.

The Dough

I love fresh-baked cookies. A lot of people do. I'm particularly stuck on the fresh-baked aspect and regular cookies which have been sitting around for a day or more are, well, just less interesting to me. I may poke at them out of boredom if I'm having a sweet craving. Store bought cookies in particular can sit on a counter for weeks without raising my interest. So I make my own cookies and gleefully eat them right out of the oven, but I also don't need to be wolfing down two dozen fresh cookies in one sitting. Years ago when I was in this quandary of how to make small batches, I decided that actually mixing up small batches was stupid and frustrating, so I turned to the master of food longevity: the freezer.

Read more about Cryogenic cookies

My whole life a pancake was a pancake. There might have been other pancake-like objects, like crepes, but they most definitely were not pancakes. As I've traveled though, it is clear that the definition of "pancake" is regional and American pancakes are their own, special thing. They are also very delicious and something of a novelty over here in Europe. Generally in Europe a pancake is very thin and large in diameter. In Ireland they are served up one at a time by sprinkling lemon juice and sugar on them and rolling them up. Here in Denmark they are totally a dessert and never for breakfast. Then again, the dessert/breakfast line is verrrry fuzzy for me and Americans tend to have a lot more sugary sweet for breakfast generally. But I digress. The main point here is that American pancakes are fluffy, eaten stacked, and are most definitely a classic breakfast. They also seem hard for people to master who haven't been exposed to them their whole lives. I have a number of Danish friends who are quite frustrated but determined to make American pancakes. Read more about American Pancakes