"Fläsk med löksås"

If a Swede sees this, it will be clear that it's not a traditional "fläsk med löksås", which would be fried salted pork belly, onion sauce with a lot of cream in it, and boiled potatoes. But fläsk means pork, and löksås means onion sauce. I've done a new take on it, trying to keep the soul of the Swedish dish but adding a twist to it. Instead of boiled potatoes, we have the crispiest hash brown you've ever had. Let's call it råraka, the Swedish equivalence.

The Onion Sauce

• 4 large onions
• 1  cloves of garlic (I know a lot of people just double or tripple the amount of garlic to whatever says in a recipe, but listen… It's the onion flavour we want here. You'll ruin it if you make it a garlic sauce instead!)
• 1/2 teaspoon of freshly cracked black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme
• 2 teaspoons of sugar
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar
• Salt to taste (about 1/2 teaspoon)

1. Chop the onions (finely, but it doesn't need to be extremely fine, they'll be so soft that it won't matter)
2. Crush the garlic and chop it up finely.
3. Now, if you have a pressure cooker, use it. Inset a little "plateu" (fine French word for "level", as in something heightened, like… Something you put into a pressure cooker so that whatever you put in there doesn't touch the bottom of the cooker where it'll burn). Fill up with water to right under the "plateu". Then take a heat resistant container and keep following the recipe. If you don't have a pressure cooker, then use a saucepan and fill that up instead.
4. Put the garlic and onions in the container, and att all the other ingredients for the sauce.
5. Place the container onto the "plateu" of the pressure cooker. Shut the cooker closed, set it to highest pressure, and set the burner to maximum until the cooker starts making a lot of sounds. Now lower the heat to whatever level you can that still makes the cooker sound the same. In other words, as low heat as possible while retaining pressure. (Or, if you're using a regular saucepan, cover it wit ha lid, and let it simmer on medium-low)
6. After 1 hours under pressure, turn off the heat and let the pressure cooker cool until the pressure goes down to normal (when the little pressure indicator drops and you can open it. All modern pressure cookers have security mechanisms so you can't even try to open it unless the pressure is down to normal). Do not open the valve to let out the steam, do not place it under cold water to speed things up. You want it to take time for the flavours to stay in there! (If you're using a regular saucepan, after this one hour on medium-low, with a lot of stirring, you set it to low and let it simmer for another 3 hours. yes, that's right, 3 more hours, sucks right? Get a pressure cooker!)
7. There's a lot of liquid in the container now, right? Transfer it to a saucepan and let it boil for about 20 minutes until the water has evaporated and you're left with a fragrant brown gooey onion sauce (not the saucepan you're using instead of a pressure cooker, that one is still cooking for another 3 hours, remember?).
8. If you're making more of a classic Swedish "löksås", you'd add liquid beef stock to this, a lot of cream and a lot of butter. Feel free to try that, but my version here is without that. Anyway, you need to add some salt to taste. Do that now, about 1/2 teaspoon.

Råraka (or "rösti" or Swedish Hash brown) and bacon

• 4 cleaned potatoes, but leave them unpeeled
• A lot of neutral oil (like rapeseed) just in case
• Salt to taste
• 8 thick slices of bacon (it has to be thick)

1. Grate the potatoes (if you have a small and a large grate side, use the large one)
2. Put the grated potatoes into a colander and clean it thoroughly in cold water, get that white starch out. It will give you the crispiest potatoes you've ever had.
3. Use a clean tea towel to squish the water out. Just put the washed grated potatoes into it, close it, and turn it until water comes through the fabric. All of it. Keep squeezing.
4. Spread it out on the towel and let it dry a little more while you cook the bacon…
5. In a dry hot pan, place the bacon and let it cook. The fat starts melting, it makes crackling sounds, you flip the bacon, and cook it a little more. When it's really dark but still sloppy, take it out and place it on a paper towel. As it cools a little, it will crisp up a lot and even darken some more from the residual heat.
6. Look at the pan, and all that salty fat! We're going to use that now. Use a small heat resistant bowl (like a cat food bowl?) and place a handful of grated potatoes in it. Flip the bowl onto the hot pan and leave it there for 4 minutes. The vapour from the potatoes will cook it under the bowl.
7. Remove the bowl, and let it cook for another 2 minutes, to have the water evaporate from the hash brown. Do not press it down!
8. Flip it without pressing it! It's supposed to be fluffy and crispy!
9. Repeat 6-8 until all of the hash browns are done. If you're out of fat in the pan, you might need to add some more. Use some oil.
10. You won't need to add salt, the bacon fat was already salty and it's all over your hash browns.

The plating per person

• 2 rårakor/hash browns/rösti
• A lot of thick crispy bacon
• A lot of onion sauce

1. One hash brown
2. Bacon
3. Sauce
4. Another hash brown
5. Eat.