Recipes :)

I definitely believe is worth sharing the email my good friend sent me, explaining with many many details how to reproduce his fantastic cooking! So here we go;

''The recipe on this site seems to be quite close to the one I used:

http://www.nrk.no/mat/1.7548100

 I do wonder if it is a bit much sugar and vinegar in the gravy, but that you should add to taste any way. I also used more vegetables both when I was boiling the meat (an onion, some carrots, a bit of celery and some celeriac, all these I discarded), and when I served the soup and meat. Parsnips, celeriac and Jerusalem parsley (persillerot) are all good ones to use.

The melboller, the small dough balls in the soup was made as such (from http://www.matoppskrift.no/oppskrift/Kraftsuppe-med-melboller );''

60 gr  butter

60 gr  flour
1 stk egg
1 dl boiling water
 0,5 ts cardamom
0,5 ts  sugar

Melt butter, add the flour and dilute with boiling water. Remove the pan from the heat and add the egg. Add salt, cardamom and little sugar. Stir. The mixture should be dense enough so that you can form small balls with a spoon. Cook the dough balls in a bit salted water. (This part is my translation hopefully comprehensible enough : ) ...

'' It is easier to work with the dough if you cool it in the fridge before use. Simmer them in salted water for about 5 minutes. A slotted spoon is esential to get them out of the water. They can be left in one layer on a dish and put in the soup right before serving. They fall apart quite easily if you mess about too much.

The rhubarb soup is made as follows:

400 g rhubarb
1 l water
2--3 dl sugar
1,5 ts potato starch + 0,5 dl water

Rinse the rhubarb and cut it into small pieces. Remove the skin if it seems to be tough. Put the rhubarb pieces in a pot with the water and boil gently until the rhubarb is tender. Add sugar to taste. You can put a stick of cinnamon in the pot if you want to.
Instead of adding sugar I add some cheep strawberry jam. It contains enough sugar and it ads strawberries that I think make a nice addition to the dish.
Thicken the soup by adding a slurry of the potato starch and water to the near boiling soup. Stir well and bring to the boiling point.

Chill and serve with whipped cream, vanilla ice-creme or yogurt.
A final point. Rhubarb is in season now and a few weeks more. You can, however, clean it, slice it in pieces and freeze it. It keeps well frozen.

 Good luck!''

He is great, isn't he?? :D

Norwegian food

I have come to the conclusion that norwegian food is very underestimated. And this is pity!
Let me explain. 

First of all, if you ask a foreigner how he/she finds food in Norway most probably if not for certain will say in despair that he/she suffers! Well, I don't completely exclude myself.... But this is mainly due to homesick syndromes. You don't find ingredients you are used to or even if you do they taste differently. Coming from a Mediterranean country is almost a curse if you try to appreciate the quality of fruits and vegetables, here. 

As for locals, if you ask them for norwegian food, they will start mentioning baked potatoes and fish and maybe reedier and whale and that's pretty much it. (Ok let's not talk here about Gradiosa....) 

Does this signal enthusiasm? Any room for fireworks? Oh! No, surely not! They present proudly raskfisk and brunost but how many chances there are that you won't turn skeptical after experiencing these? On the other hand  ask for feta cheese or olives and you'll get exclamation marks!

By making the comparison and summing up with your nostalgia, you end up with the impression that norwegian food is rather something dull (and if you have supper in the canteen, you're slightly more prone to believe that). But is that true??????

To be honest in a great degree I believed so. There were dishes I liked like the reedier with the brussels cabbage or the fiskeboller,  the smoked salmon, the bakalao or the fiskesoup but I thought that's rather a short list. 

All it takes is a dinner at a friend's place who loves tradition and prepares everything with care. He called it ''norwegian assimilation dinner'' and he ''forced'' me to reconsider this unfavourable opinion of mine with the most tasteful way!!! : D The first dish was fresh meat soup with small dough balls. The soft texture, the sweetness of the butter and the salty biff taste was fantastic and then he served the miracle!!!! Biff with onion sauce and vegetables. I could hardly stop myself praising it!! I was all 'yiummy... ouaou...uff!!' for way longer than appropriate! Uff, I feel a bit embarrassed since there were people I knew very little but it was so spontaneous, so honest and that sauce so amazingly delicious and the biff so tender! ( I want this recipe, I want this recipe, I want this recipe....NOW!!!). The photo is from the dessert another very pleasant surprise! Rhubarb and strawberry soup served with cream! Full of taste and full of aromas!

Who said again norwegian food is boring?? Shame, Shame on me!!