Food & Thoughts

Now how's that for a cake for ya?? I'm a gadget woman, and very much so. Not that I have huge kitchen to actually accommodate all of the stuff, but I love having TONS of different things - like a collection of different cake tins - this Bundt one, a swirly one, cookie cutters, muffin pans, silicone moulds... I could go on! Guess cake tins are not really gadgets - they're necessities, aren't they? Anyway, my current favorite is the aforementioned Bundt cake tin, also used for the blueberry adventure recently. It's funny how a lot of us think "who is reading this blog? Is anyone actually reading it?". Well, it turned out, that Lisa Yockelson, the author of Baking by Flavor , a FABULOUS book on baking, and a definite star in my cookbook collection read my entry on her Blueberry Tea Cake - and commented on it! Yowser! Someone is actually reading this! So I thought I'd do another cake from her book, all in her honor. Who am I kidding, I needed cake!! The ...

PRETTY!

There was a glutton of the sweetest tasting strawberries at the market a week or so ago. I don't know where they came from, I mean, it was the middle of September. But they were there. I couldn't help myself. It's been a really bad summer for strawberries here in Denmark, waay to much rain, not that much sun - and I'm a girl that relishes the moment were the first strawberries are there - you never know exactly, but one day they're there, if you're really lucky still warm from the sun, the smell oh-so-sweet and the color, oh that dark, juicy red. Naturally, I had to try and save some of that late-coming summer. I ended up with a strawberry tart and three (count them, 3!) jars of strawberry jam. And that doesn't count the ones that jumped in my mouth while making all of this... Strawberry tart - adaptation of Nigella Lawson's Rhubarb Tart from How to be a Domestic Goddess It's basically a cream cheese filled pie crust topped with (i...

How could I not love him?

A whatta?! You might say - but hey, it's just short for the newest IMBB?-spin-off - Sugar High Fridays: the International Sweet Tooth Blogging Extravaganza! as proposed by our very own Domestic Goddess, Jennifer . As the inventor of this very short-named event, and host this time at least, Jennifer decided our first endeavour should be in: white chocolate - that chocolate that's not really chocolate, yet at least as addictive as the dark kind! Personally, I can't wait! So come on and join the fun! Anyone and everyone is welcome! for further info, go to Jennifer's page ...

My boyfriend and I haven't been that good at eating dinner together - with the both of us working in the restaurant business, him as the owner and working chef at two cafe's, me at first full time waitressing, then after I started studying, about once or twice a week (who am I kidding - more than that - too much, granted!) Anyways, hopefully, that's going to change. M., the boyfriend, just said goodbye to the business, hoping to engage in a more 9-5-style of living, with actual sitting down with the loved ones for dinner. As it is, well... I'm still working, but that's only - ONLY! - because I haven't started school yet. For now, that means that the meal mostly shared together at our house is breakfast - brunch you should probably call it, considering it is very seldom eaten before 11 o'clock. Because of that, we have a rather elaborate repetoire of brunch-dishes we do on a regular basis. Yes, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, soft-boiled eggs, omelets -...

There was an abundance of raspberries at the market the (hmm, not sure you could call it a market, but it's the best I have!) the other day - naturally, I had to buy a lot and make jam! There's nothing better stirred into yoghurt or Tykmælk in the morning. I almost never use jam on bread and therefore use a method introduced to me by Nigella Lawson - hands-free raspberry jam on p. 346 of her How To Be A Domestic Goddess . While I at first thought the recipe made for a very sugary version, I've grown to like it like this (I do have a sweet tooth!) - raspberries can be so tart, and I add no other sugar to my morning meal. It does look rather runny as well, but that's taken care of once you've stirred it through the first time you open the jar. The recipe is not really a recipe, more of a direction: take equal amounts of sugar and raspberries, put them in two separate bowls. Put them in the oven at 180 degrees celsius for about 20 minutes - take them out, pou...

The Is My Blog Burning? -events are probably one of the major reasons I ventured into food blogging land myself - I found it ever so entertaining to read about the adventures of so many people, acting on the same topic, be it soup , tartines , a cakewalk (darn, I had to miss that!), rice , fish , grilling and dumplings . Naturally, I had to participate in it this time, the 8th. time around! Hosted by the lovely Donna at There's a Chef in my Kitchen with the innovative theme: Raise your spirits high! Rules are easy: use spirits, wine, beer - something with an alcohol-content! - and tell all about it! So of course, when I first started thinking about what to make, my mind went absolutely blank - guess that just has to happen! Then slowly, but steadily, ideas started creeping in on me - or well, rather, I stumbled across them in my cookbooks and magazines! Barolo risotto with radicchio - Vodka & Herb Gnocchis - Crepe Suzette?! - Bailey Chocolate Truffles... Hey, wait, d...

My boss at one of the restaurants I work at - and have been working at for quite some time now - convinced me that we have to make a wine geek out of me... Hence the formal title of the entry. Well, that and the fact that WWWBW is closing in on me, I thought I'd make an extra gesture and taste some other wine! It has to be said that boss-man is SERIOUS about wines - he's the kind of guy that'll make your head spin talking about terroir, this or that fields, merchants etc. etc. - at the same time he's the type of guy that will open a bottle of 1969 wine at 2.30 in the morning "just because this is excactly what we need now!" As you might imagine I consider myself lucky indeed for having a teacher like this. We started out in Franken, Germany. Some place to start, eih? The thing is, we do a wine menu at the restaurant and naturally, I'd have to learn about those first - the star tonight being a "2002 ’Sommerhäuser Reifenstein’, Riesling Kabinett h...

I'm having a bit of a problem with the whole copyright thing - conscience and all, little angel vs. little devil on my shoulder - and realize I should take a stand as Heidi has done . While I see that a lot of the fun about keeping up with the various food blogs around here is getting some new, actual recipes in ones book, to me it's just as much about being inspired and awe-struck about the imagination, talents or cookbook collection of others. As it is, I'm the proud owner of a decent amount of books myself, some of them the regular, popular ones (Nigella, Jamie Oliver etc.) a couple of fancy ones ( French Laundry for one - a book I absolutely ADORE by the way!) - and of course, a vast collection of Danish ones , none of them translated, I think... The thing is this: when a recipe is in a cookbook, and is copied into a blog, step by step - I guess that's not actually allowed to do, is it? Would it be enough to just write where it is from, copyright him/her? ...

Yay! I had an evening off, and was stumbling around at the local Irma (grocery store, but one of the nicer ones) trying to figure out what to put on my plate. It's like once you get out of the habit of making dinner on a daily basis, you just keep wandering around, loking at what might be really nice produce - and nothing springs to mind. Guess it happens to people that make dinner on a daily basis as well, but you know what I mean - I know I'm not the only one ! Still, it's just agonizing when the only thing you want to do is make yourself something really nice - and you're just BLANK! Then I found this really nice jar of pickled cucumbers. No, I'm not pregnant - at least I don't think so?! - but I've always had a thing for these - crunchy, sweet-sour and savoury. Mmm. And -swish!- there it was! The image of a bean salad with pickled cucumbers I have actually made a couple of times, but with a twist: I knew there was spinach in the fridge at home... What...

My Dad and his wife recently brought me back this Bundt cake tin from a trip to Bayreuth - the city of Wagner operas and, apparently, some really nice kitchenware shops. Yes, I had to be nerdy enough to have this as my "wish list item no. 1". I've been longing to use it, but haven't had the time for devoting myself to the kitchen and finding the recipe to inaugurate the tin. The other day I went with my boyfriend shopping, and stumbled upon some beautiful blueberries that I just HAD to buy - so I did. And then they just sat there in the fridge, calling out to me every time I opened the door - "Use me, use me!" Admittedly not that many times, seeing that I haven't been home too much. Finally, one night we finished early and I jumped eagerly into my kitchen, my, for the moment favorite baking book " Baking by Flavor " in hand and thought: how hard can it be? Blueberries and my tin - there must be something in here... I love the lay-out o...

I'm gonna do it! I'm gonna start being serious about drinking wine! Oh the horror! :-) No, what I meant to say was, lately, a lot of people - okay, maybe just boss-man who thinks we have to make a wine-geek out of me - have been insisting I should try and do something more out of the wine I drink than just, well... drinking it. And with this World Wide Wine Blogging Wednesday - this time hosted by Alder at Vinography - being all the craze around the blogs, I thought, what the heck, I'll do it! I'll buy one, I'll try describing it - heck, I might even snap a photo! Who knows, BF might even join! And have fun, too!

I've been forced to do this. My newly found friend and fellow blogger, Oslofoodie , has been going on about these, flødeboller from Summerbird, driving me to a level of must-have-now that I've been trying to resist for the last couple of days. But then today, I passed Amokka, a coffee-shop and what did I see through the window? There it was, a tall, dark-chocolate smothered creature, revealing no secrets, but I knew, oh I knew what it was hiding under that chocolate layer - a feathery light, sugary and slightly sticky, gooey heart and a base of marzipan. You shall be mine, I thought - or well, maybe 6 of you shall be mine is more like what I thought... This is him - her - well, you get it. As it happened, just a couple of weeks ago, I was clearing out some of all my food magazines and stumbled across a recipe for these. Now, I've never actually tried making them, so I give no guarantee for the recipe - I know the instructions are not very thorough, but it's what ...

And indeed it was. My boyfriend, the ex-restaurateur/chef did a bit of catering this weekend, and our poor fridge was just about to burst! As you can probably tell it's not the biggest fridge in the world. Oh how I dream of the days when I'll own that 2-door HUGE specimen with walk-in freezer et all! Besides from getting to help him with the preparations (washing salad and herbs, preparing risotto, making bread dough ya-da ya-da) I benefited a bit from the ordeal as well - a new wheat sour dough has been brought to life! Okay, it is yeast-based, so not authentic sour dough - but I've tried the natural air-borne yeast method a couple of times and have come to the conclusion that I'll kill it in a matter of no time because I never get to use it enough. Ah well. On to sour dough adventures!