Food & Thoughts

Smørrebrød - or just plain open-faced sandwich on rye , with ripe avocado and cherry tomatoes. Lots of freshly ground pepper and LOTS of Maldon Salt. Breakfast smørrebrød - on brown bread with salted butter, strawberries and brown sugah Baby (as it could ony be sung by D'Angelo ). So maybe not REALLY Danish - but it's open-faced, in your face, applied to face - good . And after all, that is what's important :-)

This dish does NOT taste of anchovies. Just thought I'd get that out of the way. So - this week, Cathy and I am focusing on pasta. That versatile backdrop for sauces rich or light, chunky or smooth. You can have it fresh, or you can have it dried. While I at first thought this a golden opportunity to actually try using the pasta machine I got this Christmas, time ran away from me, and heck, on a daily basis, I guess most of us need recipes for dressing up the dried kind, rather than the fresh kind. The fresh is sort of a feast in itself anyways, stuffed it with goodies or as smooth, silky strands of home made tagliatelle or the likes. This dish does NOT taste of anchovies. And what better to try than Debbie of Words to Eat By 's Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower, Figs & Mint . I was so intrigued by the combination of sweet figs and savory (admittedly, tiny bit of) anchovy paste, and the ahem - somewhat "windy" smelling cauliflower - if you know what I mean?;-) - that...

So am I daft or what?! I just found out that my camera has one of those macro buttons. I thought surely, that was some fancy thing only very expensive cameras had. Nuh-uh. Mine does too. It's the little flower one. And it makes a world of a difference - now I can actually get as close to the food as I'd wanted to get, but never could! Horray! Not that I'm promising this place is going to start looking like some sort of gourmet magazine or anything, but I thought I'd share the news - maybe I'm not the only one that hasn't fully understood the capabilities of my fairly standard digi-cam? And uh - Rachel taught me how to post multiple pictures , too. Man, soon this blogging business will be child's play!:-) One more thing - a lot can be learned from the newly established Food Blog S'cool - so if you haven't already checked it out, do!

Whew! Busy weekend, neh? SHF over and done, we promptly proceeded to the month of April's Is My Blog Burning? event! And color me Orange, Ladygoat over at Foodgoat (or is it both of them? Hmm...) asked us all "Orange you hungry?" I started out thinking I had to do something with oranges, but nooooo - this is the first color-coordinated IMBB-event, and you could use any kind of ingredient or dish that would turn out orange for your entry. I've done colored (green and yellow) dinners for my Food Club girlfriends a couple of times, so I can't wait to see how this turns out - it has got to be one of the editions that will show the greatest diversity of recipes! On to the matter at heart, I chose sweet potatoes as my ingredient. The orange variety, naturally, even though I had some problems finding them - they're not used that much around this hood (so much for Danish cooking , eih? Hold your horses, we'll get there!:-)). I wanted to do something that I serve...

While the sun has started warming the ground a little around here, it is still insanely cold outside. So why on earth I decided to make ice cream for Sugar High Friday, this time hosted by Derrick , is beyond me! Yup, sometimes I'm pretty foolish. I blame it on the UV-rays, the fact that after having been without my ice cream maker for a good 6 months (the freezer element started leaking - it was an OLD machine!) and then miraculously having said ice cream maker restored to normal (Boyfriend picked up TWO new elements this Monday) and the fact that I thought I had come up with a BRILLIANT idea to present this months start ingredient, MOLASSES - yea, that must have been the reason(s)! I had a problem figuring out what exactly "molasses" would translate into in Danish, to start things of. Derrick's explanation, combined with a little help from Harold McGee (how did I ever live without this book?) told me that what I'd be looking for would be " sirup " on ...

Ahem. It really couldn't have been me that suggested this weeks theme should be a cake. Why, I never bake, - do I?;-) Okay, so I do. On my recent trip to Berlin, I almost spend more money on cake tins, than on clothes (okay, almost - not entirely!) So cake had to be there somewhere. The problem about this theme wasn't so much finding a cake I'd like to try making - the problem was more narrowing down the choices! To the rescue came a relatively new and GORGEOUS blog: Delicious Days , written by Nicky from Munich. She was trying to hide it, but I did a search on her site (typed CAKE - how hard can it be?) and up popped 4 posts, one of them titled: Chocolate Heaven . Uh-oh. Would the pictures be deceiving, or would it be as good as they suggested? She's also got recipes up for a pink to the point of perfection glazed tuna , incredible sounding Antipasto Speciale , small doughy cushions, sounds so good! - and, should you be going round to Munich anytime soon, be sure to ch...

I'm at a loss for inspiration food-blogging-wise these days. I think (hope?!) you all know what it's like - it's not because you don't cook, it's just because - well, maybe what you cook are old standby's, maybe they look goddam-awful, maybe you forgot to take the picture (although the Boyfriend has started joking that he never gets to eat before I get the perfect shot) - maybe your thoughts are elsewhere, or as in my case, should be elsewhere (exam, yes, again. Not until another two months, but our school has made it their case to make sure we only have 4 days for catching up on all the "insert cursing phrase" we didn't have time to read before exam is actually there - so we have to start now to try and get through all of it) I thought I had things planned, with pictures already up-loaded and ready for a couple of catchy words, but alas, it's just not so much fun posting about things you've done a looong time ago - the memory of tastes, te...

Orange? Orange! Courtesy of Foodgoat & Ladygoat ...

Around came the days that were full of CHEESE! Yes, that's right, this week the Bloggers are dining with, in and around cheese - Um? With me being a total novice in the Mac'n'cheese department, what would fall more natural than trying out an already tried and tested recipe for that? That is, a novice, apart from (okay, I am embarrassed now:) the Kraft version... At A Spoonful of Sugar , one of the first food blogs I ever encountered, Angela had in her archives a small hidden treasure. Usually, I'm tempted by all of the cakes she's got going on over there, but this sounded wonderfully posh in a way that only the English, and Delia Smith could make it sound: Upmarket Souffléed Macaroni Cheese . That's like taking the two extremes of the culinary repertoire and trying to fit them together! I love how Angela scold Delia for her way of writing recipes - as I've mentioned before , she is ridiculously meticulous - I mean so okay, I KNOW not the entire world ...

No no, I haven't disappeared totally - I'm just a busy little bee at the moment. So have a look at these pretty flowers that my Boyfriend gave me for my birthday this February, and I'll be back with a real post before you know it!

This is my most recent possession. It's a huge (40 by 30 cm) roasting tin (that will, I'm sure, also accommodate a sheet cake perfectly). The people at my favorite cook shop, Kunst & Køkkentøj, said it probably wouldn't fit in the oven, but let me take it with me home for a try. It fits perfectly, leaving 1 cm on each side between the handle and the oven's side. Like a glove. I know. I know. A ROASTING TIN?? C'mon. But no. There's no denying it. I LOVE IT! Now I just have to figure out what to make in it...

A long, LONG time ago, when she hadn't even started her blog, Moira was so kind as to offer me, via e-mail, a copy of her recipe for bagels. She claimed they were the best homemade bagels in the entire WORLD! And you know what? I think she's right! This weeks theme is lunch or as I liked to put it, lunchbox - I have to bring lunch on an almost daily basis to school, and started a little project on finding the best bagel in the world a couple of months ago, that then proceeded to die right then and there. So naturally, when I saw Moira had posted about the bagels over at Who Wants Seconds? there was no escaping it anymore - I had to try them. Moira's a real kidder - I mean seriously, she had me thinking "Oh no, she's gone amuck, I mean one thing is originality, but this ? This is plain - um... EUIW!" Also, her pictures are to die for ! I was a little startled to find out that I needed an entire packet of fresh yeast (50 g) for the 3½ cups of flour, after...

So I promised I'd report back on the thing I was supposed to do for this weeks Dining with the Bloggers - better late than never, right? :-) The thing was and Onion Tart. But oh no, not just any old onion tart - it was Molly of Orangette's Alsatian Onion Tart . A dream of a tart, no less. I'm telling you - while I've had my share of problems with tarts , this one was a breeze, and tasted magnificent - not too much butter, exactly enough crunch and flakiness. (I think my problem have been adding too little water - I guess I was just always anxious I'd add to much and end up with a batter instead of dough!) Next time I might bake the tart case blind for a couple of minutes before adding the onions, just because that's what I always do and I think it might make it even more perfect. And oh, the onions - just thinly sliced, then sauteed in a couple of lugs of oil - patience, patience - and AH! Caramelized onions. It seems way too simple: I mean: butter - flour - su...

What with Easter and everything, and family coming around, one had to bake a cake - oh drats!;-) I'm not one to let an opportunity like that pass me by, so out came the books (I'm doing a lot of things by the book, I don't know if you've noticed... One day I guess I'll feel confident dabbling around baking recipes, but for now, I'll stick to messing up my dinners and lunches - the savory part anyways) My collection of cookbooks is an evergrowing project (YAY!) but there are, to my shame, a lot of them that I've never cooked from. Shame on me, shame on me. And you know what - one of those was entitled Chocolate American Style . C'mon, a cookbook named something with chocolate and I hadn't cooked from it?!? Well, that's just - wrong. I had to do something! The book is divided into chapters: The Candy Store - Chocolate for Breakfast (Lora Brody - I like you!) - Comfort me with Chocolate - Celebrations, Holidays, and Other Special Occasions for Eatin...