Food & Thoughts

  Oh my God, soooo good! The recipe header reads: Calling all olive heads... Well, you had me at hello! Exactly the right amount of brine-y - salty - spicy - hot one could wish for, with the ricotta salata giving a little respite from the heat. I guess it really depends on your chili paste what heat you get - and of course also on your heat preference - but I might dial the amount back to half a tablespoon, because if I am not to adapt to my liking, why take notes at all?  Used self imported Rancho Gordo Ayocote Blanco Beans , which were outstanding. The poached egg on top made it a full meal. Definitely a do-again. 

I have eleven (11!) tomato plants on my balcony. There are white ones, yellow ones, green and red ones, pink, orange and even black ones. Some are big, some are small, some are the shape of dates, some are very round and others very long. Two of them are striped. A couple of them I grew from seed, but I couldn't help myself when we went on our yearly visit to Gartneri Toftegaard , so some of them came into this home as wee little baby-plants. They've grown, they're producing like crazy (as in big bowlfuls, everyday) and I love it. I loved that I've nursed them all through spring and summer, trimmed the little side shots and the crazy leaves, schlepped water from downstairs so they could have their drinks, fed them, talked to them, moved them around so the sun wasn't too harsh on their delicate leaves or so that they didn't drown in the August downpours. Tomatoes are like gold. But they are not the only thing growing in this house. When I got pregnant, I prom...

On a day to day basis, I think it's safe to say that I do most of our grocery shopping and cooking. It's not that M doesn't like cooking (the shopping is another matter), it's just that me making dinner is what makes sense. I get off earlier from school and work, so I don't have to suffer the post-traumatic stress it is to go to the store after 5 o'clock and generally, I say I like cooking us dinner. Only problem: what to make? I usually ask M in the morning what he may feel like having for dinner, but being the man that he is, knowing what he'd like to eat anywhere further away than 20 minutes from the present is a question along the lines of "What is the meaning of life?" He hardly EVER has a clue. So much for inspiration, I'm telling you. We've tried a lot of things: picking out recipes from randomly selected cookbooks that looks or sounds good; I've had M go over my delicious bookmarks, so he could find things he'd like eating...

We had this tonight - or, half of it - roasted in a pan, with a generous amount of salt and pepper. Then we put it in a wonderful risotto with bacon, peas and spinach. A little mascarpone and a lotta parmesan. 'twas very nice. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the other half.

Do you remember my list of Foodie Dares ? from (ahem) 2007? I did do a follow-up post on my progress, and the note is also still on the fridge - the actual crossing off items on the list is the hard part. Allow me to refresh, briefly, that one of the things I wanted to do, was to try making Indian food. Specifically, I wanted to make samosas and Dal Makhani, and on the list I have on my fridge, I also wrote Butter Chicken (also known as murgh mahkani, I later learned. Mahkani means butter. Obviously, I'm all about butter) I scoured the internet for recipes, bookmarked half a dozen, thumbed through a couple of cookbooks. With the host of Indian food bloggers out there, I suppose it would have been easy as pie to find a recipe there, but for some reason, the one that intrigued me the most was from a Danish chef, a big, red-haired dude that's as Danish as they get, that I found in a Danish cookbook. Don't ask, the point is, you have to start somewhere and I finally got start...

Look, I know this looks like a pile o' mess. But trust me, it doesn't taste like a mess. What it does taste like is fantastic. I promise. Sweetness from the beets, salty capers, starchy potatoes, mustardy hotness and smoky bacon backdrops flaky, clean-tasting cod. It's lovely, if you ask me. It fits right in here during winter - not being very Christmas-sy, or too heavy. Lord knows there's enough of that kind of food around in December. And there's a lot you can do regarding the attractiveness of the dish - like not mix the beets in with the rest of the ingredients, but just gently bounce a couple round the top of the rest of the "salad" before serving. That way, everything won't be pink. Even though I'm all for pretty girl colors in food, there's gotta be a limit. The dish does take a little time to put together, but I'm thinking you could make a couple shortcuts. Like use already pickled beets, boil the eggs the day before, and use lefto...

I did warn you - old(er) pictures and ideas would be coming up. Let's start Christmas off nicely, with a little DwB'ing... Homesick Texan's Refried Beans I really like that whole tex-mex food thing. I have no idea as to what is authentic or real or the right thing, but that's why I turn to Lisa, the Homesick Texan - she is my go-to person when it comes to anything tex-mex. Lisa cooks lovely looking food and tells tales of Texas and New York, and of food so nice-sounding, you can't help but want to cook it yourself. That's what happened to me with these refried beans - I'd been looking for a recipe for a while so I could add to my repertoire of Mexican dishes. Naturally, when this post went up, I bookmarked it and cooked it asap. It's easy and relatively quick to do, once you've cooked the beans. You even get to munch on bacon while you're finishing it up. I'm a simple person - there's not much more I ask for when it comes to cooking th...

Do you eat enough vegetables? Do you really, honestly, get your " 6 a day? " I think it is pretty safe to say that even though I have the best of intentions, I don't. For all the thinking, writing and enjoying food that I do, I'm actually a real slouch on an everyday basis. This is an account of last Thursday, but you could tell the same story for many of the days during the looooong time off I've just had: I wake up, a large glass of tea on the bedstand next to me, lovingly provided by Martin. I get up, lounge around the apartment for a couple of hours (internetting, checking the balcony, doing some scrap-booking (on a good day)), then suddenly realize I need to get to work. I shower and run out the door. You did notice I forgot to eat breakfast, right? And even though I take my tea with both milk and sugar, please, and there is a lot of it, I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit neatly into the category of "stamina-inducing breakfasts". So I jot to wo...

Tarragon My posts have become somewhat of photo-marathons lately. The last couple, the chocolate ones, was mostly comprised of old, old, photos - you all know how they tend to bulk up, and there's not a much better feeling than when they actually get put to good use. But this post? These photos are pretty much all of them fresh of the press - I promise! Not much in the way of recipes, though - hey, you can't have everything at once!:) You see, I've started a small balcony garden. Uhuh. Me. And lemme tell you: I am the kind of person that can kill cactus and succulents. Yes, that is the kind of plants you give to students so that they can have some greenery around they don't have to give much thought. I am not widely known for my green thumb, let that be said. See that? That's chicken salad. Made with mayo, creme fraiche, chicken (obviously!) and tarragon - the one from the photo above. So why on earth I thought it a great idea to start planting and growing herbs!...

And yesterday, I was one of them. Guess I should be - or at least I should know I am - seeing I'm the one doing most of our grocery shopping. But you know how it is: sometimes, the fridge and vegetable basket is just one big, blank, empty nothing. Either that, or my brain is one big: but how on earth can I put these things together and make them into something good ? Last night, my brain was my friend (maybe it's all the studying I've been doing lately that's making it try harder?) and the fridge was well stocked with jewels of spring. So I had this for dinner: freshly shelled peas, avocado, finely sliced radishes, baby salad leaves, cucumber, croutons and crumbled bacon. A spritz of lemon, a glug of good olive oil, salt, pepper - and a spoonful of homemade mayo for the croutons. Welcome back in my kitchen, spring!:-)

Because it can't be all hardcore protein-feasts , all the time. Thursday night's dinner: brown rice, nutty and fantastic - and I'm no health fanatic, believe me , but brown rice I adore - dressed with a little tamari, toasted sesame seeds, half a diced avocado and chiffonade of parsley. Sometimes, you don't need the fuss. Sometimes, you just want the basics.

Mmh. That's one big lump o' meat we've got there (underneith all the colorful stuff - yes, that's right, there!). Actually, it's not that big a lump - I think this one was just shy of 120 grams. But I'm going too fast here - let me tell you a little about Pariserbøf . Or actually, let me not. Because to be honest, I have no idea as to where this thing originated. I did try a Google search which came up with both England and France as countries of origin, but I've never had anything like this outside Danish borders. Sure, it must have some sort of sandwich-y ancestor. I suppose you could even call it the Danish version of the hamburger. But the true story, I don't know. I just know that it's good, and that Pariserbøf is what I often turn to when the protein-and-no-fresh-vegetables-in-sight-pangs strike me. The last couple of years, it's been on a revival trip in some of the hip restaurants and café's around Copenhagen. Being a traditional Da...

I lost my pasta making virginity on the last day of 2006. Yes, really. I've been claiming to be a foodie in league with the best of them, but it is only shy of three months ago I ventured into the land of pasta-making. Why no sooner? Surely, pasta is easy to make? Guess I just never saw the need, really. I love my De Cecco pasta. Of course, you don't get that with interesting stuffing, but I'm all about sauce anyways - preferably something creamy and clingy. So what's with the idea of making dough, leaving it to rest, roll it, thinner, thinner, and then just a little bit thinner again, and then spend ages making neat little packages out of them? Well - that - spending ages making little packages, is exactly the point of it all, if you ask me. The fact that I'm using my Kitchen Aid attachment - hereby sticking to one of my 2007 dares - makes this even better, and faster and easier, too. If you haven't already tried, do so. It's worth it (and you can still ...

It's been a while, hasn't it? So with no further apologies or ado's, I bring you DwB - once more, with feeling! This week, it's Shauna, or as you might better know her, Gluten-Free Girl that's in the spotlight. It's not like she needs her horn tooted - c'mon, the woman's got herself a bookdeal , people! - but well - this dish ( and several other on her blog - and just the blog in general, m'kay?) certainly deserves a brass band with matching chorus. This is a woman with a passion for food - taste, smell, texture and just plain writing about it. It has to be gluten-free, but that certainly doesn't leave nothing left to wish for for the gluten-eaters among us. Oh yes, and she's a little passionate about the Chef, too ;-) But this is about the food - to be more specific, it's about Chicken Thighs in Pomegranate Molasses . Ah - the dish, the dish! I'm telling you - it's good! And it was pretty fast in the making, too. I had a...

My apologies. It was my sincerest intention to do a DwB post at least every other week. Then what happened? Well, the boss left on paternity leave and left me with a whole lotta work, hence, no post last week. Yup, always blame it on work. So even though I had done some cooking, I didn't have time to do a write up. But it's here today. Having done this DwB thing for quite some time now has had me troubling my mind - not so much with how to keep finding new recipes that I want to try to choose from - lord knows there's PLENTY! - but from what to do with the recipes I kept bookmarking from blogs that I've already once featured in a DwB session. I know, it's shameless of them to not stop posting about delicious things once I have acknowledged them - but they do keep doing it, oh yes they do! And I mean, of course you want to know about new blogs, but face it - it's also the food we're all after, isn't it? So what to do? I could of course just try them out, ...

Inside Lime I have a hard time believing that it's been three months since we returned from our roadtrip. Where did all that time go? Where did all the time that we spend ON the trip fly away too? And why, oh WHY will it not come back?? So a couple weeks ago, I took matters into my own hands, and tried to recreate a little piece of time passed by. The Dinner Club girls (as we shall refer to them in the future) are a bunch of girls that started out in med school at the same time. Some have gone off to do other things, and the rest of us are spread out on different semesters, but we try to get together at least once a month, taking turns to be in charge of dinner and doing the dishes. We try to keep it low-key - it really should be things that we'd make for ourselves on a weeknight, without further ado. But it was summer, I had more spare time than I usually do, with school not taking up the big hunk of time it normally does, so of course, I had to throw myself at it like a kid ...

Surely, there is no stopping me this week! It's Dining with the Blogger's time and for once: I've planned ahead. Usually, I'm running around on Tuesday night (admittedly, sometimes on Wednesday mornings) trying to figure out which one of the oh-so-many bookmarked food blogger recipes I'm to try. This week though - no problemo. Last Wednesday, Fanny from Food Beam had this wonderfully looking picture (complete with recipe) up of a Pissaladiere . Um, and a-whatta? Pissaladiere. Go see Fanny's post, she'll tell you where it comes from. I never had it before, but it looked so good, and it had been a while since I'd done anything with yeast. I just couldn't get it of my mind. Sweet onions, savory anchovies, salty olives, doughy cushions of bread? Hello! If that doesn't speak heaven to you, well... But when would I have the time to make it? It turned out I unexpectedly got Friday night off. And is there a better way to spend Friday night than with dou...

Do you know how to make broccoli look good? Molly from Spice Tart does! Broccoli's not the only vegetable she makes look good - in fact, she's not even the only one in her family that can make vegetables look good. Her sister has done these wonderful paintings that are up at Molly's site, you have to have a look at those - the first one I saw ( the onion ) I actually thought was a macro'ed out close-up of an actual onion. Nah, it's paint! When we started doing Dining with the Bloggers last season, I went around a lot of the blogs, perusing their indexes and archives, to see if there was anything I'd like to try. Nowadays, Ialso get inspiration from my BlogLine Feed, and I'm telling you, the list is growing like a baby on steroids! This was also how I spotted Molly's recipe for making the easiest, yet tastiest broccoli . I eat way too little vegetables - I pride myself on being oh so healthy (to make up for all those cakes, you know?) but when pus...

I've been wanting to try a recipe from Niki's in quite a while. She keeps up her fantastic blog, Esurientes - The Comfort Zone - from (from me) far, far away Melbourne, Australia. Only problem - if you can call it that - was that a lot of the recipes I've bookmarked from her site turned out to be cakes . Now how could that have happened? ;-) It's probably all natural - Niki's a great baker, and her tastes in cakes correspond very well with mine! And did you know she has an entire index page exclusively with CHOCOLATE recipes?? The problem was (or is) - and you might think it silly - that I need to make more everyday recipes. It's seldom a problem for me to figure out what I want to bake, but ask me what I'm making for dinner tomorrow night and I'm sure all you'll get from me is a face looking like a question mark! No problemo though, 'cause there was plenty of bookmarks for savory dishes too, one of those being something she just made r...

That's right, Cathy and I are back with tried and tasted recipes from our favorite source: YOU BLOGGERS YOU! I can't believe (again, I think I've mentioned this before) the amount of new blogs that just springs up all over - it's amazing, and I love it! One of the not-so-new-anymore blogs, that I bookmarked the first time I had seen it, Taste Everything Once , is coming to us from Spokane. It's written by Jennifer, who I just recently realized has a knack for Norwegian language and an opinion on croutons with which I wholeheartedly agree! As if that's not enough, she's got projects going on: one trying to tell us all about the restaurant scene in Spokane , the other one introducing us to coffee place after coffee place . She's got the cutest dog , and oh yes - she makes gorgeous food ! That's still not it. She's also got the best recipe for pizza dough I have yet to come across. It's easy to prepare, you can freeze any you don't use ...