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 ...