The Susanne

Came across this ad today. My good­ness. What more can I say…

Me? Write a book? Sure!

Yeah, summer is here. And coffee drinker that I am I’ve been feel­ing jeal­ous of all the people I see enjoy­ing iced cof­fees: here in Oslo at least it’s very dif­fi­cult to find iced coffee that doesn’t con­tain milk. Usu­ally the vari­et­ies to choose from are: latte, mocca and cap­puccino. Yeah. So I star­ted exper­i­ment­ing at home, with espresso, ice, water, sugar and soy milk with none too good res­ults. Des­per­a­tion star­ted clos­ing in on me, but then — I remembered a favour­ite drink of mine when I vis­ited Greece with mum and The Sister in 2004: Frappé! It’s Greek iced coffee and it’s beau­ti­ful! And the best part is, it’s milk free! (Okay, milk is optional, but there is really no need for it.) Also it’s lovely tast­ing and has the best froth of any drink I can think of. It’s made from instant coffee which is mixed with a little water and some sugar, then shaken or blen­ded (I use a hand mixer) until it forms a thick froth. Poured over ice into a tall glass and then just enough water is added to fill the glass, served with bendy straws. Amazing!

I have news! I have decided to start with recipes! At the moment I am trying to figure out a good way of post­ing them out­side the chro­no­logy of the blog itself – right now I’m think­ing I’ll use ‘pages’ but that will require some help from The Boy­friend as I’m cur­rently using pages just as photo albums. So I’ve star­ted writ­ing down how I make things… It felt really com­plic­ated at first but I sup­pose it will get easier as I do it more. Have also star­ted taking pic­tures of the cook­ing pro­cess, to accom­pany the recipes. I’m well excited.

As I’m writ­ing this, there’s an exhausted bunny asleep next to me. We took him out today for the first time after let­ting him get used to the har­ness for a few days. I sus­pec­ted he’d like being out­side but I also thought he’d be a bit scep­tical and maybe even a little scared at first; not so! He abso­lutely loved it out­side and he wasn’t afraid at all. He ran, jumped, inspec­ted the dif­fer­ent plants and the cigar­ette butts on the gravel (oh how I love my neigh­bours who smoke…) and basic­ally seemed just in his ele­ment! It was def­in­itely a great suc­cess and some­thing we will have to keep up. When I go to stay at my parents’ for the summer they’ve agreed to help me build a cage for him out of chicken wire so he can be out­side all day. It will be more restric­ted than run­ning around almost freely on a leash (with me trying to keep up), but I’m sure he’ll like it. And the com­pany of The Cat, of course! Here’s my ickle bunnykins enjoy­ing his first taste of Mother Nature:

Since Wed­nes­day, I’ve com­pleted two of my four exams. I’m utterly exhausted but it feels amaz­ing. We’ve been eating a lot of meat lately because it’s what’s been on sale and also The Boy­friend is much more of a meat eater than a fish eater. So when I met mum for dinner on Wed­nes­day night after my first exam, she gave me some money to buy some fresh fish. I haven’t really had a chance to until today because of my second exam which didn’t finish until half six last night, so I finally made the trip to Laksen Fisk og Vilt and bought two Hard­anger trout. It’s basic­ally alpine trout caught on the Hard­anger­vidda, and it tastes divine! I fil­leted it myself which was quite the adven­ture: I got to use the fil­let­ing knife from the set of chef’s knives dad gave me for christ­mas, and I got to figure out how to get all the bones out without mutil­at­ing the fil­lets! I had loads of fun and I’d even gotten pretty good at it by the third fillet. I pan fried the fil­lets in butter (for that lovely crisp skin!) and served with twice baked pota­toes filled with bacon, onion and chives. I’ll be post­ing the recipe as soon as I figure out how I want to do it.

Earlier in the week we had pork cut­lets (again). I wanted to use my home made bouil­lon and some of all the pork I’ve piled up in the freezer, and this is what I ended up with:

The Boy­friend has given me the most won­der­ful gift I have ever received: The New Con­cise Larousse Gast­ro­nomique! Oh my lord! How can I study for exams with that abso­lute gem in my pos­ses­sion?! I tell you, it’s pos­sible but extremely dif­fi­cult.
Since my trip to the post office to pick up the mys­ter­i­ous pack­age I have per­used my treas­ure and am now in the pro­cess of making my first ‘real’ stock! It’s been sim­mer­ing for about three hours and has another three hours to go accord­ing to the Larousse. Well, I have noth­ing but time. I can’t wait for tomorrow’s dinner, just make a guess if there will be sauce…

Ok, so I was too impa­tient to wait until it was fin­ished before trying it. I used some for tonight’s dinner, which was sear-​roasted chicken breasts with a garlic and herb rub, and mashed pota­toes. I deglazed the chicken pan with some bal­samic vin­egar and then added about 2 dl of my unfin­ished stock. Reduced to about 1 dl and drained through a piece of muslin. And let me just say: wow! I really had no idea what I was miss­ing, muck­ing about with that store-​bought boul­lion all this time. No more! Here’s a pic­ture of my chicken dinner:

As usual I’m too lazy to write out the recipe, but I will share the secret of my amaz­ing mashed pota­toes! Being lactose-​intolerant I often have to think twice (and resign myself to some uncom­fort­able hours to come if I decide to indulge myself) before tuck­ing into food cooked by other people, and there are cer­tain foods I miss immensely such as pizza (oh my love, why must you hurt me so?). And I used to miss mashed pota­toes. But then I thought of a way to make them just as deli­cious but 100% dairy-​free.

What you’ll need is:

your desired amount of new pota­toes (I keep the skin on for its lovely taste and its nutri­ents),
some non-​dairy mar­gar­ine,
water
and salt.
(and some pepper if you like)

Here’s what to do:

Chop up the pota­toes before cook­ing to drastic­ally shorten the cook­ing time.

Then boil them in some lightly salted water until they are very tender and almost fall apart on touch.

Pour some of the water into a jug before drain­ing the pota­toes in a colan­der, and then throw them back into the pot (off the heat!)

Now add a big slab of mar­gar­ine, and mash away.

Pour in some of the water whilst mash­ing until you reach your favour­ite consistency.

Season with addi­tional salt and pepper to taste, and—

Enjoy!

I am start­ing to see that today is a day of firsts. I have just suc­cess­fully made my very first batch of cook­ies! I got the idea and the ‘how-to’ from a blog I just dis­covered earlier tonight: Cook & Eat. The idea of making leftover-​cookies appealed to me immensely! Like the author of Cook & Eat, I have heaps and heaps of left over stuff taking up pre­cious cup­board space and seeing the photos of the light golden brown cook­ies lit­er­ally made my mouth water. And let me just say, for the record, that I am not a sweet-​tooth!

I made my cook­ies fol­low­ing the recipe from Cook & Eat up to the point of the oats, with only slight adjust­ments to fit my stom­ach and my pantry. I used non-​dairy mar­gar­ine as always, and I used 1 tsp of lemon juice instead of 2 tsp orange juice as I didn’t have any. Also, I didn’t have any brown sugar so just used 1 cup of the normal stuff. Now, when the time came for fla­vour­ing I had dug out all the yummy secrets hidden away in my cup­board and my candy shelf. Here’s what I decided to put into the cook­ies: Hundreds-and-Thousands, shred­ded coconut, chips of 70% cocoa dark chocol­ate and some Lindt chili 86% cocoa chocol­ate my mum gave me once.

I have to say, they didn’t look too appet­ising halfway through the cook­ing pro­cess (I decided against post­ing the photo of it). But My oh My, did they look lovely when they came out! (Oh yeah, I tried cook­ing them for 12 minutes the first time and they came out dark brown and not so yummy. The next two batches were cooked for under ten minutes, just until lightly golden at the edges.) Also, my cook­ies didn’t stay fluffy. They rose in the oven, but then sud­denly they all col­lapsed into flat­ness. They still taste divine, though. Incred­ibly sweet, but divine nonetheless.

I made schnitzel again! Yey me! I LOVE schnitzel!!! To mix it up a little I tried some dif­fer­ent fla­vours tonight: I went for a ginger and garlic rub for the schnitzels, and couscous on the side. I also had to change the filling for the schnitzels as I was out of both cured ham and expens­ive cheese. So The Boyfriend’s schintzel had a Jarls­berg and bacon filling whilst mine had bacon and asparagus. Scrump­tious! As before, I used a mix of bread­crumbs and sesame seeds for the crust. I love how the sesame seeds give it a nutty fla­vour and also some extra crunch!

It was my first time making couscous and I must say I was pleased with the result in that depart­ment also! I made it with veget­able stock instead of water and I seasoned it with some grated ginger. I sauteed some veget­ables in my biggest skil­let, seasoned with some hoisin-​based sauce and mixed in the couscous just a few minutes before serving.

I’m not really one for writ­ing out recipes. I feel like this one deserves to be shared, but I just don’t have the patience to write out lists of ingredi­ents and instruc­tions on how to make it. I am aware that that prob­ably makes me selfish and lazy and not a good food-​blogger. But I’m will­ing to live with that. And who knows, maybe some day I’ll change my mind and post all my recipes. Or maybe I’ll write them down in a beau­ti­ful leather-​bound book and give to my daugh­ter, when I’m old and wrinkly and have loads of time on my hands… Who knows.

I’d like to end with a few choice words from Lewis Carroll:

‘Twas bril­lig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Do you ever wake up feel­ing so awful you think the day can only go uphill from here…and then it goes down­hill instead? Yeah, you guessed it, that’s today for me. Woke up with a split­ting head­ache, prob­ably due to the weather as I react badly to rain, then got up and my left hand is swollen and hurt­ing for no good reason at all. Got in the shower and as soon as I star­ted sham­poo­ing I could tell this is not just a bad day, it’s a bad hair day as well. To cheer me up I decided to try my hand at making Rösti for break­fast. Rösti is a Swiss potato based dish not that unlike hash browns I guess. It’s made from shred­ded potato by itself or mixed with veget­ables, cheese, or fruit, basic­ally whatever you like. I made mine with leeks, onion and car­rots. Deli­cious! It was a bit of work and they took much longer to cook than I’d anti­cip­ated, but the end result was def­in­itely worth it:

I served them up with some crispy bacon and a fried egg, and I believe that in addi­tion to dis­cov­er­ing an unques­tion­ably yummy way to serve bacon and eggs, I have pos­sibly found a hangover favour­ite. The only prob­lem is that I’m the cook in this house­hold and I’m also the only one who suf­fers from hangovers. The Boy­friend is curi­ously exempt from this pain­ful after-​effect of drink­ing. I sup­pose I will just have to avoid the ‘over-the-top, blind-and-stumbling’ drunken nights and go for the ‘slightly intoxicated’ ver­sion instead. Much easier on the liver, too. And I’ll be able to cook my own breakfast ;)

I’ve spent the last few days study­ing or trying to study. dis­tract­ing situ­ations keep pop­ping up and as The Boy­friend and I live in a studio flat there’s nowhere for me to go in order to get some peace and quiet. There are simply no doors to close. Unless I want to study in the bath­room, that is. Uni is out of the ques­tion as I have a tend­ency to fall asleep and whenever I’m in a lib­rary I just end up either star­ing at all the other people or read­ing random books that beckon to me from their shelves.

Des­pite my efforts to study, how­ever, I have had time to cook. I bought a huge pack of pork chops the other day and wanted to do some­thing dif­fer­ent with them to what I usu­ally do. (Which is just cook­ing them up with Worcester­shire sauce and serving with pota­toes and veg­gies. Incred­ibly deli­cious but it gets boring, like everything else.) So I flipped through the Boyfriend’s cook­book that I have a feel­ing his mum might have sup­plied, and what did I see? The Schnitzel!

I knew imme­di­ately that I would have to make it. Although there are those who will call it sac­ri­lege, I don’t have a prob­lem with sub­sti­tut­ing pork for veal. Veal is very expens­ive and I had all this pork and all… So I set to work. I didn’t have the ‘meat hammer’ thing used for pound­ing the meat flat, so I tried a few things I had lying around. I tried using our reg­u­lar hammer with a wooden spat­ula. It split in half. Then I tried it with my plastic spat­ula, it was crushed. I had to send The Boy­friend out for a new spat­ula and almost gave up the entire attempt, when I thought of my little sauce­pan, just sit­ting there on its shelf, look­ing smug. I picked it up, and poun­ded the four bone­less pork chops until my arm hurt!  after­wards, I seasoned them with salt and pepper before pla­cing some cured ham and a little grated parmesan on each, and then spin­ach on two and The Boyfriend’s cheese of the week (he gets one expens­ive cheese at a time. When he’s fin­ished that one he gets to pick another) on the other two. Then I folded them up and sent them through the schnitzel-​dips:

Firstly, flour mixed with salt, pepper and grated parmesan

Secondly, two lightly beaten eggs, and-

Thirdly, bread­crumbs mixed with yet more parmesan, salt, pepper and sesame seeds.

Then the schintzels were ready for the pan, where I fried them in a mix­ture of mar­gar­ine and canola oil until they were golden brown and scrump­tiously crispy. I served them with mashed pota­toes, asparagus and green beans. Unfor­tu­nal­tely I was in such a hurry to dig into my huge plate of deli­cious­ness that I forgot to take a pic­ture: I will there­fore make some again tonight and I’ll try to remem­ber the photo session.