The Susanne

I was plan­ning on writ­ing a ’10 things  love about Sicilia’-post, but the wire­less net­work I’m cur­rently on won’t let me upload my pic­tures. So that will have to wait until another time. This is just a shortie to say I’m back, I’m alive and I’m immeas­ur­ably happy after my amaz­ing trip. Details to come.

The Boy­friend and I went on another little fish­ing trip tonight as we thought I’d have to leave tomor­row. There are no buses going by this island on week­ends and only about twice a day on week­days, so as none of us own cars my only hope of get­ting home in time for my 6am flight on Tues­day would be the 11am bus tomor­row. But then The B came up with a bril­liant plan: we’ll take the boat to Vige­land on Sat­urday and I can get a bus from there! Ah, how I love it when things work out. Also I love not having to drag my suit­case along the gravel road that is the only way off this island.

Any­ways, back to the fish­ing trip. We were out there for a while, even had dinner on a little island with a light­house and then did some gro­cery shop­ping over at Spangereid. Then, on the way home I asked The B for one hour fish­ing time, after which time we’d head straight home and I’d make him a pizza. He agreed (of course) and after half an hour I could feel a faint tug­ging at the line! Oh the excite­ment! But then, noth­ing. I wor­ried I had lost the fish, but kept reel­ing in any­ways just in case. Finally I could see some­thing silver get­ting closer to the sur­face and yes, it was a fish. A little pol­lock to be exact. Although it seemed very tired, didn’t really put up much of a fight at all and I wondered if the hook had gone through its brain as I could see it coming out of the eye:

Also it felt really thin, like it hadn’t eaten for weeks. I thought ‘Maybe it’s a girl and it’s just spawned’. But I was wor­ried. When we got back I sliced her open and when we saw the liver we found a def­in­ite clue as to why she was so thin. She hadn’t lost the baby­weight, she’d para­sites! We took some pic­tures and then googled it, and found a video with a guy who’d been infec­ted with the same para­site after eating sushi. We also dis­covered that when cooked prop­erly the fish is com­pletely safe to eat, but we’d already thrown the poor thing into the bay…

First a happy sur­prise: last night mum bought tick­ets to Sicilia for The Sister and I! We leave on Tues­day and will be gone for a week. It still hasn’t really sunk in yet, in fact it feels like a bad case of morn­ing after anxi­ety. Like I was very drunk last night and may not be remem­ber­ing things cor­rectly. But it is true, we are going. Yey! I’ve never been to Sicilia before, nor to Italy at all, and I’m well excited! Will be bring­ing the camera but no com­puter, so there will most likely be about ten new posts up all at once in about two weeks time.. I’m excited to see some of the castles and things from medi­eval times. And the beaches, of course. And I can’t wait to sample the food! Ohhh my good­ness. My mouth is water­ing just at the thought of it!

Speak­ing of food — I woke up this morn­ing crav­ing scones. Now, that is itself is weird on sev­eral levels as 1) I don’t think I’ve ever actu­ally had scones before and 2) scones are made with loads of butter and milk, and thus inev­it­ably make me sick. But I scoured the inter­net for a simple recipe and found one at Smit­ten Kit­chen, and then I set to work. I’m not sure how the dough was sup­posed to be before cook­ing but I do have a feel­ing mine was a little runny. Well, maybe not runny but it was def­in­itely not dry and as soon as I got the scones in the oven they seemed to melt a little. And I know for sure that scones are sup­posed to be much higher than mine, which in fact turned out more like scone cook­ies. But they still tasted divine. Mmmm… I only man­aged one before my stom­ach felt like it was throw­ing some sort of satanic party and I was the guest of honour (read: sac­ri­fice) and I had to capit­u­late. But, it was worth it. It was so light and fluffy and deli­cious, lovely and crumbly yet moist at the same time. I had mine with straw­berry jam and it was simply per­fect. No wonder I craved it…

Spending some time here at Underøy I’m really begin­ning to open my eyes to what an abund­ant source of deli­cious things the sea really is. In the last five days I’ve caught a cod, a bucket full of crabs and another bucket full of mus­sels. All this is food that I would have to pay pretty dearly for back in Oslo and all food that I love. I love sea­food – pretty much all fish as well as crabs, mus­sels, lob­ster, prawns, shrimp, calamari… It all tastes so fresh and lovely, and it needs so little in terms of spices or fla­vour enhan­cers. Plus it tastes healthy. Anyone else think so? To me, sea­food some­how comes out­side of the normal food thing where cal­or­ies, fat con­tent and car­bo­hydrates count for any­thing. When it comes to sea­food, all that mat­ters is the lovely fla­vours. In fact, I know noth­ing about the fat con­tent in any sea­food except that I’ve heard some­where that salmon is full of the good fatty acids.

And this place… it must be what heaven is like. I never ima­gined being able to just walk out the door, a few metres down to the water’s edge car­ry­ing a bucket, and pick tonight’s dinner! It’s right there, just out­side the house walls! And if I feel like fish, all we have to do is jump in the boat which is also right there and with some luck we’ll come home with all the fish we could dream of. Or crabs, all you need is a bucket, a rake and a flash­light, and then take the boat out to one of the many little islets scattered around, and just pick them up from the side of the rock. Boil them in sea water, and eat.

It’s the sim­pli­city of it which gets me. Good sea­food is some­thing of a luxury in Oslo, which is such a shame because when pre­pared prop­erly it becomes such an amaz­ing gour­met meal, every time. And now that it’s so avail­able, I feel… I don’t quite know how to describe it. All I know is I feel happy inside, and that I don’t really want to go back to having to buy frozen shell­fish and check­ing the ‘fresh’ fish I buy to see if it’s really fresh. It’s so dif­fer­ent when you’ve caught it your­self: you’ve pulled it out of the sea, you’ve killed it, you’ve pulled out its guts, you know the exact amount of time it’s been dead before you cook and eat it and… well, it’s just amaz­ing. Oh and I forgot — It’s free! How bril­liant is that!

Our fish­ing trip last night was good, if not too much of a suc­cess i terms of catch: Trond got a pretty small pol­lock which I fryed up in some butter when we got home, and we all snacked on it. But I didn’t get any­thing. Trond also got a weird little thing called Horngjel (Gar­fish), which was thin and spiky and accord­ing to The Boy­friend can really hurt you when you try to unhook it. Luck­ily this one got loose on its own whilst we were doing a little pho­toshoot to document the cool catch.

When we got back, I felt pretty bad about coming back empty handed, so I took a little walk around the bay out­side the house and picked my first ever mussels. I didn’t know how much to get so I picked a whole bucket full, which weighed in at 7,5 kg. I quickly real­ised that that’s way too much for two people to eat, pos­sibly even a lot for seven or eight! (I read after­wards that 1 kg mus­sels per person is an appro­pri­ate por­tion size for an entree) So after I’d cleaned them all — which took me an hour– I threw 2/3 of them back into the bay.

I wanted to make them for dinner today, and as The Boy­friend is not known to be crazy about sea­food I decided to do a tomato/red wine broth instead of just steam­ing them in white wine which I believe is the more tra­di­tional way of pre­par­ing them. I also made some oven pota­toes just in case The Boy­friend didn’t love the meal enough to fill up on the scrump­tious little mus­sels. Although actu­ally, they were pretty big..

He turned out to love it almost as much as I did, in fact. It must have been the broth, which I’m very pleased with! Tomato, onion, garlic and red wine, a little thyme, and some car­rots and the mussles on top. Deli­cious! You can find the recipe under the Sea­food category…

The import­ant thing about mus­sels is, firstly – check­ing that the mus­sels in your area are safe to eat (if you’re pick­ing them your­self) and secondly – only using the ones that are closed or close upon touch. If they stay open, they’re dead and pos­sibly deadly. Like­wise, once they’re cooked, only eat the ones that have opened.

So that’s it: (raw = closed + cooked = open) = good.

To serve two (maybe three) you need:

• 2 kg fresh mussels
• 4 car­rots, julienned
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tin chopped tomato
• 1/2 bottle good red wine
• 1 tbsp thyme
• salt and pepper
• a good splash greek olive oil

In a large pot, sauté the onion in the olive until soft, then add the garlic and sauté until it starts turn­ing golden and gets that nutty aroma.

Add the tin of tomato and a little salt and pepper to taste, then pour in about half of the red wine. Let it all boil for a few minutes until it comes together and starts to thicken.

Add the thyme and the rest of the wine.

Place the car­rots in the broth and then place the mus­sels on top, and cover. Steam for about eight to ten minutes or until all the mus­sels have opened.

On Sat­urday night at about 1am, The Boy­friend, his cousin and I went crab pick­ing. We were a little tipsy from the party and it was pitch black out because of the clouds, and the rocks are very slip­pery. But we braved all these obstacles and went out with high spir­its and higher hopes of a great catch. We were not dis­ap­poin­ted. Last year, The Boy­friend and I only caught four crabs on our nightly adven­ture. This year we came back with 21 beau­ties! We were soak­ing wet from the rain (and I from fall­ing in a few puddles along the way…) and tired from the day, so we covered them with some sea­weed to keep them alive, and went to bed.

The next morn­ing we woke up, excited about our catch and couldn’t wait to get our hands on it. We filled the largest pot with some sea water and put it on two burn­ers to boil. Then all we had to do was wait until the water was ready for our little crabby friends… After the fun of throw­ing the little things in the boil­ing water we had to wait another 30 minutes while they cooked, then drain them on the rocks outside.

Luck­ily The Boyfriend’s cousin R’s boy­friend P sug­ges­ted we eat the crab legs while they were still warm, as appar­ently it’s easier to suck the meat out then. It is my belief that he was simply impa­tient about dig­ging into the good­ies — and I heart­ily applaud his initiative!

Mmmm… so good!

Later on, with only a few, stray, legs left on the crabs, it was time for the birth­day feast ( it was cousin S’ birth­day) — con­sist­ing of crabs, of course. The table was laid, every­one gathered, and then we ate. And ate, and ate, and still there were a few little crabs left over once we were all full. They were some pretty meaty little guys! We didn’t actu­ally make a crab cake like we’d joked about the night before when we went pick­ing, but I think that was pos­sibly for the best.

Happy birth­day, S. And thank you for lend­ing me your clean and dry (spare) trousers whilst my own dried off…

Back in the ’60s, The Boyfriend’s grand­mother (on his mother’s side) and her sis­ters bough a small island for 2500 kr. The value was based on the fact that it was pas­ture for 2,5 sheep. They built some cabins there, pretty small ones at first and then they’ve added on to them in the years since, to acco­mod­ate the grow­ing fam­il­ies. Now it’s a reg­u­lar para­dise just within the Hark­mark fjord and look­ing out to the wide ocean, and I’m sure it’s worth mil­lions upon mil­lions. Not that anyone’s think­ing of selling: this is a family retreat and that’s what it will always be.

The whole family uses it and every­one helps with the upkeep and improve­ments, and once a year they all gather for the annual family party. It tra­di­tion­ally includes a feast, singing and a good catching-​up of the year’s events. This year was the 20th anniversary of the event and my first time. The Boy­friend, his dad and his uncle had been scar­ing me with tales of new­comers being forced to stand on the table so i was pretty nervous. in fact, that’s the reason this is my first time: last year I decided it was ridicu­lous (read: too scary) and changed my train ticket to two days later. This year, though, I’d seen through their scam. Appar­ently only new babies go on the table, and that’s only so every­one can see them. So I only had to stand up next to my chair and look pretty. The party went well, every­one stuffed them­selves with prawns and white bread, and later with cake, before the song books and gui­tars were brought out and the singing began. I’d con­vinced The Boy­friend he should bake a cake for the party this year, and picked out this recipe from Con­fes­sions of a Novice which looked abso­lutely scrump­tious. He agreed to do it on the con­di­tion that I was there to lend a help­ing hand when needed, which I gladly agreed to. He didn’t need much help actu­ally, but I must admit I butted in a little. I find it very hard to keep my hands off things in the kit­chen. The cake was a huge suc­cess. Ten minutes after the cakes had been brought out, all that was left was a small heap of crumbs and crushed blue­ber­ries. Four dif­fer­ent people asked for the recipe and I think every­one has some new­found respect for The Boyfriend’s abil­it­ies in the kit­chen. I was told I’m a good influ­ence on him, which was pretty cool to hear also.

I have been get­ting a cold lately and of course it chose Sat­urday to really show its ugly face. I didn’t mind so much except that I wanted to make a good impres­sion on the rel­at­ives and instead I was reduced to a sniff­ling mess with no energy to spare and without my usual, sunny, bubbly dis­pos­i­tion. I did my best, though, and I’m sure they liked me anyway. At least a little…

The next day the sun came out and the boys went swim­ming. I wanted to more than any­thing, but I felt fever­ish and stuffy and awful and opted out, instead taking on the role of pho­to­grapher. They had fun though: