The Susanne

After a long day at uni filled with frus­tra­tions and with no oppor­tun­ity for eating (from 10 am till 4 pm) I got home crav­ing some­thing filling and autumny. A quick stop at the super­mar­ket gave me the answer: Shepherd’s Pie! Mmmm! I used Gordon Ramsay’s recipe with a few alter­a­tions: I used twice the amount of both onion and carrot, as well as loads of green beans, as I wanted more veget­ables. I also didn’t grate the onion and carrot, but rather chopped them quite finely so that I had small pieces which still had some ‘bite’ to them. Lastly I changed the butter for non-​dairy mar­gar­ine. It turned out great! This is one meal I won’t mind eating night after night (as there’s so much it’ll prob­ably take me all week to finish)– no prob­lem at all with some­thing as good as this!

My oral exam for the phon­et­ics course went really well. It was basic­ally just a pro­nun­ci­ation test and I do have pretty good pro­nun­ci­ation. My lec­turer opened by saying it was really a little unfair to those of us who had to do the test this early in the semester as we haven’t covered the things we’re being tested in, but that she didn’t think I’d have any trouble as I’d prob­ably just get it right instinct­ively. Which I took as a com­pli­ment! And I did get it all right. She said she noticed a hint of my Aus­tralian accent as I pro­nounced the name ‘Carl’, and my Scot­tish accent as I said ‘Scotland’. I was intrigued by the fact that she was able to point it out so accur­ately and explain to me how and why she noticed it. I really like her, she and Juan (my lec­turer in Shakespeare) are my def­in­ite favour­ites this semester. I really love having lec­tur­ers that inspire me to do well. I notice it more and more, but espe­cially this semester as it’s the last semester of my BA — that extra little incent­ive to do well really does make a dif­fer­ence in the amount of effort I put down! Now let’s just hope my inspir­a­tion stays up until the end of the semester and through­out the exam period, and I’ll be look­ing at some pretty spec­tac­u­lar exam res­ults. Yey! (Yea please bear with me and let me toot my own horn a little. I’ve no one else doing it for me at the moment ;) )

Yeah, that’s right. It’s called stick meat. It has its name from the method of cook­ing, which is that it’s steamed by pla­cing birch sticks, in cross­ing layers in the bottom of a pot and pla­cing the meat on top, and filling with water until just below the meat. The sticks can be bought ready made, but it feels really good to col­lect your own — I think it makes the Pinnekjøtt taste extra deli­cious as well. In Pinnekjøtt, you use the dry cured side of mutton, although some people prefer using lamb which has a milder taste. I prefer mutton because it’s much tastier.

To feed 4:

2 kg dry cured side of mutton

birch sticks

Divide the meat along each rib. Then place in plenty of water at room tem­per­at­ure for about 24-30 hours depend­ing on the thick­ness of the meat.

Layer the birch sticks in the bottom of a large pot, and fill with water so it is level with the sticks.

Place the ribs on top, making sure they’re not in the water. Let it cook on a low heat for about 3 hours, refilling the water as needed.

If you want you can place the Pinnekjøtt under the grill for a few minutes just before serving to give it that brown touch.

Serve on warm plates with Vos­sakorv (tra­di­tional Nor­we­gian saus­age), pota­toes, mashed swede, mus­tard and a reduc­tion from the cook­ing juices.