The Susanne

Reading through some recent posts on Slash­food I found a link to a post about moose meat and Sarah Palin’s moose hunt­ing escapades, where I was com­pletely baffled to learn that in the USA, game meat is only allowed for sale if it is farmed! Now, please do cor­rect me if I’m wrong but in my 23-something years on this earth I have always been under the impres­sion that game = wild anim­als. Hence the dis­tinct, strong fla­vour and high prices of the meat. I love game. I love moose meat, I love reindeer meat, I love deer.

As I hail to a quite rural part of Norway (well, which parts except the centre of Oslo aren’t rural?) I’ve spent quite a lot of time in the forest whilst grow­ing up. We’ve picked ber­ries (blue­ber­ries, lin­gon­ber­ries, even cloud­ber­ries) and mush­rooms, espe­cially chanterelles (my abso­lute favour­ite!) and por­cini. One espe­cially mem­or­able day when I was about ten (I think), mum and I were pick­ing ber­ries when all of a sudden we noticed an awful stench! Then we heard a weird, loud, some­what choked sound. Mum’s face went white and she clasped me to her and explained that a moose mother and her calf were nearby and we had to sneak home as quickly and as quietly as we could, and hope to escape unnoticed. Which we did, of course. I’m not sure what would have happened has the mother moose seen us, but chances are she would have attacked to pro­tect her calf and I would prob­ably not be sit­ting here now, telling the tale.

Another thing about moose is, they really, really like the fer­men­ted apples that are left on the trees come winter. I remem­ber one day when I was about 18, my friend and I were sup­posed to hang out when she called me, with a slight panic in her voice, explain­ing that she would not be able to make it was there were two drunken moose in her garden and she was scared to leave the house! Poor her. And poor me! I didn’t get to see my friend for days, not until the moose had left (pos­sibly after devour­ing all the apples, I don’t really remember.)

My par­ents have friends who hunt moose every autumn. Well, the Nor­we­gian moose, anyway. They have a spe­cial license and a quota which is dis­trib­uted amongst land owners, and they go out into the woods and shoot as many moose as they can up to the limit of their quota. But they aren’t allowed to just take their ‘catch’ home and eat it. They have to take their moose to a slaughter­house where the meat is pre­pared for con­sump­tion — and then they have to buy it back! They get it at a reduced price of course, as they’re the ones who brought the meat in, but they still have to pay. If they choose not to buy it back the slaughterhouse will be free to sell it to con­sumers who have to pay a much dearer price for the exclus­ive meat. Which tastes lovely, by the way. Ever tried a moose burger? I’ve always found this prac­tice quite ridicu­lous, although I do under­stand the import­ance of food safety. But com­pared to my latest dis­cov­ery about game meat in the USA, I’ll feel forever blessed for living in a coun­try where game meat comes from actual wild animals!

Today so far has been won­der­ful: prob­ably the best 17. May in years. When we woke this morn­ing we were greeted by snow­flakes fall­ing out­side our window. The Boy­friend and I dressed and shared a quite eleg­ant yet simple break­fast of cham­pagne, some rye crack­ers, grapes and fenalår before set­ting out on today’s adventure.

As we left the flat after break­fast and made our way towards the city centre and the royal castle, the tem­per­at­ure had risen slightly and snow had given way to heavy rain and sharp wind. We met up with The Boyfriend’s brother and pro­ceeded through the throng of rev­el­lers towards the castle to find a good place to spot the King and also watch the children’s parade - and we suc­ceeded beyond expect­a­tion. It was freez­ing, it was wet, my shoes were a touch too high and about a size too big, a man kicked me with his muddy shoe and we only man­aged to catch occa­sional glimpses of the Royals whenever a strong gust of wind would blow aside a branch of the tree which obscured our view of them. Yet is was bril­liant! We waved our little flags and shouted HURRA! with the chil­dren, we spot­ted a rel­at­ive of The Boy­friend and The Brother in one of the march­ing bands and we really had a great time.

After a while I found I could no longer ignore the pain in my feet, and as we were just about frozen through we left the cel­eb­ra­tions and made our way back home where I cooked up a gigantic (at least for three people) brunch. Actu­ally I hadn’t meant for it to be quite of that scale but I found as I was cook­ing away that I simply couldn’t stop. One thing inspired me to make another and in the end I’d made, clock­wise from bottom left: scrambled eggs with chives, warm potato salad, tomato and moz­zarella salad, a plate of smoked salmon and my spe­cial gravlaks (which turned out great I might add. A tad salty, but tasty!), mus­tard sauce for the salmon and aïoli, both home made, fresh baguettes (which I only heated up so no credit there), a plate of cured ham and fenalår (cured leg of lamb), and asparagus with cured ham and parmesan. It was quite a feast!

All this took about an hour to get ready, so luck­ily I thought to serve up a cheese, cured ham and rye crack­ers plate to sus­tain the two hungry men whilst they waited, as well as some italian ice cream cake which I’d pre­pared last night. We feasted upon all this for a while until we were well and fat, and then lounged about for a while trying to catch our breath. The Brother provided some enter­tain­ment in the form of his lovely guitar play:

After brunch we sep­ar­ated for a few hours to get some rest before the evening’s shenanigans: we’re going to a con­cert! Farm­ers Market are play­ing at Rock­e­feller and I’m well excited. I know Stian Carstensen’s music from his Christ­mas Jazz shows home in Eids­voll, which are simply bril­liant. He is a musi­cian quite dif­fer­ent from any other I can think of: incred­ibly tal­en­ted in both tech­nique and per­form­ance, as well as dazzlingly cre­at­ive and ener­getic. I simply can’t wait!