The Susanne

My first meet­ing with Steamy Kit­chen res­ul­ted in some pretty spec­tac­u­lar Asian spare ribs. They were so mouth­wa­ter­ingly (oh I’m sure it’s a word) deli­cious that I have since exper­i­mented with the recipe and found my own favour­ite version:

For the glaze, you’ll need

• 5 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tsp minced ginger
• ½ oinion, minced
• 7 tbsp Worcester­shire sauce
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp sambal oelek
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 dl water

Set the oven to 150 degrees Celsius, then pre­pare the glaze:

In a sauce­pan, heat the olive oil and add the onion and garlic. Sauté for a few minutes until soft but not brown, and add the remain­ing ingredi­ents. Let it simmer until it has thickened.

Pre­pare the ribs:

Brush on a layer of the glaze on both sides of the ribs, place them in a non-​stick oven dish. Cover with alu­minium foil, and then pop them in the oven for about three hours. Every 30 minutes, take the ribs out and brush on some more glaze. After 3 hours, take the ribs out and pop on the grill in the oven. Take off the alu­minium foil and brush on the remain­ing glaze, and put the ribs back in the oven until the glaze car­a­mel­izes and looks bubbly and yummy.

Take the ribs out before the glaze burns, and serve! With a salad, some coleslaw or onion rings or even plain old boiled pota­toes, these ribs will amaze you with whatever dish you choose to accom­pany them!

A schnitzel is such a deli­cious little treat, it will keep you want­ing more long after the last morsel has left the plate for the inside of your stom­ach. It is also a great way to put an easy spin on a boring piece of meat, and a sure way of impress­ing who­ever you want to impress with your cook­ing skills. I made mine from pork (no sur­prise there ay) and will gladly share my method:

The basics for two:

• 2 pork chops, bone­less (why not use the bones to make sauce?)
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• salt and pepper
• 2 dl flour
• 0,5 dl bread crumbs and 1,5 dl sesame seeds, mixed

• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• finely grated ginger

• 6 slices Jarlsberg
• 3 slices bacon, halved and cooked
• 4 asparagus heads, quickly seared in butter

• dip them in the flour, cov­er­ing them lightly all over
• then into the egg, again making sure they’re well covered
• lastly, dip the schnitzels in the mix of bread crumbs and sesame seeds.

This is a recipe I’ve brought with me from home, a fail-​safe dinner that will never cease to amaze my taste buds and bring a smile to my face as I remem­ber mum’s din­ners. The Worcester­shire sauce was dad’s idea though.

To feed 4, you need:

• 5 large loin chops (one extra is always a good idea in case someone eats theirs too quickly and finds them­selves hun­ger­ing for more…)
• Salt
• Pepper
• Worcester­shire sauce

Here’s the how-​to:

Rub the chops all over with salt, pepper and lots of Worcester­shire sauce.

Heat a large skil­let on a medium-​high heat and melt some mar­gar­ine or butter. Cook two chops at a time.

Cook them on one side for a couple of minutes or until meat juice starts to show up on the sur­face, then turn them and cook for about one minute. Take them out of the pan and place them in a heat proof dish with a lid or in alu­minum foil to keep warm whilst cook­ing the other two.

When they’re all cooked, gently press you finger down on the meat­i­est part to see if they’re cooked to your liking, if you want them more done then put them back in the skil­let on a low heat for about a minute or so. If not, deglaze the pan with a little water and Worcester­shire sauce to make a lovely reduc­tion, and serve with boiled pota­toes and maybe some vegetables!

As I’m a poor stu­dent and can’t afford to spend a lot of money on food, I usu­ally have to buy in bulk when some­thing is on spe­cial. This time it was pork chops: they were ridicu­lously cheap and con­sequently I filled up my freezer. But then came the ques­tion of how to eat all the chops without tiring of them com­pletely. Some vari­ation was much needed, and I came up with a way of making them near unrecognisable:

Rolled up and secured with string and filled with spin­ach. Then braised for full fla­vour and tenderness.

You need:

• 4 pork chops
• some frozen spin­ach (or fresh if you can afford it; I can’t really)
• some stock (I prefer home made since I learned how to make it; store bought should do also)
• assor­ted veget­ables (your choice)
• lots of sea salt
• crushed/ minced garlic (to taste — I like loads!)
• Worcester­shire sauce
• pepper
• kit­chen string
• 2 tbsp olive oil

Here’s what to do:

set the oven to 175 degrees Celsius

Cut the bones off the chops, and put aside. (you can use these to make deli­cious stock or sauce!)

Ten­der­ise the meat and give it a lovely flavour:

• rub the chops on both sides with the crushed garlic
• cover them with salt (also on both sides)
• cover and put aside for about 15 — 30 minutes, depend­ing on the thick­ness of the cuts
• rinse off the salt and pat dry thoroughly

Whilst the meat is suck­ing up fla­vour, pre­pare the oven dish. Place in it some veget­ables of your choice, and the stock.

Place the chops on a cut­ting board, next to each other but over­lap­ping. Place some spin­ach in the middle, season with some salt and pepper, then roll the meat up tightly with the fat rind sfa­cing out. Secure with string. Rub the whole roll of meat with some salt, pepper and a dash of Worcester­shire sauce.

heat a large skillet/sauté pan to a high heat, and add olive oil. Sear the pork roll on all sides until browned.

then take it out and place it on top of the veget­ables in the roast­ing dish.

Cover tightly with a lid or alu­minium foil. Prop the whole thing in the oven for about 1 hour or until a food ther­mo­meter reads about 60 degrees C.
Take it out, but leave it covered for a while, let­ting it rest. (Remem­ber to keep it warm)
Then remove the meat and the veget­ables to a dif­fer­ent dish, and cover again. Pour the deli­cious liquid from the first dish into whatever sauce you’re making or into a sauce­pan to reduce.

When the meat has rested for about 30 minutes or just before serving, remove the string and cut thick pieces off the roll, about 7cm in length.

Serve with home made sauce, pota­toes and the vegetables.

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: