The Susanne

Having finally recovered from this morning’s nausea, by the time dinner time rolled around I was abso­lutely fam­ished! And we all know that the super­mar­ket should always be off limits when you’re hungry, or you’re likely to buy everything within sight. Which is pretty much what I did this after­noon. Luck­ily I only felt like incred­ibly deli­cious stuff… maybe with the excep­tion of a tin of tomato beans, which was basic­ally so cheap I just got it ‘in case I should feel like beans some time’. I actu­ally think they’re really quite good for break­fast, with a fried egg and maybe some bacon if you’ve a hangover or you’re just crav­ing meat. Actu­ally, though, I just got all that stuff for later as I’d already thought up what I’d like for dinner today: gravlaks with roas­ted green beans and sugar snaps, and mus­tard sauce. And oh my, how good was it! The roas­ted greens were so deli­cious. I’d just seasoned them with a little salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil, and stuck them in the oven for a few minutes. The gravlaks was incred­ibly tasty also — there’s just some­thing about salmon that makes my taste buds tingle! For some reason I also sliced up half a cucum­ber and spread the slices around the plate — I must have had a lapse of con­scious­ness or some­thing because they served no other pur­pose than to make the whole thing look slightly ridicu­lous. I did eat about half of them though, out of sheer embarrassment… they tasted good! In case you’re won­der­ing what the other stuff I got that’s cur­rently sit­ting in my fridge making me wish I wasn’t incred­ibly full is, here’s a snapshot!

ps, I love leeks! Mum grows them in her garden but as she loves them, if pos­sible, even more than I do she’s not too keen on giving them to me. So I just get mine from the super­mar­ket and they taste lovely! I get heaps of other amaz­ing stuff from mum, though. She’s got lovely car­rots, swedes, pars­ley, mint, thyme, oregano, lettuce, rocket, pota­toes, toma­toes, rhu­barb, and loads of fruit and ber­ries: plums, rasp­ber­ries, straw­ber­ries, cher­ries, apples… I love her garden! I wish I’d taken some photos of it during summer when it was at its most lux­uri­ant. But I sup­pose there’s no point crying over spilt milk. Or even spilt soy milk.

I’ve decided to start a little thing here where I write a brief post on what I eat. Today, it was a pan fried trout cutlet, with zuc­chini, grated carrot, some fresh leek and some bal­samic vin­egar. Abso­lutely deli­cious! I love bal­samic vin­egar with trout and salmon — the fla­vours just seem to com­pli­ment each other per­fectly! I prefer it to both lemon, garlic, red wine and the white fish sauces common in Norway. The first time I had it was at a res­taur­ant in Sydney when I was only 16 and it was the first time I’d ever had bal­samic vin­egar. I loved it!

The trout was on spe­cial at my super­mar­ket or I would have eaten some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent today, namely spana­ko­pita tri­angles! I found a recipe at Treat a Week and I’ve been want­ing to try my hand at making those little things for months now, but my super­mar­ket (which, by the way, is one of the best-​stocked in all of Oslo) doesn’t stock filo dough — and I’m just not very keen on trying to make my own paper thin sheets of pastry. So last night when I found filo sheets at the greens market down the road I bought a pack, and some lovely, fresh spin­ach. I love feta cheese but it makes me incred­ibly ill — so as much as I love it I simply couldn’t bring myself to use it in some­thing like this as I wanted to be able to eat the res­ults of my exper­i­ment! So I used some goat’s cheese instead, and loads of parmesan. Also I used two Span­ish onions, a leek, a grated carrot and some spices (namely oregano, basil and nutmeg — I left out the cumin in the recipe as I’m not too big on it.) I wilted down the spin­ach in a pan before mixing it with the other ingredi­ents, as the recipe called for frozen spin­ach. I left the last batch of spana­ko­pitas in the oven for just a little too long.. but they were still per­fectly edible! They turned out good I’d say, although I really only tasted the mix­ture before cook­ing as I was making the trout for dinner — I invited The Ex over for a snack and he ate four of them, so I guess that’s a test­a­ment to them tast­ing at least pretty good. Although I must admit, he seems to love any­thing I make, even the occa­sional thing that I think turns out a little below par..