Fishing pollock

Earlier today I told about our "gone fishing" Saturday night over in my House in the Woods. We got six pollock, and the other day it was time to make a dinner out of them.

While I made a cold potatosalad and a green salad fresh from the herb and vegetable garden, Terje braised the fish. He always make braised fish taste like some pieces from heaven. I don't know how he does it, I have tried and tried, but never get the same wonderful, spicy taste as Terje does. I believe he has learned the secret from his father :-)

If you are a regular reader of my foodblog you know that we love fish in The Blue Café. And when the fish is selffished and prepared by Terje - nothing can beat it!

Living in the garden

Perfect summer tempertures are finally here. The Blue Garden is bursting and The Blue Café is busy outdoors. The waffels are eaten almost before they are finished. If you want a heart or four you have to hurry.

Living the cabin life.

The Blue Café has had a quiet time. I have been in England a week, (more about this can be read in my main blog) and we have spent Whitsun week-end at cabin. We started our time there with a barbeque Saturday night, and here are a few photos while waiting for more activity in The Blue Café.

Simple supper

Little time for cooking, little time for blogging. A friend agg covered with fresh chimes is a perfect solution.

Table set.

As often happens when we have a full house for dinner - there was no time for photographing. So all I have from our Syttende Mai dinner is this photo :-)

Cream for Celebration

May 17 is the birthday of Norway with celebrations all over the country from early morning. We have a traditional dinner which I will blog about later, but I thought you might enjoy this sweet dessert. The dessert, which I call Angel Cream is originally for my Lent book and the indigo week in the Rainbow Calendar.

Whipe cream with a little sugar. Catherine Mary asked about the translation of 2 dl cream in my last blog. 2 dl (deciliters) is 2/10 of one liter (how much is that in the American measure?), and cream, well, that's the thickest part of the milk, what you skim off the top of the milk when it's fresh. That's the best translation I have. Can anybody help me with a better one?

Back to the angel cream. Fill whiped cream in a glass, I couldn't resist using my new rose cup for the book photograph. Top with rice (do you call it puffed rice?) and blueberries. And a little sugar if you want it sweeter. Happy May 17. Nice to have you celebration with us.

Recipe for a yellow week.

My upcoming book, which I've already mentioned here, will be in Norwegian only. As far as I know there are mostly English-speaking readers here at The Blue Café (any Norwegians around?), and this means that you will not be able to read the book. A pity for you of course ;-)

I will give you a little peak though, sharing a few of the recipes I've created for the Lent Rainbow Calendar. Let's start with this Yellow Vegetable Soup which tastes heavenly.

One rutabaga and four carrots are peeled and cut into small pieces. Boil in salted water till they are soft/al dente. Make a white sauce of 2 tablespoons (ts) butter, 2 ts flour and 1 1/2 liter broth. Mix 2dl cream and 2 egg yolks and add this ti the broth. Warm, but not let it boil, untill it starts getting thicker. Add the vegetables, salt, pepper and parsley.

I know I am terrible when it comes to translating my recipes into English........I hope you can understand what I mean. Good luck.

Dishes done.

Moose again

If you have followed this blog from the start you know that we eat alot of moose meat in The Blue Café. My uncle is a moose hunter, and every autumn we buy meat from him. We love this rich meat with a taste of wilderness, and being a supporter of ecological sustainability I feel it right to use more of this "wild" meat.

For many years I limited my moose cooking to meat soup or a traditional steak, but now I like to play more in the kitchen, trying new ways to prepare traditional food.

Today I simply fried pieces of meat topped with pepper and oregano in olive oil to give the meat the right colour. Just a few minutes on each side. Then the meat and potatos cut into boats were put in the oven on 200C for an hour. First I sprinkeled the meat richly with chives, rosmarin, lovage, juniperberries and maldon salt. And some of the meat got a blanket of a blue cheese, a new type which I bought at Farmer's Market in town on Saturday.

Yes, this is something we will try again later.

Photos for my book

Yes, you have already seen this photo. A fruit salad on the Italian plate I bought in Assissi some years ago. I do have alot of new recipes and food talk waiting to be posted, and I will eventually. But right now I am so busy gathering photos for my book. My deadline to send photos is next Sunday, the same day as I travel over to England and The Holy Island of Lindisfarne to start the preparations for what can be another books.

The book about Lent and Lental traditions will be in Norwegian only (sorry English speaking readers). One of the chapters is a rainbow calendar and in this chapter I have recipes for all the colours in the rainbow. At has been alot of fun to work it all out, but I can tell you it has also been ALOT of work.

The book, which title can be translated to something like "40 Days - from Carnival till Easter Rise" will be printed in August, ready in time for the Christmas sales.

Caring Bloggers Rose Day

Yesterday was Caring Bloggers Rose Day, which you can read more about here and here.

I celebrated with a cup of Lover's Dream tea in my new rose cup.

Onion Soup, Løksuppe

Løksuppe, or onion soup is not a common dish in The Blue Café. Considering how cheap it is, how easy it is to make and how tasty it is, I really don't understand why. May be it will be a more regular guest now after having it for dinner yesterday.

Løksuppe
Three onions cut in thin halfmoon slices, fried till yellow and shiny in olive oil in an ovenproof ironpot. Fill ca 1 liter water over the onions and boil for 15 minutes. Add salt, pepper, fennel seeds, oregano and bouillon (is that the right name???) The fennel seeds were a whim there and then and it worked perfectly.

Top the soup with toasted bread and some cheese and bake in oven till the cheese is melted. I used mozzarella cheese for me and Terje, good old Norvegia for the girls.



My recipe is for a family of four.

A scone for lunch.

Some days are just too busy to cook, even almost too busy to eat. I had one of those days yesterday, with several appointments which I just had to do before coming home being able to make myself some lunch.

Last on my list was the nearest shopping mall. It was long past lunch time and I was hungry. I resisted buying a chocolate though, and instead stopped at the bakery where I bought a fresh scone.

Coming home I ate it with "the world's best cherry marmelade" which my husband made last summer. And a huge mug of Blue Flower te. Often the simplest is the best.

Simple Italian Pleasure

When we are in Italy we have a favorite lunch which is very simple to cook; tortellini, aspargus and a salad made of rucola, cherry tomatos and mozzarella. In Terracina I love to visit the pasta baker to watch him make the different types of pastas, and I have been lucky to find wild aspargus when hiking. And we have taken part in a buffalo mozzarella festival. In Venice we have our special shop where we buy the pasta and in lack of the language use our fingers when we explain how much pasts we want. And there are alot of street markets where we can buy the aspargus, the tomatos and the rucola.

We do find all the right ingredients here at the grocery store nearest to The Blue Café, but of course not with the same charm as in Italy. I do visit Terri's blog though to see how she makes the real tortellini and ravioli, and I have The Blue Garden where I grow my own tomatos and rucola.

Yesterday we had the Italian Pleasure on the meny, and Marta's friend was thrilled when she was invited to eat with us. Her dream is to go to Italy some day.

Coffee in Garden

Finally a mild day with a little sun after weeks with cold weather. Perfect for us that it happens on a Sunday. We had breakfast indoors, but then I went out in the garden and have been out for hours just enjoying the colours, the fragrants, birds and squirrels busy playing, and looking through a few gardenbooks. We are invited to a birthday party with dinner later today, and I decided I just wanted to make a very siple lunch. And to celebrate the nice weather I decided to make a Foccacia Dolce.

Ilva introduced me to her simple and tasty foccacia a few months ago, and when I started this blog, a foccacia was one of the first thigs I blogged about

The one I made today was very easy to make. 25g yeast, a little salt and sugar. Let the yeast melt in the salt/sugar and add 3dl fingerwarm water and about 5 dl flour. Let the dough raise for about 45 minutes. Paint (?) a tin with olive oil, spread the dough in the tin and sprinkle walnuts, sugar and olive oil on top. Marta doesn't like walnuts, so part of my foccaca is with only sugar and olive oil.

Let raise some more and bake in oven, 225C for ca 25 minutes.

Rhuburb cake

The rhuburbs are growing fast now, and when I should bake a cake for guests yesterday, to serve after an Italian dinner, I was not in doubt. I wanted to make a rhuburb cake.
I was so busy with all the food preparations after a long day at work, so I almost forgot to take photos. But after the guests left and I started to clean the table, I finally remembered;-)

Rhuburb cake.
125g butter, 125g sugar, 2 eggs, 2 1/2 dl flour, 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 2 tablespoons milk.
Mix butter and sugar till it becomes white. Add the eggs, one at a time. Then add flour, baking powder and milk. Fill the baking tin.
Top the cake with rhubarb cut in small pieces, add sugar and cinnamon.
Bake in 175C for 30-40 min.
I served it with whiped cream

Fish, always fish

I can walk around in the fishmarket in Venice for hours. During my visit this time I was captured by the interesting pattern many of the fish mongers created with their fishes. I had a goal during my week in Venice in April which I didn't achieve - to buy fish at the fish market and prepare in the kitchen of Nati House. Well, something has to wait till my next visit.

We have an indoor fishmarket here in Trondheim where I love to visit. On Monday I had the day off and wanted to make fish for dinner (always a favorite in The Blue Café). But since I didn't go downtown, one of the local grocery stores, with a wide and very good variety of fresh fish, was the solution. I walked over to the store with no spesific fish in my mind, and when I came there I couldn't resist the pink trout.

Coming home I didn't have a spesific recipe, so it became a kind of "decide as you go"-recipe. First I greased an ovenproof dish with olive oil, then I sliced potatos and covered the dish. Sprinkeled the potatos with salt, pepper and rosemary and let it cook in the oven for about 15 minutes at 200C. During the 15 minutes I marinated the trout with olive oil, pepper and alot of chives from the garden. The trout were laid on the potato bed and back in oven for 30-40 minutes.

Easy to make. Healthy. Perfect taste. Can you ask for more?

Tomato salad with fresh herbs

Making lunch something special doesn't have to be buying expensive ingredients, spending a long time preparing. The herbs are growing fast in my herbgarden now, and with a few tomatos in the fridge I decided to make lunch, which usually consists of bread here, a little tasty and colourful.

The bread was homemade, which is always a treat. I diced the tomatos and sprinkled chives, oregano and "løpstikke" (lovage?) on top, all fresh from The Blue Garden of course. I had an unopened bottle of spiced extra virgin olive oil which I bought in Prague last year, and it was just perfect for this salad.

The tomatos were eaten with a couple of slices of homebaked bread. The bread was one day old, but as long as the bread is homebaked (in The Blue Café) it still tastes almost fresh from the oven.