Marta's Limonade

I have called Marta, now 12, my apprentice. This is not the right title anymore, I must change it to co-chef. She loves reading cookbook (just like her mother) and she loves playing in the kitchen (just like her mother). I have been "on the road" yesterday and came home late. She was not in bed yet, "you know mum, it is Easter break now and I can't go to bed before you have read a chapter from Harry Potter!" (We have only a few chapters left of the last book, what shall we read next.......)

Well, instead of a sleeping Marta I was met with a delicious smell from the kitchen. Marta was just finished making waffler and coffee, perfect supper for her, me and daddy. And as soon as we had finished the waffles I had regained enough energy after my long day of working to read yet another HP chapter.

I have written about waffles here at The Blue Café already, so instead I'll give you the recipe of one of Marta's specialities; limonade:

1 1/2 l water

6 tablesp sugar

peeled lemon skin

1dl lemon juice

ice cubes

sparkling water

Boil water sugar and peeled lemon skin, let boil for 5 minutes. Cool.

Add lemon juice

Cool in fridge for a couple of hours

Decorate the top of the glass with sigar and lemon juice.

Enjoy the limonade cold with ice cubes.

Fried rice with walnuts, onion and chives

An unexpected day at home, and a craving for something extra for lunch! Well, the first step is to look through the fridge. I found some left over cooked rice and decided it could be a good start for something. With some extra virgin olive oil, a couple of chive boats, the half of an onion and an almost empty box of walnuts, and soon my lunch was finished.

First I fried the chive and the onion in the olive oil, after a while I added half of the walnuts and the rice. The rest of the walnuts I fried in a corner of the frying pan to use for garniture. Eating alone really doesn't mean that the food shall look just plain! With a piece of bread and a few pieces of parma ham I could have a feast together with my book.

I am reading Dervla Murphy's One Foot in Laos. I visited Laos myself a few years ago and fell in love with the sticky rice which were served to all meals. My fried rice was not sticky, but good as well.

A Month since my Last Post

It really was not my intention to keep away from The Blue Café for a month. It just happend, and I have no reason. I keep on makijng food every day, I even almost always take photos of the food I make..........

So the other day I suddenly came to my senses when I was in the kitchen frying some salmon for dinner. I caught my camera and decided it was full time to think about blogging again. And why do all food photos fpr blogging have to be so fancy and perfect. Here I had a kitchen with all signs of a kitchen in use, and the smell of the delicious fish was teasing my sences. If this isn't worth a blog post, nothing is.

So here I am, back again. Hopefully with more kitchen talks and recipes for you. I hope all my readers haevn't left me :-)

Red Soup for a Red Week. Lent

Lent has seven weeks and the rainbow has seven colours. I have given each week of Lent a different colour, starting this first week with red. I lit a red candle on my special season table, I plant tomato seeds, I buy some red tulips and I make some red food. I am not a vegetarian and don't give up meat totally for these weeks, but I challenge myself to let as many days as possible be vegetarian days.

I am fascinated by the red colour. Do you know that red was for a long time one of the most difficult colours to make. The old Meso - Americans found out that the blood from the female cochineal beetle together with alun made a beautiful red colour. I read about colours in Victoria Finlay's Colours. Travels through the Painbox and I am mesmerized.

Red Vegetable Soup / Tomato Soup

Dice a red onion and braise in the best extra virgin olive oil together with two stalks of cellery. Add three chopped carrots, then four plum tomatoes cut into boatshaped pieces. Cover the vegetablas with just enough water. Add salt and pepper and dried bouillon. Let boil for 20 minutes. Add a glass of white wine if you prefere (I don't do that during Lent)

Eat with bread and butter.

Salted pork on Fat Tuesday

I've been away for a couple of days, so though Lent has started I still haven't posted about our Fat Tuesday tradition, salted pork, potatoes and mashed rutabaga. Since we were away on Tuesday we had this dish on Sunday. Enjoy the photos. Lent recipes will soon come.......

Herring Salad on Blue Monday

It is Blue Monday and Terje and I have just finished a late supper. We will both be travelling for a couple of days, so we have had Dagmar's Austrian herring salad one day early.

Herring Salad

Make a cream of:

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

pepper

1 tablsp mustard

olive oil

vinegar

3 tblsp majonaise

3 tbsp craime fraiche

Dice and mix in the cream:

4 hardboiled eggs

1 apple

4 spiced herrings

4 potatoes

Make a salad a few hours before you eat, to make it more juicy

I baked four grain whole wheat bread, and we had a feast.

More about Lent tradition over in the House in the Woods.

Fastelavn søndag - Sunday before Lent

In our livingroom I have an old table. I have had some empty baskets there for a few weeks, but now it is filled with masks from Venica. And my Lent book is there. As Lent unfolds the decorations on the table will change, and the pages will be turned in the book. The pages shown today are about "fastelavn søndag", some lines from the Bible where Jesus tells about his coing death and his rise, photos of fastelavnsris, traditions about this day and the recipe and a photo of "fastelavnsboller". In my blogs, some days here, other days in The House in the Woods, the Blue Garden or the Blue Bookshelf, I will take you along my walk through Lent. How I celebrate, how I walk in prayers, how I slow down, how I want to live these seven weeks before Easter. I have always "collected" traditions, and would love to hear more about how you live these seven weeks, how you prepare for Easter.
Fastelavnsboller eaten on Sunday before Lent, on Fastelavn Sunday is an old tradition. These last days before Lent and fasting is for alot of food, for food extravaganza. Tuesday I have a special dinner recipe for you, today I will share with you my recipe for the rolls, or buns (I am never sure what you call this sweet pastry in English) The recipe is from my book, "40 dager - fra karneval til oppstandelse"

Fastelavnsboller
150 gr butter
5 dl milk or water (i prefere water)
50 gr fresh yeast
a little salt
1 dl sugar
12-13 dl white flour

Melt the butter, add water and warm till lukewarm. Add salt and just a little sugar to the yeast to let the yeast melt. Add water/butter and stir well. Add the rest of the sugar and almost all of the flour. Knead this you get a smooth dough, add more flour if necessary.
Let the dough rest and rise to double size.
Knead, cut into 25 small pieces and make rolls
Bake at 230C for 10-15 minutes.

Whipe some cream, cut the sweet rools in two and add cream. Sprinkle with dusting sugar.
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Do you want to have a look into my book? May be it is of interest to you even if the writing is in Norwegian.
Take a look here:
http://server02.dotminded.com/dotminded/data/magazine/489032/

The book can be ordered from here:
http://www.iko.no/sider/produkt.asp?id=309&vare