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Got a song stuck to your brain?

Try this: Unhear it

Yesterday I tried something I’ve never made before. Hash browns. I think it tastes better then it sounds.. It went very well with the main dish: salmon with mushrooms, artichoke hearts, mini asparagus and zucchini wrapped in tin foil.

For the hash browns I used a couple of boiled potatoes, one leek, a couple of cloves of garlic, one egg and a little bit of flour. I finely sliced the leek and the garlic and quickly fired it, then i shredded the potatoes and blended all the ingredients together. Quite simple and it’s easy to see how much flour you need.

It was fun to make and very easy. After cooking them I read Pham Fatale’s blog and she said the secret to crispy hash browns was to sprinkle rice flour over the shredded potatoes. She doesn’t even cook the potatoes before shredding them. So maybe I should try that, wish I had read her blog before making the hash browns.

I like them when you can see that the potatoes are shredded, it looks much nicer than a lump of mash. Something like the picture below (Pham Fatale’s hash browns):

Are you wondering what kind of beer, soda or water to serve with your dish? Well, if you speak Norwegian you can try Drikkeglede.

Yesterday I was so thrilled to find out that Fiskeriet finally had opened so I went straight down after work. The fish was delicately presented and the selection was quite good. They even have a snack bar where you can have lunch or dinner. I will definitely try it some day.

I bought some coalfish (sei) and a big bag with prawns. I picked up some fennel and celery root on my way home and headed straight for the kitchen.

I started with a marinade for the fennel. Just a few slices to put on top of the soup before serving. I used olive oil, lemon squeeze, salt and pepper. The rest of the fennel was put in a bowl of cold water and lemon, it makes the taste milder and takes away some of the licorice taste. The longer you leave the fennel in the water, the milder it gets.

So I simmered the fennel with two shallots and some garlic, I added chicken stock and white wine and a spoon of sambal oelek. I also added a big spoon of oregano. Then I waited for the vegetables to get soft enough to use my Bamix blender. After making a puree I put the fish and the prawns and some cream in the soup and left the pot on low heat til the fish was cooked.

I served the soup with the marinated fennel slices on top, and some bread with home made mint butter. Yum!

Hurray! Fiskeriet on Youngstorget in Oslo has finally opened their doors so the people of Oslo once again can enjoy the delicious and strange creatures living in the ocean. Also called fish. About a year ago Erling Moe closed the doors to his fish store after oh so many years, it was very sad and we had almost nowhere else to go.

But on friday the 13th of august 2010 Fiskeriet opened with not just a store, also a restaurant. They have a brilliant website where you can check out the fish of the season and get lots of info, even order you dinner online. How about that!

I know where I’ll buy my dinner today!

Go Away

Chech out MOO’s new look!

www.moo.com

A MasterChef in Australia is not the same as a MasterChef in Norway. I watched the norwegian episodes of MasterChef once in a while, and though it was fun and interesting to see how an amateur chef would cope with the tasks of a real chef, I have a feeling that it is not even close to what they have to do in for example Australia. I never watched the australian version, but I came across their website one day and I was amazed when I saw the recipes. Wow, I would never imagine that these guys are amateurs. It will be a long time till we see something like that on the norwegian show. That I am certain of.

Have a look at the Australian Masters!

It’s hard not to think of the artist Meat Loaf Aday when talking about meatloaf (food) and then ending up with “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that..” (what is “that”?) stuck to your brain. But my point was that I made my first meatloaf yesterday!

Meatloaf is an underestimated lump of meat, especially on a sunday. I made one mistake though, I didn’t have any lingonberry to serve with it. That would’ve been perfect. Since I only make dinner for two I don’t need the loaf to be the size of a normal bread. So I used my mini bread loaf pan, wich is about 10 cm long and 5 cm wide. And the rest of the meat I put in a mini cake pan. I can really recommend it, it’s fun to serve!

Anyway, I was a meatloaf virgin and I needed a recipe. So I found a couple online and decided to use the proportions and the ingredients I meant would be tasty. So this is the recipe I ended up with:

• 400 g minced meat (I prefer those with less fat and more meat)
• ca 4 tsp potato flour
• 1 onion
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 chili
• 2 spring onions
• ground coriander
• ground ginger
• ground nutmeg
• ca 4 tbsp milk
• salt and pepper

In every recipe I found they meant that you should have (for these proportions) 4 dl milk. That didn’t work in this recipe because I used my (super fantastic) Bamix blender for cutting the onion. After about 2 seconds the onion was turned into a porridge and gave so much moist to the meat that it was not necessary to use more milk than 4 tablespoons. So if you don’t mince the onion like I did you might need more milk.

Mix all the ingredients with an electric blender of some sort to make the mince as smooth as possible, then add the mince to a pan of your choice and place it in the oven at 180 C for about 1 hour. Oh, and remember to put the pans in a water bath, the water should reach 1/3 on the pan.

I would’ve had some photos for you, but my camera is broken. So until I get it fixed or get a new one, I’ll have to borrow pictures online.