Two Very Easy to Make Cakes, and Some Yummy Punch Balls

When I mean easy to make, I also include the dishes. Both these two cakes leave few things to wash up. They are easy to make and taste fantastic. The first one is

Mississippy Mud Cake

This was actually Elvis' favourite cake, and if you google it, you can find some very elaborate and fattening recipes for this cake on the internet. Most of the time, this cake contains about one kilo sugar, but most of it is actually in the frosting, so by omitting the frosting, the cake gets a little bit "healthier", if one can say that about a cake.

In a sucepan, cook up:
200 grams of butter or 1 deciliter (1/2 cup) of oil
2 deciliters (1 cup) of water
4 tablespoons of cocoa powder, let it cool down

In a bowl put
4 deciliters (2 cups) of flour
4 deciliters (2 cups) of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 deciliter (1/2 cup) sour cream
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs

When the cocoa mix is cool, add it to the bowl and stir it all well together before you pour it into a spring form that you have greased well (I use the sort of grease you get in a spray can). Bake it at 200 center grades for about 45 minutes or till a piece of wood comes out clean when you stick it into the middle of the cake.

I normally serve the cake like this, with no frosting added, because it's really moist without. I normally serve it with vanilla custard, whipped cream or creme fresh, or some times only with a little bit of powder sugar sprinckled over.

Sour Cream Cake from Trøndelag (which is the middle of Norway for those who don't know)

You need:
4 lage or 5 small eggs
3 deciliters (1 1/2 cups) of sugar
3 deciliters (1 1/2 cups) of sour cream
3 1/2 deciliters (1 1/2 cups + 1 tablespoon) of flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder.

Mix it all together in a bowl, pour it into a greased spring form and bake at 160 center grades for one hour. Like the other cake, this also tastes good with no frosting, and with berries or jam and cream, sour cream or custard, it's a delicious dessert.

Punch Balls

These cakes are so delicious. They are sold in all bakeries all over Norway and Sweden, and according to the blog where I found them, this is the sort of cakes for which the baker uses leftovers from his other baking. However, since I NEVER have leftover cake, I actually have to bake one of each of the cakes above to make one portion of these cakes (or you can buy two cakes). And here is the rest of the recipe:

In a mixer mix togtether till it's white:
100 grams of butter (an American stick of butter is 125 grams, so a little less than a full stick)
2 deciliters (1 cup) of powder sugar
Then add one egg yoke and mix for one more minute.
Crumble the cakes into this mix with 2 heaped tablespoons of apricot jam and 1-2 teaspoons of rum essence and let the mixer go till all is mixed. Pour it out on a table and roll it into small balls - walnut size. In a saucepan mix together 300 grams of chocolate and some coconut fat (the kind that goes stiff when cold), and dip each cake in the chocolate mix. If you add more coconut fat the chocolate covering gets thinner, less thicker. Let them drip off on a baking paper and put them in the fridge to cool. Keep them in the fridge till serving time. I put them in little muffin cups and keep them in a tight box in the back of the fridge - unbeknownst to all but me.

I found the recipe on Tom's blog and he has given me permission to post the pictures from his blog here. So thank you Tom.

http://kringlevridern.wordpress.com/2010/11/28/puncheboller-barnas-favoritt/#comment-77

On Demand

People some times ask me for recipes for things they have eaten here, and I am happy to give out those recipes, unfortunately if I am not planning to eat that dish for dinner, I will not make pictures of it. So here are a couple of recipes that people have asked for, but for now, without pictures.

Salmon Burgers

This recipe is for Keren, and she is from Israel, so this dish is actually Kosher (according to her that is, I wouldn't have any idea).

You need for 4 burgers:
a slice of bread per person (or a burger bun, but we normally have open faced sandwhiches that we eat with a knife and fork)
about 200 grams of salmon without skin and bones. In general salmon is sold in pieces, and I find that one piece is enough for two people, so two pieces of salmon.
2 teaspoons of potato starch (or other starch if you don't have it)
cream
1/2 onion finely chopped (or chives or leek or spring onions)
salt, pepper
1 carrot
1/2 apple
lettuce
lemon wedges
mayonaise

Use a stick mixer to mash the salmon (or you can use a teaspoon and scrape it), add a little of the cream to make it go around more smoothly. Add the starch and stir in so much cream that the batter is soft, but not too soft. You should be able to make cakes out of it. Then add the onion, salt and pepper to taste. Make four burgers out of the meat that you fry in a mixture of butter and oil till they are dark brown. In the mean time shred the carrot and the apple and mix it with as little mayonaise as you need to make it hold together (you might want to add a bit of Dijon mustard to that mayonaise). On the bread put first some lettuce, then a spoon of the carrot salad, then the burger which you top with a lemon wedge. That's it. For it you might want some

Cucomber Salat

Cook up 1 deciliter of vinegar, 1 deciliter of sugar and 1 deciliter of water. Slice the cucomber in about 1/2 cm thick slices, put them in a bowl and pour the hot liquid over. Ready to be eaten when cool.

**********

The next two recipes are for Cristina from Romania who stayed with us for a month last summer, and obviously thought that I could only make one dessert: Pavlova (when you have Bearnaise or Hollandaise sauce, you end up with a lot of egg whites, and we have those sauces quite often in the summer both for fish and barbeques). So I guess she was quite surprised when she came to dinner here the other day and got something else for dessert! She got

Lime Ice Cream

And to make it you will need:
4 eggs
250 grams of sugar
6 deciliters of cream
shredded peel and juice from two limes (may be even three if they don't have much juice)

Whip the eggs and the sugar together til you can write ole in the mix. Whip the cream till it's thick also, then mix the two together with the peel and juice of the lime. Pour it into a container that you have lined with cling film and freeze. This is actually called a parfait, which means that you don't need to stir in it while it freezes. Just take it out about 15 minutes before you want to use it. And with this you can serve

Lime and Cardamom Slices

You need:
220 grams of butter
75 grams of powder sugar
60 grams of grounded almonds
250 grams of wheat flour
2 teaspoons of ground cardamom. You can buy that already grounded, but last time I bought cardamom I actually bought it whole and grounded it myself, and the difference in taste was enormous, so I suggest you do that.
The shredded peel and juice of 2-3 limes.

Mix the butter and sugar together till it turns white, add the other ingredients and devide it in two parts and form each part into a sausage. The thinkness of the sausage will be the diameter of the cookies, and I like them small - 2-3 cm. Wrap them in baking paper and put them in the fridge over night. Next day you slice the sausages in about 1/2 cm thick slices and put them on a baking paper. Bake at 180 center grades till they are light brown.

Gravlaks - Cured Salmon

This is a dish I DO like and I am sure a lot of you will too. It's the sushi of the North, as it is raw fish, but we have cured it for a couple of days first. We normally buy it already made, but it's easy to make yourself if you get good salmon. And good salmon does not need to come from Norway. I think I would prefer Irish salmon (if I had a choice, which I don't), since they seem to produce their salmon in more open water than we do, and which should guarantee that the fish get fresh water all the time, and in spite of this, it seems to be sold at half price in comparison to the Norwegian salmon in most places I have visited. And that, my friends, has nothing to do with the quality of the fish. It's because the salaries of the Norwegians who produce our fish is so much higher than the salaries of the Irish who produce their fish. However, if you have a posh moment, go for the Norwegian fish by all means, just remember that we will not starve if you chose the Irish - we have other stuff in our waters besides fish!

You need:
 1 fillet of salmon divided in two across
3 tablespoons of sugar
3 tablespoons of salt
1 teaspoon of pepper
brandy, or aquavit (optional)
lots of fresh dill (or dried, but here fresh is better) finely chopped.

Wash the salmon well and scrape off the shells on the skin side. Put one piece with the skin side down in a dish, (at this point you drip brandy/aquavit over it)  rub in half the salt/sugar/pepper mixture into it, and do the same with the other half. Put the dill over the first fillet, the other fillet over and this time with the skin up. Put the whole dish in a plastic bag, and put something flat over, such as a cutting board. Put something heavy on top of that, as it needs a bit of pressure. Now you just leave it in the fridge for three days. Once per day take it out and turn the fish over.

Here is a Swedish guy who shows you how to do it on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzIrYFbLC-U

And if you can't be bothered, I hate to say it again: IKEA!

After three days your fish is done and you slice it in as think slices as possible, and at an angle, so that you get as big pieces of it as possible. When serving I use either Pumpernickel bread or buttered toast. On top of that I put a lettuce or two, then the gravlaks which is garnished with a lemon wedge and a twig of dill. For this we have

Mustard sauce

Mix together  1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon of honey and 1 tablespoon of chopped dill (dried is fine here). Add drops of oil to the mixture while you stir, like as if to make maionaise. When the sauce seems to be like .... sauce, you are done.

Lutefisk

I think that of all the grosse stuff we eat for Christmas in the North, lutefisk is the most famous. The reason for this being that when most Norwegians emigrated to USA about 100 years ago, this was something they looked forward to eating for Christmas, mainly because they had nothing else to eat, and which is why they emigrated in the first place....

So these days, the world record holder in lutefisk eating (yes they have comeptitions like that in USA) is a very fat man from Minnesota. I am obviously not too fond of it myself, but I crawl to the cross as least once a year, and make it for those who like it. And I always make enough fried bacon and mashed peas, not to mention my very strong and very sweet mustard, so it will be enough for those who will not eat the fish, and for those who only pretend that they like the fish (there are strong rumours about that it actually makes hair grow on your chest when you eat it) and want to drown the vile flavour of it.

Lutefisk

Put the pieces in an oven proof dish with the skin down. Cover the dish with aluminum foil. Bake it at 200 center grades for about 40 minutes. That's it.

Crispy Fried Bacon

Cut the bacon in small pieces and fry them at low heat for a loooong time. Stir in it a bit while it happens.

Mashed Peas

Cook a pack of frozen peas wit a little bit of butter, when they are soft, crush them with a stick mixer and add salt, pepper and a bit of tyme to taste.

Sweet and strong mustard

This mustard will cover any taste of the lutefisk, and should make you be able to divulge at least a little piece of it. Mix together
2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons of coarse, sweeet mustard (we use mustard from Skåne in Sweden for this - IKEA!)
2 teaspoons of powdered English mustard
2 teaspoons of honey

This is traditionally served with our customary floury potatoes and Christmas beer which holds 7% alcohol, and aquavit, and I am sure this is the reason why we still make it here, as next day, people have normally forgotten what it tastes like...

And here you have a very happy Norwegian family eating lutefisk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLqIDzEdEHg&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLC34B5824AE7D2406

Pumpernickel Bread

For those who like German bread, this is really worth making. I normally make it late in the evening, because the baking time is 12-14 hours, and I do it during the night. I use a mixer, but you can do it by hand if you have someone strong by. Mixing this dough together is actually man's work. You need 3 bread pans for this recipe and also to grease them properly, I use spray grease that comes in aerosol cans. All the ingredients are cold.

You need:

1.7 liter (7 1/2 cups of water)

600 grams of coarsely grounded rye

600 grams of coarsely grounded wheat

300 grams of finely grounded rye

300 grams of finely grounded wheat

300 grams sunflower seeds (or whole wheat corns that you have put in water the day before, and which I always forget, so I use sunflower seeds instead)

300 gram normal wheat flour

1 tablespoon of molasses

3 tablespoons of salt

50 grams/one pack of yeast

Dissolve the yeast in the water with the molasses and then add all the other ingredients and stir. It's supposed to be a sticky mass not looking much like bread dough at all. When well mixed, pour it over in 3 bread pans, that are not supposed to be more than 3/4 full. Seal them with aluminum foil on top, before you put them into a cold oven that you put on100 center grades and bake for 12-14 hours (I normally let them be there for 13, but if you don't wake up on time, 14 is still ok).

This bread needs to be kept in the fridge or freezer when done, as it contains a lot of moisture and mildewes easily. I normally cut them in half before I freeze them. And like a lot of European food, this bread also tastes better after a night in the fridge.

Pickled Herring

Christmas morning would be a flop here if we don't have pickled herring on Pumpernickel bread. Because while you people of the English speaking world were out partying, we were home opening up our presents, so Christmas morning here is a looooong and elaborate breakfast that lasts till lunch, which is another loooong eating experience. I make two kinds, spicy herring and tomato herring. If you buy salted herring, you need to water out the pieces for about one hour in cold water to get some of the salt taste out first.

Spicy Pickled Herring

This is enough for two jars

You need:

6 fillets of herring cut in pieces

1 deciliter or 1/2 cup of 7% vinegar

2 deciliters of 1 cup of water

1 deciliter or 1/2 cup of sugar

2 bay leaves

20 whole black pepper corns

2 teaspoons of whole mustard seeds

8 whole allspice corns

10 whole cloves
2 stars of anis

2 onions sliced in thin rings

or

1 white onion in rings

1 red onion in rings

1 piece of leek in rings

1 carrot in very thin slices

In clean jars put herring in layers with the different onions. Put half the spices in each jar. Mix together the water, the vinegar and the sugar over a little heat till the sugar is dissolved. Let it cool again before you pour it over the fish (do NOT pour it over hot, then you will cook the fish and it's supposed to be raw). Leave it for at least one day before you eat it.

Tomato Herring

This also makes 2 jars

You need:

6 fillets of herring in small pieces (a bit smaller than for the spicy herring)

2 onions chopped semi-finely

1/2 liter/2 cups of tomato paste

4 tablespoons of sugar

3 tablespoons of vinegar

1 teaspoon of powdered cloves

2 bay leaves

For this I mix together all the ingredients except for the bay leaves before I pour it over in jars. I put one bay leaf in the mixture and one on top for decoration. This too need to be in the fridge for at least one night before eating.

Für die Deutsche:

And since the people who seem to love my pickled herring the most all are German, below is the recipe in German with special good wishes for Lutgar and Jana:

Hier wäre der erste Weihnachtstag ohne in Essig eingelegten Hering auf Pumpernickel ein Flop.
Während ihr Leute der englischsprachigen Welt ausgegangen seid um zu feiern, waren wir zu hause und haben unsere Geschenke ausgepackt. Der erste Weihnachtstag beginnt mit einem weiterem Esserlebniss, einem laaaaaaaaaaaagen, ausgiebigen bis zum Mittag anhaltenden Frühstück . Ich mache zwei Sorten Hering; würzig und in Tomate.

Würtzig Hering

 Ergibt zwei Gläser
  Würziger Essighering
6 Heringe in Stücke schneiden
1 dl oder ½ Tasse Essig 7%ig
2 Lorberblätter
1 Tasse Wasser
1 dl oder ½ Tasse Zurcker
20 Pfefferkörner
2 TL Senfkörner
8 Pimentkörner
10 Nelken
2 Zwiebeln in Ringe schneiden
1 rote Zwiebel in Ringe schneiden
1 Porree in Ringe schneiden
1 Möhre in feine Streifen schneiden

Den geschnittenen Hering mit den Zwiebeln in die Gläser schichten. Die Hälfte der Gewürze dazu geben.
Die andere Hälfte der Gewürze mit Wasser, Essig und Zucker auf niedriger Stufe erwärmen, bis der Zucker gelöst ist.
Abkühlen lassen! und über den Hering geben und mindestens einen Tag ziehen lassen.



Tomatenhering

Ergibt zwei Gläser
6 Heringe in Stücke schneiden (etwas feiner)
2 Zwiebeln fein gehackt
½ l oder 2 Tassen Tomatenmark
4 EL Zucker
3 EL Essig
1 TL Nelken gemahlen
2 Lorbeerblätter

Nun werden alle Zutaten vermengt und in Gläser gefüllt. Auch dieser Hering muss mindestens eine Nacht ruhen.
Da die Deutschen meinen eingelegten Hering besonders zu mögen scheinen, unten das Rezept auf Deutsch. Mit besten Wünschen an Ludger und Jana!

And for those who don't live around the North Sea and might have problems finding herring fillets, try this. It's a trick I learned from a Swedish American who had learned it from his mother. You buy a jar of already made pickled herring, which one actually can get in most well assorted grocery shops all over the world, and if not (and still, I hate to tell you this) they have it in IKEA.  Pick out all the herring pieces from the jar, rinse them well in cold water and discard the rest, then proceed as above. The result will be very close to the result you get from starting with the herring fillets.

Three Kinds of Cookies That You Can Make in an Afternoon

Walnut Lace

These cookies are really thin and look like lace. You can shape them into cones or rolls, but then you need a really big cookie jar and you havew to make sure to put paper between them, or else they break. If you leave them flat, they taste the same even if they don't look all that fancy, and you need not be so careful with them.

You need:

100 grams of walnuts finely chopped (I put them in the blender)

100 grams of sugar

100 grams of butter

2 tablespoons of cream

Pour it all in a saucepan and stir till all is mixed. Then on a baking sheet, set down teaspoon fulls of cake mix, and leave at least 5 cm/2 inches between them, as they get really wide. Bake them at 175 center grades till they are light brown. Then pull the baking paper away from the baking sheet and leave them to cool on a flat surface.

Coconut Macaroons

You need:

4 egg whites

2 deciliters/1 cup of sugar

300 grams of shredded coconut

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Whip the egg whites stiff, and then gradually add the sugar and whip till all the sugar is disolved. Then stir carefully in the coconut and the vanilla. Put the cookies with two teasppons on a baking paper and bake at 175 center grades till they are light brown on top.

Peanut Butter Cookies

You need:

8 tablespoons of wheat flour - which is 2 deciliters or 1 cup for those who can't be bothered to count that much
2 tablespoons of peanut butter

2 tablespooons of sugar

1 egg

50 gram soft butter

Mix all the ingredients, then divide the portion into 16 and roll them into a little balls that you put on a baking paper and press down a little bit with a fork. Bake them at 175 center grades till they are light brown.

Very Good Chocolate Chip Cookies

There seems to be only one recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies, they just might seem different because the measurements are "translated" differently. Some times they go from cups to liter or they go from cups to grams, and depending on the flower the person is using, the recipes seem to be a little different, but they are not. So if one person makes better cookies than the next, it has little to do with the ingredients and more to do about the method one uses when baking them. This method is English (and as we know the English were baking biscuits before the word cookie was invented). Since it's close to Christmas and everybody love these cakes, it's a huge portion that will make you 80 big coffee shop/gas station style cookies, or 160 smaller ones. And you need to put the chocolate in the freezer the day before.

You need:

400 grams of dark chocolate

400 grams of Mars bars that you put in the freezer the day before. I take off the paper, and put them in triple plastic bags first. Next day, when they are frozen solid, bang on them with a rolling pin or a hammer or something till all the pieces are about the size you like them - 1/2-1 cm I like.

450 grams of butter (also a good idea to put that on the kitchen counter the day before)

2 teaspoons of salt

350 grams/1 cup of white sugar

350 grams/1 cup of brown sugar

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

700 grams/2 cups and 2 tablespoons of flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

4 eggs.

Whip together the four first ingredients, whip in the eggs one by one add the flour and whip some more. Finally stir in the crushed chocolate. Pour the mixture out on a baking paper and divide it in four, that you roll to "sausages" about 5 cm (2 inches) in diameter. You do this by wetting your hands a bit with cold water, before you shape the sausage with your hands, and then roll it in the paper. Twist each end of the sausage to make sure there are no holes in it. Then put the four sausages in the fridge till you are going to bake them.

At that time put the oven on 190 center grades and wait till it has this temperature. In the mean time, divide one of the sausages into 20 slices, put them on a baking paper with lots of room in between and bake them for 9 minutes (not 10 and not 8). This should make them crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. If you want smaller cookies, divide the roll in half and make 40 cookies of each roll instead. These cookies only need to be baked for 7-8 minutes.

I think the reason why these cookies are better than the ones you just put on a baking sheet with two spoons, is because the flour get time to "swell" as we say, and which means that the flour has soaked up the liquid of the dough. So even fast food from the fast food country of the world, improves when it's done less fast....

And not having baked them all at the same time, should guarantee at least some cookies for Christmas.

A Christmassy Dinner

Today is such a depressing day. It's midday and it's not even light yet. It's storming outside and salt water is hitting the windows, so we can hardly see the outside. So I am going to cheer myself up and make Christmas food. We have a lot of traditional dishes that we make and eat for Christmas in Norway, and some of them I make myself. I start with the things that I can freeze, and today I am making meatballs of pork and sour cabbage. We still have some kale in the garden. Red Italian kale. I put the seeds down in January, so they have taken 11 months to grow (they probably have three crops in the same time in Italy!), and I will try to make red sour cabbage of them. I think they will be good for it, as sour cabbage has to cook for a long time, and I seem to remember kale needs to be cooked long also. If it turns out well, then we will have veggies from our own garden on Christmas Eve, and if not, I make sour cabbage from white cabbage as one is supposed to - another day.

Pork Meat Balls - Medisterkaker

I will make a huge portion today, but if I make these meat patties for dinner one day for 4-5 people, then I will use 1/2 kg (1 pound) meat, so below I give you the recipe for a portion like that. If you make a bigger portion, just multiply all ingredients but salt. Use 1/2 teaspoon, make a test patty and taste before you add more.

You need:

1/2 kg (1 pound) minced pork

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 finely chopped onion (about 4 table spoons chopped)

1 heaped tablespoon of potato starch (you can use maizenna or other types of starch instead)

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves (I never put cloves in unless it's Christmas)

a lot of pepper

dried parsley (or fresh if you have and like to chop), optional, but I like the little green spots it leaves in the patties

2 deciliters (1 cup) of water, or a little bit more or less depending on the dough

butter and oil to fry

Put the meat and the salt in a bowl, or either mix it with a mixer or do it with your (just washed) hands. You do this to make the mince meat more elastic, and after a while you will see that if you pull it apart, it will not crumble so much and be more stretchable. Add all the other ingredients and half the water and stir again. Test the dough with a spoon. You want it formable, but still a bit soft (softer than both Italian and Swedish meatballs). Heat 2 tablespoons of butter and two of oil in a pan (yes, I know it will be a butter on lard, but it's Christmas and I do it for flavour, and I will let them drain off later). Get a glass of water with a tablespoon in it. Take the spoon out of the water, moist the palm of the other hand, take out a piece of meat from the bowl, and with the wet hand and the spoon, form patties, that you put in the frying pan till you have filled it. Tap them a bit with a knife or the spoon on top for them not to swell up (this works on burgers also, by the way). Fry them dark brown on both sides, before you put them over on a kitchen paper to soak up the excess fat. Continue till you have fried them all. And if you want to make a brown sauce, save the grease that is left in the pan in a little bowl, fill the pan with water and let it cook up while you scrape the bottom of it. Save this water also.

Brown sauce

If you want to learn Scandinavian cooking, this sauce is the Bolognaise of the North, you will find it all over with different flavours added, whether it's for the Swedish meatballs or for the Danish roast pork or reindeer meat - you will get brown sauce. And here is how you make it:

You need:

3 tablespoons of the grease you have saved from cooking the meat, and if it's not enough add butter, or if you start from scratch, butter

2 tablespoons of wheat flour

1/2 liter (2 cups) Fond, or water from cooked vegetables, but in this case the water from the frying pan

Dijon mustard

Wine, vinegar, red currant juice, raspberry juice...(one or two - not all of them)

Bullion powder/cube

Melt the fat in a saucepan with the flower, keep stirring till the flower turns light brown and gives out a really nice smell. Then add the liquid a little at the time, while stirring. Let it boil between each time you add more water and a bullion cube to flavour. When you are happy with it, taste it off with a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and then the "sour" of your choice. For the pork patties for Christmas, I always add Port wine, so if you have it....Then taste it off with a bit of Worcester sauce, Marmite, Vegimite, soy sauce... it's all up to your taste buds.

And at this point you put the meat patties in the sauce and let them stay there and simmer on very low heat till eating time. And if you have made them in advance, and take them straight from the freezer, you can pour them directly in the sauce. With this we serve sour cabbage, boiled potatoes(practically to crumbles, but still well damped off - we like our potatoes floury!) and lingonberry jam (if you get brown sauce, you can for the most part also count on the lingonberries if you are north of Skagerak).

Sour Cabbage - Surkål

We eat surkål with pork all the time, and since they have found out that plants in the cabbage family are really good for us, and this is a really good dish, both as side dish or as a dish in itself (I will get to that later), not to mention superb in leftover-mixes. It takes some hours of cooking time to make this, so make a big portion if you can. It freezes very well.

You need:

1 white cabbage about 1 kg (2 pounds), cut first in 2-3 cm (1 inch) wedges and then across so you get thin strips (or about 1 cm wide). Fill the bottom of a pot with about 1 liter (4 cups) water. Add about 1/3 of the cut cabbage, then add 1 tablespoon of bullion powder, 2 tablespoons of caraway seeds and one tablespoon of sugar, then another layer of cabbage, spices again, and then the same a third time. Add about 1 dl (1/2 cup) of 7% vinegar. Put a lid on and let i boil for 2-3 hours - or longer. The longer it boils the better it tastes. Good thing is, that thanks to the caraway seeds, it actually makes the house smell very nice while it cooks. Check that the water doesn't cook out here and there, but except for that, no need to bother too much about it in the mean time. When the cabbage is cooked, add a tablespoon of the cooking fat left over from the frying of the meat patties, or butter or other fat, just to make it shiny and add a bit a heaviness to it. Taste off before you eat, you might want a bit more vinegar, a bit more sugar or a bit more salt.

And then you just need the lingonberries, which can easily be substituted by cranberries, black- or red currant jelly or even grape jelly. But if you are desperate for the real thing, and I hate to say this: They do sell it in IKEA!

Sour Red Kale

I had a basket full of kale, from which I chopped all the woody stems, but kept the ones that I could easily cut through. Then I sliced the kale and put it in layers with sugar, caraway seeds and salt. To keep the color I also added a handful of chopped pickled red beets, and juice from the pickled beets which I substituted for vinegar. I let it cook for about half an hour before I decided it was finished. It shrunk in size when being cooked, but it looks fantastic, a bit like Holly with red berries, and very Christmassy. I will use it to decorate the Christmas food with on Christmas Eve.

A Vegetarian Dinner

I am not a vegetarian, but I often make vegetarian food, both because it's good for us and also because vegetables are much cheaper than meat in most places, so it's also good for the pocket book. This three course dinner will take you about two hours to make, but most of this time you are actually waiting for the bread to rise, so you can check what your facebook friends are up to in the mean time. Since I am not a vegetarian, I do add a little bit of meat to the main dish, but it's optional, if you don't want it or don't have it, just skip it.

So let's start with

Wheat Bread

I lot of people don't eat wheat these days, but if you want to have a good-tasting bread to go with dinner (or next morning toasted with marmelade) nothing tastes like wheat bread, and this is both good and very easy to make. You will get four breads from this recipe, which most ovens are big enough to take - and you need no breadpans for it.

If you have a mixer you start with the wet ingedients, if you knead by hand, start with the dry ones.

1 liter (4 cups) of luke warm water from the tap
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
3-4 tablespoons oil (I use olive oil but any will do)
50 grams of yeast that you crumble into the water (or two packs of dry yeast which you mix in the flour)
3  liters (12 cups) of wheat flour

Knead the bread till all is mixed, but not for longer than that, because the longer you knead wheat bread the "heavier" it becomes and you want it light. Cover the bowl with a clean towel or a piece of plastic and let it rise to double size in a draught free place at "room temperature". Now room temperture can be a lot of things, I have found out, so if you live in a country where one goes in to cool off, put the bowl in the oven, which you set on 50 degrees (or as low as you can get it).
When this has happend, which takes about 1/2-3/4 hour, some times a bit longer, first you put the oven on 200-210 center grades, you pour the dough out on a floored or oiled surface and devide it into four pieces which you shape into breads. The less you fiddle with this, the lighter the bread gets. Place the breads on a baking paper on a baking sheet and put a towel over to rise once more. I normally put this plate on top of the oven, because the heat from it makes perfect temperature for the rising, and when my oven is hot enough, the breads are normally ready to be baked. Put them in the oven (normally a bit lower than the middle, but it depends on the oven) and bake them for 45  minutes to 1 hour. They are done when they are light brown.

First Course: Cold Cucomber Soup

This soup is so easyto make  that it's almost embarrassing to give out the recipe for it, as I have fooled numerous people into thinking that this soupe is high level cooking. It tastes like it.

You need:
A blender or a stick mixer
1 large cucomber
4 table spoons of sour cream
1 bulion cube (or a tea sppon of powder, any kind you like)
2 cloves of garlic (or more if you like it)
Water

Cut the cucomber in smaller pieces, and put them and the rest of the ingredients in the blender. Fill up with water till it's 1 1/2 litres (6 cups)  all together. Whizz til it's smooth, pour it over in a mug and put it in the fridge till serving time. When serving, add some chopped almonds, chopped tomatoes and some chopped chives/leeks to garnish (also optional).

Main Course: Flat Broccoli Souffle

For a souffle you actually need to devide the eggs and whip the whites which you fold into the sauce before you pour it over. Then you also have to have your guests ready at the table and serve the souffle as soon as it is out of the oven. This one is less hazzle and besides it can wait for the guests to get ready and not the other way around. It even tastes good cold the next day if you have leftovers.

You need:
A broccoli (or cawliflower)
a little piece of leek (or onions)
a pice of meat or coldcut (I used an end piece of Serrano ham here, as some places sell the ends of coldcuts and hams out really cheaply)
a couple of handfuls of shredded cheese (I use a strong Swedish kind, but any kind of yellow cheese is fine, use the leftovers you might have, if you have more kinds, the better)
3 table spoons of butter
3 table spoons of flour
some milk
pinch of salt

Cut and shred all into pieces (see picture). Boil water, and when boiling, pour the vegetables in, and as soon as the water is boiling again, take them out with a slotted spoon and pour them into a oven proof dish. Pour the meat over.

Melt the butter, add the flour, and use a bit of the cooking water from the vegetables and a bit of milk to make a thick white sauce. Add the cheese, the eggs (one by one and stir a bit for each egg). Taste it now. The cheese normally adds a bit of salt, but some times you might need a bit extra. Pour the sauce over the vegetables and bake it in the oven at 200 centergrades till it has light brown bubbles on top. With this a salad tastes good.

Tomatoe Salad

1/2 tomatoe per person in thin slices
chopped onion/leeks/chives
2 table spoons of lemon or lime juice
1 table spoon of Worstershiresauce or a little pinch of bulion powder (both optional but it tastes good with the tomatoes)
6 table spoons of olive oil
a pinch of sugar (which bring the flavour of the tomatoes out)
salt/pepper

I don't think I need to tell anybody how to do this. Except that this salad also taste better if you leave it at room temperature for an hour or so before you eat it.

Dessert: Sliced Oranges with Greek Yougurt

My grandmother used to make this dessert for Christmas. It was in the days before Norway found oil and we were poor and only got oranges for Christmas. And even if one can get oranges all the time now, I still think they taste better in the winter, so this is an easy and healthy dessert with lots of vitamine C, and when I use Greek Yougurt on top of it, and not whipped cream (as my grandma), it is actually quite healthy also.

You need:
1/2 orange per person
sugar
chopped almonds
Greek yougurt (you can use Turkish or French if you prefer that, but these days I think the Greeks need us to buy stuff from them)

Peel the orange with a sharp knife (see pictures) and make sure to remove the white as well. Then cut the organges in thin slices. Sugar it to taste, about a tea spoon per orange is normally enough but it's a matter of taste.  Spread the chopped almonds over and serve with Greek yougurt that you might want to sweeten a bit with either honey, sugar or artificial sweetener. And this desert also, is better about an hour on the kitchen counter, as the sugar blends with the orange juice and turns into syrup.

P:S:

These pictures are taken an afternoon at the end of November in Norway, and as you can see from the picture below, it's pitch dark here by 4 in the afternoon. Espen, the photographer, has not used any other light than the flash on his camera, which is why the lighting on some of these pictures are not quite as he had planned. I bet you know what we mean, though!

Salads - Winter Types

Salads are good for us because we get som many different vegetables and stuff into us at the same time, and if we do it right, it's healthy and it tastes good too, which is something the girls have found out long time ago, so this is a Real Man's salad, just to show you how good a healthy dish can be.

Per person
1 egg cooked 8 minutes, per person
1/2 onion any color and sliced through the stem in narrow boats that hang together at the stem (but if they don't, consider it a fly on life's ass - it doesen't matter).
1 slice of bacon per person (or a slice of salami, pepperoni, ham, whatever you have of coldcut leftovers)
nuts, pine nuts or walnuts are best (optional)
spianach/ruccola either/or or both or any other very green sort of lettuce
oilves (optional)
frozen green peas (optional)
Feta cheese (optional)
shredded cheese, Parmesan is best, but any will do

Heat 3-4 tablesppons of oilive oil in a frying pan (be a bit generous, this oil will be used for salad dressing). Fry fist the bacon crispy on both sides and put them on a paper towel, then the onions till they are caramelised (which means turns light brow) and the nuts and fry it all a bit.

While this happens, wash and pour the spinach in a bowl and sprinkle the other vegetables over.

Take the pan away from the heat and check how much oil you have for the salat, if it looks little, add some more and then add some Balsamic vinegar, a little at the time and taste every time after you have stired it together, till you like the taste. Pour it over the spinach and mix well. Garnish with the eggs, crisp bacon and the two kinds of cheeses. You can eat it right away, but it's actually best after about 10 minutes when the dressing has soaked well into the thick spinach leaves.

And if you have this salad on Monday, you will had got so many antioxidants and vitamins in you that you probably can eat junk food on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday....

Fishballs Bombay

My mother used to make this this dish, and when she did, we sort of looked at each other and though "fishballs in India???" because we thought that the Norwegians had invented the fishballs and that they probably never had heard of it in India. Then my Indian friend, Sheila, cooked me a meal in London, and guess what? The main ingredient was fishballs, and not only that, they were Chinese, so they obviously have fishballs all over the place.... although when that is said and having tasted the Chinese ones, which could have been made from flower in comparison to ours, I say - and I am not the least bit biased - ours are better and they contain nothing but fish! And if you have a choice of Norwegian fishballs, go for the ones from Vesterålen, they are our best.

For 4-5 people you need:
1 litre tin of fish balls
2 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of wheat flower
curry
salt

rice
raisins
shredded coconut
peanuts
organge peeled and cut in thin slices or small cubes (how much of each of these is optional)

carrots (1/2-1 per person)
apples (1/4-1/2 per person)
ginger (1 teapoon shredded)
horseraddich (1 teasspoon shredded)
lemon juice (juice of half a lemon)
oil (soy, sunflower or other flavour-weak oil) twice as much as lemon juice
sugar or sweetener

Start by making the salad: Shred carrots and apples (as much as you like/have) and a little bit of horseraddich, and make a dressing of lemon juice, oil, ginger and sweetener (Taste it, it's supposed to taste very sweet and very sour, but good, you are supposed to like it). Pour it over, mix the salad well and put it in the fridge. Carrots contain a lot of vitamine A, which is good for the eyes and the lungs (eat carrots if you smoke), but they are only dissolvable in oil, so now the salad is sitting there getting healthier, so to speak....

Now to the fishballs. Melt the butter in a big enough sacepan (a teflon pan will make the dishes easier), add the butter and curry (optional, I normally take about 1 teaspoon at this stage and add more later if it's not hot enough), then the flower, and then gradually stir in the liquid from the fishball tin till it makes a sauce as thick as you like it. Let the sauce boil up each time before you add more liquid and you will always know how thick the sauce will be. Normally it needs a bit more liquid than what's in the tin, so add a bit of milk. Taste off the sauce with salt or pepper (or a fish builion cube instead of the salt) and add the fishballs. Leave it to simmer while you cook the rice, and all the dishes for this meal should be done at the same time. Sprinckle, raisins, peanuts, shredded coconut and pieces of oranges over the dish before serving. And if you don't do the dishes right away, make sure to fill the pans with water, as both rice and fishsauce turn into glue if left unattended to over night - I say no more!

I am not sure anybody in India ever had a dish like this, but it sure taste good in Norway in the winter - and fishballs are still quite affordable.....

Tomato Soup

I use this soup to show young people how stupid it is to buy a pack of this or a pack of that, which supposedly should make your life easier, but instead cost more, has less nourishment, and takes longer. This soup takes 5 minutes.

You need:
1 tablespoon of wheat flower
1 tablesppon of butter
1 heaped tablespoon of tomato paste
1 heaped teaspoon of builion powder - any kind (or a cube or two)
1 liter (4 cups) of water

In a saucepan mix together the butter, flower and tomato paste while stiring. Add the water gradually and let the soup come to a boil. Taste it and check the color. You want it really red, so add some more tomato paste if it is not, and if you want it saltier, add some more builion. Ready to serve....(the pack of soup mix, will still need to boil for another 5 minutes)!

You can put pasta in it and let it boil in the soup till it's done or you can put croutons on top. Cut slices of bread (it can be stale) into cubes and fry them in olive oil till they are light brown. Let them drip off on a piece of paper towel and season them with a bit of salt and some garlic powder, or you can chop some garlic and fry it with the bread.

Traditional Norwegian Cod Dinner

Supposedly we Norwegians are so healthy and live so long because we eat so much cod (and have a teaspoon of cod liver oil every day in all months with R in them), and before we found the oil, we wouldn't have survived without the cod, and thanks to the cod we also got the oil. It happened like this.

When EU was formed, Norway got really worried that Spanish and Italian fishermen should come all the way up here and fish "our" fish, and sent negotiators to Brussels to talk our case. And after months of negotiating, EU agreed that the part of the North Sea, which is the continental shelf Norway is located on, should all belong to Norway. So Norway became a very big country, although most of it is under water. Nobody knew that oil would be found on this enlarged part of Norway till ten years later, and I am not so sure EU would have been as generous if they had known that, after all most of the oil is found closer to both the Netherlands and UK.

But we saved the cod, which is still not extinct in the Norwegian waters, and we still eat and sell a lot of it. Most of what we sell, we sell dried, and Christmas would not be the same in places like Portugal and Brazil unless they have cod from Norway, which they call Baccalao and make wonderful dishes out of. We here, however, prefer the fish so fresh that it taste more like cream than fish, and how we get and keep the fish so fresh is by freezing it practically as soon as it is caught - litterally, which you can see in this video that my friend and fishmonger Daniel has taken on board a cod trawler.

"Of women and sardines, the small is the preferrable", we say, but when it comes to cod, the bigger the better. The bigger it is, the more the consistancy becomes like meat, and some of the best cod we get, we call skrei, and which is the fish that comes down from the arctic to the coast of Norway some time in February, where it is fished and dried around the Lofoten islands a bit north of the middle of Norway. So if you buy cod, look for the thick pieces as they normally come from a big cod. And here is what you do if you want to make the most common meal in Norway when I grew up, although these days we serve it as party food, because even here good fish has become expensive.

You need:
Potatoes (2 medium ones per person and 2 for the pot, as we say)
Carrots (1 per person) sliced
Peas or sweet peas - as much as you like
Butter
Flour
Milk
About 200-250 g (1/2 pound) of cod in pieces per person (frozen is fine, just remember to take it out and put it in the fridge the night before, but if you forget, no problem, treat the frozen pieces like they were not and bake them for 20-25 minutes instead)
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg

Start with setting the owen on as high as it goes.

Then you put the potatoes to boil. Wash them (but don't peel them, as most of the nourishment of the potatoe is either in the skin or right underneath it), cover them with cold water and let them boil for about 20 minutes, and check with a fork if they are cooked.

While they are boiling do the vegetable stew. Boil the carrots for a minute or so, you still want a bit of bite in them, then sieve off the water and save it. In a saucepan melt about 1 tablespoon of butter (this portion will be enough for 4-5 people if you are more people, take more butter) and stir in 1 tablespoon of wheat flower, then gradually add some of the carrot water and finally a little bit of milk. Taste it off with salt, pepper and a bit of nutmeg. Then add the carrots, and then some frozen peas. And when this is done you start with the fish.

Butter an oven-proof dish, salt and pepper the fish pieces and put them in it. Cover it with aluminum foil and bake it in the oven on as high heat as possible for 10-15 minutes depending on the size of the pieces. The fish is supposed to have turned from translucent to white when it's done. If it seems not to have become all white, leave it for a bit longer, unlike salmon, you can not overcook cod.

All you have to do now, is to melt some butter to go with this meal, and if it's Sunday put some chopped parsley in it (only parsley on Sunday's when I was a kid, and then we even got the potatoes peeled, but then they didn't know that the nourishment was in the peeling). And if you have done this as I told you, everything for this meal should be ready at the same time.

Chocolate Mousse

This chocolate mousse is so easy that it's almost embarrassing to give out the recipe. It tastes just like the kind for which you need real chocolate, three bowls, a boiler and what have you not, but here it is:

You need:
A mixer or a whip
2 1/2 dl (1 cup) of whipping cream
2 tablespoons of cocoa
sugar (or artificial sweeteners for those on low carb) to taste, I normally use 1 tablespoon

Optional but not at all necessary:
vanilla
chopped chocolate
chopped nuts

Pour the 3 ingredients in a bow and mix it till it's stiff. Then leave it for about 10 minutes in the fridge. During this time something chemical happens (I think) because it's like the cocoa melts with the cream and seem to turn it into chocolate. That's it. Hope you like it.

Mayonaise

For this you need the mixer stick and the plastic container that comes with it. Fill it with

1 egg
juice of half a lemon
1 heaped teaspoon of Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Enough soy oil (or other tasteless oil, such as cannola or sunflower) to make it all 1/2 litre (2 cups)
all the ingredients need to be room tempered

Then put the stick mixer in the bottom of the container and pull it slowly up. If things have gone as planned, your mayo should now be done, but some times it does not get thick. What you do then is to add another egg and do it again, second time it never fails. Stir it a bit with a spoon and taste it, some times you might want a bit more lemon and some times a bit more Dijon mustard, let your tastebuds deside.


If you would like to make aioli, you do the same, except you add a couple of garlic cloves and exchange the soy oil with olive oil (or actually I do half and half, as all oilve oil can make the flavour a bit too strong for my tastebuds). To this you can also add your favourite herbs, such as basil, chives, oregano....whatever you like.

Catchup

which originally came from India, so for those who think it's American junk food - it's not - it's ethnic food and you can therefore eat it and still be cool, and if you make your own, you can still be slim, as this catchup contains no sugar. Bought catchup actually contains 1/3 sugar, and as we know sugar is not good for us, besides it's addictive, so this is also an excellent catchup for small children. One of our sons works in a famous restaurant and have told that the big honcho there says that a good catchup should always start with an H: Heinz or Home made and here is the recipe for the home made:

You need:
A blender or a stick mixer
2 1/2 dl (1 cup) tomato paste. I prefer the thick Turkish kind
1/2 dl (1/4 cup) apple cider vingar
2 1/2 dl (1 cup) oninons (approximately 1 1/2 medium sized onions)
2 cloves of garlic (or more if you like it - garlic is good for us)
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
artificial sweetener, I use 8 tablets of Natrena that I dissolved in a bit of hot water, but you can make it sweeter or less sweet depending on your taste
water

Put all the ingredinets in a blender (or the cup that comes with the mixer stick) and blend it. Add as much water as you need to make the blender go easily, and even a bit more if the catchup seems to be too thick. That's it. You can of curse put it through a sieve and make it totally smooth, but the fibers of the onions are also good for us, so why bother. The catchup will keep in the fridge for at least three weeks - normally you use it before that.

Tzatziki

I let Theo, the Greek, taste this dish also, and he said right away that it tasted like in Greece, but that he wanted to add 2 more tablespoons of yougurt, which we did, and I liked it. His version is more creamy, mine is more cucombery, take you pick. However, if you are on a low carb and use sour cream instead of yougurt, I think it's wise to stick to my version.

And with the Moussaka, Tzatziki tastes really good and adds both another vegetable and some freshness to the Moussaka. You need

2 cucombers
3-4 heaped tablespoons of Turkish or Greek yougurt (I prefer Turkish, the fatty kind - sorry Greeks), or, if you are on a low carb diet, use sour cream instead
2 cloves of garlic
lemon juice
salt
pepper
chopped mint leaves (optional)

Put a clean dish towel over a bowl and shred the cucombers coarsly over the dishtowel in the bowl. Then pick up the towel and squeeze out as much liquid as possible (but save it in a glas). Put the cucombers back in the bowl, press the garlic cloves over, add the yougurt and stir it all together and taste it off with lemon juice, salt and pepper and mint leaves - again, let your tastebuds be your guide. That's it. Hope you all have a nice dinner.

And the cucomber juice is a quick fix if you want to look better in an hour or so. It is a diuretic and will at least remove the bags under your eyes. Add a little bit of lemon juice to it and drink - quickly, it tastes foul....but is good for you!

Moussaka

Our sons have been to Greece, but I have not, and when they came home they told me that I make better moussaka than the Greeks, and when we got a Greek visitor, Theo, I desided to make it and let the Greek give his verdict. He loved it, and told me that it was better than what you get in Greece and he especially loved the cheese topping, so here is my recipe. You will need:

2 large carrots cut in small cubes
3 large stalks of cellery also cut in same size cubes
2 onions cut in same size pieces
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 kg (about a pound) minced meat. If I can get minced lamb I use that, but it's expensive, so I normally use what is on special offer and chicken mince often is, so I mostly use that
1-2 tablespoons for oregano (or more if you like it)
1/2 teaspoon of cumin (Theo, the Greek, was a bit aprehensive when I put that in, as he claimed it was more for Turkish cooking that Greek, but I love Turkish food, so I didn't listen)
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 heaped tablespoon of ox bulion powder (or a cube or two - taste after the first one), or, if you live in a country that has it, like UK, use lamb bulion powder or cube
2-3 heaped tablespoons of tomatoe paste
water
oilive oil
cooked potatoes or, if you can afford it eggplant in slices (how much depends of how much you have, but I normally have enough to make on layer in the dish I am using for it. For this portion, I think I used about 10 boiled potatoes. The reason I had planned to make moussaka, was actually because I had all those potatoes, and when Theo said he would be coming, my choice was easy)

2 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of wheat flower
milk
cheese
2 eggs
salt, pepper, nutmegPour some olive oil in a large pot (use as much as you like, as it is very healthy, but you still get fat from it, so not so much then) and fry the vegetables till they are translucent, then add the spices and the meat and fry while stiring till all the meat has cooked. Then add the tomatoe paste (and a bit of water if it's too thick, you want it like pasta sauce) and the builion cube and taste. I never use salt in sauces like this, so if it's not salt enough for you, add another builion cube. Let all boil for about 10 minutes, while you make the next sauce.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the butter, then add milk a little bit at the time while stiring till you have a thick sauce, take it away from the heat, then add the cheese and the eggs and taste it off with a bit of pepper, salt and nutmeg - again, taste and let your tastebuds be the guide.

Take out two oven proof dishes, I used two large round ones for this. Fill half of the red sauce in each, then a layer of potaoes, then a layer of the white sauce. Bake them in the oven at 200 centergrades for about 20 minutes or till it's bubly and has brown spots on the top. This portion is enough for about 10 people, so if you are less, put one of the dishes in the freezer. When you want to eat this one, put it in a cold oven (otherwise the dish might brake) set it on 200 degrees and bake till it has brown spots on top. It takes about 45 minutes.

And with this dish, Tzatziki tastes very good, and that is another of my Greek recipes, now approved by Theo, the Greek!