floundering

So, we at 48 have been engaging in a Community Supported Fishery (or CSF, or Fish Share.) It's called Cape Ann Fresh Catch http://namanet.org/csf/cape-ann-fresh-catch We are splitting it with another household, so every other week or so we get, basically a few whole fish. We will also be getting shrimp, but that has not materialized yet.

This week, we got a whole cod, already gutted, and a flounder, not gutted. gina marie dealt with the cod, I took on the flounder. Sadly, I was in a rush and didn't take any pictures of the gutting and filleting. gina actually did the skinning.

Once that was done, the flounder sat in tupperware in the fridge for a few days. I was thinking of how to use it. I decide to do something inspired by my favorite fish dish that my Norwegian grandmother makes for me - I'm not sure on the spelling, something like "røkt kolje" røkt means smoked and kolje is a kind of white sea fish. I had a white sea fish, but it was not smoked. My grandmother prepares this in a butter sauce with carrots and hard boiled eggs, served with boiled potatoes. I was in a hurry and had no idea how to even make the sauce - so I winged it!


I put most of a stick of butter in a pan. Chopped a carrot, put it in the pan, and let it simmer. I sliced a couple of little farm share potatoes (purple and white) and put those in the pan. I added some salt and pepper. I let it simmer. I added some white wine, I turned the heart up a tad. I added some more butter. Than I popped the tiny flounder fillets on top (my skills aren't great so there was definitely some fish left on the skeleton.) then I let it cook for a while. Flipped the fillets, and let it cook a little more.





The meantime, I was hard boiling two eggs. emily, 48's other non-feline resident, advised me to boil the water, then add both eggs with a slotted spoon, then let barely simmer for ten minutes. I did that. butfor 11minutes. A quick rinse in cold water and I peeled them. Then I used my egg slicer (Norwegian invention!) to cut the eggs both ways.






then I served it on a plate, topped with eggs. It was good! very buttery. I think it could afford to be less buttery, but I hadn't wanted to risk it.

thai red curry squash and coconut milk soup (and toasted seeds)

So I read this blog, SouleMama, which is written by a woman in Maine. She tends to make pretty and delicious things. I don't manage the pretty things much, but I do aspire to the delicious.

The other day, in her post about fall's harvest, she recommended a recipe from 101 cookbooks. It was perfect. I had an acorn squash, a sugar pumpkin, and two butternuts at home aching to be eaten. it's been too warm for them to store well, and I knew I needed to cook them before they started to rot.

I split them all in half, scooped the seeds out into a separate bowl (so I could make Simply Recipes toasted pumpkin seeds - recipe acquired via 101 cookbooks' toasted pumpkin seeds) and then lay them all out on a cookie sheet with the cut side up. I sprayed them with a little canola spray, and then rubbed them with butter and ground salt over them, letting most of each pat sit in the holes formed by the scooped out seeds. I put it in the oven at 375 for an hour.

When they came out, the squashes smelled and tasted delicious. I almost gave up on making soup to just eat them right there. but then I decided that was too much squash for little old me and I settled into just a few bites and scooped the rest out laboriously into a big soup pot. (this was probably the hardest part - the squash skins were so tender they just sort of fell apart - and there was butter everywhere).

then I turned the heat to medium high and added two cans of coconut milk (first press - not light.) once it was getting simmery, I turned off the heat and hit it with the immersion blender till it was very smooth. Then I added a little more than a teaspoon of red thai curry paste and some smoked paprika, and blended some more.

Then I went out dancing.

the next day the soup was still sitting on the stove with the lid on. Iw as going to have some friends over, so I heated it back up, added some water (I have no idea how much - just until the thickness seemed good) and some salt, and... voila! serve with bread. delicious reheated.


while I was out dancing I also put the bowl of squash seeds in the fridge covered with a towel. The next day I rinsed them in a colander as best as I could, picking out the squash-meat chunks, and then I put them in a saucepan of boiling water with some salt. I simmered them for 10 minutes. I drained them in the colander, and then tossed them with about 3 tablespoons of melted butter in a bowl.

I spread the seeds out on a cookie sheet and put them in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 12 minutes. I took them out, sprinkled them with smoked paprika, and put them in a bowl. they were the best snack ever. soo good. and they were nice and tender so they didn't need shelling. and it wasn't just the pumpkin, but also the other squashes, and all the seeds were good.

(p.s., while I was making these foods, I may have dropped gina marie's camera on the floor and broken it... I will try to salvage some pictures when I can...)

popcorn: outside edition

So, from our farmshare with stone soup farm, we get popcorn each year.

(picture courtesy of stone soup)

It lasts for years, literally, which is great. I went on a camping trip over 4th of july weekend and tried to recreate the magic of popcorn on the stove with popcorn on the campfire.

it came out deliciously (healthy amounts of salt and butter were included.)

what you do, is you use your thumb to take the kernels off the corncob. you put them in a pot with some oil and a lid, and then let it get hot. then they pop. and it's delicious. also - I have found that the kernels that don't pop the first time around will often pop if you try them again after you have taken out the popped corn.

This is pretty fun.

penne with sweet pepper sauce and sweet italian sausages

This is another of my dad's old standbys. He actually used to make this at his restaurant. I made it more than a week ago, but I will try to remember the details.

To start off, bought some *sweet* italian sausages at the whole foods. Usually I get little ones - but these were twice the size! I put them in a frying pan with the heat on low. I turn them every 5 minutes or so. I later learned from Kristen that slicing them into quarters lengthwise cooks 'em faster and more evenly. gonna try that next time.

gina marie sliced a whole yellow onion and we also sliced (into long medium strips, not chopped) 2 red, 1 yellow, and 1 orange bell peppers. We added this along with a lot of chopped garlic into a big saute pan with some olive oils and put the heat on low.

once the peppers had softened I seasoned with some thyme and a little pepper. then I added half a can of low-sodium chicken broth and brought it just to a simmer and then turned the heat back to medium. I let that simmer until the broth had reduced a bit and added 1 can of diced tomatoes.

continued to let this all cook on medium low. towards the end I added half a stick of butter to the sauce. just let it melt and stir.



when my sauce was the consistency I wanted, I added some chopped fresh basil at the very end. The following pictures were to document my basil chopping method Stack up some leaves, roll them, then slice the roll-up:



Then I served it over whole wheat penne. (I made too much penne - one box would have cut it - also, generally I wouldn't use whole wheat for this -but it's better for you!) Also, served with parmesan.






Kristen made it awesome by bringing us her favorite bottle of french red. Excellent!




Vegan options: use vegetable broth, veggie sausages, no butter at the end

creamy purple potato soup

So.... I had a lot of potatoes. and I decided I would make potato soup. I have no idea how to make potato soup, but, as I said to Susan - if I don't like it and it tastes like watery mashed potatoes - I'll just eat something from a can.

It came out ok though!

I covered the bottom of a soup pot generously with olive oil. I put the heat on low and diced an onion and put that in there with it.

Then I washed about six potatoes (I still don't have a peeler) and realized that they were purple potatoes! I cut each potato into cubes and threw them in with the onions and the oil. I stieed that and let it sort of fry for a minute or two.

Then I added one chicken bullion cube and 6 cups of water, and I covered it and let it go on a medium bowl for about 1/2 hour or 45 minutes. Then I added a stick of butter and blended it with the immersion blender. It was all purple-y and little pieces of potato skin and kinda pretty. It tasted a little salty though, so I added half of one of those small cartons of heavy cream that Susan brought back for me from trader joe's.

Then I stirred... and voila! creamy creamy good! (probably 1/2 a stick of butter would have been plenty - but who's counting?)

Breakfast in Skurdalen, from the one who makes it.

Sarah emily posted a bit about breakfast in Norway. The breakfast that she and others have eaten that I make in the cabin in Skurdalen (pronounced, roughly, "skrewdallin,") is influenced by the smorgasbord-y breakfasts common in scandinavia, the bread, cheese and eggs that they consume constantly, and my dad's awesome cooking skills, straight outta southern california.

Basically, the key is, use everything in the little cabin refrigerator, including whatever is left of last night's fish dinner. It's important to have at least one hot "centerpiece" - this is to satisfy the American in me.

Usually, it's potatoes. To make the potatoes:

scrub a buncha little potatoes (you can peel if you want, but I never do) - either red or white
cube the potatoes
cube one small-medium sized onion
finely chop or crush 4 cloves of garlic
put a 1/4 stick of butter or (for vegans, lactards, and the rest of the butter-averse) a bunch of oil (vegetable or olive) in a frying pan
add onions on medium heat
add garlic
saute about 2 minutes
add in potatoes
stir pan with spatula every 1-2 minutes
dice 1 red, yellow or orange pepper (optional)
dice 1 zucchini (optional)
(you can add pretty much any vegetables you have, they will change it up a little, I have found peppers and zucchini particularly satisfying, but carrots, broccoli, etc can also be good - or you can skip the extra veggies altogether and just revel in starchy goodness)
after potatoes have been in pan for about 10-15 minutes, add zucchini and pepper
add salt & lots of pepper
add garlic powder if you feel like it
cook - stirring often to avoid burning, and adding more butter/oil (especially necessary when using butter) whenever it seems prudent.
you can now be done, if you wish. Vegans must finish here.

optionally, you can scramble/fry an egg into the potatoes.
to do this, whisk an a few eggs, and optionally, some milk in a bowl.
pour the mixture over the potatoes and stir it around.
it's done when the eggs are cooked to your liking.

AND/OR

add cheese!
you can grate it or just break off hunks. In Norway I almost always use gulost (yellow cheese - which is sort of like a mild cheddar) or jarlsberg (a mild swiss-like cheese) for this.
add chunks of cheese liberally with the heat on medium low and stir until it melts.

when the potatoes are done, put them in a brightly colored bowl with some kind of ikea utensil for serving.



Moving on from the potatoes,
another key element is the boiled egg.
you need an egg cup for everyone
boil the eggs to their liking (softer is better for this purpose).
put each egg in an egg cup.
when it's time to eat the egg, tap your knife on the side of the egg near the very top to crack it a little, and then slice off the top.
if you like, add a little salt and or pepper to exposed egg.
now using your little bitty spoon, scoop the egg out of it's shell to eat it. you can eat it off the spoon, or you can put it on bread as part of your smorbrod assembly.

which brings us to smorbrod, the real heart of the breakfast. "Smor" in Norwegian, means butter. "bord" means table, thus, smorgasbord, buttertable. smorbrod is what norwegians eat for breakfast and lunch - butterbread. basically, you take some bread - usually a pretty heavy one with lots of seeds and stuff in it, and you spread some butter on it, and then you spread more stuff on it. the "smor" (butter) has come to mean more than just bread, so the smor is the spread, whatever you spread on it, and that's what we but on the smorgasbord (spread table!)

Here are some typical things for the smorgasbord:

bread, sliced in a basket sitting next to the toastmaster (person sitting next to the toaster is the toastmaster. they toast bread on request for the rest of the table) you might have a graabrod, very rough bread, "loff" (pronounced "loof") which is yummy white bread, solskinnbrod, which is sunshine bread and has sunflower seeds, and whatever other bread you baked or picked up at the bakery. Also in the breadbasket there may be Wasa crackers or other breadlike objects that you can spread things on.

cheeses. set them out on a wooden board with a knife and a cheeseslicer (norwegian invention!). I usually but out all the kinds of cheese in the fridge, usually at least one yellow cheese, one brown cheese (usually geitost, a brown sort of sweet caramelly goat cheese - geit means goat), something kind of creamy and/or stinky, and then whatever else you picked up.

veggies. usually a tomato (tomat), a pepper (paprika), a cucumber (agurk), put on a board with a paring knife so people can slice their own. these are key.

meats/fishies. salami or other sliced meat, any leftovers. often I poach the fish (fisk) that we catch in the lake, and if you make it nice the night before it's very yummy the next day. sometimes I reheat it by sauteeing it in a little parsley butter (persillesmor) just before breakfast. (there is no microwave at the cabin, which is why the food always tastes better). also, jars of little fishes, brined and pickled - herring mostly. These are not my favorite, but sometimes I put them out so folks can try. Norwegians also like to eat little shrimps (reker) and breakfast. I can't usually afford it, but smoked salmon is also a biggy. and yummy. sometimes also there is bacon, but the norwegians have nothing to do with that :).

Boiled eggs. I know we already had them in our eggcups, but it's important to also have them hardboiled for peeling and putting in the eggslicer (another norwegian invention!), which then makes perfect smorbrod slices.

also key are butter, jams (syltetoy) (the norwegians are big on blueberry), nutella or other chocolate (sjokolade) spread.


then everyone sits down with their hot beverage, their cold beverage, and gets started on their eggcup, the bread gets toasted, people have some potatoes, and then the spreading begins. At this point it is also key to *make your lunch* - which you do by spreading your bread (all open face sandwiches in norway) and then putting a piece of wax paper between each piece of spread bread. then you wrap it in more wax paper - or if you're modern like me, a plastic bag.

then you go swimming in the lake and fall asleep with your book on your face.

more cookie adventures with gina marie.

let's continue to follow gina marie in her adventures and misadventures in the world of chocolate chip cookies.

if you remember, last time we saw gina marie, she had made some chocolate chip cookies with egg whites from a carton and soy butter substitute type thing. these cookies were not good, although we can't stress enough that it was not the fault of the fake/soy/vegan butter stuff, and there have since been more successful attempts at vegan baking, although, as sarah emily mentioned, there was no fake butter involved.

so, this time, gina marie made the best cookies ever, and enjoyed by many a lantern maker. the goodness of these cookies was a result (we learned from later testing) of real butter, real eggs, an oven that heats 50 degrees hotter than you tell it to, and some serious undercooking. mmmmm raw cookies.

so my suggestions to cookie makers: use lots of butter, crank up the oven, take the cookies out when they still look like melty dough in the middle, and always always always *always* use the nestle toll house cookie recipe.