aquavit! part 2

sarah emily here. as a non-norwegian, I wanted to chime in about aquavit. once you taste it, you will immediately understand why it is the beverage of choice when eating rotting fish. this will sterilize you. the first time I tried it, the taste reminded me of the dentist. I can't explain it more than that. it's actually not bad, though. I wouldn't call it good, but it does have a very peculiar charm.

aquavit! yes!

It is just so exciting when Norwegian treats are featured on teh interwebz!

check out http://www.chow.com/stories/11298 - an article about aquavit, a classic norwegian beverage that I drink chilled, and with beer. but not usually with rotting fish.

blogging blogs. omg. black metal baking.

When sarah emily and I (sarah elisabeth) went to Norway once, we met a blackmetal fanatic, who was very nice and spoke a lot of English. He was disturbed that sarah emily didn't know who motorhead was, and he also was a computer programmer and at the very end of our visit to this particular bar, sarah emily and I were leaving to go to the awesome lesbo-bar in Oslo that is now sadly closed. I think it was called sin pecado. Anyways, we were leaving and his friend suddenly pulled down his pants and we were made to bear witness to his rather small penis. The not-at-all chagrined black metal fan said: "It's not magic." And we left, but we loved it. It was amazing.

Black metal is a peculiarly Norwegian/Scandinavian genre of metal related to satanism and the occult and sometimes to ancient nordic religions. (wikipedia it if you want to know all the sordid details... they are actually awesome.) There is a certain awesome stupid nihilism to black metal.

In other news, stephen (of threefrog.blogspot.com) just alerted me to the most amazing site ever. it is blackmetal inspired baking. I can't wait to try everything. check out: The Black Oven.

This is the latest post...
The Black Oven: Where the Chocolate Beats Incessant

norwegian raisin buns - vegan style

My mom made raisin buns all the time when I was a kid, and I would always complain because she didn't put enough raisins in them. When I found this recipe for a vegan version, I decided to become master of my own destiny. Raisins galore!

I borrowed the recipe from here: http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=291


I took 1/2 cup of earth balance and put it in a saucepan on low. Then I added 1.25 cups unsweetened soy milk to the saucepan. Careful not to let it boil!

In a bowl I combined 4 cups of flour, 1 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of cardamom, and a packet of dry yeast and stirred.

Then I poured the earth balance/soy milk mixture over the dry ingredients, and added a little more than a cup of raisins. Then I kneaded it with my hands for about five minutes. I set it, in the bowl I had kneaded it in with a handtowel over it, on top of the stove (the oven was preheated to 430F so the stove was nice and warm) for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes I dumped the sough out on a cutting board coated in flour and kneaded it for another 3 or 4 minutes. I kneaded it into something of a flattish square, and then I used a sharp knife to cut it into about 20 pieces - 4 slices one way and three the other. I took each little dough square and mushed into a ball and set it on a cookie sheet.

Finally, I had prepared a mixture of a few tables spoons of sugar in some warm water on the stove. I brushed this over the top of each bun. ("brush" may not be the word - lacking any kind of pastry brush, I used a spatula.)

Then I put them in the over for about 12 minutes.

When I took them out they required some spatula-ing off of the cookie sheet (maybe I should have greased it) but sliced in half and spread with some earth balance - they tasted exactly like they should.

Fair warning - these aren't a dessert so much as a snack or something to have with coffee. They're not super sweet. yummy though ;)

potatoes!

remember those breakfast potatoes referred to in the earlier post about breakfast in Norway? I made them the other day to bring to brunch at Max and Lyssa's. And someone thought to take a picture!

I had carrots from the farm share, so I threw those in, and I bought a red pepper and used the potatoes and onions I had from the farmshare. I used oil in stead of butter to enhance vegan-ness. also, heavy on the pepper, and long on the cooking. I put the lid on at the end too. mmmm mmmm.

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.

breakfast in norway

in norway, breakfast is a big deal. sarah elisabeth is a master of creating the extravagant meal with which one begins the day. here you can see the wide array of foods - eggs, rice, two types of cheese, bread, vegetables, meats, and more. sarah and zeke (a friend of the happy diner) lovingly prepared breakfast for the rest of the cabin one morning this past august. norwegian breakfasts mark a turning point in my appreciation of the meal. two years ago I returned to the states with a new understanding of what a leisurely, filling breakfast can do for a person. I also returned pretty convinced that I needed a job where admiring public sculpture was required, but that's a meditation for a different blog.