Happy New Year!

I´m sorry for not posting in a while... I´ve had a very buzy autumn. But I still braid, and I was lucky to both have several custom orders for christmas and I also went to a very nice christmas market here in Nesodden.

We celebrated New Year in our usual style... 7 courses + coffee and belgian chocolate. My in-laws took the trip from Holland to celebrate with us. My girl is happy with her child champagne and ketchup!

We made a lot of seafood this year, including these little babies:

You don´t need to go fancy with lobster. I just cut them in half and toast them in the oven with parmesan and herbs.

Serve with salad, bread and spicy mayo. Champagne off-course!

S novim godom - Godt nytt år - Happy New Year! I hope 2014 will be a really good year for all of you.

Okara - cereal

So, what to do with all that okara? I turned mine into delicious cereal and muffins (recipe later), and then I froze down some. You'll get a lot of okara, so it's a shame to throw it all away.

I mixed 3 cups of okara with:
1 cup of rolled/cooked oats
1/2 cup of raisins
1 cup of shredded coconut
1/2-1 cup of agave syrup
1/2 cup of coconut oil

Mix well and spread on a greased baking sheet, maximum 1 inch deep. Dry it in the oven on about 150 degrees for a couple of hours. Store in a container, in the frigde to keep it longer. Eat it with milk or youghurt as breakfast.

Project: Food bases. First base: orange

So, while making dinner tonight I got the idea of making "food bases" and freeze them for easier and faster cooking without using ready-made food from the store.
So far I've come up with 3 color bases, and from these an endless variety of recipes.

Here comes the recipe for the first base:



Orange base

5 cm chunk of ginger, peeled and chopped
1-2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tbsp coconut oil

Fry this for 5 min and add:

1 kg of carrots, peeled and diced
1,5 liters of water with 1 cube bullion or stock

Boil until tender and run through a blender or mash it any way you like.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

Use this for carrot soup:
To the base, add 2-3 deciliters of cooking cream or Oatly cream, bring to boil.
Serve with orange wedges and parma ham roasted in oven until crisp.

Use it as mash:
Boil some extra carrots or potatoes and mash them with butter or oil. Add the carrot base.

Pictures coming!

Russian pirogi *non-Japanese food*

Yes, we do eat other stuff than Japanese food! Especially lately, I've been trying to mix it up a bit.. and being a "Russian housewife", I thought I'd try to make pirogi.

So, here we go:

Dough
7 g dry yeast
2 ts brown sugar
2/3 cup skimmed milk (abt. 2 dl ), lukewarm
1 large egg
1 tbsp water
1 cup (=240 ml) melted margarine, lukewarm
1/4 ts salt
3 3/4 cup flour (= 9 dl) (I used dinkel)


Filling
1/2 head of cabbage
2 tbsp hacked dill
1 clove garlic, hacked
2 tbsp oil
2-3 hard boiled eggs
2-3 large potatoes cut in small cubes and boiled
salt and pepper

+ any meat, fish or chicken and maybe peas as well
1 beaten egg

Make dough
Dissolve the yeast and sugar in lukewarm milk, leave for 5 min, then add the egg beaten with water and lukewarm margarine, plus salt. Stir together and add the flour, cup by cup, leaving 1/2 cup out. Form the dough into a ball and knead in the rest of the flour. Leave to rise for abt. 10 min. Use at once, or refrigerate for up to 24 hrs.

Make filling
Boil eggs and potatoes until done. Sieve potatoes and peel eggs. Chop them into small pieces.
Cut the cabbage into strips and boil for 2 min in salted water. Strain and chop it up more.
Put the oil in a large pan or wok, add garlic, fry 2 min, add cabbage and dill. Fry until soft, add potatoes and eggs + any other filling. Adjust taste with s/p.

Make circular pieces of the dough and put 2 tbsp filling on one half. Close it into a half circle, close the edges with a fork and put beaten egg on it.
Cook the pirogi for 20-25 minutes on 200 degrees C until brown.

Serve with soup or sour cream dressing. Great for picnic!

Cake! Pavlova... *non-japanese food*

Oh, I found this picture of the Pavlova I made for 17th of May (Norway's constitution day).
And it looks so nice I want to share it... and post recipe...

Pavlova

6 egg whites
4 dl sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vinegar
1 tbsp corn starch
1 tbsp vanilla essence

Whisk together, starting with egg whites and salt, then adding sugar and eventually vinegar and corn starch + vanilla.
When the meringue has become thick and shiny, pour in on a baking sheet where you've drawn a circle of about 26 cm in diameter. Form a circle of the mass.
Put it in an oven heated to 250 degrees C, switch the heat down to 100 degrees. Fry it on 100 degrees for at least an hour. Cool down.
Decorate with whipped cream, berries, vanilla cream....