Friday Night Dinner

My boyfriend went home to his parents today to help his father move. That means (except that I have to be alone in the appartement and I'm super scared of the dark) that I can eat stuff that he doesn't like. Like shrimps and avocado.

Pasta with Ham and Mushroom sauce

Serves 4

300 g/10 oz pasta

150 g/5 oz smoked ham

200 g/7 oz mushrooms

1 tablespoon butter/oil

2 ½ dl/1 cup single cream (matlagningsgrädde)

1 dl/3 fl oz chopped parsley

2 cloves of finley chopped garlic

½ teaspoon salt

a pinch of black pepper

(Maizena)

Optional add ins:

1 dl/3 fl oz grated cheese

1 chopped onioin, fried with the mushrooms

Boil the pasta according to the instructions. Cut the ham in shreds and the mushrooms in slices. Fry the mushroom in butter for about 3 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients. Let it all boil together for a few minutes. You might wanna add some Maizena or other thickenings to make it more sauce like. Pour the sauce over the cooked pasta stir and serve.

Super Simple Pea Soup

Serves 2

2 cups of frozen green peas
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
2 vegetable stock cubes
1 cup of boilingwater (approx.)
2 tablespoons of thick yoghurt
Salt and pepper to taste
Oil to saute in

Chop the onion and the garlic and saute it in oil in a pan. Add the green peas and the stock cubes. Remove from the heat. Pour boiling water over the peas until they are almost covered. Stir. Put everything in a blender or use a stand mixer and blend smooth. Add the yoghurt and salt and pepper to taste. Put on the heat again and let it be warm. Serve with bread.

Cool Stationary

Knock Knock

Have you seen this? I love it! Unfourtunatley, there's only one online store selling their stuff in Sweden, and only part of the selection.

Exam again...

I'm having another French exam tomorrow. I failed on the last one, but that doesn't really feel that bad. But this next one... It'll be bad if I fail that one too. We have to read an entire textbook and remember all the texts, stupid, stupid exam. I really hope it's gonna go well.

I will hopefully be back with another recipie update tomorrow when I've had the time to translate one. I'm also trying to find time to bake some bread.

Inglorious Basterds

Just got back from seeing Inglorious Basterds by Tarantino. No, no, NO!! Not a movie in my taste. Too much blood and icky stuff. But sure, the story itself had its points. And I finally have seen a whole Tarantino movie (I kind of had my eyes shut during half the movie when they showed the icky, but you can still say I've seen the whole film, right?).

Bean Burgers with Coleslaw and Avocado

Serves 4

1 onion

1 clove of garlic

1 tablespoon butter (for frying)

1 can of beans (400 g/14 oz) or 4 dl/13 fl oz home cooked beans

2 boiled potatoes

2 tablespoons of raspings

1 teaspoon cumin

½ teaspoon chili powder

½ teaspoon salt

150 g/ 5 oz red cabbage

1 carrot

1 dl /3½ fl oz thick youghurt

1-2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

½ teaspoon salt

2 pinches black pepper

Raspings

Oil and butter for frying

Hamburger bread

Sallad

2 mashed avocados

1 tomato

1. Peel and chop the onion and the garlic. Saute them golden in butter.

2. Mix the beans with the onion and potatoes in a blender or with a hand blender.

3. Add raspings and cumin, chili powder and salt. Shred the cabbage. Put in a colander and pour some boiling water on it. Let it rinse.

4. Peel and grate the carrot roughly. Mix cabbage and carrot with youghurt, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Make burgers of the batter, 4 really large ones, or 8 smaller. Turn them in raspings. Fry in oil and butter, approximatley 5 minutes on each side. Serve with bread, coleslaw, mashed avocados and tomato in slices.

When I make this, I normaly need to add an egg into the batter, otherwise the burgers just fall apart when I'm frying them. That might depend on what kind of beans you use too, I've done this recipie with kidney beans and black beans. Yesterday we skipped the cabbage and made a coleslaw on just carrots and served with a nice pineapple salsa. Yummy!

Exam in French

I'm having a French grammar exam tomorrow. (Wish me luck!) I really think that I know most of it, but one can never be too sure, and I probably haven't studied as much as I should have.. After that I'm going home to Åhus to visit my parents over the weekend. That'll be nice!

Basic Risotto

This is what I made the other day. This Jamie Oliver-recipie is my absolut favorit. I added some nice, finly sliced, mushrooms to the onion this time. That was really delicious. I normaly don't use as much grated Parmesan cheese as it says here, I take about 75 g/2½oz instead. But I guess it's just a matter of how healthy you want it to be..

Ingredients
• approx 1.1 litres/2 pints stock (chicken, fish or vegetable as appropriate)

• 1 knob of butter

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 large onion, finely chopped

• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

• ½ a head of celery, finely chopped

• 400g/14oz risotto rice

• 2 wineglasses of dry white vermouth (dry Martini or Noilly Prat) or dry white wine

• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 70g/2½oz butter

• 115g/4oz freshly grated Parmesan cheese

a basic risotto recipe

main courses serves 4-6

This is a great recipe for making risotto. You want it to be smooth, creamy and oozy, not thick and stodgy.

1. Heat the stock. In a separate pan heat the olive oil and butter, add the onions, garlic and celery, and fry very slowly for about 15 minutes without colouring. When the vegetables have softened, add the rice and turn up the heat.

2. The rice will now begin to lightly fry, so keep stirring it. After a minute it will look slightly translucent. Add the vermouth or wine and keep stirring — it will smell fantastic. Any harsh alcohol flavours will evaporate and leave the rice with a tasty essence.

3. Once the vermouth or wine has cooked into the rice, add your first ladle of hot stock and a good pinch of salt. Turn down the heat to a simmer so the rice doesn’t cook too quickly on the outside. Keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring and almost massaging the creamy starch out of the rice, allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. This will take around 15 minutes. Taste the rice — is it cooked? Carry on adding stock until the rice is soft but with a slight bite. Don’t forget to check the seasoning carefully. If you run out of stock before the rice is cooked, add some boiling water.

4. Remove from the heat and add the butter and Parmesan. Stir well. Place a lid on the pan and allow to sit for 2 minutes. This is the most important part of making the perfect risotto, as this is when it becomes outrageously creamy and oozy like it should be. Eat it as soon as possible, while the risotto retains its beautiful texture.

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/risotto/basic-risotto-recipe

Spinach Lasagne

3 (MAYBE 4) people

450 g frozen, chopped spinach (1 lb)
1 onioin, chopped
1 vegetable stock cube

1 can diced tomatoes (500 g / 17 oz)
1 onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, grated
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 vegetable stock cube
1 Italian herbs stock cube
2 lumps of sugar

5 dl milk (2 cups)
2½ dl cream (I prefer single, but whipping cream works well too) (1 cup)
2 dl grated cheese (7 fl oz)
about 3.5 tablespoons of Maizena
Salt and pepper to taste

Lasagnaplates
1 dl grated cheese (3-4 fl oz)

Saute the onion and the garlic in oil. Add the rest of the ingredients to the tomato sauce and let it cook gently for at least 20 minutes.

Thaw the spinach and let it drain. Fry the onion lightly in oil, add the spinach and the stock. Sizzle until it's all the liquid is dried out.

Whip the Maizena together with the milk and let it come to boil. Simmer it for a few minutes until it thickens. Remove from heat and add cream. Stir in the cheese and salt and pepper to taste.

Put a layer of cheese sauce in the bottom of a medium sized, oiled, casserole. Add a layer of lasagnaplates. On top of that, half of the spinach and half of the tomato sauce, and another layer of cheese sauce.

Anohter layer of plates, rest of the spinache and tomato sauce and some more cheese sauce. On top a last layer of plates and the last of the cheese sauce. Top with grated cheese.

In the oven (225* C / 430* F) for 20-25 minutes.

Some of my beloved family members

Uncle Lasse

Aunt Ulrica and my cousin Carolina

Youngest cousin Olivia

My dad, Mikael

Cousin Isabella

Cousins Carolina & Alexander

IKEA

I spend almost an entire afternoon at IKEA this week, and we only bought 3 things:


A nice, red bookend (really needed one). Though it's not used in a Billy-bookcase but in a Expedit.





A fitted sheet, Dvala.



And a set of Kotte Christmas gift wrapping set.









And then we had lunch there too, and we got to think about IKEA food. I assume they serve Swedish meatballs at all IKEA stores, but what about the other dishes? I had chicken with coleslaw, BBQ sauce and fries. What do they have at a US IKEA restaurant?

Corn Pancakes with Cottage Chese

Ingredients for 4:

½ red chili pepper
½ pot of fresh coriander (cilantro)
4 eggs
1 1/4 dl milk (4 fl oz)
3 dl wheat flour (10 fl oz)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 can of corn (340 g/12 oz)
Cottage cheese
100 g Feta cheese (3.5 oz)
Baby spinach
Tomatoes

1. Half the pepper and remove the seeds and chop it finely (I usually take 1 whole chili), chop the coriander as well (same here, I use one whole pot).
2. Whip egg and milk together in a bowl, add the chili and coriander.
3. Add flour, baking powder and salt. Whip it to a smooth batter.
4. Pour of the liquid from the corn and add it into the batter.
5. Cook in a hot pan with some butter. It will probably be 12-16 pancakes.
6. Mix the cottage cheese with the Feta cheese, and make a simple sallad of baby spinach and tomatoes. Serve with the pancakes.

Fun Polaroids

Thanks Amanda for the link to Rollip! It's super fun.

I'm back

I'm back here after a few set backs last week; a bad cold and a computer crash.

My comp crashed after installing Windows Vista Service Pack 2. And this was apparently a very uncommon problem, I found no help at all on the Internt. Yay.. But we managed to extract my files and then re-install Windows.

I'm gonna try and translate a lasagne recipe to publish later.

I bought this sweater/jacket last week. Way too expensive for my student's budget, but I hope my parents can help me finance it.






















I'm totaly in love with it!


And I'm searching high and low for a job. Money to spend on a ticket to the States next summer. I really, really want to go! But I don't know how, with whom, or when. Yet.

Carrot soup with sweet potatoes

This is a lovely soup. I love the sweetness of the carrots and the sweet potatoes!
I don't really have any specific measures, but it's really just a question of taste and amount of people.

Another variant I do is replace the sweet potatoes with regular potatoes (so much cheaper), and add some finely grated ginger.

8 Carrots
2 (SMALL!) Sweet potatoes
1 Onion
1 Clove of garlic
2 Vegetable stock cubes
2 Tablespoons of thick youghurt, milk, or cream
Enough water to almost cover the carrots.
1 Orange

Chop the onion and the garlic, sizzle it in oil in a pan.
Cut the carrots and potatoes into cubes.
Put them in the pan, add the stock and boil.
When the vegetables are done, take the pan of the heat.
Add the yoghurt and put the vegetables all in a blender.
Run until smooth.
Add juice from the orange.
Thin down the soup with the stock.
Re-heat and serve with a nice bread.