Food while traveling

Ihave got a bit of an obsession taking pictures of what I eat while traveling, and this time I figured I'd actually use the pictures and make a post of my food diary - after all we have enjoyed a lot of yummy food along the way.

After a long day of travel from Oslo to Kolmården we enjoyed a lovely fish dinner at the hotel restaurant:

 The fish was succulent and just perfectly cooked and that potato puree was soooo yummy

For our second dinner at the hotel I had decided to go for the vegetarian canelloni, but believe it or not they had changed the menu from one dinner to the other! In stead I opted for the risotto with local goat cheese and sun dried tomatoes. I have to say this is some of the best stuff I have ever eaten! Perfectly balanced flavours. The portion was huge, but I just couldn't stop eating it

My selection from the breakfast buffet

We arrived late to Gothenburg on the Saturday evening and ended up at the local Hard Rock Café - my selection was the Smokehouse Chop Salad

A beautiful sunny and lazy Sunday called for a sushi lunch at the park - respectable quality sushi.

And what sunny Sunday would be perfect without ice cream. GB Magnum is celebrating their 25th birthday with a strawberry ice cream covered in white chocolate. Absolutely good, but not something I will miss when the anniversary year reaches it's end.

Palak paneer at Masala Kitchen - probably the best version of this dish I have had. The paneer had the perfect consistensy and the sauce was just to die for

Walking in the section of the city called Haga on Monday we came across the bakery "Husaren" and spotted these huge cinnamon buns in their window. Unable to resist we decided to share one for lunch

When I say huge bun, I mean family sized! After we both were more than satisfied this piece was still left on the plate, and there were several hours since we had had breakfast. We later found out this is a rather famous baked good known as "Hagabulle" and is the speciality of this one bakery

In the evening we went to the restaurant Jalla Jalla - the starter plate of Baba Ghanuj, Tzatsiki and Hummus was more or less gone before any of us got our cameras out, guess the bun wasn't all that filling in the long run ;-)

My entré was Samak Mishvie - salmon and prawns with a lobster sauce. The fish was a tad over cooked, but all in all it was a very pleasant meal

A touch of nostalgia - at the City museum they sold the bubblegum BUGG, which we grew up with. Can't say it was a heavenly flavour experience, but the bubbles still get as big as when I was 8 *lol*

After our tour of the Botanical Garden on tuesday we both were so hungry we decided to jump off the tram when we spotted a Spanish restaurant from the window. We opted for the Paella for two with seafood - a very colourful dish with lots and lots of flavour

And more than plenty for two hungry people  - there were lots of calamari hidden under that rice

Fish soup at the lokal food market for lunch on Wednesday - the consistency was a bit mushy, but the broth was very yummy indeed

And I just have to include this - their warning sign behind the counter "The food may contain traces of love"

For our final dinner I think we were both a little fed up with restaurant food, so we opted for a hotel room piknik. We finsihed off the sushi and some of the fruit and juice, but we the rest we brought with us on the train home.

The hotel breakfast buffet - basically anything and everything you could desire for breakfast

K enjoying the last meal before we headed for the train station (and a short stop for ice cream *lol*)

Hugs and stitches from Anne Ida

Quick Comfort Food

A few days ago I found a draft for a post I made ages ago but didn't post. So I  figured it's time to share. It's a simple cooking recipe - this is the yummiest thing you can eat when craving comfort food, and apples are in season at the moment. It is quick and easy to make, and definitely not suitable if you're on a diet *lol* For ca four portions you need:

2-4 chicken breasts (depending on size, some are huge!)

1 medium size yellow onion

1 red pepper
1 green apple

1 bag of Bearnaise sauce powder

2 tbsp cooking oil
water (according to liquid announced on the sauce packet)

1 tub of creme fraiche (3dl)

salt; chili flakes, any other spice you might wish ;-)

Dice the chicken, onion, pepper and apple. Soften the onion in some oil in a pan on low heat, leave it for a few minutes before adding the pepper - leave it till it's shiny and soft. Remove and heat the pan so you can brown the chicken pieces. Add the sauce powder and water and bring to a boil, add the veggies, the creme fraiche and the apple. You might need to add a tad more water. Season to taste - some salt, and a pinch of flaked chili gives it a nice heat if you like that,. Let it cook till the apple is soft, but not mushy.

I didn't have a pepper in the house when I made it today, so I skipped it. Makes the dish look a little bland, but the taste is still great. There's just something comforting about the richness of the sauce, the softness of the chicken, the sweetness of the onion and the tartness of the apple. I love to serve this with noodles but it works wonderful with rice as well - yummmmmm!!!!

Hugs and stitches from Anne Ida

Fresh blocks and Golden Syrup pudding...

...best way to spend a gray and rainy Sunday? Yup! Friday started our block sewing on the Lucinda's Gift quilt-along, and I'm not sure how much I'll manage to sew in the evenings in the week to come, so I have tried to get most of my blocks done this weekend. 21 of this week's 24 blocks are laid out on the floor



Love the scrappiness of them! I have tossed everything and anything from my scrap box in there - regular quilter's cottons, muslins, homespuns and batiks in a bright mix. I think this will be a great quilt ;-) At least I'm having heaps of fun stitching the blocks!

While cutting and stitching I have been catching up on some MasterChef Australia, and on one of the episodes  the contestants were making Golden Syrup Pudding, I tasted this yummy dessert when I visited Rose, and I have had the recipe hanging on the fridge door. So I decided today was the day to try making it. However I did have to do some changes to the recipe due to my low-stocked fridge: I didn't have butter so I used margarine and I had to use yogurt instead of milk.



It came out looking pretty good, even if the top was a bit cracked. However it was quite soggy in the bottom, so I ended up cutting that part away. But with a big dollop of yogurt on the side the taste of what was salvageable was really yummy!

The sourness of the yogurt really played well with the golden syrup. Gonna try this again, and get it cooked a bit better. I usually share the recipe when I show some of my cooking, but since this isn't my recipe I'll let anyone interested e-mail Rose in stead :-)

EDIT: Rose has generously allowed me to share the recipe, so here it is:

Cake
1 egg
1.5 cups self raising flour (we don't have that in Norway, so I used regular flour and a tsp baking powder)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
40 g melted butter

Syrup
30 g butter
2 tbs Golden Syrup
2 cups boiling water

Mix together the cake mix. Combine syrup ingredients in a separate jug and pour over the cake mix. Bake in a 180 C oven for 40 mins. And e-mail Rose a bowl full!!!

Have a lovely Sunday!
Hugs and stitches from Anne Ida

So tasty!

I know it looks kind of mushy, it wouldn't have if the sauce had been thinned out a bit, but the taste was just heaven. Regular readers of this blog might have picked up that my friend Leisha and I sometimes does some experimental cooking. We have made food ranging from home made marshmallows to black bean and cola soup. On Saturday we did a version of the Indian dish Palak Paneer, and when I told Rose about it she got curious, so I promised to show some pictures and share the recipe we used.

Paneer (fresh cheese):

1 liter full fat milk

juice from 1 lemon

Bring the milk to the boil, add the lemon juice and the milk will split. Once the milk has started to form little clumps, strain the mixture in a cloth

....and hang to drip dry - I left it for approximately 45 min and then gave the bundle a squeeze:

Flatten the cheese mixture a bit and place it in the fridge with some weight on top to squeeze out as much of the leftover moisture as possible. The recipe I found said this would take about 2 hours. It did turn out ok, but was a bit crumbly at the edges and soggy in the center, so I think the next time we do it we'll make the paneer the day before and leave it chilled overnight. And we'll make twice as much ;-)

Sauce:
oil for frying
1 onion - finely chopped
Ginger (1.5" dice finely grated), red chili (1 large chopped finely) and garlic (2 cloves crushed) to taste
1 tbs coriander seeds - crushed
1.5 tsp cumin - ground
3 tomatoes - diced
Spinach - we used 1/2 packet of frozen spinach (if using fresh - chop the leaves a bit)
2 dl yogurt
salt to taste

Cut the paneer into 1" cubes and fry golden in oil, remove from the pan. Fry the onion on low heat till translucent and shiny. Add the spices and let them heat through before adding tomatoes - once the tomatoes goes soft add the spinach, and once it comes to the boil add the yogurt. Let it cook for a couple of minutes, season to taste. The spinach we used had very little water, so we could probably have added some to thin the sauce a bit, but we just added the fried paneer to the mixture and plated it up with some warm naan bread and mango chutney.

Yummmmmm!!!
Hugs and stitches from Anne Ida

PS! The recipe we started out from also had a tbs of tomato paste - we discovered after we had plated the dish that we had forgotten to put it in, but we didn't miss it as far as the taste went.

Something yummy for a rainy Sunday

It has more or less become a standing request for hot and sour chicken soup when dinner for friends is being served at 'Casa de Quiltoholic'. It is an incredibly tasty and very quick (20-30 minutes depending on how fast you chop) and simple dish to make, so I thought perhaps I'd share the recipe in case someone else would like to give it a try:

4 servings:
2 large chicken breasts
1-2 bell peppers (I like red and/or yellow)
1 packet of baby sweet corn
1 bunch of spring onion
1 chili pepper (I also like to add some dried chili flakes for some extra heat)
1 can coconut milk + a splash of water to rinse the can
Juice from 1-2 lime (depending on size and how much juice they give)
1/2 liter of chicken stock
egg noodles (after how hungry everyone are)
Salt and pepper if needed (depends on how seasoned your stock is)

Cube the chicken to bite size and brown it quickly in a pan, cut the peppers and the sweet corn and give them the same treatment. Mix chicken stock, most of the lime juice, and the coconut milk in a large saucepan and bring to the boil, add the the chicken, peppers, chili, sweet corn and noodles. While it cooks (3-4 min), chop the spring onions, and add them when the noodles are about 1 minute from finished (you'll probably need to add some extra water - it can reduce quite a lot, especially if you add a lot of noodles). Season to taste with salt, pepper, dried chili flakes and the rest of the lime juice.

Pour into large serving bowls and ENJOY!! You can vary the veggies to season and taste, and swapping the chicken for fish works great as well :o)
Hugs and stitches from Anne Ida

This and that

Lately (and for some time to come) I have been alternating between sewing up a storm and grading/commenting on student papers. Sorry to say I can't show either on this blog.

I'm on the verge of getting an overdose of tea (oh, this brings me back to the days I studied like mad before exams), but I'm having fun! Last night I decided I needed something to soak up some of the tea, so I made a batch of bagels dough for a slow rise in the fridge over night. This is the very first time for me. I remember my Mum making bagels years ago, and concluding "they were not worth all the hassle!" - but I decided to give it a go on a small batch.

They didn't come out the perfect shape and they got a bit dark since the last minutes in the oven flew by a bit too fast, but the taste.... mmmmmm! I'm happy with my first attempt ;o) This is the recipe I used:

• 25 g yeast
• 5 dl cold water
• 2 tbs melted butter
• 2 tbs golden syrup (I only had dark, but it worked well)
• 2 tsp salt
• ca 800 g regular flour

Mix well and leave covered in the fridge overnight (10-12 hours). Knead the dough and make 12 "rings" and leave them to rise for 20-30 min. Boil them in sugar-water (2 tbs sugar pr liter water) for ca 2-3 min, place on a baking sheet and add poppyseeds/sesame seeds/sunflower seeds, bake in the oven at 225C for ca 20 min.

Hugs and stitches from Anne Ida