Zucchini fritters

Tonight's dinner- Zucchini fritters

Zucchini fritters
Makes 4

1 rather large zucchini, about 30 cm long
½ red chilli, de-seeded and finely chopped
2 spring onions, finely chopped
1 egg, beaten
½-1 dl flour
salt and pepper

1. Grate the zucchini in the coarse side and place the grated zucchini in a bowl. Sprinkle with some salt, mix and set to rest for about 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, place the zucchini in a colander and press down to squeeze out any zucchini juices.

2. Place the zucchini back in the bowl and mix with the rest of the ingredients. The fritter "batter" should be quite loose.

3. Heat some oil in a frying pan and fry as large or small fritters as you want. Flip over when the bottom has turned golden and crisp.

Serve with a dollop of yoghurt and your favourite topping, such as sliced chicken, bacon, prawns or eat them as they are.

Light Chicken Korma

I made a deal with myself a while ago not to eat too many carbohydrates in an attempt to loose some weight. So far I have more or less managed to stay clear of potatoes, rice and pasta, but the tricky part is really to stay clear of bread... And since I'm not much of a pulse person, I'd pretty much rather be fat than to eat beans and lentils. So, so far I have tried to make tasty dishes and have simply left out the high carb side-dishes . I don't know if that's how one does it, and I can't tell a significant weightloss as of yet, but I'm hanging in there.

Tonight's light chicken korma was low in carbs, if one left out the bread. But seeing since I didn't have anything even close to a lettuce leaf in my house at the moment I decided to serve the korma with a side of homemade naan-breads. I did however substitute half the flour with a store bought mixed rye- and wheat flour, which I guess made it a little bit more healthy...

Light Chicken Korma
Serves 4
Adapted from BBC Good Food

4 skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
a small knob of fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 onion, sliced
1 ½ tsp garam masala
150 ml chicken stock
3 tbsp fromage frais (I used quark)
2 tbsp ground cashew nuts
handful of baby spinach leaves, roughly chopped
2 spring onions, the green bits only, cut into 1 cm pieces
corinader/cilantro leaves
1 tbsp sultanas

1. Fry the ginger, garlic and onion in the oil until softened. Add in the chicken and allow the chicken to brown, this takes about 5 minutes. Stir in the garam masala and fry for an additional minute.

2. Pour over the stock and simmer for 10 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. 5 minutes into the 10 minutes of simmering the chicken in the stock, add in the spinach leaves and the green bits for from the spring onions.

3. In a small bowl, mix the fromage frais/quark and the ground cashews. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the fromage frais/quark- and cashew mixture. Do not return it to the heat or it will split. Garnish with the sultanas and sprinkle over some leftover cashews.

Serve with homemade naan-bread or rice.

You can add in more stock and fromage frais at the appropriate times if you feel there isn't enough gravy.

Ethiopian food

I made Niter Kebbeh, Doro Wat and Injera bread on Wednesday for week 4 in "The World On Our Plates"-project.

Check out how it went + recipes HERE

Malaysian Chicken Curry

I came across a recipe for Black Beef Cry Curry over at Fuss Free Cooking, and I immediately knew that this was a dish I really wanted to make one day. As I am a bit low on cash at the moment, I'm pretty much in-between jobs, I figured if I could make some minor adjustments to the original recipe I would be able to make it with the stuff I had in my pantry/fridge.

So, instead of the beef I used chicken, and I did not know exactly what kind of Malaysian curry powder she was referring to so I used the Malaysian meat curry powder I made a while ago. Also, I had never heard of Ketjap Manis, nor did I have money to buy it from the shop were I to come across it, so I decided to make my own from a recipe I found online. This did not turn out all that good, I think I just let the "sauce" reduce way too much, so instead of a syrup kind of liquid it turned out like thick, thick, thick syrup. I had to dilute it with hot water to even get the spoon into it. The moral of this story is; buy the Ketjap Manis at the shop!

Here's my version of Fuss Free Cooking's Black Beef Dry Curry.

Malaysian Chicken Curry
Serves 2
Adapted from Fuss Free Cooking

3 small chicken breasts, or 2 medium, diced
1 ½ tbsp Malaysian meat curry powder
water
2-3 tbsp Ketjap Manis
about 5 curry leaves
1 onion, sliced thinly
2 ½ garlic cloves, chopped roughly
½ inch ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1 small green chilli, de seeded and halved
1 tomato, quartered
salt and sugar, to taste

1. Start by soaking the curry powder in the water for 30 minutes.

2. Heat some oil in a pan and fry the curry leaves. Add the onion, garlic, ginger and green chilli. Fry until fragrant.

3. Add in the curry and water mix and stir to combine. Fry for 10-15 minutes until the oil starts to separate.

4. Add in tomatoes, chicken, ketjap manis, and some salt and sugar. Also add in enough water to just cover the chicken and cook until the liquid has just about halved and the chicken is cooked through.

5. Serve with spiced rice or with a side of fresh salad.

I added some sweet corn at step 4 because I found an open box of sweet corn in the fridge that needed to be used up.

Chicken and Sweet Corn Soup

I picked sweet corn at a farm not too far from where I live yesterday. I paid 25 NOK/kg, about $ 4/kg. It might sound horribly expensive to some of you, but stuff, especially food, is really expensive in Norway.

Yesterday we boiled some corn on the cob and served them with butter and salt as an evening snack. We had the same for lunch today. I am trying to eat them all before they go bad as last year I had a rather bad experience with freezing fresh sweet corn.

Tonight I made chicken and sweet corn soup. I didn't have any dairy products at home, so I had to come up with a soup without milk or cream... It turned out great, I just threw together some ingredients that I had in the fridge.

Chicken and Sweet Corn Soup
Serves 3-4

vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, grated
1 bay leaf
1 tsp Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce
1 ½-2 tbsp Heinz ketchup
1 chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces
1½-2 cubes chicken stock
1 litre water
kernels from 2 corn on the cob
1-2 tsp garam masala
salt & pepper
some flat leaf parsley

1. Heat about 2 tbsp of vegetable oil in a large sauce pan. Add in the onion, garlic and bay leaf and sauté for a couple of minutes. Stir in the chili sauce, ketchup and crushed stock cubes. Add in the pieces of chicken breast, water, corn kernels and half the garam masala.

2. Bring soup to the boil, turn down to medium heat and allow the soup to simmer for 10 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. Add salt and pepper, and more garam masala, to taste. Chop some parsley and add it to the soup, right before you serve it.

Serve the soup in individual bowls, drizzle over some olive oil and sprinkle some more parsley.

Chicken Roulade With A Fresh Bulgur Salad

Yesterday's dinner was a quick chicken breast roulade filled with homemade sun-dried tomato pesto served on a bed of a cucumber, red pepper, leek, raisin, carrot and parsley bulgur salad. The bulgur salad was dressed with a splash of lemon juice and olive oil to keep it moist. The rather disgusting looking brown/black bits scattered around and on top of the bulgur are fried mushrooms. They added nothing to the dish, and if I could take them out of the picture I would.

The World On Our Plates

Me and my friend Josefin are launching a new blog. The blog's called "The World On Our Plates". To explain the concept of the blog to you, I have to explain the entire story, so here it goes...

Me, Josefin and Susanne (the girl I went to Copenhagen with, and the girl who has designed the awesome logo for out new website) met up one Wednesday at Susanne's apartment for some food and boardgames, and we got to talking about one thing or the other which led Josefin into mentioning a film she had recently seen: Julie&Julia. She said that after watching the film she was inspired and wanted to do something similar, but instead of cooking from a Julia Child's cookbook (which has obviously been done before) she wanted to cook food from around the world. As an eager foodie I couldn't resist to invite myself along on her project and that's how "The World On Our Plates" came about. We decided we wanted to cook ourselves around the world and came up with the idea of cooking one dish per week each, from one country each, for an entire year.

104 countries in 52 weeks.

I don't think it's overly ambitious, but I might have chosen some rather difficult countries, such as Kiribati, The Solomon Islands and Micronesia. But I'm sure I'll find recipes, eventually.

My first country is Israel; I made bagels, and Josefin's first country is Paraguay.

So, please do come check us out at "The World On Our Plates"

Sushi, take 2

Today's dinner was homemade sushi filled with cucumber, leeks, red pepper, baby corn and smoked mackerel or salmon. Served with wasabi and soy sauce.

Cupcakes

When my friend asked me the other day if I wanted to hang out and watch a movie, I said yes on one condition: that she would let me teach her how to make cupcakes from scratch. You see, I had a couple of weeks earlier been gobsmacked when said friend told me that she did a little bit of baking, but that she always used the "just add water"-cake mixes. I really couldn't believe what I was hearing, and vowed to give her a lesson in baking when I had time.

Since she didn't have any of the ingredients I had to bring flour, baking powder, sugar and eggs. The rest of the ingredients we picked up at the store on our way to her place, she came to pick me up in her car since it was raining and I don't have a car, nor do I drive.

The cupcakes turned out great and I left my friend with the recipe, she even asked for it, and said, quite a few times, while we were baking that "this wasn't as difficult as I'd expected it to be". Yay, mission accomplished!

Cupcakes
Makes about 20 cupcakes
Adopted from Laila bakar

100 g butter, melted
2 2 eggs
1.5 1.5 dl caster sugar
1 1 tsk vanilla sugar
2 2 dl milk
1 1 lemon, the zest
4 4 dl flour
2 2 tsk baking powder
1 1 pinch salt

Frosting:
100 g Philadelphia cheese
60 60 g soft butter
300 300 g chocolate/strawberry flavoured powdered sugar
0.5 the juice of ½ lemon

1. Pre-heat your oven to 200 C fan, or 220 C if you use a normal oven.

2. Start by beating the eggs and the sugars until you have a pale yellow, fluffy batter.

3. Pour in the melted butter, milk and the lemon zest. Mix to combine.

4. Using a wooden spoon or a spatula, fold in the flour, baking powder and salt.

5. Line a cupcake tin with cupcake liners and fill each liner 3/4 of the way up. Place on the middle shelf of the oven for 10 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted into the middle of a cupcake comes out dry and clean.

6. Allow to cool some in the tin before tipping the cupcakes out to cool completely on a wire rack.

7. Make the frosting:
Cream butter, powdered sugar and lemon juice. Mix in the cream cheese.
Spread or pipe onto the cupcakes and garnish with sprinkles or flowers.