eating my way through the usa: the new york edition (round 1)

funny, the street food in denmark never includes lobster rolls.

or awesome greek chicken pitas that claim to be made of all sustainable ingredients.

and oddly, the main station in copenhagen does not have a gorgeous oyster bar with 25+ kinds of oysters to choose from.

nor are there macaroons with the most creamy, velvety filling ever on every corner.

and i've never been served heavenly, creamy mushroom croquettes that make you wonder how on earth they did that amazing combination of crunchy and creamy.

tho' i'll admit foie gras pops with a surprise fig filling do seem vaguely new nordic.

our pizza runs more to mince and bernaise (yuck. i tell you.)

and we do not do our crust nearly thin and crispy enough.

i've never seen green bean tempura with a zesty mustard dipping sauce on a danish menu.

nor has my spinach craving ever been assuaged in denmark.

some things are just bettter in new york.

eating my way through the usa: seattle edition

the crab salad at lowell's, pike's market, seattle.

seared scallops on corn succotash at miller's guild, the restaurant in hotel max.

crab cakes for breakfast at 14 carrot.

french toast and bacon at 14 carrot

the omelette at 14 carrot

crab cake (again) at blue acre

the heirloom tomato salad at blue acre

seared tuna - very sashimi-like - at blue acre

shrimp, crayfish and andouille sausage with cheesy grits at toulouse petit

* * *

more soon. i just didn't want you to think i'd fallen off the face of the earth.

jamie, please bring your italian to denmark!

spicy pork cracklins

a few weeks ago on our holiday, we ate at jamie's italian in oxford. if you must eat at a chain restaurant, this is the one. relaxed surroundings, food served on chunky wooden bread boards and simple, delicious food. what more could you ask? i find myself rather longing for it on this rainy, grey sunday.

super food salad with grilled mackerel

i probably have most of the ingredients for this super food salad (minus the mackerel), but it's just not the same if you have to make it yourself, is it? avocado, quinoa, sprouts, quark (we call it skyr around here), pomegranate. it was delicious and healthy. and i'd like someone to bring one to me right now.

burger with polenta chips

the burger was on good bread, grilled perfectly and with plenty of fresh lettuce and tomato. polenta fries (or chips as the brits call them) gave a twist on the usual french fries. a bit of rosemary and parmesan on top - delish!

polenta chips

i didn't know what to expect with polenta chips, thinking that sounded awfully heavy, but they weren't at all, they were light and crispy and quite delicious. i'm not sure i could duplicate it at home, as when i make polenta it seems heavy and porridgy. i'll have to see if he's got a recipe on his website, because it could be fun to try it. but really, at the moment, i'd rather just hop a ryan air flight to stansted and find the nearest branch of jamie's italian and tuck in.

what's for dinner?

roasted cauliflower & brussels sprouts soup topped with grilled monkfish, bacon, kale and homemade breadcrumbs

we've been doing some heavy reading in our blog camp food & culture course. turgid academic texts about the industrialization of food (what i like to think of as the badly treated chicken texts) were getting downright depressing. so, we (and by we, i mean me) decided to go off-syllabus to get our food (and perhaps cooking and hopefully reading) mojo back. i've been reading margaret visser's much depends on dinner and the rituals of dinner (aside: i also tried to read her the geometry of love: space, time, mystery, and meaning in an ordinary church, but it didn't do it for me and i had to abandon it again. i can do that with non-fiction.) i've also just started erica bauermeister's the school of essential ingredients and really feel transported by it. anyway, i made a copy of the intro chapter to visser's much depends on dinner and asked everyone to answer that daily dilemma: what's for dinner? as visser says,

"a meal is an artistic social construct, ordering the foodstuffs which comprise it into a complex dramatic whole, as a play organizes actions and words into component parts such as acts, scenes, speeches, dialogues, entrances, and exits, all in the sequences designed for them. however humble it may be, a meal has a definite plot, the intention of which is to intrigue, stimulate, and satisfy."

now at first glance, i don't feel like i put on a play every evening when i put dinner on the table. a meal like thanksgiving feels choreographed somehow, but the daily meals we eat do not. there's more routine in them, less effort and significantly less food than a thanksgiving feast. but doesn't our daily evening meal set the stage of a life well lived? it says a great deal about who we are and what we prioritize, our tastes, our norms, our likes and dislikes. and it's predominantly me who is the director of the play that is our evening meal. i hadn't really thought about how powerful that is in shaping our identity as a family until now.

autumn salad of mixed leaves, roasted cauliflower, roasted brussels sprouts and pomegranate topped with seared, rare tuna

some days it's easier than others to answer the "what's for dinner?" question. other days, i have a pan of chopped onions sizzling away in olive oil underway before having a single idea what to do with them. i learned at a friend's wedding shower nearly two decades ago that something can always come of sautéed onion. fridays are easy - as i said in my post the other day, we have a friday ritual that we generally follow - fresh bread and yummy things to put on it. friday is also the day that the fish truck comes to town and i generally buy a tempting piece of something or other to use for our saturday meal - whatever's coming ashore out the west coast, but sometimes a piece of fresh tuna if there's no inspiring mackerel or monkfish and we don't feel like old standbys such as salmon or cod. i got a piece of grey mullet on friday and it was heavenly tossed with a few leeks from the garden and steamed in foil in the oven (i sadly neglected to photograph it).

fresh from the garden

i often take my dinner inspiration from what's in the garden. at the moment, that's potatoes, jerusalem artichokes, squash, leeks, kale and it was apples until we turned them all into 30 liters of cider last weekend, we've even still got a few raspberries going strong (enough to throw a handful into smoothies or cupcakes). we're trying to eat less meat and we're on a health kick for the month of november (which mainly means i'm not partaking of my daily glass (or two) of wine while cooking), so we're making even more of an effort on that front. i've said it before, we don't want to be vegetarian, but we would like to do better at not considering meat to be the centerpiece of every meal. that's what i love about the tuna salad above - instead of buying us each a big tuna steak, i buy one large one and slice it thinly on top of the salad. we all feel like we get enough to eat and we haven't each consumed a whole steak ourselves. it's better for us and for the tuna.

raspberries still going strong

some days, we're busy running to meetings and gymnastics and riding lessons and we get home a bit late, so i throw together a omelette with potatoes and perhaps chorizo sausage in it. i've been doing that less since our chickens were rustled. we've got new ones, but they're young and not yet laying. i hate to do it too often with store-bought eggs, as those chickens, even if the eggs are organic, often live miserable lives. if you don't want to slog through academic texts on the subject like we did, check out hugh fearnley-whittingstall's chicken out campaign. it was his programs on chicken welfare that first brought it to my attention. the industrial chicken industry is absolutely horrifying and means we don't eat chicken around here that much. i occasionally buy an expensive organic one that was ostensibly treated well (using it as roast and boiling the carcass for soup and/or risotto, thereby getting several meals out of it), but do my best to stay away from the water-filled packaged breasts.

we are fortunate to have a good variety of organic produce in denmark. i always buy organic milk, cream, creme fraiche, butter and lemons. (and i'm a bit of a snob about it, i'll admit, looking askance at those who fill their carts with the non-organic sorts.) i buy organic, free range ground beef and pork if it's available (it's not always in our little town). fruit and veg can be a bit more of a challenge as to availability in our smaller grocery stores, so there i tend to choose based on food miles. tho' i feel a dilemma on that front with regard to cucumbers - is it better to take a danish cucumber that's produced in an energy-hogging greenhouse in our climate or to take one that's been trucked up from spain? i'll admit i often choose spain, because the flavor is better, same with tomatoes. i turned my front entryway into a makeshift greenhouse this summer and we had our own tomatoes and cucumbers, at least for a short time.

tomato galette - with foraged chanterelles

our daily dinners tend to be a simple salad of some kind, featuring whatever inspired me in the green section of the supermarket, often rice (black and red are favorites) or spelt or rye grains, sometimes meat or fish, but not always. i do lots of stir-frys, these days with brassicas that seem to be in season (we're not fans of broccoli, but we love cauliflower and various kinds of cabbage). i even succeeded in growing a couple of heads of red cabbage in the garden this year and i've got kale there too, still going strong. i love to make risotto, tho' sabin's not fond of it. we eat simple pasta dishes like pasta carbonara or with pesto. sabin and i love soups and even tho' husband isn't fond of them, we try to make hearty, chunky ones so he's happy too. sometimes i boil up a big pan of beans and use them in various ways over several days - mixed together with diced onion, tomato and avocado, some chili sauce and a little creme fraiche is one favorite way. a one-dish meal if you throw a few arugula leaves on top. in fact, i've just inspired myself and have set some black beans to soak. i quite often make savory tarts or galette, just throwing in whatever is around.

mixed leaves salad with pear, cashews and parmesan

we don't often give in and buy a pizza, nor do we go out to dinner much. it's just not the way of the culture here and there is a distinct lack of inspiring places in our area, so we'd rather not spend the money on it. if we do eat out, it tends to be a posh sandwich for lunch in a café, but only very rarely dinner. it would probably be different if we lived in copenhagen, where there's much more choice. but generally, there isn't a big eating out culture in denmark the way there is in the states. there is also a culture here of buying groceries every day, rather than stocking up and having a whole lot in the freezer. i think it's because our refrigerators are smaller, but i'd also like to think it's because people are more focused on having fresh, good ingredients. i'm used it now, it's part of my routine and i actually quite like it. if i had the daunting task of going to target or whole foods for groceries every day, i wouldn't like it, but our grocery stores are small and intimate, so it's easy to pop in and out daily or every other day.

that said, i have a stash of beans (both dried and canned), pasta and rice in the cupboard. i try to keep staples like butter and bacon and milk and cheese in the fridge, so we can always come up with something for dinner in a pinch when there hasn't been time to shop. i always have a good supply of different kinds of flour and i make bread several times a week - often focaccia-style, drizzling olive oil and a sprinkle of cheese and maybe thin slices of serrano ham on top to make it heartier. if we don't eat it all, i cube it, dry it in the oven and make bread crumbs for other uses. either that or we feed it to the chickens.

roasted cauliflower agnolotti in progress (i've obviously got a thing about roasted cauliflower)

of course some days are more inspired than others and sabin complained not long ago that i was uninspired and never making anything new. so i've added things like homemade pasta to the repertoire of late. it's easier than you think and so soothing to run it through that little hand-crank pasta machine. we all need a little inspiration sometimes and we have to shake things up. i subscribe to epicurious and martha stewart and the kitchn's email newsletters, and i pin a lot of recipes on pinterest, both savory and sweet. cooking is probably where i'm best at using my pinterest boards regularly.

i don't know if my daily dinners are theatre, but they definitely set the stage for the way we choose to live our family life.

how do you answer the question, "what's for dinner?"

* * *

minimalist fairy tale posters.

* * *

the cat-hater's notebook was wonderfully illustrated.

* * *

clever tiny homes.

* * *

i'm in love with the idea of secret dining societies. 

when my cooking mojo returned and we ate our way into 2013

the holidays returned my cooking mojo to me. i will admit that it had been a bit lackluster around here in the kitchen of late, but a brined turkey stuffed with rye grains for christmas and a new year's feast of epic proportions (i didn't get shots of the 6 different appetizers) changed all that. i'll be blogging all the recipes on the long-neglected domestic sensualist blog in the next couple of days.

but i will admit it leaves me feeling like i may never need to eat again. or at the very least, that a detox is in order. maybe i need to unearth my juicer.

here's hoping you all had a wonderful new year's eve and are enjoying the beginning of 2013.

happy easter!

what's better on easter than your very own basket of easter bunnies? we have a bit of a hard time keeping our bunnies IN the basket, but that's another story. it's been a lovely easter weekend - we've had family visitors and loads of good food and time spent outside - where it was sunny, if a bit cold.

goat cheese, chorizo and asparagus

i've actually been whipping up a whole lot of pinspiration for the past few days while we've had a houseful of guests. oddly, i neglected to photograph any of the finished products. yes, it's true and i'm afraid it's all gone now, every last crumb, and the dishes are all done, so i can't even photograph mournfully empty plates. but i made these bars, this dish (to which i added chorizo for extra zing) and this one too. and i made gnocchi with nettles, again.  it was based on the gnocchi recipe in this pin (tho' i added nettles). and i made the ricotta myself (easy peasy) from this recipe. i can highly recommend all of it.

homemade ricotta - a jar of whey for bread baking

i have this odd feeling when i'm cooking for a crowd...i'm quite stressed out when it first begins and even as i'm planning the menu, but once i settle into the groove, i quite enjoy it.  chopping, combining, sizzling, the aroma of sauteed onions and crispy bacon, the magical alchemy - like when you pour a few tablespoons of vinegar into a pan of hot milk and watch it separate and become cheese. there are few things more satisfying than a good meal coming together, unless it's knowing that your guests enjoy eating it.

here's hoping you have all had a lovely easter. we've still got tomorrow, but we can feel the holiday winding down.

memorable meals

i woke up thinking about food. not because i was hungry, but because i go in streaks like that...where i feel inspired in the kitchen and the clock's turning to 5 doesn't fill me with dread because i have no idea what i'll make for dinner. i'm in one of those periods where that doesn't scare me, because i know i'll just open the fridge and make something yummy, even if i approach it without knowing what that something might be.


what i awoke thinking about was a fantastic salad i had at a spa restaurant in thailand. it was served in a beautifully-carved papaya and it had crunchy shreds of carrot and green mango, chili, cilantro, crab and peanuts.

it was tossed in a spicy dressing of chili, fish sauce and plenty of tangy lime. just writing about it makes my mouth water right now. it was actually on the edge of too spicy, even for me, who loves a bit of heat, but it felt right at that moment, like the heat of the dish caused me to sweat out the last toxins, not coaxed out by the massage i'd just had. it was the perfect end to my spa visit.

you have to forgive my utterly crap photo of it, it was before my photo obsession began, in addition to being taken at night with the dreaded flash - but it gives you a good idea of how beautifully presented it was. i can still remember scooping out the delicious, cooling, ripe papaya flesh after the salad was gone. it was truly a memorable meal.

memorable meals often occur when you're traveling and we remember less of the everyday meals we eat at home. i can still remember pulling into a little town called larissa in greece, late at night after a long day of driving. my traveling companions and i checked into a hotel and then wandered out to find something to eat. there was a big square lined with restaurants. old greek men sitting out on the warm summer night, having lively conversations over sweating bottles of ouzo at tables covered in actual red-checked tablecloths. we approached such a restaurant and found no one spoke much english, but with gestures and a visit to the kitchen where a lovely elderly lady, all clad in black, down to the scarf on her head, showed us what she could make. it was a simple meal of fish, but imprinted on my memory forever because of the experience and the feeling that we'd stepped onto a 1950s greek movie set.

i remember a meal of walnut-encrusted shark at the linn street café in iowa city in the early 90s. it was so good it actually brought tears to my eyes. i may have to try to duplicate that, tho' i don't think it's so politically (or environmentally) correct to eat shark anymore these days. maybe another fish would do. or perhaps even a steak, as shark has that dark, steak-like quality.

i remember wandering the streets of tokyo with a colleague, looking for a place to eat dinner. we saw some signs and went up to the 8th floor to a restaurant where you checked your shoes at the door (quite normal in tokyo, actually). we were seated in the window, looking down over shinjuku, teeming with shoppers and lit up with neon. however, it soon became apparent that our utter lack of japanese, coupled with a menu with few pictures and a waiter that lacked english meant that we had to reclaim our shoes and go. we ended up back at our hotel, where, tho' it was late, they served us up a fantastic meal. a series of delicious little dishes of all kinds of things - most memorable of which was the gorgeous, tender slices of real wagyu beef. i remember thinking that now i understood what the fuss was about.

and then, there was the wasabi bistro in seattle, where another colleague and i ate night after night during the ten days or so we were there. we couldn't stay away after sampling the white salmon sashimi. it's still the best i've ever had, even including tokyo.

what food do you remember?

rockin' your socks off

dec. 10 - the party (reverbing for your reading pleasure):  Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

a spiked (with tequila) shrimp "ceviche" of sorts

i think that the party that will rock my socks off in 2010 is still yet to come, as it's our annual christmas gathering with good friends who live on a beautiful lake called buresø. the party always promises loads of good food, ample drink, a silly gift exchange and another game involving famous names passed around in a bowl and a sort of pictionary-like guessing of them that always gets rather heated and the odd person or two (read: husband) deciding to engage in a bracing jump into the nearly-frozen lake. it's a party that's the highlight of the year for going on the 6th year in a row.

part of the tradition is that every couple brings a dish. most of the others are known for bringing the same dish year after year...flæskesteg (pork roast w/the cracklings on it), tarteletter (a danish thing-a flaky light pastry filled with a creamy mixture of chicken and white asparagus), tiramisu, sushi, herring...but me, i'm known for NOT bringing the same thing again and again. my contribution to the tradition is to be untraditional...hmm, maybe that's now i'm different...above is my contribution from 2 years ago...a tequila-spiked shrimp and mango ceviche that we used as a starter. last year, i made homemade herring (yes, me, in the land of the herring, decided to tackle this and ended up doing a very traditional, old-fashioned sort - imagine that!)

any suggestions for what i should bring this year? at this moment, i've got no idea! whatever it is, had better rock their socks off.

actually taken at the buresø christmas party in 2008.

first things first

poring over decorating books is a nightly activity.

when you move into a new house, especially one where you know you're going to do a whole lot of work on it before you truly settle in, you are selective about what you unpack. you have to have enough things out for your everyday life, but you don't necessarily need that special checkerboard cake pan at the ready. i found that i immediately went to work unpacking the kitchen. because if the kitchen feels relatively normal, you feel like you can more or less function on an everyday basis. this kitchen, with its horrible pepto bismol pink cupboards (going to remedy that this weekend), has loads of cupboards, so i've managed to put things away and then forget which of the many cupboards i put them in...now where were those measuring cups again? but the teacups are in place, as are plates and pots and pans and a selection of the most essential cookbooks. oh, and the liquor cabinet - at least with the essentials (read: hendrick's gin stash) at hand. a girl does have her priorities.

the second most unpacked room is the bathroom, because that also needs to feel more or less normal for you to function on a daily basis. makeup, contact lenses, hairbrushes, flat iron, husband's razor and towels are all at the ready. as far as our bedroom, work clothes are hung in the closet, but there are still loads of boxes along the sides of the room. luckily, we have a whole large room just to stash boxes in, so we've done that. the only problem is that in frantic searches for various essential items, those boxes keep shifting around and it's becoming impossible to find anything. i'll have to try to get some order in that area this weekend.

for the child, the first priority was the satellite t.v. package we had promised her (a horse, a saddle, an iPhone, a season pass to Legoland, an iPad, satellite t.v. - the kid made out like a bandit on this move). her father dutifully went down and acquired the box for that on saturday and got it up and running. to her relief, she now once again has her fill of hannah montana on a daily basis.

for me, it was essential to get the iMac out and set up my desk area, tho' i'll admit that the computer feels rather useless without an internet connection (just got confirmation that it comes on tuesday - YAY!). but i have had time to process loads of pictures, so that's a good thing. i do, however, out of habit, find myself rather frequently hitting that little firefox icon down at the bottom and feeling a twinge of sadness when it tells me that i'm offline. oh well, it's probably good for me.

several boxes of "essential" books have been unpacked - the decorating books above are being used on a nightly basis as we readjust our thinking about what we're going to do with the house - e.g. tear down at least part of it. surprisingly, since deciding to do that we've felt much more free about the whole thing and less constricted. it really opens up the thinking and lets husband's inner architect run free.

it somehow felt important to cook in the house right away. i brought the first meal along from the old house--i had made extra veal parmesan so we had a pan of that to begin with the night we moved in. it seemed right to bring something from the old kitchen to the new one. the next day, i made our favorite focaccia. there were leftovers of it that got a bit dry, so i cubed the bread, tossed it with some spicy sausage and garlic in a pan and we gobbled that as an appetizer the next night. eating good food you make yourself in a new place sets the tone.

this weekend will bring lots more settling in, a bit of painting and definitely some riding. happy weekend one and all!

creativity update: the home stretch

when i last left you with my creativity count, we were at #78, the ghosty cupcakes from halloween. also that evening, sabin was wearing a halloween-themed ugly doll costume which i slaved over but failed to get a good picture of. you can see her face peeking out of the mouth, rather far away, in the middle of this picture. somehow, that is the only picture and she refuses to put it on again for the sake of a blog photo. i know, her priorities are all skewed, i'll work on that...

#79 - sabin's halloween costume

#80 - the very best pumpkin i've ever carved in all my thirty-twelve years.

#81 - rainbow baby quilt, going to a very special home.

#82 - our latest little fun monster guys. sabin and her friend sewed these (you can see that),

but i'm counting them because i made the pattern and helped significantly.

#83 - a new pillow design, which will go up in my etsy shop this weekend

(it has a partner that's similar, but not exactly the same)

#84 - anna maria horner fabrics + wool = a pretty scarf

this one's for my neighbor (the one who reminded me recently about how sometimes you have to close one door before another one opens) but there will be a similar (tho' even more fabulous because it has embroidery) one in my etsy shop this weekend.

* * *

on the creative front, i'm really excited because i've signed up for a weaving course which starts in january. i talked to the most delightful older lady about it on the phone and i just can't wait. i found a weaving laug like the one at the museum in randbøldal in a town much closer to home. i've also got a lead on a loom, tho' it happens to be in scotland, but husband's a logistics expert, so i'm sure we can figure that out.

* * *

tonight we opened a jar of the apple chutney i made back in september and i am happy to report it is fantastic (that's the very jar we opened, the dark one there on the right)! if you have any apples left from your apple trees, run, don't walk and make this chutney, it's not too late. we had it as an accompaniment to a wonderful chicken gumbo from jamie oliver's new america cookbook this evening, but we will be eating it with just about anything...a roast, a curry, our thanksgiving turkey...it's wonderful! and so satisfying to have made it myself. in fact, i don't think i counted it before, so it's #85.

only 15 more things to go in the year of creativity! i think i'm going to make it.

* * *

p.s. dear blogger, i HATE your new photo uploader. it sucks beyond belief. bring back the easy, good one from blogger in draft. please, pretty please? you know, the one that lets us upload our photos, choose where they go and when and then lets us change them to the size we want without changing the html in 3 places....yeah, that one. give it back! don't make me ponder wordpress....

p.p.s. dear blogger, thank you for helping me very quickly via twitter. and while i'm still not entirely happy with the new photo uploader (only 5 photos at a time? please, that's pathetic), i can now make my photos the 800 wide that i want to without distortion. it's a bit more cumbersome than it was, but it is pretty cool to be able to look up pix that are already in the picasa albums and i'm sure you'll keep improving it. oh, and please send some sunshine.