Corduroy Orange

I roasted a goose the other night.  It was my first goose ever, and I really enjoyed it.  In fact, i liked it enough that goose now enjoys a spot in my top 3 favorite meats:

1) Prosciutto, specifically from Parma Sausage on Penn Avenue, where the hams are aged for a minimum of 16 months and it’s sliced to order and it melts in your mouth.

2) Goose–which is an accomplishment, as it jumped right into the #2 spot out of nowhere.  I suggested roasting goose for Thanksgiving next year.  Aurora said it doesn’t feed as many people as turkey does.  I said that we’d just have to invite fewer people.  She shot me a dirty look.

3) Lamb–pretty much any preparation, so long as it’s medium rare if roasted and falling apart if braised.  In particular for braised lamb, I enjoy a mediterranean-style preparation with good green olives and pistachios in with the stewed meat.  But so long as it’s been well-prepared, you can’t go wrong with lamb in my book.

Duck had previously held the number 3 spot, but was edged out of my rankings by the tastiness of the goose.

While everyone who was dining with me enjoyed the goose, I was the only one among us for whom goose ranked in the top 3.

Aurora’s top 3:

1. Rabbit
2. Duck
3. Seared Ahi Tuna

Justin’s top 3:

1. Corned Beef
2. Lamb
3. Seared Ahi Tuna

Ji Eun’s Top 3:

1. Spicy Pork
2. Tandoori Chicken
3. Cephalapod (either octopus or squid will do)–but only if it’s spicy!

Your top 3?

When it comes to most foods, admittedly, I’m a food snob. Not that I require my meals to consist of eight courses composed of the bestest of ingredients flown in from around the globe; but rather that I require my meals to be created from honest ingredients, well crafted, and consist of actual food (not processed food products).

My tendency toward snobbery is even more pronounced when it comes to tomato soup. I grew up eating a delicious pureed soup made from fresh tomatoes from my parents’ garden. When, on occasion, as a young child I was offered a bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup, I was convinced that the stuff in the dish in front of me couldn’t possibly be what it claimed to be, because it just didn’t taste good and had completely the wrong consistency: all watery with no texture to it.

So, of course, I now make my own tomato soup so that I can enjoy the delicacy the way it was meant to be eaten: from peak season tomatoes handled with care. It’s basically my mom’s recipe with a few of my own changes made to it.

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Aurora and I tried pastries from many places while we were in Norway (okay, so I tried more than she did): coffee shops, several different grocery stores, and bakeries. By far, the bakery that most impressed us was Rosenborg Bakeri, in the Rosenborg neighborhood of Trondheim.

The bakery is just a couple of blocks from our friends Troy and Carin’s apartment where we were staying, but somehow it took us until our last couple of days in the country to realize that it was there, because it was the opposite direction from the apartment than we had walked for the first several days of our visit.

When we finally made it to this chic neighborhood cafe, we were impressed by the breadth of their selections and spent several minutes in front of the display case trying to decide what to order. Finally, we settled on three from the “buy 2, get one free” selections. At 22 kroner per pastry (about $4.50), they were downright reasonably priced for Norway, where in general you can expect things to cost about twice what they would in the states. We opted to get 2 of the pastries for eating there, and one to go–and in so doing added a hefty surcharge onto the price of our pastries. We’d learn later that anytime you dine in in Norway, you pay a hefty tax for the services provided; but if you purchase something to go, it is taxed at a lower rate as a foodstuff.

Oh well. The atmosphere of sitting outside on the deck in fromt of the bakery was worth the extra several kroner. I opted for the raisin roll (the raisins are tough to see in the picture, but they were there), which Troy told me is a ubiquitous Norwegian breakfast, especially if slathered with liberal amounts of butter (I took him up on his serving suggestion). The roll was spiced with a slight hint of cloves, which made for a very pleasant touch.

Aurora got the pastry with the vanilla-flavored cream, which was colored yellow. She was surprised that this filling was vanilla-flavored (she expected lemon), but was not disappointed. The pastry was flaky; the filling was sweet–a perfect combination.

The third pastry, which we wound up eating as we sat there even though we had purchased it to go, consisted of a flaky pastry dough covered with nuts and sticky sweetness, topped with a lemon fondant. It, too, was spectacular.

The next morning, we left Trondheim for a weekend exploring beautiful Geiranger Fjord.  It was a spectacular weekend filled with beautiful vistas of towering mountaintops that descend immediately to sea level, their expanses dotted with waterfalls and small villages.

The range of sights and tastes we found in the fjord made up for our not being able to make a return visit to Rosenborg Bakeri before we had to leave Norway to come back home to the states–but just barely.  The pastries were that good.

Rosenborg Bakeri is located at 10 Rosenborg Gate, Trondheim, Norway.

They are just like Gummi Men, except for their slight mammarian curvature.

Though they look somewhat like Sour Patch Kids, they’re just coated with sugar; in Norway, if you want a sour gummi candy, it’s going to come in the form of tantrum-throwing children:

The hills around our cabin at Flaakoie

had a full cover of blueberries

and cloudberries nestled in the marsh.

Raspberries lined the old logging road.

But even amidst such brilliance of foragability, the tiny wild strawberries lurking in odd corners and peeking from trap rock tasted like candy from the vine.

Served atop flaky biscuits with a dollop of creme fraiche.

If you’ve wondered why i haven’t added anything to the site since sometime last month, the short answer is that I’ve been in Norway.  A beautiful variety of foods available there, though the foods tend to be somewhat expensive.  As a result, I ate out rarely and more often prepared my own meal or ate meals prepared by friends.  Even so, I got a chance to explore a large swath of the regional cuisine.

A quick and mostly complete list of what I ate:

• Fish cakes–patties of fish pudding seasoned with a mixture of spices that very much reminded me of barbecue potato chips (that was probably the msg).  if I had to compare it to anything, i’d say it was probably the norwegian equivalent of a hot dog–very similar in texture, pre-cooked, can be eaten with a variety of condiments either hot or cold
• Mackerel in tomato Sauce: a canned food, readily available in any grocery store.  has a nice, meaty texture and a flavor that isn’t too fishy.
• Fresh berries: almost everywhere I went, there were berry bushes growing that I could pluck berries from.  Varieties included blueberries, wild strawberries, raspberries, cloud berries (a native delicacy that is difficult to find and expensive to buy at about $30 per kilogram), and currants, bith red and black.  The black currants had a nutty taste that I thought would match tremendously well with mackerel, though i never had a chance to test this theory.
• Salmon, both fresh and smoked: Norwegian salmon is quite tasty.  because it’s a local food, wild salmon sells at about an equivalent price to what I’d pay in Pittsburgh, maybe even slightly cheaper.  the farmed salmon from Tine (brand name) goes from water to packaging within four hours and even raw and lightly seasoned tingles the tongue with delight.
• Sausages of many types abound.  A sampling of the sausages I sampled includes: moose, llama, reindeer, and a sausage containing horse meat.
• Rutabaga: There was some confusion about this vegetable, which came mashed as a side dish to one of my few restaurant meals.  the Norwegian word for it is very similar to “kohlrabi” and the English translation provided on the menu was “turnip cabbage,” so it took a small amount of detective work to determine that it was in fact a rutabaga.
• Reindeer stew: tasty, tasty, tasty.  According to my ex-pat friend whom I was visiting, Norwegian dishes rarely combine too many flavors.  So, if I were to make it, it would have included potatoes, onions, carrots, turnips, and what have you; in its presentation to me, it was tender bits of braised reindeer and mushrooms in a dark and rich gravy, served with a couple of boiled potatoes on the side.
• Pizza.  It turns out, pizza is incredibly popular in Norway, and I would up eating some because, apparently, a trip to Norway isn’t complete without having some.
• Various foods from tubes: including bacon-cheese and fish eggs.  Other possibilities that I didn’t taste included shrimp-cheese and pepperoni cheese.
• Salvarpostei (I think I spelled that right!): a paste made primarily of fish eggs with other ingredients, served in a can.  Bore a resemblance to tinned cat food, both in size of the can and in the smell.  I’m not quite adventurous to try tinned cat food to compare the flavors.
• Rislunsj: individual rice puddings with an attached flavoring (my favorite was rips [aka red currants] and bringabaer [aka raspberries]).  They come with a collapsible plastic spoon–its handle folds in half and clicks into place when you open it!
• Cheese of a variety of sorts, including a tasty milk-sheep-goat combination blue cheese from western Sweden and gjetost, a brown cheese that isn’t really a cheese at all, but rather a caramel made by simmering milk for two days until the lactose caramelizes.
• Gummy men and gummy women.  the difference?  The women have curvy figures.

It’s strawberry season in southwestern PA, and after just plucking them out of the quart and eating them raw, shortcake is one of my favorite treatments of this fruit.

I made the shortcake according to a standard biscuit recipe (3 cups flour, 3/4 tsp salt, 1.5 tablespoons baking powder, a stick of butter, and a cup plus two tablespoons milk/cream mixed together) with a few alterations: I added the zest of an orange, a square half inch of grated dark chocolate, a teaspoon or so of sugar, shake of cinnamon, a bit of nutmeg, and a pinch of cloves into the dry ingredients.

I rolled the biscuit dough out, trimmed the edges, then sliced it down into twelve large biscuits. The scraps from trimming the edges were enough to shape into two more biscuits. After I transferred the biscuits to an ungreased baking sheet, brushed their tops with cream to help the browning process, and sprinkled them with coarse turbinado sugar for decoration and a bit of sweetness, I baked them in a 450F oven for 15 minutes.

Once the biscuits had cooled slightly, I split them and spooned several strawberries onto the bottom half, followed by a small dollop of whipped cream.  This extra bit of cream helps out with the crucial cream: biscuit ration on the final few bites, and it also helps keep the top in place for presentation (instead of having it slide off to the side).  I spooned more berries around the edges and topped the biscuit with a full dollop of cream and a strawberry on top.

The results? Tasty.

Ribeye Steak of a Grass-fed Beef with Fingerling Potatoes and Asparagus

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Salad with fresh, local lettuces (Silver Wheel Farm via Penn’s corner Farm Alliance); balsamic-roasted portobello mushroom (Giant Eagle mushroom simmered on the stovetop in a homemade balsamic vinaigrette featuring rosemary from the plant Aurora managed to overwinter and garlic chives from my garden); two kinds of radishes (Goose Creek Gardens via Penn’s Corner); and thinly sliced carrots(Kretschmann Farm); topped with shaved Montasio cheese (acquired at Pennsylvania Macaroni Company).

Most people who know me know about my obsession with cast iron—it’s sturdy (will last for generations), versatile (equally good on electric, gas, or campfire), almost as non-stick as teflon without the risk of its surface coating flaking off into your food, and economical (many fine specimens are available at antique stores and flea markets for $30 or less).

Still, when I bought my cast iron wafflemaker it was, in my mind, a curiosity piece: an unusual specimen from a bygone era. After all, I had a perfectly good wafflemaker that plugs into the wall and heats predictably, whereas the cast iron piece would have to sit on my burner and would only get heated on one side. As I purchased it, I decided it was a good thing that Aurora wasn’t with me because she probably would have vetoed the $50 price tag (even if she does on occasion talk me into buying pieces of cast iron that I’m on the fence about).

Once I got it home, I discovered how well-designed this antique actually is.

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