...NORWEGIAN

i have found this copy of "norwegian cooking for everyone" by  bjarne hakon hanssen hidden in my grandma's shelf  in her beautiful kitchen. i was totally amazed that she was to own a copy of an english-written book about norwegian cooking. supposingly i asked her all about it. she got it of my uncle who has been living in norway for several months - i am not even sure if it was not years - and he is still in love with the country and its tradition. he has been up high, hiking, going to college and trying to study norwegian but he has left for good.

but as  i already said: norway did not leave him at all. he is still in love with the landscape and of course the cooking tradition - lots of fish and seafood, lots of stews and soup, lots of different veg mixed together. after i read myself through the book's preface i decided to try out norwegian cuisine just for a week. which fits in perfectly because it is becoming cold and wet and i do need some seriously warm food to heat myself up and stay warm.

so in the coming week you will be served traditional norwegian food, although there will be european/asian influences because the cookbook shows norway's tradition nowadays which is, as we all know from ourselves, pretty influenced by all-around-the-world's cuisine.

have fun and if you get to buy a copy of hanssen's book, BUY IT!

xx lucie ♥

...SPANISH (II)

my dearest non-follower and follower and queridos y queridas!

i have made a commitment to start to be really good this week and my week has eventually started off well! college is so much fun but lots of work to do (especially reading) and so i have decided to put a plan for my samana espanol into a word document so i definitely have a plan. if i follow the plan is to question but so far i have been pretty good. and i really like spanish food, so im more or less addicted to carry out my planning and all.

but to be honest i do not think it is clever to put my plan for the week up here because it will probably change anyways, so i will post - if i am not as good as i was before in my french and asian weeks - my spanish recipes when i already tried them.

monday 19th of october

to start off to be all spanish for a week, i have tried to make tortilla de verdura del tiempo  which is basically tortilla (potatoes) with fresh veg (peppers, tomatoes) and eggs all over the mixture. i seasoned eggs and put some herbs in it (frozen mixed herbs). of course before i went off putting veg into the pan, i gently roasted sliced onions and garlic, when these started to turn a bit brown-ish i added yellow and red peppers as well as some ham cut in squares. it immediately smelled like wonderful food in my whole apartment - soooo nice!!  in the meantime i stirred 2 eggs, seasoning and herbs - then i added the tomatoes to my perfectly smelling already waiting for more delish-food :) and put some mashed potatoes on top after like five minutes. then i put the eggish thingy over it all and waited for my beautiful tortilla-ish food to harden. it nearly looked like pizza after the eggs set (froze - i do not know the best expression for it...)

it tasted like heaven! happily ever after it was so much for little lucie, i had to put some of the tortilla into my fridge and had lunch today as well! YES!

gladly i had my plan written sunday evening so i knew exactly what to cook today, which turned out to be:

arroz con leche (rice pudding)  
this recipe is for lazy cooks like i am most of the time, so i was pretty happy to only stir and add some milk to the rice for 25 minutes. after the rice was all set i sliced some fresh bananas, put some vanilla sugar and cinnamon into my rice and ready it was! NICE! :)

♥ 

¡hasta luego!

lucie xx

...SPANISH

i know i have not posted for a week. i feel really sorry about me being so absent and un-blogger-ish. but i think i will be good this week.

i really appreciate you voting for spanish, although i got a precious norwegian cook book off my granny. its gorgeous and the week after the spanish week will definitely be norwegian.

it totally fits the bad weather. so wintery and all.

so expect me to be good this week :)

SPANISH; SO IT IS!

♥

...FRENCH (III)

to be honest i have been quite french this week. and i am not lying at all! this week has been a success so far. as i have already mentioned i will not (and have not) post a blog post everyday. too exhausting and it bores me quite a bit.

austria has gone through an amazing and unbelievable summery week. which is incredibly nice but nerve-wrecking at the same time. i went out with jeans, runners (+ socks... or the other way round) and a white blouse. it thought i would melt - and it is october lads! it is not like may or something because i am used to summery temperatures even in april. but it is october! i experienced SNOW in october last year or something likely. so what the heck is wrong?!

but no bother. i just was not up to cook potato gratin savoyen for lunch today. it is just too hot to actually eat potatoes. you know what i mean? it is meltingly ridiculously hot out there!

but i have to tell you about my absolutely amazing bouillabaisse monday evening. how can i describe the explosion of different flavours in my mouth? to be honest, i just looked the recipe up one of jamie oliver's cookbooks and it was supposed to be "indian fish-rice soup" which i obviously did not make, because i did not put rice in it nor added i indian spices. so it was just fish soup... but it was not only fish soup. there were so many different tastes of fish in it, and then a bit salty and nicely seasoned. :) i should not be too proud of myself but i am. it has gone so well - so far.

right.thuesday 

i went for quiche NOT lorraine but i decided to put leeks, spinach and carrots in it which tasted delicious (even if it does not look like it... but it WAS delicious!!)

great. i thought.because it really went well doing all that french stuff to this point. and i continued! you would not believe it ;-) 

wednesday i had no time to cook and prepare stuff. so i just went out to buy some camembert and onion bread (yes i like it although i hate onions. this hatress is kind of weird i must admit)... this was my dinner at last. i toasted bread and i had cheese on it and it was tasty and spicy and really french :-) 

thursday  

it was too hot to actually cook the gratin savoyen, which i already mentioned. so i decided to go for an apple-camembert-carrot-potato-créme fraîche-salad which tasted lovely as well. i added some balsamico and olive oil and it was a total delish. 

this was it so far... tbc?!

♥

...FRENCH (II)

okay just a brief apology i was not up to putting some stuff up here anymore yesterday, but there you go: my french week's diet plan:

1. monday 5th bouillabaisse
2. tuesday 6th quiche not-lorraine (because i hate onions...)
3. wednesday 7th potatoe-gratîn savoyen
4. thursday 8th french omelette
5. friday 9th stuffed aubergines (i am not definitely sure about it because i might go to my parents' place before i even start cooking...)

have a lovely day! i am off to jazz dance and work afterwards!

♥ xx

...FRENCH

believe it or not - bonjour madame et monsieur - i am going for a french week.

first of all i have to apologize for not publishing any asian food experiments after thursday, but i decided it was enough asian for the week. so i simply did not eat asian food at all at the weekend. but that is fine i guess. i should not be bothered about blogging at the weekend anyways.

college is about to start and my holidays in peace are over. there will be a lot of book-buying and writing and highlighting and listening and stuff like that going on through my weeks now. this is a good thing though. believe it or not i love college. and i love studying, so there is nothing sad about going back to college.

(Duke the Berry, Les Trés Riches Heures)

so about my decision to go all french this week. as far as i am concerned i have never properly cooked french dinners. i have been to paris twice and have ate baguette, croissants and crêpes as much as i could get (to be honest, i think i always gained like ten kilos a day). great, so i will turn to be fat this week... although french women do carry this secret with them and have always done. they do not get fat. they do stay slim and skinny for like ever. look at carla bruni, hell yeah she looks fantastic and i bet she has been invited to lots and lots of le dîners through the past years. but mireille guiliano has already written about the fact french women stay as they are although they eat three course-dinners most of the time (guess what, normal housewives would not but those fammes who are important...). just that you know: i will not cook three course dinners everyday. i am not a professional cook, i am just this little girl, living in the big city and trying to have fun cooking unusual stuff, buying ingredients i have never touched before (i will not, definitely not, eat foie gras though.)

i have decided to try one of austrian's best french restaurants, recommended at lokaltipp, which is called: Le Crêperie ... which is located at the danube and does look properly french.

my week's diet will be planned today so i will probably blog a second time today, if i am up to it. like a week's menu...

au revoir!

 

♥ lucie

...ASIAN (III) + (IV)

this week i have already been particularly good on blogging. i think i have never been that consistant writing blogs. or even follow such a routine for four days now.

applause!

(right, im applausing myself, because it is nice to be given credit for such a thing!)

but people i have not been that good. i might have eaten asian food for four days now but i have not cooked all of it myself. i was very lazy yesterday (which was wednesday - most horrible day of the week i suppose). it was not as if i had no time or i was busy doing other stuff. i just was not up to cooking at all. so i decided after strolling through the bookshop and reading re-decorating magazines and books (i am totally into interior design!) - i lost track of my sentence... so i decided to buy myself sushi. and i totally enjoyed it. it was not as good as i wanted it to be. the fish was not cold enough for my share but well, soy sauce tasted extraordinarily nice and the oranges afterwards were tasty as well.

i totally own up to that now. but at least i admitted it! ha!

thursday is exceptionally asian again,...

good. but i was good today. i was not sure what to cook myself. it should not take as long as rice would take, it should not burn easily, it should not taste to spicy it should not... you know a lot of different shoulds were involved so i took quinoa which my mam gave me once because she thought it tastes lovely (and it does!) and cooked it for like 20 min (1cup of quinoa, 2cups of water, salt & spices added). i pondered what to eat with it. like i could not eat salted quinoa for lunch only. after a quick look into my (empty) fridge i added some curry, as well as some grated carrots, i had some tuna left too (naturally out of the can...)... and to make it a bit more asian i put an egg into it at the end of my experiment.

as far as i can remember my food experiments have always backfired. but this one... you would not believe it, it was not only eatable, it was tasty and nice and spicy and it tasted a bit like tuna but not too much and a bit like mild curry.  

'very nice' i thought to myself. i will probably cook this experiments once again if i ran out of ideas ;-)

i had bean sprouts-salad with it (added soy sauce, sesame oil, some vinegar, seasoning and some of the leftover carrots i did not want to put in my experiment).

winner!

have a lovely day, x

...ASIAN (II)

i am still asian. of course. that is because it is still the same week. only tuesday.

i have had a busy day at work. although i only sat there in mcdonald's and watch the little one - who is apparently not my son but my boss' son - shooting for a MD's advert. he was brilliant. and i had some time to think of my asian dinner which was already formed in my mind - i cannot stand MD's food so i did not eat. i did not even try the chips there they just look so lackadaisical (this is the absolute right word for it!) and not quite tasty. so i decided to stay MD sober - drinking water and some sprite...

(this is my mango. i have cut it so perfectly) 

and my thoughts went off to my dinner. asian it should be. there was still some of the coconut ramen left. alright, so i would not break my decision to eat asian for a week. at least i would last the first week. right. and there was this mango i bought the other day. and miraculously sohyi kim helped out again. she must be such a fantastic cook. if i had the money i would go and eat there but i think a student does not earn enough to enjoy the food there (except i ask my parents to go there with me...). right. thank you, sohyi kim you saved my life twice. although it is not about surviving or similar stories but it feels like betrayal if i gave up on my ideas the second day of starting to fullfill them.

tuesday's meal: mango salad with soy-sauce and groundnuts.

it was more than wonderful to sit there and eat some of the left overs (the most amazing left overs i ever had in this kitchen, which is not profoundly much but it was better than most left overs - the only exception would be my granny's meal-left overs...). and then in there came the extraordinary salad - courgettes, bean sprouts, soy sauce, coriander, red peppers, mango and moooore mango.

the taste of it. not only it was spicy because of the spices (i could have said it at least a bit more elegant but im not in the mood to look for some special phrases ...) - meaning soy sauce and coriander - it also tasted really sweet. like a pop song. there are some spices but there is still some sweetness left. i do not know how to explain it differently. it was like an explosion in your mouth. my whole tongue was involved getting to know new flavours.

♥ lucie xx

...ASIAN

i have actually thought i would not make it to start cooking asian stuff monday. i had to travel back and forward from my parents' place to vienna and to my granny's. so a lot of traveling this monday. but however, i changed my mind to just order sushi or a bento box, which would fit into my asian week, i bought some ingredients and cooked coconut ramen.

i have to announce i did not invent coconut ramen which was delicious (and there is still some left for today's lunch in the fridge, yippieh!). but sohyi kim did. she is supposed to be one of vienna's or even austria's best cooks concerning asian food. she has got her own restaurant in vienna (kimkocht) where i definitely want to go one day. sohyi kim also offers workshops where you easily learn how to make sushi rice, how to eventually roll sushi and how to - you know - get into asian food.

sohyi kim's cookbook does not only show how to make sushi or ramen, it also tells you how to cook miso soup the right way and how to make sweet and sour chicken whether too sour nor too sweet :-)

monday's shopping list for coconut ramen:

• 1 bag of carrots

• 1 courgette

• 1 leek

• 1/4 l coconut milk

• 1 bag of miso

• 1 fish filet (gilthead,

• 1 sea food mix

i paid 15,00€ which did not surprise me but was under my expections. i also bought some ingredients for further recipes, so not too bad.

after i cut the vegetables i started to boil water for rice noodles, which are part of ramen. they only cooked like 4 minutes.

when i added the noodles, i heated some olive oil in my wok (a normal frying pan is alright) and stirred in the vegetables as well as the fish filet (cut up in pieces) and some of the sea food mix. a

after like 3-4 minutes i added the seasoning and miso, stirred and added 1/2 l of boiling water and the coconut milk to the veg.

after that i prepared a bowl with rice noodles. table had been set then, i just needed a spoon and with the rest of the boiling water i made myself some mate-tea, which is supposed to be exhilarant.

Maté Tea

i have absolutely enjoyed this asian dinner last night. it was not only spicy but something different to taste. i am totally into sea food but if you do not like that kind of food just take tofu instead. or try it! you will be amazed how tasty it is!

lots of love, xx

...JUST MYSELF

this week i am just myself.

what is this blog about, you may ask yourself reading the title.
"this week i am" should not suggest another i-want-to-find-myself kind of blog. i have been inspired by the film julie & julia (starring meryl streep, amy adams. i have not watched the flick but i would say i will buy it on dvd later this year. i will certainly not quit my job nor college to become a full-time blogger and post 365 recipes and how they worked out. i am definitely not julia nor am i julie the full-time cook.

but how does the film inspire my blog if it has nothing to do with the topic?
well, it does.

in my mind there is this crazy idea to cook myself through different cultures and cuisines every week. so the three points after "this week i am" lead every blog title to what i was trying to cook, how it worked out, which recipes i tried and if people liked what i cooked.



this week i am just myself.
the title suggests the type of cuisine, the type of traditional food i was cooking during a whole week. i will definitely not be able to post everyday because i know i will get fed up after a while doing the posting. but once a week there will be a new blog entry, saying f.e. this week i am mexican. and you can read about my experience buying mexican products, trying to find the right recipes and how cooking worked out or did not.

enjoy ♥