Pizza with Noprah balls, zucchini, and plums – what?!

So as I was sitting down to write this post about pizza, I had lofty plans to follow it with the beautiful pictures we shot last night as we were cooking. I didn’t realize at the time that pizza, especially rustic homemade pizza, pretty much looks like the dog’s dinner when photographed without a food stylist, lights, and lots of re-shoots. Oh, and then there’s the whole using-something-else-that-looks-good-on-camera-as-a-substitute-for-the-actual-food thing, which, although it’s fun to think about (is that really milk on that cereal or did they use glue again??), isn’t my thing. 

What I did accomplish, though, is making a very good homemade pizza entirely from scratch. We used the bread dough that we call the Plan B dough (a faster and less exciting white dough than our favorite one) and instead of using a pizza stone (who has one?!) I inverted my largest cast iron skillet and let it heat up for 30 minutes in a 450 degree oven. This is the same principle as baking bread in a pre-heated dutch oven, although not as effective because the skillet doesn’t have a lid. Neither does a pizza stone, so it must be the only way to go – still working on how to get that one to work. Anyway, as the skillet was heating up I mixed up a quick batch of pizza sauce from a can of ground tomatoes, some garlic, some fresh basil, salt, pepper, and a little bit of sugar to balance the acidity. I rolled and hand stretched the dough to form hideous excuses for circles, dusted the skillet with corn meal to prevent sticking, and precariously positioned the dough “round” onto the pan. I couldn’t figure out how to move a pre-dressed crust from the counter to the pan, so on went the naked crust and I quickly assembled the pizza with the rack pulled out halfway, doing a little acrobatic thing so I didn’t burn my legs on the open oven door.

Success! We had a plain cheese pizza for the kids (I used an Asiago and cheddar blend which Sara called the most delicious cheese blend ever) and a meatball and red onion pizza for us, using some of the Noprah** meatballs we made last week and froze.  Overall I’d give the pizza an A- as we still need to perfect the thickness of the dough so our tastes, but not at all bad for a dinner for four that cost about $1.50 in total.

 

**Noprah meatballs – About 4 years ago I read an article about a restaurant in Montecito, California that made turkey meatballs that Oprah feel in love with and ate every day for lunch for the entire summer. The key to the meatballs was raisins. I adapted the recipe and ended up with a turkey and pork meatball that includes 3 key ingredients: fennel seed, grated zucchini, and a puree of dried plums. The fennel balances spicy red pepper flakes, and the zucchini and plums provide lots of moisture and a touch of sweetness.  Try adding these key ingredients to your current meatball recipe to see what I’m talking about, and don’t forget lots of hot red pepper flakes! (OK, OK, they’re prunes. Yes, prunes…which are the same thing as dried plums you know, and just sound so much more appealing…and yes, they’re in a jar…and yes, it’s in an un usual section of the grocery store. OK, fine, they’re baby food prunes. So shoot me.)

Swedish grandparents

This past weekend we were pleased to have Roland and Kerstin as our guests for dinner at “our” house. I decided to make them a typical meal for our family, although I’m not sure how representative it is of how Americans eat. My sister eats like we do, so I guess it counts! The kitchen in this house is separate from the living room, so I wasn’t really able to chat while everyone tried to keep the crostini away from Kerstin’s dog Max.

Luckily I’d made most of the dinner in advance, and only had to cook the pork while they were here. I made an herb and garlic-stuffed pork tenderloin (well, Jon actually prepared the tenderloins for me that morning using herbs from the garden) that I braised with fresh apples and served with an apple cognac reduction. We have pork tenderloin quite a bit at home, and it was fun that they had served us pork as well, Swedish style, so we could compare. I also made a summer wheat berry salad – a new favorite that I discovered in Sweden and adapted for our tastes – and minted peas. We had cheesecake brownies from my beloved David Lebovitz (his recipe is here) that I changed a bit as well. You can’t get chocolate chips in Sweden, so I left them out (David said it was OK), doubled the brownie part, and added a shot of espresso (I didn’t tell him about the espresso, shhhh). In retrospect, I should have skipped one of the eggs too, since the 4th egg made them a bit too custardy without the addition of the chocolate chips. If you make them the way I did, lose the last egg.

Anyway, we had a wonderful time with the kids’ new Swedish grandparents, and are hopeful that they will take us up on the offer to come visit in Florida.

Roland and Kerstin sing the Swedish song – or try to! – to Sara and Sam.

Ooh ooh, that smell…

It’s too bad you can’t smell my fingers. Hey! That’s not what I mean. My hands actually smell like fresh herbs that Jon and I picked from our exchange garden and turned into an herb and garlic stuffing for tonight’s pork tenderloin. It struck me as rather hilarious that the herbs we found outside were parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Oh, and chives, but that doesn’t fit into the song. As were were washing and chopping, I realized that I’d been too busy back in the States and hadn’t been able to slow down enough to appreciate the small things that make me happy. The smell of fresh herbs on my skin is something I remember my mother teaching me about when I was Sam’s age, and it still makes me feel relaxed and centered. I must have passed it down to my kids without realizing it, as I just dug Sam’s old sprig of lavender out of my purse yesterday. He’d found it when we went to Styrsö and had rubbed on all of our hands and arms to make lavender perfume. One thing that’s been blaringly obvious on this home exchange is that I need to slow down. Life really is too short to spend it in a blur.

Making it last on the road

One of the biggest challenges for me during this home exchange in Norway has been the grocery situation. I am used to a basically unlimited supply of fresh produce, lots of choices for fresh fish and meat, and lots of organic choices.  Here, not only is the selection very limited, it is also extremely expensive and not always of the best quality. Oh, and there is usually only one option - there is only one type of cottage cheese, no competing brand or prices, no big curds battling the little curds for top seller. It’s just cottage cheese, take it or leave it. Same goes for things like frozen spinach, butter, tortilla chips, tuna in a can, and black beans, if you can find them. It’s as though the whole country is one of those tiny gas station grocery stores where you buy stuff when you rent a beach house. So anyway, we’re on a super tight food budget, and I have gone from almost never cooking to cooking each and every meal, including dessert. Even if I wanted to buy something pre-made, it’s not available. To make it even harder, we don’t really eat the same food as the Norwegians, so we have to search even harder for the goods.  Oh, yeah, and Sara is vegetarian and I am mostly vegetarian. I basically turned into a 1950s housewife to make it all work, and came up with my own tricks to extend my budget:

• Save old bread for sweet (banana-chocolate) or savory (red pepper, basil, and parmesan) bread puddings.
• Root vegetables make delicious, inexpensive, versatile soups. Add milk for a smooth, creamy finish, or add beans and, you guessed it, old bread for a Norwegian ribbolita. Top with store-bought pesto (I found some!) for soupe au pistou, or hide some broccoli (Jon hates broccoli) and puree it entirely.  We have soup 3 times a week on average, and I haven’t made the same soup twice!
• Turn 2 portions of salmon into 4 by adding some sweated red onion and root veggies, wrapping it all in pastry, and you’ve got a quick Wellington.
• Lentils are your best friend. Make a hearty lentil soup with potatoes and carrots, and puree half to add thickness. Just add bread and a simple salad for a healthy meal. Or, cook a pot of lentils with garlic, onion, carrots, canned tomatoes, and lots of basil and oregano to make a thick Mediterranean lentil stew and serve over rice.
• Don’t throw out apples that have started to soften – they make great apple cobblers. If you don’t have muesli or breakfast cereal to make a topping, wrap in pastry for turnovers (I am not making pastry here – I found a really good frozen one!)
• Crepes are cheap and can be filled with cinnamon sugar or nutella and bananas for breakfast, or ham and cheese for lunch. Extras freeze really well and take up no room in tiny European freezers.
• Beans and rice are versatile: with a fried egg and green salad for lunch, with a ton of cumin and turned into enchiladas for dinner, as a side dish for salmon, leftovers can become soup.
• Make your own vinaigrette dressing, it also works as a marinade for fish.

I am always curious about what other people eat, so let me know what you’re eating and how you are stretching your food budget.

Gratulerer med dagen!

Ok, I will admit it, I am a foreign language nerd.  I get super excited when I'm able to learn new languages, and each time I master something in Norwegian I get a big kick out of it.  Gratulerer med dagen.  I've been hanging on to this little gem for a while now, waiting until I can use it. Luckily I am about to have my chance, as this Friday will be Jon's birthday.  Yeah, you guessed it. I saw the phrase on a greeting card next to a big cake with candles on it, and used some of that deductive reasoning that I usually save for emergencies.  So now that I know what to say, I am trying to figure out what to do.  At home we'd go out for a nice dinner and Jon would order a steak, a rare treat in our partially vegetarian household.  Here, though, groceries are very expensive, and fancy restaurant meals are pretty much out of our reach, so I will be cooking at home.  Pick out anything you want and I will cook it, I told Jon yesterday, going back to a birthday tradition I used to have with my father when I was a kid.  Really, you can pick anything...when I was 12 I asked for crepes suzette.  But Jon, ever the pragmatist, doesn't want to spend the money on a steak, even one that I can cook for him at home. Hmmm, maybe I don't cook a very good steak anymore, now that I don't eat beef.  Nah, that can't be it.  More likely, Jon just doesn't care enough about the food to spend a  lot of money when we could have something just as good (or better?) for much less.  Yeah, this is much more Jon-ish.  Since a birthday dinner isn't going to do the trick, I guess it's back to the drawing board.  I wonder how they say back to the drawing board in Norwegian...