Rainbow trout filled with fresh herbs

A lot of people are intimidated by the thought of cooking a meal form a whole fish, with the head and everything still on. I know I was! But my mum taught me that if you have a good fish, it really doesn't have to be very complicated. So we went to the fish market this Easter holiday and got some beautiful fresh rainbow trout. It's a pretty cheap fish with white meat, and very tasty in itself which means you don't really have to do a whole lot to it to make it taste like heaven. 

All you need to make my herb filled rainbow trout is:

4 rainbow trouts

1 lemon

1 hand full of fresh thyme

1 handful of fresh rosemary

1 handful of fresh basil

butter

salt and pepper

The how is just as simple:

Put the oven to 200 degrees.

Put the fish in tin foil in an oven safe dish.

Season with salt and pepper and fill the fish with butter, herbs and a wedge of lemon.

Close the tin foil around the fish to make it a little package, and put in to the oven for about 20  minutes. 

Serve directly with a nice salad and (Swedish) new potatoes!

Souffle au Brie - this weeks homework!

I haven't had homework since I finished university so I was super excited when our teacher and chef gave us some in this weeks class. I had to make souffle! Any kind I wanted, but I have to take a picture and bring to class for inspection next week. 

I decided to make a savory souffle since my sweet tooth is not what it used to be. I Googled around to find my recipe base, and I kept meeting story after horror story of how hard it is to make soufflé, how precise everything has to be and how difficult it is to get it right. Needless to say, I had butterflies and was super nervous and excited to give it a try myself!

I love cheese, so I fell for a soufflé with Camembert cheese. I already had some brie at home so I decided to go with that. Despite the nervousness, the butterflies and the terrible soufflé horror stories, it turned out to be pretty awesome :) I made an olive and tomato tapenade to go with it. 

The What: 

(4 portions)

2 dl milk

2 tbsp potato flour

2 tbs butter

4 eggs

100 g bire

Cayenne pepper

Nutmeg

Salt

Tapenade:

A hand full of black olives

5 cherry tomatoes

1 garlic clove

Fresh oregano

Olive oil

Salt 

Pepper

The How: 

Separate the egg yolk from the whites in two separate bowls. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they are stiff enough to turn the bowl upside down without it spilling. 

Melt the butter on low heat in a pan, add the potato flour and milk and heat up while continuously stirring. Add cayenne pepper and nutmeg, then the brie and the egg yolks. Let cool.

While the batter is cooling, make the tapenade. Finely chop black olives, cherry tomatoes and garlic. Mix together in a bowl. Add a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and top with fresh oregano. 

Prepare the serving plates so that it's all ready to go when the soufflé comes out of the oven.  

Put the oven on 175 degrees, butter forms with straight high edges. 

Carefully fold the whisked egg whites into the cooled batter and pour the batter into the buttered bowls. 

Bake in the bottom part of the oven for 30 minutes and make sure NOT to open the oven until earliest after 20 minutes or the souffle will fall. 

Serve immediately. 

Thank you Michael Krantz for lending me your base recipe, check his out here!

Hopefully I'll pass the homework assignment, I'll let you know!

Linguine with fresh asparagus, mushrooms, avocado and Parmesan cheese

My week of pasta started with a simple but amazing linguine with fresh asparagus. Unfortunately the asparagus wasn't local but I just couldn't help but to buy it anyway - and it tasted amazing, despite it being transported a few miles. It really is a sign that spring is on it's way!

The What

1 bouquet of fresh green asparagus

200 g forest mushrooms

1 ripe avocado

2 dl cream

1 tps of chili flakes (depends on how spicy you want it!)

½ freshly squeezed lemon

1 clove of garlic

salt and fresh ground black pepper

The How

Gently fry the garlic in some olive oil in a pan. Add the mushrooms and fry until they have gotten a little color, but are not burnt. 

Add the chili flakes, lemon and cream. Add salt and cracked pepper. Bring to the boil and then let simmer. 

Pick up one asparagus and hold it between the your thumb and forefinger on both sides. Bend it until it snaps and throw away the root part of the veggie. This part can be eaten, but it's more chewy and has a tendency to be a bit bitter. Repeat on the rest of the asparagus. 

Boil the linguine until tender. 

Throw the asparagus into boiling water with a bit of salt, boil for about 1 minute so that it's still nice and crispy. 

Slice the avocado.

Add the linguine to the cream sauce, add the avocado and mix together. 

Serve the pasta topped with asparagus and Parmesan cheese and some more cracked pepper, if you like. 

Enjoy!

Prawns and champagne - simple luxury

My absolute favorite thing to do on a Friday night; drink champagne and eat seafood <3 

It's so simple, the pictures say more than enough - no fancy recipe needed!

What can be better than this?

Fresh asparagus with chili oil and Parmesan cheese

Fresh prawns and langoustines

Simple luxury

What's your favorite Friday night meal?

Borough Market in London - AKA, Foodie Heaven

One of my London based mates is about as much of a foodie as I am, so when she suggested we spend Saturday at Borough Market, I figured I'd be in for a treat. We stepped off the Metro at the London Bridge station and walked right in to foodie heaven. The air was full of different and lovely smells, there was fresh coffee, grilled meat, fish, seafood, cheeses, olive oils, olives, truffle as well as delicacies from around the world and it was like stepping in to a dream; a really hungry and delicious dream. The atmosphere was vibrant and friendly, encouraging you to try everything and talk to everyone about what they were selling and why it was unique and almost always why it all tasted so amazing. I loved every minute of it! 

So many amazing products and friendly people, can't wait to go back! Next time I'm trying the whole grilled hog for sure. 

Then of course there was the Pimm's tent! Pimm's is a proper British alcoholic drink, most commonly based on gin (Pimm's no 1 Cup), and was actually first founded in London in the 1800's, by a farmers son named Pimm. He first served it as an aid to digestion at his London based Oyster Bar, but after the drink became wildly popular, he started upscale production to meet demand, thus spreading it across the UK (I just love Wikipedia, thank you!) and to other parts of the world. We had our Pimm's the most popular way, mixed with Ginger Ale and loaded with fresh fruit. It was just what we needed after 2 hours looking at and tasting amazing food in the gorgeous spring weather London was serving us. Hey, Swedes, you can actually buy it at Systembolaget, it'll set you back about 195 SEK but will be very worth it if we get a good summer in Sweden this year!

After finishing our pitcher of Pimm's, we headed back in to the market area for some after Pimm's food. It wasn't hard to find a great selection, the difficulty was deciding what to eat!

A whole roasted hog was on the menu, unfortunately I didn't try this, but I'm sure it would have tasted wonderful. I went for something a little more basic instead.

I just loved this guys company name, wish I'd thought of it first! SoulFood. Follow them on Twitter @EatSoulFood, I do!

I ended up with a MASSIVE Frankfurter (yes, you may all make jokes about this) with sauerkraut, mustard and ketchup. It was great and soaked up the Pimm's nicely. 

My gorgeous mates decided on Raclette, a swish dish consisting of a melted cheese (Raclette) over boiled potatoes with mini gherkins on the side. I had a taste and it was all a cheesy goodness!

It was truly inspirational walking around the market. So many great ideas and people who have had a foodie dream and made it into a reality. These guys below held themed cooking classes at the market, changing the themes daily. When we walked past they were making Pizzas, paying only about £10 for a class. And they got to eat it as well!

Thank you for a lovely day ladies! 

New memories made and old ones brought back to life <3 

Seafood and bubbles, indulgence on a budget - It's possible!

I work as a Key Account Manager in my "real" life and some days are great; the clients are happy, the boss is happy and I'm happy, cause everyone else is happy and maybe I've closed a big deal. Happy happy happy! Those are the days I remember why I love working in sales. Other days are not so great and I remember why I love alcohol and food! One particularly awful day when  had just started at the new job, I got yelled at for things that happened  all the way back in 2009 when I was no where near the company or the job or even the city. Back then I still dreamed of taking over Kofi Annans job with the UN, I was still at University and still stubbornly defying my natural talent within sales and  never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd end up selling, specially not within the heavy industry and construction business. Needless to say, I felt the urge to indulge. I called my ever pleasing boyfriend and gave strict instructions to buy seafood; I envisioned king crab legs, prawns, crab and langoustine (or Norway Lobster or just plain old havskräfta in Swedish). So the boy went over to Söderhallarna by Medborgarplatsen and headed over to Melanders Fiskbutik, who had everything I wanted: 

Unfortunately this time, the wallet wasn't as thick as my appetite, end of the month and all. I couldn't afford one king crab leg for 170 SEK a pop or 690 SEK/kg, so we went all out on the prawns and a few langoustines instead, added some gorgeous sour dough bread from Borgs Brödbod and great cheese from Söder Cheesen, both at Söderhallarna.

We served this lovely meal with roe sauce and hovmästarsås, a mustard and dill sauce that goes great with prawns as well as smoked salmon, (a swedish favourite!) and easily finished a bottle of Dopff Brut Cuvée Julien (nr 7410 at Systembolaget, only 68 SEK for you Swedes). All in all it was a relatively cheap meal with all the luxury of indulgence on a budget.

And we had the pleasure of meeting and eating Poseidon, God of the Sea! Sorry dude.