Almost all the cooking shows I’m watching has someone poaching an egg at some point. I also saw it in Julie and Julia (or was it the other way around?)

Not only that, but I have a surplus of eggs at the moment. I never seem to remember that I have them at home when I spot a new carton in the supermarket. Before my experiment with poaching, that meant we had 28 eggs in the refrigerator, and some were moving towards their Best Before Date.

Clearly some cooking had to be done with eggs.

And then the notion of attempting to poaching them came to mind. The sister was encouraging (but wanted no part other than as an observer, which was fair enough.) My Norwegian cookbook from the early 80s and Delia Smith’s How to Cook both said the same thing (and Nigella did not even mention poaching an egg in her How to Eat…) to put a small amount of water in a frying pan, put it to boil, and down to simmer and crack a fresh egg into that.

Well, that was nothing like what I was seeing at the telly. Apart from the water and the egg, it was two separate worlds entirely. So I tried with a mix.

It was not very successful. Well, to a certain degree, it did resemble a poached egg. And the yolk was runny when I poked it. But it just did not look like anything we wanted to eat.

And it has taken me two days to recall why it was not tempting me at all (something I should have thought of before I started the experiment): I have never been a fan of eating runny egg yolks.

Instead we used a frying pan and fried four eggs instead. That was yummy. But while the sister had hers sunny side up – I ended up frying mine on both sides.

Never mind that I’m nearly three months late in posting this. I was hit with something just before Christmas, and was tapped for energy almost all through January.

On New Year’s Eve, though, I managed to find enough energy to be creative in the kitchen. Together with Sister S, we scouted cook book, blogs and recipes online to find the perfect meal. I’m glad to say we did.

We faffled back and forth on what we would make, but ended up with Sweet & Sour Chicken, with Jasmine rice and vegetables. The recipe we found at the Brown Eyed Baker’s.

We made our own adaption:

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Serves: 3-4 (or two, if you want leftovers for the next day… which you do.)

For the Chicken:
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
2.3 dl cornstarch
3 eggs, slightly beaten
vegetable oil

For the Sauce:

6 dl sugar
12 tablespoons ketchup
3.5 dl vinegar (we used white wine vinegar, but rice is also on the list of preferred.)
3 tablespoon soy sauce
3 teaspoon garlic powder

(We doubled the original sauce recipe).

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius.

2. Cut chicken breasts into small-ish chunks.

3. Season chicken with salt and pepper.

4. Have a bowl of cornstarch and a bowl of the mixed egg.

5. Put the chicken pieces in cornstarch and then coat with the egg.

6. Heat the oil in a large frying pan, over medium-high heat and brown the chicken, in batches, turning it so that all sides of the pieces are browned.

7. Place the chicken in a single layer in a baking dish. The dish should be large enough to accommodate both chicken and sauce.

5. Whisk together the sauce ingredients in a bowl and pour evenly over the chicken. Make sure the chicken is well coated in the sauce, before putting it into the oven.

6. Bake for 1 hour, turning the chicken every 15 minutes.

The chicken, with rice and vegetables

For dessert we made chocolate fondue and butterscotch fondue, in which we dipped slices of fruit. The butterscotch fondue was quite good for dipping grapes and apples. We felt that the bananas went best in the chocolate fondue.

Butterscotch fondue

Butterscotch is one of those American flavours that I’ve always wondered what tasted like. I’ve come to understand that it was somewhat like caramel, only not.

This recipe tasted very familiar to us, and after a while we got why – butterscotch is very similar to a traditional type of Norwegian caramels, made from butter. Smørbukk.

It’s one of those candies that always seemed to end up in the Christmas tree, and always stayed there for a long time, because it wasn’t anybody’s favourite.

This was quite good, though, and we actually preferred it over the chocolate fondue.

Ingredients

110 g packed brown sugar
80 ml light syrup
60 ml heavy whipping cream
30 g butter or margarine
3 ml vanilla extract

1. Stir together the brown sugar, the syrup, the cream and the butter in a saucepan.
2. Bring to boil. Stir occasionally so it doesn’t stick.
3. Bring down in temperature and let cook for 5-10 minutes (depending on how firm you want the fondue).
4. Stir in the vanilla.
5. Transfer to a fondue pot to keep wam – although it worked fine without one.

Bringing the butterscotch fondue to a boil

Before the Christmas baking set seriously in, my mother had to have a birthday cake. Mum does not particularly care for cream cakes, so this was an easy choice to bake. It first came into the family when Sister started Home Economics in sixth grade and it has been with the family since then. Especially since we usually end up with more redcurrants than we can reasonably eat. (Personally, I’m not a big redcurrant fan, but I like them in this cake.)

It is a quick and easy cake to make, and if you don’t have blackcurrants or redcurrants, I would think you could substitute with blueberries or other similar berries. Given the season, it might not be easy to get fresh berries, so frozen berries work perfectly.

I ended up making double the size to fill a Bundt pan. (Otherwise, it is the recipe for two 22 cm round cake pans)

Ingredients

150 g butter or margarine

6 eggs
4 dl sugar

5 dl flour

4 dl fresh or frozen (cleaned) redcurrant or blackcurrants (or any other berries for that matter)

Icing:

1 dl icing sugar

1 tbsp water

A desilitre of frozen redcurrants

1) Melt the butter/margarine and let it cool.

2) Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius.

3) Mix together eggs, sugar, flour and the melted butter. Don’t use an electric mixer!

4) Put the mixture into a well-greased cakepan (whether it be a bundt pan or an ordinary one)

5) Add the berries. It is not necessary to thaw berries if they are frozen.

I added the redcurrants both to the top and bottom of the cake

6) Bake the cake in the lower parts of the oven for 25-30 minutes, depending on how you want your cake.

7) Let the cake cool down before you take it out of the pan.

Mix the icing sugar and water to an icing and add to the top of the cake (after the cake has cooled down). Let the icing set before serving.

Cake, just out of the oven

If you want to freeze the cake, omit the last step.

We ended up using melted white chocolate as the icing on the cake, since it was a festive occasion.

Redcurrant cake with white chocolate icing

Or, lemon mousse in English, of which there seems to be oodles of recipes on the internet.

I think the first time I really made this dessert, was back in home ec. in seventh grade. I remember it, because the other dish my group had to prepare, boiled fish of some sort, ended up being inedible, and so it was really pure luck that the lemon mousse turned out splendidly.

This time around, many things seemed to go wrong, and it did not turn out perfectly in consistency – the mousse refused to set properly. But as it tasted absolutely delicious, and tart, I’m still sharing

Lemon Mousse, or Sitronfromasj, from Gyldendals Store Kokebok,

Published 1981

Recipe should yield 4-6 portions, depending on size. It says that it should take 2-3 hours to set after making.

Ingredients:

2 eggs, split into yolks and whites.

2 tbsp sugar (granulated)

the juice and zest of half a lemon

4 sheets gelatin, loosened in water.

3 dl whipping cream.

Instructions

1. Prepare all the ingredients – ie. zest the lemon and juice it, separate yolks and whites, and so on.
2. Whisk the egg yolks and the sugar together.
3. Add the lemon juice and the lemon zest to the egg/sugar mixture, and whisk a bit.
4. Make sure to squeeze the water out of the gelatin sheets, and put them in a pot on low heat on the stove to melt them.
5. Pour the gelatin into the egg/sugar/lemon mixture, while stirring gently.
6. Let it set for a bit.
7. If you’re making the mousse with whipping cream (see below for alternative ingredients if you don’t), whip the cream, then add it to the lemon mousse mixture.
8. Whisk the egg whites until they’re firm and white. (And you can turn the bowl upside down without anything falling out. NOTE: Don’t turn it on its head until you’ve been whisking for a while, and when you do, do it carefully.)
9. Mix the egg whites carefully into the mousse.
10. Pour the mousse into a serving bowl or individual serving bowls.
11. Put it in a cold place to let it set.

Notes:

• We had a lot of lemons and limes, so I ended up using the juice from a whole lemon, plus a lime, which I suspect (in addition to trouble with the gelatin) was why the mousse did not set. It made the recipe wonderfully tart, though, as I did not add any additional sugar to compensate for the additional lime juice.
• Despite it not setting, it did get somewhat mousse-like qualities, and it tasted fantastic. We couldn’t have more than a couple of spoonfuls, as we were full from dinner. The rest was eaten the next day, by the grandmother, an experienced lemon mousse maker, who thought it tasted wonderful.
• Even though raw eggs are deemed safe to use in Norway, due to testing and procedures, because the nature of the internet means things can be read here and made everywhere, I thought it might be good with an additional note. Obviously there is a salmonella risk here that a) was not apparent in 1981 when the cookbook was published, but b) is also rather slim according to statistics I’ve seen. But follow the guidance of your country’s health/food departments, however also be sure that the hygiene is top-notch, and that your eggs look and smell normal before using. (Some countries you can buy pasturized eggs, which I’ve read can be difficult to whip the whites off, but anything to feel safer.)

The finished product

The Lemon Mousse can also be made without cream.

Then you use:

3 eggs, separate yolks and whites

1 dl granulated sugar

the juice from a whole lemon

the zest from half a lemon

and 3 sheets of loosened gelatin.

And omit step 7 from the instructions above.

After really binging this weekend (why, oh, why?) I felt the need for something healthy for dinner today. I landed on carrot patties – made from the same principle as hamburger patties, I guess, but without meat.

If you have a food processor, this is not a time-consuming recipe. If not, like me, you’re going to be spending some time shredding the carrots and potatoes.

Carrot patties (gives about 6-7 patties)

from Kokeboka – for deg som syns mat er gøy by Aase Strømstad

Ingredients

4 carrots, finely shredded.

4 raw, medium sized potatoes, finely shredded-

1 dl rolled oats

1/2 onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp parsley, chopped.

2 eggs

1 ts salt (It could probably do with a bit more than this, but better safe than sorry.)

1 ts ground Nutmeg

margarine for frying.

1. Shred carrots, and potatoes if you haven’t done it already.

Shredded carrots and potatoes

2. Finely chop the onion and parsley.

3. Mix all the ingredients together well in a mixing bowl, until it looks like a dough/thick mixture.

The dough mixture. It kind of looks like a meaty mixture, doesn't it?

4. Take about a handful of the dough, and shape into a patty. (You might want to squeeze out some extra moisture – the carrots seem to generate quite a bit of it.) Do this until you have no more dough in the bowl.

Look at that carrot juice, just flowing out.

Two properly squeezed patties

5. Cook them on a frying pan in margarine until the patties are nice and brown on both sides.

6. Serve.

With apologies for the bad picture quality, the finished product

It tasted surprisingly yummy.

Additional notes:

• I would have this either as the main “meat” or as a side dish to meat.
• Make sure you squeeze the additional moisture out of the patties – carrots produce a lot of juice, I discovered, and it was easier getting some shape to the patties after the surplus juice was gone.
• Make sure you cook the patties long enough – keep them small in shape and not too big. My first patty was rather large, and it resulted in it being slightly undercooked, but only just so I could taste the raw potatoes, which was tasting too undercooked for me. The others were fine.

With the recent upgrades over at The Royal Twist, it seemed like the time to do something here as well.

I’m definitely going to try to be more present, and publish more stuff here.