Soup is a dish so very wonderful, tasty and full of vitamins, if you do make it from scratch using fresh vegetables though. Ones you start making your own soup you will never go back the ready-made once you buy at the grocery store, they are just full of sugar and salt and no nutrition for your body. Making your own is quick, very easy and healthy, and you also get lots of minerals and vitamins in your body that your body will love you for. I tend to try making different ones from time to time, but my favorites are: Creamy Cauliflower/broccoli Soup, Farmhouse vegetable soup, French Onion Soup and Tomato Soup with eggs I usually make these ones quite often.
It’s autumn in Norway now and snuggling up on the couch under a blanket while hearing the crackling from the fireplace is a wonderful feeling, and what suits better than a nice comforting soup to warm you up with. So this time I chose to make Tomato soup with eggs. Tomatoes are high in Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium and Potassium, it also contains a high level of Lycopene which is proven to help prevent cancer. The high-quality protein in eggs helps you to feel fuller longer and stay energized.
Serves 2 -3
Ingredients:
2 tins of diced tomatoes
1 tbs tomato paste
100 gr. Cherry tomatoes (boiled and peeled)
2 medium sticks celery (sliced)
1 medium carrot (sliced)
3 shallots onion (sliced)
2 garlic cloves
3 cm long of a medium leek (sliced)
2 tbs fresh chopped basil
1 cup beef and vegetable broth
1 tbs butter
4 tbs fresh cream
1 ts sugar
A small pinch of nutmeg
Taste with salt and pepper
4 eggs
How to:
Cut all the vegetables in dices. Melt butter in a fry-pan on medium heat, when the butter has melted add the carrot, onion and garlic, let cook until tender. In the meanwhile add the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, cherry tomatoes, celery stick, leek and beef/vegetable broth in a saucepan on high heat until it starts bubbling, then let simmer on low to medium heat for about 7 minutes. Add the vegetables from the frying pan to the saucepan and let cook for about 10 -15 minutes.
Meanwhile add water in a saucepan and bring to boil. Add the eggs and let cook for 9 – 10 minutes. Peel and cut in half.
Add the fresh cream and all the spice including the fresh chopped spice. Let cook for a couple of minutes.
Serve with egg and nice bread. If you dont like eggs or prefer tomato soup without it, you can always serve with it alone or with crispy cheese and sour cream.
After attending a Sushi and Sashimi class held by”The Flying Culinary Circus” we got very inspired to try making our own Sushi.
The expectations of the end result were very low as we know it takes up to 8-10 years of training to become a Sushi Chef and they spend two of these years only cooking Sushi rice. However we got all the necessary ingredients to make Sushi rolls and Nigiri filled with Scampi or Salmon:
- Salmon
- Scampi
- Wasabi
- Sushi Rice (Made Japanese style)
- Bamboo mat
- Nori Seaweed (didn’t end up using it this time)
- Cucumber (for crunchiness)
- Avocado (for creaminess)
- Sesame seeds (black and white)
- Plastic Wrap
- Sushi and Sashimi Soy Sauce (needs to be a bit lighter than normal soy sauce)
- Pickled Ginger
We rolled our sleeves up and got ready to make some Sushi following the steps told by Japanese Sushi Chefs. The first task was to cut the Salmon in nice, thin slices.
Firstly we made Nigiri, that was not such a hard task and then we started on the Sushi rolls.
These are the steps we followed making the Sushi rolls:
Place the bamboo mat on your kitchen bench and place plastic wrap on top of the bamboo mat. Then grab a handful of rice. It’s important to keep your hands wet while working with sushi rice because it’s very sticky. Keep a bowl next to you with water that you’ve added a touch of rice wine vinegar to it when making Sushi.
Gently put the rice in the middle of the plastic wrap, and start spreading it equally on the wrap, creating a layer of rice covering almost the entire sheet except the upper margin of about 2 cm that should be kept uncovered. Later on, the margins need to be empty of rice in order to close the Sushi roll properly. Be careful not to compress the rice, but merely spread it over the plastic wrap.
Now it’s time to place a slice Salmon or Scampi on the edge of the plastic wrap, along with the cucumber and avocado.
Using the closer edge of the rolling mat, close on the filling with the plastic wrap making a rectangular shaped hill and tighten it from above.
Move forward; continue rolling in the rectangular hill steps, keeping it tight with every move until you reach the end of the wrap. Put pressure on the roll from all three sides at all time, especially on stops to allow it to roll tightly. Sprinkle Sesame seed on top and use a wet, sharp knife to cut the roll in to little Sushi units.
Since this was our first try we ended up being quite happy with the result, but we could have worked the rice a little bit better to get it more firm.
A nice Sushi meal needs to be accompanied with a nice glass of wine. We tried a Battenfeld-Spanier Estate Riesling 2009that tasted very nice with the Sushi meal.
We had great fun making the Sushi and even more fun eating it!
We will definitely do this again in the near future.
Well, the first celebrity chef, Antonin Carême known as “chef of kings and king of chefs,” gave us many classic recipes of todays cooking. He built the foundation of classic sauces and pastry.
Not only was he a good chef, but he also had a great interest in architecture which is mirrored in his cooking and presentation of dishes.
Background History of Carême
Antonin was born in 1784 (died 1833) to extremely poor parents who had twenty-five children and couldn’t afford to raise him. When he was seven, his father gave him a big meal at a tavern near the gates of Paris and then turned him out in the street to survive.
Fortunately, the first door that little Antonin knocked on was the home of a cook who took the boy in and gave him room and board. Antoine was eventually given a few cooking lessons and began his cooking apprenticeship which culminated in his being the most sought-after chef in Europe.
However, architecture, not cooking, was Carême’s first love. After he began a new apprenticeship to a famous pâtissier with a shop near the Palais-Royal, Carême was able to apply his architectural skills to the elaborate cakes and pastries that became one of his trademarks and still survives today in the croquembouche (from the French ‘Croque en bouche’ meaning ‘crunch in the mouth’), a popular wedding cake made with a high cone of profiteroles (choux puffs filled with pastry cream) bound with caramel.
Carême insisted on the importance of hygiene in professional kitchens. White clothes were his way of signifying the seriousness with which cooks should take cleanliness; and those high chefs’ hats (toques) was his way of displaying the chef’s importance in aristocratic households.
His works on pastries and desserts, confections as they were more generally called, laid down the foundation of classic French pâtisserie.
For Carême, the way food was served was as important as the way it tasted.
Careme's Cake Illustrations
Antonin Carême went on to work famous men and his first position for a Royalty was for England’s Prince Regent before he became George IV’s at which time Carême created the Apple Charlotte; Czar Alexander I, where Carême invented the Charlotte Russe, Chicken Kiev, and Mushrooms a la Greque; and, eventually, the Baron de Rothschild under whose patronage Careme was happiest. It was Rothschild who gave Carême a blank checkbook to spend as much money as he needed to create the most elaborate banquets in Europe. Rothschild also provided Carême with enough free time to write a series of famous cookbooks that fundamentally changed the future of French cooking. Carême’s recipes were divided into two sections. The more elaborate and often expensive recipes from the basis of what became known as grande cuisine (elaborate cooking) and haute cuisine (high class cooking). There was also another section an everyday cooking, or bourgeoisie cuisine.
While Carême’s grande cuisine recipes are seldom used, his haute cuisine and bourgeoisie cuisine recipes form the basis of what is commonly thought of as French cooking. It was Carême who created the soufflé, and perfected the use of puff pastry in many of the classic French desserts such as the Pithiviers, which he also created. Carême perfected and defined the use of those miraculous French sauces that are probably the most fundamental aspect of haute cuisine.
Some classic desserts of Antonin Carême:
Charlotte Russe
Meringues
Eclairs
Napoleon Cake
Apple Charlotte
Vol - au - Vents
Soufflé
He also set the standard for the first “Mother Sauces”
Antonine Carême’s Cooking Sauces – The 4 Classic Mother Sauces
These are referred to as Grandes Sauces or Sayces Meres. Antonin Careme which is the founding father of French “Grande Cuisin, Haute Cuisine and Bourgeoisie Cuisine came up with a system of categorizing hundreds of different sauces under 4 categories. The mother sauces were traditionally prepared in large quantities, and then separated into smaller portions with additional ingredients added to create a multitude of variations.
As sauce is the finishing touch on dishes, the ability to prepare a sauce sets the average cook at a new level. Those sauces are called “mother sauces” because most other sauces can be derived from them.
Bechamel Sauce
Bechamel Sauce is the king of all sauces and probably the one that is used the most frequently. Bechamel is a smooth, white sauce made by stirring milk into a butter-flour roux, the thickness of the sauce depends on the proportion of flour and butter to milk. It is usually served with white meats, eggs, and vegetables. It forms the basis of many other sauces.
Veloute Sauce
Veloute Sauce is a stock-based white sauce that can be made from chicken, veal, or fish stock thickened with white roux. The sauce is often enriched with egg yolks or cream.
Espagnole Sauce
Espagnole sauce is traditionally made from a rich meat stock, a mirepoix of browned vegetables (most often a mixture of diced onion, carrots and celery), a nicely browned roux, herbs and sometimes tomato paste.
Allemande Sauce
Is a sauce in French cuisine that is based on velouté sauce, but thickened with egg yolks and heavy cream, and seasoned with lemon juice.
Chef Auguste Escoffier updated the classification, replacing sauce Allemande with egg-based emulsions (Hollandaise and mayonnaise), and adding tomate. They set the standard for today’s mother sauces.
Béchamel
Espagnole
Hollandaise
Mayonnaise
Tomato sauce
Velouté
Books written by Carême
Carême wrote several books on cookery, above all the encyclopedic L’Art de la Cuisine Française (5 vols, 1833–34, of which he had completed three before his death), which included, aside from hundreds of recipes, plans for menus and opulent table settings, a history of French cookery, and instructions for organizing kitchens.
Le Pâtissier royal parisien, ou Traité élémentaire et pratique de la pâtisserie moderne, suivi d’observations utiles au progrès de cet art, et d’une revue critique des grands bals de 1810 et 1811 (Paris, 1815)
Le Maître d’hôtel français, ou Parallèle de la cuisine ancienne et moderne, considéré sous rapport de l’ordonnance des menus selon les quatre saisons. (Paris, 2 vols. 1822)
Projets d’architecture pour l’embellissement de Sainte Petersburg.
(Paris, 1821)
Projets d’architecture pour l’embellissement de Paris. (Paris, 1826)
Le Pâtissier pittoresque, précédé d’un traité des cinq orders d’architecture (Paris, 1828; 4th edition, Paris, 1842)
Le Cuisinier parisien, Deuxième édition, revue, corrigée et augmentée. (Paris, 1828)
L’Art de la cuisine française au dix-neuvième siècle. Traité élémentaire et pratique. (Volumes 1-5. [Work completed after Carême's death by Armand Plumerey.] Paris, 1833-1847)
The royal Parisian pastrycook and confectioner ([From the original of Carême, edited by John Porter] London, 1834)
French Cookery, Comprising l’Art de la cuisine française; Le Pâtissier royal; Le Cuisinier parisien… ( [translated by William Hall] London, 1836)
Bibliography
Hyman, Philip. “Culina Mutata: Carême et l’ancienne cuisine.” In L’Art culinaire au XIXe siècle: Antonin Carême. Exhibition catalogue. Paris: Délégation à l’action artistique de la ville de Paris, April 1984.
Hyman, Philip, and Mary Hyman. “La première nouvelle cuisine.” In L’Honnête volupté: Art culinaire, Art majeur, pp. 73–74. Paris: Editions Michel de Maule, 1989.
Rodil, Louis. Antonin Carême. Marseille: Laffitte, 1980.
Holidays are the best time for enjoying life and relaxing. During these holidays it’s very easy to gain a few pounds more than we would normally. Well, especially I do so at least! So, when the holiday is over and I’m back to normal working days I realize that my pants might be a bit tighter than when I started my holidays. I am not a big fan of extreme diets, I don’t think it’s healthy in any way so that’s totally out of the question. However what has become my perfect “diet” meal is vegetable soup with lots of cabbage and celery. Since I love food and cooking I find it important that the food has lots of flavor and that it’s not only a type of diet, but also healthy for you. I might eat this soup about 4 -5 a week for two weeks and I can really feel that the extra weight I gained just melts away!
I cook up a large amount of the soup and freeze it down so that I don’t have to cook it for a while.
You will need a large saucepan for this recipe.
Healthy Vegetable Soup Recipe
Makes up about 3.5 – 4 liter of soup
Ingredients:
1 medium cabbage
2 red onions
1 yellow onion
6 celery sticks
8 medium carrots
75 gram celery root
1 leek
1 fennel
1 yellow or orange capsicum
2.5 liter stock water
500 grams small boiled meat balls or fried chicken fillet.
½ tbs butter
3 tbs fresh herbs (Rosemary and Thyme)
Taste with, salt, pepper and nutmeg
Peel the carrots and celery root. Roast the capsicum and peel off the skin. Cut all the vegetables in small bite size pieces.
Fry the carrots, onion and capsicum for about 5 minutes in a large skillet using about ½ tbs butter.
Add the rest of the ingredients in a large saucepan and add the stock water. Then add the vegetables that you fried in the skillet.
Let cook for about 30 – 45 minutes or until vegetables are medium soft. Add the boiled meatballs or the fried chicken and the chopped herbs, taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg and let cook on low heat for about 5 minutes.
On a warm summers day it’s not ideal to be standing inside a warm kitchen cooking. On these days I prefer light food such as salads and off course BBQ’s, but it can sometimes end up being a little bit too much BBQ’ing! So on this day I felt like a light salad and it tasted delicious!
Serves 2
Ingredients:
½ Lettuce
2 Tomatoes
1 red onion
1 small tin of sweet corn
½ red capsicum
½ yellow capsicum
5 cm long medium sized cucumber
50 gram prusciotto
25 gram Parmesan Cheese (thinly sliced)
200 grams chicken (marinated with garlic and soy sauce)
2 soft/hard boild eggs.
Dressing:
1 dl Sour Cream
1 tsp water
½ garlic clove minced
Juice of ½ small lemon
1 tsp Mustard Seeds
1 pinch sugar
Taste with salt and pepper
Rinse well and cut all vegetables in bite size pieces. Quickly fry the Prosciutto so it becomes crispy. Boil the egg until soft – about 7 minutes.
Cut the chicken in bite size pieces. Fry the chicken until cooked right before serving and add some fresh chopped herbs to the cooked chicken pieces.
Mix the dressing ingredients well in a bowl.
Add the lettuce and the rest of the vegetables in a large bowl and mix well, toss with dressing. Add the warm chicken, sliced egg, sliced parmesan cheese and Prosciutto to the bowl.
I was so lucky to join a Sushi and Sashimi Class at the Trøndelag Food Festival (Trøndersk Matfestival) by The Flying Culinary Circus.
The Flying Culinary Circus is a team of four chefs from Norway. They are considered the only constantly travelling chef group in the world.
They have cooked for Royal families (Norway, Denmark, Malaysia, UAE..) and celebrities like The Black Eyed Peas, Pharrell Williams, a-ha, Guns ‘n Roses, Ke$ha and more. The chefs have visited more than 40 countries, from the USA to Malaysia from France to South Africa. The Flying Culinary Circus cater to all kinds of events, from gala dinners to celebrity parties. They are known for always adding a special performance to an event. They do stunts like flying in on parachutes or on a zip-line and for lighting their dishes on fire (Source Wikipedia).
They are a team of four top chefs from Norway. World class food and world wide circus by Tor Jørgen Kramprud Arnesen, Mathias Spieler Bugge, Trond Svendgård and Hans Kristian Larsen. The first and only chef group travelling together around the world.
They went through basic steps of making Sushi and Sashimi spiced up with entertainment and great Sushi tastings.
Cicilie | 
09 21st, 2011| 
