Quinoa pro quo

With a pasta-free week, more for imagination-inducing reasons than anything else (although cutting back on pasta is one of the few things in the Low-Carb High-Fat community I could live with...), I've made a number of dishes that are a little more creative than 'anything-and-pasta'.

One of the good alternatives to boring pasta, is the wonderful, magical, fabulous world of quinoa. This exceptionally tasty and superbly easy seed/grain is so easy to cook, and it tastes fantastic. We've made two different and equally tasty dishes this week, including stuffed peppers with quinoa, onion and pine nuts (yum!), and I've found loads more recipes I want to try.

The most successful was salmon with quinoa salad, inspired by this recipe from Waitrose. (I just can't stop shopping at Waitrose, even if it is way too expensive - not only do they have amazing food and a great selection, they keep giving me recipe cards and ideas that I just have to try. Even if the ingredients can only be found in Waitrose - which is partly why I keep going back. Clever, them...)

Salmon with quinoa and bean salad

100g or so quinoa, with some bulgur wheat if you like
Salmon - we used chops on the bone
Juice and zest from a lemon
¼ tbsp cayenne pepper
Olive oil
A bit of shredded fennel
200g green beans, topped, tailed and halved
1 avocado, diced
3 tomatoes, diced
Half a cucumber, diced
Red onion, sliced
Rocket salad
Mint leaves, roughly chopped

Cook quinoa (and bulgur wheat) as it says on the pack. Mix lemon zest, cayenne pepper and a little olive oil, and brush the salmon with it. Grill the salmon on rather high temperature, for about 6-8 minutes or until it is light pink through (but don't burn it, the oven or the baking sheet...). Baste or brush with the oil if you like while cooking.

Mix the salad in a bowl, tossing in quinoa and herbs. Combine the lemon juice with salt, pepper, some more olive oil, and whatever is left of the oil for the salmon. Drizzle the dressing over the salad and season if needed.

Serve the piping hot salmon with salad and lemon chunks for squeezing. Shockingly good!

The Other Hand

It seems like I haven't read anything new in a while, but that's mainly because I am still working my way through a very enjoyable trilogy +1, of which I will write more later. In the meantime, partly because this is a book I care about, and partly to keep up the balance of books vs food, I have been thinking that I wanted to say something about a quite brilliant book I read some time ago - Chris Cleave's The Other Hand .

The Other Hand is a thought-provoking novel, told from two disparate points of view, and with two distinctive voices. The main character is Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee to the UK, who has made her way to a suburb outside London to find the only people she knows in this foreign land - a couple she met on a beach in her homeland, during events which are slowly and gradually uncovered, and drive a lot of the plot of the book. The plot is somewhat convoluted, but broadly speaking covers events in the present: Little Bee leaves an immigration centre, goes to find Andrew O'Rourke, whose driving licence is the only piece of information she has about where to find him, and finds his wife Sarah and their son Batman (or Charlie, as anyone but himself calls him) in the process of going through his funeral after he has committed suicide. In the past, as the reader finds out through flashbacks in the voice of the two women, Little Bee met the couple on a beach in Nigeria, and horrible events unfolded, which in many ways are connected to what happened to Andrew.

I find it quite difficult to recount more of the plot, without getting into complicated explanations, because this is a very carefully and thoroughly woven story, with many cross-points connecting many stories over the course of the book. It is explicitly political, and seems to include many sides of the story, including political, economical, journalistic and administrative aspects, even if it is narrated by Little Bee, a young Nigerian girl and Sarah, a rather posh editor of a women's magazine. It tells a story of immigration from the immigrant's point of view, it tells of political and economical events in the world that affects everyone and causes harm, violence and death to many. The author cares a lot for his subjects, not just the Nigerian eponymous heroine, but equally for the accomplished and at the same time rather hapless English heroine. He also cares about the political background for the story, and without describing an answer, describes an issue that needs to be questioned more and by many.

The book is food for thought, and is especially good in that it seems to tell one story of immigration from a different perspective than we normally see it (the press in particular), while not becoming one-sidedly well-meaning and do-goody. It does not deal with any of the issues it raises simply or impartially, but gets across a gripping and remarkable tale without being (too) melodramatic. Many passages are both funny and sad, and there are several laugh-out-loud moments - many courtesy of the world of the women's magazine. The majority of characters are believable, heart-warming and multi-faceted, which makes for sympathetic reading throughout.

I got my edition from a Norwegian friend, and it was odd to read an English book, especially one as vocal as this one, in Norwegian. I tend to find the language stilted and awkward in many cases, including this one. Part of the problem in "Little Bee", as the Norwegian (sic!) translation of the title is, is that there is a marked difference in narrative voice between the two main narrators, and also with several of the supporting characters. Little Bee speaks 'proper' English, as she has learnt from the immigration centre, but there is a Nigerian twang on the way she speaks and tells things. She is very self-reflective on this subject, and language is one of the key subjects of the book. Sarah speaks with a middle-class, middle-England accent, and we also meet a very outspoken Jamaican girl, as well as others with more or less grasp of the English language. Reading all this in Norwegian is particularly odd, and even if the general translation was good (which I can't say that it was), the dialogue would, and does, suffer from this translation. But because this is a book where content plays as much a role as form, and where the form is visible through the translation, it is still a strikingly good read, and one that stays with you long after you've finished reading.

The Guardian review is also recommended for anyone who wants a better understanding of the book and plot!

Cakes in a cup

Today was my return to work after an extended break, and what better way to convince everyone they have missed me than by bribing them with sweet cakes?

I haven't baked much in ages, and it was fantastic to come home to my Kenwood Chef, although he's caught a slight cough on low speeds - I think he's just not used to being used these days. I decided to go all out and try a few different cupcake recipes, inspired by the gorgeous front page of a Tara Smak magazine I nicked from home. I planned about 6 different versions, and ended up making a little over a hundred cupcakes, in these four flavours:

White chocolate and banana cupcakes, with banana frosting and home dried banana chips on top


Triple chocolate with two different types of chocolate frosting


Carrot cupcakes with cream cheese icing


Lemon and poppy seed with yellow lemon frosting

The recipes and methods were modified versions of recipes I found online and in the magazine, I'll write them all up another day (after all, it was my first day back to work, so I am legitimately tired!)

Peas and Love

As we move into autumn, my favourite time of year, the food I crave changes too, and cooking becomes more and more about hearty, warm dishes, with ingredients that reflect the season and tastes that resembles the multitude of earthy, autumnal colours outside. And there is nothing better than being outside, in any weather, with the fresh air of fall, and the smells of the world changing into storage and survival mode. There's just nothing like it! Coming back inside as well, to the smells of food ready to heat you up from the inside out, is unbeatable, and it speaks to me in a way that no fresh salad or chilled summer soup can do - wonderful as they might be, they're just not autumn food...

A lot of the seasonal food is also very traditional, reflecting age-old ways of making, storing, preparing and keeping food. This recent dish, for instance, is based on dry peas, a simple, cheap, nutritious and space-efficient vegetable that can be stored over long periods, and ensures a reasonable intake of vegetables and vitamins even mid-winter. It also has a bit of cured ham, and is boiled with the bone of the ham for extra taste. This is another traditional way of keeping meat over the winter months: salting and drying legs of lamb, which creates the most amazing taste. (As a side note, I am going to attempt a self-cured ham this year, and will report on the progress as I get started.)

It's a simple soup recipe, and I can recommend making loads, as it also goes well in a thermos/flask for lunch on a mountain trip - just remember to bring a cup and a spoon.

Autumn Pea Soup

200-300 g dried peas - traditionally yellow, but it tastes just as nice with green

1 onion, chopped

2-3 celery sticks, sliced

or 1 celeriac, cubed

Leftovers of a cured ham on the bone

Water or stock - 2 liters or so

Thyme

1 leek, sliced in rings

2-3 carrots, sliced

Pepper

Soak the peas in water overnight. Rinse and add to a large casserole with fresh water or stock (remember that the soup will get quite salty from the ham). Add the onion, celery/celeriac, ham and thyme, and bring to the boil. Let it simmer for 2-3 hours, until the peas are tender. When there is about 20 minutes left, add carrot and leek. Remove the meat on the bone, cut the meat off and put it back into the soup. (You can use boiled sausage, other dried meats or similar instead or as well.)

Season with pepper, and serve with flatbread and good butter. 

Pea soup with ham and carrots, served with flat bread

Faceless Killers - Toothless Crime

Part of summer reading is crime reading. Especially for summer time spent in isolated areas, like lighthouses and cabins in mountains, far from people and civilisation, reading books that can put a slight chill into a warm night, and an extra darkness to the isolation is an attractive choice from time to time. It is all part of the experience: scaring yourself a little bit, while in what is really a safe, but could be frightening, environment. It's getting that enjoyable shiver and letting yourself get just a little bit afraid, knowing that you can close the book at any time. While I doubt this is what Aristotle had in mind, it is still somewhat cathartic to let the crime novel grip you, and give your frightened emotions free reins for a while.

At the same time, isn't it nice to be feeling slightly clever when you can spot the solution just a little ahead of the detective - or even just add it all together with a knowing nod after the solution has been presented to you? Yes, crime fiction has many good points, albeit not all of them literary. But literature doesn't always have to be good literature to be good, it is sometimes enough for it to be entertaining, have a good story, believable characters and a good puzzle. (A good story told in a bad way is, after all, less tedious than reading a bad story told in a bad way, or sometimes a bad story told in a half-decent way. Many beach-skimmers - those bricks you bring on holiday to keep you entertained while you don't really have the energy to pay attention to narrative structure or protagonistic devices, are good stories wrapped in bad language, like Labyrinth by Kate Mosse, or  - dare I say it? - Dan Brown's collection of badly told mysteries.)

Unfortunately, my effort of a similar read this summer fell unsatisfyingly on stony ground, even if I had rather optimistic expectations. Many Swedish authors have shown a remarkable ability to write good crime literature, and even for a reluctant subscriber to the genre like myself, I have to admit that there are many readable (or seeable on film) efforts from the likes of Sjöwall and Wahlöö, who 'started' the trend, Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Liza Marklund, Håkan Nesser, Camilla Läckberg, and many more. I haven't read any Mankell before - and I still haven't touched the Larsson trilogy! - so when I found a nice hardback of the first of his Wallander books at my grandfather's house, I thought I'd give it a go.

I probably shouldn't have bothered - it was boring. The book is called 'Faceless Killers', and unfortunately the entire cast is rather without any facial features whatsoever. The crime committed wasn't very gripping or believable, even if Mankell threw a good array of blood and viciousness at it - I just didn't care. Victims and supporting characters never got real enough to bother about, and while many were described as two-faced and 'complex', they remained one-dimensional throughout the story. And as for Wallander - I can only hope and think that he must have developed significantly over the course of the next few books for people to have developed such a relationship with him, and the author building up a fan-base like he has.

Not only is Kurt Wallander a very stereotypical detective character - divorced, overweight, brooding and gloomy, a bit of a loose cannon, prone to drinking too much, a bit of a misogynist, with few friends and a complicated family life. He is also very annoying, from the propensity the narrator has to continuously refer to him as Kurt Wallander, never just Kurt or Wallander, always Kurt Wallander, both names. (I couldn't help thinking 'brand building?', but that might be a conspiracy thought too far?)

There are aspects of political discourse in the book, undoubtedly inspired by the political writing which  Sjöwall and Wahlöö based their fiction on, but as politics go, the different sides to the question of immigration, racism and challenges this brings to modern society, Kurt Wallander and the book itself falls short of any conclusions. And the crime? While it is solved, the reader doesn't feel satisfied in the same way as one would with the classics, like Sherlock Holmes, or Agatha Christie's detectives - and that is a bad thing, if you ask me.