Puffy pancakes and endless runs to the supermarket

I don´t go to supermarkets no more, I am so tired of those big stores full of shit…processed shit. I have a small local, organic store I go to.  They have Icelandic veggies and good stuff from Sicily and from an organic farm in England.

They have a great stone milled flour from Marino.  That is a real flour. I recommend you read the book Cooked by Michael Pollan and especially the chapter about bread.  Don´t buy the cheapest processed flour that has been vitamin added because the have taken all the nutrition out if by too much processing… (READ THAT BOOK! It is good).

I used to go to the supermarket all the time and stock up on canned stuff that usually ended up expired on my shelves. Now I shop fresh stuff only.  Even my spice rack was full of expired spices since I never used them.  Now I don´t buy spices even, just salt, pepper and good oregano.  I use fresh herbs.

I could go on and on about processed food….when you buy canned salsa, vacuum packed tortillas,supermarket roasted chicken and burrito spice blend in a pack …and go home to mix it all together you are NOT cooking from scratch! Enough babbbbling…It is just good to be aware of what you are eating. There is a joke in Iceland now:  It has only rained twice this summer.  First for 23 days and then for 45. As I sit here now this morning, the rain is pouring down.  What else to do on a rainy and windy day but spend it in the kitchen.  I have few things lined up.  For lunch A PIZZA!  I´ve got top quality ingredients for it. I have rhubarb curd I´ve got to do something with.  I went to the fish store yesterday and got all kind of fresh fish, salted cod,  haddock to make the famous Icelandic stew called Plokkfiskur, a Blue Ling that I have not decided what to do with  and a fresh cod for dinner tonight that I will roll up in a batter and deep fry Spanish style.

The rain is at least good for the garden and the flowers…

If you want something nice and easy for brunch this is a super easy and mess free recipe….have a great weekend.

Puffy pancakes

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup good flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3-4 tablespoon butter

Heat the oven to 200°c.  Put in a oven proof dish with the butter. Mix together eggs, milk, flour and salt with an electric mixer.  Take out the oven proofed dish with the now melted butter …WARNING, IT IS HOT 🙂 Pour the pancake mix in the dish on top of the butter. Put back in the oven for about 17 minutes. Serve warm with something sweet or savory, bacon, smoked salmon, fruits, jam…

Kind of Italian brunch

Finally we got good weather so I got the chance to make brunch and eat outside on the balcony.

I saw this recipe the other day and was excited to try it, and you know what, I loved it.

I used what I had in the kitchen and here it goes:

Eggs in a tomato sauce

• Passata,organic tomatoes
• Red pepper
• Fresh basil
• Garlic
• Parmigiano Reggiano
• Salt
• Pepper
• Oregano
• Eggs (as many as you want to eat)
• Olive oil,extra virgin

Fry the red pepper and garlic for a little while, do not burn the garlic.  Add the Passata  tomato sauce and spices.  Simmer on medium heat for 5 minutes.

Break in the eggs, the eggs do float on the sauce, they do not need to touch the pan.  Cover the pan and simmer until the eggs are cooked as you like them to be.

Sprinkle with Parmigiano Reggiano and fresh basil.  Serve with Grissini bread sticks and oven baked bacon.  I served a Beronia Reserva with this one.

Egg fried in a slice of red pepper – great presentation

I´ve been collecting stuff on my boards on Pinterest.  Lately I read where someone said it was pointless to pin all those pins and not do anything of what you pin.  I have lots of pins I wanna do, and after reading this I started doing as much as I could of what I pinned.  Therefor I´ve  been trying so many things since I started pinning.

This egg in a slice of  pepper is one of those things.  Typical pin to pin but not try.  So I did this, it worked well and I would totally do this again, specially if I get friends over for some B&B here in the country.

I saw the funniest website where people post photos of what they have made after pinning it.  The result didn´t look as great as what they pinned.  I could post quite a few photos of things I have tried and didn´t look as impressive as the image I pinned…

lots of fun food related stuff at THE HOUSE BY THE SEA …likeedilike

The healthiest pancakes ever, at least that I have made and they are very tasty as well.

I make pancakes quite often.  It´s a good way to start the morning with something healthy and a good way to give my little girl  nutritious breakfast.

I usually don´t follow a recipe.  I  just make something out of what I have but I use almost always oat meal or barley, a yogurt with Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium (AB milk) and wheat germ.

If you need to make a food more nutritious it´s a clever thing to use wheat germ.  It is mild in taste and works well in a pancake mix for example, it makes classic white flour American pancakes a lot healthier and you don´t taste the difference.

The good thing about pancake batter is that you can use so many things to make them, oat meal, rice, barley, all kinds of flour, milk, buttermilk or yogurt, wheat germs and all kinds of seeds.  When I do few for breakfast I use about 1 egg, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 cup of dry ingredients and half a cup of wet ingredients and a tablespoon or two of oil or butter.

I usually fry an egg, over easy with a little runny yolk with the pancakes and if I have an avocado that´s the best. Once in a while I have a liiiittle bit of bacon with it all.

This is a recipe for a super duper healthy pancakes.  They are very good.  Make them and cook them like you would do with the American type of pancakes.

Crazy healthy pancakes – very nutritious

• 1 cup flour (white, whole wheat or spelt)
• 1 cup oat meal
• 3 tablespoons wheat germ
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup wheat bran
• 3 tablespoons sesame seeds, grind in food prosessor
• 3 tablespoons sunflower seeds, grind in food prosessor
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2  tablespoons honey
• 4  tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cups buttermilk
• Water

Put everything but the water in a bowl and mix well together.  Add the water until you are happy with the batter, more if you like it thin, less if thicker.

Every morning I make a smoothie,  usually AB milk, banana, blueberries and little bit of fresh orange juice. It goes very well with the pancakes.

Girly brunch and pink pancakes with sage

I got invited to a really nice brunch last weekend.  My next door neighbor and a good friend in the country was having a flock of girls over for brunch.  These girls are in a “brunch club” and meet once in a while for brunch.  They are all into food and every girl brings one dish to the brunch and the standard of the food that is served is high.

Every time they have a new theme and this time it was fresh herbs.

They made for example mint salad, basil cocktail, shrimp salad, coconut-banana desert, zucchini with basil pesto, really good pasta with homemade pesto and rice wrap with fresh mint and coriander.  Everything was delicious.

Once the food was on the table I forgot all about my camera and enjoyed the food and the company as well as the good weather that was so nice so we could sit outside in the sun and eat.

For the brunch, I made pink pancakes with fresh sage. I served the pancakes with sour cream and fried bacon.  Sage and bacon goes well together.

Pink pancakes

• 1/2 beet, cooked
• Pancake batter
• Fresh sage, 2 pck.

I lightly fried the sage in butter on a pan before adding it to the pancakes.

I mixed the cooked  beet with a half a cup of milk in the blender .

This is how my batter was this time

• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup flour
• Ca 1 cup milk (or as much as you need to get a good pancake batter)

The amount of milk depends on if you like thicker american pancakes or thinner crepes style pancakes.

Mix the ingredients together, as well as the beet that went to the blender.  Add the sage to the dough..

To make the pancakes round I used a cutter I have, I made rather small pancakes.  I used what got cut off the pancakes to make few roses for decoration.  You can see the images below how I rolled it up.

Eating only what grows in Iceland, how would that go?

I have been thinking about this concept “eating local” and seasonal lately after reading few books by American authors.  We don´t have much seasonal…Kind of only one season, fall.  Potatoes, carrots and roots during fall and lots of berries (picking them myself because usually they don´t sell the Icelandic berries at the supermarket and the few ones you can buy in stores are crazy expensive).  Other than few types of berries we got no fruits.

There is no one that makes oranges, bananas, melons, apples, lemons, you name it, to sell in the stores.

We have big greenhouses making peppers, cucumber, salad leaves, carrots, few different lettuces, broccoli, tomatoes and mushrooms all year round, no special season there, and that´s almost all you get “grown in Iceland”. (Once in a while I find a zucchini).  No onion or garlic, pumpkins or eggplants…only imported

We have of course lots of fish, mussels and other seafood, lamb and beef all year around. Our fish is very fresh, so is the lamb.   Many Icelanders who eat meat eat horse meat and whales when they fish them.   Then we  have chickens and pigs.

We grow barley but  no white flour and no sugar or syrup at all.   Few farmers have been making honey.  A tiny little jar is very expensive, so honey would be luxury.

My boyfriend ate nothing but Icelandic food for a whole month, that meant NO SUGAR and no white flour and no alcohol. We did buy a little jar of honey for him to last the month 🙂  At that time I was pregnant so I was to lazy to participate fully in this experiment, with all my pregnancy cravings 🙂

It was interesting.  It went well, We do have food in Iceland and for sure we would not starve. BUT! I am happy we import some things.  There are few things I couldn´t live with out, like my fruit smoothie in the morning,  sugar for baking, white flour for my pizzas and pasta and last but not least my red wine.

I made these Barley pancakes for my boyfriend during the Icelandic food period using only Icelandic grown food.  They are healthy, simple and good.

Barley pancake patties

• 1/2 cup Barley flour (ground barley)
• 1/2 cup Quick cooking Barley, boiled in water with a little bit salt for 5 minutes
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk, or enough to make think pancake patties
• 1-2 tablespoons melted butter

Mix the ingredients well togeather. Melt butter on a pan and add to the batter.  Cook the pancake patties on both sides on a pan, just like pancakes.  With a little bit of white flour mixed with the barley flour they get a little lighter.  I use butter because we don´t have any Icelandic cooking oils.

It´s very good with an egg , salt and dried chili flakes.

Gallo pinto

One of my favorite breakfast is Gallo Pinto. Rice and Black beans, what a combo. I got used to it when living in Costa Rica for a while. I got it every day and wasn´t to fond of it to begin with, but learned to love it. So good for your digestion.

I serve the Gallo Pinto with an egg, sunny side up or over easy and often with corn tortillas. I make a lot and put few portions in the freezer.

Gallo pinto

• 3 cups rice (boiled and chilled)
• 2 cups cooked black beans or one can.
• Red or green chile
• Little bit of garlic
• Half a onion
• About 2 carrots
• 1 red pepper
• Fresh coriander
• Veggie oil
• Salt

All the veggies diced small. On a pan in a veggie oil cook onion, red pepper, carrot, garlic, chile pepper. Then you add rice and cooked beans. Then some coriander and salt to taste.

Corn tortillas

• 2 cups Masa Harina
• 1 og 1/4 cup water
• Salt

This video shows you well how this is done.

Served with a glass of chrispy citrus white wine or Mimosa…well even Bloody Mary on a beautiful saturday morning.

p.s…This is one of those dishes that just gets better reheated.