Stringy cheese chicken

Hello food loving people!

A little while ago I saw a Heston Blumenthal episode, and he made me crave for stringy cheese! I absolutely adore cheese! If you one day you get to ask me which my favorite cheese are, I´ll only be answering: there´s too many to choose from! But my favorites are in the blue cheese and well preserved section.

Now for this simple dish I used:
Mozzarella
Compté
Norwegian yellow cheese
Parmesan

All these have a purpose. Mozzarella for the stringiness, compté for the intense flavor, norwegian yellow cheese for the volume and the aged parmesan for the little crisp and creamy flavor.
Mix them all in a Bain Marie and let it melt naturally. Swirl a couple of times and do not worry about the sauce.

Cut the chicken breast in the middle so that it folds out. Put some stringy cheese in it, and close it up with some thread. Cut some carrots in fine lengths and mix it with some greens (asparagus, green beans, herbs...)  in the pan. The carrots will bring some sweet flavor to the dish.
Fry the chicken first and them the vegetables. Use some of the cheese sauce that was created and there you have a stringy cheese dish!
Remember one thing though, always season your food! and then taste before re-seasoning.

Have a great one!

Surf ' n ' Turf Mania

Now it´s my turn re-posting recipes for you guys!

I assure you, I have been cooking a lot for the past months, but the time for some blogging has been very limited. To recap my life for the past months, I began the year with the national barista championships, then I prepared for my 5 exams at the university! The fact that I was ill for a couple of months before my exams, meant that I had to read a LOT!
Food being one of the center pieces in my relationship, I have to say that my girlfriend has made a lot of improvements being my personal little chef :)
Following my exams, I get offered the job that many passionate baristas dream of getting! I get to be a assistant manager during the opening of the new Stockfleths i Oslo (soon to be the best coffee bar in Oslo!). Not only that, but I get to have the Norwegian Barista Champion as my boss! That, I have to say, is pretty AWSOME!
Now school has started again. Even if I haven´t had a lot of vacation, I´m ready for a new semester and new experiences!

As my first blogpost in a long time, I would like to share one of my favorite Italian recipes I made this summer. This is really a sunny day recipe, but can be appreciated a cold day with a great spanish or italian red wine.

I would like to call it:

Surf ´n ´ turf MANIA!

I honestly love this recipe, and can never get enough of it!

Now to the basics of this recipe:
- 3 tins of quality tunafish in olive oil
- homemade mayonaise (retail is great too)
- Ruccola salad
- Pre panned sirloin (you can use a lot of different types, but red meat is recommended)
- quality parmesan
- quality olive oil (extra virgin)
- pine nuts
- lime
- salt and pepper
- creme fraiche
- cayenne pepper
- LOVE

Now this sounds pretty easy, and the great thing is that it is easy!

If you have a little fatty sirloin, beat it to break the strings! then cook it in a pan with butter, or put it in the oven for a slower cook (160 degrees should do it (remember to moisture the meat while its cooking)).
Let it rest for a couple of minutes, and cut it into longer pieces.

For the tuna mix, empty the tuna tins into a bowl, then add a couple of spoons of mayonnaise. Then add some creme fraiche to mix the different creamy textures! Balance it after you own palate and add the salt, pepper, cayenne and lime!

Mix the ingredients, and add the meat. Let it cool during the night! Before serving, add the roasted pine nuts and ruccola and there you go!!!! it´s time for surf ´n´ turf MANIA!

I hope you enjoy my first long blog post! My god I now remember how much I love writing about this!

Fish dinner in Autumn

Good evening!
Everything is going great in my new job, very nice colleagues, a beautiful office in Oslo and I can cook great meals now that my bank account isn't always in negative.

It's been a long time since I cooked fish, I'm not even sure if I posted any recipe with fish on this blog but anyway, here's tonight's dinner: "Tzatziki Salmon" for the entrée, and "Stir fried Plaice" for the main course.

For this "Tzatziki Salmon", I used really basic ingredients to make a fine, fresh and well balanced entrée. I made a bed of avocado at the bottom, put slices of cucumber (marinated quickly with olive oil), and finished it with pomegranate on the top.

 
Around the cucumber, I put a tzatziki emulsion made from tzatziki with added liquid cream. I placed cubes of fresh salmon and small bits of cucumber pulp. Store it in the fridge for 5 minutes before serving.

The main course is simpler in taste and color, but still as delicious. I stir fried the Plaice filets in olive oil for 5 minutes on the skin and placed it in the oven for 3 minutes at 200°c. The green vegetables were also stir fried in olive oil for 5 minutes, but I added also balsamic vinegar.
I added lime juice just before serving, salt and pepper. You really don't need any sauce for Plaice, the fish speaks for itself.

Hope you enjoy these two recipes! Ask me if you want other fish recipes ;)

Reindeer Steak with Brunost Sauce

Hey everyone!

It has been a long since the last spot. Well, life has been very busy since last time. I graduated from my school in France after weeks working on my thesis, but I wasn't accepted in the Master program I wanted to do in Norway. Huge disappointment, but I got back on my feet directly and started looking for a job. I finally found the dream job, after few interviews I finally got it, and I'm based in Oslo which is just perfect!

After that, I had to come back to cooking and writing on the blog.

Here I am, with a new Camille's Norwegian meal: Reindeer Steak with Brunost Sauce. Every once in a while, there is a farmer market in Oslo where you can buy very typical Norwegian food, and this was the best place to find a meal to do my blog come back. I chose a beautiful piece of reindeer hunted just recently, and a brunost. For those who don't kno, brunost is a delicious brown goat cheese. It is made from whey that is cooked until caramelized. I love it and if you come to Norway, you need to try it.

For the meat, I cooked it in the oven at 60°c during 3 hours and finished it at 100°c for 30 minutes glazing it with a salty butter at the end. I recommend it bloody or at least pink to really enjoy the taste of the meat, but if you want it cooked more you can live it at 60°c for another hour.
For the sauce, I used 50g of butter, added 25g of Brunost and finished it with 10ml of liquid cream. It works perfectly with a meat, really delicious!

On the side, I cooked cantrell mushrooms quickly in a pan with olive oil, just remember to wash them very well before. Plus a rutabaga and parsnip purée: cut them in cubes, cook the cubes in boiling water until they are soft and mix them with liquid cream until you can a nice texture. Pour the cream carefully and just a little bit several time in order to avoid a very liquid purée.

I hope you like this come-back recipe! Feels good to cook and blog again:)

A nice dinner for two!

I know. It has been so long without posting... I really feel guilty. I've been so busy between France and Norway, trying to write my bachelor thesis. Anyway, here is a new post. I cooked a nice dinner for my girlfriend and I while I was in Oslo and I present you my new favorite vegetable:

They are indeed quite tasty.

For the starter, I used slices of eggplant and parsnip with a scampi on it. These vegetables work very well with seafood. I cooked the parsnip in boiling water for 10 minutes and the eggplant with butter, 3 minutes on each side.

For the scampi, I cooked them in a frying pan with a little bit of olive oil and soy sauce. Everything together really works perfectly and you can use it with fishes too.

For the next meal, I made an oven-baked salmon with spinach. Put the salmon with olive oil, salt and pepper in the oven at 180°c for 10 minutes. Don't overcook it or it will be dry, wasting this delicious fish.
With the spinach, put them in a saucepan with 10cl of water, a spoon of olive oil, salt and pepper and cook it at medium temperature until they are very soft without any water left. The sauce is a crème fraîche with lime, perfect for the salmon!

I might be without posting for some time again as my bachelor thesis is due very soon bu I'll do my best. See you soon!

Homemade Ravioli:)

I´ve made ravioli from scratch!!

Use my pasta recipe for the dough. For the filling I mixed chicken with asparagus, chives and goat cheese. But the thing with ravioli is that you can do all kinds of sorts!! cheese, ham, all vegetables and so on... The fantastic thing with fresh ravioli is that it only needs a couple of minutes in the pan.

Us a fork to press the dough edges and put it on a floured plate. Tips for cooking! use a regular pan and not saucepan. It´s much easier to get them out without breaking the dough!

I really made so much ravioli that we had to spare some for lunch the next day... It was perfect! Now my girlfriend want me to make them all the time!! Even today she asked me when I was thinking about making it again... Loving my new pasta machine :-)

Tomato risotto

I love my risotto! And here is another for you:

Risotto

basil

cherry tomato

white wine

crème fraiche

seasoning

butter

and of course parmesan :)

Not the hardest to make, but a beautiful dish it is!