Stuart's Soliloquy to the void » appetisers

Rehabilitating from thesis writing

Henrik Stuart — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:37:43 +0000

There has been a lot of silence on this blog during the past two months. Too much silence, really. However, all has not been lost as I have now finished my master’s thesis and handed it in. Only the defense remains. However, after scarcely having had time to bake, let alone writing about it, there is only one solution for rehabilitation: bake a lot of bread and make some awesome food. So I did just that, or, rather, I provided the bread, my wife provided the awesome food.

What we did was take a bunch of very lovely and delicate chantarelle mushrooms…

and we throw them on a frying pan together with a few regular champignons, some thyme, a bit of parsley and some thinly sliced garlic. They make for a very lovely photo if I have to say so myself.

To this we add a bit of oat-based cream (since I am lactose intolerant) that the mushrooms absorb fairly quickly.

Now all we need is a bit of my freshly baked french bread…

and the fried mushrooms are placed on the bread…

et voilà. Delicious as an appetiser or a night snack.

Fresh Vietnamese spring rolls

Henrik Stuart — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:12:12 +0000

Normally spring rolls is something with extreme amounts of fat and the hassle of deep frying them, so it was quite a refreshing change when I stumbled across fresh Vietnamese spring rolls on Haalo’s blog Cook (almost) anything at least once. Since these spring rolls require rice paper I had to find a small specialty store in central Copenhagen where I was able to buy it, fairly cheap taking into account how many spring rolls we have been able to make with it.

Each sheet is very thin but rather rigid and to be able to roll it, you dip it for a few seconds in tepid to warm water and then place it on a damp towel, add the ingredients and roll it up nicely.

Keeping with Haalo’s recipe, we added steamed chicken, spring onions, lettuce, coriander and vermicelli noodles, although I think the original fresh Vietnamese spring rolls are made with minced pork, but nevermind this. The spring rolls were slightly rubbery, which the lettuce offset nicely, and they were excellent as a fresh, different appetiser. We will definitely be using this again.