Decorating eggs for the Easter celebration has had a long tradition, where some wrap the eggs in leaves and onion peel to get natural colouring.
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011
I was decidedly going for pastels this year when it came to Easter Eggs, since 2010’s efforts turned out a little too intense.
Continue reading “Easter in pastels”
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the largest museums in the USA. Still, when asking for directions in Philadelphia people might not immediately recognize what the huge building at the small hill near the river is, but if you ask about the “Rocky” stairs … aha!
An ongoing exhibition here that is not to be missed is on Italian fashion designer Roberto Capucci: Art into Fashion that goes on until June 2011.
Photo: J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011
Far from being a cliché, running up and down the “Rocky Stairs” is exactly what people do up until today in Philadelphia. That, and posing in front of the Rocky statue for pictures.
Continue reading “Things I love about Philly!”
In Chinatown, just outside the restaurant Penang in Philadelphia, USA. It was colder than usual for this time of year in Philly with temperatures hovering around 0C. In this picture on me, a beige wool coat from Patrizia Pepe, a mole coloured wool knitted scarf by Isabel Benenato, both Italian designers. Brown denim jeans from Warehouse, a deep pink wool sweater by Karen Millen. Boots are from Clarks.
J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011
Cherry blossoms were supposed to be in full bloom during this time of year that is end of March in Philadelphia, USA. In fact, Washington DC is right now celebrating its Cherry Blossom Festival, but where I was in Philadelphia, it was chillier than usual with temperatures hovering between -3C and 3C.
The University of Pennsylvania or UPenn has got remarkably beautiful grounds. In fact, their school’s Quad is featured in the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, 2009.
I was in Philadelphia on conference as one of several invited speakers, to be part of a panel discussion on Singaporeans living and working abroad. The conference was held at Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, where I thought the univeristy grounds were breathtakingly beautiful, despite the chill.
Philadelphia warms my heart. And I’ll be back in short, with why.
A homemade peanut butter chocolate spread atop a cupcake chocolate brownie.
J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2010
So I ran out of Nutella. Complete devastation on my part, me being almost addicted to the stuff. But on the upside of this small set-back for breakfast this morning was the fact that I could now raid my kitchen cupboards to make my own chocolate spread.
Roasted peanuts.
I found myself staring at a bag of roasted peanuts and immediately recalled the last time I attempted to make my own peanut butter. Disastrous. I turned out overly chunky and non-spreadable peanut butter. So appalled at what I could possibly churn out with something as simple as a little oil, ground peanuts and sugar that I haven’t brought myself to try again since then.
But I took a deep breath, with my conviction that nothing could possibly go that wrong with nuts in chocolate made spreadable, and decided to see if I could combine the two to get … peanutella?
Continue reading “Chocolate peanut spread”
I got this email from John Wocher this morning and thought I’d like to share it. John is long time family friend. In times of great catastrophies such as these, I can’t help but reflect how the decisions we make, define who we are.
Update from Kameda Medica Center. 80km south of Tokyo directly on the Pacific coast, in a town called Kamogawa.
Photo © John Wocher, March 14, 2011
From John
Good Morning – May be sporadically on the forum, maybe not…
Everyone knows that on Friday at 3:29 Japan suffered a massive earthquake which now has been revised as a magnitude 9.0 quake. Here on Monday morning, the full devastation has been the subject of major news worldwide and it is horrific. An hour ago, another nuclear reactor explosion.
Continue reading “Letter from the Kameda Medical Center, Japan”
Blueberry muffins, A Sunday’s afternoons delight.
Photo © JE Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2011
Sunday afternoon, I’m leafing through at least two cookbooks and several leaflets of muffin recipes that my mother had handed over to me over the years, in search of consistencies between the recipes. I could of course try the Internet too, but that would most likely compound the problem of coming up with a trustworthy recipe for something as simple as a muffin, since depending on culture and beliefs about information sharing, authentic recipes over the Internet are rare finds.
I used 300 grams of deep frozen blue berries softly stirred with white sugar. Whole fresh berries might have been better.
In this day of social media where technology lends overwhelming support to the creation and sustenance of the knowledge economy, it leads to the fact that a lot of people are managing their expert know-how to their cooking by just not wanting to tell how they do it, thus leading to any number of nonsense recipes on the Internet, being just plain wrong.
It’s frustrating, time consuming and infuriating to not be able to get all details to the cooking or baking, from the ingredients and their quantities, to more precise information such as when eggs are best used, to if they should be cold or room temperature before whisking them them together with some butter to get the right consistency.
Continue reading “Blueberry Muffins Knowledge Conceptualization and the Knowledge Spiral”
A homemade potato salad with fresh, crisp green apples that goes splendid with barbecued chicken.
J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011
A while back I asked a friend, Torbjörn Eliasson, about his thoughts on a potato salad that would go nicely with a barbecued Chicken, and after a quick raid in the grocery store, he came up with more or less this suggestion. He refuses though to take credit for this recipe since I am not using “the right yogurt”, which neither of us remember the name of anyway, but it is a thick, French made yoghurt with a stiff consistency, which is important for the salad’s ability to stay firm.
Presented in this post is a pretty close version of this day’s original potato salad anyway.
Choose the juiciest and most wholesome barbecued chicken you can find, straight from the store, and you’ll have a gorgeous lunch.
Only cold ingredients go into this salad, even the boiled potatoes.
Ingredients for 4-6 persons
Base:
5 or more cold boiled potatoes of a firm cooking type (Asterix)
1 peeled green apple, all cut to dices
2 chopped up shallots or/and maybe half a red onion, in small dices
Sauce:
300 ml crème fraîche
300 ml thick yoghurt
(If this becomes too thick or fatty depending on brands, add up to 300 ml of whipped cream to taste)
Flavour
1-2 tbs capers
Some spring onion strands to taste
The seeds from 1 pomegranate, stir in some or add all on top of the finished salad together with the spring onion
Add salt and black pepper, and taste! This is very important since your local ingredients can be so different from what we used.
For the potatoes use firm potatoes, already boiled or boil a new set and set them aside to cool before mixing. Carefully fold the ingredients together, and the salad is done! The pomegranate seeds comes the very last since they will color the whole thing pink otherwise, or you can skip them entirely if you want.
Continue reading “A crisp Potato Salad”
Walnut in honey, with aged parmigiano reggiano hard cheese from Parma, Italy.
J E Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson © 2011
One of the most fun culinary discovery trips is when you take a known concept and add a twist to it. Here, we’re having Parmigiano Reggiano from Kulla Gourmet, a company whose family produces the cheese in Parma, Italy, accompanied with walnuts in honey, produced by another family owned Swedish company, Birgittas Matbod in Öland.
It was during our 2008 visit to Florence, Italy, dining at Trattoria Quatro Leoni we experienced a memorable moment having Italian hard cheese with honey. And since then, we’ve been experimenting with different honey, cheese and wine combinations. (See, A caseinic tour of Europe), trying to find our favourite combination of flavours.
We brought back a few things from the past week’s Passion för Mat food fair, and this weekend lent a serendipitous discovery by combining Swedish made walnuts and honey to our 24 months old Swedish-Italian Parmigiano Reggiano. What’s more? No cooking needed. Simply cut the cheese into squares, lay it on the plate, pour out the walnuts in honey… and enjoy!1
The Grand Old Man of Western Swedish Gastronomy and Guide Micheline star Chef Leif Mannerström gives the thumbs up of one of the new flavours at the Österhagens ice-cream stall. No surprise perhaps. Stig’s and Inger’s efforts are well known, and recognized by Diplomas of Execellence awarded by the Western Swedish Academy of Gastronomy in 2008 and by the Swedish Academy of Gastronomy in 2010.
Early Friday morning the staff at the Swedish Coffee house Löfbergs Lila were adding the last touches to their stall. Besides coffee, they feature a vintage 1960 French delivery truck with forward opening “girl catching” doors, painted in their corporate colors and rebuilt into a coffee van. Together with the smell of freshly brewed coffee samples, nothing beats this as a crowd puller.
Photo © JE Nilsson for CMC 2011
Yesterday, Friday the 25th of February, 2011 – the forth installment of the food fair Passion för Mat 2011 at Eriksbergshallen in Gothenburg opened its gates for the expectant crowds.
This particular food fair is a crowd pleaser in that its exhibitors are overwhelmingly generous with giving out samples of most everything displayed to be sold.
I had arrived well ahead of opening hours this first day, since I had planned to help some at the booth of the Western Swedish Academy of Gastronomy friends organization. The steady paced group of exhibitors – bright, friendly and enthusiastic – are so passionate about what they do that it’s a joy to be there. Taking my time, I strolled around the expansive hall to say hello to friendly faces who like me, were adding a last few touches to their stalls.
One of the trends today in upscale dining is that the food comes with a story. The produce should be grown as close to the consumption as possible. Both in time and geography. The fish should ideally be alive when it goes into the pot and as one Chef puts it, if we push this just a little bit further, people will need to bite into the cow in the barnyard. So, people here know what they are selling. If they hadn’t baked, cooked or canned everything themselves, they at least knew those who did.
After grabbing a coffee from the remarkably attention grabbing purple vintage 1960 van at the Löfbergs Lila stand, I wandered on.
Continue reading “Passionate about food, a walk through Passion för Mat 2011, iGothenburg, Sweden”
Triple chocolate, chocolate chip cookies with Pacari 100% organic raw cacao.
Photo © JE Nilsson and C M Cordeiro-Nilsson for CMC 2011
The event for all food lovers in Sweden is happening end of this week, Passion för Mat! from 25-27 February, 2011 at Erikbergshallen in Gothenburg.
At this year’s tradefair, as with Passion för Mat 2010, a segment of the very large hall will be dedicated to an open to public Cooking School or Köksskolan, where reknowned personalities from the food industry and celebrity Chefs make their appearance at various hours, tutoring and entertaining the public on how to cook different types of food. What sounds most interesting this year is Friday’s (25th February, 15:00 hrs) focus on the basic raw ingredient of eggs and how best to fry an Omelette, where a competition will be held to see who can serve up the best creation! That, and several tutorials on from how to best cook fish and wild meat to how to cook Vietnamese and Italian, will be topics that pique my interest.
Continue reading “Triple chocolate, organic raw cacao chocolate chip cookies”