Different peppers

Wondering what to get when buying spices? Here is a short list of spices and uses. I’ve got way more spices than this (over twice as much), but I consider these the essentials.

Essentials:

• Black pepper: use for almost anything, especially meat. Use as much as you feel like
• Salt: use for almost anything, use just enough to get the flavor you want (as little as possible)
• Red pepper powder: Perfect for rice, home made spice mixes, chicken and more
• Thyme: Great for pork, chicken and lamb. I use this many times every week.
• Oregano: The pizza spice! Perfect for italian food. Smell it and you should recognize it’s uses.
• Basil: Use in pizza and pasta sauces, pesto and more. Strong flavor, use with caution.
• Cardamom: Used in all sorts of baked goods, like wafles, muffins, buns and cinnamon rolls.
• Cinnamon: Many uses, but I use mainly for baking and rice porridge topping. See cinnamon rolls.
• Curry: The rice and chicken spice. Indian food.

Less used but great to have:

• Ginger powder: Used in much eastern food
• Cumin: The secret behind kebab meat. Together with ginger powder, red pepper powder and garlic this will rock you.
• Rosemary: Lamb, chicken and pork. I often use this one together with thyme

You should also have these spices in fresh or processed form:

Garlic

• Chili (use mild chili if you aren’t too fond of spicy stuff): gives your dish that extra “oomph”. Mexican food essential.
• Garlic: Really really healthy and tasty. Makes any meat stand out, use with rice and in stews and more. Essential in italian food.
• Onion: Used in almost all italian dishes, many more. Don’t be afraid to use a lot.
• Lemon: Gives you that fresh, bitter taste. Use with fish and pork on the grill. Perfect for drinks too.

Inspirational spice examples:

Beef

Spice richly with salt and pepper, rub a garlic clove over (it doesn’t seem to do much, but it really makes a difference). Rub the spices in together with olive oil before frying on high heat.

Lamb dish

Salmon

Mix 1/3 lemon juice and 2/3 olive oil. Add salt and pepper, coat with the mix. Let it sit for as long as possible up to 24 hours in your fridge before grilling or frying. A touch of soy sauce and chili doesn’t hurt, either.

Chicken

Salt, pepper, curry and red pepper powder. The same spices can also be used in a sauce based on chicken stock and cream.

Lamb meat

Salt, pepper, rosemary and thyme.

Check out thomassnielsen.com/food for more inspiration.

Salad lunch pack

I should’ve written this one earlier, but I just didn’t have the time. Last year I started to make some more comprehensive lunch packs, compared to the Norwegian traditional lunch pack with a couple of slices of bread.

I was just tired of eating dry, tasteless bread, and wanted to try something else. I have two variants I use now, one of which is pictured above.

The salad lunch pack is easy, and takes from 5-20 minutes to make, depending on what you put in it. My favorite is the one on the picture, with chicken and pasta.

Recipe #1 – Chicken salad lunch pack

• Pasta (I use Macaroni or Fusilli, but any pasta will do)
• Lettuce (I use iceberg or crispi)
• Red pepper
• Grilled or cooked chicken meat (you can often buy salad-specific chicken meat. If not, a whole grilled chicken works too)
• Onion
• Maize
• Spices and/or dressing (I use salt and ground pepper, sometimes a little bit of garlic powder)

Cook the pasta. Cut the chicken, red pepper and onion into pieces. Rip the lettuce into pieces (this way it stays fresh longer, compared to cutting it). Mix all ingredients in a airtight lunch box, and add spices. If you use dressing, you can put that in a separate box to preserve the salad better. Remember to bring a fork.

Tip: If you make the salad the night before, make sure to put the driest ingredients on top, and don’t blend them until you are ready to eat. Store the lunch box in the fridge. That way you will have the freshest possible salad.

Recipe #2 – Home-made baguette with ham and cheese

This one requires a bit more preparation, but it tastes great and is really cheap. You can bake baguettes twice a week and have one for lunch every day.

Baguette:

• 3/4 white wheat flour
• 1/4 coarse wheat flour
• yeast (50g per liter of flour)
• milk
• salt
• whole grain and seeds (optional)

If you use fresh yeast, mix it with lukewarm milk. If you use dried yeast, mix it with the flour. Mix together the ingredients until the dough lets go of the bowl. Let the dough raise for about an hour. Roll into sausage-shapes in the size you want. Remember that it will raise. Let it raise for another hour. Put on some whole grain and seeds if you like. Wet them slightly with water before you put them in the owen at 220C. They are ready when they are crispy and brown. Let them cool down before eating. Put them in a plastic bag if you want to use them later.

• Lettuce
• Red pepper
• Ham
• Cheese
• mayonnaise (optional)

Cut a baguette in half. Add ripped lettuce, slices of red pepper, ham and cheese. Add mayonnaise if you like. Wrap in plastic and bring as a lunch pack.

Both of these are great options to paying for expensive lunch in the cafeteria or bringing plain old dry bread.

Creamy Potato Gratin

Time for food again. This is one of my favorite ways to cook potatoes. It tastes delicious, and it is really easy. It takes a bit of time though, almost an hour from start to finish. But it is worth it.

Ingredients:
- At least two small/medium potatoes per person
- Milk
- Whipping cream
- Garlic and/or onion
- Spices (pepper, salt, whatever else you feel like)
- Grated cheese

Recipe:
Peel the potatoes and cut them into slices (about 1/2 cm). Ad a layer of potatoes into a casserole dish, then ad spices and finely chopped garlic and/or onion.

Pour milk and whipping cream (about 50/50 mix, more milk if you are afraid of fat) until you cover the potatoes. Continue adding layers of potatoes, spices and milk/cream until you are out of potatoes.

Let it cook in the oven at 200C for about half an hour. Take it out, ad a decent layer of grated cheese, and put it back for another 15 minutes. Serve with any kind of meat. Great together with beef or pork chops.

Warning: This may very well become the main dish of your meal, so remember to make enough!

Ingredients

• Red pepper
• Onion
• Hot dog sausage
• Ham
• Milk
• Salt
• Black pepper
• Cheese
• Lettuce

Recipe

Cut a hot dog sausage, a slice of red pepper, a slice of onion and ham into tiny pieces. Fry them in a pan in oil or butter while you mix two eggs with salt, pepper and about 1dl milk. Add grated cheese to the mix.

When the pieces in the pan are starting to look ready (light brown on the sausage, blank onion), pour in the egg mix. Let it fry until the top is firm. Turn the omelette, and let it fry for 1-2 minutes on the other side. Serve with lettuce.

This is a really fast meal, probably took me under 20 minutes to make. Tastes great. As with any other meal I make, feel free to change ingredients.

What? You’ve never heard of my famous pizza before? Oh well, you have now. Today I made my special Italian-American style blend, with my own twist. What that really means is that the oven pan was too small to make the pizza dough thin enough for an Italian style pizza.

A history leason
Do you know the history of the Pizza? Originally it was made by poor Italians who used the left over flour from the bakers and made pizza-style meals on the remaining heat in the stone ovens. Or at least that is one of the stories. So Pizza is really the left over meal. They made a dough of the remaining flour and put what they had on it. Fish, squid, meat, vegetables, whatever.

My pizza

Homemade pizza

I know many people these days like to buy frozen pizzas or ready-made pizza dough and sauce. I make it all from scratch, because I like it better that way. It doesn’t take too long either, about an hour from start to finish.

Recipe
Dough (for 1-2 people):
- 3,5dl flour
- 1,5dl water
- 1/4 pack of yeast (norwegian package size)
- a little salt and olive oil

Sauce:
3 parts cut tomatoes
1 part Heinz ketchup
a little dash of olive oil
spice with oregano, basil, crushed black pepper, salt, onion and garlic

Topping:
Cheese
Oregano
Whatever you like

The dough
mix the yeast with lukewarm water. Add the olive oil, flour and salt. Mix and add flour or water as needed until it is ready for kneading. Knead the dough until you don’t see any cracks and it has a fine round shape. Let it to rise while you make the sauce and maybe wait a bit. It should be left for at least 30 minutes (preferably more).

The sauce
This is really easy. If you use hermetic cut tomatoes, just open the can and mix with the ketchup and olive oil. If you use fresh tomatoes you need to cut them first. Use a blender if you don’t want pieces in your sauce. Cut part of an onion into tiny pieces and fry them. When ready (light brown), add them to the sauce. Add one small garlic clove, lots of oregano, and a little basil. Blend in a touch of pepper and salt for extra taste.

If you use ground meat, you can fry this and add to your sauce if you like, or you could add it to your topping later.

Putting it all together
Roll the dough out by hand. Spread the sauce out so it covers everything but the edges of the dough. Add a thin layer of grated cheese. Add your favorite topping (I used fried ground meat, ham and red pepper). Add another thin layer of cheese. Cook in a pre-heated oven at 200C (400F) for about 10-15 minutes (can be even longer, depending on the size and the thickness). Enjoy, preferably with a coke.

Tasty

Today I had an unexpected guest for dinner. I was in town shopping when a friend met me. After finishing shopping some flowers to my girlfriend, we went home to my place. My girlfriend arrived shortly after, and we decided to invite him to stay for dinner.

We was having pork steak again, and had enough steak for him also. But we didn’t have enough fries, so I decided to use the leftovers from my salad also. Still that didn’t seem enough, so I cooked some vegetables that everybody should have in their home: Potatoes, carrots, cauliflower and broccoli.

All this is cheap stuff that you can keep around for a while. It took a while to make, again mainly because of the fries and vegetables. 30-45 minutes.

Ingredients

• Pork steaks (1 or 2 per person, depending on the size)
• Vegetables (I used potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli)
• French fries
• Salad (I used lettuce, maize, onion and garlic dressing. You can ad for example cucumber, red pepper or anything else you like)

Recipe
Start with heating the oven (if you use French fries that you make in the oven) and boil up some water in a pot. While they heat up, prepare the fries and wash the vegetables. Put the fries in the oven and the vegetables in the pot when the oven is hot and the water boils. Start with the potatoes, as they need to boil longer than the other vegetables. If you use the same vegetables as me, the other vegetables are added just a few minutes at the end (while you finish frying the steak).

Cut the ingredients of the salad. When you have about 10-15 minutes left before the fries are done, start frying the steaks. Remember to spice (salt and black pepper is fine). When everything is done, just serve it. I didn’t ad the garlic dressing to the salad, as some prefer to eat the salad without dressing. I put the dressing, some ketchup and spices at the table together with the rest of the food.

Enjoy.

As always I am happy to get comments and suggestions to my recipes.

I bought a large pack of frozen pork steaks (cheaper than fresh ones), and picked out a couple of them. The French fries was also of the cheaper sort, and we used half a package. The salad was leftovers from Monday, when we ate taco. Really simple and tasty. Took about 40 minutes to make, mostly because of the fries.

If you wonder what I ate from Monday to yesterday, I was in Trondheim picking up the rest of my stuff, and ate with my family.

Today’s meal: Chicken wraps

Chicken wrap

This was also a fast, cheap and easy meal. I still had leftovers from the taco, so I just bought some ground chicken meat. I used the taco wraps, lettuce, pepper, maize, garlic dressing and cheese I already had. Short recipe:

Ingredients

• Ground chicken meat
• Iceberg lettuce
• Onion
• Red pepper
• Maize
• Garlic dressing
• Taco wraps
• Cheese

Fry the ground chicken meat until it is brown. While you fry the chicken, lay the wraps on plates, and cut the vegetables and distribute evenly on the wraps. Add some garlic dressing and cheese topping on top. When the chicken meat is ready, just ad it to the wraps, wrap them and eat.

Of course you can add or remove ingredients at will. Cucumber and carrots are great options.

Estimated time: 15-20 minutes.

Comments
I know this is not the cheapest meal you can make, but if you have lots of vegetable leftovers, this is a great way to use it. The ground chicken meat was really cheap, and I used only 1/3 of a 400g package for 1 person. The rest i froze for later. It is also easy and fast to make, and it tastes good. I would love to get comments and suggestions on the recipe.

Tomorrow I will probably make something out of only leftovers, but next week I will try to get some more meals up here. Maybe something with fish or other seafood.