The 3-Week Plan: All of the last week

It has been a bad week for plans, with lots of unexpected changes this way and that, and the husband, who is entering a period of extensive travelling (he will be away more than he will be at home for the next couple of months) has been in a restaurant mood, eager to spoil me a bit before he goes, which is nice of him.

He took me to a very fancy place, Hemmagastronomi (= home gastronomy), which is a combination restaurant-delicatessen store. We shared three medium size dishes: vendace roe with blini, smoked shrimp with aioli, and a plate with dried hams, salami, cheese, pickles, and tapenade. They served a delicious sour dough bread with that. Beer for me and a lemonade for him. I wouldn´t mind going back there!

One evening, the sister-in-law (who has been visiting the mum-in-law) treated us to her home-graved salmon, spiced with elderflower saft and gin. I have the recipe, and here it is:

Take a 900 g (2 pounds) salmon filet, with the skin still on, take out any remaining bones and cut it in half. Mix 4 tablespoons of sugar, 4 teaspoons of salt, 1 tablespoon freshly ground white pepper, and zest from one lemon; rub this into the salmon. Put one filet on top of the other, skinside out and one thick end against one thin end. Put a double layer of plastic bags around it and add 4 tablespoons of concentrated elderflower saft and 3 tablespoons of gin. Put this on a plate in the fridge for 2-3 days, turn the bag over a couple of times during that time. Then scrape off the spices, cut the fish into thin slices (discard the skin!) and serve with lemon, ground black pepper, boiled potatoes, and mustard-dill sauce. 

I didn´t take a photo of it, but it had the nicest pink colour ever. There is a blogger who has a good recipe for the entire dish, sauce and all, here.

One of the days I made some more cornbread and let the husband taste Dave´s black eye peas, which he liked a lot. "I imagine this is what the cowboys ate," he said and he might be right, I guess. I intend to bring some to the mum-in-law eventually, as I have much left in the freezer.

Mash, fried salmon, tunnbröd, mango chutney. 

One day this week I fried some salmon and mashed some potatoes. That is a favourite dish of ours, fast food (half an hour plus however long it takes to peel the potatoes - I favour buying large ones!), but properly cooked. It´s so easy it isn´t even a recipe.

Our personal quirk is perhaps that we accompany fried salmon with creme fraiche and mango chutney, which makes for a very good blend of tastes. The idea came from a friend who said that mixing creme fraiche and cloudberry jam makes a very good salmon sauce. We prefer blending it on the plate - if nothing else, it´s frugal.

Today, we had leftover köttsoppa (= meat soup) built on bits and pieces from a kalops (meat stew), Dave´s black eye peas, and green peas from the freezer. I baked a fresh loaf on rye and whole wheat flour. Nothing fancy, but good all the same.

Next week, I will be alone and do a pantry cleaning menu. It´s a personal sport of mine which I do when the husband is away for a whole week - the challenge being not going to the store at all, but making due with what´s available. The eating equivalent of "shopping one´s closet", I suppose. But first, the husband is taking me out for Italian!

The Quick Cooking Plan

This year I have a lot to do. Much to read, much to learn, many hours of practice to work through. And I need to eat well, while spending a minmum of hours on cooking. Absolutely no more than half an hour, preferably less. Fifteen minutes sounds ideal, but probably utopian.

Simple, tasty, good for you.

My first idea is to have a weekly structure, to make sure we get to have a balanced diet. In Sweden we already have some days that are culturally dedicated to a particular dish or type of dish. For example, Thursdays are peasoup & pancake days. This tradition goes back as far as the Middle Ages, when Sweden was still a Catholic country (King Gustav Vasa made us Protestant in the 16th Century). As a preparation for the Friday fast, people ate heavily on Thursdays and peas are a good match with pork (a favourite that dates back to Iron Age and the Vikings), and pancakes on top of that makes a very rich meal indeed. The Swedish Army still serves peasoup & pancakes every Thursday in their canteens, as do many lunch restaurants. Students also favour this tradition, not least because they enjoy the traditional drink: punch, which is a arak flavoured liqueuer, a speciality for Sweden. Tuesdays are fish days. I have heard that this is because fishermen wouldn´t go out on Sundays (for religious reasons), so Sundays and Mondays the fish market would be closed.

I decided to plan for three weeks at a time, this gives me the right amount of variation I feel that we need. Saturdays are for batch-cooking and inspirational cooking. Sundays are for shopping for and cooking with the mum-in-law. Some dishes can be made in large quantities (like 20 portions) with very little effort, though they take a whole afternoon to make, like peasoup. This is a dish that actually gets better after freezing. Same thing with meat stew or rice porridge. You just have to be there, but can do other things while it cooks. Chutney or jam is the same, and baking too. This is basic stuff, but saves a lot of time later in the week if done in advance. Salads are problematic in winter, hard to transport in below zero (particularly if you don´t have a car), and hard to store. I am planning to use more root vegetables and other sturdier greens.

I have already run this for three weeks and it works really well. I also have a much better idea of where the money goes, and what we need to get. The husband is supportive and I think the overall success is due to me having such a clear goal, an expressed need, compared to other times when I tried to organize our eating. Not only that, we have eaten some very good food lately. I guess I´m just the kind of person who is more inspired within a structure than one who likes to start from zero every day.