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My Mom is worried that I will get fat in the US. So she decided to teach me how to make some healthy crisp bread the other day. The first thing I suggested was to put some honey in the dough to make it yummier. I am definitely getting fat over there. However, these initially surprisingly-easy-to-make crisp breads end up being not-so-easy-to-separate-from-the-baking-sheet if you add the honey. My advice – DO NOT EXPERIMENT. Do as Tone (my Mom’s colleague) says. If you understand Norwegian, that is. I am lazy today, so I simply won’t bother translating all these seeds and weird flour types into English. I won’t even type the recipe. I think my photos will do. Now go make these crispy delights:

I celebrated my 25th birthday this weekend. Happy, smiling, lovely friends – they all came to an Italian three course meal at my parent’s place. With 14 guests, a functional toilet and general space is essential.

The menu:
- Salmon carpaccio
- Pasta with pumpkin or amatriciana (tomato, bacon, chili++) sauce
- Panna cotta with raspberries

Some of my friends came early to help out (thankyouthankyou!!). But I made the dessert all by myself the night before. A nervous dessert-making session. I am not good at baking or making desserts – probably because I generally prefer eating a starter rather than digging in to this sweet stuff. But panna cotta is the exception that proves the rule. Not when it comes to the making of it, but when it comes to the eating. I simply LOVE panna cotta, and figured that I just had to try to make my favorite dish although my last attempt did not work out at all. After all, every recipe I looked up would mark this as an “Easy” dish to make. And this time it actually was!

PANNA COTTA WITH YOGURT
3 sheets of gelatine
3 dl whipping cream
2 dl plain yogurt
1 dl sugar
1 vanilla beam

RASPBERRY SAUCE
5 tablespoons of sugar
1 dl water
250 g rasberries
1 vanilla beam
Limejuice

Split the vanilla beam lengthwise, Scrape out the seeds with a knife. Put both beam and seeds in a pan with the cream and sugar. Heat it while stirring, but do not bring to boil. Remove from heat for 20 minutes. Put sheets of gelatin in cold water for about 3 minutes. Put the pan back on the stove on medium heat. Remove the vanilla beam. Take the sheets of gelatin out of the water, and squeeze them gently to remove any water before adding them to the pan. Stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved. Turn off the heat, and add the yogurt gently while stirring. Pour the panna cotta mixture into 4 glasses. Put in fridge for about 4 hours.

The raspberry sauce is just one of many ways to add flavor to the panna cotta. But rasberry sauce – how to: put water and sugar in a pan, stir while bringing to boil. Remove the pan from the heat, add a split vanilla beam, the seeds, the berries and some drops of lime juice to enhance the taste. Let the mixture rest for an hour before removing the vanilla beam and put the whole berrysaucethingy in a blender or something. Add some tablespoons of sauce to the panna cotta before serving – just to cover it. Too much sauce will ruin the delicious yogurt/vanilla flavour of the panna cotta. So. Less than on the crappy iphone photo above, then :)

Yummy!

Once and for all, just so we are all on the same page here, bruschetta is pronounced “brosketta”. Most Norwegians do not know this and will correct me when I say it this way, and insist on using the ch-sound instead. Anyway, my favorite way of serving bruschetta is like on the photo above (minus the plastic containers). Here you can choose what to put on the bread yourself – and even mix by using pesto as butter, and put the tomato stuff on top. Sprinkle some parmesan cheese over the dish too, and it is ready!

My favorite bruschetta place is Bar Enrica in Manarola, Italy. The summer of 2008 I think we had both breakfast and lunch at Bar Enrica every day of our vacation because of their wonderful bruschettas with various delicious toppings.

Classica Piú, Gorgonzola e noci, Mediterranea. From Bar Enrica, Manarola.
More photos from my Italy 2008 holiday.

In the bruschetta I make, the tomato salsa takes some time to prepare. The ingredients:

Olive oil
Onion
Garlic
Cherry tomatoes
Tin of chopped tomatoes
Balsamic vinegar
Basil
Sugar
Salt

Chopped onions and a couple of fine-chopped garlic cloves in a large frying pan with some olive oil. Add chopped fresh tomatoes after a bit. The more fresh, tasty tomatoes, the better, but if you need to make a large amount, hermetic tomatoes work fine as well. I normally use a combo of the two. I let it simmer over a low heat for quite some time (30-45 minutes), and add a bit of water if the salsa gets too dry. Towards the end I add some balsamic vinegar (a couple of tablespoons), lots of fresh basil, and a bit of salt and sugar to adjust the taste. If the tomatoes are very sweet, then skip the sugar. The salsa is best served cold on crispy bread with grated parmesan cheese, green pesto, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper on the table.

A perfect day. I woke up happy, and decided to stay that way even though it was time for Christmas shopping… I managed to keep away from shopping malls and stressful people, and had nice chats with other cheerful people in smaller shops at Grünerløkka instead. At Le Palais des Thés, a tea guru guided me to a good Chai tea. Back home I am now relaxing by the fireplace, sipping tea with a delicious meal on the side. The title of this post is Asparagus craving, but the people who know me well, will know that it is the lovely taste of parmesan that made me think of this dish in the first place!