Cookbook of the week #22 : Sweet Food, including a recipe for Almond, orange and cardamom biscotti

I’m back. I have had a lot going on in my life since I last posted, but now I am ready to pick up where I left off.



This week’s cookbook was published by Murdoch Books, part of a series of themed books that are in equal measure recipe collections and unabashed food porn. There is a photo of every dish, each one designed to make the reader hungry. The book is divided into chapters for baked goods, desserts and pies & tarts, and other than the chapter divisions, there is no rhyme or reason to the way the recipes are collected, so that for example, the 5 cheesecake recipes in the book are to be found in two chapters and none of them on adjacent pages. This makes for interesting browsing. I have found that I can open this book at random and be almost certain to find something I want to try. I have had to eliminate several recipes I would have liked to try because of hard-to-find ingredients.

Note: The tbs called for are 20 ml tbs, rather than 15 ml ones.

The first recipe I chose is Almond, orange and cardamom biscotti

In Italian “biscotti” means “twice baked”, but according to Wikipedia, in Italy the term is used for any type of cookie. In North-America it refers to twice-baked pastries like the ones in this recipe, which in Italy are called “biscotti di Prato”, “cantoucchi” or “cantoucchini”.

I would like to imagine that when J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about lembas, he had something like biscotti in mind.

Makes about 40.

2 eggs
155 g (2/3 cup) firmly packed soft brown sugar
125 g (1 cup) self-rising flour (if you don’t have self-rising flour, use 1 cup plain flour and add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt)
90 g (3/4 cup) plain flour
125 g (1 1/4 cups) almonds
1 tbs finely grated orange zest
1/4 tsp ground cardamom

Preheat the oven to 160°C (315°F), or lower temperature as indicated for convection ovens. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Beat the eggs and sugar until light and creamy. Sift the flours into the bowl, add the almonds, zest and cardamom and mix to a soft dough.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, divide in two and shape into two loaves, about 5 x 20 cm (2 x 8 inches) in size.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until lightly golden. Cool on a wire rack. When cool, cut the loaves into 1 cm (2/5 inch) slices with a serrated bread knife. The biscotti will be crumbly on the edges, so work slowly and if you can, hold the sides of the loaves as you cut.

Arrange the slices on baking trays in one layer and return to the oven for 10 minutes on each side. If the slices look like they are not completely dry when removed from the oven, don’t worry – they will become crisp when they cool. Allow to cool before serving.

Great with coffee.

Edit:

Recipe review:
I made this recipe yesterday after I posted it. The dough was EXTREMELY sticky, so sticky that I ended up just forming it into one rough loaf and then I went to scrape a thick layer of gluey dough off my hands. Next time I will wet my hands before handling the dough. The raw loaf looked like a misshapen lump of lava, but it baked up smooth and when I sliced it it looked like biscotti should. In the instructions it says to cool the loaf – I would just let it cool for about 10 minutes and then slice it, because fully cooled it was hard to cut because the crust was so hard. The biscotti are very good, with a mild orangey flavour and just a hint of cardamom.

Cookbook of the week # 21: Foods of the World: The Cooking of the Middle-East

This book is part of a series of gorgeous Time-Life books about the foods of different regions and countries of the world. This is more than just a cookbook: it describes the foods and food history and offers various food related tidbits and photographs of the foods, people and landscapes of the 9 countries the author visited. The countries were Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Iran. As I have mentioned before, I love North-African and Middle-Eastern food, so this will be an interesting read. Unfortunately the recipe booklet that came with the book has been lost, so I only have the recipes included in the book to choose from.

Cookbook of the week # 20 : Hollt og gott (Healthy and tasty), and the first sample recipe: Lentil soup

This is one of the self-published cookbooks in my collection. In this case the publisher was a religious group, the Adventists. This spiral-bound cookbook is full of meatless recipes (some vegan, others ovo-lacto vegetarian), many of which have the contributor’s name beside it. It came from my mother’s collection, and I think she got it from my aunt who in turn got it from one of her in-laws, who has a number of recipes in the book.

Since I am a little late in posting this, here is the first recipe:

Lentil soup:

1 1/2 cups lentils (it doesn’t say which kind, so I am assuming any type can be used)
2 large tomatoes, chopped
2 carrots, finely chopped
3/4 cup chopped parsley
3/4 cup white cabbage, torn into pieces
2 litres vegetable broth/bouillon
3 celery stalks, finely chopped
2 tbs soup herbs (this is a mixture of dried herbs and vegetables that is sold in shops here. I don’t know if it is available in other countries, but you can replace it with chopped kale)
1 bay leaf
The juice of 1 lemon

Cook the lentils in the veggie broth until soft. Add the rest and cook until the vegetables are tender.

Cookbook of the week # 19: The Book of Thai Cooking by Hilaire Walden

There are a number of Thai restaurants in Reykjavík and I occasionally treat myself to some Thai food. This book, which is part of a series of ethnic cookbooks, is illustrated with photographs and most of the recipes seem to be simple and easy, although some of the ingredients must have been hard to come by back when it was first published in Iceland in 1993. Since then, at least three Asian markets have opened in Reykjavík, and one of the supermarket chains has added many oriental ingredients to its shelves, so it should not be hard to get galangal, lemon grass or fish sauce or most of the other unfamiliar ingredients.

Cookbook of the week #18: Ódýrt og gott (Cheap and tasty)

Here is yet another of those Swedish cookbooks. This one is about how to cook on the cheap, with ingredients common in Scandinavian supermarkets, ca. the 1980s. This means it’s heavy on root vegetables, potatoes, herring and ground meat. There are a number of recipes in it that I would like to try.

Cookbook of the week #17: Cookies: Favorite recipes from the Land O’Lakes Test Kitchens, and a recipe for Cashew Butter Cookies

Following on from the recipe of the week, I decided to go for one of my two cookie books. Christmas is coming in just over three weeks, and one of the things Christmas means to me is cookies. My mother didn’t generally make cookies from scratch when I was growing up, being more of a cake person, but she always baked cookies for Christmas. When I was a child the staples she would make were cornflake mounds, air cookies, vanilla rings and vanilla sandwich cookies, crisp chocolate chip and nut cookies, coconut cookies, meringue drops, pepper cookies and gingersnap sandwich cookies, not to mention the experiments that were never repeated or that she made a for a few years and then stopped making, like oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies. (She would also make brown cake, dream cake and devil’s cake, but that’s another story).

The number of types of cookies has dropped down to four now, plus the one type I always make which are more like confections than cookies. My appetite for these lovely little nibbles has not diminished (although I have to be careful now how many I eat in one session), and therefore I am looking forward to testing some of the recipes in this book. I will probably make at least a couple of the sample recipes, perhaps more, and review them as I go along, rather than post one review at the end of the week.



Land O’Lakes is a dairy company based in Minnesota in the USA and the book is a promotional publication to push their products, especially butter and sour cream. Neither is imported to Iceland, so I will be using Icelandic products instead. In addition to recipes, the book has plenty of useful advice about how to get the best results when making the various different kinds of cookies.

The first sample recipe is for Cashew Butter Cookies:

The recipe is supposed to make 54 cookies.

3/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup honey
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cup chopped salted cashew nuts

Salted cashew halves for decorating

Heat oven to 190°C (375°F).

Mix together the flour, baking soda and baking powder in a bowl.

Combine butter, sugar, honey and egg in a mixing bowl and beat at medium speed, scraping the bowl often, until creamy (2-3 minutes). Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture. beat until well mixed (1-2 minutes). Fold in the chopped cashew nuts by hand.

Using two teaspoons, drop rounded teaspoonfuls of dough onto ungreased cookie sheets, about 2 inches apart. Top each cookie with a cashew half. Bake for 6-9 minutes or until golden brown.

Cookbook of the week #16: The Big Ready Steady Cook Book

When I have access to BBC Prime I always try to catch Ready Steady Cook. As a rule I don’t particularly like cookery shows, especially the kind with a cook/chef making one or several dishes and telling the audience how easy it all is and how wonderful it tastes, etc. Jamie Oliver’s chirpiness gets on my nerves, Delia Smith’s voice annoys me and I think I have developed an allergy to Giada De Laurentiis and motormouth Rachel Ray (in Giada’s case after one episode). I can just about watch an episode of Nigella Lawson’s show every now and then, but I try to avoid it because it makes me hungry, even right after a meal – something none of the other abovementioned cooks/chefs have managed to do. But shows like Ready Steady Cook and Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook interest me, because they are mostly unscripted and because they show people who are not food professionals cooking and interacting with chefs.

This cookbook was first published (by the BBC) in 1997 and seems to have been quite popular, going through two editions and 7 reprints up to the one I have. The recipes do not seem to be ones that were created on the show, but rather a showcase of the creative talents of the chefs.

I decided to choose one recipe from each of the 5 chapters, and one of them or one more as recipe of the week. As those who regularly watch the show know, the recipes often have original punning titles, and some of the recipes in the book do too. For copyright reasons I can’t publish those recipes under their original artistic titles, but I will include the page number and name of the creator so they can be easily found in the book.

I found a number of recipes in the book that I would like to make, but unusually for me, the dessert recipes were the least interesting of the lot. The most difficult to choose from were the meat recipes, as this is the first of my cookbooks of the week that has a really good choice of tempting recipes that feature lamb. I have not yet chosen the recipe of the week, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it will be one for lamb, but I will have a very busy weekend, so I may end up making a dessert. I usually don’t know my choice until Friday.

Most of the recipes have a long list of ingredients, but do not seem to be fiddly to put together.

Cookbook of the week #15: Salatréttir (Salads)

It’s time for another one of those series books.



The book is just what the title says: a collection of salads, as starters, sides or main dishes.

I am not very adventurous where salads are concerned, usually preferring them plain rather than dressed, and when dressed, with mayonnaise- or sour cream-based salad sauces rather than oil- or vinegar-based dressings. This is a chance for me to expand my horizons a bit.

Cookbook of the week #14: Nanny Ogg's Cookbook

Nanny Ogg's Cookbook is more than just a cookbook, as may be seen from the subtitle: A useful and improving Almanack of Information including Astonishing Recipes from Terry Pratchett's Discworld. The authors are Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs, Paul Kidby made the illustrations and Tina Hannan and Stephen Briggs compiled the recipes. The publisher is Doubleday.

For those familiar with the Discworld books no explanations are needed, but for the uninitiated, they are a series of humorous (and sometimes just laugh out loud funny) literary fantasy novels that take place on a world that is as flat as a pizza and is carried on the backs of four cosmic elephants that stand on the back of a gargantuan space turtle who swims slowly through space towards some unknown destination. Nanny Ogg is one of the olives, or possibly anchovies, on the pizza: an old but frisky witch with a very earthy sense of humour and a vast knowledge of aphrodisiac cooking. Unfortunately her magnum opus, The Joye of Snacks, has been banned and no copies have ever found their way onto Roundworld (which is what Discworld wizards call our Earth), but a few edited versions made it into this book, as did recipes from several other denizens of the Disc.

The sample recipes do not give any idea of the humour of the book, as I have only copied the uncopyrightable portions, i.e. the ingredient lists, and I have rewritten the instructions to leave out the copyrighted portions that refer to the Discworld. The recipes are attributed to different characters, and most of them are mentioned in one or other of the books. They are merely a part of the book and are really just a way for fans to get to know the characters better and for non-fans to develop an interest in getting to know them better, but I know the recipes were all tested before being published, and fans who have made them have generally been happy with the results.

I have been longing to try several of the recipes ever since I got the book, and I think 8 years is enough waiting time, so now I am really going to cook one or perhaps more recipes from the book.

Cookbook of the week #13: Mexican Cooking (Mexikanske specialiteter)

It’s time to go ethnic again. This little book was written by Roger Hicks and the Danish edition that I have was published by Könemann. It is a gorgeous little book, full of photographs, not only of the dishes, but also of the people and landscapes of Mexico. It includes a short chapter on the cuisine of Mexico, along with chapters on common ingredients, preparation methods and dining culture.

My experience of Mexican food is mostly with tex-mex fast food, a hybrid cuisine that is only partly Mexican, and I love Spanish cuisine, which contributed to Mexico’s culinary tradition, but I don’t have much experience with authentic Mexican cooking, so I can’t judge how genuine the recipes in the book are. All I can say is that many of them look very tempting.

Cookbook of the week #11: The Spice Cookbook

Since I just finished reading Spice: The history of a temptation by Jack Turner, I decided to review one of the three spice cookbooks in my collection. I chose the one I find the most interesting. I came across it at the charity shop where I have acquired many of my books, and knew I had to have it. It was published in 1964 and the authors are Lillie Stuckey and Avanelle Day. The illustrations are by Jo Spier. The book appears to have become collectible, but I doubt my copy would fetch a high price, since the dust cover is missing and there are food stains on the cover. The image below is of the title page and will give you an idea of the wonderful and quirky artwork scattered throughout the book.



This is one of those big, ambitious cookbooks that make one wonder if it is meant for the kitchen or to be kept on a lectern somewhere to have recipes copied from for use. It doesn’t help that it is necessary to turn a page to finish reading some of the recipes, which is always a disadvantage with cookbooks since it causes stains and eventual tattering of pages with much-used recipes. The book is in a large format and weighs a whooping 1600 grams (over 3 lbs.). I certainly can’t see myself standing by the stove, stirring a sauce with one hand and holding the book in the other.

As we know, few recipes are totally free of some sort of added flavouring (imagine such a recipe, free even of salt – a terrible thought, isn’t it?), and many recipes feature at least one herb or spice, but this book seems to be an attempt to give examples of the typical use of spices and herbs in recipes from around the world. There are also short chapters outlining the history of the spice trade, profiling the spices and herbs featured in the book, one on how to cook with spices, a spice and herb chart outlining the sorts of food the spice/herb is good in, followed by over 1400 recipes for all sorts of foods from entrées to desserts. Since I am one of those people who get hungry from reading cookbooks, I really don’t think it would be good for my waist-line to read the book from cover to cover, so I intend to skim over it, stopping to read recipes that sound interesting, and choose a few at random to give as samples. I only wish I could show some more of the wonderful artwork that decorates the book, but I think it’s still copyrighted.

Cookbook of the week #10:Small dishes for every palate

This is the second book in this series I review. Whereas the previous one focused on quick dishes, this one is all about small dishes: finger food, nibbles, appetizers and light snacks, although some of the dishes actually seem to be full meals.



Here are some recipes that seem interesting:

Cheese soufflé
Baked omelet with mushroom sauce
Spring rolls Mai Tang
Russian pancakes (blini)
Leek pie (quiche)
Bacon-rolled bananas
Reindeer stew with mushrooms

Cookbook of the week #9: Step-by-step Moroccan Cooking

My forays into Moroccan cookery have not always been successful. The last attempt not from the featured book was a disaster. The recipe was for a tagine of lamb with prunes and cinnamon, from a reputable cooking magazine where it was praised to the skies as a wonderful recipe taught to the cooks who are trained to work in Moroccan embassy kitchens. I followed the recipe to the letter and got a gooey, slimy, lumpy concoction resembling nothing as much as badly mixed cinnamon-scented wallpaper glue. Either I went wrong somewhere (the likeliest reason), there was an error in the recipe, or there are some areas of Moroccan cookery I should stay away from.

I discovered Moroccan cuisine back when I was in college. There was a Moroccan restaurant in Reykjavík at the time and I went there several times and loved everything I tasted. Unfortunately it didn't survive for long and was replaced by a steak-house, and it was a long time until I tasted Moroccan food again. A friend who knew I loved Middle-Eastern and North-African cooking gave me this little book and I have used several recipes from it.



This little book or booklet was published by Murdoch Books in 1992. It's part of a series of small recipe books, a mixture of cuisines and themes. These step-by-step books are very useful for beginners, as they show the main steps of each recipe in photographs that are accompanied by clear and simple instructions.

The recipes I have already tried from this book are:
Preserved lemons. These looked lovely to begin with but unfortunately the pickling jar I used didn't seal itself properly and some of the pickling liquid evaporated and the lemons went bad, so I never got to taste them. I will definitely make them again some day.
Tagine of mixed vegetables. This has a mild but distinctive flavour and is quite good if you like cumin.
Roast lamb with spices. Very good indeed.
Moroccan rice and meat balls. I have made these several times and loved them every time.

Choosing a recipe from this book is a bit of a challenge, as some of the ingredients are difficult to get in Iceland, like veal (seems to be by special order only), quinces and pumpkin. I am vacillating between:

Eggplant purée
Moroccan Cigars: Filo pastry rolls filled with spicy minced meat.
Vegetable Couscous: In which case I'll have to either leave out the pumpkin or wait until pumpkins arrive in the shops (they are sometimes available, sometimes not);
Moroccan-style fish with dates
B'stilla: A pie, properly made with pigeon or squab, here adapted to chicken.
Lentil Soup
Cucumber Salad with Mint
Khobz (wholemeal flat bread)
Whole Baked Fish
Chicken and Olives
Barbecued Lamb with Chermoula
Almond Macaroons

Cookbook of the week #8: Súkkulaði: Það besta frá Nóa-Síríus (Chocolate: The best from Nói-Síríus)

You might be surprised to discover that Icelandic chocolate is considered very good, and is in fact preferred by some over both Swiss and Belgian chocolates (and I am not just talking about Icelanders). The Nói-Síríus candy company came into being with the union of two candy companies, Síríus and Nói, and is probably the biggest candy producer in Iceland. Among the stuff they make is the country's most popular chocolate, Konsúm, which is the basis of many recipes in this delicious book. They also make the most popular packaged confectionery selection and the top selling variety of Easter eggs, in addition to many kinds of non-chocolate candies.

For more than 10 years the company has published a new recipe booklet each year, which has been sold cheaply as a way of promoting the company's products, and this book contains a selection of the best recipes from those booklets, intermingled with new recipes.



This is a thoroughly modern cook book, equal parts recipes and gorgeous food photography that definietly falls under what some have called "food porn".

The recipes use the following chocolates, which I will try to describe well enough so good substitutes can be found:

Síríus Konsúm dark chocolate, which has a 45% cacao content and a sweet, slightly bitter taste with a hint of vanilla. It is suited for eating, making drinking chocolate, confectionery or baking.

Síríus 56%. This is similar to Konsúm, but with a higher cacao content and less sugar, but only slightly more bitter to the taste.

Síríus 70%. It has 70% cacao content and less than 30% sugar and a rich, bitter chocolate taste.

Síríus rjómasúkkulaði. Smooth milk chocolate with a sweet, rich flavour.

Additionally, a few recipes use other chocolate candies made by Nói-Síríus, such as chocolate-covered liqorice.

There are chapters on confections; cakes; cookies, muffins and bars; oven-pan cakes (including muffins); and desserts.

I will choose one recipe from each chapter as a sample and will try to choose recipes I have neither made or tasted before. Although I have not made many recipes from the book, I have made and/or tasted many of the booklet recipes, and several variations of recipes from the book are part of my kitchen repertoire, such as Sarah Bernhardt cookies and hot chocolate made with Konsúm.

Cookbook of the week #7: Quick Dishes

This book comes from a cookbook series that my mother bought through her book-club to give me. I have the whole series (I think), a total of 11 books, but I have never made so much as a single recipe from any of them, so I guess it is about time I did.

The focus is on Scandinavian cookery, with a touch of the international. There are photos of every dish, and you can tell that a lot of work went into making the books look appealing.



The theme of this volume is dishes that can be made quickly by using only a few ingredients in each dish. To this end convenience foods feature in many recipes, like canned soup, frozen vegetables, potato flakes, etc., in other words, foods that most home cooks use but you don't often see in recipe books because it's fashionable to make everything from scratch. Although I do use stuff like frozen veggies and canned beans and I usually buy frozen puff pastry rather than make it, there are still recipes in this book that turn my stomach, e.g. the canned asparagus soup with canned fish loaf, but I did promise I would try one recipe from each book, didn't I?

Here are a few recipes that I like the look of, translated using my best kitchen English with a smattering of restaurant French:

Fish soup with mushrooms. This uses fresh fish but the soup comes from a can.
Gourmet cauliflower. Baked cauliflower with spinach and Hollandaise sauce.
Saffron mashed potatoes. Saffron and potato flakes? Interesting combination.
Herring á la maison
Stuffed herring fillets
Beef patties with onions
Chicken amadine au gratin
Grapefruit with brown sugar and nuts

Cookbook of the week #6: The Diner's Club Cookbook: Great recipes from great restaurants

Author: Myra Waldo
Published in 1959.

Most of the recipes in this book came from restaurants and were adapted for home cooking by the author.

This book dates back to the time when curry powder was a perfectly respectable, even exotic, ingredient in cookbook recipes, whereas now it has become rather gauche and you hardly see it except in recipe collections by exceptionally honest authors who are willing to admit to using it. The difference is that now the author will tell you which specific curry powder (e.g. X-brand red curry paste, Madras-style curry, Thai green curry, etc.) they have in mind, whereas back then "curry powder" meant the mild western version.

Most Icelanders of my generation and older remember that curry and I am sure many people of my age group in other western countries remember it too. The brand may have differed from country to country, but the taste not so much. If there was any chilli in it, it was in miniscule amounts. The powder was always a very evil looking yellow (indicating a lot of turmeric) and it was often used more as a colouring than a condiment. There are a number of recipes in this book that call for this curry powder, and I have avoided them as best I could, having developed a hearty dislike of it as a child (although I must admit that poached lamb with curry-flavoured bécahmel sauce does bring up some nostalgic feelings for me…)

Apart from the curry powder many of the recipes in this nearly 50 year old cookbook might be found in a modern cookbook. Since they come from various restaurants all over the USA, the recipes are quite diverse and cover a number of different cuisines, and the book is bristling with bookmarks where I have marked interesting recipes. Here are some of the ones I would like to try:

Scalzo's Grundbeif de Calabrei. Sounds imposing, but theses are actually Italian meatballs.
Chicken Gumbo. I would love to try making gumbo, but I doubt I'll be able to make it authentic, as okra is not widely available here. (I have hopes of finding it at one Asian market)
Potaje De Garbanzas (Spanish chick-pea soup).
Delices de Sole L'Ecu de France. (Fillet of sole with mushroom-Hollandaise sauce)
Jamaican style curried chicken with rice. Ok, so there is curry powder in this one, but I happen to know where I can get Jamiacan-style curry powder.
Kan's walnut chicken.
Murgi Ka Korma. (Chicken korma). The "curry" here is made from scratch, which is perhaps no surprise, since the recipe came from an Indian restaurant.
Chopped beef à La Lindstrom.
Ranch kitchen chili and beans.
Kzartma (Shank of baby lamb).
Armenian shish kabob.
Hawaiian Chinese spareribs.
Osso buco Livornese.
Cassoulet Toulousain (French bean casserole).
Baked eggplant à la Armand.
Chinese blintzes.
Baba au rum. What! Only one dessert recipe?

Cookbook of the week #5: The Silver Palate Cookbook: Delicious recipes, menus, tips, lore from Manhattan's celebrated gourmet food shop

Authors: Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins with Michael McLaughlin. Illustrations by Sheila Lukins.

I have the first edition of this (justly) famous cookbook that was first published in 1982. It was a lucky charity shop find for me, at only 200 krónur (about 3$). It has just been republished in a 25th anniversary edition, with colour photographs in addition to the original drawings and I urge anyone who is seriously interested in cooking and good food to go out and buy it.

This is one of the few cookbooks I have that I actually use (I also read it for fun), but there are still many, many recipes in it that I have never tried. By the look of it the previous owner did not use it much, although they did leave a slip-on bookmark on one of the pages, at the exact same place where the spine had been broken, so I suppose they used at least one recipe (Chili for a crowd, p. 130).

The book is lovingly illustrated by Lukins and is among of the prettiest of my cookbooks.

Instead of listing the recipes I'm most interested in, I will simply pick one I like the look of for each day.

Cookbook of the week #4: Hjemmets Kokebokklubb: Sommermat (Summer Food)

This cookbook comes from a series published by Hjemmet, which I think also publishes the womens' weekly magazine of the same name. I have this book in the original Norwegian, and several others from the Icelandic edition of the series. The theme is "summer food", i.e. picnic food and dishes with fresh seasonal ingredients, cold drinks and fruit and berry desserts. Since summer is showing definite signs of ending soon, I decided to test this book before autumn sets in, although I generally don't cook different dishes in the summer than I do in the winter, formerly seasonal ingredients now generally being available year round.

Here are some of the recipes I would like to try:

Apple-white wine punch. I would try to make it into a cocktail.
Barbecued pork kebabs with onions, mushrooms and tomatoes. I can almost taste them…
Cauliflower Pie. I like baked cauliflower, and this looks like the next step up.
Spicy potato croquettes. These would be nice served on the side with the kebabs.
Cold cucumber soup. Sounds very refreshing.
Rhubarb tart. I love rhubarb and I have some of last year's crop still in the freezer.
Glazed fruit tart. I love these, but have never tried making one.
Chocolate ice-cream. I always make vanilla and then add extra flavour by using sauces and liqueurs, but I would like to try making chocolate ice cream for once.
Strawberries Romanoff. I think these would be quite nice as a dessert after the kebabs.

I think I have a meal planned already :-)

Cookbook of the week #3: Charmaine Solomon's Indian Cookbook

I love Indian food, from the meat dishes of the north to the hot vegetable dishes of the south. My favourite ethnic restaurant in Reykjavík is an Indian/Pakistani place called Shalimar which serves authentic Indian food, both meat and vegetarian dishes.

Cardamom Chai (spiced milk tea), Lassi (buttermilk drink with flavouring), Aloo Gobi (potato and cauliflower dry curry), Rogan Josh (red lamb curry), and a spicy chick pea dry curry for which I don't know the Indian name, are part of my kitchen repertoire. I know how to cook chappatis, and I have cooked various other classic Indian dishes, such as Aloo Mattar Samosas (potato and pea-filled deep fried savoury pastries), Tandoori chicken, Koftas (meatballs in yogurt sauce), several different Dhal (lentil) dishes and Raitas (yogurt dip), the westernised Chicken Tikka Masala (possibly the world's most popular curry) and the Anglo-Indian Kedgeree, which I have never been able to stomach as a breakfast dish like the British, but will happily have for lunch.

On the other hand I have never made a Pilau or a Biriani (I'm not even sure what the difference is), Naan bread, Balti dishes, chutney of any kind, Indian kebabs (except a kebab version of Tandoori chicken), and the only Korma dish I have made is the abovementioned Koftas. I have never even tried Pakoras, Vindaloo dishes or an Indian fish or pork dish of any kind and I have only tried one kind of Indian sweet, which I had to eat for the sake of being polite while very sick, so I don't remember what they were like. (I do like halwah, but have never tried a specifically Indian kind).



This book offers recipes from all over India, plus a handy guide to common ingredients and spices, a guide to cooking methods, and recipes for several common spice mixes used in the dishes. While my dream Indian cookbook is Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking, this one (and the two others I have) will do just fine until I get my hands on Sahni's book.

The possible recipe choices:

Pakoras (vegetable fritters). I don't know why, but I never tried these snacks while I was travelling in Pakistan and India, perhaps because I had developed quite an appetite for samosas. A strong contender for recipe of the week.
Thosai (South Indian lentil and rice pancakes).
Rajasthani Pilau (spicy rice).
Mattar Pilau (rice and peas, Uttar Pradesh style).
Moti Pilau (spiced rice with meatballs, Uttar Pradesh style).
Alu Mattar Rasa (Utter Pradesh-style potato and pea curry).
Cho Chori (Bengali spicy dry vegetables).
Dhal Mulegoo Thani (South Indian lentil soup (the basis for Mulligatawny?)).
Machchi Do Piaza (Bengali curried fish).
Jhinga Kari (Keralan hot prawn curry).
Chingri Kari (Bengali prawn mustard curry).
Tikka Kebab (North Indian chicken kebab, the basis for Chicken Tikka Masala).
Murgh Vindaloo (Goan chicken vinegar curry).
Shami Kebab (minced lamb and lentil patties, Uttar Pradesh style).
Seekh Kebab (North Indian minced meat on skewers). I first tasted minced meat kebab in Iran, where I didn't catch what it was called, but when I later tasted the Indian seekh kebab, I realised it was basically the same dish. Whatever its name or nationality, I love it but have never got round to trying to cook it, so this is a strong contender.
Kid Josh (Maharashtran Parsi-style curried lamb with cashews and coconut milk).
Tabak Maaz (Kashmiri spiced lamb ribs).
Badam Kheer (Utter Pradesh-style creamed almonds).

Cookbook of the week #2: 100 fristende konditorkager

Danish, Swedish and Norwegian women's weekly magazines are quite popular in Iceland, especially among the older generations of women who grew up before English became the Icelanders' foreign language of choice. These magazines feature true life stories, interviews, crafts, horoscopes, columns of all sorts, and recipes. Several times a year they will include a free gift, often a small recipe book or booklet. This is one such, included with a copy of the Norwegian Sunday edition of Ugebladet ("The Weekly"). Most of my Scandinavian recipe books came with similar magazines, most of which were collected by my grandmother, but a couple I bought myself, either for the recipe book or quilting or crochet patterns.



This is a difficult book to read. Every recipe is mouthwatering, and it doesn't matter if it's read before, during or after a meal, it induces hunger – or rather, it gives one an appetite for something sweet. The chapters cover small cakes, oven-pan cakes, layer cakes, rolls, tarts, choux-pastry, meringues and marzipan cakes, and cookies, all of them something you might expect to find in a fine bakery or served in a fancy café, and, as a matter fact, the title translates as 100 tempting pastry-chef cakes.

There are a few old friends here, like Sarah Bernhardts and Sachertorte, as well as creations I have never heard of. I would have loved to make just about everything in the book, but finally I narrowed it down to half a dozen recipes:

The first is called Bird's Nests. These are small individual pastries in four layers: one of baked marzipan, then a layer of butter icing, then melted chocolate over the icing, and a decoration of small pieces of gelatine/fruit juice glazed tinned fruit on top. If I make these, I think I will use fresh fruit.

The second is Honey-cake Squares. This is a spicy oven-pan cake with honey and almonds and chocolate icing. The cake is cut into small individual cakes before being glazed.

The third contender is Napoleon Cakes or simply Napoleons. These are little layered cakes made from vanilla custard sandwiched between pieces of puff pastry with a layer of raspberry marmalade, and topped with rum icing and whipped cream. According to Wikipedia they are known as Vanilla or Custard Slices in Britain and are a variation of Mille-feuilles pastries, which are similar but have more layers of both pastry and custard.
I have never tasted these, but my mother speaks of them with much nostalgia as a childhood favourite and has asked me to find out if they are sold in any bakeries in Reykjavík. Unfortunately I have yet to find one, so this is a strong contender. I would love to surprise her with Napoleon cakes the next time she comes to visit me.

The fourth is a Chocolate-Nut Roll. This is a log or roll (obvious, really). The cake is made with nuts and cocoa with a chocolate-orange cream filling and decorated with white chocolate and flaked hazelnuts.

The fifth is a Chocolate Roll with Daim Filling. This is a chocolate roll filled with buttercream into which has been mixed crushed Daim candy, and decorated with dark chocolate and chocolate sprinkles. For those unfamiliar with Daim, it is almond brittle covered with milk chocolate and if there is an IKEA store near you it is sold in the food section.

The sixth is French Waffles, puff pastry sandwiches filled with coffee-cremé. I love these, but I like them better with vanilla buttercream, so I would probably make half with coffee-cremé and half with vanilla buttercream.

Since there is not a problem with copyright here (I translated the recipes into English and whatever copyright there may be therefore belongs to me – not that I forbid anyone to copy them), I am going to showcase all six recipes, two per day, starting tomorrow, and then decide which one I will make. I have plans to try all of them eventually, but I will only test one now (or perhaps two if I'm in the mood).