To much family and festivity... I need a drink and some peace and quiet. At least I can go to work tomorrow.

Today I took my kids to the national historical museum to watch a mummification of a hen. This was a very fascinating show beginning with the uncovering of the hen corpse from the salt it had been laying in for 30 days. Then the ritual washing, the embalming, the wrapping, the use of resin and strips of linen, the tar, finally the wrapping in a red linen cloth before the hen mummy was placed in its custom built sarcophagi. At last the burial procession taking the mummy to it's pyramid. My kids loved the show and left the museum with a little mummy each that they made in a workshop for kids at the museum.

Saturday was not as much fun. I celebrated Uncle Al's 60th greater feast day a tad to hard and came home saturday morning just in time for breakfast with the family. Mental note to self: not a good idea!

RK talked a bit about tantra last weekend and recommended the book Kiss of the Yogini by David Gordon White. Today my copy arrived from amazon and I must say I'm completely blown away by this book. Not only by the fact that my knowledge about South Asian Tantra was so lacking but also by the implications this will have on my studies and understanding of Thelema. Seems like AC picked up quite a bit during his travels in this part of the world. I wonder how Bikkhu Ananda Metteyya (Bennett) and AC read the Hathayogapradipika and what sources their understanding of rajayoga was based on. If they are anything close to what I've read the last few hours then quite a bit (at least the fluidly bits) becomes very interesting.

"From [the fact that there is] union (yoga) of uterine blood and semen, this is known as rajayoga" - Now thats royal...

An unforgettable weekend is over.

We had the pleasure of having Dr. Richard Kaczynski visiting and giving a handful of great lectures staring friday and concluding sunday afternoon. Dr. K gave me lots of new insights in the history of esoteric movements starting in the early victorian times and up until modern times. He also opened up a new world of kabbalistic knowledge and I can't wait to dig deeper into this. The lectures focusing on Crowley were also brilliant and it was great being able to discuss Uncle Al with a world class scholar. Thank you Dr. K, I look forward to meeting you again!

According to the test results of this test my pitch discrimination and musical memory abilities are top notch... I scored 91.7% placing me among world class musicians... why the hell can't I tune my guitar properly then?

Back from Bergen. Back from rain, rain, rain and a bit more rain. Back from a intense weekend full of work and a bit of fun. Ate some stockfish on saturday and did not hate it. Drank way too much wine. Dead tired on sunday. Mental note to self: don't ever fly with Norwegian again.

The last 24 hours or so have given me a minor defeat in the fact that me and my team did not make it to the finals in this years national championship for amateur cooks. Sad as that is, the fact that the people of the United States seem to finally have come to their senses and given the democrats a chance to clear up the bloody mess that Bush and his henchemen have created makes my small defeat insignificant. This morning the sun rose in the west!

Today I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to Mr. Kul Gautam, Deputy Executive Director of the Unicef. He gave a one hour talk at a breakfast meeting in Unicef's Oslo offices. Mr. Gautam talked us through the 60 year long history of Unicef. He also told us about his 33 year long career in Unicef, a very fascinating history. Mr. Gautam praised Norway for it's strong support of Unicef and emphasized the role Norway has played in the history of the United Nations and Unicef.

This was all fine, but it left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. In general, Norwegians are selfish, hyper commercial, hyper consuming people with very little thought of other but them self.

I wish more people had the opportunity to listen to these very inspirational people that dedicate them self to helping children. I wish that I and the people around me did more to help. I wish we could care just a bit more. Mr. Gautam certainly made an impact on me and I'll try to care and help more in the future....

The weekend has been spent doing the usual, trying to wear down my twins seemingly endless energy reserves and of course obsessing on wine and food.

Four more books on cooking have joined my ever growing collection the last couple of weeks. One on belgian cooking, one norwegian that was a gift, the brilliant new book from Heston Blumenthal, 'In Search of Perfection', and the off-beat 'Food by design'.

After reading most of these books my head is again filled with new ideas and yesterday I started experimenting. After quite a few hours in the kitchen the results where as usual mixed. The parmesan coated chicken-breasts, first fried then roasted, were ok, but not as good as expected. The calvados mushrooms came out horrible, a clear miss. But the potato's ruled!

Heston Blumenthal has obsessed over the creating the perfect roasted potato's and I think he pretty damn close. I adapted his recipe for local conditions and mellowed the tastes a little. Heston loves to use olive oil, rosemary and garlic when doing potato's. I prefer diluted olive oil, thyme and garlic. If you want to have a go at this then make sure you get just the right potato for this. In the UK Heston has concluded with the Maris Piper variety. Unprepared, the only thing I had were local ecologic potato's of the Folva variety (I think) , probably not the best choice. I have to do some research on the optimal variety here in Norway. Right, here goes:

- 1 kilo potato's
- Very light olive oil or a 50/50 mixture of a neutral cooking oil and olive oil (I used rape-seed oil)
- 4 cloves of garlic
- A few thyme twigs
- salt

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees celcius
2. Pour oil into a roasting tray about one cm up and place in the oven.
3. Peel and quarter the potatoes. Rinse them in running cold water for a few minutes
4. Boil the potatoes until very soft in salted water (10g salt pr. liter)
5. Sieve off water. The potatoes should be dry before...
6. You put them in the roasting tray, tossing them so that they are covered with oil.
7. Turn the potatoes every 15 minutes or so. Do this three times.
8. Add the garlic and thyme and finish off the potaoes for another 15 minutes.
9. Take the potatoes out of the roating tray, dry off excess oil and salt them.

Ah,

Back from the land of smog, cheap wine and Nena. Back from six days without Internet. Back from a depressing place doing depressing things. But crap, it's cold here. Our place was a chilling 13 C when we came back. 7 C outside. Damn, winter is just around the corner. Well, the next two months are packed with stuff to do so I probably won't notice winter 'till new-year - the upside of stress, I guess.

Smoked Chicken Skin crisps

Kudos to Kamozawa & Talbot - I smoked it!

Ok, this one is still a bit sketchy and needs some work.

10 pieces of skin from chicken breasts
Corn starch
1l frying oil
Salt
a handful of wood chips
My trusty old smoker (actually it's brand new, but it sounds better)

The crips

1. Dry off any liquid and/or goo from the skins
2. Heat oil to 190 c
3. Fry skins until crisp
4. Dry off any excess oil, salt lightly

Then the smoke

1. Prepare the smoker
2. Cold smoke the skins lightly for 3-4 minutes

My component for the dessert - An apple tart

Kudos to Clotilde - I was inspired by your tarte tatin

6-8 apples
Calvados

For the crust:
200g flour
100g sugar
100g salted butter
20ml, more or less, milk

For the caramel:
100g brown sugar
50g salted butter

Calvados

The Crust

1. Combine sugar and butter in a bowl. Add the flour, little by little while stirring. Stir until crumbly.
2. Add milk until you have a smooth but not sticky ball of dough
3. Pop the ball in the fridge while you finish the other parts of the recipe

The Caramel

1. Melt the brown sugar in a non-stick pan over medium heat.
2. Remove from heat and stir in the butter

The Filling

1. Have a bowl of iced water with some lemon juice added ready
2. Peel, core and quarter the apples, tossing the finished slices into the bowl as you work
3. With a mandolin, or some electrical slicing appliance you might have lying around, or in worst case a sharp knife thinly slice the apple quarters
4. Zip-lock the slices with a generous dash of calvados

Bringing it all together

1. Preheat the oven to 175 c
2. Butter up a 25-30 cm cake pan
3. Smear the caramel over the bottom of the pan
4. Drain the zip-lock and finely distribute the apple sliced over the caramel
5. Roll out the dough to a circle slightly larger then the pan
6. Cover, tuck and prick the dough with a fork
7. Bake for 50ish minutes
8. Cool, run a knife around the edges and flip the cake over
9. Slice and love

Blue Potato Foam

Kudos to Ferran Adrià - yo da man



(10 servings, small side dish)

- 600g blue congo potatoes, peeled and diced
- 200ml single cream
- 55g salted butter
- 600g red onion, julienned
- 100g salted butter
- 100ml light olive oil
- 250ml water

Gear:
a 1L siphon and 2-3 cream chargers

The potato emulsion

1. Boil the diced potatoes in salted water for 20ish minutes
2. Drain, preserve 200ml of the potato water
3. Liquefy the potatoes and water in a blender
4. Add the cream, little by little
5. Add the butter, melted and chilled, also little by little
6. Blend until you have a smooth emulsion
7. Salt to taste
8. Strain and funnel into the siphon
9. Load the air and shake, rattle and roll
10. Keep warm in a bain-marie at 70 c

The onion jam

1. Fry the onions gently in oil and butter for about 20 minutes
2. Drain off excess fats and add 50 ml water
3. Cook until water has evaporated. Repeat four times. This should take 20ish minutes
4. Salt to taste
5. Keep warm

Bringing it together

As a side dish, lay out some onion jam on a (warm) plate. Siphon a golf-ball sized knob of potato foam on top.

And now, the finished Haddock Margarita:
(10 servings)






750g clean-cut sushi grade Haddock filet's, diced
Juice of 10 limes
100ml Tequila

3 green chillies, seeds removed and thinly sliced
5 tomatoes, seeds removed, diced
7 big cloves of fresh garlic, thinly sliced
2 large red onions, diced
A hand-full of chopped cilantro

4 Avocados
350ml milk

Salt
Pepper

5 passion-fruits
A few cilantro twigs

Ceviche

1. Juice 10 limes, strain juice into a large zip-lock bag.
2. Add the Tequila to the bag.
3. Add the diced haddock and seal the bag, squeezing as much air as possible out.
4. Refrigerate for 2 hours


Veggies

1. Slice, chop and/or dice all the vegetables
2. Strain the lime and tequila (aka tigermilk) of the haddock
3. Dry off excess juice from the haddock
4. Mix haddock and veggies
5. Salt to taste

Avocado foam

1. Half the avocados and remove stones
2. Scoope out avocado flesh and mash it in a bowl
3. Add one tablespoon tigermilk
4. Add 350ml milk
5. Salt to taste
6. Whisk the mixture until you have foam

Bringing it together

1. Wet the rind of ten martini glasses with some of the tigermilk
2. Dip the rind in salt, creating the margarita-look we want
3. Fill the maritini glasses two-thirds way up with the haddock/veggie mixture
4. Top with avocado foam
5. Decorate with a teaspoon full of passion-fruit seeds and some cilantro leaves

And the fish comes together..

(4 servings)
200g sushi-grade Haddock, cut in strips
1 tomato, diced
1 small red onion, cut in thin slices
1 green chili, minced
1 passionfruit, stones used

Juice of 7 limes
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp Tequila
Maybe some pepper, maybe some milk, perhaps a few drops of some vinegar....

Well, this will be mye third take on this dish a bit later today.

And now... fish! The first course in the upcoming national championships must contain 60% haddock. Now, last year the main course had this requirement. After all out hard work and intense training this was what ruined our shot at the 1st place. We forgot the fish and started cooking it much to late and ending up serving the judges fish that was raw in the middle. So this year we'll stick to serving the bloody fish raw. Enter chemistry. In parts of South America lime juice is used to 'cook' fish without heat. The methods and ingredients differ quite a bit from country to country, but the lime juice always plays a big part. So why does lime juice seemingly cook fish? I'm glad you asked. It doesn't. The acid in lime juice does however 'pickle' the fish, causing it to loose its translucency and making the proteins shed water and thus become more 'tough'. The end result is delicious and perfect as a snack or a small dish. Now, there are a couple of other things from that part of the world that I quite enjoy: Tequila, habanero chillies and cilantro. So let's throw that in and see how it turns out. To make the appearance more interesting we'll serve this margarita-style in frozen martini glasses with a rind of lime and salt...

The deadline for finishing our menu for the national championship for amateur cooks this year is fast approaching and we are moving fast to meet this deadline. I've been working 24/7 on the perfect apple cake/pie/? to serve as a part of the dessert and am almost there. This is a very painful process given that most all apple-based cakes taste great, so how to take the extra step towards perfection? As always I tend to fall back on molecular gastronomy. I've tried to analyze just what happens, chemistry wise, when an apple cake is baked hoping to learn the flavor formula thus enabling me to remodel this using other techniques allowing me to enhance tastes and textures I want to enhance. So far my conclusions are pretty trivial. Sous-vide and/or slow baking does not produce any better results then higher temperature cooking does. Even though Pierre Herme thinks one should do 20-hour apples, that is 10 hours of slow cooking and 10 hours of resting, I've found that there is little or no benefit to this technique compared to a much faster process using higher temperatures and extremely thin apple slices. The same blending of tastes seems to take place in my improved two hour process. I even think exposing apples to higher temperatures gives a slightly better result since the caramelizing of the sugars present is different. Well, we'll see...

Man skal ikke plage andre,
man skal være grei og snill,
og for øvrig kan man gjøre som man vil

good thing I'm not going to http://www.oyafestivalen.com/?page=program
Won't get to see The Cramps, but thats life.