these past few weeks have been full of good times and good food with amazing friends. but all those picnics and dinner parties didn't happen without breaking my heart a little bit. one of our friends, R, is moving to hong kong with her boyfriend and we don't know if/when they're coming back to denmark. gradually, she's been cleaning out her pantry and fridge with each wonderful salad, bruchetta, and dessert. we've had quite a few great meals together and were able to reach out to each other while struggling to integrate, get jobs, and just get into the groove in this foreign land.
last week i showed R what tamales were, after i made them with our mutual friend from mexico. it is a pretty strange concept to wrap your head around if you've never had them. they turned out to be a great success despite the different ingredients (imagine hunting down pork fat in 5 different supermarkets) in denmark and the fact that none of us had attempted it before. obviously it was mostly thanks to our mothers; hers for the tried-and-tested recipe and mine for bringing corn husks and chilies from california. we even made some with beans instead of pork so R, a vegetarian, could eat them. learning about new foods is always fun.
R and i both had something to learn from our spanish friend, who made us tortilla de patatas and then showed us a very simple but delicious snack; catalan tomato bread! i never would have thought of it myself. rub a garlic half on toasted bread, rub a tomato half on said bread, drizzle olive oil, sprinkle salt. it's like the garlic bread you get in restaurants, only better. i'm definitely going to be making this at home in the future.
this girl has taught me so much about food and vegetarian cooking. my tofu skills were no match for her fresh salads and inventive dips. so you can imagine how i felt when she gave me a big box full of 'leftovers' which was full of wonderful ingredients, some very personal, some i have never even heard of before. it really hit home at that point; the fact that we would no longer be a phone call away from meeting up with each other somewhere in the city. luckily i didn't cry then, or even on her last night in copenhagen. as we sat drinking white wine and eating chocolate ice cream (seemingly undoing all the healthy meals we had together) on the floor of her very empty kitchen, i tried to take comfort in knowing that the world is pretty small these days. we'll definitely meet again. (:
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6 kommentarer:
is that tofu sheet on the picture? We use them a lot in soups in Indonesia
Oh, thanks for the link to the Chocolate Tofu Pudding - I will be trying this out as soon as I have a good excuse/a bigger group to share it with (my boyfriend - if you can believe it - hates chocolate of any kind!).
I'm sorry to hear your friend is moving to Hong Kong. My best friend in Copenhagen just moved to Ireland this summer, and even that feels like far away (which it really isn't, after all). On a positive note, now you have a good excuse to book a vacation to Hong Kong in the middle of the gray, wet and windy Danish winter. ;)
@eva: tofu sheet? what is that? which photo?
@seglare: that is crazy! i've never met anyone who HATES chocolate... hmm, but i think you can just use any strong flavour to mask the tofu. raspberries, christmas-y spices, lemon... i'll have to try those too, but chocolate is just so good and easy. ^^
I think Eva means the pic with the corn husks - they resemble tofu sheet. And is tofu sheet the same thing as tempeh?
I haven't had a tamale in AGES!!!!!
Ooh, were those corn husks instead?
Tofu sheets are the thing you can buy in Asian supermarket, they look exactly like that and they grow limp in soups LOL
Tempeh is just like tofu, but with the beans visible. You should try it Jennie, good, filling vegetarian alternative of meat
@jennie: i have 3 left in the freezer if you are interested in a trade of some sort... (;
@eva: OH you meant the corn husks. you mean like inari? or fried tofu sheets? mmmm, so good! tempeh can be pretty good, as well as seitan, but i prefer to stay away from fake meats and get my protein from beans and such. ^^;
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