Friday Night Dinner

Norwegian Weekend!

Over the weekend we had the pleasure of visiting some good friends. The best part of the visit was not only the company and other guests, but the fabulous Norwegian Meal that was waiting for us when we got there!

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The host, a retired Captain from Royal Caribbean had made a fabulous traditional Norwegian dish for us called Farikal (for us non Norwegians also known as lamb and cabbage)! This of course made my Norwegian hubby very happy 🙂

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This meal is a simple but very tasty stew with, you guessed right, lamb, cabbage and lots of black pepper!

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Talk about yummy comforting food, and of course like every Norwegian dish, its served with potatoes ❤

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Then to make it even better, on the next day of our stay, another retired Captain and his wife joined us and we were presented with some yet again fabulous Gravlax, yet another Norwegian dish 🙂

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If you are not familiar with this dish, its the result of marinading a nice piece of salmon in salt, sugar, black pepper, dill and aquavit or brandy. You let it rest in the fridge for a minimum of 3 days and then just slice it thin and dip in some Mustard sauce and here you have another piece of heaven!

So as you can tell, I had a great dose of Norwegian fabulous food and company 🙂

Huge thank you to the hosts for a wonderful weekend and to the guests for such good company!

 

 

 

 

Holiday menu testing…….. Chicken, Brie, Cranberries and Pecans – Husband Approved :-)

Friday night is the perfect night to celebrate the end of yet another week. Someone reminded me that there are currently 20 days left before Thanksgiving and 48 days left till Christmas!

So with that said, its time to get into the Holiday spirit mode and start testing recipes to see which ones get the seal of approval from the family!

Tonight we had Stuffed Chicken with Asparagus and Yellow Peppers, with Deep Fried Goats Cheese on a bed of Madeira Cranberry Sauce, topped with Candied Red Pepper Pecans!

Started with the pecans:

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  • 2 1/2 cups of pecans
  • Butter
  • 1 cup of sugar
  • 1/2 tsp of salt
  • 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp red pepper (if you don’t want them with a hot hint, skip this ingredient)
  • 1/2 cup of water
  • 1 tsp vanilla

    Place pecans on a baking sheet and warm in 250 deg F oven for about 10 minutes.

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In the meantime place all above ingredients in a casserole except for the vanilla and cook on low heat until sugar disappears, then turn heat up and cook until it reaches 236 deg on the candy thermometer (softball stage).
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Remove from heat, stir in the vanilla, add the pecans and stir until evenly coated.

Place on a butter coated baking sheet into 250 deg F oven for 30 minutes and make sure to toss them around every 10 minutes.

Once that was done I dipped the Goats Cheese Brie Wedges into egg mixture and coated in plain bread crumbs and put aside ready to dip into pipping hot oil a few minutes before dinner.

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Then for the chicken, got some chicken breasts and butterflied them and pounded them till I got them thin enough.

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Seasoned them with salt and pepper and stuffed them with some fresh asparagus and yellow peppers, wrapped them up and held them together with toothpicks.

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Pan cooked them for a few minutes to give them a lovely golden crust and then finished them off in the oven.

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The final step to my dish was toasting some Pita Bread for the Deep Fried Goats Brie!

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This dish got the hubby’s seal of approval! 🙂