Tasty Tuesday

There's been a Porterhouse steak taunting us in the freezer for way too long and after a 24 hour stint in the city shooting your average New York City B roll (i.e. water towers, Empire State Building, birds in sky...) I felt like cooking in my country kitchen. I bought some tarragon at our local farmers market on 9th Ave between 41/42. And that can only mean one thing...

...Bearnaise

In a sauce pan combine 1/4 cup Tarragon vinegar, 1/4 cup dry white wine, 2 table spoons of finely chopped onion and 1 table spoon chopped fresh tarragon. Bring it to a boil and let it simmer till the liquid has been reduced to 1/4 cup. 

Strain the mixture into a a bowl over hot water and beat in 3 egg yolks. Whisk till it thickens. Beat in butter (a total of 1 stick) one table spoon at a time.

Finally stir in the remaining tarragon. 

Mine totally separated this time and was not worthy of a picture but it tasted delish. At home on a tuesday night it's all that matters. 

We thought we were cooking the steak on the grill but the Weber was not cooperating. Probably cause of the temperature outside... So we cooked it in a pan inside, 3 minutes on each side in a hot pan, with just a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper rubbed on it, then stuck it in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, 10 minutes on each side. 

With it thyme potato wedges in the oven. 

Enjoy with a fine box wine. Cheers!

And that's how we do tuesday night.

Baking Bread!

My mom and my sister are both new devotees of the following bread recipe. It's called the Toft Sisters Loaf. The Swedish version of the recipe is on my sister's blog.

(Ser den ut som den ska?)

1.5 dl (.6 cups) rye flour

1.5 dl flax seed

1 dl (.4 cups) sunflower seeds

1 dl wheat bran

2 table spoons olive oil

2 table spoons salt

Mix these ingredients and pour 4 dl (1.6 cups) boiling hot water over to blanche. Let it sit for 1 hour.

Mix 50 grams (1.7 oz) of yeast with 3.5 dl (1.4 cups) of finger warm water. Mix in the blanched ingredients. Add 1 liter (4.2 cups) of flour and make a dough. Let the dough rise for at least 3 hours or over night. 

Knead the dough with 2 dl (.8 cups) of flour and flatten it into a square and roll up like a roll cake. You guys don't know what that is but you can imagine - it's a cake. That you roll.

Let the roll rise for 30 minutes and then bake for 40 minutes at 437 degrees. That is a direct conversion of 225 degrees celsius. 

Let it cool off without a cloth over it. 

My sister says you shouldn't keep the bread in a bag but keep it out because the thick crust keeps it moist inside. 

I don't think we'll ever know over here because the loaf is almost gone already. Yummy!

Big Green in Big Pink

The long awaited couch is here! Thank you Rosemary! First some befores just to remind myself how far we've come!!!

The couch arrived last night and it's been test driven already to 3 episodes of Damages, season 1. Our only complaint is that it's too comfy. It's hard to get up once you're in it. 

It's a Rowe couch with a custom made slip cover. Rosemary picked up all the fabric samples in Boston and we decided on this one. And now a big green velour monster has taken hold of our living room. Coze factor is in the red zone.

And cause we are so excited about it and it's such a perfect fit for the room and for us all we want now is a good rug, drapes, big crazy art for the walls, lamps, plants, aquariums, stuffed fish for over the fireplace (we would settle for a susaphone or a wagonwheel if anybody's got one)....!!! And the perfect accessory for any comfy piece of furniture. A cat. Named Todd.

Here's the start of the white bathroom. Go away pink -you are not wanted here.

We love Clintondale and feel so lucky to have found this place. Now we want more people to find it! We looked at both these houses before we found Big Pink and they are still for sale, you young house hunters you...

I call this one Cute Guy. It's about 100 years old and completely finished inside. It has a cool barn, about an acre of land and a great view of the mountains. It was a little too small for us and we also wanted a little bit of a fixer upper.

This is the crazy house across the street from us. The one with the domed ceiling in the dining room and the LED water fall art on the wall. She's a gutter for sure but a gutter in foreclosure and someone could make it a terrific house. It has about 4 acres of land and giant barn.

This is the back of the crazy house and the red barn that belongs to the house.

And this of course is the Gunk Haus and this is the first of many reminders - they open for business March 21st and it's gonna be great! Hope to see you there!

And finally an herbal update. It's still illegal in the United States of America. Oh - right my window sill herbs...

My thumb may be green but it's a little confused. I thought I planted 4 different kinds of herbs but 2 came up as Parsley and one as Cilantro. And one not at all. But parsley is good to keep around, grandma Anna Lisa thinks it cures just about everything.

Lipstick on a pig

I use our neighbor Florence's goats as my own personal garbage disposal/compost until I get to start my own. Today I brought them the stalks and leaves from the beets which they loved. Florence said that's sweet food for them. She also told me that this morning she woke up to find 2 brand new baby lambs in the former chicken coop. She took me to see them and I really wanted to run for my camera but I felt I needed to preserve their innocence from the Clintondale paparazzi just a little while longer. They'll be out grazing with their buddies soon enough and I'll snap away.

We are doing a couple of projects that kind of fall in the putting "lipstick on a pig" or "a band-aid on a headwound" category but hells bells we gotta live here and we want to make it nice. Since our 10 year plan is contingent on winning the lottery we should do what we can right now. Scott is routing down our horrific Goldilocks meets the Flintstones cabinet doors and James is painting, yes painting, the bathroom tiles. It's the most toxic paint I've ever smelled and he'll be singing showtunes from the fumes soon but it's looking good. 

Uhummmm yup that was a PINK bathroom...

We've made no secret of how much we detest the color of our kitchen but having a 10 year plan has put a halt on most of the work. But here's something that felt worth it. 

We call it carpenter's joy in Sweden but this isn't even that, this is some generic pre fab crap that reeks of faux country. But this is real country, we don't need your added touches. 

It may seem silly but to us - getting rid of that edge just made the house a little more ours. If work stays slow we're painting the doors next week.

I feel like Edward Weston, using produce and peeling paint as photo subjects because I can't afford to hire models, besides beets have no attitude and wallpaper doesn't need hair and make-up so here's more still lives from around the house. The wall paper also kind of tells a story, there's multiple generations visible and I wonder what era they all belong to. On one wall in the hallway it's peeled down to the plaster which may be an original wall, meaning 200 years old. 

I think what we are tackling next is the area known as the teacup room. It's the hallway that connects the kitchen, bathroom and dining room. Referred to as the teacup room because of its wallpaper. 

Turns out there aren't really any teacups on the wallpaper but instead completely random things like that weaver majiggy, fruit baskets and mushrooms. I don't know if I can handle all this quaintness. 

Some kind of time off

It's a snowy day in the country. Could be a lot worse, we were actually wishing for a lot worse but again it's a wimpy storm. But it's wintery enough for us to start another TV show, Damages this time, and make soup. Rosemary makes a delicious Borscht and I thought I would try my hand at it. When I started peeling the beets I noticed just how beautiful they are and I had to play with my food a little first. 

This fall sometime James brought home a couple of Porterhouses from work and we made amazing chimichurri steaks on the grill. I saved the bone hoping to make soup on it and today is the day. I'm making stock on the bone and 8 cups of water. I supplemented with another soup beef with bone. Bring it to a simmer and add 2 onions, 3 peeled carrots and finally the beets. I dumped 2 bunches in there, about 8 beets. Also add 1/4 cup white vinegar. Let it simmer for 1 1/2 hours. After that the beets should be soft. Fish out the meat and cut the good pieces off and put back in the pot. Separate the beets from the liquid and put them through the blender and then add back to the stock. I brought it back to a simmer while adding salt - very carefully.

Beautiful ingredients make for beautiful food.

Serve with sour cream and fresh cut dill.

Looking at these pictures you would think that the dining room is done. But this is last week.

 This is today.

It's getting to be a bad joke around here with all the moving of the furniture but it keeps things interesting. I guess.

But that last coat on the floor makes it done. We'll move back in tomorrow afternoon and this time - we'll stay in!

The chairs are in place and so is the TV. But we are still waiting on the couch.

This is a pasta salad Lovisa and I made up for our friend Jörn.

Marinade tomatoes, cucumbers and red onion in lemon juice, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Add cooked pasta and feta cheese. Top it off with avocado. It's like all the things I like.

We ate it with friends and Bratwursts on Superbowl sunday. Go Saints! We watched the game at Browns which is 5 minutes from the house. It was our first visit there and it certainly won't be our last. There are plenty of reasons for that and here are 3:

- One of the regulars/inhabitants is a beagle named Charlie. 

- Twice the owner came downstairs to stoke the fire - in her bathrobe. 

- We drank pony Rolling Rocks all night and the bill came to $25. 

Thanks to Team D&E for taking us! 

I love spending time up here and I wish I could stay forever. This time around is a little scary though because the reason we are sticking around is that work has dried up. Things will turn around for sure but I hate that we can't completely relax and enjoy the time off. Being a freelancer is sooooo hard. You're never really on vacation - you're always just between jobs. But instead of whining and worrying and saying I'LL NEVER WORK AGAIN I will look back on my last awesome motion picture making experience and look forward to the next. 

Camera Department Extraordinaire: Cali Joe, Jessica, Young Dave, Dear Cedric, the author, Charlie, Paul and Ted Logan as the Cherry Orchard's Lopakhin with a rodent on his face. Most Excellent. 

Fellow Swedes, Peter and I.

Thanks to Jessica Miglio, our still photographer for the sweetass HenryCrime pics!

Getting ahead of myself

I just can't wait any longer. Don't have much to say but I just have to share the progress of the house with you. Our living room is D.U.N. James put in some serious time painting this weekend and I cleaned. We are striving for a dust free environment and it's getting there.

The floor was sanded and then Michael applied a white stain and then satin polyurethane on top. 4 coats I believe. The floor has had it and even this sanding was pushing it. We can see daylight coming in from the basement. But this was a great way to de-doggify the area and just make it look fresh. Next time we'll have to replace the boards... But this should buy some time. We are moving in and the couch should be here end of next week.

(Sigh of relief)

The bedroom also got a facelift. We are not painting the baywindow area just yet, the whole room is going to get a makeover in the next few months, years... and we were just dying to get the house back to cozefactor -hi so I cleaned and am now sitting at my desk in one of the prettiest places in the house. Hey that's me!

Got lemons?

Make Hollandaise.


It's so much easier than I thought and it turns sunday breakfast into brunch!


First, I don't have a double boiler so I just put a bowl over a pot of simmering water. So put 3 egg yolks in the bowl and whisk till they get thick. Add 4 tablespoons of boiling water, 1 tablespoon at a time and whisk in between.


Add 2 table spoons of warmed lemon juice. Whisk again.


Take the pot off the heat and slowly whisk in 1 stick of melted butter.


Finally add 1/2 teaspoon salt and a 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper.


Done.


And if you have Hollandaise. Make Eggs Benedict!

Finally got my poached egg right. 
- I'm using very fresh eggs. 
- The water should be simmering, not boiling.
-  Add about 2 tablespoons of vinegar to the water. 


It's a beautiful thing when it just stays together in the pot.