For the next six weeks I shall be working aboard Gaasten with old friend and skipper Tim. We are sailing from Alesund on one week trips around the Norwegian Fjords. I’m looking forward to cooking with new ingredients.
Handy tips so far are don’t give skiers chocolate bars head up in to the Mountains with. They get too cold to bite in to. One of our seasoned cross country ski guests shared her recipes for flapjack with me. It was like no flapjack that I had ever had in the UK which i find is often bland or sickly sweet. This was a cornucopia of the tastiest seeds, nuts and dried fruit. I have been rejigging the recipe all week and have made four different varieties each, I think, better than the last. Where I have really excelled myself though has been in the discovery of THE best ever sauce for Deer. I began with all the usual suspects; onion, garlic, carrots, celery, thyme, rosemary and a bay leaf but then went off piste with the addition of almost a handful of juniper. I added star anise and orange later and the classically Scandinavian finish of cream rather than butter.
It was intense, dark and almost smokey. If you closed your eyes you could taste a Norwegian woodland. I think I may have added a cube of 70% Choc at the end to create that silky feel.
Sometimes I think you really have to be in a country to cook it’s food. You have to smell it, see it and touch it before you can begin to understand how it needs to taste. The Norwegians loved it and we ended the cruise with a heady mixture of Aquavit and Whiskey.
Tim, Tash and I spent the last day climbing the hill near Alesund, where I finally saw my White Tailed Sea Eagle, before heading to town to buy jumpers and pose with Trolls. I think we are beginning to look more like Trolls each day.
