Day 2 - Norway - World Cup Eating Challenge 2015

One of the best parts about this challenge comes from looking up food from countries I'm not as familiar with. I had Norway as country #2 on my list and my mind drew a blank. The only thing I could think of was the movie Frozen and aside from chocolate and sanwhiches, I'm not sure they really mention food at all. So it was off to the drawing board! Which looks a lot like a Pinterest board.

Ok, it's Pinterest.

Pinterest is my go to for looking up recipes a lot of the time. If you want to follow along with my ideas for future posts, definitely check out my World Eating Challenge board.

But I digress...  I found some recipes for Norwegian fish cakes and potato pancakes that seemed really amazing and I thought they would make a good breakfast.

Fish Cakes

These salmon and cod cakes looks so fresh and paleo friendly, I knew they would be great. I went to the market and was able to get fresh cuts of each fish. I didn't measure perfectly for the herbs though which I think was misstep #1. I also decided to skip out on the coconut flour since I don't think these types of things really need the binder. I was really happy with that decision.

Putting them all together was really easy though! I cut up the fish into small pieces and processed it with the herbs. I think I made have over processed them a little though. I wish I'd left the mixture a little chunkier. I also would suggest a second egg for moisture. After that, I just let them cook in some butter on the stove!

All in all, I found these to be really dry and I think it's for some of the reasons I mentioned above. I put more herbs than it called for, I over processed the fish which increases the surface area (faster cooking time), and I made 4 instead of two big ones. All of these changes would lead to faster cooking and just drying out of the cakes. I also didn't want to do the poached egg, mostly because I was short on time. The cakes were also really fishy. I think my cod wasn't great. I would suggest to only use salmon if you want to try this at home. I ate mine with a sriracha mayo which helped but you know it's not good if you're just trying to mask a taste.

Potato Pancakes

As good as the fish cakes looked though, they didn't hold a candle to the potato pancakes. I knew I could make some good substitutions to be able to pull these off. I'd use tapioca flour and almond milk instead of the regular versions and then honey and coconut sugar as toppings.

I made my mashed potatoes and then when I added in the rest of ingredients, it seemed too doughy and dry so I added another splash of milk... and then realized I was a total idiot. Of course the mixture should be doughy... I had to roll out the flat pancake shape. I tried adding more tapioca flour to thicken the goopey mixture but it didn't worth. Tapioca flour is a little to elastic so at such a high quantity, it made it really gummy when I tried to roll it out and make the pancakes. I ended up dumping everything. It was really sad.

Kitchen failures definitely aren't fun especially when it's not salvageable. Which is why I was happy I decided to go with a fun little addition to these dishes...

Ice Wine

Since I knew Frozen was from Norway, I wanted a little icey addition to the day's food. Since I'm such a wino, ice wine seemed like the best choice. Ice wine isn't from Norway at all but it's still cool. It's a dessert wine made from grapes left on the vine until after they have frozen. As such, it's only made it really cold areas like Canada, New York, and Germany.

I was happy to find this Vidal Ice Wine at Bevmo for a reasonable price. It had such a beautiful honey flavor and was super delicious. When the cooking gets frustrating, it's nice that wine doesn't disappoint.