Norway Travel: The Food
I’m a vegan for Lent. Or, I was until I boarded the plane for Norway.
I figured that eating vegan in Norway was going to be tough but I really had no idea how tough. After asking for a vegetarian meal on Scandinavian airlines and being given a fish dish instead I was quick to throw my hands up in the air and give myself a week long hiatus from Lent.
Given the proximity to sea and the farming practices of the country, which are primarily livestock and feed grains, you can bet there was lots of dairy, meat, and fish to be eaten.
One thing to note about dining out in Norway: it’s not cheap. Not at all.
The Meat:
I was not so secretly hoping to be able to eat one of these on my trip:
Reindeer.
Don’t worry, this guy is just taxidermy. I’m no hunter. The meal looked more like this:
It tasted pretty good. Not my favourite meat (that award still goes to lamb). It was a bit on the tough side with a mild taste (not as game-y as I was expecting) similar to venison.
This reindeer stew came from the cafeteria restaurant Kaffistova in Oslo that serves lots of traditional Norwegian dishes from smørbrød (open faced sandwiches) to hot stews like this one to fish dishes.
Dinner for two at this cafeteria with no drinks 320NOK ~ $56 CAD.
The Fish:
Fish is BIG in Norway. Huge, really. I’m a big fan of fish and I’m pretty familiar with Norwegian fish dishes like gravlax and stockfish (salt cod) that I’ve cooked before so I was excited to eat it! Matt and I got a recommendation to go to the fish restaurant Lofoten in the Aker Brygge harbour neighbourhood of Oslo.
We started with a raw marinated scallop with scallop mousseline and lemon creme, and mussels steamed in white wine.
The scallop was tasty but I much preferred the mussel dish. The mussels were huge, meaty, and perfectly steamed.
For a main dish I went with panfried cod with onion tart and Matt had the baked arctic char with cauliflower cream. I`m not a big fan of these fancy schmancy deconstructed type dishes. While the fish was perfectly cooked, it was under seasoned. Everything else on the plate was over seasoned. It`s like you had to mush all the components of the dish together to get the whole thing to taste right! I don`t know about you, but I prefer my dish constructed.
At least the dessert made-up for the main… it was delicious. Black currant souffle with black currant sourbet. There were warm melty chunks of chocolate in the not too sweet souffle that mixed perfectly with the tartness of the sorbet. I was in heaven. It was almost worth the $20.
Dinner for two with 2 courses each, 1 dessert, and 1 glass of wine: 1180NOK ~ $205 CAD
The Dairy:
Probably my favourite part of Norwegian cuisine was the dairy. Seriously, it was amazing. And given the amount that I ate the fact that I only came home with 2 tiny pimples made it all the more worthwhile.
First the skyr: super thick and not too sweet this Nordic yoghurt had the consistency thicker than sour cream and could hold a spoon upright. And the vanilla flavour actually had vanilla beans in it. Awesome.
Then there was the butter. Best. Butter. Ever.
I know I talked about Irish butter before and how delicious everyone says it is. If it’s anything like Norwegian butter then I believe every word. Because Norwegian butter is amazing. It tastes like you used to imagine butter would tasted back when you were 5 years old and you pretended you were Amish and had an imaginary butter churner. For real.
And then there’s the best cheese in the world. Gudbrandsdalost or Brown Cheese.
(source)
Made from the caramelized whey leftover from the goat cheese making process this cheese is soft and sweet and is amazing on toast with or Wasa crackers with coffee. … I snuck some home in my suitcase to save until after Lent again. 
Related Norway Posts:
Norway in March
Exploring Norway by Train, Boat, and Bus
Active Pursuits in Norway
Homecooked Meals
day 68: Easter
Don’t forget to win a 5 Days of Superfoods tutorial. I’ll be drawing a winner tomorrow night.
So I’ve taken a few days hiatus from blogging because of Easter weekend. My hands and mouth have been full of food that I haven’t put down for 3 days. It’s been glorious.
Friday was a big fish dinner at my dad’s – featuring baccalà!
Saturday was breakfast out with my girlfriends and dinner out at an Indian restaurant with my husband.
Sunday was brunch with my in-laws followed up with a BIG PIECE OF BIRTHDAY CAKE (because, hey, it’s Easter!)
…if I had to venture a guess, I’d say that I have gained about 3 lbs this weekend (pretty shitty considering it took me a month to lose that much) but I’m waiting until my weigh in this week to get the final number. It’s not going to be pretty.
Every meal this week is going to be leftovers from the weekend.
At least I was able to get in some good workouts this weekend. Matt came with me to lift weights on Friday (I always love having a weightlifting partner) and I took an Athletic Training class at the gym on Saturday. I don’t usually take classes but I make an exception when my favourite instructor is teaching:
My Sister! yay! She was in town for the holiday weekend / her birthday.
I am probably her most vocal student with all my hoots and hollers.
How did you all else enjoy your Easter?
day 62: cooking day
Yesterday was a perfect day for cooking. It was rainy and ugly outside all day long so it was great to stay indoors and cook some brand new things.
First, I headed over to my dad’s house to learn from my nonna how to make the baccalà. Apparently, it’s super easy (especially since nonna did the hard part of soaking it, changing the water 3 times a day, and cleaning out all the spines and skin).
After that, you just add the fish to some olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, and white wine and let it stew up for a couple of hours while you lay on the couch watching the food network. Ahhh Sundays.
I can’t wait to sink my teeth (over, and over, and over again—it’s really chewy) into this stuff on Good Friday!
You would never know that this woman didn’t want to make baccalà this year.
Yesterday’s cooking inspired me to want to learn more Italian recipes, so I’m going to try cooking Italian food most of the week.
After coming home from my dad’s house yesterday I set out to make my power bread. It started with a pre-soaker I made on Friday, a soaker and a biga that I made Saturday, and the final dough was made yesterday. This dough was chock full of goodness: flax, whole grain flour, sunflower seed meal, pepitas, and sesame seeds. If it sounds delicious, then you’re right: it was.
It was also hideous.
This is the ugliest bread I think I’ve ever made. It didn’t lift in the oven and I have no idea why? Please avert your eyes.
In any case, I’m glad that it’s at least tasty – that’s most important. I guess I have a thing or two to learn about working with whole grains.
I had to wake up early again to get my gym on this morning. I’m donating blood today and there’s to be “no heavy lifting for 8 hours”. This should make for a long day.
day 56: in search of stockfish
This morning I woke up extra early to head to the gym. Normally I’m up not up until 7:00 but this morning I was up at 5:45 to be at the gym for 6:00. I wasn’t as tired as I expected to be, but I was extra hungry this morning after my workout. Does anyone know a good post workout breakfast that I can pack and bring to work?
The most exciting part of my workout this morning: I got complimented on the amount of weight I was squatting! I love getting compliments at the gym 
I got to thinking that I should compliment a new person every day at the gym. Maybe it will make them happy and make them want to come back! What do you think? Good idea or annoying?
I spent the morning at the gym because this afternoon I had to pick up my nonna and take her back and forth across the city until we could find this:
That’s stockfish or dried cod. I have every intention of learning from her how to make baccalà this weekend. Baccalà is actually salt cod, but being Northern Italian we tend to do things a bit differently. We use dried cod instead.
There are 2 things that you need to know about stockfish (we’ll call it baccalà for the sake of argument): 1) it is as solid as a board — you could probably sleep with one under your bed in lieu of a baseball bat to fend off attackers. But you probably wouldn’t want to do that because 2) it smells terrible. Imagine the smelliest fish you could think of and then multiply that aroma by 10.
So once nonna and I got the fish home we took it into the garage and pulled out a wood saw and a hammer from the toolbox to saw it up into pieces small enough to fit into a pot. The baccalà then has to soak in warm water for 3 days (in the garage since you don’t want that smell in your house, blech!) and the water must be changed 3 times a day!
No wonder nonna wasn’t too keen on making it. On the plus side, once I know the recipe then she’ll never have to worry about making it again.
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