Nerd Cuisine

05/15/2013 04:43 PM

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2 Courgette 4 Egg Omelet

According to Wikipedia, zucchini is the most common used name in Scandinavia for the vegetable in other places more commonly known by its french name courgette. I might have old data, but I think the most widespread name in Sweden at least, is simply squash (probably since we didn’t know about any other squashes for very long […]

Nerd Cuisine

05/10/2013 05:38 PM

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Spicy Chicken 2 (Murgh Korma, more or less)

Chicken has only recently been allowed in the kitchen as the significant other softened the bird-eating veto. In combination with the increased comfort in the blending of various spicy spices, this opens up a whole new chapter of cooking, previously unseen in the Nerd Cuisine kitchens. Not bothering with checking any recipes before cooking, this […]

Nerd Cuisine

05/09/2013 05:46 PM

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Spicy Chicken 1

For nearly three years I’ve lived under the delusion that my significant other disliked couscous. Apparently that is not the case, so to celebrate I made some with spicy chicken. The spice blend aimed to be something that could be associated with North Africa. I don’t remember everything I put in there off the top […]

Nerd Cuisine

05/01/2013 05:47 PM

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Fast Food, Only Slow…

We didn’t even eat half the roast of the last post for dinner that night. I didn’t feel like just slicing and re-heating it. After some thinking I realized that the Greek fast food dish gyros is usually made with pork neck. The name comes from the broiling on a rotating spit of course, but you [...]

Nerd Cuisine

04/29/2013 06:25 PM

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Garlic-studded Pork Neck

Went to the store to catch up on vegetables a bit. Not a lot of those at home lately. Stumbled upon an almost suspiciously good offer on pork neck for members of the cooperative. Took one home, studded it with garlic. I didn’t bother with tying it this time. There’s a limit to how fancy [...]

Nerd Cuisine

04/26/2013 01:41 PM

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Moussaka, sort of.

Minced pork, button mushrooms and fresh garlic at great discounts and the refrigerator runneth over with eggplant and half-zucchinis (OK, one of each, but you get the idea). In my book that spells moussaka or something pretty similar. Fresh onions and garlic and a bag of shrooms. Frying stuff. Also making sure the seasoning has [...]

Nerd Cuisine

04/21/2013 05:49 PM

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Non-opulent Green Pea Soup

The classic green pea soup, or Crème Nignon, is an exercise in slightly restrained luxury with its whipped cream and champagne garnish. But what if one simply wants a green pea soup, without bells and whistles? That’s fine too. (we only decided to have soup for dinner since it’s quick and cheap and Star Wars was [...]

Nerd Cuisine

04/07/2013 07:03 PM

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My Big Fat Swedish Pancake

After a bit of surfing around I came to the conclusion that baking pancakes in the oven is a quite local Swedish/Finnish thing, with oven pancakes more often being served as a main dish and ‘normal’ pancakes for dessert. This only came up because we had one for dinner yesterday and I’d be interested to [...]

Nerd Cuisine

04/07/2013 06:47 AM

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Mongolian Style Pork Loin

Read about Mongolian food in the newspaper and became a bit interested. Thought about the article for a couple of days and then decided to try cooking something that more or less resembled that particular cuisine. A bit of googling around hints that this dish may or may not actually be authentic, but could be [...]

Nerd Cuisine

04/05/2013 01:59 PM

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Shrimp Soup and Pão de Queijo

We were invited to a potluck dinner on Easter Monday and my mother had kindly donated a pound of shrimps, which, combined with the shellfish stock made last Easter provided a good base for a most excellent soup. Leeks and carrots to begin with, along with some potatoes to give a bit of body. The [...]

Nerd Cuisine

03/22/2013 04:00 PM

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Defacing Fish Soup

Today’s dish is a very fishy soup. I was trying to think up something that would involve the Hong-Kong style shrimp noodles that had found their way into my kitchen. I didn’t feel like going to the store again to get proper fish, so I dug some fish sticks out of the freezer. Just putting [...]

Nerd Cuisine

03/19/2013 06:28 PM

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We’re frying salad now?

Here in Sweden, Chinese cabbage (or nappa cabbage, or napa cabbage) is mostly encountered in a salad bowl, but in Korea it’s commonly used for kimchi (i.e. fermented and spiced) and in China the seeds are pressed for cooking oil. It’s also used in stir fries in many stir-frying countries, something which seems pretty far fetched [...]

Nerd Cuisine

03/15/2013 05:11 PM

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Eight Minute Lunch Box

Tram to work leaves in half an hour, you forgot to pack lunch the night before and the takeaway opportunities at work are sketchy at best? Fear not. Do like this: 1. Put on kettle with just enough water to soften a block of noodles. 2. Heat a pan 3. Chop some garlic sprouts and [...]

Nerd Cuisine

03/11/2013 08:59 PM

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A Quick Pie Tip

Here’s a suggestion for what to do with lots of leftover bolognese sauce if you happen to have a bag of instant mashed potatoes around the house. Make a pie not dissimilar to the traditional shepherd’s. Instant mash is a terrible thing to do to potatoes, but quite handy for those days when fancy or [...]

Nerd Cuisine

03/10/2013 09:10 PM

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More Noodly Frolicking: Soba

As said before, I got hold of a lot of interesting stuff at that Asian store recently. One of them was Soba noodles, which are made with buckwheat (perhaps something for gluten sensitives to look into?) In addition, the little supermarket on the way to work had dirt cheap button mushrooms. Like so often before, the [...]

Nerd Cuisine

03/09/2013 09:23 AM

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Shrimped Spaghetti

Here’s a really quick and simple pasta dish I had recently and subsequently altered slightly. Sauté finely chopped garlic and shallots. Cook some spaghetti or other pasta of your choice and then give it a quick sizzle together with the garlic and shallots. Plate and add shrimp, olives and garlic bread. I also sprinkled a [...]

Nerd Cuisine

03/08/2013 03:34 AM

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Clearance Stew: Gumbo-inspired Muck

It was one of those days when the leftovers and odds and ends reached critical mass. A number of loose food ends that are at risk of going bad unless they’re chucked out (which is very unfashionable these days) or made into a clearance stew (a.k.a. fridge stew). Such stews can take any number of [...]

Nerd Cuisine

03/03/2013 09:57 AM

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Exploring Udon and Dashi

Raided the recently mentioned Asian grocery store again, and came home with five different kinds of noodles, frozen okra, some instant dashi granules and ssamjang. Since noodles obviously are one of my favorite kinds of food I thought I’d make some. Leek, dashi, mushrooms, red chili pepper, carrot, garlic sprouts, ssamjang, udon noodles and lotus [...]

Nerd Cuisine

02/20/2013 04:11 PM

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Simple but Fancy Potato Salad

My recent blog posts about blue Swedish potatoes are about to get company by one about some rather yellow Danish ones. Today’s main ingredient is Ratte or Asparges potatoes, originating in Denmark according to Wikipedia. They were bought at the same time as the Blue Congo potatoes and at the same shop. Also very cheap for such [...]

Nerd Cuisine

02/18/2013 06:13 PM

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Valentines Highlights

Last year for Valentines my fiancée cooked dinner for me. This year she came down with a bit of a cold, so we cooked together instead. Here are some of the highlights. A loin of pork covered in garlic cream cheese, biding its time in the oven. The first kriek (belgian cherry ale) I’ve ever had [...]

Nerd Cuisine

02/13/2013 07:44 PM

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Broccoli Soup

Made soup, but forgot to take pictures until it was done and I photographed a showy plating just to have something for the blog. Here’s how it’s done. Sweat onions, garlic, sliced carrot, diced potatoes and cut up broccoli in a suitable pot. Add water, stock cube, white peppercorns and for example french herbs. [...]

Nerd Cuisine

02/12/2013 06:40 PM

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Rounding Up the Leftovers: The Almost Tortilla

Came home late. Needed something to eat. Noted the accumulated leftovers from recent cooking adventures. Sprung into action. A proper spanish tortilla, is, from what I’ve gathered, an omelet with maybe more potato than egg in it. I only had half a potato, which makes it an almost tortilla. Sautéed some onions and garlic, along [...]

Nerd Cuisine

02/11/2013 05:04 PM

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Fun With Blue Spuds

Today I happened upon very cheap gourmet potatoes of different types. Among them were one of my favourite potatoes, Blue Congo. It’s not only interesting by being purple-blue on the inside, but also a pretty good eat, especially good for mash. Apparently it’s been grown in Sweden since at least the 1930s. Since I’ve already [...]

Nerd Cuisine

02/08/2013 08:17 PM

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Guest Post

A couple of weeks before Christmas I had the opportunity to write a guest post for the rather awesome food blog rantingchef.com. Since Christmas was just around the bend at the time, I chose a Swedish Christmas classic – pickled herring. Due to the immense amount of bloggers who wanted to contribute, my post missed [...]

Nerd Cuisine

02/07/2013 06:39 PM

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Surely this isn’t what they meant by ‘fusion cooking’?

I went to a new Asian food store the other day. It’s been there for years, but in the past they’ve mostly seemed to sell silly kitschy stuff. This time I looked closer and found that they had a wide selection of interesting foods, such as very small frozen crabs, fresh pak choi and hundreds [...]

Nerd Cuisine

02/06/2013 04:21 PM

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A quick one on salad

I’m thinking there’s going to be an increase in food photographed in plastic boxes since I only eat school food on Thursdays (and have no scheduled lunch at all on Fridays) Here, a kind of salad, made with the first chicory I’ve ever bought, elbow macaroni, hard boiled egg and diced bacon. Dressed with mayo [...]

Nerd Cuisine

02/04/2013 12:37 PM

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Becoming a Cabbage-Head: The Accidental LCHF Lunch

Those who read this blog regularly may have noticed that there’s cabbage involved quite often. I think I’m becoming a cabbage-head. This time it’s mostly because the Savoy cabbage was cheap and the creamed kale of the second last post turned out so very awesome. LCHF is a diet which I’m not committed to, but [...]

Nerd Cuisine

01/23/2013 06:48 PM

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Salsified Bacon

According to urbandictionary, to salsify something is to alter its texture to resemble that of a salsa. I thought I was going to be funny in a way of my own about the fact that the vegetable in question sounds like a verb. (There are lots of food verbs of course, most of them dirty [...]

Nerd Cuisine

01/12/2013 08:49 AM

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Creamed Kale and Schnitzel

Almost done with most school assignments, but started working instead, so we’ll see what amount of time can be spent blogging. Anyway. Kale, because of its imperviousness to cold, is a winter vegetable in many parts of the world. In Sweden it’s very specifically connected to Christmas – either as långkål (long cabbage/long kale) which is [...]

Nerd Cuisine

12/17/2012 12:55 PM

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Using harvested stuff – Ramen with Pak Choi

Continuing the harvest theme by actually using the pak choi I proudly showed off the other day. Even though I’ve seen it in Swedish grocery stores on a couple of occasions, it’s a predominantly Asian vegetable, so what better then, than to combine the usage of homegrown cabbage with getting rid of the crumbly bits [...]

Nerd Cuisine

12/05/2012 10:53 AM

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Winter Wok

I STILL don’t really have time to mind the food blog, but sometimes you can’t help but do it anyway. This is another installment of ‘do Asian stuff to prefab Swedish meatballs’. I’ll be using the same flat wheat noodles, the same Sichuan pepper and the same old meatballs, but a new blend of vegetables. [...]

Nerd Cuisine

11/06/2012 02:57 PM

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Fusion Pork

I still don’t have enough time to make proper posts, but I still have to cook most days and sometimes remember to snap a picture every now and then. Two pounds of stewing pork had been biding its time in the freezer for quite some time, while a pot of Greek yogurt, almost forgotten, was [...]

Nerd Cuisine

10/21/2012 10:56 AM

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Blog just had a birthday! (and more noodles)

October 19th 2011, I migrated a blog post from nerdcuisine.blogspot.com to nerdcuisine.wordpress.com. It’s been a year. That’s awesome. Since then, I’ve gotten a firmer grasp on editing blogs, on cooking and photographing certain types of food and probably also the English language (which wasn’t that bad to begin with). Thank you everyone who has contributed [...]

Nerd Cuisine

10/04/2012 05:21 PM

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Cranking up the Rusticity

Today’s dish was created mostly out of a need to get some potatoes and prefab meatballs eaten as quickly as possible, but also because the grocery store offered irresistible shiitake mushrooms. The ones I’ve seen before were all fairly small with woody stipes and wrinkled caps. Perhaps it’s hard to judge their size from this [...]

Nerd Cuisine

09/30/2012 10:11 AM

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September Casserole

Today we start in medias res just because we can. Diced sausage (falukorv) grated carrot and finely shredded leek having a sauté. Transferring to a pot, then adding cooked green lentils. The lentils had soaked for days before cooking because I couldn’t decide what to do with them. Also a good time to add garlic, bay [...]

Nerd Cuisine

09/20/2012 09:50 AM

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Butternut Bisque

OK, it’s not a bisque in the strict sense, but I’m prepared to let that slide for the cause of alliteration. It’s soup time again, especially with proper autumn lurking around the corner and the stores filling up with interesting vegetables, such as butternut squash. Around ten years ago, as result of a slow Americanization, [...]

Nerd Cuisine

09/17/2012 10:03 PM

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A Quick Stop to Meddle with Chili.

Since I spent a lot of spring and summer writing blog posts instead of school papers, this semester has had a bit of a rough start. There’s still a lot to do before I can relax, but I felt a need to at least post a little something. Autumn is about to get serious (even [...]

Nerd Cuisine

09/01/2012 06:52 AM

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Bacon Out, Noodles In

I used to consider my diet pretty well rounded, but looking through the blog leaves room for doubt. To underline that, here’s another dish with noodles (at least rice noodles, not instant ramen) but no bacon whatsoever. It’s a fairly quick dish, for those who, like me spend a lot of time sitting around the [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/30/2012 10:15 AM

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A Not-Too-Often Breakfast

Sunday breakfasts are often lavish (and often brunches or missed entirely). This one from last sunday, I feel, has a hint of Britain and aims to achieve lots of base pleasure with minimal amounts of washing up. It’s a bit on the greasy side though, so your arteries will probably thank you for not having [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/28/2012 10:09 PM

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Groat, Artiodactyl and Underbrush

Here’s a simple dish for when you need to eat, the store’s closed and you’re not really in a hurry, but not in the mood to cook either. The title of the post is not some odd singer/songwriter trio, but the main ingredients. This is the mainest of ingredients – khorasan wheat. It takes something [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/27/2012 05:38 AM

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Oh no!

Balcony agriculture keeps you reasonably safe from slugs, but apparently not from other pests, such as Large White (Pieris brassicae) [sv: kålfjäril], so I will have to harvest all the remaining Pak Choi and freeze it, since one won’t want to eat that much cabbage in one go. It’s detrimental for the social life the [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/25/2012 05:45 PM

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The Treacherous Chili Sauce

Before going to France, I had bought a small bunch of yellow chili peppers. Fairly mild, but still not something I’d snack on. Just before we left I put them in the freezer, since we’d be away for ten days. Apart from using a small piece for gazpacho I haven’t touched them since and decided [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/18/2012 04:58 PM

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Something on Bratwurst and Cultivars

Today’s dinner isn’t too exciting on account of the cheapskate part of the brain winning over the gourmet part again. But bagging some mushrooms got me thinking of cultivars a bit, since many are surprised that the white button mushrooms are the same species as brown or crimini mushrooms and portobello mushrooms, only different a [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/17/2012 11:32 AM

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Squashy Noodly Pancakes

This dish is one of the usual gatherings of leftover odds and ends, but with an attempt to get some variation from the ever resurfacing sausage and rice jumbles. First, prepare a batch of pancake batter. Second, get some noodles. These are rice noodles, apparently of Vietnamese origin. Third, scrounge up some diced bacon, grate [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/14/2012 11:02 AM

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Two Leftovers Enter, One Sandwich Leaves

With a loaf of bread in the box, getting worse for wear by the minute, but with a texture that gets more awesome with toasting, and a batch of leftover meatballs in the fridge shrinking steadily because of a grazing geek with too many assignments to write, there’s one obvious course of action. Meatball sandwich. [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/13/2012 06:05 PM

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Actual, Swedish, Swedish Meatballs

These meatballs are very close to how I interpret typical Swedish meatballs, the way they most often occur in Sweden. The big difference is that they’re made from ground veal only instead of a pork/beef mixture. The only reason for the veal is of course the near expiry discount. So, what makes meatballs really Swedish? [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/13/2012 10:22 AM

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The Amorphous Loaf

Had another go at baking sourdough bread, this time with rye-based sourdough and less yeast. Also allowed the sourdough slurry to get comfy in room temperature overnight to get things going. Since most bread I make gets kind of dense, I used a little less flour than I usually do, which meant the dough was [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/10/2012 10:44 AM

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Crustacean Carcasses, part 2

Around Easter I went to great lengths in making a pot of shrimp and lobster stock, which was blogged as Crustacean Carcasses, part 1. I’ve been worried that it’s gone bad in the freezer since it’s been sitting there for four months or so. It did smell a bit funny, but I recall that it [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/09/2012 05:21 PM

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Slightly Risky Business

In recent days I’ve discussed both prefab foodstuffs and inadvisable editing of recipes, so what could be better than concluding with a post containing both prefabricated goods and tampering with an extremely popular recipe? Boxed mac and cheese. A quick and simple meal, but to serve two I needed to add some more stuff while [...]

Nerd Cuisine

08/09/2012 11:36 AM

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Pak Choi Progress

I felt like writing a new post, but can’t for my life figure out what to have for dinner. In the meantime I’ll just show off my portable Chinese cabbage patch. The box also houses red-leaf basil, thyme and lemon balm, which all seem to be late bloomers (intended) compared to the pak choi.

	Nerd Cuisine
	The musings of a fuzzy geek with a passion for good food, cheap food and interesting new food.

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