Arianna's salmon pasta

I have been in search for some tasty and quick pasta, a bit different from usual. Since, here, finding smoke salmon is a relatively easy task that is the main ingredient of this recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of smoked salmon
• pasta (preferably spaghetti) for two people
• 1/2 glass of white wine
• an handful of raisins
• a teaspoon of curry
• salt and peppar
• a garlic clove
• a spoon of olive oil

Warm up in a big pan the olive oil and let fry lightly the garlic, while in another pot we start to cook the pasta.

Add the salmon, after slicing it up in small strips and let it fry until it gets color.

Add the wine when the heat is on medium temperature. Let it fade and then add the raisins.

Remove then the garlic and add the curry. Let it fry for some minute. If it gets too dry add a bit of the water from the pasta.

Once the pasta is ready and drained, put it in the pan with everything else and mix it properly with the sauce.
Then, serve and enjoy ;-)

Restaurant Les Halles, Saluhallen, Lund

It is since February that they have opened the new Saluhallen (market hall) in Lund. In reality, the old part of the building is still under "construction" and still, some new places are not yet opened.

One of the new names that can be found next to the ones that already existed in the old Saluhallen-days is the Restaurant Les Halles. It has a very great position, being the first place that one sees when entering the building from the new entrance. It is elegant and cosy and sophisticated at the same time. And incredibly popular, so much that there were rumours stating that it was necessary to book lunch as well (and that is not true).

We managed to squeeze ourselves in (with stroller and Isabella) few weeks ago, for lunch. The menu is obviously french style and while waiting for our food to be served, we enjoyed some very nice bread and the usual salad (sorry, Swedes, I don't like this tradition!).

I took a soup (as often ;-) ) which was having a salmon tartare, and A (!!!) single clam. It was supposed to be a clam soup. It tasted quite fine, but it was slightly blend (I think there was a too strong "background taste" of the fish fond that had been used to make the soup) and it was a pity it was not that "meaty". The salmon was just smoked salmon (or tasted as such) and I was hoping for some nice fresher piece.
Mattias, instead, took the "dish of the day" which was a plate of ribs and potatoes pure'. I tasted the potato part of the dish and it tasted pretty good, according to Mattias the ribs were nice but nothing revolutionary on the culinary world.

The best part of the meal was the dessert: we took a chocolate pie which was delicious and served in a very original way: in a glass bell (making it a bit harder to share the cake... :-P)

The main problem: we were quite hungry (strangely enough?) after this lunch and, considering the price (a bit higher than the "average") we would have expected a bit more tasty food, although it was quite classy.
Let's hope though that the quality will continue to be decently high and not "degenerate" as often happens after a place has been opened for a little while.

Our savior: IRobot Roomba!

Every spring (more than any other period of the year) we live in a nightmare: cat hair clouds shaping in front of us with the speed of light!
This can be stopped (or at least reduced) with an extreme frequent combing of both Pico and Romeo, which is time taking (...), not always pleasant (you get a cat-fur for free on you) and they are not always very cooperative.

This year, though, we have decided to change our lifestyle and make a "long term" investment in a vacuum cleaner robot, after hearing a couple of friends of ours doing such purchase and being happy about it.
We have discussed for years to buy something like this! It was about time to actually make such plan concrete. After evaluating the different models on the market, we decided to go for an IRobot Roomba 564 Pet, which has some extra feature to be pet friendly and hair collector.

After charging it, we were eager to try it and it was enough to press a little button to start the "magic"! The cats and Isabella have been reasonably terrified the first week, while now they are getting used to the device (Isabella enjoys putting objects on it) and although the instructions are for the general robot and not the specific one, and some functions are a bit mysterious (but can be investigated on the internet), we have observed it in action.

The result is great! Making it start every day guarantees a decently clean apartment. Corners and "hidden places" can't be reached, but our cleaning is sensibly faster and the floor looks generally clean, considering that before we were drowning in cat sand/cat hair/bread crumbs which needed to be removed very fast and very frequently.
We don't have to remove objects from the floor: it usually pushes them around, if in the way and if it gets stuck (which happens very seldom), one has just to "get afloat" the robot.
It communicates quite clearly when the brushes need to be cleaned, and that happens not as frequently as I was afraid. Doing that operation is also very comfortable since there are two specific tools included that are very helpful for cleaning the brushes.

It is a bit noisy, but it is not that loud that one get disturbed and I feel safe to let it go when I am not home, since, most of the times, it reaches its dock station when the batteries are exhausted and it is built in such a way that it won't harm pets.

Our robot has also some scheduling function, virtual walls, which we haven't tried yet,  and can be enhanced with others accessories (and I don't think we will do such an investment).

It is now a couple of weeks that we have it and I can say that we are surely satisfied of the purchase (although it was not a very cheap product) and we feel relieved from a lot of daily cleaning, which was hard to cope with.
A lot of people give names to their little robot, but we haven't yet come up with one for it? Has anyone a good suggestion? :)

M.E.A.T. by "night"

Few posts back, I talked about the (then it was new) restaurant M.E.A.T., which is located in Lund.
For Valentine day, we managed to go there for dinner. So, the experience is worthy to be mentioned, although, unfortunately, I left the camera home ;-/

The staff was very nice the whole evening, and this was a nice treatment for us, considering that we were having Isabella around (and hence, we probably destroyed the dinner for a couple of customers more).

Mattias went for the evening menu of that day, while I picked up a couple of dishes from the standard one. In reality, Mattias' selection was from the standard menu as well, but at a lower price.
We both took the crabcakes for pre-dish. They were nicely done, tasty and not too heavy.
While I took the Beef Ribs as main dish, Mattias ate the filet. My rib dish was quite good, the meat was tasty and coming easily out of the bone. However, it was literally drown in the caramelized onion it was served with. It was a nice component of the dish, but covered too much the taste of the meat and was too heavy. The french fries were great and the salad was nice, but hard to eat (I have very hard issues eating crass since it is not chomped into small pieces and I feel like a cow when ruminating it :-)
Mattias' dish was nice and what I tasted was good. There were mushrooms so I did right in avoiding the dish.
Both dishes were cutely served on a plate of wood and the french fries in a small glass. Quite scenic, but a bit unpractical when the table is not exactly big and you have to avoid that your daughter take some cutlery and throw it around in the restaurant :)
We completed the dinner splitting a very nice apple pie, which almost had the "grandma'" feeling in it (I was though more in cheesecake mode that day, pity it was an apple pie day ;D).

This time we were not left hungry and I can say that the quality of the food was very good. I was a bit disappointed at my dish, being too rich in flavour for my tastes, but I like the atmosphere of the place and the menu choice. We will surely go back there and try some other nice dish!

Red rice with gorgonzola

This kind of rice has come recently on the supermarket shelves and I have decided to try it, although I had no idea how to cook it.
The first time we tried it it took almost an hour to get a decent consistency and we were still far from the ideal one.
Then, I investigated the matter by searching on the internet and found that the pressure cooker would have saved our life, and it turned out to be true.

Ingredients:
200 gr of red rice
1 leek
an handful of pine nuts
a piece of gorgonzola
4 anchoves
1/2 liter of broth
two spoons of olive oil
1/2 glass of white wine

Light fry the leek and the anchoves in the olive oil, directly in the pressure cooker. When it is golden, add the rice, let it roast and then add the wine.
At this point, add the whole broth. Close the pressure cooker and let it cook for about 20-25 minutes.
In the meanwhile, toast the pine nuts in a pan.
Once the rice is ready (and if it has too much broth after the pressure cooker is opened, it is enough to let it shrink a little bit), I remove it from the heat, I add the gorgonzola and let it whisk.
Before serving add some raw leek and the pine nuts.

Serve it with parmesan, if you like and enjoy! The red rice has a different taste than the normal one, but we enjoyed it very much.