Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow - Fish Soup (#ReadCookEat)

I reckon you don't want to hear anything about snow right now, but ... I do it anyway. Where does it say that you have to read books playing in winter and with snow and winter and summer books in summer? Does this aid your imagination or what?
Well, I read a certain book, when I feel like it. There was it on my bookshelf: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow or as you would call it in the original Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne by Peter Høeg. What shall I say? For sure there are better short summaries of the book online somewhere, but I still give it a shot. 
Smilla, 37 year old daughter of a female Inuit hunter and a rich Danish physician lives alone in an apartment complex. One of the neighbours is an alcoholic. That one has a son called Isaiah. She forms a friendship with him. Suddenly Isaiah dies. The police explains it as an accident, the boy falling from the roof. However, due to his marks in the snow on the roof and some other facts, Smilla does not believe in an accident. She investigates, later together with another neighbour, called Peter. He is a mechanic. Whatsoever, there is some kind of conspiracy and ... the rest you have to read for yourself.
As Galina from Chez Maximka and I myself are still doing the ReadCookEat challenge, it is no wonder I also kept an eye on the food in the book apart from obviously following the real plot.
While I would have loved to go for a raspberry cake I decided for this ...

In one scene in the book the mechanic, Peter, is preparing a fish soup for Smilla and himself. The description of the ingredients and the preparation is quite detailed so I tried to reproduce it, although I stuck to the ingredients I could get more easily ... eh ... for what was in that one shop, when I went shopping for the dish.

Ingredients:
Splash of olive oil
1 onion
2 carrots
1 small bulb of fennel
1 leek
Various items of fish (I had: gilthead bream, haddock, salmon)
Hand full of prawns
Rice
2 Star anise
1 tsp. cardamom
2 tbsp. sour cream
Juice of half an orange
Salt and pepper

Method:
I prepared the rice in the usual way with the star anise and the cardamom. I did this in a separate pan. You know, double amount of water, bring to boil, cover, reduce heat to minimum or turn off and let it work for 20 minutes. Anyway, you may have a different method or even a rice cooker. Feel free to do as yo are accustomed to do.

Than start with a large pan to do the soup. Give a splash of olive oil to the pan, which you put on low to medium heat. Chop up your onion and throw it into the pan.
Afterwards go for the carrots. Peel, chop up and off to the pan. Now the fennel and finally the leek. Give the vegetables a good time in the pan to soften them a bit and to release some flavour, maybe 20 minutes or more. Just make sure, you don't burn anything.
In between season the whole thing with salt and pepper and Pour in 1,5 litre or water. All this you bring to the boil and let simmer for 10 minutes.

It's not called fish soup for no reason. Therefore we need some fish in the pan. If you feel you just want to go ahead as I did (with little knowledge about fish) just use whole fish like I did with head, fin and bones and all (as was done in the book as well). However, that might get a bit messy, for later you don't want the head, fins and bones in the finished soup. For your convenience use fillets of fish. That will make your life easier, but you might have less flavour, if you can notice. Just one more thing, you don't want to have the scales of the fish anywhere near your pan. That, of course, if you have a good fishmonger should be no problem at all. I don't have ... a good fishmonger.
Fine, you put your pieces of fish into the pan, pushing it under the liquid and let the fish boil together with the rest for 10 minutes. If you need to remove heads, fins and bones afterwards ... your problem. 
Once all the undesirable parts are removed, add the prawns and cook them for another two minutes. After that you can finish the soup of with the sour cream and the orange juice.

Serve the soup together with the rice and if you like some bread as well.
That was one of the more expensive dishes, for you know, fish isn't that cheap. However, I got a good quality meal and finally some more fish for my health and a more balanced diet. Apart from that, there are some leftovers for another day ... or maybe too.
While eating I still discovered some fishbones in the soup - maybe that's why I don't have fish too often.
Whatever I say, I enjoyed the fish soup and am glad I have some more for the weekend.
Now that's something lovely for ReadCookEat.

Anyway, it wouldn't have been my fault, if the soup would have been terrible, for I followed most of the time Peter Høeg's description.

If it happens to be the case you have been reading something or are still doing so and you find any connection with food in that book and find the power to do a dish, then I see no reason, why you should not join ReadCookEat this month ...

Click here to go to the Link-up

#ReadCookEat Round-Up for May

Reading is fun, cooking is fun and reading is fun. Well, at least this is true for me. Therefore it's a brilliant thing to combine all those three together. When you do that, you get the lovely blog challenge ReadCookEat. 

Since Galina and myself put up this challenge in April and as well in this month we enjoyed it a lot. I hope you did so to. In fact the challenge made me read more and also to read in a different way. Now I pay more attention to any kind of food and eating. However, there was not much food in the last book I read. With the book I just started recently, Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne by Peter Høeg. Besides of bringing back memories from my visit to Copenhagen there are quite some references to food. Yesterday when I was reading my appetite was whetted almost to the point I wanted to make some biscuits. However, due to some other recent discovery, I didn't. 
So far, there was more food in the book, omelette, fish soup and raspberry cake. Yet more tempting bits. Anyway, I just wanted to make clear again, that reading, cooking and eating is fun. We don't want to dwell to much, though, on what I am reading right now, but on the lovely entries we got for this month, May.

As the month set off, so did Galina from Chez Maximka with her introduction to ReadCookEat for May and her Rout-Cakes inspired from Jane Austen's Emma. 

Although Galina mentions something about a poor attempt at making rout-cakes, I am sure you will find them lovely, too. Indeed a good addition for your tea time.

From Bath, UK and Jane Austen we go over to Maycomb, Maycomb County, USA and Harper Lee. Here we are going to hopefully enjoy some Angel Food Cake with Strawberry and Rhubarb Jam, one of the cakes Boo Radley from the book To Kill a Mockingbird never received.

I'm quite happy I was able to hide the bits not to be seen beneath this strawberry and rhubarb jam.

Next in line was Cheryl from Madhouse Family reviews! She had been reading Last Refuge by Craig Robertson. The book was taking her to the Faroe Islands (maybe next time we do ReadTravelEat) and therefore the inspiration for food came from there, too. Sadly Cheryl was not in the mood to delight us with some sheep's head or dried whale blubber dishes. On the contrary, we can be quite lucky she didn't. Instead, she has a much more delicious and lovely looking Mango Vinegar Prawn Salad for us.

Now you have to come up with your own dish using dried whale blubber, if you can get any. Good luck!

What else do we have? It's again Cheryl delighting us with something edible and lovely, with Lemon Scones inspired by Above All Things by Tanis Rideout.

Considering the time of the day I would call myself lucky had I any of those in my kitchen now. Besides all this, Cheryl also provides us with a review of the book (that's true to the book mentioned before as well), which I find also very good.

As far as I can see it, the final post is coming from Alison and her blog Dragons and Fairy Dust. She had by reading John Grisham, to be more precisely his book Sycamore Row, which is set in Mississippi. The inspiration from this leads to a wonderful dish with the title Southern Style Jambalaya.

It's spicy and looks wonderful. To me this post is a reminder, I still want to try a Jambalaya dish. Have a look and maybe you feel this way, too.

This would be the end of the Round-up. In case I have missed your post or the time simply went by too fast and you were just about to prepare a post for ReadCookEat, simply give me a shout and I am sure I can do something about it.

In the meantime continue to have fun with reading books, cooking and eating ... see ya!

Angel Food Cake for Boo Radley (#ReadCookEat)

  "Mr Tate went to the swing and picked up his hat. It was lying beside Atticus. Mr Tate pushed back his hair and put his hat on.

  'I never heard tell that it's against the law for a citizen to do his utmost to prevent a crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did, but maybe you'll say it's my duty to tell the town all about it and not hush it up. Know what'd happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb includin' my wife'd be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To my way of thinkin', Mr Finch, taking the one man who's done you and this town a great service an' draggin' him with his shy ways into the limelight -  to me, that's a sin. It's a sin and I'm not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man it'd be different. But not this man, Mr Finch.'

  Mr Tate was trying to dig a hole in the floor with the toe of his boot. He pulled his nose, then he massaged his left arm. 'I may not be much, Mr Finch, but I'm still sheriff of Maycomb County, and Bob Ewell fell on his knife. Good night sir.'

  Mr Tate stamped off the porch and strode across the front yard. His car door slammed and he drove away.

Atticus sat looking at the floor for a long time. Finally he raised his head. 'Scout,' he said, 'Mr Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?'

  Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him an kissed him with all my might. 'Yes sir, I understand,' I reassured him. 'Mr Tate was right.'

  Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. 'What do you mean?'

  'Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?'

  Atticus put his face in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up and walked across the porch into the shadows, his youthful step had returned. Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. 'Thank you for my children, Arthur,' he said." 

- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

As you have read, thing turned out that Boo Radley would not get into the limelight and as a consequence wouldn't receive any  angel food cakes from anyone around town.

Therefore, in order to join #ReadCookEat again this month, I decided to have a go at an angel food cake. I never had one before yet attempted to make one. So I had to do some research. One recipe I found was from Mary Berry on the BBC website. It mentioned also it was from The Great British Bake Off. I didn't notice anything ...

So, I didn't want to make a huge cake requiring a lot of ... eh ... cake eating afterwards, so I went one adjusting ideas from the net to my needs ...

Angel Food Cake for Boo Radley:

Ingredients:

75 g flour

180 g sugar

6 egg whites

Zest of one lemon

A small splash of lemon juice

1 tsp. baking powder

Pinch of salt

Method:

Sift the flour, baking powder and 60 g sugar into a bowl, which you set to the side for the time being.

Then start whisking the egg whites in a large bowl for one minute on high speed.

Add the lemon zest, juice and salt and continue whisking on high speed for another 3 minutes. The egg whites should form soft peaks when you remove the whisk.

Now you continue whisking at even higher speed and add the remaining 120 g of sugar on tablespoon at a time until all is in. Continue whisking for a while.

Now fold in the flour and sugar mixture, being careful as not to knock out all the air you whisked in before.

Transfer the batter to your tin you plan to use. Only after I had finished my angel food cake and was ready to eat, I remember I had seen the episode of The Great British Bake Off, where they had to bake angel food cakes according to Mary Berry's recipe. They even had special angel food cake tins. However, I hadn't. So I used a small rectangular tin for it.

Whatsoever the case, bake the angel food cake in the bottom third of your oven at 180 °C for 30-40 min.  I had mine in for a longer time (as I have read in other recipes) and that resulted in the cake to be looking slightly unpleasant around the edges.

Whatever you do, use common sense and test with a wooden skewer whether your cake is ready. When it comes out clean, it is.

After you removed the cake from the oven allow it to cool down for at least one hour. Then you can remove it from the tin and eat it ...

As you see on the picture, I wasn't quite satisfied to eat it like this. I added some strawberries and some freshly made rhubarb and strawberry jam.

Rhubarb and Strawberry Jam:

Ingredients:

400 g strawberries

2 large stalks of rhubarb

175 g sugar

100 ml water

1 vanilla bean

Juice of one lemon

Method:

Chop up the strawberries and the rhubarb. Put them into a sufficiently large pot together with the sugar and the water. Slice open the vanilla bean, add the seeds to the pot and the sliced open vanilla bean, too. Finally add the lemon juice and bring on the heat.

Let it cook and bubble away. Once you are satisfied with the consistency, fill the jam into a sterilised jar. Use it for the angle food cake or to enhance other desserts.

Well, it really has been a long time since I read To Kill a Mockingbird, it was back in school. Hm, this reminds me once more, I am not 20 anymore. Oh, oh, I feel the crisis coming up again. Therefore, I have continue to do some stupid things again or ... some even more stupid things ... things, I've never done before.

But, before I can go over to this I go and link this post up to the #ReadCookEat challenge. If you want to join, too, head over to Chez Maximka and add your link. That will nit only make Galina happy, but me as well.

I hope this post has made you hungry for reading, cooking and eating and you will join us this month ...