The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Bacon Pancakes, the Wrong Kind; and Lingonberries. The Right Kind.

First of all, let me just say that I went about this all wrong.  Now, I wouldn't go so far as to call this project a complete failure; but truth be told, I had a good mind to scrap this post and start all over when I realized my stupidity.  Being as I am American, what do you think comes to mind when I think of bacon pancakes?  Why, flapjacks with bacon mixed in, that's what.  But a person from Sweden, where The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo takes place, might think of something else.  More on that at the end of this post. Since I am a novice food blogger, however, I decided to allow myself to be an idiot on occasion; and besides, hardly anyone will read this anyway.  Now onward we go.

Last summer I read the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson.  (I'm devouring  books again this summer, but so far I haven't come across any food that I'm inspired to cook; there is still a month and a half left, though, and I'm sure I'll come up with something!)  Back in January I made some DELICIOUS lamb chops like the ones the main character, Mikael Blomkvist cooks. (For the recipe and more about the story and its characters, click here.)  Oh, and recently we watched The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo starring Daniel Craig.  In my post from last winter I said I was afraid that I wouldn't like that film as much as the Swedish-language one, because Noomi Rapace is so amazing as Lisbeth Salander I wasn't sure if anyone else would do the character justice.  Not to worry.  The actress who plays Lisbeth in this film, Rooney Mara, is just as good.  And I can't wait to see Noomi in Prometheus; at this point it looks like we'll be waiting for the DVD.  Joe is anxious to see that one too, because of Charlize Theron.)

In The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist, has been doing some research for the rich and powerful Henrik Vanger, regarding a niece that went missing years ago.  He has just returned to Henrik's home on Hedeby Island after serving jail time because of a scandal involving Blomkvist's magazine, Millennium. (Interestingly, they left this detail out of the Daniel Craig movie, but not the Swedish one.) 

He found Vanger on the ground floor.  The old man raised his eyebrows in surprise when he saw Mikael.
"Did you escape?"
"Released early."
"That's a surprise."
"For me too.  I found out last night."
They looked at each other for a few seconds.  then the old man surprised Blomkvist by throwing his arms around him and giving him a bear hug.
"I was just about to eat.  Join me."
Anna produced a great quantity of bacon pancakes with lingonberries.  They sat there in the dining room and talked for almost two hours.  Blomkvist told him about how far he had got with the family chronicle, and where there were holes and gaps.  They did not talk at all about Harriet...
(The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, p. 277)

Well, I had never heard of lingonberries, and I made a mental note to find out what they are and where (or if) I could find them.  Recently as I was searching the grocery store shelves for maraschino cherries, I spotted a jar of lingonberries and grabbed it.  Inside the jar was something that looked like wild blueberry preserves, except it was red; the stuff was tart and yummy, and tasted like cranberry sauce, only a little bit sweeter.  Rightly so; according to AboutDotCom, lingonberries are found all over Scandanavia, and are a cousin to the cranberry. (HA!  I knew it.)

The other night I needed to cook something quick and I decided to break out the bacon and lingonberries and make a "Blog Dinner," as I've recently started calling them.  I poked around online a little bit to find recipes for bacon pancakes (here is where I went wrong, more below), and most of the ones I found were recipes for plain old pancakes, with crumbled bacon as an ingredient.  There were one or two that consisted of a slice of bacon coated in pancake batter, but those didn't really appeal to me.   I decided to just add bacon to a pancake recipe that I've recently kind of adopted as my own.  You see, for years I've been using a recipe for buttermilk pancakes from my favorite cookbook, The Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, and adapting it slightly to meet Moe's food allergy needs.  When we visit my parents, my mother always makes pancakes using a recipe she found on the outside of the Ener-G Egg Replacer package; the ingredients for those include orange juice, cinnamon, and nutmeg, which makes a unique and delicious flapjack.  After the boys begged and begged me to make THOSE pancakes, I took my Southern Living recipe and substituted half the milk (or soymilk, in our case) for orange juice, and added cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, and vanilla.  Here's the recipe that I came up with (starred items are the ones I added):

ZESTY ORANGE PANCAKES (I made that up just now; it's cheesy, I know...)

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon nutmeg*

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon*

2 large eggs, lightly beaten (or 1 heaping tablespoon Ener-G Egg Replacer beaten together with 1/4 cup water)

1 cup milk (I use soy or rice milk; the recipe in the book calls for buttermilk)

1 cup orange juice*

2 teaspoons vanilla extract*

1/4 cup vegetable oil

Crumbled cooked bacon (optional; I didn't measure it, but I would guess I used about a half to 2/3 of a package)

Combine first 7 ingredients; stir well.  Combine eggs, milk, orange juice, vanilla, and oil in a bowl; add to flour mixture, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened.  Fold in crumbled bacon.

For each pancake, pour about 1/4 cup batter onto a hot, lightly greased griddle.  (To make these even more bacon-y, I used the leftover bacon grease.)  Cook pancakes until tops are covered with bubbles and edges look cooked; turn and cook other side.  Serve with lingonberries, syrup, or whatever topping you like.

(Adapted from The Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, p. 72-73)

To further complicate things, I wanted to make gluten free bacon pancakes for myself, so I pulled out my new best friend, Gluten Free Bisquick.  I just followed the recipe on the back, and like with the "regular" hotcakes, I used orange juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar.  And bacon, of course.  Easy-peasy; and if you're scared of gluten free pancakes, Gluten Free Bisquick will cure you of that.  You're welcome.

Now for the verdict.  When the boys asked the nightly question, "What's For Dinner?" and I said, "Bacon Pancakes,"  they all kind of wrinkled their noses and said, "Oh.  That sounds terrible."  Even Joe wasn't too thrilled with that idea.  Turns out that unbeknownst to me, Joe doesn't like the orange juice pancakes!  He never told me.  And nobody liked the idea of the bacon inside the pancake; they would rather eat it separately.  (Sheesh.  They said they wished I would have made some of them with bacon and some without.  I figured since everyone likes pancakes and everyone likes bacon this wouldn't be a problem.)  I will have to give Curly, our thirteen-year-old who eats everything, credit for not complaining, and saying that even though he would rather eat his bacon on the side, he liked them and would eat the leftovers.  I wanted to hug him.  And how many people tried the lingonberries?  One.  Me.  They were delicious with the bacon pancakes.  Then again, I'm the only one in my family who likes cranberries.

So what did I think?  I liked mine, although in defense of those who wanted their bacon on the side, I will say that some of the flavor of the bacon was lost in the pancakes.  I don't know if this is because I used the special recipe with orange juice and spices, and that was what masked the bacon; but truthfully I would just as soon had my bacon separately as well.  The next time I make gluten free pancakes for myself--without all that extra stuff--I might crumble some bacon into some of them just to see if that makes a difference.  BUT, I liked them well enough to have them for lunch the next day--with lingonberries, of course--and for breakfast just this morning.  I have two left, safely stored in my freezer for later consumption.

And now for the post-script.  After making this meal (and writing most of this blog post), I decided to see what would happen if I Googled SWEDISH bacon pancakes, and guess what?  I found recipes that are COMPLETELY different from your run-of-the-mill flapjacks with bacon added in.  Holy crap!  I'm dope-slapping myself.  Why didn't I think of that BEFORE??  I even found a blog post by a fan of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and the person made--you guessed it--Swedish bacon pancakes.  Those look more like a frittata, with lots of eggs and little or no flour. (One site described it as being like a Yorkshire pudding, except I don't really know what THAT is!)  I definitely think a do-over is in order.

Be sure to check back here soon for my first meal from the Nicholas Sparks book, The Last Song:  Summer Spaghetti!

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Lamb Chops in Red Wine Sauce and Creamy Baby Potatoes

We're taking a little side trip, leaving Nick and the Outer Banks for a little bit to visit Sweden. (I hear it's cold there this time of year.) Last summer I read Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest), and was very intrigued both by the story and by some of the interesting fare that was cooked in those books. If you haven't read this series, I highly recommend it; just a warning, though--it's quite intense with plenty of sex and violence, but lots of suspense and excitement too. I even watched the Swedish-language films and loved them. I almost didn't notice they were subtitled. (If you saw Sherlock Holmes 2, you might remember a petite and pretty, yet tough kick-ass gypsy girl who joined Watson and Holmes on their latest adventure. The actress who played her, Noomi Rapace, was the tattooed girl Lisbeth in the Swedish films. She ROCKS. I haven't seen the recently released English version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo starring Daniel Craig; when I finally watch it on DVD I hope I'm not disappointed because that Lisbeth isn't Noomi.)

I don't think I'm going to bore you with too many plot details, except for a brief Who's Who: Lisbeth Salander is a troubled young woman, covered in tattoos and piercings; a loner who doesn't relate to people very well. She has a brilliant mind, a photographic memory, and she's a skilled hacker who can gain access to anyone's computer or cell phone with a few clicks and a phone call to a reclusive hacker friend. And she isn't afraid of anything. (The two main characters on the TV show Person of Interest kind of remind me of her in a way; the introverted tech whiz who builds a machine that watches everyone all the time, and with his seemingly invincible Jack Bauer-type partner, solving crimes by hacking into people's computers and cell phones, spying on unsuspecting citizens, and beating up bad guys with martial-arts punches and kicks. My favorite thing Lisbeth does? Subduing a very large villain who, as it happens, doesn't feel pain, by pinning his feet to a floor with a nail gun. Brilliant.) Anyhow, Lisbeth is fighting a troubled past, and has spent much of her life in a mental institution--not because she's mentally ill, but because a band of slimeballs are conspiring to ruin her life; and now she's living on a kind of probation and must have a guardian assigned by the state to manage her money and such. Even though she can get by just fine on her own, in spite of her quirks.

The other main character, Mikael Blomkvist, is an investigative reporter for a major Swedish magazine, Millennium. He's recently published an expose' of a prominent businessman in which he revealed some shocking scandal and corruption within the company, and now he's been accused of slander by said businessman. He will eventually serve jail time, but meanwhile he's been hired by another prominent businessman, Henrik Vanger, to find out who murdered his beloved niece Harriet, who went missing in the 1960's. Mr. Vanger and several members of his family live on the fictional island of Hedeby, and Blomkvist moves into a little rustic cabin near the Vanger mansion. He hires Lisbeth to assist him with his investigation, and she moves into the cabin with him.

(I do want to pause here and vent a little bit about Blomkvist. He's one of the good guys, a likeable and even honorable character; kind, trustworthy, on the side of justice, and the fair treatment of all. The thing that just makes me want to shake him silly is his casual attitude about sex. He isn't married, and his lover is his longtime friend and co-worker, Erika Berger, who IS married. Erika's husband knows about her affair with Blomkvist, and get this: he doesn't care. Erika often calls him up and says, "Oh, hi, darling, I'm staying with Mikael tonight. I'll see you tomorrow." and he'll say, "That's great, sweetheart! Have fun, and tell him I said hello." Sheesh. Mikael sleeps with several other women throughout the trilogy as well, including Lisbeth. He deserves a few dope-slaps for that kind of behavior.)

Okay, so now for the food part: One night in the cabin on Hedeby, Mikael makes a dinner for himself and Lisbeth of lamb cutlets, with potatoes and cream sauce. Then fast-forward to the third book in the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and we find Mikael cooking lamb once again; this time for his new girlfriend, Monika--and it's lamb chops in red wine sauce.

So what did I decide to cook? Lamb chops in pomegranate-red wine sauce, and baby potatoes with cream sauce. And I nearly had another Cooking Nick's Books anxiety attack.

It was the day after New Year's, and I stood in the butcher shop eyeing the lamb chops, trying to talk myself into buying them. Or maybe I was trying to talk myself out of buying them. They were nearly as expensive per pound as the beef tenderloin I had just cooked a week before. I thought, I must be completely insane. Here it is, the day after New Year's, I've just spent the last week entertaining people. I should be spending the last evening before everyone was heading back to school just relaxing and ordering out, and I'm seriously thinking of cooking lamb chops tonight?? The last time I tried cooking lamb chops, before we had kids and before I learned to cook, they were awful. I didn't know what I was doing and I overcooked them and they tasted like crap. I finally reasoned that if I only cooked just enough for everyone to have a small portion, then at least I wouldn't have wasted all that much money and time.

I chose five good-sized chops, and found a recipe from my favorite magazine, Fine Cooking:

LAMB CHOPS WITH POMEGRANATE RED WINE SAUCE

12 lamb rib chops*
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup minced shallot (about 1 large)
1/2 cup pomegranate juice (such as Pom brand)
1/4 cup full-bodied dry red wine
1/4 cup homemade or low-salt chicken broth
1-1/2 Tbs. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbs. fresh thyme leaves, finely chopped
1/2 Tbs. honey
2 Tbs. cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

*My butcher didn't have rib chops; they had a thicker bone-in chop instead, and I only bought five.

Liberally season the lamb chops with salt and pepper on both sides. Heat the olive oil in a 12-inch sauté pan over medium-high heat until very hot. Sear the chops in two batches, until well browned on both sides, about 2 minutes per side for medium rare, 3 minutes per side for medium. Keep the chops warm on a platter covered with foil. Pour off and discard all but about 1 or 2 Tbs. fat from the pan.

Add the shallot to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, until browned, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the pomegranate juice, wine, chicken broth, vinegar, thyme, and honey and cook, stirring, until the liquid is reduced by half, 3 to 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium low and swirl in the butter until it melts. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.**

Transfer the chops to dinner plates and serve with the sauce.

(Source: Fine Cooking)

**Since my chops were thicker than rib chops, I browned them on all sides, and after making the sauce I returned them to the pan and cooked them in the liquid on low heat for about five additional minutes, maybe less.

"I don't know about these..." I kept saying. I remembered my long-ago lamb disaster and just knew these would be equally awful. When I served the chops, and Joe and the boys prepared to take their first bite, I literally had knots in my stomach. But guess what? They were delicious. I could have ordered them at a four-star restaurant, they were that good. (HAPPY DANCE!!!)

---------------------------------------------------------------

For the potatoes, I decided to look online and found a recipe on a site called The Orgasmic Chef. Of course, with a name like that I HAD to try it. (I'll have what she's having.)

BABY POTATOES WITH CREAMY GARLIC SAUCE

Ingredients

10 baby (chat) potatoes
2 tbs butter
2 cloves garlic minced (you can use less if you don’t like garlic)
3/4 cup cream
2 tbs fresh parsley chopped (or 1 tbs dried parsley)
salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Wash and cut potatoes in bite sized pieces
2. Boil over low heat until just done
3. In a saucepan melt butter and add the garlic and over low heat cook the garlic for 2 or 3 minutes
4. Add cream and reduce til thick enough to coat the potatoes. About 10 minutes.
5. Drain potatoes and add to cream sauce
6. Add parsley, salt and pepper

(Source: The Orgasmic Chef)

Now, I will admit, I cheated just a little bit: I still had quite a bit of gorgonzola sauce left over from Christmas dinner, so I warmed that up in the microwave, added a bit of parsley, and stirred it into the potatoes. They were delicious.

There is more wonderful-sounding food in the Millennium trilogy, and I hope to have more adventures from that series soon. Meanwhile, I think I will revisit Nicholas Sparks' At First Sight with a T-bone steak and maybe some macaroni and cheese; and I will be revealing the ending, so brace yourself!

I also wanted to tell you that I was interviewed recently for an article about blogs in our diocesan Catholic newsletter, and the writer asked me questions about Musings of a Catholic Mom, my other blog. Click here to check out the article! My only regret is not mentioning Cooking Nick's Books in the interview. Ah, well...

Have a wonderful weekend!

7 Quick Takes, Volume 6

DISCLAIMER: If you get a sense of deja' vu right around Take Number Three, I apologize. A few of these takes are already on my other blog, Musings of a Catholic Mom. Since they're somewhat food- and/or book-related I decided to post them here too; sorry if some of this seems repetitive. And it's likely my next "7 Quick Takes" post here will have at least one repeat from Musings too. I'll try not to make that a habit.

--1--

On a recent weekend, we went camping in Shenandoah National Park (too see some highlights, click here). On Saturday night after returning from the town of Luray after attending Mass and eating dinner out, we built a fire and roasted dough boys for an after-dinner treat.

What are "dough boys," you ask? Just some Bisquick mixed with a little water, wrapped around a stick and cooked over a fire. (I like to call them "Biscuit-on-a-stick.")

Curly put some butter and kiwi jam on his. These would make a great camping breakfast, don't you think?

--2--

In my most recent post at Musings of a Catholic Mom, I talked about how I want to make my blogging more authentic (and on that one I want to be authentically Catholic; even here I like to bring my Catholic faith with me sometimes), and I want both my blogs to be reflections of who I really am, not glossed-over versions of myself and my family life.

Therefore, I'll tell you what REALLY happened when we made the dough boys. The kids were all excited because they had just made them the previous week at a nature camp they had attended. I dutifully poured some Bisquick into a bowl (even though I really didn't want to bother with making them--it was late and I just wanted to relax by the fire with my Hornsby's Hard Cider), mixed it up with some water, and let the boys have at it. Well, Moe was very upset because the dough was sticky, and when he tried to put it on his stick, it got all over his hands and made a big mess. "OK," I said, "Why don't I just put a little more Bisquick in it and make it less sticky?" (Remember, I'd never done this before.) He kept complaining that I wasn't doing it right. Even when Curly showed him how to knead the dough to make it smooth and easier to handle, he was having none of it. I finally asked him to show me what I needed to do, and he said he didn't know because Ms. L, the camp leader, had been the one who made the dough and given it to the kids. He whined so much that Joe and I almost banished him to the tent for the rest of the evening unless he pulled himself together. Thank goodness he eventually did.

And you thought there was no drama in my family.

--3--

This week Moe is visiting Joe's parents. We've had a tradition these last several years that each summer, one of the boys gets to spend a week with them. It's a great way for them to bond with their grandparents, and the boys always look forward to when it will be "their turn." For about two days before Moe left, I kept finding myself on the verge of tears thinking about how much I would miss him. He's having a great time with his grandparents, of course, and even with only one of the boys gone the house seems quiet. He calls us every night and tells us about his day, and I know I won't sleep well unless I get a chance to say good night to him. I'm feeling a little guilty, though, because yesterday when I made my homemade hamburger buns (I've posted the recipe here and here), I realized I could use a REAL EGG and REAL MILK since there wasn't anyone in the house allergic to them. We excitedly went to Chick Fil-A for lunch; a place we usually avoid because they fry their stuff in peanut oil. And the other day at Costco I grabbed a bag of tortilla chips--not our usual brand, but one we like better but never get because they're cooked in (you guessed it) peanut oil.

He's coming home Saturday, and I can't wait. Having everyone home is much better than getting to eat at Chick Fil-A.

(Oh, and I also bought Honey Nut Chex, too. I realize now that I haven't missed much.)

--4--

Speaking of cereal, check out what I found in Target not long ago:

I remember growing up, seeing that on the grocery shelf every time I would go with my mother, and she would never buy it. It was always Raisin Bran and Grape Nuts and Special K in our house. I would be extremely jealous when I would visit friends and notice that THEIR mothers let them have it.

Of course I got some and you know what? It tastes like Captain Crunch. Which my mother would never buy either, but when I got to college it became a staple food.

--5--

I finished Stieg Larsson's Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy, and I'm glad I did (a couple of times the graphic sex and violence almost made me quit reading. Almost.) I've decided that the main character, a troubled young woman named Lisbeth who has multiple piercings and tattoos and doesn't relate to people very well, is a female version of Jack Bauer. On second thought, she is a combination of Jack and his computer-savvy friend Chloe, without whom Jack would never have survived many of his run-ins with the bad guys. Not only does Lisbeth habitually hack into other people's computers, but she manages to survive a number of brutal attacks--including (SPOILER ALERT) being shot in the head point blank and then buried alive. My favorite part of this series? When Lisbeth (ANOTHER SPOILER) is about to be murdered by a monstrous villain who feels no pain, and she grabs a nail gun and shoots nails into the guy's feet, pinning them to the floor. Brilliant!

--6--

Now I'm reading two books at once: one e-book and one I checked out from the library. My current e-book is C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. I've read almost half of it now. It's definitely not what I expected--instead of reading like a novel, it's a series of letters written by a demon (Screwtape) to his nephew Wormwood, offering advice on how best to turn a good man away from God and to the Dark Side. Very eye-opening. Screwtape could easily be talking about me.

I'm also reading Long Way Down: An Epic Journey By Motorcycle From Scotland to South Africa, by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. (Yes, I mean THAT Ewan McGregor, as in Obi-Wan Kenobi.) In 2007 ( I think) Ewan and his best friend Charley took off from northern Scotland on motorcycles, along with a team of support people--cameramen, a doctor, producers, fixers--and rode all the way to Cape Town, South Africa for a TV series called Long Way Down and to do some charity work for UNICEF. (In 2004 they rode around the world for their TV series Long Way Round; there is a companion book for that one too. For more about Ewan and Charley's adventures, click here.) Anyway, Joe and I had watched the Long Way Down series on DVD, and I'm enjoying reading Ewan and Charley's accounts of the trip in their own words.

By the way, did I ever tell you I'm a biker chick wannabe? Someday I want to climb on the back of a Harley (straddling my husband!) and ride across the USA. Joe doesn't share that dream. *sigh* Maybe when they make Long Way Up Ewan and Charley will pass through my town. That would be the next best thing.

--7--

The other day on my Facebook news feed, I found a fun post from Nicholas Sparks' Facebook fan page: a link to a website, MeetTheAuthor.com, and a three-minute video of Nick talking about his novel, A Bend In the Road. I did a little searching and discovered that Nick recorded little tidbits there about all of his books from The Notebook to At First Sight. I spent entirely too much time online last night, a good-sized chunk of which was watching these videos. Click the book titles to see them!

The Notebook

Message in a Bottle

A Walk to Remember

The Rescue

A Bend in the Road

Nights in Rodanthe

The Guardian

The Wedding

Three Weeks With My Brother

True Believer

At First Sight

In my next post, I'll share some delicious grilled tuna that was inspired by At First Sight. I'm having to bend my own rules a little bit for that one; the only time anyone cooks (besides grilling steaks and hot dogs, which I think happens in every one of Nick's books) is in the epilogue. I don't think I can do that one in context without revealing the ending. I'll figure something out.

Check out my other blog, Musings of a Catholic Mom, for another Quick Takes Post (as I mentioned, some of it is repetitive, but most of it is not), and for even more, be sure to visit Conversion Diary, the official "7 Quick Takes" hub!