Do you think you change your habits if you change country? Apparently that can’t happen: Anikó Mészáros cooks together with international friends again.
I’m spending my summer holiday working at the neighbour’s: in Norway. I thought this time it would be different. Unlike in Lund which is almost not Sweden but an international city, this time I would assimilate as much as possible, learn the names of all the fish and so on. I don’t know why I thought this. I’m working as a tour guide, for God’s sake! With colleagues from at least ten different countries!
On the other hand, I’m living with Norwegians. Yay, I thought, until I’ve realized that I almost never see them. They are extremely mousy, spending most of their time in their rooms. The only track is that they leave the lights on. Always.
Still, I was interested in their cuisine, so I’ve started spying in the fridge and in shopping bags forgotten to pack out. Great ingredients, interesting specialities! For example this is how I discovered brunost, this special-tasting brown cheese – in my opinion it tastes great, but I couldn’t eat it every day.
Then I countinued spying on the cooker and in the oven. On the cooker, disappointment: all those great ingredients prepared in the most boring way. Potato and carrot boiled in water without anything! In the oven, shock: yesss, my ethernal enemy is back in the game: frozen pizza!
Not any type of frozen pizza. Pizza Grandiosa, as I was later told, is the national dish in Norway. Norway consumes the most of this type of pizza in the world! I can verify that. Unfortunately there is no selective waste collection here, but we collect the pizza boxes separately. Looks very impressive!
And then, just when I decided to switch to my long-lasting friendmaking strategy and to explore the weird goods in grocery shops on my own, the ice has been broken. One evening I went to the kitchen and something smelled great there in a pan! I decided to be on the lurk there until the human this dish belongs to finally has to show up. Turned out he is a friendly guy, he was just writing his thesis the previous weeks – and he just submitted it that day. We talked a lot, it was great, and three weeks after arriving here I finally started to feel a little bit at home.
About that dinner: it was simple chicken with a spice mix that you can buy at any Arabic shop. He just cut the chicken into little pieces and it went in the pan with butter. Add the spice, that’s it, very simple. Great taste though!
