After a day at sea and some pretty awful buffet food, we forged onto Oslo, Norway. I was so excited to be in Norway because I remember going to Epcot as a kid and going on the Norway ride, the “Fjorn.” After the ride, you’d stay over and watch a movie about Norway obviously filmed by the Norwegian Tourism Board. The film would always mesmerize me and deep down, I always wanted to move there and be a Norwegian…and fish.
We didn’t have a lot of time in Oslo which was a huge disappointment for me. We took an excursion and saw the olympic ski jump (my photos of the ski jump were lost unfortunately), the sculpture garden, the nobel peace building, etc. I also even found out that I have a side job in Norway hawking ice cream.
After our excursion, we were in a huge time crunch to get back to the ship. We weren’t even sure if we would be able to eat somewhere, but we decided to risk it and eat at a cafe near where the ship was docked. I can’t for the life of me remember what the name of the cafe was, but we took their business card and I’ll have to re-edit this when I get back home and find the card in case any of you ever goes to Oslo.
Since we were in a hurry and time was of the essence we decided to order some light stuff: Soup and salad.
Rus ordered a Caesar Salad (not pictured) and a Seafood soup. To this day, he does not stop talking about this soup and even I tasted it and thought it was the greatest thing ever. I was a very buttery soup and anything that tastes like butter gets an A+ from me.
I ordered an Onion soup again. This soup was much different than the soup at Cafe Luxembourg. It was a lot more brothy and had a lot of thyme in it. It did not have cheese either. I actually liked this soup very much and hope to make it soon.
I also ordered a Parma Ham salad. What was great about this salad was that it was light and refreshing. The salad wasn’t overwhelmed by salad dressing at all. In fact, I think it only had a light drizzle of olive oil which was nice because it allowed the Parma Ham and the asparagus’ flavor to shine through. This is an easy salad to make at home, and I’m definitely going to make this…maybe tonight!
All in all, the lunch in Oslo was great and we really enjoyed it. We hoped for more time in Oslo, but unfortunately we had to rush back to the ship. I’m hoping to go back to Norway again sometime soon so we can take a week to see as much Norway as possible.
Filed under: Blogroll, Cooking, Fish, Food, Recipes, asparagus, easy, easy meal, lunch, restaurant, salad, seafood, soup
By chance did you get the recipe?
No, but last night I actually tried making both dishes (the onion soup and parma salad).
The salad was easy: lettuce, i added prosciutto, boiled asparagus-put them in ice water after they’re cooked, sundried tomatoes and alfalfa sprouts. Oh and I added fresh mozzarella which was not part of the original salad. Finally..Drizzle olive oil and salt/pepper to taste.
The onion soup:
Box of beef stock
Red onions
1/4 teaspoon of sugar to carmelize the onions
1/4 teaspoon flour
A few sprigs of fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup of white cooking wine
Croutons
Garlic
Carmelize the onions in a sautee pan with butter and garlic until translucent. Add the sugar and continue to cook, but do not burn.
Add the flower and stir the onions.
After about 15 minutes, add the beef stock, the bay leaf, the white wine and the thyme sprigs. Let the flavors infuse with one another for about another 15 minutes.
Add the croutons to a bowl and then add your soup.