1796 Foods

Hi! I'm Laura, and this blog is following my fascinating yet foolish challenge to try 1796 of the world's must-eat foods

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It took me a while, but I finally have Instagram for the blog! I’ll be posting tasty things I’ve made or eaten out (this was my amazing dessert at the Blue Lagoon in Iceland) that aren’t foods on my list, and some sneak previews of upcoming posts too. 

My username is (obviously) 1796foods. Look forward to seeing you there!

[1796foods]

912. Lobster Bisque

This is the last of my Iceland posts. It’s only been a couple of months but I already really really want to go back. It was such an incredible place and I feel like I still have so much of it to explore. I managed to get hold of one of the Icelandic beers I drank at a local bar the other day which made me very happy as their beers are so crazy good. 

Lobster and langoustines are a big thing in Iceland. They are readily available, and aren’t overly expensive (in comparison to the UK at least, they’re still a lot more than you’d pay in the US). You could get them in all kinds of ways - my friend had some on a surf and turf burger - but bisque was one of the most common and was really easy to find. I had this one for my lunch when we were in a little seaside town which seemed to literally have only this one restaurant open when we were there. We were starving by that point as we’d already driven miles to get there, including an escapade in a car park with a dog who liked playing with the car tyres so much that we were scared to drive. 

The soup was thick and creamy and bursting with lobster flavour. It was so rich though that I did struggle to eat the whole thing. I should have known better really as the exact same thing happened before when I made crab bisque at home. I don’t know what it is about it that makes it so overwhelming but I need to learn to stick to a small cup of bisque in the future so I can get the awesome flavour without the infinite slog through the second half of the bowl!

912 down, 884 to go

[1796foods]

Eat With Pie!

My awesome best friend and flatmate Pie has started a food blog of his very own to document the delicious cakes, desserts, and dinners he/we make. It already has fancy cake, marshmallows, and lemon mousse on it. YUM. 

If you like sweet treats (and who doesn’t), head over there and give him a follow to fill your feed with deliciousness. 

[1796foods]

911. Canneles

Evening all! I hope you’ve all had a fantastic weekend. Mine has mostly been full of cooking - salmon with orzo, cake pops, melanzane parmigiana, sesame chicken noodle salad, pesto chicken sandwiches, rhubarb and raspberry crumble, and roast pork, and I of course barely took a photo of any of it because I was too eager to shove everything in my mouth to mess around with my camera. My bad.

This is one of my backlog posts from a while back. We went for an afternoon tea one day when we were in Sweden and alongside the tea and sandwiches we got to choose a cake. I of course was awkward and asked for two small cakes instead of one big one, so I got a macaron, and this little cannele. It’s a French pastry that is baked in a special mould until it is super caramelised on the outside. The middle was different to how I expected - I was anticipating a moist cake, but it was more like a firm set custard. I’m not sure it’s something I would choose all that often - there are infinitely more exciting options available when you go to the patisserie - but it was definitely tasty.

911 down, 885 to go

[sauce-whisperer]

I made Red (and Blue) Velvet Norwegian Cake with vanilla frosting.

This was a lot of effort, but a lot of fun. It involved baking over 4 different cakes (2 blue, 2 red.) 

The Norwegian flag is red, with an off-centre blue cross, outlined in white. And I think we got that. Well, our friend who we made it for recognised what it was meant to be instantly, so I’m chalking it up a win.

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My best friend/flatmate now has a food blog of his own! We made this cake last weekend for our Norwegian friend. It took a while but it was so much fun. 

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910. Pho

I’m going to have a bit of a catch up. 

There are a few old posts that I’ve been meaning to get around to writing for ages, but then I eat something more recent and it’s always more fun (not to mention easier) to write about something you just ate yesterday so these posts get pushed further and further back until I have a mild panic attack about how long it’s been and how little I can remember and then I’m even less likely to finish writing them. Well, no more. I’ve made a resolution to clear the backlog so I can make way for writing lovely new, up-to-date posts guilt-free. Yay!

So, here we go.

This was my first, and to date still only, bowl of pho. Not for a lack of want, but simply because Vietnamese food is not really a thing in the UK, except in London, but then again every cuisine you could imagine is a thing in London. I do eat a lot of ramen though, so that’s what I anticipated this would be like - just really savoury, so I was shocked at how fresh and light it was. It just tasted like it was healthy, which is kind of a rare and refreshing thing when you are eating out. 

910 down, 886 to go

[1796foods]

909. Arctic Char

Let’s resume the Icelandic tour.

On our final day, we went to the Blue Lagoon. It’s the number one tourist attraction in Iceland and it’s not hard to see why. It’s just beyond amazing. It’s a geothermally heated pool and the water looks like milk because it’s filled with this silica mud. The contrast between the heat of the pool and the cold of the air creates all this steam, so when you’re moving through the lagoon you can barely see 10 feet in front of you and it feels like you’ve been transported to some kind of mystical other world. Plus you can use the mud as a face pack, and get drinks without even leaving the pool. It’s heaven. If it hadn’t been that I needed to get out to have dinner I would have never wanted to leave.

It was a special dinner, which made getting out that little bit easier. We decided that as it was our last day, we’d treat ourselves and eat at the Blue Lagoon restaurant. They do a four course tasting menu, which we had with the paired wines, and it was without doubt one of the most memorable meals of my life.

We started with a langoustine bisque, which came as a single fat grilled langoustine sat on top of white chocolate cream, and then the bisque was poured on top. It was incredible. The langoustine was so smoky and the flavour permeated the whole bowl of creamy soup, not to mention incredibly tender.

The second course was this, arctic char, which was served almost raw with a salad of shaved fennel and apple, and roe. The char was very similar to trout in both taste and texture, and it was both extremely fresh but rich and salty at the same time. 

Our third course was some ridiculously succulent lamb, served with a smoked hollandaise that was just insane. Then we finished off with a pudding that comprised skyr mousse, frozen berries, licorice icecream, and two separate types of cake, and was served with undoubtably the best dessert wine I’ve ever tried in my life.

I couldn’t recommend the whole experience enough.

909 down, 887 to go

[1796foods]

Chicken and Corn Tortilla Soup

I posted this on Instagram the other day and a few people asked me for the recipe so I thought I’d share it with you.

This was one of those meals where I made it mostly because I had a few random things leftover and this seemed like a sensible thing to make with them, and it turned out to be so freaking delicious that I am now just going to plan on making it all the time. Seriously, Pie said that it was one of the best things I’ve ever made, and this is coming from someone who generally hates soup. 

This is also a meal that proves my theory that a whole chicken is basically the best thing you can buy, because this was the fifth meal the two of us had from a single bird (after roast chicken, coronation chicken salad, and both dinner and lunch portions of curry) and that makes both my wallet and my obsession with not throwing any food out very happy. 

Oh, and this recipe started off as being from Gizzi Erskine’s Foolproof Suppers, but then I added a bunch of other stuff because it’s me and I cannot ever just leave a recipe alone.

The recipe is enough for 2 large portions, but can easily be doubled or tripled if you have more people (or if you are really, really hungry).

Ingredients

2 tbsps oil

1/2 onion

2 cloves garlic

1 red chilli

3 tomatoes

2 cups homemade chicken stock

1/2 chicken bouillon cube

1/2 cup leftover cooked shredded chicken

1/2 cup sweetcorn

Small bunch coriander/cilantro

Hot sauce

Juice of 1/4 lime

1 flour tortilla

1/2 avocado

Sour cream

Directions

Finely chop the onion, garlic, and chilli. Dice the tomatoes. Finely chop the stalks of the coriander and roughly chop the leaves.

Fry the onion in 1tbsp of the oil until soft, then add the garlic and chilli and fry for another couple of minutes. 

Add the tomatoes and cook for around a minute, then add in the chicken stock, chicken, sweetcorn, and the coriander stalks. Simmer for around 20 minutes.

While the soup is cooking, cut the tortilla in half, then slice it into thin strips. Fry the strips in the remaining tbsp of oil until they are brown and crispy (mine took around 4-5 minutes).

After the 20 minutes is up, taste the soup and add hot sauce to taste. I added around 2 tsps of Wahaca yellow chilli sauce. Add the lime juice right before serving.

Pour the soup into bowls and top with the fried tortilla strips, diced avocado, coriander leaves, and some small spoonfuls of sour cream.

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908. Rugbraud

So, remember in my last post when I said that the skyr was probably the most filling thing I ever ate? Well, foolishly I decided that despite having just eaten what felt like 10 pounds of yogurt, I should also have some bread and cheese for breakfast too. Why? Well, I’m not even sure any more. Probably because I’d bought it and it was there. 

Rugbraud is a traditional thinly-sliced Icelandic rye bread. Sort of like a pumpernickel, but not as dense, and not quite as rich and sweet tasting. I’ll be honest and say this isn’t really my favourite type of bread. There’s something about the texture which just isn’t fulfilling. I want my bread to have a nice crisp crust, and a soft, fluffy middle, and these types of breads lack all of that. They’re just chewy. Every bite feels like a workout for your mouth. And if my mouth is going to work that hard, I’d rather it was from Starburst.

908 down, 888 to go

[1796foods]

907. Skyr

On our trip, we travelled around a lot and stayed in a different place almost every night, sometimes hotels, sometimes Airbnbs. This particular Airbnb we stayed at was a teeny tiny cabin up a snowy, windy, hill road. Fortunately our car rental did us proud. 

Knowing we were going to be literally in the middle of nowhere, we stocked up on some groceries to have for breakfast. We also stocked up on more candy than anyone has ever bought in one go ever, for the car, which we then proceeded to eat on all of our journeys whilst we obsessively listened to Serial. We spent so much of our vacation debating who we thought did it. I so cannot wait for the next season. 

One of the things we grabbed at the supermarket where these skyr yogurts. I went for a classic vanilla (which as far as I’m concerned is a fantastic flavour for yogurt, and a crappy flavour for icecream). They are really high in protein (17g in a single serve pot) and low in fat, and my god you can tell. This was quite possibly the most filling thing I've eaten in my whole life. One pot of yogurt and it was like I’d had a whole meal. I can only imagine these are brilliant for dieting, as it tasted good too.

907 down, 889 to go 

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906. Hangikjöt 

Happy Friday everyone!

This post is coming to you from my new apartment. Yes. I moved, again. For those of you who’ve been here a while this will be no surprise to you whatsoever. I was working it out and I think I’ve moved 6 times since starting this blog a little over 5 years ago. I clearly love to punish myself. 

This time it was just a local move at least, and I’m now living right in the town centre rather than way out in the sticks. It also means I get to have my own kitchen again. Don’t get me wrong, living with people who cook for you is lovely and I appreciated it so, so much, but oh my goodness is it nice to have my own equipment and to be able to make whatever the hell I like for dinner. I’ve been making so much mac and cheese, and curries, and roast dinners, and now a bunch of salads because well, maybe I overdid it jussstttt a little bit. I also made the most freaking amazing pulled pork tamale pie which I didn’t take a picture of because I didn’t realise how crazy good it was going to be until after I served it, so I’m just going to have to make it again so that I can share the recipe with you all. What. A. Shame.

Now that I’m all unpacked and I’ve stopped making treks to Ikea on a weekly basis, let’s celebrate my return with posts of all the Icelandic foods I ate on my awesome trip there in February.

This is hangikjöt, or at least the meat in the sandwich is, and it’s a traditional Icelandic dish of smoked lamb. Lamb is actually extremely popular in Iceland, though I didn’t see a single sheep when I was there. Maybe I was in the wrong places... Anyway, my friends and I all had this same sandwich for our lunch, and we all collectively decided that it tasted like a cross between kebab meat and bacon. Sliced thinly in a grilled sandwich with cheese and salad, it worked great, and it was pretty much the perfect thing for us to stuff ourselves with after looking at waterfalls on a day which had seriously the coldest wind imaginable. 

It would also make such a good late night snack after a couple of Icelandic beers, which by the way, are insanely good. If you ever get the chance to drink Icelandic beers, then do it. I think it must be a combination of small breweries and crisp, clean glacier water. Einstök Toasted Porter was unbelievably delicious, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t usually even like dark beers. Every other beer I tried there was great too. Drinking one made from glacier lake water whilst sitting in front of said glacier lake looking at seals and icebergs could not have been more perfect.

906 down, 890 to go

[1796foods]

905. Brillat Savarin

Let's talk cheese. 

When I was younger, and by younger, I really mean until only a few years ago, I was not that into cheese. I loved cooked cheese - cheese sauce, mac and cheese, pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches etc etc, but cheese by itself with crackers or bread was not something I enjoyed. Obviously over the past few years I've rectified my ways and realised what a fool I was in earlier life, because I've finally come to the realisation like all other sensible people in the world, that cheese is amazing. I will now happily have cheese and crackers as a meal, more than happily in fact. If I told my child self that would happen in the future, I very much doubt that I would have believed it. 

I'd heard a lot about this cheese before, but I'd never gotten around to trying it. Now I have though, I will certainly be trying it again. This is a cheese of two halves. The outside is similar to a very fresh, subtle brie, but this gives way to what is essentially cream cheese in the middle. I've seen a few people lately use it in cheesecake recipes and I can totally see why - the centre is uber creamy, and the contrast of the slightly sweet inside with the slightly savoury outside makes for a beautiful combination. With a sweet, fruity topping, this would be so so good. Equally it was perfect just by itself with crackers though. 

905 down, 891 to go

[1796foods]

904. Vol-au-Vents

Merry Christmas everyone! 

So I'm a little late with my holiday posting this year. But we all know I'm a little late with my everything posting right now so let's just let this one slide a bit shall we? I'm currently on a mission to get up to date and so so incredibly organised with this blog. I now have a whole Trello board dedicated to it with a bunch of columns, and on top of that one of my to-dos for the week is setting up an editorial calendar to plan all my posts well in advance. This is the year Laura gets organised. 

If you knew me in real life, you'd realise that this disorganisation is actually kind of unheard of for me. I'm the queen of lists. I love lists. They are quite possibly my favourite thing in the whole world. Besides food. And puppies. My Disneyworld plans for past family vacations are a thing of legend. My passion for lists was one of the main reasons I started this in the first place. So I'm putting my Disneyworld planning hat on and listing this up to the extreme. Just wait, at Easter there will actually be posts about Easter. 

Anyway, let's talk pastry. Having now been doing this blog for 5 years (which is a whole insane thing of its own that we'll talk about another time), I've more or less exhausted the typical festive fare. Within the first couple of years I'd already ticked off turkey and Christmas cake and Christmas pudding and all the other usual holiday treats. So now I have to get a bit more creative to try and find some other list foods to eat during Christmastime. This year I chose a couple of things to have at our annual 'party food' gathering when my half-sisters come to visit. 

One of these was vol-au-vents. As we all know, because I'm sure I wax lyrical about it on here at every opportunity, I am just a little bit of a puff pastry fan. I love everything that involves puff pastry, or even similar-to-puff-pastry pastry. It's just so crispy and flaky and really the best. If anyone tries to tell you any other kind of pastry is better, well they're clearly wrong. I mean, they're welcome to their opinion of course, but their opinion is wrong. 

These vol-au-vents had a range of different veggie fillings including asparagus, and butternut squash, and they came from Marks & Spencers. Sure I could have made my own, but one of the traditions of the party food gathering is just buying loads of delicious morsels from M&S, or other stores, and then popping them in the oven while we play one of many traditional Christmas games, like my Dad's 'famous faces' picture quiz, or my brother's infamously difficult news of the year quiz. 

They were crisp on the outside and soft in the middle, and the flavours were super tasty, and well, they were puff pastry, so what more is there to say?

904 down, 892 to go

[1796foods]

903. Baby Back Ribs

Hi everyone! I just got back from an unbelievable trip to Iceland. Seriously, that country is amazing. Everywhere is so crazy beautiful. It takes hours to get anywhere because you literally have to stop the car every five minutes to get out and take pictures. There are mountains, and glaciers, and waterfalls, and lakes, and beach, and the landscape just changes almost instantaneously. One second you'll be driving past paddocks of horses and the next you'll be slap bang in the middle of an alien-looking rocky lava field. I'm already planning my next trip (in my head at least, my wallet can't plan it quite yet). If you haven't been, go, like right now, just drop what you're doing and go play in the snow and take a million pictures. 

I tried a few typical Icelandic foods from my list while I was there, but I haven't quite had the chance to process the photos yet, so in the meantime I'll get back to usual programming. 

This was a belated meal we had for my dad's birthday. Five of us went to this restaurant, of four of us ordered the same thing, a chicken and ribs combo. Now, I am not a spare ribs person. I find them mostly tough and I don't particularly enjoy the flavour of the meat. Baby back ribs on the other hand though are a different story. I LOVE baby back ribs. They are so juicy and tasty and succulent and the combination of the meat and the barbecue sauce is just so so good. These were a great example, with sweet sticky sauce and meat that slid right off the bones. Yum. 

The rest of the dish was great too - moist, flavourful chicken, a fantastic spicy peri peri sauce, and delicious grilled corn and coleslaw. Honestly the fries weren't even needed, which is something I wouldn't have thought I would ever hear myself say (or I guess write) in my life. Pretty sure that if I go back to Giraffe I won't even bother with the menu. Only chicken and ribs for me from now on.

903 down, 893 to go

[1796foods]

902. Divinity

For the second week of our vacation, we stayed with friends on the New Hampshire/Maine border. I really wanted to get some American candy, and by some I mean lots, so they took me to a local candy store called Yummies, which was more or less my paradise. Wall to wall candies in pretty much every flavour and type you could want, all in massive sharing packs. It was glorious. 

I got all kinds of things - pecan turtles, cinnamon gummy bears, Nerds and other Wonka candy, cow tails, peanut butter cups, and this divinity. I spent over $20. I wasn't even ashamed. 

I'd never tried divinity before but heard that it was a kind of hybrid marshmallow nougat fudge type thing. I love all of those so I figured I couldn't really go wrong with this. What I hadn't factored into the equation was that you seem to get all the sugar of all three of those things compacted into one single piece of candy. I'd say I'd never eaten anything so sweet in my life, except that would be a lie because this was marginally less sweet than the frosting my brother had on his birthday cake one time in Florida, but this was easily the second sweetest thing I've ever eaten in my life. 

They literally made my teeth hurt. And this is coming from a now-30-year-old (it was my birthday yesterday. I am now officially like a grown-up or something) who basically ran around the candy store hyperventilating with excitement at all the sugary treats. I had one and then I couldn't do it to myself any more. 

902 down, 894 to go

[1796foods]

901. Funnel Cake

The next few posts are going to have a vacation theme. Because it's January, and cold, and it's been a while since Christmas. Though I must say reliving a past vacation in an attempt to cheer yourself up mostly just seems to make you depressed that you aren't on vacation any more. 

Before Christmas, I went on a trip to New York, New Hampshire, and Maine. We spent the first week in Brooklyn, then another few days in Portsmouth, NH. It was my first trip to the US in more than a few years and I'd forgotten quite how much I loved it. 

We went to Brooklyn with a group of friends, but on my last full day there I had the day all to myself as everyone else was busy doing other things. I decided to take the day to explore, and visited Prospect Park before heading down to Brighton Beach and Coney Island. I got a bit over-excited because I saw the Russian restaurant that was in an episode of SVU, and then soon after I had a funnel cake. Great afternoon, or great afternoon?

I feel like I should maybe point out that I didn't eat ALL that funnel cake to myself. I mean, don't get me wrong, I gave it a damn good try, but I had already eaten a meatball sub for lunch, and two donuts for breakfast. And thinking about it, I then went on to eat a bunch of pretzels, and then have a Shake Shack burger and fries for dinner. And here I was trying to defend my greediness that I didn't eat this whole thing... I did do over 25,000 steps that day though (so my fitbit told me), so I'm going to say that was all completely justified, and not excessive at all. Not in the least. Nope. 

It was kind of a miracle that I got to eat any of the funnel cake at all really. I had to fight off a whole bunch of hungry seagulls. It's a good job I come from the seaside, or else being ambushed by a huge pack of ravenous large birds might have been a bit disconcerting. At least one of them didn't swallow a mackerel head whole this time like the last time gulls encroached on my beach meal. Now that was scary. I did have the added bonus of being pointed and laughed at my a passing man this time though. Thanks dude, I'm glad my being attacked by birds provided so much amusement for you. 

901 down, 895 to go

[1796foods]

900. Beef Bulgogi

Someday I'll be a person that posts things in a timely appropriate fashion. Like posting Christmas foods in the run-up to Christmas, or delicious salads and barbecue foods in the middle of summer. Today sadly is not that day, because today, in January, we are going to talk about Korean Thanksgiving, which was in September. But really, who's to say it matters that much. I mean, food doesn't get less yummy because we're talking about it terribly late, right. Yeah, that's what I'm going to tell myself for now.

Last year I experienced my first Korean Thanksgiving meal, and honestly, one of my first Korean meals of any kind. It's not a cuisine you find too much in Britain, or in Sweden, but it's one I think we should be eating a lot more of because it was great. Our friend invited us over for dinner and served up this total feast featuring rice, noodles, this spicy pork, potatoes, a summery kimchi, and bulgogi. The beef was thinly spiced and marinated and it was super tender, and had a fantastic sweet savoury flavour. Everything in the meal was so good really.

Also, for those of you who just found yourself here from Buzzfeed. Hi, and welcome! I may or may not have screamed a little bit and danced around a lot when I found out I was going to be featured last night. It is basically my favourite website, and the list has so many awesome other blogs on it that I was thrilled to say the least. 

900 down, 896 to go