Featured Food Blog: Ferdakost

Name: Marion
Name of blog:  Ferdakost
Location: Jæren, Norway

How would you describe your culinary style?
My culinary style reflects my heritage. In Scandinavia, we make the best of a limited amount of ingredients, and that’s what I do too. Everything I make is from scratch. As it happens, I’m also quite adventurous. I love exploring new dishes, cuisines and ingredient and am quite open to trying new food. Cooking for me is a way of relaxing, and my food is usually homey, comforting and traditional – with a few twists. I love using my creativity to tweak old recipes, but I do like to taste what I’m eating, so I keep the flavours as simple as possible.

What is the main source of inspiration for your recipes?
I know it may be a cliché, but I get inspired by my grandmother. Her cooking is so incredible comforting, and I like to twist her traditional Norwegian recipes into something of my own. I have a couple of her old tattered cookbooks, as well as a few of my great-aunt and great-grandmother. They’re over 100 years old, and I treasure them dearly. I also love to make French food, so many French food blogs are great sources of inspiration to me. I often chat with a few of the authors, and together we tweak their recipes, which is great fun. Travels also inspire me – I’ll go and eat something in an restaurant, come home, and try to recreate it. In the process I come up with something uniquely mine.

If you could have one food while stranded on a desert island, what would it be? 
If the island is tropical, it would be a blueberry, grapefruit, raspberry and basil sorbet. It’s not my favourite food, but I can’t imagine eating a hot and heavy dinner on a tropical island. If the island is a simple dark rock somewhere in the North Sea, I’d go for lapskaus, a Norwegian winter vegetable stew with lamb and flat bread. It’s incredibly comforting.

For someone new to your blog, which recipe do you recommend they try first? 
I’d go for my tartiflette – a French potato, cream and cheese dish flavoured with thyme. It’s delicious. If you are looking for something sweet, however, I would check out traditional skillingsbollar – Norwegian cinnamon and sugar buns.

What is your ultimate guilty food pleasure? 
Cheese. I love cheese so much, I put it on everything – potatoes, bread, pasta. Melted Camembert with minced garlic, thyme and rosemary on baguette slices is incredibly good!

Define Yummly.
Yummly is where you go to share your ideas, recipes and creativity with people around the world, and where you find recipes and creative solutions to any problems you may have. It’s a great online cookbook!