Food for thought

Salmon Quiche

2007-09-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

It is all in the pastry base. Really!!! What you want is something that is firm and interesting, and for this reason I added about 20 almonds that I had diced into small crumbs. They are surprises in the pastry. In addition I added half a teaspoon on rough crushed extra hot red chillies and half a cup of grated tangy Hergard cheese from Sweden. The other ingredients are 3 cups of flour and six table spoons of olive oil. Mix the whole lot in a bowl until it looks like a pastry dough. Squeeze it though your fingers untill all the crumbs are bonded together. Then place it in the centre of a big baking dish and press it out from the centre to the edges until it covers the dish. Put it in the oven and bake for 10 minutes at 230 C

Now for the killer filling and I do mean killer filling since the amount of calories and fat and cholestorol is equivilent to a heart attack on a plate. Crack three eggs into a bowl and add 2 dl of sour cream and half a cup of grated strong mature black label Emental. Then add three large dollops of mayonase, and five finely cut mushrooms.
Beat the hell out of the mixture and when it looks thick and creamy pour it into the pie dish and then sprinkle some smoked salmon over the top and dust down with som Parmesan cheese. Pop it in the oven for 40 minutes at 200 C and sit back and enjoy the aroma that fills the kitchen.

Since you know just how much evil stuff you have added to this dish you can assuage your conscience by serving it with some Japanese Mizuna, and some cheap white wine. Be sure to eat it all before you wife returns from her weekend away.

Foccaccia

2007-09-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

I like to make Foccacia bread. It is so simple and quick to prepare and it tastes wonderful. You can go to specialist bakeries and get artizan bread but they will cost you an arm and a leg, so it is so much easier to prepare it yourself with good ingredients that will give you a bread that is full of flavour and a joy to eat.

Ingredients:

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1 pinch ground black pepper
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 cup water2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
1 bag of mozzarella pellets
Shredded fresh rosemary for topping.

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, salt, sugar, yeast, garlic powder, oregano, thyme, basil and black pepper. Mix in the vegetable oil and water.
2. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead until smooth and elastic. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth, and let rise in a warm place for 20 minutes.
3. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Punch dough down; place on greased baking sheet. Pat into a 1/2 inch thick rectangle. Brush top with olive oil. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese, mozzarella cheese and fresh shredded rosemary.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve warm.

Onion soup with Aura cheese and rose pepper and dill

2007-04-19T23:46:00.001-07:00

Onion soup with Aura cheese and rose pepper and dill
Originally uploaded by Selma Sol€.

Does onion soup frighten you? Don't be afaid. Here is my recipe.

Cut 4 large onions into big chunks. None of this finely minced french style onions. Cut them big and rough. If you want to practice your knife work then you can take 2 sticks of celery and chop it to dust. Throw the chunky onions and celery dust into into a pot and add a drizzle of olive oil, (why is it that olive oil always drizzles, why can't you have a thunder-storm of olive oil) and cook until soft.

Add a half litre of water and a stockcube and simmer for 20 minutes. Surprisingly onion soup tastes rather sweet so for a good topping, and to add some sharpness and contrast, I add freshly ground rose pepper and dill. These two ingredients put on at the last minute when the soup has been laddled onto the bowl, give the soup a rare fragrance.

Now for the AURA blue cheese. This should be added as rough generous chunks, and allowed to melts a little before you get stuck in.

On the side you can have buttered barley bread and tomato. Very simple and inexpensive. Enjoy

Scottish Tablet

2007-03-22T04:50:00.001-07:00

Scottish Tablet
Originally uploaded by Arthur Eyetis.

My grandmother used to make tablet around about christmas time. She also made ginger beer and boston cream for new year

I remember being crazy for tablet, and it was always homemade stuff. The nearest commercial equivilent is Kendal mintcake that made it to the top of Mount Everest with Hilary.

Kendal mintcake is carried by mountaineers to give them energy, and when you see the recipe for tablet you can understand why.

1 kg of granulated sugar
1 tin of sweetend condensed milk
2 dl of cream
200 gm of unsalted butter

Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed deep pot. Add the sugar condensed milk and cream and bring the mixture to the boil. At this stage the liquid is a light creamy colour. Once the liquid is boiling reduce the temperature so that it is just simmering nicely. It is essential that you stir the mixture continuously to stop it from burning to the bottom of the pot. A flat wooden spatula is better than a wooden spoon for this job, becasue you can more easily scrape the bottom of the pot while you are stirring.

While it is boiling you can expect the volume of the liquid to perhaps double, and it is hellish hot so don't go trying to taste the mixture straight from the pot as you will scald your tongue. As you stir the colour of the mixture will become darker and the stirring process usually take 20 minutes before the tablet is ready. You can test this by taking a teaspoon of the mixture from the pot and dropping it into a tumbler of cold water. If the mixture forms a solid globule then the mixture is ready.

Now remove the mixture from the heat and whisk for 10 minutes. Place some aluminium folio that has been greased with butter into a shallow baking tray and pour in the tablet mixture. It should begin to set almost immediately, but while it is still hot score the top of it with a knife so you can break it into squares afterwards. Set aside to cool and amuse yourself or your children by giving them the pot to lick.

One of the best thing about making tablet is licking the pot afterwards.

Tentura christmas cake

2007-01-23T05:17:00.000-08:00

While in Greece I was served up some Tentura after a meal. It is a liquer and the main ingredients are cinnamon and cloves. You drink it down in a small shot glass and I suppose it is an ancient version of Salmiaki Kossu. So it was Maija's idea to make a cake with Tentura as a spice.

Now Christmas cakes have a great tradition in the UK and America. These christmas fruitcakes weigh a tonne and apparently if you don't eat them they last for ever. A bit like the English wedding cakes covered in icing and marzipan that can be saved so that the first born can sample their mother and fathers wedding cake.

Fruit cakes given as presents at christmas can be left uneaten, and if you don't like them they can be passed on to someone else. who will undoubtedly pass it on to somebody else the following christmas. They are so rich they will last forever it left untouched. I bet you the Pharaoh had perfectly good cake in his burial chamber.

Eggs, sugar, flour, butter, all go into the basic dough and you add it the fruits like raisens, sultanas, appricots, cherries and of course a generous helping of Tentura.

Now you don't want the cake to turn out like a coal-dust brickette so to prevent the cake from burning and sticking to the container, the inside is lined with brown baking paper and the outside is covered in newspaper.

Now I hear you question as to what type of newspaper to use. Well personally we got good results with Helsinki Sanomat, though I dare say The Times would have done equally well.

At all cost avoid The Sun, or The National Inquirer. For some reason cakes wraped in these newspapers always come out badly.

Finally when the cake is ready it has to be spiked with more Tentura, for after all eating cake is only a discrete way of consuming alcohol. Prick the cake with a toothpick and pour in as much Tentura was you want.

You will observe that after people have eaten a few slices they will remark how wonderfully moist the cake is, and will be asking for another slice.

Nuckle of Lamb

2007-01-23T03:22:00.000-08:00

Knuckle of Lamb... I ate it many times in islamic resturants in Cairo. It is an awesome sight to have a chunk of meat like this braized to perfection and falling off the bone placed in front of you.

There is something very special about the way lamb is cooked in North africa or the middle east, that makes it so different from the roast lamb that you would get in England.

Perhaps it has something to do with the lamb itself in that it is not deep frozen stuff from New Zealand. Whatever it is freshness, spices, cooking method, it sure is tasty.

In marocco they will add to the casserole apricots, dates, almonds, sultanas or raisins, honey, saffron mixture, tomato juice and lamb or chicken stock, and I guess all that fruitiness gives a sweetness to the dish that you do not usually associate with lamb

The spices that I added were freshly sliced ginger. Don't use that powdered stuff it may give ginger flavour, but there is nothing so satisfying than to bite into a bit of ginger that has been cooked. It does something for the appetite.

Then there is Bay leaves, and rosemary and thyme which are traditional herbs to go along with lamb. In addition Rose Pepper and Black Peppercorns give the casserole some extra bite.

Whack the whole thing in a cast iron pot and add a couple of onions quartered and a large carrot diced. Add a stock cube and water, clap on the lid and cook in the oven for 2-3 hours at 180 C

It is read whn the meat falls off the bone and all the marrow has dissolved from inside the bone. at it with either rice or couscous.

Avocado and date salad

2006-11-30T04:32:00.000-08:00

I will build my love a salad. First of all I will wash fresh stalks of celery in cold water and slice them diagonally.

I will build a tower of goodness from ripe avocado, crystalised dates, and dried bananna chips.

And on it I will lay wedges of strong salty cheese, and whole corriander seeds. For a dressing there will be fresh ground black pepper, white garlic sauce, and a drizzle of virgin olive oil.

I will lay it on a table of linen, and pour a glass of strong red wine, full heady tannin, that will sing a love song to the cheese.

Pasha & Kulich

2006-04-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

Pasha & Kulich, originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Pasha is spread on the kulich and eaten.
Pasha is a very rich.

No!!! to say it is rich is a lie.

Pasha is a heart attack on a plate.
Pasha is the gunge that will clog your arteries.
Pasha has so much sugary sweetness it will have you running up the walls.
Pasha explodes in your mouth.
Pasha tingles your toes and gives you pins and neddles in your fingers.
Pasha makes you dance with schitzoid jerky movements.
Pasha is dangerous and should only be eaten by people who have practiced extreme eating for years.
Pasha is the nipple of heaven.

If food were flags

2006-04-09T06:20:00.000-07:00

If food were flags then a tomato boat carrying a wedge of feta as cargo under the full sail of a basil leaf would represent Italy. The colours are right and the taste is right too. For the lion rampant of Scotland you would have custard and strawberries. The English would have milk and beetroot juice, and the Americans would have a blueberry pie topped with a triple helping of double cream, and an obscene amount of glazed cherries.

The sad thing is that things are being grown for looks rather than flavour. Shelf life is more important than taste. It is a given that tomatoes are red, but what is the point of selling nice red tomatoes when the price is all wrong. If you have a glut of tomatoes on the market then you get rock bottom prices for them.

So what you do genetically engineer them to remain green on the vine for a longer period of time, and when the price is right you pump ethelyene into the green house and have them ripen overnight, and then sell them at top dollar. They might be rock hard and taste like sewage, but they sure as hell look good on the supermarkert shelves.

If Peru had a flag it should be shaped like a potato, and potatoes should be knobbly with vivid strange colours, just the way nature intended, but no they need to have a certain shape if they have to be made into Walkers crisps, and Walkers will only buy certain types of potato which means that growers will only grow certain potatoes so they can sell them to Walkers. The end result is that the old varieties disappear.

The same is true for wheat and rice. Varieties are bred to be high yielding, but only if you use lots of fertilizer. This is why the big chemical companies are buying up seed companies, since seeds are being designed to grow well with chemicals. Who cares about the diminished gene pool? Who cares that the genetic heritage of the generations is being fed to pigs, because modern seeds give better yields and more profit. Who worries that there might be huge swathes for land devoted to mono-cultures of corn or rice. With mono-cultures the risk is that if they are hit by disease like a fungal rust then there exists the distinct possibility that entire crops will be wiped out from japan to India.

I am all for genetic diversity. I am all for taste. I want wierd shaped fruit with stange colours, that does not have a shelf-life and needs to be eaten fresh. Give me a basil tomato boat with a cargo of feta, floating on a sea of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Give me taste.

Strawberries and black forrest ham on a poppy seed roll

2006-02-27T06:32:00.000-08:00

Why not? If things taste good on their own them why not combine them, and see if the combination opens any doors. Hmmm that roll with poppy seeds would burst a saloon door wide open. Those small wild strawberries would cause the camera eyed doors on the Sar wars DeathStar blink open, and if you laid a few slices of German black forest ham on the combination lock at Fort Knox it would blow those vault doors wide open.

Put them all together, bite into them and they prove to be the key that opens Pandora's other box, you know the one she kept under her bed covered with a red silk shawl. The box of pleasures that we are not allowed to taste.

I eat everything. I eat the forbidden. I eat crusts and burnt bits. The brown burnt egg stuck to the bottom of life's pan. I lick the bowl. I eat raw dough. I finger melted chocolate from the pan. I drizzle olive oil on green leaves, shake rock salt on fish heads, suck marrow from the bone, tear crisp spiced brown skin from the bone, squeeze mustard on hot pork, mash bannana on white bread and sprinkle it with sugar.

You ask why I do it and I reply. Why not?

God's blow-out.

2006-01-29T07:36:00.000-08:00

Here is a thought for you. It comes from the old testiment. It is in actual fact a command from God, and it goes like this.

And thou shall bestow that money for whatsosever your soul lusteth after, for oxen, for sheep, or for wine, or for stong drink, or for whatever thy soul desireth, and thou shall eat there before the Lord they God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou and thy entire household

If I get it right there are times when you take the tithe ( a tenth of your income ) and instead of giving it away, you use it to have a good time with your family and friends. Now that is quite radical thinking

So here is what I am suggesting that when pay day comes along you forget about the rent and the bills and the other financial matters that weigh you down, and set aside one tenth of your salary to buy some really good food to share with your friends and family.

Don't blow the money on a resturant. You can make better meals at home. Cooking together is good. It does not have to be French cuisine, but what it does need to be is tasty. Lip smacking good. Finger licking good. Fresh tomatoes spiked with sea salt and placed on buttered bread straight from the oven is heavenly. Whole cloves of garlic drenched in olive oil. Scarred and charred salmon has that smokey oily tang that makes you want to take the flesh in your mouth and suck, and suck, and suck, until all the flavour has been drawn out

At the end of the meal there should only be bones left. Every bit of goodness should be devoured and savoured. And after the meal... lick each others fingers... you would not get away with that in a resturant.

You know it is what God wants... so do it.

The vampire challenge

2006-01-28T15:08:00.000-08:00

Imogen I eat you, originally uploaded by HyperBob.

It all started out in a very innocent manner. I had found a photo by Imogen Cunningham called three vegetables, and as part of a Utata project I dug around in the fridge for three vegetables I could photo, and came across some cloves of garlic that had began to sprout.

So I snaped the garlic and since I had taken it out and it looked so nice I decided to spice it up and bake it in the over along with some potatoe wedges.

I went and bought some fillet steak to go along with it and I used some Nomu African rub to give it some edge.

Can you eat so much garlic in one go? Yes of course you can. The cloves go wonderfully soft and almost caramelised. I do not recommend using a knife and fork to get at the innards, instead use your fingers and suck all the goodness out of them.

If I were a Vampire I wonder how I would react to a nicely done RARE steak with garlic on the side. I think it would be tempting and off-putting at one and the same time. The luciousness of the red meat and the horror of the garlic, but I think that good food inherently has a tension within it. It almost dares you to be brave enough to eat it.

Gravlax... innit???

2005-12-15T10:10:00.001-08:00

It is so expensive to make buy gravlax so why not make your own. It is very simple. First of all you need a nice bit of salmon. On offer in the shops at the moment at reasonable prices are farmed salmon from Norway or deep sea salmon from Ahvenamaa. I went for the salmon from the archipeligo.

raw salmon from the archipelego

To start the process you need to salt the fish and I use natural rock salt. It is big and it is cruchy and it looks good. It is enough to put a couple of table spoons on the salmon to coat the flesh.

Salmon salted with rock salt

After that the flesh is sprinkled with ordinary sugar. Just plain old sugar. I used sugar from estonia which I bought at a bargain price from Lidl. I was tempted to use some brown sugar from Suomen sokeri but thought better of it.

sugar added

Then it is time for some spices and I went for a mixture of rose pepper and Jamacian allspice. The recipe from the web called for crushed white pepper, but I did not have any so I went with the Rose pepper instead. It looks better with a little bit of red added to it.

Rose pepper and Jamacian allspice

Traditionally for some green you should go for dill, but I did not have any, but I did have some rosemary growing on the balcony so I chopped up some leaves and sprinkled it over the fish. It made a good contrast with the rose pepper.

Rosemary added

Finally the fillet is tightly wraped in cling film and place in the fridge for a couple of days to mature. The package is placed in a dish and then another dish is placed on top of it to weigh it down. You should expect some juices to come out of the fish fillet.

Wraped in cling film

In 48 hours time the fillet will be removed from the cling film and all of the remaining salt and sugar and herbs will be scraped off and the fillet sliced at 45 degrees to give very thin slices. It should be eaten with garlic mustard but I have decided to do gravlax con meloni.

If the Italians can get away with parma ham on melon, then I am going to be the first to put strips of gravlax with melon. I may even smother it in liqorice sauce. Eat your heart out fat duck.

P.S. Did I forget to mention that it was also marinated in Hunaja-Terva Snapsi (Honey-tar Schnapps)

Fava bean and chickpea soup

2005-12-04T11:39:00.000-08:00

I visited a Kurdish shop in Espoon Keskus and bought some nibbles. It is hard to describe what they are exactly, since it looks like hollow bits of spaghetti coated in chilli pepper. Whatever they are they taste good, and to my mind are better than peanuts or popcorn. Perhaps it is a Kurdish version of Bombay mix.

Anyways I also discovered they had some condensed milk, something I have not been able to find in the supermarkets here in Finland. Maija found a recipe for some special christmas sweets which needed dark chocolate and condensed cream so we will be all set to roll in a few days time.

The other thing that I picked up was a tin of Fava beans with chickpeas, by Wadi Chtoura Foods. The only time I have heard fava beans mentioned in connection with eating was in the the movie "Silence of the lambs", when Hannibal the Cannibal says "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti." So I just had to try the Fava beans and instead of liver I tossed in some spiced Gyros from Dulano.

I suppose the Fava beans should have been eaten in a salad with olive oil and lemon but when I opened the tin the beans and chickpeas were floating in a hot and spicey tomato and chilli sauce, and since it was one of those raw days outside, I added some more liquid to the sauce and made the whole thing into a warm and satisfying soup. I crisped up some bread under the grill and while it was still hot spread it with a generous layer of real butter. I had intended to leave half the soup for tomorrow but it tasted so good I ate the lot in one go. It was excellent and I plan to do it again as soon as I get more beans.

Though the wife says wait until tomorrow until you see how you react to the beans.

Fish and bacon... yeah right

2005-11-11T11:24:00.000-08:00

Combine fish and bacon... I don't think so. I mean to say it just does not go. It clashes. Pig and fish just does not look right on the menu. Chuck in a few green beans. Vegetables always bring forgivness. Oh but I forgot about the white wine, a pinot grigio from Northern Italy. That makes everything right. Doesn't it? White wine and fish that has got to be OK, and white wine and pork well that is a combination to die for... NOT!!!

But who could resist Siika dusted down with rye flour and simply spiced with pepper and salt and fried so the skin on the fish is crisp and succulent. I mean to say this is a skin that you do not scrape off and put on the side of the plate. This is a skin that you cut off with the flesh and suck all of the goodness out of it. You eat some green beans because you feel guilty. You drink a little wine to get rid of the guilt. You eat some bacon and feel that you have to do some sort of penence so you eat some more fish to say that you feel sorry for defiling yourself with the evil pork, and so it goes on... fish, beans, wine, pork, until you have finnished the meal.

We always rationalise our reasons for eating stuff that we shouldn't. Fish good, wine bad, Pork bad, beans good. It all evens out in the end... that is if you do not use TOO much salt and pepper, which is diabolical and the most sinful of condiments.

Muikku/Vendace

2005-10-21T12:49:00.000-07:00

Muikku/Vendace, originally uploaded by HyperBob.

How is it that you can buy gutted muikku? All the heads have been cut off and the insides are missing. I can only imagine some machine that slices the heads off and some suction method to remove the guts. But all that is beside the point, the important thing is how to cook them and how to eat them.

Well you have to cook them in rye flour that has been spiced with salt and pepper. Nothing else, and they have to be fried in butter. Not olive oil, not margarine, not sunflower oil.

And when it comes to eating them you eat them whole. You eat the skin, the tails, the fins, the bones, everything and you do it with your fingers. No forks and knifes.

Muslims have the habit of eating food with their hands, and we may scorn this practice but it makes very good sense. When you pick a fried fish up with your fingers you make a judgement of how hot it is, and if it is safe to put it into your mouth. How many times have you speared a pototo with you fork and popped it straight into your mouth without checking how hot it was?

At the end of the meal you can lick your fingers for desert.

Home-made Dill, Pepper, Garlic pickled Gherkins

2005-08-29T04:39:00.000-07:00

Home-made Dill, Pepper, Garlic pickled Gherkins, originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Pickled Gherkins with dill, pepper,and garlic

I bought about a kilo and a half of gherkins to suppliment the ones I got from my allotment and decided to pickle them. This is the process.

Dump the gherkins in a basins and wash them, then take a fork and prick them all over. Transfer the gherkins to a container and cover them with 1/4 kilo of salt and leave for 4 hours. During this time the gherkins will become soft and they will loose water from the holes you have pricked on the surface.

Once the 4 hours is up wash the gherkins 5 times in cold running water ready for putting in preservative jars.

Pickle mixture.
1/2 cup of vinegar
2 cups of water
1 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon of mustard seed
1 tablespoon of jamacian allspice
3 heads of dill plant
6 cloves of garlic finely sliced.

Place all of the spices in a pot and add the vinegar and water and bring gently to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes.

2 kilos of gherkins should fit nicely into 3 1/2 litre jars. Place the dill heads and mustard seed at the bottom of the jar, and then you can either pack the gherkins into the jar whole or you can slice them, then top up with the spiced pickling mixture and seal the jars.

When the gherkins go in the jar they are still rather green in colour but by the next day they will have drawn in the spiced pickling liquor and their colour will change to a more olive green, and believe it or not they are ready to eat the next day.

Great with cold ham or salmon.

Pistachio Lemon bread with Lemon butter

2005-05-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

Judith Olney has a chapter in her book called Essence Breads and their butters, and Maij decided to try the Pistachio/Lemon bread. It is more of a cake than a real bread and it is quite heavenly to eat. After it had been made we cut a couple of slices and had it with coffee on the balcony.

The strange thing about this bread is that after it has been baked you prick the top of it with a wooden kebab stick and then pour a "glaze" over it, which is basically 1/3 a cup of sugar and the juice from a lemon. I thought it would make it sodden, but somehow the bread absorbed it all and became very moist and succulent with a tang to smack your lips to.

If that is not lemony enough for you then you also have lemon butter to go along with it, which is made with 8 tbl spoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of lemon zest. As you can see from the photo the butter just melted into the hot bread once it was taken from the tin, and the pistachios were dotted through the bread with green nutty goodness.

Verdict: Mahtava!!!

Smoked fish and sunday newspaper

2005-05-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

No we did not find a new way of cooking newspaper. We just read the day old Sunday newspaper while we were eating. When you read and eat at the same time it is a slow process, and you tend to savour the food a little more. You examine it for texture, You suck it for flavour, you pick the best bits out of one thing and leave the best bits of something else. Eating becomes and adventure, and you can quite easily pinch something off somebodies plate if they are engrossed in the gardening section.

Maija bought some lovely smoked "muikku" and we had it plain and simple with potato salad, tomato, gherkins, together with some focaccia rosemary bread. It was nice. I inspected those muikku. They were topped but not tailed. Crisp fish tails to a Finn is as chicken feet to the Chinese.

I have planted a tomato plant on the balcony, appropriately enough it is called "Balcony Star". It is a gnarly looking plant. Tough with wrinkly leaves and I am expecting a tomato that would win prizes. We shall see.

How do you take photos of food? It is quite a complicated business to get it right. Do you do close-ups? Should there be the background clutter of life? Like the newspaper or a flower. Or should it be clean and stark? I wish I knew.

The Judith Olney book has some wonderful photos in it and if you are doing her rercipes it is not good to try and repeat the same shots that she has put in her book. There has to be something different. I am still looking for a style.

Meringue dream with kumquats (Brazo de Zetor)

2005-05-15T23:14:00.000-07:00

This is good. The visitors had seconds. And the kumquats... how do you eat those damn things. They look like small oranges. cut them open and inside all you have is seeds, big seeds, seeds that are hard and you cannot eat. Seeds that you have to throw away, and all that you are left with is the orange coloured peel and hardly any fruity flesh at all. It looks for all the world like orange peel. You do the maths... oranges 1.50 euro a kilo... kumquats 11.50 euro a kilo, and you think to yourself am I paying through the nose for orange peel? You see with kumquats you eat the peel, there is nothing else to eat from it really and the taste if you believe the supermarket is bitter sweet.

Which reminds me of artichokes... you get this hellava big green flower plonked on your plate and you wonder what bits of it are you supposed to eat. It's like drinking lemon flavoured water, and complimenting the lady of the table, how refreshing it is only to discover later that it was a finger bowl for cleaning your fingers. Such is life. Airs and graces.

Recipe
Meringue:
4 egg whites
1 tsp lemon juice
2 dl sugar
1 dl crushed almond
2 tbl cornflour.
Topping:
1/2 dl almonds
Dusting of icing sugar
Filling:
2 dl whipped cream
1 dl quark
1 dl strong marmalade
1 tsp vannila sugar
1 tin tangerines

Add the lemon juice to the eggs and beat, slowly add the sugar and continue to whisk,and near the end carefully add the crushed almonds and corn flour. Place the meringue mixture in a bag with a 1cm nozzle and pipe the mixture onto baking paper. Make 18 strips 35 cm long that are joined along the edges and sprinkle with almonds. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes at 175 C untill the meringeue just takes on some colour. Don't over cook so the meringue becomes hard. Carefully turn the sheet of soft meringue over onto baking paper and leave to cool.

For the filling whip the cream and mix in the quark, marmalade and vannilla sugar. Spread this mixture onto the soft meringue and with the aid of the baking paper carefully roll into the shape of a log, and place in the fridge to set. Just before serving dust the top with icing sugar.

Asparagus, romain pepper, onion, mushroom in a thin liquorice sauce and topped with ground black pepper and rock salt.

2005-05-08T02:20:00.000-07:00

Asparagus is in the shops, and I just had to buy some, and fry it up in olive oil with mushrooms, onions, and peppers. No steaming for me. There is an interesting story connected with aspargus. Supposedly your pee smells different after eating asparagus. Some people thought this was due to the fact that something in the asparagus was not metabolised properly, and thus gave your pee a distictive smell. But in actual fact some people have just got more sensitive noses.

Lison et al. (1980) concluded that the urinary excretion of an odorous substance after eating asparagus is not an inborn error of metabolism as had been proposed by Allison and McWhirter (1956). Instead they suggested that the detection of the odor constitutes a specific smell hypersensitivity. Their observations on a large number of individuals indicated that those who could smell the odor in their own urine could also smell it in the urine of anyone who had eaten asparagus, whether or not that person was able to smell it himself.

Mitchell et al. (1987) stated that Nencki (1891) had shown that the odor of urine after ingestion of asparagus is due to the volatile sulfur-containing compound methanethiol, which imparts a smell similar to rotten or boiling cabbage.

Bacon and beans

2005-05-05T04:40:00.000-07:00

Green beans, pinto beans, blackeyed peas, haricot beans, broad beans, soya beans, fava beans, French beans, jumping beans, runner beans, chickpeas, kidney beans, , mung beans, the list goes on and on and where can you get that big plump and pregnant queen of beans, the butter bean. Nowhere.

In the past I have scorned beans thinking of them in the immortal words of Bart Simpson, "Beans beans the musical fruit, the more you eat the more you toot", but then came the magical day in a tapas bar in Madrid. We were in there to sample some sherry. Just extremely small glasses, but lots of them and with every glass of sherry we bought the owners felt abliged to bring us some more tapas. Sizzling prawns in a garlic sauce (dribble dribble), cold cut of tuna with french mustard (smacks lips), olives stuffed with pimento (savours the acidity), whole white-bait dressed in breadcrumbs (crunches them bones and all from head to tail).

Then came the beans, big and buttery, shaped like a small kidney, coated in olive oil, with their fine skin dusted down with aromatic herbs, and black pepper. It may have been the sherries that went beforehand but somehow the butter beans, which I had held in such low esteem were suddenly elevated to something most noble, and ever since then I have wanted that taste again.

But not having any sherry I got side tracked and I did some spiced beans with bacon. Here is the recipe.

Soak a cup of butter beans in water over night. Add a pinch of bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt. This is the magic part since it helps the beans to absorb water and expand. You won't loose the skins when you boil them either. Drain the beans and add new water and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer until tender. Low heat is esential since you don't want them to disintigrate and turn to mush. Drain the water off and add the following spices. Ground black pepper, Rock salt, fresh basil torn, fresh parsley torn, garlic pepper, and then drizzle on some olive oil and mix. Transfer the spiced beans to a dish and on top place some roughly cut strips of bacon. Place in and oven at 250 C and cook for 20 minutes. This is to give a crunchiness to the beans and the bacon is cooked to perfection. Juices from the bacon are absorbed by the beans, giving them a delicious moistness.

Now for the most important part of the operation when you have removed the dish from the oven and let it cool, you should eat the beans with your fingers. No forks or knives allowed. It is a great pleasure to pick up the beans in your fingers, and to sift around the dish for the best bits. While eating your fingers will become flavoured by the spiced juices in the dish, and you will be afforded the opportinity to lick your own fingers, or even suck them to get them clean. Don't wash them or use wipes. That would spoil everything.

Enjoy... I know I did

The easiest, bestest foccacia ever

2005-05-04T05:25:00.000-07:00

There is nothing better than a fresh warm bread served straight from the oven. Maija made the "Italian Picnic Bread" and it received a very good response on Flickr, but that bread is more of a meal than a snack. The best bread for snacks is foccacia since it has such a lovely structure and the presence of olive oil makes it so moist and succulent.

So I dug around and found a wonderful website with a recipe for the easiest and bestest foccacia ever. I made it exactly according to the recipe with the exception I used emental cheese which is much stronger than the mozzerella cheese suggested in the recipe. I also baked it in a dish to give it some shape, but apart from that it is a wonderful recipe and it only takes an hour from start to finnish.

This type of bread is best eaten fresh and if possible in the open air. I ripped it into bits and had it with fresh vine tomatoes, pickled gerkins, and black olives. I sat out on the balcony amongst the pots with pelargonia cuttings, and enjoyed the afternoon sun. It was not Tuscany, but it was good enough for me.

Avocado, strawberry and liquorice sauce

2005-05-03T11:32:00.000-07:00

So I cut the avocado so there was nice little circles and into them I poured a liquorice sauce and dusted it down with icing sugar. Liquorice of the salty sort (salmiakki) is very popular in Finland. They put it in vodka and call it salmiakkikossu, and it tastes a bit like cough mixture.

The liquorice with the avocado and strawberries is nice and sweet. I made a plate for presentation, and it was so good that I made myself another plate but this time everything was just roughly cut up and smothered in the sauce.

It was then that I made an amazing discovery, food does not need to look good before you can eat it. The roughly chopped ingredients was just a luscious. Believe me this obscenely decadent avocado and strawberries with liquorice sauce is a treat for the taste buds and tongue.

Italian picnic bread

2005-05-03T05:44:00.000-07:00

Some people say
That oysters make you
come on strong,
But I don't buy it,
I don't believe my diet
turns me on.
Won't take no pills,
That's the last thing
that I need to do,
I can't deny it,
My aphrodisiac is you.

Don't smoke no grass,
Or opium from old Hong Kong,
That hubble-bubble
Just makes me see you double
All night long.
Don't waste my time
With Spanish fly and roots to chew,
They cause me trouble,
Because my aphrodisiac is you.

Katie Melua (my aphrodisiac is you)

Russian leg of lamb with rosemary

2005-04-30T01:01:00.000-07:00

Yes it was heavy but I didn't eat it... the wife did, at a russian resturant called Shaslik in Helsinki. We had a small cabinet all to ourself, and in other parts of the resurant you could here a mixture of languages from all over the world. Shaslik seems to be a watering hole for companies like Nokia who want to show their customers something exotic.

The resturant itself looks like something from the turn of the century. The walls have flocked floral patterns in the style of imperial Russia. The waiters dress like cossacks. The Vodka is served chilled. The food is heavy but very good an tasty.

At the end of the meal a man with an accodrian and a woman entered the booth and sang us some sad russian songs. It is strange that a certain note and a word in an unknown language, causes a bubbling of emotions inside like a kettle on the boil, and from your eyes tears roll unhindered.

Tagliatelle siskonmakkarakastikkeella

2005-04-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

The lady selling cold cuts of ham, chicken and luncheon meat at the local supermarket suggested that I buy 'siskonmakkara', a special offer of course, and use them as an ingredient in a pasta sauce. Siskonmakkara (sister's sausage) in a PASTA SAUCE, what has the world come to? I only remembered them as these slimy sausage skins that you took between your fingers and squeezed the contents into a pot of boiling vegetable soup. Or going back even further, my mum's soup that had them cut in skins and all (caused a nice swelling effect at both ends). The ends where the sausages had been cut. Once they reached the boiling pot, that is.

But pasta sauce, give me a break. Well I gave her a break and bought the leek, the chanterelle cheese spread and the cream. Squeezed (at least I got to squeeze) the contents little blobs at a time into a hot frying pan, added the chopped leek, the cream and the chanterelle spread. Cooked the tagliatelle, arranged it all on a plate topped with some parsley and red pepper. Observed the nice swelling effect round my midriff. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all. Must move on with the times.

Pea soup, pork, rye bread and cheese

2005-04-27T00:06:00.000-07:00

"It's Tuesday let's do pea soup"
"It's not Tuesday"
"Yes it is. It is Tuesday"
"No but, I mean Tuesday is not pea soup day"
"Yes but, you said 'It's not Tuesday' which is wrong because it is Tuesday"
"No but, what I ment to say was Thursday is pea soup day"
"Then why not just say it then, instead of saying 'It's not Tuesday'"
"Whatever"

Yes Thursday is indeed pea soup day. All over Scandinavia you have pea soup on a Thursday and pancakes and jam for afters. It is strange that certain days of the week are associated with certain foods. Fish for Friday was a catholic tradition in the village where I grew up.

So why have pea soup on Thursdays? Well here is a thought. When Sweden was converted to Catholicism, pea soup became the traditional meal for Thursday dinner--thick and hearty, especially "och flask" (with pork) to tide hardworking farmers over the Catholic fast on Fridays. Pea soup has continued to be eaten as a standard for Thursday dinners even to today, traditionally with brown mustard and crisp or hardcrusted bread, with a strong cheese.

Recipe:

Steep the Peasoup peas in water over night. Rinse peas well and strain the remaining water from them. Pour water into a saucepan. Add peas and smoked bones or knuckle of pork. Cook gently for 2-3 hours. Take a smoked knuckle from the saucepan, separate the meat and cut into little pieces. Chop onions and carrots and add them to the saucepan with meat, cream (not necessary but gives smooth taste), black pepper, and marjoram. Cook gently for half an hour. If you like, you can put a little bit of mustard into the soup. Traditionally pea soup is served with rye bread and cheese.

An American friend was a bit sceptical of pea soup and pancakes but he said he would give it a go. He took a spoonful of soup and directly afterwards took his knife and fork and cut himself a bit of pancake with some cream and jam on it. And so the meal progressed... spoonfull of soup... mouthful of pancake. It was such a wonderful and unusual sight I just let him get on with it. He enjoyed the combination and made a reputation for himself every Thursday as the peasoup/pancake man. People would smile when they saw him eating, and he was totally bemused at how friendly and smiling the Finns were towards him on Thursdays. I did not have the heart to tell him he should have eaten the peasoup first and the pancake afterwards.

Tomato and Kiwi

2005-04-24T13:56:00.000-07:00

Went to the Korkeasaari Zoo today for a picnic and made a salad which was topped off with tomatoes and kiwi. Fresh.

Underneath was some shell pasta which had crispy chunks of fried bacon, mozerella cheese, and pickled gherkin. To give it a little bite I sprinkled in some "aromasalt" and for some extra tang mayonese.

We ate it while the brown bears played, and the seals basked on the warm rocks, and the seagulls swooped overhead and tried to steal chips from the waitress carrying a tray of food to the nearby tables.

Do seagulls think since that waitress is using two hands to carry the tray then it is safe to swoop down and gobble a few chips, since she can't catch me or beat me. Who know what birds think.

It was good to eat out in the open. The sea air was fresh. The sun was doing its best to be friendly, and the wind was slight as cold caress. Eating out perhaps harks back to a primitive past, and it certainly enhances the eating experiance. Must be something to do with ozone, or air, or sunshine, anyway it is the best and we should all do it more often.

Avocado, Nori and cold smoked salmon

2005-04-22T08:36:00.000-07:00

Fusion food... what's your problem Japanese sushi and Mexican sauce? Avocado and salmon? Kiwi and lime rice? I'm kool with that. If it tastes good eat it.

So the topping was avocado and a spicey chillie sauce, and underneath that was smoked salmon and a strip of seaweed, and in the rice there was parsley corriander and lime.

What a melange. Three flavours competing at the same time. Dirty and diabolical, and every mouthful a surprise. Why content yourself with the safe and trustworthy? Eating should be an adventure, where you are attacked by the hotness of chilli, and you can suck on salmon and taste the smoke from the ancient bark of a juniper tree, and cool down with the lime in the rice.

Bleat bleat whine whine it is not right you say. It is not proper. It is a scandel. How can you even have the affrontory to write about such an abomination? Well I just did, and I just ate everything. Cleaned the plate, and sucked on my moustache for afters.

Cool hot chicken

2005-04-21T07:13:00.000-07:00

Chicken thighs are about the cheapest bit of meat you can get, and if you dress it up with the right spices then dare I say it, even the skin tastes good. The spice I used for this was galric salt, paprikka, crushed rose pepper, and a light dusting of curry.

Whack them into a hot oven at around 200 and stand back and watch them sizzle. When they are just turning brown take them out and turn them over and slap them back in the oven until the top side is crisp. Serve them up with thick cut chips and eat everything with your hands. No forks allowed. When you are finnished eating for dessert lick the stickiness and all the cooking flavours off your fingers.

Verdict: Dangerously satisfying. Do not repeat on a regular basis if you know what is good for you.

Creamy lemon saffron sauce with rose pepper and parsley

2005-04-20T02:01:00.000-07:00

She has some sauce... hmmm... having some sauce usually means that someone is asking for something that they should not have asked for. Or stepping forward and getting ideas above their station. Being brazen, and not knowing their place in the scheme of things.

Sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander... hmmm... seems to be saying that if something is good for a certain person then it is also good for another person. I suppose originally it spoke about the differences between men and women, but it could equally be about the the rich and the poor. Surely it is not obscene for the poor to enjoy the same pleasures as the rich. As the old song says

It's the Rich, wot gets the Pleasure.
And the Poor, wot gets the Blame.
It's the same the whole world over.
Ain't it all a Bloody shame ????

Sauce is good for everyone. When I think of sauces, I think of chopped mushroom and corriander in Heidelburg. I remember tomato, basil, and olive oil, with herring in Trieste, and a wonderful creamy truffle sauce in Porec Croatia, served with Tagatelle. Crushed mixed pepper venison in a black peppercorn sauce here in Helsinki. The most memorable meals always have good sauces to go along with them.

Maija did some pike/perch fillets from Estonia which were breaded with rye flour pepper and salt and we had the fillets with boiled potatoes and the creamy lemon sauce.

Verdict: Mash those potatoes up to absorb ALL the sauce.

Green and white salad

2005-04-12T05:43:00.000-07:00

Some things are just easy to eat. They are fresh and they are not filling. When you have finished eating them you don't feel as though you are about to burst your gut. There is no need to loosen your tie, undo your bra, pop the top button on your trousers, roll down your tights. You do not need to sigh with relief when you down the last mouthful, and then crawl off to bed to recover.

Some meals are like that they are unforgiving, and after eating them they seek revenge. I well remember the off-season mussels in Newcastle that had promised so much on the evening, but the next day attacked you and made you feel like a cerebal palsy victim performing delicate brain surgery with a chain saw.

Salads however are so forgiving. You can clean your plate and if there was more you could scoff off the same again. So I did a green and white salad and it disappear off the plate faster than butter off a hot knife.

Verdict: Ishmallah!!!

One huge sticky bun and her babies

2005-04-11T13:03:00.000-07:00

There you go... you leave yeast, milk, sugar, salt, eggs, cinnamon, apple, and flour on the table, and innocnetly turn your back on them, and what do they do for being taken off those shelves in the supermarket... are they thankful? Not a bit of it. Take your eye off them for a moment and they are at it.

Getting themselves all whipped up, and beaten together. Who would have thought of mixing sugar and cinnamon and butter. It is just not done in polite circles. What would the neighbours think if they found out? I think there must be a law against it. I suspect it is outlawed in all of the southern states of America. Promiscuity that's what it is.

But that is not enough... all this wetness and stickiness and the profusion of spice in that heaving dough... that is not sufficient... that is not shocking enough... they have to turn the heat up until it's tropical... until it is swealtering hot. Anybody would think it was a holiday romance or something, and we all know the end result of passion in a hot oven.

One huge sticky bun and her babies, that's what. The shame of it all. I will have to eat them all before anybody finds out.

Pike perch in lemon sauce

2005-04-11T03:59:00.000-07:00

Kuha is a Finnish fish called Pike-Perch and Maija decided to do it in a lemon wine sauce. My son accuses me of eating too much red fish and it is time to try some white fish so Maija got a couple of fillets and cut them in half rolled them up an stuck a toothpick through them so they would keep their shape.

We had the fish together with a kiwi/prune/chinese cabbage salad and some jasmin rice. The fish and the sauce are so light and fresh that you feel you could just go on and eat more and more of it. It was not a deathmetal dish. It was more the hesitant tinkle of wind chimes... light and airy. You could eat it with ease.

The recipe for the sauce is as follows.

3 tbl spoons of white flour
3 dl of fish stock
0.5 dl of cream
25 gm of butter
3 teaspoons of lemon juice
a sprinkle of white pepper
a pinch of salt
a smidgen of saffron.

The fish has rock salt and freshly ground black pepper rubbed into it, and is boiled in a fishstock with white wine. Cover with a lid and boil for 5-10 minutes. Serve with the jasmin rice and fresh green salad.

Verdict: mmmmuuuuaaaaghhhhhh!!!!

Salad snack

2005-04-10T13:40:00.000-07:00

We watched Amadeus which was the Peter Schaffer play directed by Milos Forman and staring F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce (whatever happened to him?) and we had some salad was nibbles beforehand. I said to Maija lets do somthing like a tricolor, something red white and green. Tomatoes mozerella and avocado, then I got to thinking there is no red white and green flag, which was a bit disappointing, but during the film I was thinking kiwi and mozerella, green and white, isn't that the Pakistani flag.

But thought of flags went out the window when Salieri and Mozart are discussing a dessert they are eating. Marscapone sugar and rum so I dug around for a recipe that had these ingredients, and here it is.

1 17.5 ounce container marscapone cheese
2 tablespoons orange liqueur, such as Triple Sec or Cointreau
1 tablespoon dark rum
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup heavy cream
24 ladyfingers
1 1/2 cup brewed expresso
6 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

It is amazing what you come up with when you watch movies from the 80's

Avocado and tomato

2005-04-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

Avocado and tomato
Originally uploaded by HyperBob.

Maija made some fresh bread with sundried tomatoes in it, so it would be a waste not to rustle up a nice topping which is quick easy and tasty.

I saw a brillant presentation on flickr which used thinly peeled cucumber and salmon which looked absolutely stunning for the visual effect. Green stripes of the cucumber and a red disk of the salmon.

I must admit I tried for a layered look with the avocado, but it did not quite work out, which makes you think is food made for eating or for looking at.

I did not look at it long enough. I ate two sandwiches quickly and then made another two and ate them just as fast.

Apricot chocolate cake

2005-04-05T00:43:00.000-07:00

Chocolate helps you slim. Yeah right???
Chocolate is essential for your mental health. Yeah right???
Chocolate keeps you fit. Yeah right???
Chocolate increases your brain power. Yeah right???

You put Kiwi green salad before a five year old and a seven year old and they will ask you all sorts of questions like, what are those black bits in that green sauce. You tell them frogs spawn, now shut up and eat it. They ask if the gherkins are sweet or sour. They ask if the Kiwi is hard or soft. They want to know why the advocado tastes sour. You tell them cos it is sulphuric acid to burn your tongue off... no not really it is lemon juice to stop it from going brown... my sweet innocent child.

They are not overly impressed with Green Kiwi salad and pick at it and have to be coaxed to finish it off by saying it is an appitizer to help get your digestive juices running for the main meal. It don't mean a thing to them. They are eating green frogs spawn soaked in sulphuric acid and nothing you can say will convince them otherwise.

There are five people at the table and a plate with six apricot chocolate cakes is placed on the table. The kids do a calculation. Five into six does not compute. If there is one piece of apricot chocolate cake left over, who would be eating that then? They have not tasted it yet somehow chocolate icing with shredded chocolate on top and moist apricot filing does not ellicit any questions whatsoever.

Is this fair trade chocolate? Does the icing sugar come from a plantation where the workers have been exploited? Has the flour been imported at a pittance and sold at a premium in the supermarket. Did you buy any of the ingredients from Lidl who subjugate their workers? Have those serving plates been bought from Ikea who are known to exploit child labour? Well if any of those facts are true, then I am not eating your damned apricot chocolate cake and you can just stuff it in that hole where the sun never shines.

No that never happens. The scheme that is running through the kids heads is that if I eat my bit of cake fast enough then I might get more. I asked Olli what was so good about apricot chocolate cake and he replied.

Because

If only life were as simple as looking at food, and you could make instant decisions without ever tasting life's bitterness or sweetness.

Green salad with avocado and Kiwi sauce

2005-04-03T09:46:00.000-07:00

Decided to make a completely green salad with a green sauce. So what went into it?

Oak leaf lettuce
Avocado (covered in lemon juice to stop going brown)
Kiwi fruit sliced
Gherkins sliced
Choped Pistachio nuts with just a hint of green.

For the sauce it was
2 kiwi fruit blitzed
2 tbl spoons olive oil
2 tbl spoons Lemon juice
Freshly ground black pepper
Roughly ground sea salt
2 tea spoons runny honey

Verdict: Fresh

Beans ala Brenda

2005-04-02T09:08:00.000-08:00

On Flickr I saw a crispy bean salad by Brendadada and photographed by Shooz and it looked so good I thought I would have to give it a go.

Beans are protein, and pound for pound they are equal to a good cut of meat, but cost only a few pennies. I hunted all around for broadbeans in Espoonlahti but could not find any. I finally went into an Iranian shop where I usually get my pickled garlic and the owner convinced me to buy some Iranian white beans instead. Beans like peas are dried so they do not spoil in storage, so he advised me to soak them in water overnight to rehydrate them.

Brenda has since told me that a pinch of "bicarbonate of soda" helps in the softening process. In the morning the water was drained off. Soaking keeps the beans from splitting open during cooking or from having the outside shell fall apart while the middle is still hard.

Once cooked I sprinkled some olive oil on them and spiced them up with parsley, freshly ground pepper, sea salt, and garlic pepper bread crumbs. I spread them on a baking tray in the oven and cooked until crispy. The smell from the oven will tell you when they are done. It is heavenly... that is if you like garlic.

I laid the beans on a bed of oak leaf lettuce, and to go along with it I diced plum tomatoes and red onion and stirred in some sweet chilli pineapple sauce. For a third flavour on the plate I also had some potato, gherkin salad. On the side was some bread made by Maija which had sundried tomatoes folded into it.

Excellent!!!

Ice Cream

2005-04-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

So you want some nice ice cream? How and where do you get it?

This is my method. Find a good place that sells ice cream. Go into it and ask for the best icream they have. Buy it no matter the cost and eat it. It works for me everytime. Simple.

Ham, Mushroom, Basel and Sundried Tomato in a cream sauce

2005-03-31T12:04:00.000-08:00

Pasta is quick an easy. My son says spaghetti should not be over cooked and it should be al dente. Al dente is a fancy term for pasta that's fully cooked, but not overly soft. The phrase is Italian for "to the tooth," which comes from testing the pasta's consistency with your teeth.

But the way that he does it is to take one strand of spaghetti from the pot and throw it agaist the wall at the back of the cooker. If it stays stuck to the wall for a few seconds before it falls down then it is al dente. If it does not stick then it is not fully cooked. It might be a messy way to test... but it works perfectly.

And for the cream sauce. Fry some onion in butter with rock salt and course black pepper, and add cubes of oak smoked ham. Cut in half Sitake mushrooms and for colour add sundried tomatoes and torn basil leaves. Mushrooms shrink considerably if you cook them for a long period of time so put them in at the end together with the cream. When everything is piping hot pour over your pasta. Superb.

Ham on Rye with beefsteak tomatoes and pickled gherkin (evening snack)

2005-03-31T11:33:00.000-08:00

There is no beating Finnish Rye bread. There are so many varieties but my favourite is "Jälkiuuni" sour rye bread. First off the bread is sour and salty. This is due to fact that the starter for the sourdough has lactobacillus, which produces lactic acid to give the bread that acid bite.

This bread is called and "after-oven" bread. Once all the other bread has been baked at the bakery and the oven is cooling down this is when the Jälkiuuni Rye bread is put into the oven. It is circular and has a hole in the centre. In the olden days once the bread was baked a pole was shoved through the hole and the rye bread hung from the rafters. Because of its sourness it was a bread that could be kept for a long time.

Due to to baking process of a long slow and low temperature the bread is a very tough and it gives good exercise to the teeth just to eat it. I love it with oak smoked ham, beef steak tomatoes, and pickled gherkin, and even though it is quite salty I am not averse to grinding some sea salt on the tomatoes for that extra ping.

Djam cake with cream and hot chocolate

2005-03-30T11:09:00.000-08:00

Wedding anniversary 33 years and we go out for some coffee and cake, and a movie afterwards. Djam is Swedish but what the hell it is good stuff especially with some cream on the side and a drizzle of hot chocolate sauce covering the plate in a manner that would have made the action painter Jackson Pollack proud.

And the movie afterwards we went to BioCity where they don't do Hollywood. There was a good choice and it was a toss up between a french movie called the choir boys and a mongolian movie about a camel that cried.

I wanted the French movie since I did not want to have to say to anyone who asked me what did you do on your anniversary that I had been watching a mongolian movie abut a camel that wept. We went for the choirboy movie but before it began they showed a trailer for the camel that wept and I almost wished I had gone to see it.

Thai green curry with basil on parsley rice

2005-03-29T04:39:00.000-08:00

How do you cook perfect rice, well I do it according to the method my daughter taught me. It is very simple and works every time. The rice is not undercooked, and it does not get burnt to the bottom of the pot. This is her secret.

Take 2 dl of rice (a dl per person is the rule )and add a vegetable stock cube. Don't bother with salt. Boil up 4 dl of water seperately, I do this in an electric kettle, and when it is boiling vigourously, pour it on top of the rice. Keep the water boiling, and in about 8 minutes the level of the water will have gone down so the rice begins to show.

At this point turn the heat off completely and put the lid on the pot and let it rest for a further 6 minutes. Sprinkle in some dried parsley and if you want add a dash of olive oil to make the rice glisten, or if you want a knob of butter will do the trick as well. Mix butter and parsley into the rice and serve imeadiately.

Cinnamon buns ( Korvapuusti )

2005-03-23T01:24:00.000-08:00

Bread is good but Korvapuusti is better. Bread is sensible and sturdy. Korvapuusti has a tan having been basted with whiped egg. Bread is solid and very serious, it does not make jokes. Korvapuusti is flecked with cinnamon and glows with saffron, it giggles behind its hand, or laughs outright straight in your face. Bread wears steeltoe capped industrial boots, and it stand on the table with its hands on its hips, defiantely. Korvapuusti has satin ballet pumps and frilly pink ribbons, and it will dance until it is out of breath.

Korvapuusti what a strange name (Korva=Ear, puusti=a slap) ( Korvapuusti= A slap on the ear.) Yes the shape of it looks like the ears of a boxer who has gone a few too many rounds with Mike Tyson, or the ears of a Welsh second row forward, that are swollen due to years of rubbing and chaffing on the haunches of the prop-forward.

The secret is in the spices. Into the dough you put cardimum and saffron, and when the dough is rolled out you spead on butter, and sprinkle with sugar, and dust with cinnamon.

1 package yeast
1/4 cup warm water
3/4 cup milk
4 cups flour ( Sunnuntai )
6 table spons unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
Spices Cinnamon, cardimum, saffron.
For glaze: 1 egg yolk beaten with 2 teaspoons water.

When can you eat it? I cannot resist eating it straight from the oven while it is still hot. I know it must be really bad for you, and we have even told the kids wait until it cools, only to sneak a nibble at a fresh korvapuusti while nobody is looking. Korvapuusti is one item of food that can easily turn you into a thief and a hypocrite.

Bread of life

2005-03-22T12:04:00.000-08:00

Why should you make bread? Well basically for the smell. If you come into a house where bread has been baked, it has got a wonderful welcoming aroma. When you take rolls from the oven and they are steaming fresh, you can hardly wait to slap some butter on them and see it melt into the warm pores of the bread. Bread and butter alone is a treat, but if you want to go overboard then the perfect combination is to add emental cheese with tomatoes, or if you want your delight to have a sharper taste then go for metvursti and pickled gherkins

Recipe: Maija's secret recipe

Water, yeast, salt, honey, oats, wholemeal four, white flour, olive oil and butter. You think she is going to give you exact amounts... no way... the dough is made by feel. You know when it is right and that only comes through experiance, and how do you get experiance? Well one of the best methods is to have five kids who all love the bread that you make, and will eat it as fast as you can make it.

Eat raw stuff

2005-03-21T06:14:00.000-08:00

Alot of people eat raw food and never think anything of it. An apple an orange a bannana. So what!!! I suppose some people make a big thing out of eating raw stuff. They would say it is healthier, and that you are getting vitamins and other trace elements that might be destroyed through cooking.

I don't even take those things into consideration. I eat raw because it is easy, and it cuts out having to expend enery cooking things. The above salad has got lots of raw stuff in it. Raw smoked salmon (norwegian) celery sticks (israel) sliced tomatoes (spannish) Mozzerella cheese (italian) pickled ghrekin (polish) oak-leaf lettuce (finnish) garlic cloves (iranian).

The good thing about this kind of raw salad is the contrast in flavours. A drizzle of olive oil, and a shake of balsamic vinegar, and some freshly ground pepper makes it perfect.

Home made Sushi

2005-03-18T01:57:00.000-08:00

I like raw fish. The Finns like raw Baltic herring. I have just discovered a new variation Limesilli and I thought it would go well with some sushi rice. It is a misapprehension that sushi is raw fish. In actual fact sushi refers to the pearl rice treated with the the rice vinegar sauce. It is true that raw fish features prominantly together with sushi, but to give it its proper name it is called sashimi. The rice is wraped in edible roasted seaweed called Nori.

The package of Nori that I bought was from Yutaka, and in it was a small sachet of moisture absorbant chemical, and on the package it said "DO NOT EAT", and there was I thinking I would make a sauce of it!!!

I made two rolls, one with cold smoked salmon, and the other with the lime Baltic herring. For some green colour I added some celery leaves. Dill might have been better. One sheet of nori can be cut into six parts. I used a very sharp knife and to make cutting easier, I warmed it with with hot water. Keeping the knife moist also helps. That sushi rice is very sticky. The two side sauces were sweet chilli and pineapple and the other Ketjap Manis a sweet soya sauce.

Thai green curry soup with cold smoked salmon

2005-03-17T08:55:00.000-08:00

I bought some cold smoked salmon to make some sushi and having rather alot of it I decided to make some Thai green curry soup. Something warm for this cold weather. It snowed rather heavily overnight.

4 small potatoes thinly sliced
1 carrot thinly sliced
1 small leek roughly chopped.
1 green pepper
2 tablespoons Thai green curry.
1 small tin coconut milk.
200 gm cold smoked salmon cut into 2 cm chunks.
Olive oil.

Saute the leek in the pan with olive oil. Add potato and carrot strips and briefly stir in with the leeks and olive oil. Add half liter of water and the green thai curry powder. Bring to the boil and then simmer until potatoes and carrots are cooked. At the end add the coconut milk, salmon chunks, and green pepper, and serve immediately while the green pepper is still cruchy. Perfect.

Bread and Cheese Wednesday 16th March 2005

2005-03-16T01:48:00.000-08:00

Good bread is hard to beat. I don't mean that cotton wool bleached bread with a shelf live of a milllion years. I mean real bread full of flavours. The bread I had this morning for breakfast was "Vaasan Kaura Pellava" (Oat and linseed) I topped it it off with JuustoPortti Pohjanmaa, a semi hard, full fat, mature cheese.

Finns are spoiled for good bread, especially rye bread. Finns who are abroad usually want three things cardemum for pastries, Turun Sinappia mustard for sausages, and Fazer Rye bread to compliment a bottle of lager.

Lazy porridge Tuesday 15th March

2005-03-15T00:42:00.000-08:00

So you don't like to wash up the pot after making porridge, well this is the way to do it if you are in a hurry. Do it straight in the plate. Take 1 dl of porridge oats: I use the Elovena brand cos they are good and I like the packaging, and put then in a deep bowl. Add 2.5 dl of water or if you want 1 dl of milk and 1.5 dl of water. Add a pinch of salt and bung the plate in the microwave for 2 min 30 sec. Stop the microwave at 1 min and give it a stir and then continue for a further 1:30 min. Take it out and let it rest for 1 min and then eat it with milk and sugar.

Nothing quite like it to fill the stomach on a cold winter's morning.

Hot potato soup Monday 14th March

2005-03-14T06:33:00.000-08:00

Soups are simple and good and very easy to make. Ten minutes for preperation and 25 minutes to cook. Here is my recipe for hot potato minced meat soup.

5 small potatoes diced (type firm rather than mushy)
2 carrots diced
2 onions diced
2 cloves of garlic sliced (garlic is the new salt)
200 gm of minced meat
1 vegetable stock cube
Sprinkling of parsley and chives.

Saute the onions with a knob of butter, add 1 litre of Evian bottled water... just kidding tap water is good enough, Add the other ingredients and boil for 25 minutes. Test the potatoes with a knife to see that they are ready. If they fall off the knife they are good to go. As a garnish add the chives and parsley at the end. Serve with oat and linseed bread, and have a beer to go along with it.

Pasta with Swedish meatballs Sunday 13th March

2005-03-13T22:35:00.000-08:00

Pasta with mushroom sauce and swedish meatballs toped with fresh chives.

Simple cabbage salad

2005-03-13T22:34:00.000-08:00

Ilana our friend from Israel made us a very simple cabbage salad. It is so easy to make and so tasty. The ingredients are as follows:

One fresh young cabbage.
a handful of prunes.
half a lemon or half a lime whichever you prefer.
A drizzle of virgin olive oil.
Freshly ground rock salt.

Shred the cabbage in thin slices and keep as long strips (no dicing). I use a Japanese knife for this the blade is broad and the edge keen and it makes a great job of shredding cabbage. Cut the prunes into nibble size chunks and mix with the cabbage. Squeeze on the lime or lemon juice and add a drizzle of olive oil, then toss the salad to mix the ingredients once more, and finally grind some rock salt over the top. Finnished and perfect.

A UK top chef on an American TV show tossed is salad and the co-presenter and american asked him why he was tossing the salad rather than mixing it with a spoon. With a wink the chef replied "We are all tossers over in the UK".

Viili Breakfast 13th March 2005

2005-03-13T02:09:00.001-08:00

Viili is a Finnish dairy product. I think the best way to describe it is "ropey milk". It is not like yoghurt it does not have that smooth consistancy. It is very stretchy and stringy, as you can see from the picture you can lift it from the bowl and and it will form a strand more than 5 cm long.

They sell these machines for making yoghurt, sort of incubators because the lactobacillus that performs the fermentation requires a temperature of around 45C to be able to grow and ferment the milk sugar lactose into lactic acid. Making yoghurt at home requires some management, but I have been told instead of buying expensive equipment, you can just use a styrox box with a 100 watt lightbulb fitted to it. It generates enough heat inside the box for the fermentation to take place.

The beauty of the cultures used for making Viili is that all you need to do is place some milk in a bowl and add a spoonful of Villi as a starter and overnight the milk will have set and the Viili is ready to eat. You can get Viili with very low fat. The stuff that I am eating is 1% and I top it off with bannana and a raisin meusli.

Franco Sporco's in Trieste

2005-03-12T12:35:00.000-08:00

Franco Sporco has a restuant in Trieste Northern Italy. I suppose his nickname would be "Frank the Pig". The special thing about Franco is that to get into Franco's you have to have connections. Someone who has his telephone number. You call him up and if he likes the sound of your voice then you can book a table. At Franco's there are no menus you eat what he cooks for you.

He has a cigar perminantly stuck in the corner of his mouth. A dish towel over his shoulder and flour on his hands and he cooks the most amazing fish. Fish is the only thing he ever cooks. For the meal he will give you 10 litres of either Tokai or Pinot Grigio, and as much cibbatta bread as you need to mop up the gravy from your plate. An evening will start at 8 o'clock and when the last course is served it will be well past midnight.

For starters he will do a clear clam soup, and after that some fritto misto to nibble on untill the main course arrives. His speciality is a lobster dish which has king prawns and mussels thrown in, and if he does you mussels on their own he only uses white wine, onion, chives, rock salt and black pepper for the sauce.

Two hours into the meal he will play LP's by Harry Belafonte. Mostly happy calypso songs "she jump up in the air come down in slow motion", and expects everybody to join in the chorus. Eating at Franco's is a very happy experiance.

Salmon on a bed of salad

2005-03-12T08:53:00.000-08:00

salad bed

Salmon on salad bed

Salmon salad almost all eaten

Spiced salmon Saturday 12th March

2005-03-12T04:53:00.000-08:00

Ready for the oven

Spiced salmon for two

Half a kilo of Norwegian salmon (tail section)
Olive oil and Apple cider vinegar
Rough rock sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Zest of Lime
One grated pistacho nut

Place aluminium folio on a baking try and add a dash of olive oil and apple cider vinegar. Dip both sides of the salmon in the olive oil-vinegar mix. Place salmon skin side down and sprinkle with rough sea salt, freshly ground pepper, the zest of a lime and grated pistacho nut.

Fold over the folio to make a tight package so that none of the juices can run out, and bake in the oven at 200 C. The fish will remain moist and absorb all the flavours from the different spices. Serve with a salad.

Mämmiä

2005-03-12T04:18:00.000-08:00

If you were thinking that brown stuff was some kind of chocolate mousse you would be wrong. It is mämmiä a traditional Finnish desert served around easter time. The mämmiä box is always brought out and unsuspecting foreigners are asked if they would like to taste it.

A thick round dollop is extracted from the mämmiä box and sort of thrown onto the plate. That stuff is so thick and sticky that it takes a quick flick of the wrist to get it off the serving spoon, and when it comes to rest on the plate it looks like something a dog would have left on the pavement. The hosts then smile a wry smile and wait for you to eat it.

Friday 11th March Salad

2005-03-12T01:53:00.000-08:00

click photo to enlarge

Salad
Oak leaf lettuce
Mozerella cheese
Feta cheese
Spanish Beaf tomatoes
Finnish Cucumber slices
Roasted pistachio nuts (Iran)
Potato and cucumber salad
Zest of lime
Vaasan Rye Bread with chives spread.

What match???

2004-09-15T02:03:00.000-07:00

I am the eggman. I am the walrus

2004-09-15T02:02:00.000-07:00

Next year maybe baby

2004-09-15T02:01:00.001-07:00

Punching out the lights

2004-09-15T02:01:00.000-07:00

For the benifit of Mr Kite

2004-09-15T02:00:00.000-07:00

Never mind the bollocks give us a goal

2004-09-15T01:59:00.001-07:00

The equalisers

2004-09-15T01:59:00.000-07:00

You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille

2004-09-15T01:58:00.001-07:00

Wraped around the flag

2004-09-15T01:58:00.000-07:00

Why does it always rain on me?

2004-09-15T01:56:00.001-07:00

Down in the dumps

That's it then... game over

2004-09-15T01:56:00.000-07:00

Whirlygig

2004-09-14T14:12:00.000-07:00

Braid of onions

2004-09-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

Click on photo to enlarge

Wet oinions from the allotment

2004-09-01T03:36:00.000-07:00

Click on photo to enlarge

Chives

2004-08-29T04:08:00.000-07:00

Eaten herbs

2004-08-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

45 degree twist

2004-08-28T02:54:00.000-07:00