Thursday musings

I have a bottle of Hoisin sauce my father bought when he came to visit a few weeks ago and it is calling to me, wanting to be used. Life has been busy and opportunities to use it have come and gone. Other things needed eating up, I fancied making other dishes, you know how it is. The balance between work and life have been muddled (what else is to be expected with a 10 week old baby in the house?) so the bottle has been left alone.

The thing is I don't know what hoisin sauce is, what it is used for and why you might want to use it. As someone who loves to scratch cook I even enjoy making my own sauces and stocks so am innately suspicious of shop bought sauces like this. I even bought and used, in extremis, some minced garlic made by the same company and found it to be disgusting and lacking in any kind of garlic taste. And yet. And yet the hoisin calls to me still.

So we have a situation where I don't know what to do with it and I'm not sure I like it anyway. It's going to be a great meal when it comes out! This is the essence of the kitchen, getting the best out of what you have around you to feed body and soul.

Wish me luck!

Bacchus and the meal

Finally a story. When we lived in Helsinki a neighbor of ours told us about how the people who work in the Alko are trained to give recommendations about which wines can go with which foods but most of the time they only get to point people to the Korsenkorva. He then went on to relate how he went into his local Alko and the sales assistant's eyes lit up when asked to advise on wine. So I decided to put this to the test.

I had sketched out doing something with chicken and chili and inspired by my neighbours tale I went into the alko and got my recommendation despite delivering one of my worst performances ever in the mangling the Finnish language. The recommendation was this Allora pictured above.

Needless to say I never cooked anything with chili and chicken and the bottle was just enjoyed at some other time that seemed right.

*****

Two months later I decided to see if this wine really went with chili and chicken, did the lady in the Helsinki alko get it right?

*****


Serves 2
1 bottle of allora negroamaro (Alko product code 409797)

1 chicken breast cubed
3 dried red chillies crushed, flaked or otherwise made small and bitty
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp green peppercorns
Sesame oil
1 dash of sake

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and marinade for the whole day. When ready stir fry in a hot wok and serve immediately.

To serve I decided to cook some sticky rice and peas and a little side of yellow peppers and mushrooms with chopped ginger stir fried. You can increase or decrease the amount of ginger used to taste but I decided to do this because ginger does have a heat that compliments the chili. The only other thing to note is I served this side in a little dish separate from the main to make sure the flavours had some integrity.

The result? Excellent, the wine held it's own against the strong chili flavours. It was just a shame that our daughter decided to cry her way through the whole experience meaning that we ate with more of a hurry than such a simple and straightforward yet pleasing meal deserved.

So if you are ever in the alko looking for a bottle of wine you should be confident that the staff will be able to recommend a bottle to go with your ingredients.

Across the universe

Cycling home from work tonight was like tumbling effortlessly through time. The rain and the wind pushed against me and yet the bike moved almost by itself as my mind allowed itself to wander. The weather was the catalyst for the strange place I ended up in. Although I actually managed to be on my way home before 4.30pm the dark and dank nature of the world made it seem like much later and by the time I got home one hour later I felt like I was awake in the middle of the night.

The original plan for tea revolved around a squash, some lemon grass and coriander and none of these were available in the supermarket today when the boss reported the results of her foraging expedition. So cycling home I decided to drop into the swankiest department store in town (Stockmann's for any Finns reading this) and while I found all three the recipe called for 250g of pumpkin and all they had was a 5kg pumpkin costing 18€! Next I tried the Kauppahalli but there was nothing and finally the eco shop which was just as fruitless. So I got home feeling like I had travelled much further across space and time than was usual.

However a little baby and her mother helped me back to normality but we still had the challenge of dinner, so here is a simple way to save a Monday night supper using one pan. It is based on the gypsy eggs idea.

400g tomatoes
400g large white beans (this is cooked weight)
1 small red onion chopped
1 small red chili deseeded
Half an aubergine
1 carrot chopped
1 potato chopped
200g chorizo
Water
Thyme
2 eggs
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper

Warm the olive oil in the pan and gently fry the onion, carrot, chorizo and chili.
Add the beans and the tomatoes
Add water to take the liquid in the dish up to where you want it (less more a meal, more it's closer to a soup - it is your choice)
Add the aubergine and potato, herbs and salt & pepper.
Put the lid on and let it simmer for 20-30 mins
Break 2 eggs into it and let them cook in the juices
Serve

I sprinkled a little pimenton over it when I served it up which was a nice little touch. I recommend a lovely apple crumble with thick custard as dessert as well.

Vampires, Danes & Grandparents

I'm just back from a long long long wait at Copenhagen airport that stretched interminably. It got so bad that I bought Twilight and have been addicted to it ever since. The last time I checked I am not the target group for this book - 17yrs old, nope, female, nope....and yet and yet. I have to say it is for the most part poorly written but there are odd flashes of a well turned phrase and it did its job of keeping me amused as the hours rolled by as the story was well paced. The concept is also a good one. The question now is whether I go on and read the rest....as I have several encounters with Copenhagen airport coming up I fear I already know the answer.

Update:
This morning I have decided not to bother with the rest of the books but my curiosity did get the better of me and I read the precis of the rest of the saga on the internet. I have to say that what I learnt only confirmed to me that I made the right decision.

I have been thinking about this some more so this is kind of a second update here and I have to reflect back to when I read Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice many years ago and then went on to read other books in the series which were increasingly batty and bad. The law of diminishing returns applies. I think the same will be true of the Twilight saga.

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My parents have been staying with us, spending time with their new grand daughter and as today is Fathers Day in Finland we made a lovely dinner of

Lamb shanks cooked in vermouth and cream with leek and mushrooms
Mashed potatoes
Honey glazed carrots and an onion sauce

This was followed by

Bread and butter pudding which with the addition of Baileys was quite magnificent.

It sounds kind of a simple Sunday dinner and in many ways it was but it was rich, and filling and the perfect thing to eat on a grey Sunday. We hadn't done much at all, enjoyed the baby's company, I had raked all the leaves up in the garden and we had all walked to the local cemetery to look at the graves in the late autumn light. Somehow the quietness of the day was balanced by the full, rich food as we all sat around the table. It was a meal as a moment, a meal as a celebration and a meal as an everyday happening. 3 generations, one table, one meal, one moment. How good is that?

Annotations

Generally I am dead against writing in recipe books. Whenever I follow a recipe I only pay the minimal amount of attention to it, using it as a guide and not as something that must be adhered to at all costs.

However last week we dipped in Harumi Kurihara's Japanese Home Cooking to make her Tofu and Aubergine gratin. The six tablespoons of Miso paste left an incredibly salty taste on the final dish that I am moved to change my mind on writing in books and making a note so that I will enjoy the dish next time I make it.

However that is the point about cooking isn't it, especially when you use a recipe as a guide, trial and error. That may also be the strongest argument for making notes. Time to get out the pen.


*****

Last weekend we went to the Herring Market in Turku. It was nice to wander along the banks of the river, eating freshly cooked herring and buying 3 day baked black bread from the Åland islands. There is something about food and travel that stir the mind in the right way, especially when the air is cold and the food is warm.

Our daughter is asleep upstairs and I am taking the opportunity to post a short update. We have moved house, town and job(s). Acquired a beautiful daughter who sleeps sometimes and life is slowly getting back to normal.

Our cooking has, by necessity, been basic and fast. Our daughter seems to specialise in being extremely awake between 7pm and 10pm and so we have been eating in shifts and with varying degrees of simplicity. However we are still cooking but between home life and the new day job there is just not enough hours in the day to blog as well.

However my enthusiasm to blog is increasing again and I am tempted to try a more vignette style approach for a while.

*****

Elizabeth David, doyenne of postwar British culinary writers and still relevant today. Her Moussaka which was free of the all smothering bechemel sauce, was a case study in simplified excellence: aubergines, mince, tomatoes and a tomato garlic sauce. Baked slowly. Eaten hungrily amid the babies cries. Sometimes she watches us from her high chair. Either way, we are not alone.

The end of the beginning

It is a lovely late summer's Saturday morning here in Finland as I start to write this. Quiet and still. The blue sky is almost cloudless and the garden in bathed in dappled sunlight. The house is quiet as well. The boss is upstairs busying herself with some task or other before our friend from Norway arrives tomorrow and I've just finished the hoovering.

Last night was a landmark in the kitchen as we reached the end of the third bag of charcoal consumed in one summer. In the end it was a close run thing, there was just enough heat from the coals to roast a foil wrapped loin of pork that had been rubbed with salt, pepper, fennel seeds, sesame oil and soy sauce. You can't really go wrong with this kind of cooking - put it in the coals, put in on the grill it doesn't matter, 15 minutes or 45 minutes it doesn't matter either so long as that foil is tightly wrapped so none of the juices can escape! However there wasn't enough heat to boil a pot of coffee in the embers. Maybe next summer I will manage to enjoy that little pleasure.

We served the pork with a huge bowl of sticky rice and a spicy aubergine and noodle salad that I took directly from Harumi Kurihara's Japanese Home Cooking. It was simple to make and very tasty, not to mention surprisingly spicy for the use of one chili that has been hiding in a bag with a load of other chilis in the freezer for a few months. Maybe freezing intensifies the zing a chili brings? I feel an experiment coming on! Our neighbours came and joined us with their little boy and we had an excellent evening.

However it is now time to put the blog on hold for a little while. There are two reasons for this: the first is that when the blog started I had hoped it would be a medium for food and life related musings. In a sense it has been and in a sense it hasn't. There are better food blogs out there and there are better musing blogs out there. I feel that I am falling between the two stools and my conclusion is that I need to be clearer about how this blog will go forward. I took a decision early on to exclude politics from my blog and I don't intend to change that. Now it is a question of refreshing my frame of references for myself. With the above mentioned score for the summer this post feels like the perfect point to take a breather. The second, and more practical, reason is the imminent arrival of a "mini me" or a "mini boss" into my life. I've never been a dad before and while I dream of carrying on more or less as before I am not so daft as to believe there isn't going to be a major realignment in the rthymn of my life. In fact I am looking forward to it tremendously. I cannot wait to get to know the little person. Although indications so far seem to suggest he or she has inhereted the currently complimentary stubborn streaks the boss & I possess.

Finaly as it is such a lovely day & I have nothing to do I am going to enjoy it by listening to Test Match Special from the Oval on the BBC. Might I recommend the same to you?