Our weekend in Tahko turned out to be a little more adventurous than first planned. It all started about 25 minutes after the bus should have left Tampere and we had seen no sign of it that we phoned the Tahko central booking office to be told our trip had been cancelled and unfortunately they had forgotten to tell us!
My brother & I gamely hired a car and drove 4 hours from Tampere to Kuopio in the worst winter in 50 years. The roads were not that great and for large parts of the journey there simply isn't much there. All in all most of the route is not a good play to come a cropper in winter driving conditions. However we made it safely to Kuopio by about 11pm. On Saturday we drove on up to Tahko and had a fabulous day's skiing. The weather was cold, around about -25C with the wind chill and we were fully kitted out in just about anything possible to wear that covered our face from the elements. It is not often I ski in (and I list in order): balaclava, powder mask, hat, helmet & goggles. The new skis were brilliant and I loved tearing down the slopes on them. In Finland this means 5 minutes on the lift going up and 30 seconds coming down which can be a too quick!
On Sunday we decided to head for Himos ski resort which is between Jyväsklyä and Tampere. This was an inspired move as the resort itself was excellent and we managed to be home at a reasonable time. Even better the slopes in Himos were steeper than in Tahko so I had some great fun turning the (wonderful) new skis on the steep.
All this being outdoors has made me realise that I am letting the best winter in 50 years pass me by and I need to get out and do some cross country skiing. I have a day off on Friday. Can I tear myself away from quality time with my 5 month old baby daughter to go and wonder around some frozen landscape on a pair of thin skis?
Going skiing. Hoorah! Back next week.
The soup was excellent and I will try and post the recipe soon. It has been a lot of fun to have my little brother here, it is good to catch up.
Now I just need it to be warmer....should be -30C with the wind chill. Brrr.
I made this very quickly and simply the other day. Hope you enjoy.
1 onion roughly chopped
5 or 6 carrots peeled and roughly chopped
1 head of celery washed and roughly chopped
1 potato, peeled and you guessed it
A bit of garlic (if you fancy)
A good dose of tarragon
Water
Salt and pepper
This couldn't be simpler - boil all the vegetables in the water, add the salt, pepper and tarragon. Once cooked, blend to a puree, return to the heat, add cream and cook for a little while longer, check seasoning and serve.
How simple was that?
A dash of cream
The Kitchen is on paternity leave this week, which is a welcome change from work. Although the supreme being in the house has wryly suggested this means she gets a week off and I look after the little one, I haven't as yet put this hint into action. However we, as a family trundled off to the botanical gardens today. Even though Finland is enjoying the coldest winter in 50 years we thought at least the greenhouses would be open. If nothing else we reasoned, it would be an adventure.
Needless to say it was. We got off at the wrong bus stop in the middle of nowhere and had to walk the last mile and half to the botanical gardens, luckily for us the day was one of those days where the earth is covered in snow and the sun was shining, so despite the cold temperature it was a pleasure to be outside. When we got to the greenhouses I have to say I was impressed and the little one certainly went goggle-eyed as she saw things she had absolutely no comprehension of (gold fish especially!). However it is clear the Ruissalo is somewhere to explore in the summer and in the autumn and is a tiny piece of Finnish nature only a bus ride from our front door.
*****
My little brother arrives tomorrow and will meet his niece for the first time. I hope she doesn't confuse her daddy with the guy who kind of looks quite like him....
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The kitchen is currently blogging and making tea (or more accurately ignoring what is on the stove and hoping for the best). I am making carrot and celery soup with tarragon for no other reason than I have the ingredients. My inspiration levels have been at the functional for quite some time and I've been more successful at producing better than average lunches than dinners recently. However this week we have managed a rather delicious aubergine and lentil moussaka and now with this soup things are going well. I had an idea today that it was time to start making terrines.
*****
Finally the other project I have going at the moment is learning to play Day Tripper by The Beatles. I learnt it in F for some reason which seems incredibly complicated compared to using E in the 1st position. Now however I have gone with E and am sliding up to the 7th position which leaves me loads of time to sing the song and play the lead guitar line without looking like a total plonker. It is nowhere near polished yet but it is getting there and the little one is impressed if no one else is.
This week the Kitchen has been in Hamburg, working hard by day and maybe, just maybe finding a quiet watering hole for a small beer in the evenings. I arrived early on Monday morning and headed for Kiel by train. The lady in the ticket office sold me a rover ticket which meant I could travel on any train in Schleswig-Holstein that day. Speeding over the landscape that was covered in snow a montage of images came and went as we sped along: The field shrouded in mist with roe deer standing and watching the train pass; the field full of sheep (it is strange to report but that was definitely a novelty); the sun burning through and coating the white landscape in a brilliant luminescence before we plunge into the dank cold of Kiel.
After that is was back to work in Hamburg and it was an intense couple of days that were challenging and rewarding in parts and deeply frustrating in others. However the evening with colleagues from around Europe were fun, although it seems that this lark fell in with a crowd of owls and learnt that hard way that "one more beer" is a German euphemism for 4 or 5!
We were also treated to a walk through St Pauli, it's history (Gaststätte Zur Ritze) and we were told how The Beatles are a Hamburg band. However despite that the enduring image of my night out in Hamburg was of standing down at the Elbe river with it's ice floes looking at Abramovich's yatch in dry dock.
However it is now good to be home and to marvel at how the little one has changed in only 4 days. I now have a week off and am looking forward to a little quality time with the family and in the kitchen.
Next week the Kitchen will be in Germany. I am travelling again and leaving the boss to fend for herself and for my daughter and heir while I have fun in Hamburg. I am not relishing the 06:00 flight but am looking forward to catching up with colleagues and working on the subject at hand for this session. And maybe, just maybe finding time to enjoy a small glass of German beer.
Work in the Kitchen has been a hotch potch recently and I must admit to having borrowed ideas liberally in order to keep myself and the boss fed. I haven't had the energy to be creative on my own. Instead I have been reliant on finding inspiration from others and then either following the recipe or more often than not using it as a guide and following my gut.
Today I have had a double dose of this just at the point when I can do nothing about it. However this does mean the boss can look forward to an Aubergine and Lentil Moussaka and some kind of Naan bread topped with aubergine, courgette, pine nuts, feta cheese and mint. The latter came from an home furnishing magazine I was reading at lunch today. It was only two years old and while it was in Finnish I understood what was needed to make the dish...so does half reading and half taking notice of someonelse's recipe written in a foreign language count as stealing it? I think the answer to that is yes.
Tonight our little girl howled at the moon in such apparent pain that dinner was at best just a fuel stop for two parents confused at their little baby going bananas on them. I started out by riffing on a Japanese dish of rice with 3 toppings: chicken, egg and green beans. Luckily once it was all cooked I was able to pop it in the oven to keep it warm until our little girl was convinced to sleep. Nothing seemed to work for her: even entreaties in English, Spanish, French and Finnish had no effect and that is unusual. Normally she finds Daddy cooing in French or Finnish to be very amusing.
So despite my best efforts to pacify an upset daughter with Finnish I am generally quite pleased with how my Finnish is coming on. Admittedly when a lady spoke to me at length about the Finnish pension system for entrepreneurs in Finnish this week I had to pretend I had a clue what she was talking about. I am just over the moon I have made the leap with the "Puoli" (meaning half) to extending its context to include the idea of a side (as in "this side" and "that side" or the Swedish side of the border). I can't yet use it in a meaningful sentence but I know my Finnish colleagues do so. It is little victories like this which keep you going with a language that is as alien to my English mind as Finnish. In a strange way I find it quite a beautiful language even though it frustrates me on a daily basis.
To come back to travelling the kitchen will also be in Toulouse in February and I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. Well first of all I am quite upset that I cannot get back on the day I want to due to flights but Toulouse is the home of Cassolet, one of my all time favourite foods in the world. While I am in Toulouse I wonder if I can eat Cassolet every night in a different place?
