Time for action

Has it already got to the 6th of January? Have I been sleeping though Christmas and New Year? Seems like it though the truth is, of course, that I have been at work. So much so it seems that my boss (at work) told me I was working too much and to make sure I took some time back. My challenge of course is when!

The time off I had over the Christmas/New Year break has been good, I have done a lot of reading: Scarlet & Black was finally finished and can be much recommended. Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks was a let down to anyone who has read and enjoyed even one of Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels. Now I am plunging straight into the Kalevala, the Finnish National Epic and so far so good. I was lucky enough to receive a pile of books over Christmas so I need to keep up the pace so that I keep on top of them. That last sentence is, I think, a great thing to be able to write. It's good to have books waiting for you.

The Kitchen was busy over Christmas, of course. We were very organised and planned all our food before hand (on the back of an opened envelope). So much so in fact that we are still living off the food we bought and only one avocado has been wasted in the process.

This is what we had
Fri 19 Pasta Carbonara
Sat 20 Thai Red Curry
Sun 21 Cous Cous (Which we took to Quinn's leaving do not realising she was going to invite herself to our house for Christmas!)
Mon 22 I was working late so the boss made herself Pasta surprise
Tue 23 I did the same as Monday and so did she
Wed 24 Home made leek and potato soup
Thu 25 Roast Beef with Yorkshire pudding
Fri 26 Left over surprise
Sat 27 Bulgar wheat with aubergine
Sun 28 Chicken ramen noodles
Mon 29 Boss' pasta surprise
Tue 30 Lamb chops and potatoes
Wed 31 Fennel, Cannelleni Beans and Gnocchi
Thu 1 Roast Pork Loin with pomegranite

The basic idea was to build the Christmas New Year time around 2 or 3 big dishes and then have something lighter on other nights. We plundered Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries and Moro East for inspiration. Drew up our shopping lists, tried to remember we were only feeding two when thinking about quantities and then went out and foraged. We enjoyed the experience of standing in Hakaniemi Kauppahalli on the last Sunday before Christmas as all the Finns came to collect their Hams. We were the linguistically challenged foreigners tried to explain what pork loin was to the butcher amidst all the enormous hams flying over our heads like airplanes! At least they have decent butchers here in Helsinki, it was so much more challenging in Trondheim.

Last night we had some pan fried tuna steaks with some rice and roast butternut squash. Which was lovely. The Boss worked up some kind of Fennel seed, Coriander seed, Garlic, Salt and Olive Oil rub which gave them a lovely extra dimension in flavour. The best thing is we have left overs now and can decide if we do ravioli or risotto. The agony of choice!

Today should be a quiet day, I have had a cold but now am better and want to get outside. I am entered into the Finlandia ski race next month and I need to start training. The weather has been very cold for the past fortnight and hopefully today will bring the snow. In the meantime the Boss & I will try and explore over towards Itä Keskus and the mad underground swimming pool that used to be a bomb shelter (Helsinki City Council's website still proudly says it can be converted into an emergency shelter!). All I know about this place is that it is a bomb shelter big enough for 3 swimming pools and one of them is 50m long!

Apart from exploring and reading I need to start my training for the aforementioned ski race but before I begin I want to share my one and only resolution for 2009:

Not to move out of Helsinki.

The end of a chapter

I have finally finished reading Scarlet & Black some 16 or 17 years after starting it. I think this is some sort of personal record and a good way to bow out of 2008. I recommend it to anyone who wants a challenging yet satisfying read (and who has the time to read it).

I have a feeling it will be slightly difficult to celebrate a new year in a fitting manner when you emerge blinking into the 21st Century from the pages of a romantic French novel from 1830 and find yourself surrounded by Finns. However I intend to give it a go!

I won't offer any opinions or historical revisions to 2008 or any predictions for 2009. If you want those they can be found in many other places. I will just thank those who read the blog and wish you all the best for the future and if what we've made in the kitchen for the party tonight is good I will show you where I found the recipe!

Tonight was going to be me and the boss at home with a nice meal and a couple of bottles of champagne. This will have to wait until tomorrow night now and I cannot say how grateful I am that, while I am working on Friday, there will be no early alarm call as I am working the evening shift.

Plus ça change?

Carrot and bean soup

Winter is slowly becoming the norm in Finland. We still lack snow but the temperatures are now properly below zero and sticking there stubbornly. Yesterday was Finnish independence day and therefore a day off from work. Myself and the boss had a quiet day, we took a trundle down to Munkkiniemi area of Helsinki and just walked around for half an hour. Very nice and one to explore again in the summer. Alvar Aalto had his house there and his studio. You can visit both but at a price; 17€ per person. Maybe if we get a committed architect come and visit us we will take the plunge. Apart from that we might confine ourselves to just looking in from the outside.

Today it was back to work and it was a busy day. I was back on the bike & it was clear that I have been a bit of a waster recently and that stamina and fitness quickly drop away if you don't keep it up.

Once I got home and got myself cleaned up it was time for tea. This evening we made a rather nice white bean and carrot soup. This is a very simple to make supper and can be taken in many different ways. Enjoy.

White bean and carrot soup
150ml dried white beans, soaked overnight and cooked, drained with the cooking liquid reserved
3 large carrots chopped, boiled in salted water and drained
Chicken stock
Red Onion chopped
3 shallots chopped
2 cloves of garlic
Balsamic vinegar
Chorizo chopped

Gently heat the chicken stock in a saucepan
In a blender puree the carrots and all the beans apart from a handful
Add the pureed vegetables to the stock and mix together
In a separate pan fry the onions and chorizo, while they are frying give them a good dousing with some balsamic vinegar. Mine had lovely bits on the bottom so I deglazed the pan with some vermouth.
Once cooked add the onions to the soup
Season with salt and pepper
Serve

Heat up and serve with a sprinkling of freshly chopped basil or a swirl of olive oil.

*****
I have to make sure I give credit where it is due and my sous chef prepared the beans to perfection. Obviously without this the soup would not have tasted as good. Thank you sous chef!

Turkey leftover risotto

Our thanksgiving dinner was excellent, we all had a great time, the food was good and the company was better. A few days later we are still working our way through the left overs. The carcass was duly boiled for stock and before we start to freeze it up we decided to make a risotto as it is a wonderful combination of stock and rice.

While I was idly preparing the soffrito I heard from the TV someone (OK it was Anthony Bourdain) talking about Moroccan cooking and the use of Paprika and Cumin in their cooking and being a suggestible fellow I immediately added these two ingredients to our risotto taking it off in an unexpected, but gutsy and pleasant direction.

Please remember that you have to careful with these two spices in a risotto: less is definately more here and as the result will be rumbustious this dish is best suited to a winter's day when you need food to warm you to the core. I am also taking huge libertys with a risotto here, but it is a dish I love to make and to eat and it's ability to be many different things is one of the things I love about it. Right, speech over. To the food.

Serves 2-3
1 Onion finely chopped
2 celery sticks finely chopped
1 garlic clove
1/4 of courgette finely chopped
100ml risotto rice
Dollop of vermouth
Leftover turkey roughly chopped
Warmed turkey stock 350ml
A dollop of double cream
1/4 white cabbage roughly chopped
1 small dried chili
Handfull of chopped chorizo
A good handful of freshly grated parmesan
A knob of Butter
Salt & Pepper

1) Make the sofrito,
Put a little olive in a pan and warm it through, fry the onion, celery, garlic and courgette. Fry gently for a few minutes until the onion is translucent. Add the rice and fry for a minute further. Then add the vermouth and let the alcohol evapourate.

2) Add the first ladleful of stock, stir constantly and as it reduces down top it up with more warm stock. Keep adding the stock until the rice is cooked. Towards the end add the turkey.

3) In a separate pan fry the cabbage in a little olive oil, chorizo and chili.

4) Once the rice is cooked, combine the cabbage with the risotto. Remove from the heat, add the butter and cheese, put the lid on and leave for two minutes.

Serve.

Of course there will be left overs! Enjoy.

Chelsea Girl

A few weeks ago we were at C's for some knitting and food. She was working her way through CD's alphabetically and we were treated to what could charitably be described as repition therapy to persuade us of the merits of A-Ha. However she had also discovered that she had a few duplicate CDs and I came home with a copy of "Celebration" by Simple Minds. I have to say I haven't listened to their early work for many years now. Readers of this blog will know that as a teenager their work from 1979 to 1982 was part of my life.

So despite it being a few weeks since dinner I finally had a few minutes to myself the other day and popped the CD into the computer while I was messing around at home on my own. I have to say that after a gap of many years some of it has dated. However I defy anyone who listens to Chelsea Girl not to come out of it with a big stupid grin on their face. How did a punk band produce such a great pop single as only their second single?

I was also amazed at how well the song "I Travel" has lasted. It is such a shame that they went so bad by 1985.

In other news life in Helsinki is good at the moment, OK so the economy has gone to hell and that brings loads of stress at work but there is Moles Beer to drink in town and the car is working well and there is a little bit of snow on the ground. All we need is the temperature to get above freezing now, which isn't forecast until well into next week and maybe not even then. Good that the firewood for the winter is coming tomorrow.

Tomorrow evening we're going around to T&H's for dinner and meeting Charlie the dog. Apparently he's old enough now to have visitors, why do I think we might need some help?

Moles

Moles beer has finally come to Helsinki. When I came to Helsinki a year ago I had an afternoon before my interview to wander around. I was lucky enough to find a pub called Black Door that had real ale on tap which after the beer desert of Trondheim was wonderful in itself and as I enjoyed a beer I noticed that on their wall several Hand Pump Tags from the Moles brewery. Now after a year of waiting for it to put in an appearance it has finally come back. Happy happy days!

Yesterday was meant to be a day off but I ended up at work for most of the day, however in the late afternoon I managed to escape in town, did some foraging in the oriental supermarkets in Kallio and as I was heading home I popped into the Pullman Bar at the Railway station and had a pint of Moles Landlord's Choice. It was excellent and tasted as good as I remember. The even better news is that the brewery has obviously sent a few barrels over as I have seen that it will be featured in a couple of other pubs that sell real ale around town so I know it will be a good few weeks!

Afterwards the Boss and I went to see the new Bond film. While I enjoyed it I have to say that 24 hours later I find myself refering to it as "The Bourne Redundancy". I still enjoy Daniel Craig as Bond and I approve of his hard portrayal of the character but in this film it seemed as if he kept the character in too tight a straight jacket and it eventually served to make him seem less of a man and more of a terminator.

So today has been my catch up day off and a chance to play in the Kitchen. We've been out and foraged successfully and I feel inspired about all the opportunities to cook again. I think I suffered a bit in the week after Barcelona in respect to cooking. If you have to eat out every night, coming home to a Kitchen can be a bit of a come down. Especially if you get caught in the circle of the same ingredients prepared in the same way. Sometimes it can be comforting but last week it was a bit of a dead end. However this afternoons dinner put paid to that.

Tuna steak with deep fried julieened leeks & red pepper served with sticky jasmine rice and a pea and mint puree. When I write it out it sounds very posh but trust me it wasn't actually very complicated to put together.

It takes about an hour to cook everything so maybe it is not a weekday supper but it isn't so difficult to do.

Serves 2
2 tuna steaks
110g rice
4 handfulls of julieened leeks
half a red peper sliced into strips
Seasoned flour

Pea & mint puree
250g peas
1 sprig of fresh Mint
A pinch of sugar
Creme Fraiche

Boil the peas in water with a sprig of mint and a pinch of sugar until just cooked
Puree
Add a few spoonfuls creme fraiche until you get the consistency you want
Add salt & pepper and a spoonful of freshly chopped mint

To cook the vegetables, dust with seasoned flour and cook very quickly in oil heated to about 140-160C

Cook the rice

Cook the Tuna on a hot griddle, max 3 mins pers side but it will depend on how thick it is.

Once everything is done arrange on a plate and enjoy!

I had loads of pea puree left over so will be using it in some soup in the next few days.

Barcelona

Our week in Barcelona is over and we are home. I had a fabulous time with the boss. We spent a whole week in the city and certainly feel that we got more from it than is possible from the usual long weekend. We ate, we drank, we walked, we saw, we talked, we stayed up late, we walked through some of the seedier parts of town, we looked in the windows of some of the most expensive shops, we admired achitecture from many different epochs, we drank beer by the sea, we climbed hills, we laughed, we were silly, we were always curious about what was around the next corner and we always tried to take the road less travelled.

We came home with many many photos, some are classic tourist photos and some are a little bit special, some were taken by me and some by the boss. The best may even make it onto the wall at home one day soon.

I think over the next few days we will begin to coallate a few favourite moments and add a few more photos to Flickr. Life will return to normal and we will get ready for the coming winter.

Two questions are on my mind as I get ready to go back to work tomorrow: Where next & when?

*****

Update. I think I owe an explanation for the photo above. I took it in a quiet back street in the old city on our last afternoon just wandering around and in quite a bit of pain due to a sore back. It was an impromptu shot because I liked the shape of the people in the sunlight. I took two photos pretty much without thinking about the composition, I just checked the exposure settings. As soon as I saw it I know I'd struck gold. I am very proud of this one. The best of the photos are now up on Flickr. I will continue to add to the set on it but am being as critical as I can so only the very best of the 300+ we took make it up there.