Knits and Christmas mustard

Thanks to the unexceptionally big catch of cep mushrooms last autumn, I gave dried mushrooms in glass jars as Xmas presents to our kids, together with some of the best recipes for pasta and soup. So, that was easy and didn’t require much preparations in December. Instead, I spent my time and energy for knitting and cooking, mostly in Helsinki, because we spent the Xmas there.

Knits for a baby-girl

My first grandchild is expected to be born in two months time (February). A winter baby needs warm clothes in the Northern hemisphere, said my granny instincts immediately after I heard the glad news. The babies sleep outside in Finland every day, no matter how cold it is. It is regarded healthy!

I bought white and light grey Italian Lana Grossa Baby Wool before I knew the gender and planned to knit a jacket, hat and pants for the unborn baby as a Xmas present. I had to spend several weeks to find a pattern that I knew existed in the 1970s when I used it for my own daughter. Googling baby knits didn’t help, I couldn’t find that particular pattern. Until I started to search in Swedish and 1950s old patterns.

There it was, on a Swedish webshop selling antique knitting patterns! I paid 2 euros to the bank account of the web shop owner and she sent the old pattern by post. While waiting for this pattern I knitted a baby blanket from Alpaca-Silk yarn. The white yarn lasted  also to bootees, mits, scarf and another hat, so our baby-girl will get the whole set of accessories.

 

Spicy home-made mustard is a must with the tradional ham and  Xmas casseroles.  I make it every year well in advance with Kalevei Keihänen's recipe. He was a famous Finnish businessman in the 1960s and 70s in the travel industry. My first trip to the Mediterranean was on Keihänen’s package trip to Isla de Majorca in 1972. A couple of years later, as a young student, I started cooking in my own kitchen and this mustard was one of the first successes. It has stayed on my Xmas menu ever since.    

Xmas mustard á la Keihänen

• 2 dl Colman’s mustard powder
• 1 ¼ dl sugar
• 2 dl whipping cream
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon potato flower
• 1 tablespoon vinegar

Combine all the ingredients except for vinegar in a stainless-steel pan and mix them until smooth. Put the heat on and stir all the time. (You can also cook the mustard in water bath.) Heat the mixture to boiling point and then take the pan from the stove to cold water to cool down. Add the vinegar, fill two small glass jars with the mustard and seal them well. The mustard is ready immediately, but it gets even better with time.

Darkness, dead leaves and corpse berries

After a busy autumn and several weekends either traveling or at home in Helsinki we headed to the island in the morning of our Independence Day, the 6th of December.

Besides celebrating the independence and relax a bit, we wanted to check the windows, set mouse baits (or killers = hiiribaari in Finnish), rake the dead leaves before the snow comes and make the final preparations in the house for the winter.

 

Precious independence

We Finns take independence very seriously, it is not self evident for us – has never been in the past and is not even today with several new signs of cold war. My father and JD’s father were both as young men (17 when the war started!) defending our country against Russians in the Winter War (1939-40) and in the Continuation War (1941-44).

Luckily both men survived and were able to tell us about it. Thank you, Dad! You made it possible for us to enjoy freedom.

After sauna, we had dinner and sat in candle light surrounded by total darkness, as if we were the only ones on the island. Of course we watched on TV The President’s Independence Day Reception, like everyone does.

 

Last berries before the snow

Corpse berry

Luckily it was not raining or snowing on Sunday, and I worked a couple of hours in the garden, raking leaves and emptying and washing flower pots. All the flowers and leaves were dead, except for the corpse berry (Symphoricarpos albus var. laevigatus). Somehow the name is so representative to the season. At this time of the year, it is normally already icy and snow. Now it was +4 degrees and even the sun popped up for a couple of minutes.



Morning dew, black berries and winter mushrooms

It's autumn. We enjoyed still one warm weekend on the island in late September. It was 14 degrees C in the morning and nearly 20 in the afternoon. Rose joined us, but no youngsters came this time.

Without any rain in the past couple of weeks the grass was very wet. Morning dew was intense and beautiful, showing all the spiders’ nets. The leaves had turned to autumn colors although there hadn't been any frost at night. Most of the apples and plumbs had dropped from the trees. Only some fishing boats were on the sea.

 

Third generation of butterflies

 

Despite of late September, summer flowers were in blossom and the third generation of butterflies were flying around them. I managed to capture by camera the Queen of Spain Fritillary, which is quite rare and not often seen in Finland this time of the year.

Rowan berries shone red and the branches were drooping heavy the huge amount of berries. These are very healthy berries that could be utilized, but they are bitter and I have never picked them for cooking, just for decoration. Instead, I picked some black berries, Sorbaronia mitschurinii in the garden. These berries are said to be very healthy superfood, they have a strong color and a bit bitter taste. I put it in the juicer together with apples and got bright red juice. In addition to all the flavonoids and vitamins, the taste was good, too.

Mushroom steaks

Rose and I went to pick mushrooms and lingonberries. The first winter mushrooms, Craterellus tubaeformis, had popped up. I also found some Albatrellus ovinus mushrooms. These are mild and tasty mushrooms that turn bright yellow inside when you fry them.

I made steaks from them on Sunday. I brushed the caps with egg and then rolled them in breadcrumbs seasoned with lemon pepper. Then I added butter on a hot skillet and fried them on both sides so long that they got a nice brown color outside and yellow inside. If they don't turn yellow but brown instead, then you have picked the wrong mushroom, Albatrellus confluens, which looks almost the same but doesn't taste good. 

 

Harvest time - tons of apples

This weekend in early September was warmer than Midsummer! Wonderful time to pick and preserve what mother nature has to offer. I had a couple of extra holidays and enjoyed fully the harvesting time.  From the forest I picked and dried porcini mushrooms. While they were in the Evermat dryer, I focused on fruit.  

There was a big crop of apples and plums in the garden. This is actually the first summer when the plum trees brought from my mother's garden in Turku are bearing fruit.  I dried a small amount of apple rings and plum halves, however, it was only maybe 0.1 percent of the crop. Then I made one lot of plum lemon marmalade. Preserving the small plums is very time-consuming because the stones have to be removed manually… I picked 170 stones from the kettle.


The chilies were also ripe and I tied them in a thread and just hung them out to dry.

As we have a large family and everyone likes juice, I thought we could use the tons of apples lying under the large old apple trees and make apple juice. We invested in a proper juicer and found a robust one, the largest of Kenwood’s models, most suitable for these amounts of apples. You can feed whole apples in the juicer.  

I pressed altogether seven 10-liter buckets of apples in two days and got 12 liters of juice and 20 liters of pulp. That felt like working in a juice factory, the entire kitchen was filled with all kinds of bowls and buckets. But the juice was very good, sweet and tasty and full of vitamins! I froze part of it, gave some bottles to our daughters in Helsinki and we’ll drink a couple of liters next week. And we’ll continue our juice factory next weekend.

 The days were busy, and to make the cooking easy, we made a lamb-cabbage stew in the oven. We had some lamb shanks and local vegetables, so the ingredients were prima. I fried the lamb first in a frying pan and the shredded cabbage with butter and syrup, too. Then we let it stew four hours in the oven until the meat was tender and came loose of the bones. 

The dessert was made of apples, of course, and in the oven, too. I scattered some oatmeal in a lidded pan, added pierced apples, plenty of cinnamon and some syrup, put the pan in the oven covered and after half an hour the dessert was ready. It was served with Valio’s vanilla sauce.

Feasting on porcini mushrooms

A week ago I checked the forests nearby and didn’t find a single penny bun bolet or porcini (Boletus edulis  in Latin, herkkutatti in Finnish, cèpe in French, Steinpilz in German) mushroom yet. Then one week later, these delicious gourmet mushrooms had popped up. They were everywhere.

 

On Friday evening I picked a basket-full from behind the house. On Saturday I went to a small forest one kilometer away, and couldn’t believe my eyes. Within an hour I had the basket and two plastic bags full, altogether 8 kgs of gourmet porcini mushrooms, which is an all-time record for me. There have been summers that I didn't find a single edible penny bun, as the worms like them, too. And our neighbors.

First night, we had porcinis 'al naturale'. We put them on a frying pan, first without butter, and after they had dried a bit, added butter only. At the table we sprinkled some Kosher salt  and black pepper on top of them. If you wish, you could also add some Thai soy sauce.

 

On Saturday, I tried a recipe ‘heavenly porcinis’ according to a Finnish recipe Taivaallinen tattipaistos found from Google.
 

Heavenly porcinis

• penny bun mushrooms
• butter + olive oil
• 1 – 2 onions
• a bunch of flat-leaved parsley and/or mint
• 1 garlic clove
• black pepper
• salt

Heat the skillet and add butter and olive oil. Fry chopped onions, and add little salt and some of the parsley and mint (I used both herbs at the same time). At mild heat let them simmer for about seven minutes. Meanwhile, cut the mushrooms into dice or larger pieces. Then add chopped garlic and black pepper, and turn on some more heat. The mushrooms will be added last with some more parsley. Continue frying for about five minutes so that the mushrooms get some color but remain juicy inside.

As we were only two eaters, we couldn’t eat them all fresh. On Saturday I also started drying the mushrooms which is the best way to store them. Our little Evermat dryer was working hard two whole days and nights. At 40 degrees C it took about 6 hours to dry one lot.

I also found two interesting mushrooms in our yard, parasol mushrooms. I have never tasted them although they are graded 3-star and regarded as gourmet food in Italy. I planned to try them on Sunday, but luckily didn’t... JD got some kind of norovirus, and if he had eaten a parasol mushroom earlier, he certainly would have blamed me for trying to poison him with strange mushrooms. I have to try these next year, if I'm lucky to find them. They are very rare.

My flower gallery

For a lazy gardener, who loves perennials and draught-tolerant and even heavy-rain-tolerant summer flowers, this gallery of flowers blossoming in our garden isn't bad. I didn't count how many buckets of water were carried during the seven hot weeks.

 

And some more...

 

 

 

Just the two of us

On Friday, the 1^st of August, we suddenly noticed that the house was empty. No kids, no noise, no shoes in the porch. Finally, we had one evening alone, just the two of us. We celebrated that by a ‘kräftskiva’ (crayfish party in Swedish).

We ordered ready-cooked crayfish from Ölander, who is farming them in an old limestone mine. In previous years we have managed to get large, jumbo size crayfish, but this time they had only medium-sized ones. The night was tropical and we ate late at night when it was already dark. Simple garnish included toast, mayo, dill and – the most important – Linie Aquavit schnapps. In addition, we had wine, Mudhouse Sauvignon Blanc.

 

The next day, we got visitors from Mexico. JD’s cousin and his wife who live close to Cancun spent two days with us. We made very typical Finnish summer food, smoked salmon with Siikli potatoes, herb dressing and cucumber salad. I had picked blueberries and for dessert, we had vanilla-blueberry cake according to a recipe by Kinuskikissa found on internet.

Smoking fish on a grill

This summer we bought a new smoke box that can be used on a grill. It has proved to be handy. You add some wood chips, a small twig of apple tree and juniper plus three lumps of sugar in the bottom, put the fish on a rack above it and put the lid on. Then you put the box on a grill and close the cover. A two-kilo salmon needs approximately half an hour to cook, get the smoke flavor and some color. We even managed to cook 4.7 kilos of salmon in this box when we had 14 dinner guests. That took a bit longer time. Very delicious!

Water games

When the temperature stayed above 25 degrees four weeks in a row, the only thing to do on the island is swimming and water games. We had five small kids and almost ten big ‘kids’ at the house and all escaped down to the beach, and the water was also warmer than ever, 24-26 degrees.

JD bought a new toy for the bigger kids, a plastic vessel to be pulled by the boat. Sam and Emma could also try with their parents. I was pulling little Ollie from the jetty, he is 4 years old and couldn’t take the ride with the boat.

 

Unlucky and lucky dudes

It is always sad to see the bad luck of animals. Last week we saw a dead woodpecker, seagull’s broken or damaged egg, and an old common toad who couldn’t move and had dug itself a whole under the rhubarb leave.

We also saw some very lucky animals: one evening when we were all having dinner on the patio, Rob saw three deer eating raw apples in our garden. They are already so used to people that our dinner didn’t bother them. Only when I walked closer to take a photo did they run away. So I didn't catch the moment. Another huge miss was when I saw a large bird, probably sea eagle, flying just above my head with a pike in its claws.

Hanna’s herbarium

Hanna, 12 years, had a task from school to collect a herbarium of 20 plants during the summer. One day we collected altogether 30 plants, which she pressed under newspapers and dried. I found an old herbarium with nice green covers at the Fiskars Antique Market for her.

Once the plants were dry, she attached one plant on a sheet a white paper and made small name labels for each plants.

Easy seafood

Tanned and tired after the day at the seaside, we grilled tiger shrimps (imported and bought frozen). That was fast and easy. They were simply served with rice and ready-made chili sauce. And strawberries for dessert, naturally.

Stunning July

It is amazing how fast everything grows in the garden now that the heat is above 20 degrees C. All the berries are ripening at the same time. I had to cover the white, red and black currant bushes with nets to prevent birds from eating the ripening berries.

Strawberries are sweeter than ever – despite the rainy June. We normally buy 6 -8 liters per day as the number of eaters has settled to over 10.

I picked 8 liters of blueberries during the first ‘inspection’ trip to the forest – they are big and there’s plenty of them. I am eagerly waiting for mushrooms to pop up after the heavy rain and thunderstorm last Sunday.

The life has much focused on kids in July, but they have also had other program than being with us. All the kids (Hanna, Emma, Ollie and Sam) went to  Robin’s  concert in Taalintehdas during the Baltic Jazz. Emma had also got tickets to Robin's concert in Helsinki Olympic Stadium as a birthday present, and she loved the event.

No-one was interested inthe local annual Traktorikavalkadi  this year, but Nellie, Emma and Hanna went to a large horse event Kemiö Jumping, as always. This year our neighbor was competing there in show jumping with her beautiful horse.

Then we also had first-time visitors (and, who knows, new family members..) in two successive weekends when my daughter Inka brought her new fiancé Tim and my son Ilpo his partner Windy. We took both couples boating and served Black Agnus steaks with Siikli potatoes and large bowls of salad late in the evening for dinner (to give them a feeling what and how we normally eat on the island). Hanna was practicing cooking and volunteered every night to prepare dessert, mostly from strawberries. She also made cookies one day.

I had to return to Helsinki in Mid-July to work and had the possibility to enjoy the gorgeous weather and big family only during weekends.  However, I have to admit that I greatly enjoyed for being alone and not cooking anything while in the town!

 

Hot pot night

One of our summer traditions is Mongolian hot pot. We prepare this meal when our Chinese friend Hong and her family visit us. This happened last week.
 

One of our summer traditions is Mongolian hot pot. We prepare this meal when our Chinese friend Hong and her family visit us. This happened last week.

Hot pot is a steaming aromatic broth simmering in a shallow pot divided into two sections, one has more spicy broth and the other one a mild broth. We have two original Chinese pots for this purpose to serve 8-10 people.

There is also an assortment of fresh ingredients such as thinly shaved meat, napa cabbage and other Chinese greens, noodles and tofu and people cook their own meal from these ingredients in the common hot pot. Once the chosen pieces have been cooked a minute or so, they will be fished out with chopsticks from the broth and dipped in a tasty spicy dipping sauce.

By the end of dinner, the broth has taken on wonderful flavors, and a big bowl of the broth with a dash of the dipping sauce makes for a perfect ending to the meal.

Hong was the main chef in our kitchen that day. She brought the Chinese ingredients such as goji berries, fresh and fermented tofu, black beans, Asian chile paste, glass noodles, Chinese pepper, ginseng, tahini and herbs.  We bought the meat (thinly sliced beef sirloin and lamb meat), napa cabbages and ingredients available on Kemiö S-market.

Hong mixed the ingredients to the dipping sauce and broth from her head, without measuring anything. The result is every time different but always delicious. Our kids aged from 4 to 14 all liked the food and managed to eat with chopsticks. Only little Ollie needed some help.

If you don't have a Chinese friend, there are plenty of recipes for hot pot on the internet, for example these:

• http://www.melindalee.com/recipes/mongolian-hot-pot/
• http://www.rachaelraymag.com/recipes/rachael-ray-magazine-recipe-search/dinner-recipes/mongolian-hot-pot
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEE7Kz0eSDw

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Fairy-tale art

Heat has landed on the island. We had +26 C today. So everyone is happy, happy, happy.

 

Yesterday after Inka and Yaffa had left, Rose, Hanna and I drove to Westers Garden to see flowers and herbs, and the art exhibition arSboretum 14, featuring fairy-tale art in an old barn and in the garden. Fabulous! Hanna, 12, said she wanted to buy the whole place. Me, too. 

And I liked the pieces of art, particularly as Eeva-Leena Eklund’s large paintings. As we didn’t have the needed cash (or credit), we just admired them. 

 

In the evening we got more life to the house when Hank, Angie and Sam, 7, arrived. The kids had a hilarious evening in the beach sauna and after that, in the hot tub.

Today, JD’s old uncle Matt, 84, and his wife visited us. They hadn’t seen our long dining table on the patio, and he said: “I didn’t know that you have opened a restaurant here!” Well, he wasn’t so wrong about it. This is a pop-up restaurant, open for family only. It was nice to meet them and have four generations at the table.

As the day was hot, I made a large bowl of salad with buffalo mozzarella, tomatoes, basil and olive oil for lunch. Hank grilled some sausages for the kids (and all adults ate them, too). 

Today it was Rose and Rob who had to return to Helsinki, and the number of people at the dinner table was again down to 10. Late in the evening we’ll grill tiger shrimps.

Finnish bouillabaisse

On Thursday Rob went fishing with Ollie and Emma. With a small Angry Birds rod and spincast reel they managed to get four pikes and one perch. So I had to fulfill my promise to cook bouillabaisse. This turned out to be a full-day job.

I cleaned the pikes at the seaside, and let the perch back to freedom – Ollie didn’t want to hurt it. Then we drove to Salo with JD for shopping some ingredients for the seafood stew, such as Norwegian salmon and cod, onions, carrots, and fennel. Our fishermen couldn’t catch clams and shrimp, so we bought frozen ones. 



On the way to Salo Citymarket, we stopped by Perniön Liha to buy 2.5 kgs little sausages for next day’s meal andKemiö bakery’s rye bread.

Meanwhile, Rose fetched Siikli potatoes from the farm we always buy potatoes and strawberries.  

 

 

Finnish bouillabaisse for 10  

• 1 dl extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 bunches of onions, white and green parts, diced
• 2 fennel bulbs
• 8 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
• 8 tomatoes, cut into small dice
• 8 baby carrots
• 1 kg Siikli potatoes
• Little Tabasco
• 2 bay leaves
• Pinch of saffron threads
• 2-3 liters of fish stock (and water, if needed)
• 1 kg skinless salmon
• 0.5 kg skinless cod
• Boneless pike or perch
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground  black pepper
• 1 package of frozen clams
• 0.5 kg frozen large shrimps
• 3 dl Riesling

First thing to do in bouillabaisse is to make a good fish stock. I used the pikes for the broth and cooked them with heads and skin in plenty of water for an hour, and added black pepper, salt, parsley and fennel in the water. Small pikes have so many bones that they have to be removed, and if you do it, there’s not much to eat. For this reason I strained the stock and hand-picked some pike flesh for the stew (not much really).  

Next, I dipped the tomatoes in boiling water to remove the skin. Then I chopped the onions, baby-carrots, fennel, potatoes and garlic, took a large pot and sautéed the vegetables in virgin olive oil. Tomato and fish stock was added next with the seasoning: saffran, sea salt, thyme and black pepper. I added potato cubes a bit later. In a traditional bouillabaisse there are no potatoes and carrots, but they are so lovely at this time of the year and fit well in this stew.

The different seafood is added when the vegetables are almost cooked. I also added some Riesling for the perfect finishing touch. (The same Riesling is served with the stew!)

 

The Finnish bouillabaisse is served outside by the sea when it’s cold and windy and eaten with dark rye bread and butter. It was exactly like that, windy and cold, at 10 pm when we had dinner outside. Everyone preferred the dessert (apple pie with vanilla sauce) inside the house.