If you don't like dill, you'd better stay clear of my house when I'm in a Nordic summer cooking mood. There is dill in everything, including the drinks and dessert and possibly my hair. Definitely in my teeth.

I have been working very hard in the new job for the past 2 weeks, so an extra day off and a chance to cook for a friend was just the ticket. The shock of hard work has been exacerbated by the most amazing couple of months prior to the start. I have been on what is officially called a gardening or garden leave, which is basically just paid leave with no obligation to work.

You get one of these by:

a. taking a new job with a competitor company
b. being "open and honest" about reasons that made you resign
c. helpfully sharing your views about the leadership of the company
d. just generally being a bit of a pain in the ass
e. combination of any of the above (the more you manage to combine the quicker the exit)

Or like a friend from work put it:



Husband was bemused and amused in equal measure and kept telling people: "Wife got sacked."

But it is the best kind of holiday, full pay for the entire notice period which in my case was a luxurious 3 months. You have no responsibilities other than committing to not entering your place of work or starting in a new job. Can you imagine, someone pays you for not working! I can thoroughly recommend it. These opportunities are somewhat difficult to orchestrate, but worth the trouble.

It's total relaxation. You can't stress about your old job because you have resigned and you can't stress about the new job because you haven't started yet and don't really know what to stress about. In a way I suppose this is how retirement will feel, but just with added joint pain and a more depressing end point.

Some people always say that they can't just be, can't not do something, and go around ironing every ironable object in the house, clearing cupboards, weeding and cleaning like maniacs. I'm not like that. My accomplishments during my gardening leave were:

• Cupboards cleared - 0 
• Epidodes of Downton Abbey watched - 43
• Episodes of Pride and Prejudice watched - 6 + the film
• Episodes of Mystery Diners and Jamie at home watched - Countless
• Prosecco breakfasts - 2 (a shockingly low number)
• Gardens gardened - 1 (by Izabela the gardener)
• Long lost friends reconnected with - 1
• Delicious meals cooked for husband - very many
• Naps - > 30
• Neighbours' cats fed daily - 2
• Holidays within a holiday - 2 
• Purgings of negative energy from previous job by burning sage in bedroom - 1 
• Flummoxed husbands - 1

So to celebrate the little window of freedom and the summer that is here I cooked a very Finnish menu of lovely seafood and lots of dill. Funnily enough I miss my homeland a lot more during the summer than winter (the winters are a bit gruelling in case you didn't know, that might have something to do with it).

And also we did just win the Ice-Hockey world championships, which is a big deal. It's a proper mans game, a bit like rugby in terms of the number of teeth left in the players' mouths, but on skates. Anyway, that was a big thing and any patriotic Finn would now be swimming in a fountain in the 7 degree Helsinki, because that is what we do when we are very happy apparently. I chose not to this time, much as I love my homeland, but instead I decided to honour my Finnishness with this menu:

• Crayfish Skagen in cups
• Finn-Crisp and smoked salmon rolls
• Lemon and dill hummus
• Smokerbag salmon
• Dill and vinegar cucumbers
• New potato salad
• Strawberry and goat cheese salad
• Blueberry tart and custard

Feel free to use the full fat versions of mayonnaise and creme fraiche, but it is really delicious with the lower fat options also.

200g crayfish tails
1/4 cup low fat mayonnaise
1/4 cup low fat creme fraiche
1 bunch of dill chopped
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Salt
Lemon pepper
2 tsp salmon roe and some dill for garnish


Mix all the ingredients and serve as a starter on toast or rye bread, or as I did in little crispy cups decorated with  some fish eggs and fresh dill. The classic way is to fry slices of toast in butter and serve the Skagenrora on top.

It's been a stressful week. Work is a bit crazy. I'm organising this big medical symposium with lots of really important people coming, at least I hope they are coming. If I mess it up, well, I don't actually want to think about what will happen if I mess it up. But I have been having nightmares that someone else does another event the same evening and everyone goes there and no one comes to my meeting.

In the dream an orthodox Jew called Simon Bieber tells me this. I don't know any orthodox Jews or anyone called Simon Bieber for that matter, so I'm not sure what the meaning of this is. But I hope regardless of this Bieber feller, people will come to my meeting and I'm not left there on my own with mini cottage pies and wild mushroom and tallegio arancini for 65 people. They sound delicious though. I've never had an arancini, so I'm really looking forward to that part of the evening.



Husband is still gallivanting in sunny climes and I am missing him like crazy. In a situation like this his amazing calmness would be really useful. "It'll be alright" he would say and massage my agitated, bony, cold feet with his big warm hands. I remember stressing about our wedding waltz. Neither of us are great natural waltzers and we had practiced very little. He was convinced that it would be alright. And it was. No tens from Craig Revel Horwood, but it was alright.

If I was going to be all Mills and Boon, I would say that with his big, strong arms around me everything is always alright. But since I am a self-sufficient, empowered, emancipated 21st century woman I'm obviously not going to say anything so silly, but will just grit my teeth, jut my jaw and plough on.

But he is my lobster and I have to confess that as well as stressing about stuff more without him, husband's absence also means I have now alarmingly regressed to watching "Say Yes to the dress" of which I managed to wean myself off a long time ago. But this week I found myself sobbing as nurse Katie was choosing her sparkly A-line while teary-eyed Grandma was watching.

I have also started watching X-Factor. Luckily it's final time, so I can sink no further.

And sometimes I don't brush my teeth at night, if I'm really tired.

So I'm glad husband's coming back in two weeks, otherwise I would end up a feral, toothless, reality-TV watching wildling. But clearly less attractive than the fabulous red-haired Downton housemaid in Game of Thrones.

Yes, I did also start my box set of Downton Abbey. I need to get my act together with that one. With two weeks to go haven't even finished series one.

But foodwise Fish Friday is Fish Friday whether husband is around or not, so I decided to make myself a yummy, hot bowl of seafood pasta.

I love pasta. Particularly if it's of the spicy variety. And if it isn't, there's nothing that a generous shake of Tabasco won't cure. Last weekend I made a gorgeous hot puttanesca and this time I went for a spicy crab, crayfish and smoked trout linguine.

Spicy crab, crayfish and smoked trout linguine with asparagus and fresh herbs (serves 4)

400g dried linguine or spaghetti
Water
Salt

Oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
3 gloves of garlic, chopped
3-4 mild chillies, chopped
1/2 cup white wine
Juice and zest of a lemon
150g asparagus, cut to 1 inch pieces
Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
Bunch of fresh basil, chipped
Pasta cooking water
2-3 tbsp sour cream (or cream)
Salt
Black pepper
200g crayfish
100g brown crab meat
100g smoked salmon, chopped
40g Parmesan, grated

Bring a pan of water to boil. Add salt and pasta and cook according to the pack instructions, making sure not to overcook the pasta.

Heat a splash of oil in a non-stick pan. Add the onion with a sprinkling of salt and saute for a few minutes. Add the garlic and chillies and continue sauteing. Add the white wine, lemon zest and juice, basil and the asparagus and most of the tomatoes leaving some for garnish.

Add some of the pasta cooking water (1/2 - 2/3 cup) and leave to simmer until the asparagus is almost done, but still slightly crisp. Add the crayfish, crab, smoked salmon and most of the parmesan leaving just a couple of spoonful for garnish.

Drain the pasta when it's still al dente reserving some of the cooking liquid and add to sauce. Mix everything and add some pasta cooking water if necessary. Sprinkle some fresh basil, the rest of the tomatoes and parmesan on top.

Some Italian inspiration for a change in the form of this lovely creamy seafood risotto which combines my favourite tastes of saffron, dill and seafood. The thought was brought on by our Roman holiday last weekend. We had a lovely four days in the eternal city and I got to practice my Italian which I have studied with a mobile app since January.

I don't think I am as fluent as the ad for the app promised, but what I had learned came handy as soon as we arrived. The housekeeper at the B&B we were staying at didn't speak a word of English. So I managed to get us through the check-in process and understood most of her explanations of where everything was and that it was not so much a B&B as just a B since there was no breakfast unless you made it yourself. But when she said (as she was leaving us to our own devices), if you have any problems call me, I thought to myself I would not be able to make much sense of her or she of me on the phone. The communication was heavily reliant on lively gesticulation, pointing and pantomime and not many full sentences were coherently delivered or understood.

Husband was not particularly impressed with my Italian (=repeatedly saying "si" whether I understood what the housekeeper was saying or not) at this stage. And I have to admit this whole monoglot housekeeper scenario came a bit too quickly for me. I did a lot better in situations were I had more time to prepare sentences in my head, like purchasing medicine for husband's man flu in a pharmacy when I had had the whole morning to prepare what I would say. Or talking to the taxi driver on our last day asking him to make two stops, one at the hotel so we could pick up our luggage and then at the airport.

Although afterwards I realised I had probably asked for two roasts (arrosto) rather than stops (arresto), but the driver didn't laugh at me, I didn't tell husband and no one will ever know. In all fairness they should make words more different from each other to avoid these sorts of mix-ups.

So I was pretty proud of myself and at this point husband was so impressed that he asked me to act as an interpreter while he wanted to discuss the Roman housing market with the driver. I did manage to ask about the house prices in general and how much a two bedroom flat in the centre of Rome would cost and even understood the answers, but further than that my linguistic skills wouldn't take me.

Still, well done I think. I will continue my studies as we are planning to go to Venice later this year or at least at some point in the next future. I also have a business trip to Milan in September, so can impress my colleagues by casually chatting to hotel staff in Italian.

Otherwise the holiday followed our normal format of energetic (maniacal) sightseeing with the minimum of 10k walked each day and husband happily following me wherever I chose to take us. I once tried to let him lead. I was walking ahead of him on a narrow cobblestoned street in Trastevere and decided I'll let him go first for a change, so I slowed down and tried to fall behind him, but he slowed down at the same rate and by the time I was behind him we had come to a complete stop. "Why did we get stuck", asked husband. I resumed my leading position.

And we had coffees, teas and glasses of wine in pavement cafes people watching and just enjoying the fact we didn't need to be anywhere else. In Vatican I nipped into a little shop to send my father, the philatelist, a postcard with a Vatican stamp on it, because I thought that's the kind of thing that will get him all excited and he can go to his weekly philatelist meeting and show it to the others and they can all be completely awed by this thumb sized miracle. Anyway, when I came out I couldn't find husband anywhere. Finally I spotted him behind one of the drinks vans drinking a Corona sitting on the pavement. He encouraged me (not a difficult job to be honest) to get a drink, so I got one of those little chilled bottles of wine. They had no glasses so there we sat hiding from the Pope and the sun behind the van swigging our sinful drinks straight from our bottles.

Wearing our newly purchased rosary necklaces.

I don't think God minds though. If he did, I don't think he would have let Jesus in on the water to wine trick.

We did a tiny bit of shopping as well. Husband bought the inevitable hat he always buys when we go anywhere and I bought the inevitable scarf.

We also ate lots of good food of course. The lack of breakfast initially was a bit of a disappointment, but on the first night we nipped to the corner shop on our way home and got some cereal, juice, cheese, butter, bread and tomatoes and actually it was really nice to start the days this way, just the two of us putting a simple breakfast on the table planning the day ahead.

And then of course we would eat out wherever we happened to be when we got hungry. My favourite was Linguine allo Scoglio which I had a couple of times and I think husband's favourites were the swordfish and the tagliatelle bolognese. He wasn't impressed with his lamb chops, which he felt were a different dish to the juicy and soft chops I cook for him (bless him). Another disappointment was the seafood pizza which had no cheese and was just "bread, ketchup and cockroaches" (mussels, and clams). Oh, and I had a lovely pizza on the first night. My health-consciousness doesn't allow me to have restaurant pizza often, the last time was a seafood pizza in 2011 in a restaurant in Pimlico, so it was about time. It was gorgeous.

Swordfish - this chef might not be focusing much in his garnishing and plating, but the fish was very tasty.

Bread, ketchup and cockroaches or Pizza allo Scoglio as it's known in Italy

Linguine allo Scoglio - loved it!

Pizza Cappricciosa - because it is so very thin apparently it has less calories than a banana.

I also got pooped on by a pigeon. Only on my arm but husband helpfully told me it was all over my hair and videoed my panicked wet wipe action. There was no poop in my hair. Sometimes husband's taste for comedy surpasses his survival instinct.

Prawn and crayfish risotto with saffron and dill

This risotto is a lovely meal on its own served with a crisp salad. But this time we had it with some seared tuna,

Oil
1 leek
2 cups arborio rice
1/2 cup white wine
pinch of saffron
2-3 tbsp chopped fresh dill
4 cups of low salt fish stock
180g king prawns
150g asparagus spears
120g crayfish tails
50g butter (or less if you want to be healthy)
50g grated parmesan
Salt and pepper

Wash and chop the leek. Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a deep non-stick pan and add the leek. Saute for a few minutes and add the rice. Keep frying on medium heat for another 3-4 minutes stirring so it doesn't catch. Add the lemon zest and juice, crushed saffron, dill and wine.

In the meanwhile bring the fish stock to boil in another pan. Once the wine has almost evaporated start adding the fish stock one ladle at a time stirring until it has been absorbed then add another label. Keep going until the rice is almost cooked, then remove the ends of the asparagus spears and cut the spears into one inch pieces and add to the pan. A couple of minutes later add the prawns. Once the prawns are cooked, add a knob of butter, the parmesan and the crayfish. Season to taste, stir until all is incorporated and crayfish are heated through. Serve immediately.

Baking salmon with a sour cream topping is quite a traditional everyday way of cooking salmon in Finland. We like our sour cream, we call it Smetana. It's one of the few good things that has come to us across our eastern border. No, just kidding, although miraculously can't think of anything just now. Other than that the Finnish food culture is indeed very interesting, because we have all the western Scandinavian influences as well as the Eastern European touches on top of our original Finnish cuisine. We love smetana with fish roe and pretty much anything fishy and many a soup and sauce is improved by an added blob of Smetana.

This was our Saturday dinner with the kids last week. I often opt for meat, because I think kids like that more, even though they have been pretty good with salmon. But this time traumatised by the Friday night meat fest at my company Christmas do (I don't know why he chose the turkey and pigs in blankets etc. when there was also fish on the menu) husband specifically asked for fish, so I thought I'd make this juicy version.

If you want to go all fancy-pants, you can do the same with wild Atlantic salmon and crayfish tails. Not long ago I did exactly that inspired by the crayfish that I found on the fish counter. I asked for a whole side of gorgeous, bright orange wild Atlantic salmon. As the fishmonger weighed it on the scales he mentioned the price which was quite a lot. I had read the wrong label with less than half the kg price.

At that point I should have said "oh dear, that's a bit expensive, how about that perfectly fine looking piece of farmed Norwegian salmon, how much would that be". That would have been completely reasonable and the fishmonger probably would not have laughed at me or pointed at me with his fish scaly finger shouting to all other customers: "look at this one - can't even afford to buy a piece of fish - should have gone to Lidl".

Instead I just smiled slightly stiffly and took the package without a flinch pretending I routinely buy stupidly expensive food and wished the stupid greedy monger a nice day. It's the same with the hairdresser, sorry, stylist, you can never tell her that she has completely fucked up your hair and happiness for the next 4 months, you thank her smiling sycophantically in your horrible 3-year-old-boy-hair, buy some stupidly priced heat protection spray you're never going to use and leave the salon to run into the dressing room of the first women's clothing store (in my case it's the Covent Garden Next) and burst into tears while trying to stretch your hair to cover your forehead, which in my case is a long distance.

So my advice regarding the fish (for hair I have nothing), is to do this with a normal lovely fresh salmon and prawns. It's just as lovely unless it's a special event and you want to impress. You can even skip the prawns, but they make it a bit more interesting.

Salmon topped with sour cream and prawns

1 side (750g-1kg) of Scottish, Norwegian or Atlantic salmon (or appropriate amount of fillets)
Bunch of fresh dill
1 lemon
Salt
Lemon pepper
1 pot (170ml) sour cream
1/4 cup single / double cream
 200g prawns (or crayfish)

If you can, season the salmon a few hours before cooking with salt and lemon pepper, a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh dill and the zest and juice of half a lemon. Let it sit in the fridge for maximum flavour.

When ready to cook heat the oven to 190C. Mix the sour cream and cream, season with salt and lemon pepper, zest and juice of half the lemon and a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh dill. I just thought of this, a spoonful of runny honey might work really nicely here, Spread about half of the sour cream mix on the fish. Mix the prawns with the rest of the sour cream mix and keep for later.

Place the salmon in the oven and cook for about 20-30 min (depending on thickness of your salmon) until the fish is almost done. Insert a knife into the thickest part of the fish to check doneness. I like my salmon pretty well done but not overcooked, so I will cook it until it flakes and has just turned pink. Some people like it a bit underdone in the middle and leave it slightly orange.

So about 5 minutes before your salmon is perfectly done to your liking take it out and spread the rest of the sour cream and prawns on top. Cook until the prawns have just turned pink. Garnish with fresh dill and lemon segments serve immediately with potatoes or rice and salad.