Happy New Year!

I've had a bit of a Christmas break from my laptop and blogging and stuff. But obvs not from cooking and eating. Or watching Christmas cooking programs. And about three thousand episodes of Lost. We are sometimes a bit late to the box set party, by when we finally arrive, well, God help everyone.

Sadly the lovely Christmas fun is all over and the decorations have come down. Husband was in charge of the outdoor lights as always and managed to find a six foot inflatable polar bear with twinkling lights in his belly to crown the display. He loved the bear so much that in the first couple of nights he couldn't sleep a wink because he was worried someone might steel it so he had to get up several times and go to the front room window to check that the bear was still there. The bear survived the festive period bringing Christmas cheer to the neighbourhood kids and us as well and is now safely back in the box and waiting for next Christmas.

Can't help but make you smile!

So here is a little summary of my cookery fest and a collection of links that will perhaps serve as ideas the next time around.

Until then it's time to strap on my new running shoes and head for the hills. Husband kindly performed an imitation of what I look like when I run, which unexpectedly reminded me of Phoebe in Friends. Remember when she went running with Rachel in Central Park. Funny. I always imagine myself a lot more like Jessica Ennis.

One of my favourite things I cooked this Christmas, and not only because of the two types of sangria it included, but possibly partly because of the two types of sangria, was the Christmas tapas lunch I did for a friend just before Christmas including.... drumroll.... two types of Sangria, white and red! And a selection of Christmassy tapas. what else. One of the tapas was a traditional Catalan smoked reindeer pinwheel in Lappish flatbread. Recipe - if you can call it a recipe, maybe more just an instruction - below.

Rosemary infused white wine and apple juice sangria with sprigs of rosemary and cranberries.

The sangria recipes unfortunately I didn't write down, but for the white one I got the idea from this recipe. Using the rosemary was an inspired touch, there is a suble taste in the sangria infused with a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and dusted with confectioner's sugar they make cute Christmassy decoration. And when you drink the sprig of rosemary touches your nose and you smell the herb which smells a bit like Christmas tree and some of the confectioners sugar gets stuck on your nose adding a nice wintry touch around the table.

The red one was a mixture of red wine, cinnamon, cloves, clementine, a sparkling pomegranate drink and cranberries.

Another highlight was my Christmas Eve dinner. Christmas Eve is the big day for us Finns, which is an anomaly that husband never seems to understand and always disappears for last minute shopping although Christmas peace has been announced in Turku Finland at noon and all the world should stop all activity apart from listening to Christmas music and eating ginger biscuits. So once the errant husband was back I served a starter of smoked reindeer with rocket and mozzarella - recipe below. Reindeer is a part of a Finnish Christmas, not so much pulling Santa's sleigh as a critically important supporting act on the Christmas table. We always have had some cold-smoked reindeer in the Christmas table, usually served cold on it's own as an antipasto kind of thing, And on the Chrtistmas Day in the breakfast table as something to put on top of your slice of sourdough rye bread, sweet Christmas loaf or Karelian pasty.

For my Christmas eve main I did a veal osso buco milanese with a wonderful yellow saffron risotto inspired by Jamie's Christmas cooking programs. Husband sometimes questions the necessity of hours of Good Food channel and Food Network, so these moments are great proof that there is sense to it all. I also made a panzanella salad and a raspberry tiramisu for dessert. Fantastic.





The one traditional Finnish Christmas food I can't seem to do without is the sweetened potato bake. I actually thought I would soldier through this Christmas without it, but on Christmas morning I caved in having not thought about anything else all Christmas eve and not being able to sleep very well at all. I had a jar of pickled herring and couldn't get it out of my head. How could I possibly not make this awesome potato dish to accompany the herring.

So on Christmas day I served some cold fish starters with the lovely potato bake and some roast potatoes for husband, pickled herring, mediterranean anchovies, smoked salmon and whitefish roe with dill, onion and sour cream - another absolute Christmas must. The main was my provencal duck legs, roast potatoes and roast carrots and parsnip. I was really excited with my purple heritage carrots, but they just actually looked like I had burned my veg. Everything tasted really good though.

The best way to eat roe - mixed with sour cream, chopped onion and dill.

Below my two super easy reindeer starters. Smoked reindeer can be hard to find here (although a quite ethical way to grow meat), so you could replace with other smoked meat, Waitrose sells smoked venison, or bresaola would work as well. My sister helpfully suggested cold-smoked horse as a substitute when we were discussing the difficulties obtaining reindeer in the UK. But horse meat is equally or even more difficult to find and very much frowned upon here. Whereas in Finland, practical as ever, we eat our horses after their time has come, even though we don't grow them for that purpose specifically. Waste not, want not kind of a thing. Plus it's tasty. But I told my sister that eating horse to British people is probably a bit like eating labrador puppies would be to us. However practical even we don't eat labrador puppies.

Smoked reindeer, goat cheese and rocket flatbread pinwheels

Flat bread
Pack (about 100g) cold-smoked reindeer
100g soft chevre
2-3 tbsp sour cream (or yoghurt)
1 tbsp fresh thyme
1 tbsp fresh rosemary
Rocket
Black pepper

For the flatbread try to find stonebaked flatbread, the small ethnic shops usually do it. But if you can't find any then any other kind of flat bread will do. Even a tortilla, although ideally I would use something a bit thicker.

Chop the fresh herbs. Crumble the chevre and mix in a couple of tablespoons of sour cream or yoghurt to thin it a little and mix well until smooth. Mix in the chopped herbs and black pepper to taste.

Spread the chevre mixture on the flat bread. Cut the reindeer slices into thin strips and spread evenly. Sprinkle over a good helping of rocket. Roll the flatbread and wrap the roll in a tinfoil and rest in the fridge for a couple of hours. Slice into about 1-1.5 cm slices and serve on a bed of rocket.

Smoked reindeer mozzarella and rocket salad

Pack of rocket (about 90g)
Pack (100g) cold-smoked reindeer or other smoked meat
150g good quality mozzarella
Extra virgin olive oil
Fresh thyme or rosemary
Salt
Black pepper

Spread the rocket on a serving platter or individual plates. Fold the reindeer slices into nice shapes and place over the rocket. If using small mozzarella balls add them onto the plate, or slice your mozzarella and spread the slices on the platter/plates. Sprinkle with salt, fresh chopped herbs, freshly ground black pepper and olive oil.

I will be glad when this launch that I have been working on is over next week. Particularly if it goes well of course. It's been fun but very intense. I had a dream last night that I was launching French sausages and it was the night before the launch when I realized there was no English text on the packaging. Merde. Luckily I am not launching saucissons and the packaging definitely has English text.

We've also been doing some media training in case we get opportunities. It's been a while since I have done any media interviews. I used to do quite a few early in my career when I was looking after the Easter egg range for a large confectionery company. It was a shitty product category, seasonal products, Christmas and stuff. No one wanted to do it. Imagine you get your timings wrong and miss your dates by a week. Not good. Anyway, I was often interviewed around Easter about the latest trends in Easter egg toys etc. I even once made it to the national TV, they wanted me to present our latest brainwave, finger puppets! Proud moment.

There were some tricky interviews as well. I remember one from a religious magazine about a little plastic raccoon sitting next to a barrel seemingly happily drunk. Apparently not appropriate for children. But ingeniously I turned the question around. Maybe the inappropriateness was in the eyes of the beholder, because clearly looking at it with the innocent eyes of a child it was a barrel of honey and the raccoon had just overindulged a little. Ever heard of Winnie the Pooh you dirty old bigot. I didn't say that last bit. Because I had been rigorously media trained, you see. Lesson one - don't call the journalist names.

So last night I was very glad to wind down and make husband proper dinner. I haven't been a completely useless wife this week, I made him really lovely chickpea and courgette burgers one evening, I might even blog the recipe at some point. And one evening I followed a recipe that promised to be the best ever lentil soup. It was really good, but I didn't realise that yellow lentils expand quite so much more than red lentils. I had to keep adding water. It reminded me of the story that dad told about the time he cooked rice for the first time in his student days. Had no idea that they would expand, ended up with enough to feed a Chinese village. Anyway lentil soup was nice and fed us for several nights and there is a good portion in the freezer.

The b(igg)est ever lentil soup

Our Friday dinner is a special thing and often I opt for fish. This time I had some lovely slightly smoked salmon fillets which I baked and made this orzo, basil, pesto, tomato and mozzarella bake. It's a tasty little side dish that I invented. I'm sure some one has thought of chucking these same ingredients together before me. It's not the most out there combination, the ingredients kind of all belong together naturally. There is nothing stopping you having it as a main. Side or main, or just cold from the fridge the following morning while waiting for your husband to wake up for breakfast - very yummy.

Beautiful heirloom toamatoes, the big green one was tough as old boots, but doesn't it look lovely.

Red pesto, tomato and mozzarella orzo bake (serves 2)

Oil
200g orzo
3-4 spring onions
1 small clove of garlic
2 large or 10-15 small tomatoes (heirloom for extra pretension)
2 tbsp of red pesto (or green)
Bunch of fresh basil (about 1/3 cup chopped)
1/3 cup grated parmesan
Salt and pepper
Ball of mozzarella (about 125g)

Pre-heat oven to 200C.

Cook the orzo in salted water until almost done, but still slightly al dente. In the meanwhile chop the spring onions and tomatoes and mince the garlic, Heat oil in a frying pan and saute the vegetables for a couple of minutes until the tomatoes have softened a little.

Drain the pasta. Add the vegetable mix, pesto, parmesan, salt (not too much because there is salt in the pesto and parmesan), black pepper and chopped fresh basil (leave some for garnish) to the pasta. Mix well and check the seasoning, add salt and pepper, if necessary. Pour the mix into a baking dish. Slice the mozzarella and place the slices on top.

Bake uncovered for about 15 minutes until the mozzarella has melted and the top has got some colour. Garnish with basil.

This has been a long time coming. I think the last time we made pizza was probably more than a year ago one Saturday night with the kids. Husband did the dough, he's actually the expert. He used to have his own little pizza restaurant back in the day. I remember when we started dating and I stayed in his place his sofa was full of money. Not like millions of pounds, drug lord kind of full, but little wads stuffed under the cushions waiting to be banked, not that a lot of it ever made it to the bank  suspect, but ended up in the many West End clubs.

So back to modern time, with kids we then all filled our own pizzas with whatever we liked. Kids mainly went for onions and mushroom. No, not really. Mainly salami, chicken and cheese. We should do that again actually.

Whenever I'm away, they pester their dad into getting takeaway and usually it will be pizzas. Once I was away for the weekend and next time the kids came they told me with unmistakable satisfaction in their voices that while I was gone, they had ordered takeaway pizza twice. Not under my watch it wouldn't happen!


I have recently been reminded of the wonders of pizza by many Meal Planning Monday posts by other bloggers who have had lovely sounding pizzas on their menus. Another inspiration was a post about a chorizo and grilled vegetables pizza, which sounds and looks amazing. I love that blog not only for the wonderful recipes and photographs, but also because of the stories of life on the Shetland Islands. I have this strange fascination for remote northern islands. I would love to go to Jan Mayen, Svalbard, Faroe or Shetland Islands. The more remote and arctic the better. Persuading husband, son of the desert, will be an interesting task. I might try the Hebrides to start with,

I made the dough and tomato sauce completely according to Elizabeth's recipe, so won't repeat them here. My contribution to the topic of pizza dough is this great tip: If you are going out for the day and want dinner reasonably quickly when you're back, do the dough in the morning and chuck it in the fridge in a freezer bag. I did this because we were going to be out and I knew when we'd get back we wouldn't want to wait for the dough to rise. So while you're out and about the dough will slowly rise in the fridge and be ready to roll and raring to go when your back.

For the topping I used my Finnish Moose salami, which is not very different from normal salami, but a bit smokier and tastier. It also has some horse meat in it, so some people might not approve. In Finland horse meat is used and most people won't bat an eyelid. No horses are grown for that purpose alone, but when their time comes the meat will be used, mostly for sausages. That's where the saying sure give any horse a long face "Time to go to the sausage factory" comes from. It of course means the end is neigh.


I think it is good not to waste meat, but I do understand if people see horses as pets, or almost as family members and don't want to eat them, We wouldn't eat our dogs after all. I remember when we were kids we had 3 ducks one summer. That winter mum cooked Uncle Scrooge, Donald and Daisy. I remember it was a bit hard to swallow even though they were the stupidest birds that ever lived.


For the pizza I also grilled some onion, courgette and yellow and green peppers. For cheese I had mozzarella, gruyere, cheddar and goat cheese, but I only had a handful of each, so it wasn't overcheesy. And I also dolloped some of previous night's rocket, spinach and watercress pesto on it.

It turned out very delicious indeed, but I cooked it just slightly too long. Why is there no undo button in cooking. Just 5 minutes less and it would have been perfect, but I was so worried that the bottom wouldn't be crisp. It was crisp alright. Husband was very complimentary because he saw I was annoyed with myself and I suppose all in all it was a bloody good dinner.

Moose Salami, grilled vegetables and 4 cheese pizza recipe

Pizza dough and tomato sauce - link here

Toppings:

Tomato sauce
1/2 cup of Gruyere cheese
1/2 cup of goat cheese
1/2cup of cheddar
1/2 cup of mozzarella
1 red onion
1/2 green pepper
1/2 yellow pepper
1 small courgette
1/4 cup of pesto

Pre-heat your oven to 225C.


Grill or fry the thinly sliced vegetables on a griddle pan with a little bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Slice the salami and grate the cheese. Roll out the dough - I made a rectangle to cover a large baking tray. Spread the marinara on the pizza base. Spread the vegetables and salami slices evenly, dollop the pesto here and there and sprinkle the cheese on top. Bake for 10-15 minutes until cheese is bubbling and the edges of the crust are crisp and golden.