It’s Christmas Time!

For someone who doesn’t observe Christmas, the holiday season means another year will come to an end. Like in 2011, I will take a break from blogging until February. It is the darkest period with a few hours decent daylight, which makes photographing impractical. Instead, I will concentrate on recipe developing and, hopefully, come back with a renewed enthusiasm next year.

I would like to thank you for visiting the blog, engaging in conversation via comments and exchanging private letters with me. I appreciate your feedback, and value your encouragement and well-wishes. Although I am a new blogger who is still defining an angle, you have been patient and understanding. I hope, I haven been able to offer something useful to you, too. With these traditional Finnish recipes, I wish you a warm and peaceful Christmas and a happy new year!

Let’s start with joulutorttu (Christmas pastry) that is a palm-size puff-pastry, shaped as a star, flower or half moon. There is usually prune-jam in the middle, but any other preserve that tolerates baking will do, too. For the dough, I’ve used butter, flour and cream. Remember to keep it as cold as possible when rolling out the pastries! If warm, it will be impossible to handle.

As for the instructions of how to shape the pastry as small flowers, please pardon, both, my visual and written aids! Unfortunately I lacked skills in making either of them clear. I guarantee, though, they are easier to make than it looks like. When you come to the point of having many small squares with slits cut on the edges and jam in the centre, you’ll be able to figure out how to fold them properly! Hopefully these instructions will assist.

There isn’t a household in this country that doesn’t serve mulled wine, glögi, during the winter holidays. My non-alcohol version is based on black-currant juice and boosted with orange, lemon, lime, fresh ginger and warming spices. It is just the right thing to enjoy when coming home from a snow storm!

I have already made three batches of piparkakku, gingerbread. I love the combination of ginger, cinnamon and cloves. Sometimes the cookies are made thick and chewy, sometimes thin and crisp. Usually decorated with a mixture of lemon juice and powder sugar, they are as beautiful to look at as to be eaten. I piped mine with white chocolate which is easier but not the best idea considering that chocolate remains soft in room temperature.

I have found that the tastiest gingerbread cookies are made of finely milled wholegrain spelt. I wouldn’t use flour that has a volume of bran, though. All-purpose flour is commonly used.

Here is a simple layout for those of you who would like to make a gingerbread house. If you plan and cut patterns beforehand, you will end up with functional architecture. The pieces are glued together with melted sugar. It’s a process that calls for swift hands! A tip you will like: decorate the pieces before assembling the house!

This is my dream house. Well, except I'd like to have more windows! It would be a small clay rendered straw bale hut that has a loft interior with an open kitchen. Having a hearth, there would always be a faint fragrance of wood and camphor. The ornaments would be made of cow dung! How would your dream house look like?

Stay warm, do good and be satisfied! See you soon, again.

With love, Lakshmi

OH, SUMMER!

It is the beginning of August! Time passes so fast. I was off-line for a month and it went like a blink of an eye.

Everyone has been complaining about the weather. It is unpredictable. I don’t mind rain or cloudy skies. My concern is: dearest Summer, please, don’t leave us yet!

You are so beautiful and vital! And abundant with fragrant herbs, vegetables, fruits and berries.

Your rapeseed fields have the softest hue of yellow.

A little is needed for a tasty soup: freshly picked kale, mixed herbs, green lentils, olive oil, salt and simple spices. Edible flowers and weeds add flavour and character.

Daisies, bluebells and clovers, among other natural gems, make the most valuable jewellery.

Oh, Summer, you are a leisurely treasury.

Around sunrise you cover lakes, rivers and valleys with mist. Your silence is broken by the awakening of birds.

My favourite time to greet you is before 5 am. You push the sun to remove ignorance, and to illuminate.

The play of light performs and paints.

You make all colours and patterns look compatible.

Your warm wind perfumes.

Tarts and cakes embody you.

Forest blueberries and garden currants are hidden inside a home-milled, wholegrain crust and covered with organic cream.

Please, stay a little longer! Let us breathe your greenness until you wilt away.

Thank you.

Summer Soup (Kesäkeitto)

There are dishes of collective emotional attachment in every culture. Summer soup or kesäkeitto, as it is called in Finnish, is such. In the country where a summer season is far too short and offers barely a crop a year, every bite of local harvest is honoured. When the first baby potatoes reach farmers market, people rush to buy them, even, if they cost 16 € per kilo! There is something primeval about cooking and eating native produce.

In order to appreciate Finnish cuisine, which is plain and modest, one should challenge to live here, at least, through a winter. After nine dark months of vacuum packed and gassed greenhouse fruits and vegetables flown unripe from Spain and Italy, a humble potato with a pinch of salt, dab of butter and a stalk of dill will taste like a gourmet delight.

The basic summer soup is made of vegetables, milk, butter, salt and dill. If I remember correctly, my grandmother used allspice, too. She would unfold a clean linen cloth onto a table in the shadow corner of the patio, set the plates, spoons and glasses, and carry outside a serving bowl of soup, fresh rye-bread, butter and lemonade. I can still hear our lunchtime conversation mixed with the purling of a small fountain, rustling of garden plants and chirping of birds.

Another unbeatable bonus about Finnish summer is wild berries. Strawberries come first, then blueberries, cranberries, raspberries and cloudberries.

These wild strawberries were picked from a gentle forest hill behind our home. Nothing more than sweet whipped cream is needed for a perfect dessert.

Sophistication is compensated by quality in simple cooking. If the ingredients are first class and treated with proper care and skill, the experience will be satisfactory. Attention to detail always increases value. It also gives a personal touch.

Happy summer!