Considering my love of food and my motivation for keeping this blog I have a terrible habit of not taking pictures of stuff that make their way through my head, fridge and cupboard. So yet again...
True to my cross kitchen and idea stealing style I made some fab nibbles on saturday. The fact that I thought I made cocktail nibbles for 30 and there were 20ish of us and we ran out pretty fast is either a testimony that we were short of food or probably, the food was good, or both.
Did some quick and easy rieska rolls, filled up with cold-cut meat (smoked lamb is fantastic in this), stirfried mushrooms, philadelphia cheese, oven-roasted bell peppers, chopped parsley and black pepper. Filling, rolling and slicing up quickly makes it look like you did a lot of work when actually you were watching Anthony Bourdain on tv at the same time...
For those of you unfamiliar with rieska, Wikipedia defines: "Rieska are unleavened barley-based flat breads, which are made similarly to crispbreads, but are not dried into a crisp. They are often served warm and buttered and consumed with milk.". Makes it all so clear doesn't it?
In short, I'd say, it is the north of the polar circle answer to tortilla bread, a little less chewy and fluffier but almost as thin, made with barley and sometimes with potato in it too. Some are baked round, some rectangular and the Swedish streetside hotdogstands use it to serve up a dog with potato salad and roast onions. Genious!
For a big plateful I used 6 approx 20x30cm rieskas, 400g philadelphia, 200g cold cuts, 2,5 roasted peppers and half a bunch of parsley (maybe 50g). I mixed it all up, spread the mix on the bread, rolled them up, let them rest in the fridge til' closer to the party before cutting them up. Too self-evident to really have to mention, right?
The black bread-garlicmayo-smoked salmon-gari (sprinkled with black sesame seeds just for the pretty contrast) was a major success. No cooking involved, just getting the ingredients, slicing bread and putting it all together. Need to repeat this, soon.
I do feel I should invest in a mandolin to make my own gari in bulk, the stuff in the shop is way overpriced and not very good, a potato peeler does the trick but it is much slower. To do that, you just need to warm up the vinaigrette to dissolve the sugar, shave the ginger root thinly and marinate.
It doesn't take much ingredients either, just 1 part ginger, 1 part vinegar ( just plain rice, or go wild with fruit vinegars), sugar/cane sugar/honey to taste (about 2-4 tbsp for 1 dl vinegar). The young fresh and tender ginger will turn pink, the stuff you get in the finnish supermarket need a drop of beetroot juice in the vinegar to make it pink. Serve with cold cut fish of any kind, don't restrict yourself to just sushi.
Another hit was my dear friend's chocolate cheesecake, tweaked a little from a Pirkka recipe. Make sure to use organic eggs, the flavour of the eggs makes all the difference. The almond flour crust bakes to a lovely crispy bisquit that I'll surely be using for berry tarts next summer.
For the crust, mix 1dl almond flour with 2dl plain flour,1dl sugar, 50g butter and 1 egg. Perhaps add a pinch of sea salt to put the almond in the limelight next time. Line a cake tin (about 26cm diametre) with removable sides and butter it up, press out the base crumbles over the sides and base and place in the fridge to set. To pre-bake (and make it crispier), pinch the base with a fork to avoid it rising and bake for 10 mins in 225C.
For the filling, whisk 200g philadelphia cheese, 2dl heavy cream, 3 eggs, 1,5dl sugar, then sift in 0,5dl dark cocoa powder and mix thoroughly. Pour the batter in the crust and bake in 175C on the lowest level in the oven for 45 mins. Let cool and serve.
I wouldn't have managed to show any pictures of this one either though, if it wasn't that my friend and I was planning to make two cakes, 1 full and 1 half size, but as all the guests started turning up we just finished the full size and hid the prepped crust for the small one in the fridge. This is why it ended up on the breakfast table the next day and onto my camera...What a way to start a Sunday morning!
True to my cross kitchen and idea stealing style I made some fab nibbles on saturday. The fact that I thought I made cocktail nibbles for 30 and there were 20ish of us and we ran out pretty fast is either a testimony that we were short of food or probably, the food was good, or both.
Did some quick and easy rieska rolls, filled up with cold-cut meat (smoked lamb is fantastic in this), stirfried mushrooms, philadelphia cheese, oven-roasted bell peppers, chopped parsley and black pepper. Filling, rolling and slicing up quickly makes it look like you did a lot of work when actually you were watching Anthony Bourdain on tv at the same time...
For those of you unfamiliar with rieska, Wikipedia defines: "Rieska are unleavened barley-based flat breads, which are made similarly to crispbreads, but are not dried into a crisp. They are often served warm and buttered and consumed with milk.". Makes it all so clear doesn't it?
In short, I'd say, it is the north of the polar circle answer to tortilla bread, a little less chewy and fluffier but almost as thin, made with barley and sometimes with potato in it too. Some are baked round, some rectangular and the Swedish streetside hotdogstands use it to serve up a dog with potato salad and roast onions. Genious!
For a big plateful I used 6 approx 20x30cm rieskas, 400g philadelphia, 200g cold cuts, 2,5 roasted peppers and half a bunch of parsley (maybe 50g). I mixed it all up, spread the mix on the bread, rolled them up, let them rest in the fridge til' closer to the party before cutting them up. Too self-evident to really have to mention, right?
The black bread-garlicmayo-smoked salmon-gari (sprinkled with black sesame seeds just for the pretty contrast) was a major success. No cooking involved, just getting the ingredients, slicing bread and putting it all together. Need to repeat this, soon.
I do feel I should invest in a mandolin to make my own gari in bulk, the stuff in the shop is way overpriced and not very good, a potato peeler does the trick but it is much slower. To do that, you just need to warm up the vinaigrette to dissolve the sugar, shave the ginger root thinly and marinate.
It doesn't take much ingredients either, just 1 part ginger, 1 part vinegar ( just plain rice, or go wild with fruit vinegars), sugar/cane sugar/honey to taste (about 2-4 tbsp for 1 dl vinegar). The young fresh and tender ginger will turn pink, the stuff you get in the finnish supermarket need a drop of beetroot juice in the vinegar to make it pink. Serve with cold cut fish of any kind, don't restrict yourself to just sushi.
Another hit was my dear friend's chocolate cheesecake, tweaked a little from a Pirkka recipe. Make sure to use organic eggs, the flavour of the eggs makes all the difference. The almond flour crust bakes to a lovely crispy bisquit that I'll surely be using for berry tarts next summer.
For the crust, mix 1dl almond flour with 2dl plain flour,1dl sugar, 50g butter and 1 egg. Perhaps add a pinch of sea salt to put the almond in the limelight next time. Line a cake tin (about 26cm diametre) with removable sides and butter it up, press out the base crumbles over the sides and base and place in the fridge to set. To pre-bake (and make it crispier), pinch the base with a fork to avoid it rising and bake for 10 mins in 225C.
For the filling, whisk 200g philadelphia cheese, 2dl heavy cream, 3 eggs, 1,5dl sugar, then sift in 0,5dl dark cocoa powder and mix thoroughly. Pour the batter in the crust and bake in 175C on the lowest level in the oven for 45 mins. Let cool and serve.
I wouldn't have managed to show any pictures of this one either though, if it wasn't that my friend and I was planning to make two cakes, 1 full and 1 half size, but as all the guests started turning up we just finished the full size and hid the prepped crust for the small one in the fridge. This is why it ended up on the breakfast table the next day and onto my camera...What a way to start a Sunday morning!
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| Chocolate cheescake and January sunshine |
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