Going Greekish

My family loves a meatloaf made of minced lamb and filled with feta cheese, olives and tomatoes. Sort of Greekish, I would say, so I started planning our Sunday menu around that theme. 

Lamb in Ireland is always delicious and fresh and I have never had a problem to find the piece of lamb I want (leg, shoulder, rack, mince…) and when I want. Ireland sure is a lamb lover’s paradise!

Even before moving to Ireland I always visualised the country full of green fields with herds of sheep. After moving to Ireland my image changed a little as I more often seem to see myself behind the steering wheel on a narrow country road where suddenly a sheep or a few of them appear from nowhere. I do manage to brake just in time but then realize - damn - why did I hit the brakes after all, it would have been an easy-catch Sunday dinner…

The National Sheep and Goat Census from December 2011 shows that there are nearly 3,5 million sheep in Ireland. The history of herding sheep is long – even St. Patrick was a shepherd for 6 years when he was sent as a slave from Scotland to Ireland in the end of the 4^th century A.D. 

In Finland there has quite surprisingly been sheep already in the Stone Age (article about it in Finnish at tekniikka&talous website) but rather than slaughtered young and used for cooking the animals have mainly been raised for their wool. Even in the Finnish national epic Kalevala the main character Väinämöinen himself is described shearing sheep, spinning the wool into yarn and making clothes of it. - In 2011 there were only 129 000 sheep in Finland which explains not only the fact that Finns do not eat much lamb but also that 80% of all lamb meat in Finland is imported.

What comes to Greece I do not think that much of cooking lamb (other than some odd dishes like moussaka and lamb souvlaki).  My mind rather keeps wandering to the Greek mythology where I remember lamb being a highly respected sacrifice to gods. – According to Eurostat there are about 9 million sheep in Greece.  The Greek not only eat the meat but milk the sheep, and yes, traditional feta cheese is made of sheep milk.

In the current economic climate Greece may not be the word you love but Greek food is absolutely delicious so let’s praise the Greek for that if nothing else. 

*** 

Our Sunday Menu (for 6):

Greek-Style Meatloaf 

Mashed Potatoes

Deep-Fried Courgettes

Tzatziki

Greek Flatbreads

Frozen Halva Parfait

***

I started my Sunday morning with making the parfait as it needs at least a few hours in the freezer before serving.

Frozen Halva Parfait:

6 egg yolks

½ dl / ¼ cup granulated sugar

4 dl / 2½ cups cream

250 g halva

Fresh berries / raspberry coulis / jam

1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until thick and white.

2. Whip the cream.

3. Crumb the halva and add the crumbs to the egg-sugar mixture.

4. Turn in carefully the whipped cream.

5. Pour the mixture into a loaf tin (I used an old ice cream container) and smooth the top. Freeze until firm, at least 4-5 hours but rather overnight.

6. To serve, remove the parfait from the freezer and let it soften slightly. Unmould it onto a plate and cut into slices. As halva is very sweet, berries make your parfait perfect. 

Lamb Meatloaf:

500 g minced lamb

1 egg

1 dl / ½ cup liquid (water, cream, beer)

1 dl / ½ cup dried breadcrumbs

1 tsp salt

black pepper, ground paprika, oregano, basil, chives

Filling:

100 g feta or mozzarella cheese, chopped

1 dl / ½ cup sliced black (or, rather kalamata) olives

1 tomato, chopped

1. Mix the breadcrumbs, salt and spices and add the egg and liquid. Let the mix settle for a few minutes.

2. Add the minced lamb to the breadcrumb mix. I always use my food mixer, but I know some of my friends cannot get the right touch unless doing it by hand.

3. Line a pan with baking parchment and with (olive) oiled hands shape the meat into a 1 cm/ ½” inch thick square, about 25 cm x 25 cm / 10” in size.

4. Mix the chopped cheese and tomato and sliced olives together and place them on the meat. 

5. With the help of the baking parchment roll the meat around the filling and close the ends.

6. Cook the meatloaf in the oven for about 30 min at 175°C / 390°F.

7. Cut the cooked meatloaf into nice and thick slices and serve. I love it with mashed potatoes.

Tzatziki:

2 small cucumbers

1 garlic clove

250 g Greek yoghurt

2 tsp lemon juice

½ tsp salt

pinch of ground black pepper

1. Grate the cucumbers and put the grated cucumber in a sieve to get rid of excess liquid.

2. Crush the garlic.

3. Mix the cucumber, garlic, yoghurt, lemon juice and spices and serve immediately.

Greek Flatbreads:

3 dl / 1 ¼ cup water

9-10 dl / 3½ - 4 cups strong white flour

1 bag (7 g) dried yeast

½ tsp salt

Butter for frying

1. Mix the flour, yeast and salt together.

2. Pour in the warm water.

3. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes and leave to rise until doubled in size.

4. Divide the dough into 16-18 small balls and roll them flat (about 15cm/6”) in diameter.

5. Heat a frying pan.  Melt a little butter (half a teaspoon, maybe) for each bread and cook the breads, both sides, about 1 minute per side.

Deep-Fried Courgettes:

1 medium-size courgette

1 egg

4 tbsp flour

½ tsp salt

½ tsp (smoked) ground paprika

Oil for deep-frying

1. Cut the courgette into thin slices.

2. Mix the egg and milk on one plate and the flour, salt and paprika on another.

3. Dip the courgette slices into the egg mixture.

4. Heat the oil in a pan.

5. Toss the courgette slices in the flour mixture and slip them into the hot oil for about one minute.

 6. Drain the deep-fried slices on kitchen paper.

7. Serve piping hot.

 

Cook’s Notes:

*In Greece there are 0,9 sheep per inhabitant, in Ireland the figure is 0,8 and in Finland only 0,02. The more sheep the worse economy…?

*Frying the flatbreads takes some time. Make them first and warm them up before serving. I ended up having two pans on the stove as everything else was ready and half of the breads were still waiting to be fried.

*The halva parfait melts very quickly so serve it right after you take it out of the freezer.  If you want to get nice pictures have the camera ready in your hand because the parfait is not only melting fast but disappearing fast, too…

Jury’s Comments:

“Make more meatloaf next time!” (Everybody)

“The leftover courgettes are great when just fried but they get all squishy instead of nice and crispy if you heat them in the microwave.” (Husband, after enjoying leftovers for lunch the following day)

La-Di-La-Di… Lard - Pork Pie

I prefer butter in my baking. I add oil to pizza and bread dough, but I hardly ever use margarine, and lard I had never used until now that I saw some interesting pie recipes with lard in the crust.  

Somehow I had got the idea that I would need to ask lard from a butcher’s shop where they would have it hidden behind the counter. After asking for it the butcher would hand me a suspicious-looking white ‘blob’ hanging loosely from a piece of pig’s skin with blue stamps on it… Well, this image of lard in my head probably associates with a Glaswegian gangster Aloysious “Lard” O’Connor – an imposing character in Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street series books – who in  Espresso Tales (2005) is described as “an extremely overweight man” with “fleshy tattooed forearms”.

What comes to the butcher’s I was wrong. There seems to be lard available in every supermarket, neatly packed and piled on the shelves beside the butter I always buy.  This does make sense after I read about the industrial processing of lard and the type of pig fat used for it. You can find instructions how to make lard at home, too, but I don’t think I would bother after buying the nice package costing only 0,59€/250g. 

I browsed various recipes to get ideas for my very first pork pie with a lard crust and decided to use simple ingredients for the filling:  minced pork, smoked bacon, onion and spices.  And some jelly too, just to see if/how it works out.

Crust:

200g lard

2,5dl / 1 cup water

9-10dl / 3½-4 cups plain flour

1. Put the water and lard in a pan over low heat until the lard melts.

2. Add the flour and mix with a spoon until the dough is smooth.

3. Let the dough cool down a little and roll it into a firm ball and let it rest while you make the filling.

Filling:

600g minced pork

200g smoked bacon rashers, chopped

1 onion, chopped

1 clove of garlic, crushed

1-2 tsp salt (if the bacon is very salty, 1tsp is enough)

black pepper, paprika, dried parsley, dried chives

Glazing:

1 egg yolk 

Jelly (optional):

2,5dl / 1 cup vegetable stock

2 gelatine leaves

1. Fry the chopped onion on a pan with some oil. (not necessary but I wanted to make sure the onion is well-cooked when the pie is ready)

2. Mix the minced pork with the chopped bacon, (fried) onion and crushed garlic. Add salt and spices. - Fry a little filling on a pan if you want to check the taste.

3. Grease a loose base cake pan with lard.

4. Take about 2/3 of the dough and press it around the pan, both bottom and sides. For the lid roll the rest of the dough to a circle (a little bigger than the pan).

5. Place the pork mixture evenly on the crust.

6. Put the lid on carefully and pinch the edges together with your fingers. Make a hole in the centre of the lid. If you have any dough left roll it and use a cookie cutter for making decorations.

7. Glaze the lid with egg yolk.

8. Bake in the oven for about 1h 30 min at 175°C / 350°F.

9. Let the baked pie cool in the pan.

10. If you want to add jelly soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for 5 minutes and add them to the hot vegetable stock. Using a funnel, pour the smooth liquid into the hole in the pie.

11. Let the pie set in the fridge at least for 4 hours, then remove the pie from the pan carefully and serve with salad or pickled or sour cucumbers. 

 

Cook’s Notes: 

*Crust made of lard is very easy to handle as it is not sticky at all. I hardly needed any flour even when rolling the lid.

*I found it hard to get the liquid made of vegetable stock and gelatine poured into the pie. It just did not go in but flooded all around. Maybe the filling was too tight and there should be left some room between the lid and the filling (if possible)?

Jury’s Comments:

"Add some roughly chopped apple and a few tablespoons of Calvados next time you make it." (Husband, Calvados Lover)

"Where is the ‘like’ button?" (Son, 13, Screenager and Mouse Potato)

"I love what’s inside but not what’s outside [crust]." (The Little Brother, 6, Carnivore)

"It’s not that nice [but I tasted it!]." (Daughter, 9, Open-minded Critic)

"I’m going to the chipper." (Daughter, 17, Chipperian by Heart)

"Zzzzzz…" (Cats)

Cupcake Fun

”I’m having a sleepover with three of my friends in our house this Saturday and we are going to make cupcakes,” announced my 9-year-old daughter last week. “Here is a shopping list for you!” 

And she had not only made a shopping list, but written invitations to her friends and a schedule what they would do, hour by hour, including having Chinese food for dinner, going to the front yard and have a race, eating non-butter popcorn while watching a movie and going to bed at 1 a.m. The bedtime was the only thing I had to disagree with her. Baking with the girls would be great fun and I was looking forward to seeing their creations.

So shopping I went, after checking what we already had in the kitchen cupboards. It was not easy to find coloured cupcake cases  as Easter was gone and Christmas stuff would not arrive to the shops until in a few weeks or so… Nor was I sure what fondant icing would be as I had never used it before, but I did find it (fondant icing is a ready-made block of icing; it is easy to roll, shape and you can colour it if you like), and got cute coloured paper cupcake cases, too!  

Before the girls arrived I made the dough ready. This is a very basic recipe and enough to make 36 small(ish) cupcakes.

Dough:

300g butter

3 dl / 1 ¼ cup granulated sugar

5 eggs

5dl / 2 cups self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla sugar

(2 tbsp dark cocoa powder)

1. Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy.

2. Add the eggs one at a time.

3. Mix the flour, baking powder and vanilla sugar and fold into the butter-sugar-egg mix.

At this point I divided the dough into two bowls and added 2 tbsp of cocoa powder into the other half.

The eager little bakers filled the cupcake cases - half full as I instructed them to do. Then my job was to bake the cupcakes in the oven at 175°C / 350°F for about 10-15 minutes. 

While the girls were cooling down in the front yard I was waiting for the cupcakes to cool, making some icing and putting things ready for the girls to let them prove their creativity as pastry chefs. 

Icing:

50 g soft butter

3 dl / 1 ¼ cup icing sugar

A few drops of food colouring 

Beat the butter and add the icing sugar gradually. The paste should be smooth and firm, especially if you like to pipe the icing on your cupcakes. Add some water or milk if the icing is too stiff. 

I divided the icing into two bowls colouring the first half of the icing yellow and the rest green.

For decorating we had:

Home-made icing

Fondant icing

Writing icing

Sprinkles

Mini marshmallows

Some odd candies my daughter found from her ‘safe’ (leftovers from her Friday candies)

When everything was ready I called the girls in so they could start making a mess decorating the cupcakes. The little brother wanted to join the team as a sous-chef and to my surprise he was welcomed to do so!

I gave the kids free rein to create their cupcakes as they liked. I helped them with filling in the piper with icing and checked every now and then that they were sharing the two rolling pins we had and not using a whole jar of sprinkles on one cupcake… Otherwise the bakery was fully theirs:

One of my daughter’s favourite food programs is Ace of Cakes and she had learned from there how to make a rose of fondant icing. After making one, her first one ever, she was teaching her friends how to make roses, too.

This one my daughter made from ‘milk teeth’ candies and the tongue is made of fondant icing with some red writing icing on it. Great idea for Halloween!

The little brother could maybe borrow the teeth from the cupcake in the picture above while waiting for his own teeth to  grow… These  cupcakes were his creations which he was very proud of:

As you could see from the pictures, there was icing sugar all over the place and sprinkles everywhere you could think of from the kids’ ears to the cat’s tail, and I found a few little stains of green food colouring on the carpet but the kids had great FUN and so did I!! - And the cupcakes turned out just gorgeous:

After the cupcakes were all ready and set up on the (very shaky) cupcake stand the girls sat at the table and enjoyed some of their precious creations with tea. I packed the remaining cupcakes for the guests to take home the following morning and we all said good night after an absolutely great evening, brushed our teeth (the inedible ones) and went to bed.

***

What comes to the bedtime, the lights were switched off around midnight and the girls were nicely curled up in their sleeping bags in the living room. Yesterday morning my daughter told me that they had been up till 2:35 a.m. but I couldn’t hear a sound from downstairs (at least nothing overpowering my husband’s snoring) so cannot be sure. Last night my daughter did sleep for 13½ hours – how lucky I am she is that it is a bank holiday Monday with no school today so she was able to do so.

A Tin Can…

…save your day. Or rather a few tins of canned food - or cans of tinned food. Whatever you wish to call them. I choose to call them tins today.

I was planning to make pancakes for the kids for their after-school snack, but I was busy doing this and that as it is my older daughter’s 17^th birthday tomorrow (so it is kind of a secret what I did all morning). 

Just before collecting my younger son from school I looked into the kitchen cupboards, found a few tins and ended up making Tuna and Sweetcorn Sandwiches. - Basic ingredients which we always have in the house: tuna, sweetcorn, mayonnaise, mustard, lettuce and toast. 

One of my favourite kitchen gadgets is this electronic tin opener:

It is handy, safe and fast. I don’t find it noisy but for some reason when I use it a cat always appears in the kitchen, usually not fully awake, probably sleepwalking from upstairs, coming to see what is in the tin I am opening. Today I tried to fool her and let her smell the sweetcorn but she was very persistent so I did give her some tuna before I started making the sandwiches.

Tuna and Sweetcorn Sandwiches

(enough to feed four hungry children)

Pack of sliced bread (I had 16 slices of toast)

Filling:

2 tins of tuna (net weight à 185g - minus about 1/4 of a tin I gave to the cat)

1 tin of sweetcorn (80g)

2 tsp lemon juice

1 tbsp mustard

2,5 dl / 1 cup mayonnaise

Lettuce

1. Toast the bread slices.

2. Mix the tuna, sweetcorn, lemon juice, mustard and mayonnaise. Add more mayonnaise if the mixture is too dry.

3. Take two slices of toasted bread at a time, put about two tablespoons of the tuna-sweetcorn mixture and some lettuce if you so wish and press the slices together. I usually pile up the sandwiches and let them rest a few moments (putting something heavy - but not too heavy -  on top helps, too) so the filling will not burst out so easily when cutting the sandwiches.

4. Cut the crusts off first for the sandwiches to look prettier, then cut each sandwich into four triangles, pile them up and put a cocktail stick through each pile of four triangles to hold them together. Decorate with cherry tomatoes, olives, pieces of cucumber or pickles.

Lime Cheesecake

I have been asked several times what my so called signature dish is. Do I have one and is it really something so unique and extraordinary nobody else is able to make anything even close to. Hmm. 

Lime Cheesecake may or may not be my signature dish but it is definitely my "most famous dish". It did not only win the 1^st prize in a Finnish magazine’s (webpage only in Finnish: Kotiliesi) cheese dish competition in 2006 but a piece of my cake was also shown on the Finnish TV the same year in a very popular Finnish soap called Salatut Elämät (see Wikipedia in English ‘Secret Lives’). They used to have a shop in the soap and the soap shop sold, with other real-life products, this very magazine where my piece of cake was pictured on the front page and you could see the magazine on the shelf of the soap shop at least twice and at least for a couple of seconds both times...  - The circulation of the magazine in 2006 was about 160 000 and the soap was attracting about one million viewers per episode so even with overlapping readers and viewers at least one million Finnish people have seen my piece of cake. – To be precise, I did not make the very piece of the cake for the cover page; it was made by the cooks/food editors of the magazine, but it was my recipe!

This Lime Cheesecake I made last weekend. Please find the recipe below.

 Lime Cheesecake

Crust:

150g Digestive cookies, crumbed

75g butter, melted

Filling:

300g Philadelphia Light Cream Cheese (or equivalent, I use e.g. cream cheese brands of Lidl, Tesco or Aldi)

1,5dl / 2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla sugar

6 gelatine leaves

juice of 2 limes

3 egg whites

Decoration:

zest of 1 lime, grated

1. Mix the digestive cookie crumbs and melted butter.  Press the mixture into the bottom of a loose base cake pan, base covered with baking parchment. Let the crust cool and rest in the fridge while you make the filling.

2. Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for 5 minutes.

3. Mix the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla sugar.

4. Heat up the lime juice and melt the soaked gelatine leaves in the hot juice and pour the smooth liquid into the cheese mixture. Mix well.

5. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them very gently into the cheese mixture trying to keep it ‘airy’.

6. Pour the filling on the crust and chill in the fridge at least four hours until firm.

7. Remove the firm cake from the pan very, very carefully on a serving plate and decorate it with grated lime zest. I have this lemon zester which I find very handy:

8. Enjoy!

++++ If you didn't do it yourself already, let your cat lick the crumbs from your plate. 

Welcome to My Celtic Cross-Kitchen!

This is the food blog I have been planning for some time now, the food blog I have been encouraged to start writing, the food blog where I will share not only my recipes but anything I experience in the culinary world  – and where I will definitely emphasize love and beauty and well-being what comes to cooking, baking and eating. 

My Celtic Cross-Kitchen? - I have always loved the Celtic crosses – the fine balance combining handcraft and artistry, and their attention to detail. That is a philosophy I try to implement in my cooking as well. Living in Ireland I try to use local ingredients as much as possible when cooking Irish, Spanish, Hungarian, French, Greek, Oriental… - and obviously never forgetting my background as a Finn, and the culture I grew up in. So very cross-kitchen this is. I love to make it simple and I love tastes as they are. That does not mean I don’t like spices – spices are an essential part of cooking as long as they are not overwhelming. And that does not mean I don’t like combining tastes - some ingredients may work perfectly well together even if you first didn’t believe so.

I have been living in Ireland for 5 years now with my Finnish husband and four children. We are all blessed with no allergies so our kitchen is always open to new experiments. Of course we all do have our odd dislikes (‘mental allergies’ as I call them) - even an adult’s taste buds sometimes need to learn to like something new but open-mindedness is the key word to describe cooking and eating in our family. - For example, all this goes without protest: cooked globe artichokes, oysters, mussels, squid, escargots with garlic butter, lamb, venison, Polish sausages, sour cucumbers, sauerkraut, quail eggs, smoked or cured salmon, Finnish-style sour rye bread, sushi, chicken korma, spinach soup, feta cheese… just to mention a few of the most unusual ones, that is, those not on the daily/weekly menu.

I am happy my family is interested in food and cooking, too, so if I run out of ideas what to have for dinner, somebody always comes up with suggestions and wishes which I respect with enthusiasm, or takes action in the kitchen. Friends are always welcome for dinner and there are many unforgettable culinary moments we have shared. We have also had our children’s birthday parties at home where we have baked or cooked (cookies, pizza, meatballs, to mention a few) with the young guests and the parties have been a great success.

I have shelves full of cookbooks and there are certain food magazines I buy every month; I watch various food programs on TV and I love spending time in shops exploring what is new, what seasonal products there are, what the theme of the week might be in a supermarket, and I search for information where the nearest farmer’s market is or if there is a food fair somewhere. From all of those I absorb new ideas but I very rarely use any recipe as it is. I may combine, substitute, leave out, adapt or add. The result needs to look like mine and taste like mine. Baking, as being a more exact science is the only exception unless I want my cake to turn into a hard brick or my buns not to rise enough.

To be honest, there is never enough time, peace, space (for example, I suffer from a ‘my fridge is too small’ –syndrome) and/or money in my life to cook or bake as perfectly and devotedly as I would love to. So I end up making mistakes or trying too hard, or sometimes I don’t concentrate enough, and I do make shortcuts, too. My lasagne may taste like c**p or my beautiful creamy sauce may turn into something that looks like liquid black pudding. In the morning hassle I may mix up my children’s lunchboxes so that the child who absolutely dislikes a salami sandwich and sliced apples will have a full load of them while the equally unlucky sibling gets crackers with blue cheese and carrot sticks he cannot stand. Sometimes I try to cheat my family by telling that there are actually no kidneys in a steak & kidney pie, or that the pieces of turnip in a stew are potatoes which just look like turnip... - And, worst of all I, every now and then, instead of cooking at all, serve chicken nuggets and chips or frozen pizzas (‘cause they were only 99 cent each, you know…’) and do not even feel guilty when doing so.

After revealing all that, I still dare to say that my cooking is ambitious and I do take it seriously. I am interested in food and culinary cultures more than anything else. Why I never chose cooking as a career is still a mystery to me, but you are never too old for a career change, are you? Nobody can live without food. Some people can live without cooking but I couldn’t and most days I do spend a lot of time in the kitchen. 

If the weekdays fly by with no cooking or baking worth mentioning, Sundays are always the days I take my time and make proper gourmet with thorough planning and first class ingredients. I can spend hours in the kitchen to prepare a 3-course meal. Cooking is not only ‘me-time’ but it is very therapeutic and stress relieving in addition to being an excellent way to test over and over again my creativity and to improve my skills to reach the beauty I am after. And finally, when the meal is served, not all the satisfaction comes from the food itself but from the precious moment when I have my whole family sitting together at the dinner table. 

Nice to meet you all in My Celtic Cross-Kitchen! The story is to begin now...