Garden update

It's time for another garden update. Everything is growing like crazy! I have already dried a few batches of herbs, and there will be plenty more of that to come. I'm excited to see when the first tomatoes will ripen and how much courgettes our numerous courgette plants will churn out. Expect a courgette recipe or two if everything goes to plan.

Lets start in the greenhouse:

It's a jungle, there's hardly room to move around anymore.

Courgette season has kicked off.

Fist cucumber in the making.

However the cucumber managed to grow a tentacle all the way to that cane I don't know. It will henceforth be known as Spiderman cucumber.

Broccoli waiting to be transplanted outside. 

The first tomato has been spotted.

 Next the trees:

I hope this means it will be a good season for apples.

This is apparently Black Lace Elderflower. I can't remember it having any fruit last year, but I may have overlooked it as I didn't know what it was. This year I'll definitely make something out of it.

Loads of new bay leaves coming along.

Outside in the garden:

Can't wait for these babies to turn red.

Chives - not only tasty, but very pretty too!

The goosberry bush is heavy with fruit.

Potatoes are coming along nicely.

And as usual, I'll end with some random very pretty flowers:

Paella

Yesterday was just one of those days... It all started out well and good with light traffic so I made good time on the commute to work, got some unfinished business finished, our study donors both showed up and everything went well. I headed home early to avoid the bank holiday weekend rush hour traffic... Or so I thought. And then I was stuck on the A14 standing still in a massive congestion due to a three car accident a few exits up the road. People, be carful out there! I don't understand why everyone gets so aggressive when driving a car, it's all about speeding and making risky manoeuvres to overtake and then boom! And no-one can get anywhere. And there I sat for an hour on the road, wishing to get home. 

But when I finally got home (after passing another accident in one of the accident-prone big roundabouts), I get home to the water softener leaking water all over the place due to a worn down pipe that was leaking. The cupboard under the kitchen sink was full of water and it had leaked onto the floor under the kitchen cupboards... So we had to pull out the skirting board under the cupboards and blast the heating to get it to start to dry. I guess our kitchen will look like a construction zone for the next week or so until it has all dried out. Thankfully we detected the problem quite soon, so I am hoping there is no major damage and we can get it all to dry out, but this miserable cold and wet weather is doing nothing to help. 

So currently we only have water in the kitchen tap, and I'm waiting for the Culinary Consultant to make it out of bed, head off to get a new pipe and install it so I can get a shower, flush the toilets (ewwwww!!) and clean the house before our weekend guests arrive. Oh the joys of owning your own house. Although I have to admit, having a very handy boyfriend is... well... very handy, as I would have had no idea what to do about this whole business of a geysir under my sink. And I'm so worried it won't dry out properly and then we get all sorts of problems with mould and whatnot. Here is to hoping that was the last domestic crisis for a while. And could someone please do something about this miserable weather! I know it's tropical summer in Finland while it's monsoon season here. How unfair is that? It is just literally pouring down right now, here is to the bank holiday weekend...

A day like this calls for some good food. Maybe food from a more sunny place. As I have been posting nothing but brunch recipes for quite a while (and expect a few more to come), I thought I would interrupt the theme for one post by posting this paella we made a while ago. And as I'm on the theme of complaining, let me do one more. Why, oh why, is the paella rice not with all the other rice in our grocery store, but in a completely different isle? I would think if you want rice, you would go look for it in the rice section. But hey, that would be too easy wouldn't it? Ok, I'm all done now, I hope you all are having a better weekend out there!!

Paella (serves 4):
1 tbsp olive oil
2 onions
3 cloves of garlic
1 green pepper
2 tbsp paella spice
2 tbsp smoked paprika (I used a mix of spicy and mild)
black pepper
300 g paella rice
1.2 l vegetable broth
3 tbsp marsala wine (should have been sherry, but we didn't have any)
150 g sliced chorizo (the one I used was smoked paprika and garlic)
350 g cooked seafood mix (the one I used had mussels, squid and prawns)
1/2 cup sweetcorn (or peas, but we didn't have any peas)
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley

To serve: lemon wedges and parsley

The howto:
Slice the onions, chop the garlic and green pepper. In a large frying pan, cook the onion in the oil until starting to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and green pepper and cook for another 5 minutes. Add the paella spice, smoked paprika and black pepper. Add the rice and cook for a few minutes. Add the vegetable stock and let cook until the rice is cooked, about 30-40 minutes. Add the marsala, chorizo, seafood mix, sweetcorn and parsley and let cook for a few more minutes to make sure everything is heated through. Serve with a sprinkling of parsley and a lemon wedge on top.

The verdict:
I thought making paella would be time consuming but it turned out to be rather easy. Unlike risotto, you can add all the liquid into the rice at once and just leave it to slowly cook, just stirring every once in a while to make sure it doesn't stick to the pan. The paella spice we bought on our trip to Tenerife last year was nice, it had a lot of flavour, as did the marsala wine. Don't skip the marsala wine! I really enjoyed the paella, with a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice on top it was a great dinner with very different flavours to what we usually eat. It was also still good to re-heat for lunch the next day, although the mussels do tend to get a bit chewy when re-heated.

BLT waffles

What a glorious weekend we have had, I hope it has been as lovely for you wherever you are. I enjoyed the sun with a glass of ice cold Pimms in my hand. I really like the new blackberry and elderflower flavour. Our garden is perfect for slouching in the sun as it gets sunlight pretty much all through the day, although I did have to move into the shade of the plum tree for a while when it got a bit too hot for my delicate tastes.

We also had our first al fresco brunch on Saturday with the Culinary Consultant, enjoying these amazing BLT waffles. My family will come and visit in July, so I have been working very hard (what a chore it is, poor me!) to identify acceptable brunch recipes. So far I have found way too many, and this one will go onto the ever growing list. And there was another great one this weekend as well, watch this space...

Brunch in the garden

On a completely different note, am I the only person who can't understand why computer games have to be so incredibly loud? Most of the sound effects are just soooo annoying. I can't understand how the other inhabitant in this house can stand them for hours and hours on end. Either the sound of fighting, shooting and grunting or car chases and sirens. Luckily the house is large enough so there are places to go where the noise doesn't follow (perchance the craft room...), but I can't imagine listening to it non-stop for two days. Just goes to show the male brain is wired differently.

Today's recipe for our al fresco brunch is from Joy The Baker, and the photos over there are just amazing so pop over and have a look! As soon as I saw this recipe, I knew Claude (the waffle maker, aka. the love of my life) would come out of the closet this weekend. But even with my less impressive photos, these waffles are still amazing. I adore a good weekend brunch, usually we go and get the weekly grocery shop done and then I make something delicious for us to eat and get the weekend started for real.

Cheddar and buttermilk BLT waffles (makes 6):
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of black pepper
1 tbsp sugar
1/3 cup (75 g) melted unsalted butter
2 large eggs
1 1/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup grated cheddar (I added a few tbsp of grated parmesan as well)

For the sandwiches:
Mayonnaise (I used a cracked pepper and garlic mayonnaise)
Tomatoes
Lettuce
Cooked bacon

The howto:
Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. In another bowl, mix the butter, eggs and buttermilk. Mix all ingredients together and add the cheese. Or if you are lazy like me, mix all the ingredients together in one bowl, seemed to work well enough and saves time and washing up. 

Let the batter rest while the waffle maker is heating up. Cook according to instructions. For me that meant six minutes on 2/3 of the maximum heat. The batter makes six large waffles. Keep the waffles hot in the oven while cooking the rest of them. While the waffles are cooking, cook the bacon either in the oven or in a pan depending on your preference.
I didn't make proper waffle "sandwiches", just topped the waffles with mayonnaise, tomato, lettuce straight from our own greenhouse and a few slices of bacon.

The verdict:
This waffle recipe was really great. It has enough butter to give the waffles that slightly crispy crust after you let them rest for a minute or two on a wire rack after cooking. But there isn't too much butter to make them too buttery. (As a sideline, why on earth do all US recipes give butter measurements in cups? Would you really just melt a random amount of butter and then measure up 1/3 cup? I wouldn't! I certainly want to have my butter measures in weight, not volume to avoid any waste of perfectly good butter). The cheddar brings loads of flavour. I think out of all the savoury waffles I have made, so far these are my favourites. I also love BLTs so no wonder I loved this brunch. They went down a treat with the Culinary Consultant as well. I guess you could always add a bit of scrambled egg or an egg sunny side up if you wanted, but for us this was a substantial enough brunch on it's own. I popped a few of the leftover waffles in the freezer and took the last leftover waffle to work and enjoyed as my Monday morning breakfast treat. It sure made the start of the week better!

Rhubarb kissel and semolina pudding

This is another post where I have learned something new about some of my childhood foods. When we were children, we would often have oatmeal for breakfast. Every now and then we would have porridge deluxe, i.e. semolina porridge. It was such a treat. In Finnish semolina is called "manna", and I had no idea what it was called in English, so I just assumed you couldn't get it over here. However through some coincidence or other I learned that it was called semolina and that you could get in pretty much any supermarket. So I got myself a large bag of coarse semolina (it's still not quite the same as the Finnish "manna" but works well enough) and have enjoyed the occasional treat of semolina porridge (or pudding, as I think it's called over here. But basically it's just a porridge!)

Another food I had always assumed was pretty much Finnish was the "kiisseli". I haven't found anything resembling it in the UK. However, for this post, I decided to do some research, and lo and behold, I have learned that "kiisseli", called kissel in English (thank you Wikipedia) is a Slavic dish, and the name (which I always thought was a "real" Finnish word) comes from the Slavic word for sour. I have also learned that according to Wikipedia kissel is a "viscous fruit dish". Basically, it's fruit or berries cooked in a bit of water (with sugar) and then thickened with cornstarch, potato starch or arrowroot. As a child, I remember when I was in daycare, we used to have it a lot as a dessert. Strawberry kissel, rhubarb kissel, blueberry kissel. It's a nice dessert or breakfast, it can be enjoyed with porridge, ice cream, custard or just as is. I really love rhubarb kissel, it's not too sweet (and you can adjust the amount of sugar to make it exactly how you like it) and  it just tastes of summer. It's also ridiculously easy and quick to make.

Semolina pudding (serves 4-6):
1l milk
1 1/4 dl (1/2 cup) semolina
pinch of salt

Rhubarb kissel (serves 6-8):
500 g rhubarb
400 ml water
100 ml sugar
2 tbsp corn- or potato starch
1/2 tsp vanilla syrup

The HowTo:
For the semolina pudding, bring the milk to a boil in a large saucepan (preferably non-stick if you have one, but any saucepan will work). Add the semolina and salt, cook until the pudding thickens, about 15-20 minutes.

For the rhubarb kissel, chop the rhubarb into about 1/2 inch thick pieces. Put the rhubarb, water and sugar in a saucepan, bring to a boil and let cook for a few minutes until the rhubarb has softened. Mix the starch with a tablespoon or two of water. Take the rhubarb mixture off the hob, very slowly pour in the starch and water mixture, while stirring. Put the mixture back onto the hob, and bring to a gentle boil for another minute or so to thicken the kissel. You can serve the kissel and pudding warm (not hot) or cold.

The verdict:
I'm  sorry for choosing another one of those foods that just isn't photogenic at all. And I need to get some glass bowls for photography... But as usual, it's not the looks that counts, and I wouldn't blog about it unless I loved it. This is comfort food at it's best. It's perfect for breakfast or pudding. Or why not a light lunch. You can have the semolina pudding on it's own or with jam or fresh fruit. You can have the kissel on it's own, or with ice cream or custard. And with rhubarb season in full swing, this is definitely worth a try! 

CAU Cambridge

I don't usually do restaurant reviews. Mostly because I don't eat out very much. I also find most restaurants pretty much the same, I enjoy the food but its not special enough to knock my socks off. Recently me, Sis and the Culinary Consultant headed to CAU Cambridge for a celebratory meal. And I have to admit I was rather impressed. I also apologise for having only a few pictures and them being bad quality, I only decided to write this review after all food had already been sampled and by that time I was so absorbed in the experience of eating that taking pictures was far from my mind.

CAU is part of a chain of restaurants inspired by Buenos Aires cuisine. And that, my friends, means meat. Not just any meat, very nice meat cooked to absolute perfection. There are vegetarian dishes on the menu as well, and while they were very nice (my Sis sampled quite a few of them), in my opinion there is no point in going to CAU if you aren't planning on having meat.

We started our meal with drinks and the bread basket which is served with chipotle butter while we were perusing the menu. The breads were nice and fresh, but I was a bit worried about the chipotle butter as I don't do spicy. However, it was very mild and perfect for me. In fact, I think I fell in love with that butter! It was so good, I had to restrain myself from using my finger to wipe off the leftover butter from the little ramekin when we had finished the bread!

Sis chose to have several of the small plates and sides, and the Culinary Consultant had one of the huge steaks with chips and causlaw (as the menu says, "it's like coleslaw but better"). But although I say it myself, I think my selection was definitely the winner of the night. Tapa de cuadril, thinly sliced beef grilled in a way I have never had meat before. It was the most tender meat I have ever had, I swear it melted in my mouth without chewing. Although the meat was thinly sliced, it was still beautifully pink in the middle of the thin slices. When I had my first bite, I just couldn't believe meat could be this good! I had my meat with crunchy, golden, beautiful (and triple fried) chunky chips and some more of the chipotle butter. Healthy? Not even close! Delicious? Understatement of the century!!!

In addition to the good food, the service was very friendly and relatively quick although it was a Saturday evening (but we dined right at the start of the evening, before the mad rush). The food was reasonably priced in relation to the quality, but certainly not a cheap meal. I will definitely go back, for some more of that lovely meat but also to try the CAU cornflake ice cream Sundae which I was sadly deprived of as my fellow diners didn't feel like having dessert. I watched a gentleman in the table next to us have it, and let me say, I just have to have one for myself!

Disclaimer, I have not been asked for, or compensated in any way for this review. It's just my opinion of a restaurant I thought was very nice.

 

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Garden update

I thought it would be time for another garden update as it's been a while. I'm still cut off the Interwebs, so I'm blogging from my iPad which gets just enough of a signal on 3G for me to be able to post, but don't expect much text as typing on a virtual keypad is not all too much fun. But at least I'm not completely cut off from the outside world. The Culinary Consultant is on the phone yet again to the ISP, but they are useless as usual.

Anyhows, on to better things than dysfunctional Internet connections. This week the garden is all about the fruit trees. You can already see lots of fruit developing, I'm excitedly keeping track of everything. If all goes well, there will be quite a bit of cherries, pears and plums again this year. There is even a few apricots developing, last year we didn't get a single apricot and I'm hoping the birds won't eat all this year, so we would at least get a small taster.

Let's start out in the greenhouse:

Tomato plants are turning into a jungle!

The lettuce and coriander are doing well, the basil got eaten by slugs, so I planted some more basil in pots where they hopefully can't reach it.

Courgettes are going through quite a growth spurt

Baby grapes!

Then a look outside in the garden:

The engineer in the house built a support frame for the corn

Garlic shoots and some leeks In the background

Hopefully this means there will be plenty of strawberries this year

And then the fruit trees:

Plenty of plums

The fine figs

Cheerful cherries

Amazing apricots

And to finish, a few non-edible garden delights:

 

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Chimichurri tomato salad with halloumi

It's been a while since my last post. It wasn't supposed to be that long... Life got a bit hectic this week. All good hectic, but no time for crafting, cooking or blogging. I saw friends, did pilates, and I can't even remember what I did on Tuesday and why I didn't have time to blog then, but it was something I'm sure. I was so tired last night I couldn't even be bothered to plan the weekend's cooking so we are going to have roast chicken this weekend. Again. Sigh. I am a failure as a food blogger! However, this morning I had a browse through the blogosphere and found this amazing recipe for chimichurri tomato salad on Tartelette. It looked so amazing that I had to try it out immediately!

Our own tomato season is still far away, although the tomato plants in the greenhouse are growing at lighting speed and a few flowers have already been spotted. Luckily the tomatoes in the grocery store have started to look red instead of that pale orange-y colour they have been all winter. So I bought myself a bunch of tomatoes and picked the herbs for the chimichurri right out of my own garden for this refreshing salad which is exploding with taste. The original recipe consists of the salad served with battered halloumi. I thougth I would keep it a bit healthier and just serve the halloumi lightly grilled without the panko crust, but hop over to the original blog post for a look for the crusted alternative.

Chimichurri tomato salad with halloumi (serves 2 as main or 4 as appetizer):
For the chimichurri:
1 cup parsley
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
4 cloves of garlic
1/3 cup chives
juice of one lemon
1/4 cup olive oil

For the salad:
1 lb (450 g) tomatoes
1/4 to 1/3 cup chimichurri
1/2 red onion
1 cup micro greens
1 lb (450 g) halloumi

The howto:
Take all the ingredients for the chimichurri and blitz them in a food processor until finely chopped. For the salad, slice the tomatoes and finely slice the onion. Mix all ingredients apart from the halloumi. Slice the halloumi into thick slices and pan fry over medium heat for a few minutes per side until it has turned golden. Serve immediately.

The verdict:
This is a super easy and quick salad. I think the chimichurri which is exploding with flavours from the parsley, chives and garlic goes really well with the salty halloumi. I served the salad with a bit of bacon on the side as well to appease the meat-eater in the house (and we had a few slices of bacon which needed using up so I thought why not). I was afraid that the combination of the salty bacon and halloumi would be to much, but it was well balanced by the strong flavours of the chimichurri and the sweet tomatoes. I can't wait to make this from my own tomatoes, which will be even more sweeter than the store bought ones. 

I have to admit, the measures in the recipe above are directly from the Tartlette recipe. When I made my salad, I couldn't be bothered to measure anything, just used what I thought would be a good amount of the ingredients and made a serving for two (I used 3 big red tomatoes and 4 medium sized yellow tomatoes, 2 cloves of garlic, 125 g halloumi and the rest of the ingredients to taste). If you have any chimichurri left after making the salad, it keeps for a day or two in the fridge and goes great with grilled beef

.