Forest mushroom soup

I have been neglecting the food blog lately. I know it's a bad excuse, but it just feels like the days flow away and it's always bedtime long before I would be ready for bed. And lately, with a load of cute new stamps just having arrived at my door, I have definitely been spending more time in the craft room than in the kitchen. This is a recipe I made a little while ago, but didn't get around to posting immediately.

This soup will only work if you have dried mushrooms which have been lovingly hand picked from the Finnish forest and then slowly dried in Finnish sauna. And the picking and drying has to be done by Mum, because that gives the soup just that extra little additional ingredient of love. So don't even try this unless you have those Mum picked mushrooms. Just kidding, just kidding. You can substitute with other mushrooms according to taste and preference.

My mum has given me plenty of dried mushrooms, and I haven't been very good at using them. I recently had a cold, and skipped eating dinner for two nights in a row just because I was too tired to even think of chewing anything. On the third day, my solution was to make this lovely soup.

Mushroom soup (serves 4 as a starter):
2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions
1 stalk of celery
300 g fresh mushrooms (I used closed cup mushrooms)
1 litre (4 cups) veggie stock
1/3 cup dried and crushed funnel chanterelle
a handful of dried, whole chanterelles
1 cup single cream
black pepper to taste

The howto:
Chop the onions and celery. Peel and slice the fresh mushrooms. In a large saucepan, sauté the onions and celery in the olive oil for a few minutes. Add the fresh mushrooms and sauté for another few minutes. Add the veggie stock and dried mushrooms. Cover with a lid and cook for about 40 minutes. Add the cream, season with pepper to taste and quickly let come to a boil. Serve with fresh bread.

The verdict:
The soup is really warming and comforting. There is just something special about making a soup from mushrooms that have been picked from a forest instead of bought from a supermarket. I think chanterelles are the tastiest mushrooms out there. I haven't seen them very much in the UK, so you better stock up on them if you ever happen to visit Finland. This is perfect comfort food. 

Garden update

The internet wasn't playing ball at all yesterday, today it's a bit patchy but seems to be up for now. Better get this post written really quickly before it decides to disappear again. On the positive side, all this time without internet has gotten me back in the habit of reading a book instead of blogs before bedtime. It's a long time since I finished any books, but now I am over halfway through the third Game of Thrones. It took my brain a while to get back into reading mode, I was struggling to read for any length of time, but the last few days I've spent hours reading. Brain is back in gear. 

In the garden, the main feature is the apple tree which is stunningly beautiful in full bloom. Hoping there will be lots of insects out there pollinating so we will have loads of apples. Hopefully they will be better than the ones we had last year which were full of black spots. Other than that, we are suffering from a major slug problem in the greenhouse and a major rabbit problem in the garden. Bye bye lettuce.

The apple tree is gorgeous.

Methinks we have a slug problem?

And the same aubergine, or should I say ex-aubergine a few days later...

Baby pears, can't wait for them to grow big and strong and tasty.

Success with sweet peppers, after the first batch just refused to germinate.

This year's first strawberry flowers.

Carrot cake waffles

I'm not quite sure what's going on with me lately. My energy levels are non-existant. Today, I woke up at my usual time, had a quick trip to the supermarket and got back. Got into bed and slept for another three hours, until two in the afternoon! I never take naps, they make me feel dreadful, and I'm currently having that slightly hung over feeling of exhaustion you get after a nap that turned out way too long. And for full disclosure, I have to admit, I grabbed my computer and am now doing my blogging in bed. No intention to go back to sleep, but I felt too tired to sit in a chair. I'm sure whatever this is will blow over soon, but it feels very uncharacteristic and strange. 

Probably due to whatever flunk I'm in, I haven't gotten anything done lately. No cooking, no crafting, no blogging, no cleaning and no gardening. Last weekend I oven roasted a leg of lamb in mint and garlic pesto (at least that was home made) and a big chunk of beef silverside. All week, we have been eating meat with various veg. We got a ginormous cauliflower and some sprouting broccoli from the Culinary Consultant's Dad when we visited during the Easter break. That along with the amazing harvest of asparagus and a long forgotten broccoli in the back of the fridge kept us going all week. The Culinary Consultant was thrilled with the amount of meat, whereas come Friday I had all the meat I could take. So for dinner, I had a huge plate of asparagus and cauliflower with a good know of butter on top. One of the perks of being a grown up, you can have whatever the heck you want for dinner!

These waffles were pretty much the only thing I got around to cooking last weekend. The recipe is used without modification as it was published on Adventures in the Baking Aisle.

Carrot cake waffles (makes 4-5):
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs
2 cups finely grated carrots

The howto:
In a bowl mix the flour, walnuts, baking powder and spices. In another bowl, mix sugar, buttermilk, oil, vanilla and eggs. Mix together, add carrots and give a quick stir. To be honest, I just mixed all ingredients in one bowl, as I couldn't see a point to get two bowl dirty for this. It turned out great. 

Cook in your waffle maker according to instructions. I did mine on 2/3 of maximum heat for about 6 minutes each. Makes 4-5 waffles, for me it made 4 full size and one slightly smaller. Serve with maple syrup or cream cheese frosting.

The verdict:
These waffles are much softer and more cake-y than the Belgian type of waffles I usually make. The crispy crust of the Belgian waffles comes from the butter and the sugar. These waffles are much softer due to the lack of butter and smaller amount of sugar. They are much more healthy as well, although I do love the crusty type of waffles. Not saying these weren't good, but they certainly were different.

The spices give the waffles a flavour of carrot cake, although as the carrot doesn't cook as thoroughly as it would in a cake you can taste the carrot much more. I rather liked it. We had ours for breakfast with some maple syrup, but I would imagine they would also make a great dessert if served with a cream cheese icing, like the one I made for my red velvet cake.

Garden update

I missed last week's garden update partly due to pure laziness and partly due to losing heart a little bit. To be honest, most of the pictures below are courtesy of the efforts of the Culinary Consultant. He has really been digging in (yes, pun intended, although it's awkward) and worked hard to improve the soil in the greenhouse and the little allotment we have right by the garden. My seedlings are mostly dead or dying or just simply really tiny and hardly growing. I guess it's partly due to planting them too early and possibly a bit of overwatering as well. Luckily the Culinary Consultant has a greener thumb than I do. He planted a second round of courgettes, marrows and sweet peppers (my sweet peppers never made an appearance). We also got some tomato plants from our neighbour and peas, courgettes and cucumbers from the Culinary Consultant's Dad, so we will hopefully get some crops this summer as well despite my utter failure as a gardener. 

Tree update:

The pear tree is in full bloom.

As is the cherry tree.

More cherry blossoms (and you can bet your bottom 

I have dozens of photos of them).

The first few apple blossoms, more to come 

in the next few days. This really shows how much

earlier spring comes here than at home, as I'm used

to having apple trees in flower on my birthday in late

May, not in late April. Although it has been an rather

early spring this year.

In the greenhouse:

The one and only of my courgettes that survived the

great courgette death of 2014.

Marrows (left) and courgettes planted by the Culinary Consultant,

growing well and healthy. Not quite sure where we will 

fit them all, but I'm sure we can work it out somehow.

The Culinary Consultant decided to buy some tomato

plants from the garden centre as he doesn't have faith

in my tomato seedlings. Also some garlic planted

between the tomato plants.

The first tomato flower of 2014.

My teeny tiny tomato plants, but I have faith in them,

they will grow big and strong in no time!

I found some purple basil growing in an abandoned

pot in the corner of the garden I was going to get rid of.

Thankfully I realised what was in it, and hopefully

I will have load sof basil later in the summer.

The vines which looked completely dead just a few

weeks ago are growing like crazy. I bet if you would 

stand there and stare at them for a while, you could 

actually see them grow!

Outside:

The oregano is going wild!

Black currant flowers. I think... at least that's what Google said.

Future black currants, can't wait. Last year the black currants

just shrivelled and disappeared before ripening.

Happy Easter!

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Blog Birthday 2.0

How time flies... It's already more than two years ago I wrote my first blog post. To be exact, my first blog post was published on April 9th 2012, but I consider Easter to be the blog's birthday. It was Easter holiday and I was rather bored and wanted something to do so I started a food blog after baking at least three different kinds of muffins over the Easter break. I had never had a blog, and to be quite honest, I hadn't read that many blogs either. I was inspired by a great Finnish food blog called Kauhaa ja Rakkautta. I can't claim I know much more about blogging today, I just make it up as I go along. But it's been fun so far, and who would have thought I would still be here two years later. And by that I mean blogging, I did expect I would still be "here" in the broader sense...

I feel a bit dizzy thinking back about all the things that have happened in such a short amount of time! I have changed jobs twice. Moved twice. Bought a house. Met he Culinary Consultant. Not necessarily in that order.

Two Easters ago I cooked myself some lamb, all by myself. Yesterday I cooked Easter lamb for two, using herbs from our own garden. I think the morale of the story is if you are unhappy with your life, it can change around very quickly. But it won't just come to you, you need to work on it and if you work hard and believe things will change, eventually they do. 

Professionally, it wasn't easy. Two years ago, around this time of year I had a year left on my Post Doc fellowship. I knew I wanted to get out of science, and that I would have to start looking for jobs eventually. Somewhat less than a year later, I had figured out what I wanted to do, after attending numerous career events and meetings with the career guidance councillor at the University. I worked hard on my applications and my CV and got an interview for what I thought was my dream job. I didn't get it. I got another job which soon turned out to suck the life out of me. So as hard as it was, about six months later I started the whole cycle again. Applying for jobs in the midst of burn out and depression was tough, I won't lie. Numerous job applications and several interviews later I was offered a new job last December, and started in early March after my three month (a.k.a. eternally long) notice period. I don't want to jinx it, but s far so good. Yes, it was hell last autumn when after a long day working a job I hated I came home only to spend hours searching for jobs and re-writing my CV over and over. But it worked out in the end. 

Personally it wasn't easy either. I tried it all, pubs, restaurants, parties, horse races, internet dating. Met a few people, but it didn't work out. Met someone I thought it would work out with, but I liked my shoes too much for his taste. After a gym class the Culinary Consultant asked me out. I didn't think he was my type at all, but I said yes still thinking at least I would get a free meal out of it. Our first dates were ok, but not all too exciting, we didn't have that much to talk about. But we stuck through those initial awkward dates and here we are. In hindsight, I feel I was too focussed on what I thought I wanted from a significant other. It turned out I met someone completely different. I had to give up a lot of preconceptions I had built up in my mind. It was hard, and it wouldn't have worked with someone else who would have been less committed and had less faith in us. But with the Culinary Consultant it has worked out well. So far at least. My life changed so quick, I accept it can change again. But it will all be all right somehow.

In addition to the two year blog birthday, I recently published my 200th blog post (and totally missed the moment, only realising a few posts later that I am past the 200 post mark). So to celebrate over two years and 200 posts of Invisible Pink Food, I though a cake would be in order. Unfortunately we have been without Internet the best part of the last two days, so I had to make this one up as I went along. Good thing I know the easy way of making a basic sponge cake: equal volumes of eggs, sugar and flour. It's not a fancy cake, just something you can throw together from stuff you have in the cupboard. And I even managed to get it done before it got dark outside, so for a change I managed to take photos in daylight! Now I'll finish my random rant and head off to enjoy my cake.

Chocolate and cherry cake (serves 4-6):

3 eggs

sugar

all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1tsp vanilla syrup
100g chocolate (54% cocoa solids), melted

150 g glacé cherries

4 tbsp honey rum

For the buttercream:

140 g butter (room temperature)

250 g icing sugar

200 g chocolate

The howto:

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Take three identical glasses. Crack the eggs into one glass, and fill the second with sugar to the same level as the eggs. Fill the third glass to the same level with flour and add baking powder. Whisk the eggs and sugar until white and fluffy. Add vanilla syrup and chocolate. Mix gently. Gently fold in the flour. Pour into a 15 cm round springform cake tin and bake for 35 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

Let the cake cool a few minutes, remove from the tin and let cool on a wire rack. Meanwhile prepare the buttercream. Star by melting the chocolate. Using an electric whisk, mix butter and icing sugar until smooth, white and fluffy. Add the chocolate and mix until smooth. Put a few tablespoons of the buttercream into a piping bag with a star nozzle.

Cut the cake in half, and drizzle the rum onto the cake halves. Add buttercream onto one half and cover with halved glacé cherries. Place other half of the cake on top, and cover with buttercream. Pipe eight roses of buttercream and place a cherry on top of each of them.

The verdict:
It's cake. With chocolate. And buttercream. What did you expect? Of course it's amazing! The sponge is light and fluffy, the rum brings just a little hint of spice and breaks the sweetness of the chocolate. And I like the fact that this is not a huge cake. It's something two people can reasonably eat over a few days while it's still fresh and good. Although cake does get better after a night in the fridge, this is more the rule than the exception. Nothing like starting your day with morning coffee and a slice of decadent chocolate cake!

Vanilla glazed rhubarb oatmeal scones

I usually begin my weekend morning by browsing all the blogs I follow. The other week, I stumbled upon a yummy looking Rhubarb Roly Poly recipe from The English Kitchen. Although I had promised myself I wouldn't bake anything that weekend, the recipe got me thinking of the first stalks of rhubarb out there in the garden. However, I felt I didn't want to wait for dessert but wanted something immediately, so I googled rhubarb scones and came across this delicious sounding recipe for Vanilla glazed rhubarb oatmeal scones on the Kitchen Daily blog. I took a liking to the recipe as you can almost convince yourself they are a healthy sort of treat with the oatmeal and whole wheat flour. Well, at least I can, as I'm very good at self deception. So there I was, on a Sunday morning with fresh warm scones by 8.30 in the morning. Good thing our garden faces out to fields. Our neighbours would have thought I was stark raving mad if they had seen me out there in the garden in my pink monkey robe and knife in hand, bending down over the rhubarb plant at 7.30 in the morning. But when a craving hits, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. 

I have used the recipe almost unaltered, although I did halve it as 16 fresh scones in my kitchen on a Sunday morning didn't seem like the safest of prospects.

Vanilla glazed rhubarb oatmeal scones (makes 8, recipe from the Kitchen Daily blog):
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup oats (not the quick cooking type)
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
170 g butter, cubed
1/4 cup buttermilk (I made my own by adding a splash of vinegar into regular milk)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup chopped rhubarb
1 egg for egg wash and caster sugar for sprinkling on top

Glaze:
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 1/2 tbsp milk
1/4 tsp vanilla paste

The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (400 degrees F). Mix the flour, oats, baking powder, sugar and salt in a bow. Add the cubed cold butter and using your fingers, crumble everything together until the texture of coarse sand. In another bowl, mix the buttermilk, vanilla and egg, and add to the flour and butter mixture. Mix just enough to bring the dough together. Add the rhubarb. Pat the dough to form a rectangle about 1 inch (2.5 cm) thick. Cut into eight pieces (first into four pieces once length- and once widthwise and then across the diagonals so you get eight triangles). Place triangles on a parchment paper lined baking sheet, and brush with egg. Sprinkle caster sugar on top. Bake for 20-22 minutes until baked and golden brown. Let cool for a few minutes on a wire rack.

While the scones are cooling, mix together the ingredients for the glaze and drizzle onto the scones. You can adjust the proportion of icing sugar to milk depending on how thick you like your glaze. Serve while still warm with a cup of tea or coffee. 

The verdict:
These scones were a perfect treat for a Sunday morning as well as a perfect way to enjoy the first crop of rhubarb this spring. The rhubarb stalks were still thin and tender and really tangy. The scones were wonderfully crumbly inside with a crisp crust formed by the sugar and egg wash. The combination of the sweet vanilla glaze and sour rhubarb was perfect. Also, the oats and whole wheat flour give them a rougher texture than regular scones, along with loads more flavour. Not a completely innocent treat with all that butter, but a great way to treat yourself on a lazy weekend morning.

White cabbage pie

I meant to publish this yesterday to keep with my blogging schedule, but I had my favourite Sister visiting for the weekend, so I was busy. We had a lovely time celebrating the fact that she finished her final exams for med school last week. We had dinner at the Oak Bistro, which in my opinion is one of the better restaurants in Cambridge, and I also cooked some stuff at home, including a lovely rhubarb and strawberry crumble. We went for a long run, or more correctly Sis did the running and I went along for a bikeride, the only way for me to keep up with her! So when I fell into bed last night blogging was the furthest thing from my mind and I just fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Today's recipe is another dish I made for our vegetarian week last week. The recipe is based on a recipe from the Finnish baking blog Kinuskikissa, although I have made some modifications to it. It is called Georgian cabbage pie, and I have had similar dishes before back home in Finland which consist of cabbage in a tomato puree sauce with gherkins and they have been called Georgian too. And this is Georgia as in the country, not the US state. I have no idea whether this is just a dish that exists in Finland and has for some reason been christened "Georgian" or whether it actually has some Georgian origin. Be it this way or that, it's really delicious, and cabbage is super cheap as well so this is a great dish to make. 

White cabbage pie (serves 6-8):
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 head of white cabbage
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
300 ml sour cream
2 eggs
2 tsp mustard
1 tbsp cider vinegar
3 tbsp tomato puree
1/2-1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 cup chopped gherkins
black pepper (and salt if desired)
100 g mature cheddar
1 shortcrust pastry (I used store bought as I was feeling lazy)

The howto:
Finely chop the onion, garlic and cabbage. In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil and cook the onion for a few minutes. Add the garlic and cabbage, and let cook for a few minutes while stirring. Add about a cup of water and put a lid on the saucepan. Let cook, and stir a bit every few minutes, until cabbage starts to soften, about 10 minutes. 

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Line a deep pie tin with the pastry. Mix all the remaining ingredients apart from the cheddar. When the cabbage is done, let cool for a while (about 10-15 minutes), drain and mix with the rest of the filling. Pour onto the pastry. Top with grated cheese. Bake for 40 minutes until the filling has set and the top is golden. 

The verdict:
I know a combination of white cabbage and gherkins sounds really weird, but it actually tastes great. It also works really well as a stew, but here I have encased it all in crumbly shortcrust pastry and topped it with sinful amounts of cheese to make it seem less healthy to the other half of the household who didn't think vegetarian week was the best idea ever. The pie freezes really well, and was great for lunch at work.

Veggie lasagna

This week I decided to be a vegetarian. Not for any other reason that just because. I came across this post about being vegetarian for a month on A Cup of Jo, one of the blogs I'm following. I think the Culinary Consultant would rebel if I tried to introduce a month of vegetarianism in this house, but I decided he can put up with it for a week. 

I don't have an ethical problem with eating meat. I believe we need quite a bit of protein in our diet to cut out carbs, and meat is great for that. That should of course include a variety of white meat, fish and some read meat as well. Of course buying meat from animals who have lived a happy life and whose lives have been ended in the most humane way possible is always preferable over meat from intensely farmed animals. But it's also a balancing act with the financial constraints. Not a question I want to go into too much detail as I know I don't always practice what I preach or at least what I would prefer.

So this week, just to challenge myself to make new recipes, I went veggie. I tend to make the same old things over and over, and it was time to get new flavours into my food. And eating more veggies can never be bad for you. So I started with this delicious vegetarian lasagne which was an amalgamation of some recipes I've seen online and my own imagination. It does involve a bit of work with preparing sauced and veggies, but it's definitely worth the effort! Also, I would love to know how all the "real" food bloggers always manage to cut up their lasagne into these perfectly symmetrical square pieces which looks so great on the plate. Mine just ends up in a big sloppy pile no matter what I try to do. Oh well, it tastes great nonetheless.

Veggie lasagna (serves 6-8):
Tomato sauce:
about 20 tomatoes (or 2 jars of tinned tomatoes)
2 cloves of garlic
one sprig of rosemary
1 tbsp dried oregano
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 dried chilli (or more, depending on preference)
1 bay leaf
a pinch of sugar
salt and black pepper

Bechamel sauce from 1 litre of milk, see here for instructions

For the filling:
4 sweet peppers
4 onions (1 used 1 red and 3 yellow onions)
2 cups curly kale
garlic shoots (you know the greens that grow when you plant garlic cloves in the ground. If you don't have garlics growing in your garden, substitute with chives)
lasagna sheets
150 g mature cheddar

The howto:
Start by preparing the tomato sauce and Bechamel. The instructions can be found here. For the tomato sauce, if using fresh tomatoes, blanch and peel. If using frozen tomatoes (like I did), let them semi-thaw, at which stage it's easy to take out the hard green bit and peel off the skin. Put all the ingredients in a large saucepan and cook until desired consistency (i.e. not too runny), with my frozen tomatoes this took about 40 minutes of cooking without a lid.

While the sauces are cooking, chop the sweet peppers into large chunks, lightly coat in olive oil and roast in a 225 degree oven for about 35-40 minutes. Slice the onions and cook in a bit of olive oil in a frying pan until starting to soften. Grate the cheese.

Start by spreading a bit of Bechamel in the bottom of a oven proof dish, and top with lasagne sheets. Add a layer of Bechamel, half of the tomato sauce, half of the onions, peppers and kale. Add some chopped garlic shoots and some cheese. Add another layer of lasagne sheets and build an identical layer to the first one. Top with a final layer of pasta and pour the rest of the Bechamel on top and sprinkle grated cheese on top. Cook in a 200 degree oven for an hour until golden and bubbly.

The verdict:
I am so happy this lasagne turned out to be full of flavours and really delicious. The Culinary Consultant thought it wasn't too bad given the circumstance (i.e. the lack of dead animal). I have no qualms about making this again, to me it was at least as good as a regular lasagne, possibly even better. If you are going to make home made lasagne, it's without a doubt worth making your own Bechamel and tomato sauce, it just brings that extra flavour to it and is worth every extra minute you spend on cooking. Seriously, you have to try this. I suspected it would be a decent meal, but it was just amazing, the favours were so good. I rarely get completely overwhelmed by my own creations, but this was seriously good. 

Garden update

I can't believe it's been a week since my last garden update. Lots of stuff going on in the garden. I never get tired of looking at my little seedlings, and will therefore expose you to more seedling pictures. 

It hasn't been very sunny for the last week, but the good thing is that night temperatures have been higher than the weeks before, and not quite dipping down close to zero anymore. It's usually been around 6 degrees when I have left the house in the morning, and you don't experience that horrible cold front hitting you when opening the door in the morning. 

The weekend has been cloudy but not too cold, this morning when I went out at 7.30 am to harvest some rhubarb for my rhubarb scones it didn't feel too cold. And I can see everything in the garden picking up on the fact that spring is here and it's time to grow. Forecasts for next week are unfortunately a bit colder than this week, but here's to hoping it won't be too cold as many of the seedlings would probably not be too happy about a sudden chill. Next year I really need to pace myself and not plant in March, but wait until April which will probably give me better odds to keep things alive.

Garlics have grown so quickly you
won't believe it!

Seedlings from the tomato seeds we saved
from last year's crop. Too bad I didn't keep the
different cultivars separate, it will be a
total surprise what we will get.

Only one courgette seedling out of about ten
(which is pretty close to what I was expecting)
has survived so far, but it's looking good!

A courgette being born!

Sweetcorn is growing strong. It's a funny
multi-coloured variety, I hope it will survive to
produce an actual crop, if for no other reason
that to see what the cobs look like!

The first cherry blossoms!!! 

I will never get tired of the miracle of asparagus.
Looks like we are having some asparagus with our
burgers tonight! 

The rest of the pictures are of pretty
flowers in the garden. Yes, that's as
much as I have to say about them,
as I have no clue as to what they
are, but that doesn't stop me from
enjoying them! If they are weeds,
please don't tell me, and let me keep
believing they are supposed to be there.