Lingonberry chocolate bark

 

The lazy days of experimental cooking and becoming one with nature are over. I have returned to civilisation. And while that brings with it some good things, like being able to charge my iPad, take a hot shower and bake a pie in a proper oven, it also means not being able to watch the sun set over the lake or listen to the sound of absolutely nothing but nature. Sleeping in absolute darkness in ear numbing silence. For me the summer house is a place I enjoy for about a week or so every two years. Any longer would make me go crazy. Although, to be honest the only thing I really can't live without is the opportunity to charge my iPad. And this is not because I would be addicted to my work email or Facebook. In fact, I have very thoroughly ignored every work related email for the last seven days! It's because I have all my books on the iPad, so reading is out of the question without electricity. I'm stuck with reading my Mum's Finnish lifestyle magazines. Which are nice for the first two days, but interior design and life stories soon lose their appeal. Most of all I want my iPad because blogging and photo editing are my favourite hobbies to do in my spare time, and that becomes a bit hard without electricity. Maybe there would be a solar cell iPad charger?

Although the lazy hazy crazy days of summer are no gone, I still have one more summerhouse berry delight recipe to share. And you will have to indulge another "this is so much better in Finland" rant. Possibly the last, although I won't guarantee it. The subject of today's rant is milk chocolate. The best milk chocolate EVER is the Fazer Blue. I'm rather convinced this is not one of those "you like the one you got used to in your childhood" things. If there's one thing the Finns know, it's milk products. And I bet that even in a double blinded placebo controlled tasting, I could pick out the Blue from any other milk chocolate. Now, of course we can get into a lengthy debate of whether milk chocolate is real chocolate at all, and I know there are plenty of "if it doesn't contain 70% cocoa it's not chocolate" people out there. And I love the dark chocolates, and for some things they are the only right option. I would not dare call myself an expert when it comes to dark chocolates, and I have definitely not found my favourite. And the Finnish dark chocolates are not particularly good, I'll admit that. Same goes for white choc, there is nothing that beats Green&Black's white choc with vanilla. But milk chocolate. That I know, and the best one is Fazer. It tastes like proper chocolate, unlike other wannabe milk chocs which are sickeningly sweet and taste of cheap fats and leave a disgusting film in your mouth. I have served Blue to many non-Finns, and either they are all being very polite, but they agree that it's an unusually good milk chocolate brand. So next time you visit Finland, make sure you get a taste of this 90 year o,d traditional delicacy.

So this "recipe" (is it a recipe if it only contains three ingredients and takes two minutes of prep time?) was inspired by my overwhelming love for the best milk chocolate ever as well as my obsession with the wonderful, free and nutrient rich Finnish forest berries. And I had already eaten a huge bar of plain Blue, so I felt like I wanted to mix it up in some way.




Lingonberry chocolate bark

100 g chocolate

1 cup lingonberries

1-2 tsp vanilla sugar

The howto:

Melt chocolate. If you are in an environment where you have access to a thermometer and a device where you can control the temperature (i.e. not a wood burning stove...) tempering the chocolate might be a good idea. Pour chocolate in a container, spread the lingonberries on top and press them lightly into the chocolate. Sprinkle vanilla sugar on top. Let cool in the fridge until chocolate has set. Slice into bite sized pieces. If you didn't temper the chocolate, serve straight out of the fridge.

Non-tempered chocolate and the hot Finnish August sun...

The verdict:

Fazer has quite a selection of flavoured cholocates. In addition to the traditional nut and raisin varieties, there is a range of flavours such as peppermint crush chocolate, raspberry-cranberry chocolate, pear and almond dark chocolate, cookie crumb chocolate, fudge chocolate and this summer's newcomer freeze dried strawberry and vanilla chocolate. And all of them are good (particularly the peppermint crush and strawberry ones). But all add-ons are rather sweet in my opinion. Not saying they are too sweet, they are delicious flavour combinations. But using fresh berries instead of dried ones is soooo much better. And using a tart berry really brings out the smooth sweetness of the Blue. I loved how the lingonberries popped and squirted small sprays of lingonberry juice when I bit into them. With temeperd chocolate it would have been possible to make an even thinner bark, and I think a thinner chocolate layer would have been even better. I think any fresh berry would work well, but like I said, I think the tartness of the lingonberries goes really well with the chocolate. This is quick, simple and delicious. I guess I should add I also "disposed" of it very quickly. Maybe I should suggest this flavour combo to Fazer. Wonder if they would share a bit of the profits with me?

UK meets Finland. A glass of Pimm's by the lake, last night at the summer house.

 

 

 

 

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Finnish forest berry delights

Ha, I got my iPad battery re-charged at my mum's cousin's place which is only a short 10 minute row from our summer house. So I can keep on writing about my obsession with the fruits of the autumnal Finnish forest. Like I wrote earlier, the forest is currently bursting to the brim with berries and mushrooms. It makes you go totally crazy, you just don't want to leave all those lovely (and free!) berries out there. However there are blueberries and lingonberries in pretty much endless amounts, so at some point you just have to admit defeat and leave some of them out there in the forest. I'm sure all of us at he summer house have had more than our daily dose of all possible vitamins.

Yesterday me and sis headed out, braving the ticks, horseflies and mosquitoes (all of which are way too abundant out there in the forest if I might add) to pick blueberries and lingonberries. This summer has been quite humid which has helped produce an extra good berry yield this year. Blueberry season is already towards it's end, but there is still more than plenty of the purple tiny pearls out there. And these are nothing like the huge water-filled (and watery-tasting) berries you can buy in stores. These are tiny little dark purple berries which are loaded with taste and all sorts of things that are good for you, like vitamins and anti-oxidants. Blueberries are basically superfood, they are so good for you. And I'm sure, baking them in a delicious crust with sugar and butter will just enhance the health benefits!

Lingonberry season is not quite at its peak yet, there is plenty of berries out there but most of them are still a bit white on the underside and they have not quite reached their mouth puckering sourness yet. But I'm only here for a few days, so to cook lingonberry pie, I had to live with the fact that the berries were not quite optimal yet. However, as there were so much berries out there, I tried to pick the ripest and reddest ones, as lingonberries is one of those things you just can't get your hands on in the UK so I rationalised that even slightly under-ripe lingonberries are better than no lingonberries at all.

In my last post I touched on the "limitations" of cookin at the summer house. Not only is there no electricity, everything has to be cooked on wood heated stoves or the barbeque, but also there is (at least for all practical purposes) no oven at all. Well, it's not like this would stop me. First I was thinking of cooking something along the lines of a skillet cookie with berries, I have seen several recipes on Pinterest. But one thing we do have is a fish/meat smoking box. So me and my mum thought if it gets hot enough to cook meat, it would probably get hot enough to cook a pie as well. At least it was worth a try, it's not like berry pie would contain anything that would be dangerous to eat if it didn't cook properly through. The worst case would be a gooey berry mess. So we tried to bake a blueberry pie. Which turned out great. So I cooked a lingonberry-quark pie as well. And a mixed berry pie. I even had a stab at a savoury pie, I made one for my sis and her friends to take along on their four day hike in Northern Finland. It was filled with lamb and ham, tomatoes and carrots and topped with loads of cheese. Even that turned out quite delish looking, at least in my humble opinion. I'm waiting to hear a report back qbout the taste.

The fish smoking contraption. Basically, it's a

box you put on the wood burning stove. It heats

up like a mini oven. If you put smoking chips on the

bottom you get smoked meat or fish.

The savoury pie baked in the smoking box. I used

slices of red pepper to mark the edges of different

fillings so that everyone can get their favourite.

When you do summer house cooking, you are not allowed to use any recipes. Or scales or measuring jugs. It should all be done by instinct, touch and feel. That's part of the charm, you never knowif it will work, not to mention you won't ever be able to replicate any successfull efforts. So there is absolutely no guarantee the recipes below will work. However, if you think you actually want to get things right (thereby taking all the excitement out of cooking) you can always just use your favourite pie crust recipe instead of the one below. And use any berries you happen to have. And if you can't get quark, replace it with creme Fraiche, yoghurt or cream cheese. I'm pretty sure they will all work. If you can't get potato starch, use corn starch. And if you happen not to have a wood burning oven with a box for smoking (how could that be?!?!?), use a regular oven. So basically, the point is you want a crust, berries, possibly some dairy for the filling and some contraption to cook it in. This is what I love about cooking, you can just change things around as you wish, and 8 times out of 10 it will work out rather good, and at least 9 if not 10 times out of 10 it will be edible anyways. Particularly if enjoyed outside while watching the sun set over the lake.

Some sort of berry pie-like thing in a smoking box aka summer house cooking:

For the crust

50ish g butter

1 cup-ish AP flour (or whatever flour you happen to have, I used part whole wheat) + possibly some (1/2 cup-ish) extra flour depending on the consistency of the dough

1/2 cup-ish sugar

1/2 pack vanilla quark (100g)

Filling 1

2 cups-ish berries, freshly picked from your own forest (blueberries and/or raspberries)

2 tbsp potato starch

2 tbsp caster sugar

1 tbsp vanilla sugar

Filling 2

2 cups-ish fresh berries (I would suggest lingonberries as they go really well with the sweetness of the berry flavoured quark)

1 can (200g) berry flavoured quark

1 tbsp potato starch

1 egg

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp vanilla sugar

Flavoured Finnish quarks. Top left lemon,

top right white chocolate and lime, bottom

left vanilla, bottom right blueberry-raspberry

The how-to:

Go out in the forest to pick the berries, and clean away dirt and leaves. Chop the wood for your wood burning oven, and light it in good time. Wash your fish-smoking box to get rid of as much of the fish smell as you can. When you have a nice fire going, prepare the crust. Let the butter soften a bit, add flour and sugars and using your fingers, mix until a crumbly consistency. Add the quark, mix and add flour until dough reaches a nice consistency where it is crumbly and easy to spread to the bottom and sides of a pie tin or whatever heat resistant bowl you happen to have. For filling 1, mix the sugars and starch with the berries and spread onto the pie. For filling 2, mix everything with a fork except the berries. Place berries on the crust and add quark topping to evenly cover the berries. Bake in smoking box until done (took about 90-120 mintes for me, depending on how much wood you keep on the fire at all times).

Pie in the smoking box at the start of baking.

The verdict:

It's clear that a fish-smoker is a very versatile cooking device. Not only can you smoke fish, you can cook delicious juicy meats (like the garlic butter marinated lamb my mum made the other day), but you can clearly use it to bake pies as well. Of course the problem is that controlling the temperature of the smoking box can only be done at the level of adding more or less wood onto the fire, so you have to accept that sometimes the pies come out with the crust a bit underdone, and other times it gets a bit well done, and sticks to your pie tin. Maybe our guests are just being very polite, but so far they have eaten every pie without too much complaints, so I think they have turned out acceptable. To be honest, I thought the one I would like the best was the lingonberry-quark one, but in fact it was the simple one with nothing but blueberries. However, it might alsobe because that one turned out to have the perfect level of cooking with the crust being firm and crisp without it being burned at all and coming out of the pie tin in beautiful slices. The lingonberry one got a bit too fond of sticking to the tin. The mixed berry one is going with my sis and her friends on the hike, so no verdict on that one yet.

Next time I'm coming here I'll make sure I have thought of some other, even more challenging things to cook as it turns out that after years of thinking cooking possibilities are rather limited, it turns out that with a bit of experimenting you can actually cook all sorts. Maybe next time I'll try souffles! Naah, just kidding. Ok, now I'm off to the forest to get another bucket full of berries, going to make berry quark for pudding. And there might be another berry recipe still coming up some other day, who knows!

 

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