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.

Prawn and udon noodle soup

I am trying to get back into the swing of things. Things being working. I was so spoilt during my holiday, almost two weeks off work, don't know when that is ever going to happen again. Back to getting up ridiculously early. It used to be the Culinary Consultant who had to get up early, now I leave him snoring for another hour and a half when I get up. And I spend those one and a half hours commuting to work. I've always been very lucky, I have had reasonable commutes, so my current commute of over three hours each day is feeling a tad overwhelming. But it's only been two days, I'm hoping it will get easier once I get into the routine. Obviously, now it's not too hard to get up really early as mornings are already light, but I'm dreading what will happen once the summer has gone and it starts getting darker again. But no point worrying about that, as it's many moons away. It's rather ironic that I'm now working really close to where I used to live in my tiny little penthouse studio.

I really need to figure out what to do during my long commutes, so far I've just been sitting there, staring out the window, wasting all that time. The annoying thing is that the buses are usually completely packed by the time I get on, so I can't really do much as I have to stand all the way, desperately clinging on to one of those poles trying not to fall over the other passengers. I've always read all my electronic books on the iPad, but now I'm actually considering getting a kindle as the iPad is simply to big and heavy to hold onto with one hand when standing on a bus. Coming back home is a bit easier as my work is near the start of the bus line, so I should be able to grab a seat most days. I'm thinking downloading a bunch of stuff on the iPlayer, and watching that. And I might finally get around to reading all those Game of Thrones, I've been working on them for at least two years now, and am only a third through the second volume. I would love to use the time productively and blog, but most of my trip is through the rural areas of in-the-middle-of-nowhere, so there is no 3G. The bus supposedly has wifi, but I can't make it work. It's simply so overcrowded by users that it doesn't work at all. I've only ever managed to use the wifi if I'm on the bus in the middle of the day with no other passengers around. I guess I could also take up knitting again, with over two hours of knitting time a day I should be able to produce oodles. We will have to see what happens.

Today's recipe is something I just threw together after reviewing several recipes for prawn and noodle soup online. Let's just say it's an... eclectic... mix. Not really identifying with any country, it's just a mix of whatever I happened to have around along with some things I just wanted to put in the soup. It turned out really delicious. You can obviously use any noodles you like, I like udon just because then you have a lot of noodle in there.

Prawn and noodle soup (serves 4):
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 onion
1 stalk of celery
2 cloves of garlic
thumb sized piece of ginger
2-3 large mushrooms
1 green pepper
1 can coconut milk
1 1/2 cups water
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp hot chilli sauce
2 pak choi
200 g mung bean sprouts
300 g noodles
225 g king prawns
large bunch of fresh coriander

The howto:
Finely chop the onion, celery, garlic and ginger. Peel and slice the mushrooms and chop the green pepper. Add the sesame oil to a large saucepan and sautee the onion and celery until starting to soften. Add garlic and ginger and sautee for a few more minutes. Add mushrooms and cook for a few more minutes. Add the coconut milk, water and sauces and let cook for about 10 minutes. Chop the pak choi, and add to the soup, but don't add the green tops yet. Add sprouts, noodles and king prawns and let cook for five minutes or so. Finally, add the pak choi tops and plenty of chopped coriander. Serve immediately. 

The verdict:
The soup turned out really great, lots of healthy greens all cooked only until crisp and starting to soften, but not mushy or limp. The oyster and fish sauce bring that asian flair to the soup, along with the sesame seed oil. And of course the coconut milk. You could even replace the water with a second can of coconut milk for a more creamy soup. And feel free to adjust the level of hotness to your liking, I have to say I could have added some more chilli sauce as this turned out to be a very mild soup. If you are a friend of hot food, you could also add some sliced chillies in with the garlic and ginger at the start for a bit more kick. The bean sprouts add nice crunch, and if I could afford it, I would double the amount of prawns. I love prawns, and combined with this tasty soup and the lovely noodles, this makes a perfect lunch.

King prawn and avocado starter with a slight twist

This starter has a bit of a story behind it. It was really born as a result of several coincidences. Me and the Culinary Consultant were going to roast a whole chicken as our after workout meal the other day. However, we were going to take a quick nap after the gym, but ended up napping for almost two hours. And in his typical style, the Culinary Consultant had picked the biggest chicken he could find, and we realised cooking time for the chicken would be three hours. Really hungry after the gym (and extended nap) we realised we need a starter to keep us alive until the giant chicken was cooked. Luckily, the Culinary Consultant had some king prawns in the freezer, and was planning to serve them with a mayo based sauce. He asked if I wanted something else from the grocery store as he had to get some mayo and I thought some avocados would be nice with the prawns. He came back not only with mayo and avocados, but also a mango. I rarely use fruit when I'm cooking, but whenever I do, I absolutely adore the result. I have done a really good mango and avocado salsa, but this time I thought how about doing a fruity salsa type of thingy but using mayo instead. We had both been working out for two hours, so I thought the most important thing in this case was not how healthy the food would be, just how good it would taste. 

This is a really quick and easy starter. If you like the traditional prawn and avocado combination, I'm pretty sure you will like this too. You can also modify the proportion of onion to mango to tomato to get a salsa to your specific liking.

Super non-healthy mayo salsa (malsa? sal-yo?) with garlic prawns (serves 2):
For the salsa:
1/4 of a big red onion (or about 1/2 of a small one, or any amount to taste)
1/3 of a ripe mango
1 large ripe tomato on the vine
1/4-1/2 clove of garlic
2-3 tbsp mayo (I used full fat for maximum flavour, but you can obviously use your favourite)
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

For the prawns:
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
250 g king prawns

You will also need 1 ripe avocado for serving

The howto:
Finely chop the garlic, onion, mango and tomato. Mix in a bowl with the mayo and black pepper. In a skillet, heat up the oil with the garlic. Add the prawns and cook until cooked through (or if you are using cooked prawns, only give them a few seconds on both sides to heat them up). Divide the avocado onto two plates, add prawns and salsa. 

The verdict:
For something that was whipped together from random ingredients, this turned out amazingly good. I wanted to eat the sauce straight out of the bowl with a spoon. Obviously, I was ravenously hungry as well, so maybe I have to make this another time to see if it was just the hunger or not. But I think it wasn't just the hunger, it was truly good. Trust me, you have to try this! I love the combination of mango and red onion, and the mango goes incredibly well with the garlic-y prawns. I think you could stretch this to serve as a starter to three or four people as well, if they haven't just come back from the gym, and if it will be immediately followed by a main.

Card of the day:
This time my card is a get well card for my sister. You might remember that it's not very long since my last get well card for her. I told her that I appreciate her hard work to make sure I have reasons to make cards, but I would love to do something else than a get well card. The owl is from a stamp set called Fox and Friends from Stampin Up. I have wanted this stamp set ever since I saw these awesome cards, and since, the stamp set has popped up here and there. Since then I have found entire Pinterest boards dedicated to the stampset (just type fox and friends in the search box, and click boards if you want to see some amazing cards). Anyhows, my point was that I really wanted the stamp set, but you can't really buy it anywhere anymore. I found someone selling it on Ebay, but ended up paying quite a lot of money for it. Not that it's not worth every penny, but seems like some of the stamp sets really increase in value after they are retired. So now I just have to make as much use of it as I can to make the purchase worth it. And it is just so darn cute!! 

I stamped the owl onto Hobbycraft ivory card (160 gsm) using Tim Holtz distress inks (Broken China, Peeled Paint, Worn Lipstick, Dusty Concord and Fired Brick). I used the Hobbycraft Single Clear Tree stamp in the bottom left hand corner, stamped with Tim Holtz distress ink Walnut Stain. I used the same ink to stamp the sentiment, for which I used the Hobbycraft Clear Stamps Typewriter alphabet in walnut stain, and stamped a bit of the tree at the edge of the sentiment. I inked the edges of both the sentiment and the background with Walnut Stain and Vintage photo distress inks. I matted both the sentiment and background onto a green paper from the Dovecraft Back to Basics III set and adhered it all onto kraft cardstock from Craft UK Limited.

Thai salmon soup

I usually like recipes with a minimal amount of ingredients. As they say: KISS - keep it simple, stupid. I rarely cook anything Asian because the recipes usually contain a crazy long list of ingredients and spices I don't have lying around at home. After dragging home bags full of pastes, spices and other exotic ingredients, you use a tiny amount of each of them, and a year later you rediscover the jars in the back of your fridge, growing all sorts of exotic moulds. However, there are times when you have a bunch of stuff in your fridge that needs using up, and throwing it all in a soup is a perfect solution to the problem. So I devised a nice soup which contains loads of leftover veggies, and a few simple ingredients to give the soup a thai flair. The only ingredients I had to buy specifically for the soup were coconut cream, curry paste, lemon grass and prawns. And of those four ingredients, the only one I had left over after cooking the soup was the curry paste, which is easy to use in pretty much any recipe. And there is nothing as comforting as a nice bowl of soup when your apartment is so cold that you have to keep running processor heavy tasks on your laptop to make it heat up nice and toasty on your lap. Actually, the best way to keep the laptop hot is to play Civilization. It's not because I would enjoy it, it's just to keep from freezing to death.

Thai-ish salmon soup (serves 4):

1 tsp virgin coconut oil

1 onion

1 clove of garlic

a piece of ginger root

2 stalks of celery

2 carrots

200 g cabbage

250 ml coconut cream

1 veggie stock cube in 500ml hot water

1-2 tbsp thai red curry paste

1 stalk of lemon grass

1 red pepper

250 g salmon

200 g prawns

200 g sprouted beans

150 g rice noodles

150 g spinach

fresh coriander

The howto:

Finely chop onion, garlic, celery and ginger root. Chop the carrots, cabbage and red pepper. Heat the coconut oil in a big pan, and cook the onion, garlic, celery and ginger root until the onion turns translucent. Add carrots and cabbage and cook for a few minutes. Add the coconut cream, stock, curry paste and lemon grass. Let cook for 30 minutes, or until the carrots turn soft. Add the red pepper and salmon, let cook for 5 minutes. Add the prawns, sprouted beans, noodles and spinach and cook for another 5 minutes. Serve garnished with fresh coriander. 

The verdict:

I know that the ingredient list for the soup is rather long. However, you can use any veggies you happen to have around. The main thing is having salmon, prawns, coconut cream and red thai curry paste and a mix of veggies. You can leave out whatever you don't like or don't happen to have around, and replace with things that are hiding out in the back of your fridge. 

When the weather gets really cold, there is nothing like a hot steaming bowl of soup to keep you warm. And the curry paste adds some extra heat to make sure you stay warm. The flavour combination of the spicy hot curry paste with the creaminess of the coconut cream and the crunchiness from the vegetables makes a wonderful combination. If you want to be health conscious you could always swap the coconut cream for low fat coconut milk, or even just the vegetable broth. But with this cold winter weather, it might be a good idea to get in some extra calories to keep warm in the cold and the rain. Or maybe that's just me rationalising, but at least there is no arguing with the fact that the coconut cream brings a wonderful soft... well, creaminess... to the soup. 

Beside the seaside

I can't believe it's Friday again. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy about the fact that weekend is upon us. But I have had such an unproductive week, I've been working from home as I've been suffering from strange flash headaches, and when they hit, I need to lie down and close my eyes. Thankfully they usually pass really quickly, but I would love to know where they came from. And what to do to make them go away. So far, apart from lying really still, the only other thing that helps is exercise. As long as I'm doing sports, they stay away. But there is only so much sports you can squeeze into a day, especially after a ten day holiday during which I did practically no exercise at all, so have to try to keep the rest of my body from breaking down on me. Well, next week should be better as I'm going to the Lake District to enjoy what I'm sure will be fabulous British fall weather, and one or two full English breakfasts. 

Approaching Suomenlinna on the ferry.

Ok, well onto the theme of today. The sea. When I was back home in Finland for my summer holiday, I had a whole afternoon all by myself in Helsinki and there is only one thing to do on a sunny summer afternoon in Helsinki. Stop by heaven, aka. the amazing big grocery department at the Stockmann department store (very appropriately named Delicatessen), get some picnic food (which could be anything but for me has to be chicken Cesar salad, Karelian pastries and donuts), and hop on the ferry to Suomenlinna. Suomenlinna is a group of islands outside of Helsinki, formerly a sea fortress and currently a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a popular picnic- and hanging out spot, located a short, 15 minute, ferry ride from central Helsinki. There are plenty of things to see if you go there for the first time, old buildings, fortifications, museums, old cannons, stuff like that. However, if you have visited countless times, you just want to go to the more secluded regions, sit down on the rocks by the sea and stare out on the horizon. 

Sitting on the rocks and staring out at sea.

In the summer Suomenlinna can get crazy like any other popular tourist attraction, but I was lucky that it wasn't too busy although I went out on a Friday evening. The first year students have just started their studies at universities across Helsinki, so there were big groups of students picnic-ing and enjoying a drink or two. It's one of those really traditional things people do when school starts. Watching the big groups students wearing overalls brought back warm memories from my own student days. In Finland, university students often wear overalls when having university related social outings. The colour of your overalls reflects your place of study or the student union you belong to. When I was studying at the university of technology, I was wearing the Swedish speaking student's burgundy overalls with yellow print, and when I was studying at the department of genetics, I was wearing a dark blue overall with white print. Given the activities that used to go on at those parties, having protective wear was actually not a bad idea.

View from the Southern part of Susisaari (Wolf island)
towards Downtown Helsinki (in the background)

My Friday quickie today is also sea inspired. I made a really amazing omelette with salmon and prawns. I've been craving prawns like crazy lately, and have had them for three days running now. And smoked salmon in an omelette is great for flavour, not to mention for good fats as well. After working out in the morning, I also like to have a bit of salt in my breakfast, so the salmon is perfect for that as well. Anyways, this is of course not the most exciting recipe ever, but it turned out so great I wanted to share it with you.

Sea inspired omelette (serves 1):

1 tsp virgin coconut oil

1 medium onion

1 cup spinach

2 eggs

1 slice smoked salmon

50 g king prawns

The howto:

Finely chop the onion, and sauteé in the coconut oil. Add spinach, and cook until spinach is wilted. Use a fork to mix the eggs, and pour on top of the onions and spinach. Let cook for a minute or so, add sliced salmon and prawns on top. Cook for about five minutes, until the underside has set but the top side is still soft. Fold over and slide onto a plate.

The verdict:

Overall, I'm not a huge fan of coconut oil, the flavour is a bit too coconut-ty for me. Also, I know it's all the health rage right now, and I know it's good for frying as it's thermostabile, but I do worry a bit about the saturated fat content. Anyways, I have decided to vary my fats, so that I use a bit of butter, a bit of coconut oil, some olive oil and some rapeseed oil, figuring I should get a bit of the goodness of everything and hopefully spread out the possible unhealthy effects. However, I think coconut oil goes really well with prawns, which is why I used it for this omelette. And the combination of flavours really was spot on with the onions, coconut oil, prawns and the salty yummy smoked salmon. And for once I managed to cook the omelette to perfection, not dry at all. The secret is to get the omelette off the heat at least three minutes before you think it's done. I'm happy I still have a slice of salmon and some prawns left for tomorrow, I think my sea omelette will make a reappearance tomorrow morning after my Saturday morning workout.

Lucky coincidence seafood lasagna

Putting together a three course menu always requires a bit of thought. I usually start with an idea for a main course and then build around that. It's a bit of a puzzle to put together a nice balanced menu trying to somehow tie together the dishes while still keeping a balance. If there is cheese in the starter and main, it might not be a good idea to bake a cheese cake for pudding, that sort of thing. I finally managed to settle on a nice combination of dishes, and headed off to the grocery store. Only to realise there is no way I would be able to cook what I planned as I couldn't get the main ingredient. Sob. Happened to me last Saturday. There I was in the grocery store, trying to come up with an alternative. I had settled on a bit of an Italian theme, melon with parma ham and Burrata with tomatoes and basil for a starter, mussels in white wine and freshly baked cheese bread for the main and then lemon and meringue pie for pudding. Turns out there were no fresh mussels. Panic!!! And you know how your brain always shuts down when you need it the most. There I was, the person who could list a dozen of dishes I want to cook in a minute, not coming up with anything. Ok, so Italian theme. Pasta. No mussels, but maybe sticking with sea food. Salmon! Salmon pasta. Then I remembered Best Friend talking about a smoked salmon lasagna she had made and it turned out great. Breakthrough! Smoked salmon and king prawn lasagna with sundried tomatoes and a lovely Bechamel sauce made from scratch. Lots of parmesan and mozzarella. Problem solved!

I have to admit this was the first time I have ever made proper Bechamel sauce, and I'm happy to announce that it was a success. The secret is to boil everything slowly enough so that you won't burn the milk or the flour so that the sauce stays nice and white. And to use a lot of onion and pepper. I managed to get a wonderful, creamy and delicious sauce using this recipe.


Seafood lasagna (serves 6-8):
For the Bechamel sauce:
1 l milk
a couple stalks of parsley
1 shallot
2 bay leaves
20 black peppers
80 g butter
40 g white flour
salt and black pepper


300 g fresh lasagne
200 g smoked salmon
200 g king prawns
300 g mozzarella
100 g grated parmesan
1 jar sundried tomato paste (finely chopped sundried tomatoes in olive oil)
white wine


The howto:
Start by preparing the Bechamel. Finely chop the onion, and add the onion, parsley, bay leaves and black peppers to the milk and bring it slowly to a simmer (yes the secret is to do it very slowly, and stir every once in a while to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan). Then strain the milk. Melt butter in a pan, and when melted, add the flour. Make sure to keep a low or medium heat so that the butter doesn't brown. Stir rapidly to make a gooey paste. Add milk in very small amounts while stirring rapidly to the butter and flour to make sure no lumps form. After adding half of the milk, you can start adding the milk in slightly more at a time, and keep whisking with a ballon whisk. Bring everything slowly to a simmer and let simmer for about five minutes, or until the sauce is thick and shiny. Season with salt and pepper. Go light with the salt, as the smoked salmon will bring quite a bit of salt to the dish.


Line an oven proof dish with lasagna, spread tomato paste on the pasta and add smoked salmon, grated Parmesan and a quarter of the Bechamel sauce. For the next layer, use prawns and mozzarella instead of salmon and Parmesan, and make the third layer identical to the first. Top with a layer of pasta, and pour Bechamel sauce and white wine over the top, and finish off with the rest of the mozzarella. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until the lasagna is bubbling and mozzarella is golden brown. 

Ready to go into the oven, with mozzarella
and creamy dreamy Bechamel on top.

The verdict:
Sundried tomatoes and salmon. And lots of cheese, and a creamy dreamy Bechamel. A splash of white wine, and more of the same in a glass to accompany the food. Admittedly not health food in any way, but amazingly good. And it was as terrific re-heated the next day. And the day after. I ate way too much of it. And will be making another batch very soon, as this was one of the best things I have eaten in a long time, even if I say so myself. I'm actually happy I didn't end up getting any mussels as it resulted in this amazing dish. Talk about lucky coincidences.

Pan Asian prawn soup

As probably has been very evident from the last few posts, I had a major pig-out weekend (and there are still one or two recipes left unposted from the carb binge). Now it's time to work off all that wobble that went straight to the derriere. I have ran, cycled, pumped, bootcamped and combatted. But the most important thing to remember is, you can't outrun a bad diet (ironically, a sentence that often plays on repeat in my head while I'm running). 


My go-to trick when I'm trying to cut calories is soups. I can't eat a tiny bit of food, no matter how much calories it would have I feel hungry unless I get to dig into a big portion. And with soup, you get to eat a huge bowl and it's still possible to keep it relatively low calorie, especially if you don't add any starch carbs like root veg. 


I got the inspiration for this soup when browsing Pinterest (quelle surprise), and it's from a lovely blog called Food and whine. I did end up changing the recipe a bit, especially since coconut milk is a luxury of several hundred kcals that I can't afford right now. But I think it did turn out pretty nice anyways. If you didn't binge on unhealthy stuff last weekend and can afford the calories, I'm sure the coconut milk would make it all that extra bit more creamy and dreamy. If you want to be really strict with your carbs, leave out the noodles. The rice noodles I was using actually had some corn starch in them as well, but it was the only type of rice noodles I could find when I went grocery shopping. I guess I should go and have a look in some Asian food markets, I'm sure there has to be all-rice noodles somewhere. I would have left out the noodles, but I'm planning a long run on Friday, so I rationalised to myself that I really need the extra carbs (I'm very good at self-deception, I'm sure you have noticed by now). 


Prawn and noodle soup (serves 2-3):
1 tbsp toasted sesame seed oil
1 onion
2 stalks of celery
1 carrot
1 sweet pepper
piece of ginger root
2 cloves of garlic
180g sugarsnap peas
4 scallions
1-2 tbsp curry or chilli paste (I used Rendang, a Malaysian medium spicy curry paste)
1-2 tsp Tamarind paste
1 lemon
150 g rice noodles (I used the ready-to-wok type, which are pre-cooked)
180 g king prawns (cooked and ready to use)
coriander


The howto:
Chop onion, celery, carrot and pepper finely. Fry in oil for a good few minutes, and meanwhile, chop up ginger and garlic. Add them to the pan, and fry for another minute or so. Add 2 cups (500 ml) of water and bring to a boil. Cut pea pods in half and chop scallions, and add. Add curry/chilli paste and Tamarind to taste. Grate some lemon zest into the soup, as well as the juice from the lemon. Let cook for about five minutes. When ready to serve, add prawns and noodles, give them a minute or so. Garnish with chopped coriander and serve immediately.


One serving (half of the recipe) contains 360 kcal (9.4 g fat, 46 g carbs of which 18 g sugar and 16 g protein).


The verdict:

This literally only took a few minutes to whip up, I think chopping up all the veg took more time than the actual cooking. I particularly liked the sweetness when you bit into a sugarsnap pea. And the prawns stayed lovely and juicy because they only warm up a bit but don't have time to cook at all so that they would turn that horrible rubbery texture that prawns easily get if over cooked. The tamarind sauce added a nice sweet and sour taste that went well with the prawns and veggies. Like I said before, probably even better with coconut milk, but very good like this as well. And very healthy, this goes a good way towards your five a day. I was actually going to throw in some spinach in the soup also, as I have some in the fridge that need to be used up very soon, but in my haste to get some food in me after my workout, I forgot all about the spinach. I'll add it in next time. 

Midsummer Friday Quickie

And so it's here again. The most wonderful of days, Friday. The moment you leave work on Friday, and know it's over two whole days before you have to return... Bliss! This week is a bit special, or at least would be if I was back home. In Finland, Midsummer (or Juhannus) is one of the biggest holidays. For many it's the start of the summer holiday month. Everyone packs family and food into their cars and head out to the summerhouse by the lake. Helsinki is almost deserted and even those who don't have their own summerhouses have rented one or are forcing themselves on friends or family who have one. Then you are stuck in endless traffic jams for hours. But when you finally arrive at the summer house, after hours of sweating and swearing, unpack, get the fire in the sauna going, and then have a dip in the lake or the sea... It's all worth it. For an expat, Midsummer means reading endless Facebook updates about how everyone is celebrating. Me, I went to work. Then for my weekly grocery shopping, cooked a bit, went for a run and cooked some more. And now finally I'm sitting here on the sofa, feet up, enjoying my Friday quickie. Friends have stopped updating Facebook as they are probably starting to get a bit tipsy. Lucky bastards! And now days will start getting shorter. It will be Christmas in no time.


When I was planning my weekly menu, I was totally at a loss of what to cook this Friday. Thankfully, Pinterest came to the rescue. I'm totally obsessed with Pinterest these days, it's a foodporn addict's heaven!! I am in agony every time I browse people's food boards, as there are so many amazing things to cook in this world, and so little time to cook them. And then the added complication of the ever expanding derriere, which puts some limits on the cooking as well... Anyways. I had decided that since I have been (almost) good with my eating for the last two weeks, I could award myself with something yummy, this time I ended up choosing a lovely fluffy white ball of mozzarella as my treat. And I was going to cook these oven baked courgettes from Proud Italian Cook, as I had a poor lonely courgette in my fridge that needed to be eaten sooner rather than later. I know it's not terribly new and exciting after the whole aubergine post last week. What can I say, you need some sort of vessel to pile the mozzarella on, be it aubergine or courgette. I also had a sudden craving for prawns earlier today, so I decided to add some on. And when I was browsing the seafood isle, I ran into some lovely mussels as well, and inspired by a wonderful dinner I was treated to last night, also decided to add mussels to the recipe. How decadent, by the way, to eat mussels two days in a row!! So I ended up with this concoction, which turned out absolutely amazing. Then again, even a piece of cardboard would taste heavenly if it had some garlic and mozzarella on it. The cherry on top was having fresh cherries for pudding. Bought myself a whole kilogram of cherries, and am working my way through them very efficiently. My guess is, there are none left after tomorrow.


Seafood courgette thingys
1 courgette
5-10 cherry tomatoes
1/2 tbsp oil (I used a lovely garlic infused rapeseed oil)
juice from 1 lemon
1 clove of garlic
garlic pepper spice mix (regular black pepper will do fine, too)
100g prawns
50g mussels
125g good mozzarella


Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Halve the courgette lengthwise, and cut off a little bit from the bottom so that the halves are stable in a oven proof dish. Mix the oil, lemon juice, pepper and finely chopped garlic, and drizzle half of it on the courgettes. Cut tomatoes in half, and place on courgettes, drizzle on some more oil. Save a little bit of the seasoned oil for later. Bake for about half an hour. Add seafood and mozzarella, finish by drizzling still more of the oil on top, and bake until mozzarella melts and turns lovely golden brown. 

Step 1: courgettes and tomatoes ready to go
into the oven for about 30 min. 

Step 2: courgettes and tomatoes looking
hot and lonely, waiting for some company

Step 3: Still looking a bit naked although courgettes
 and tomatoes are joined by prawns and mussels

Step 4: It's the mozzarella that makes it all perfect.
Come and get it while it's hot!

The verdict:
This is again a lovely example of how cooking amazingly good food doesn't have to take many minutes of your time. The preparation steps only take a minute or two. With the rather large amount of mozzarella, this is admittedly not the most healthy of dishes, but some Fridays a girl just needs a treat. It could of course be debated how badly that treat is needed after said girl stuffed her face with mozzarella, garlic pasta with mussels and dreamy chocolate ganache dessert with ice cream and biscotti... But hey, that was yesterday, and this is today. Like I said before, you cannot go wrong with a combination of mozzarella and garlic. 

Pay it forward

Maybe you remember the movie Pay it forward, starring Kevin Spacey, Haley Joel Osment and Helen Hunt. Spacey plays a social studies teacher who gives the pupils in his classa humble little project to change the world. Osment plays a boy who launches a good-will movement, with the idea that you should help three people with something really big without asking anything in return apart from them helping out three other people. The idea is of course, if everyone does a favour for three others, by the laws of exponential growth, soon the movement would affect a huge masses of people. 

So why am I going on about a sappy feel-good movie? Well, first of all, Kevin Spacey is really great in it. But to get to the point, I recently bought three of Jamie Olivers books: Jamie at Home, Jamie's Great Britain and Ministry of Food. I love them all (of course, it's Jamie, who wouldn't love his quirky, fun and unbelievably delicious recipes), but I particularly like the introduction to Ministry of Food. Jamie talks about how we are living in the middle of a horrible epidemic of bad health with the rise of obesity. The problem is that people perceive themselves to be too busy to cook proper, healthy food, and instead live on takeouts and preprocessed food which is lacking in nutrients and full of empty calories. His plan is similar to that in Pay it forward, and he calls it (very cleverly) pass it on. The idea is that you learn a few good recipes, such as those in Ministry of Food and then teach them to at least two people, again creating an exponentially growing tree of people teaching each other good recipes and basic cooking techniques.

I know it sounds idealistic and silly, but the truth seems to be that many people today really don't know how to cook. That is a harsh contrast to others, who are passionate about food, cooking it, planning it, sourcing the freshest and most ethically produced ingredients. And it is important to show those who aren't passionate about cooking at least how easy it can be. Cooking healthy and delicious food doesn't have to be hard or time consuming.

Of course you can now see where I'm going with this. I made something from Ministry of Food for dinner today, and I'm hoping someone else will enjoy the recipe, and they will in turn teach it (or at least pass on the link) to someone else. This recipe only takes a few minutes to cook (12 minutes according to Jamie's recipe) and can be done by anyone who can use a knife to cut an avocado and know how to heat a frying pan.

Jamie's Prawns and avocado with an old-school Marie Rose Sauce (serves 2):

1 or 2 ripe avocados

1 or 2 punnets of cress

plain flour

220 king prawns, peeled and ready to eat (I used raw prawns, that just adds a few minutes to the cooking time)

olive oil (I used coconut oil for frying the prawns as I think it gives such a lovely flavour that goes well with prawns)

2 cloves of garlic

1 heaped teaspoon of paprika

extra virgin olive oil

Marie Rose sauce:

4 tbsp mayonnaise (I made my own, and will post the recipe soon)

1 dessertspoon tomato ketchup

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp whisky

1 lemon

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

The howto:

To make the sauce, mix all the ingredients. Only use the juice from half of the lemon, then taste, season with salt and pepper and add more lemon juice if you think the sauce needs it. Otherwise cut the remaining half of the lemon into wedges for serving.

Halve the avocado, remove the stone and peel off skin. Place on plate together with cress and drizzle sauce over.

Put flour on a plate and toss prawns until they are coated with flour. Heat olive oil (or coconut oil) in a pan, bash and break up your garlic with your hand and add these to the pan (still with their peel on by the way) and immediately toss in the prawns. Season with salt, pepper and a good dash of paprika. Cook for a few minutes until crisp and golden (or until done if using raw prawns), divide onto plates and serve immediately with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.

Using my own mayo, I got a calorie count of about 600 kcal per serving (38g total fat, 15.4g carbs, 22.3g protein). Of course that will vary depending on what mayo you use and how much you drizzle olive oil onto your plate, as usual I suggest you do your own calorie calculations if you count your calories. 

The verdict:

As usual, Jamie has put together a pukka mix of flavours (yes, I know, very subtle, but when it comes to Jamie's food, I'm running out of adjectives...). When I made the sauce, I wasn't sure about it, I thought it had a bit too much Worcestershire sauce and was a bit too sharp, but mixed with the creaminess of the avocado and prawns, and the peppery cress, the flavours just came together perfectly. The whisky gives it a nice smoky and distinct flavour, I would never have thought of adding whisky to a sauce for prawns, but then again I'm no genius like Jamie. And the dish even looks perfect with the green of the avocado and cress against the red of the paprika on the prawns and the pinkish sauce. The only downside is that this is no light meal, with the avocado, olive oil and mayo it ends up having quite a bit of calories. Of course, the fats in the avocado and olive oil are good fats. I made my own mayo from extra virgin rapeseed oil (a longer rant about my love for rapeseed oil when I get around to posting the recipe for mayo) so that should be packed with those good omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids (and yes I know there are plenty of people out there with a negative attitude to rapeseed oil, but there are plenty of alternatives if you happen to be one of them).