sweet & sour weekend

I haven’t visited my home for a couple of weeks, so on this Friday I took a car and drove to the countryside near Lahti. It’s so weird to go in the middle of forest where is so quiet and peaceful, because I now live next to a train track and there is always noice in the background. When I go home once or twice a month, it is usually free time for me; mum cooks and all I have to do is to eat and sleep and eat and sleep.. and that is exactly what I did. On Friday we ate some meatballs with mashed potatoes and green salad. Very simple, but it’s a fact that mums do make the BEST meatballs ever. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos..

On Saturday one of my friends from Lahti came to spend the evening with me. I made her a cake for a suprise, which I filled with blueberries and CREAM. Seriously, there is nothing better that cream.. well, maybe bacon. We opened a bottle of sparkling wine too, Elysée N:o 1 (no need to tell my parents where did that bottle disappeared..).

The weekend was very nice, relaxing and fun. Next week is going to be awesome too; I will make a nice meal for us bacon addicts on Wednesday and Laura will have her cool bacon party on Thursday.. Can’t wait for it!
-Satu

A family dinner

After getting home from work yesterday I was truly exhausted and only wanted to sleep until monday. But I did take the train and came to visit my family.  I arrived here at midnight and almost immediately went to bed. It was probably a good idea, since today I have been in such a great mood!

Usually when I visit my parents I always like to cook a proper meal for us with my mom. The kitchen is big, so for me it’s a real luxury.  A friend of my mom’s had given her a piece of moose tenderloin, so we decided to prepare it for dinner. I marinated it in a mixture of olive oil, red wine vinegar, herbs, black pepper and salt for about 5 hours. Before cooking it I let it rest in room temperature for about an hour, then quickly tossed it around in a hot pan and then put in the oven. The tenderloin was quite small, so it only took about 15 minutes in the oven until the inside temperature was the desired 56 C degrees. And the meat was just perfect! We also made some oven baked vegetables and a creamy pepper and rosmary sauce to go with it.

With this dinner we had a bottle of red wine; Castillo de Molina Reserva, a nice warm Cabernet Sauvignon wine from Chile. It wasn’t a very aggresive wine, but had just enough of tannin to go well with the meat. This was a really good match actually!

And for dessert I made a mud cake with one of the easiest and best recipes I know. It’s one part dark chocolate, one part butter and one part eggs. (I used 200g of each ingredient for this cake.) You melt the chocolate and butter together, quickly whisk the eggs and then mix them all together. You don’t need anything to sweeten this cake with in my opinion, because the chocolate is enough.  Just pour the mixture into a mold and cook in oven for about 10-15 minutes in 200C. And that’s it! You can eat it right away but I think it’s best when it has rested in the fridge for a day.

And because a chocolate cake wasn’t enough.. I made a mascarpone cream with mango to go with it, which I seasoned with lemon acid powder and orange peel. Yummy!

I think that’s enough food for tonight! Maybe another glass of wine, sauna and a good movie to top this day..

-Riikka