I have an engineer <3

Sam handed in the final version of his bachelor’s thesis today and to celebrate we bought a couple of ciders & beers and you guessed it, fired up the grill

I’ve been pimping our garden ever since the snow showed the slightest signs of melting. Our latest garden feature is a small pink bucket filled with water with a fake LED-light up waterlily Sam got from his sister. It’s a little trashy-kitch but what can you do, we’re students with a quirky style

I don’t usually drink cider (I’m a beer girl) but it was such a sunny day that I thought I should make an exception and go for a fruity girly cider. Most of the fruity ciders sold in Finland taste overtly sweet and are terribly artificial, but I have to admit that there is one brand that I love and that is Rekorderlig. Even though they have fruity tastes geared towards teenage girls who want to get drunk without tasting alcohol they taste a lot less shite than other brands. I tried the strawberry-raspberry for the first time and it was good. Easy to drink, refreshing and not overtly sweet or fake tasting.

I marinated red peppers and zucchini in oil and a herbs de Provence spice mix before grilling them until soft and a ‘little’ charred (oops ).

One of the reasons I love grilling is because it makes chicken taste phenomenal. Chicken is cheap and unsurprisingly we eat a lot of it and there is nothing wrong with that. But once the chicken hits the grill our humble everyday dinner becomes something truly delicious. I marinated the chicken in soy sauce and some sugar and then grilled it until cooked through. I then brushed it with a thick and sticky soy sauce, sugar and tamarind sauce glaze. Yum

I also grilled some corn and tomatoes. I use ready cooked corn on the cob which is the only corn on the cob readily available in stores here year round. The best way to cook it is to brush the corn with oil and to grill until warm and nicely charred all over. Then I make a sauce of crushed garlic cloves and melted butter which is then brushed on the cobs right before devouring!

We ate on our patio and it was the perfect laid-back way to celebrate. Once Sam officially completes his degree we’ll have to organize a proper party but that’s to come…

-Laura

Ps. Check out my summery nail polish

Easter dinner

Satu cooked an Easter dinner for some friends on Saturday. She made us feta salad, some sort of lamb meatloaf with rosemary and garlic and oven baked vegetables. They were all really nice. I also made some meatballs with sun dried tomatos, since I new people were going to eat a lot. For dessert Satu had baked some traditional buns with quark filling! Maybe she will share the recipes with you soon..

I accidentally made this really good summery drink. I didn’t measure the ingredients, but this could be quite close:

4 cl good vodka
6 cl cranberry juice
10 cl rasperry flavoured mineral water

I didn’t have any lime, but a slice in the drink would’ve worked! Anyway, the drink was really tasty and refreshing.

Stefan’s steakhouse

Watching Top Chef season five on tv Stefan Richter was my favourite competitor. I thought he was by far the best (and a bit of an ass, sure) and should’ve easily won the whole thing. Well, he didn’t, but things have obviously been good for him after that. He has opened a catering business and three restaurants after the show, and one of these restaurants he opened in our home town Tampere just a couple of weeks ago.

So, last night my boss took us out for a dinner at Stefan’s Steakhouse. I’ve been wanting to go there since it opened. I was a bit suprised thinking the place would be packed, but it turned out it was a really quiet saturday evening. Probably half of the tables were empty, and it seemed like they tried compensating with waitresses, because there were so many it was ridiculous. There were probably 8 waitresses all in all. We had four or five waitresses working our table, which was a bit annoying. But they were all very nice and casual, as was the whole place.

The interior was quite butch in a way. A lot of dark wood, brick walls and big comfortable chairs. It was warm and inviting and we ended up sitting there for three hours. The menu was nice and a bit different than most restaurants here have. Although we skipped the starters I got a look of some of the dishes and they did look delicious. We did have drinks to begin the dinner with, and the waitress brought  a good amount of raisin and apricot bread and butter to our table. For main course we all decided to go with a steak. I took 150g of beef tenderloin with oven baked vegetables and thyme and bordelaise sauce. You get to choose your side orders and sauce for the steak and we all took something different.

The side orders turned out to be a bit boring, as well as the sauces. Everything came in a different small bowl and I could see it was as frustrating for the waitresses as it was for us (The tables weren’t very big).  The side orders were also quite pricey.  I mean, they were allright, but nothing too special or new. It didn’t matter much because the steak was amazing. The best steak I’ve ever tasted. Absolutely perfectly cooked, tasty, and so soft it just melted in your mouth. Cutting a piece of that steak was almost like cutting soft butter. They have different steaks to choose from, different sizes and meats. You can also get kobe beef for 49,00€ a piece.. If you ever go there, have the steak. It’ll make up for all the bad overcooked stringy pieces of meat you’ve had before.

We had two bottles of wine with the steaks, Soleus by Montgras Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 Cental Valley and Punto Final Malbec Clasico 2007, Mendoza. They were both pretty good choices for the steaks. Good wines, not much more to say about them since at this point I was already quite drunk..

I don’t usually eat desserts at restaurants but this time was pressured to do so. I had Grand Marnier espresso cake with chocolate mousse. It had good flavours and the mousse was soft and creamy, but it was a bit too sweet for my taste. A nice thing to have with a coffee though. One of us had the cheesecake (was a fairly small piece) and one had two scoops of sorbet, and they were obviously very tasty.

All in all it was a nice experience and I do recommend this restaurant. The food and the service was good, and the steak was the best I’ve ever had! (And the next time I’ll visit, I’ll take some pictures too)

-Riikka

A dog, Brussels sprouts and Julia Child

After a walk in the woods with a crazy active dog, I had a nice wintery meal. Brussels sprouts and cauliflower with butter, braised pork and fried apples.

I love brussels sprouts. They don’t only look like awesome miniature cabbages but they also taste great. I have this nice recipe I am going to try soon, with brussels sprouts, cheese, bacon and walnuts. I don’t think there’s anything that can go wrong with that, but I will share the recipe with you when I get to try it.

Also, I finally saw the movie Julie & Julia last night. I recommend it to everyone who still haven’t seen it! I’ve seen a lot of good movies lately, but this movie was something else. Maybe, because I could somehow relate to the stories and characters. Everything was so real about this movie, and all the food.. There’s so much love for food in this movie. Inspired by this, I’ve been watching old Youtube clips of Julia Child’s tv show. She is in fact quite special. Also, it got me thinking I really haven’t done much French cooking since I got out of culinary school and perhaps I should.

- Riikka

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