Spring food

Since I don’t own a car I do most of my shopping in small stores, and not supermarkets. But today Satu took me to Prisma (a supermarket), and I got inspired by the huge variety of ingredients. I saw some cheap fresh asparagus and decided to go with that. They also had a great offer on smoked whitefish (only 9,90€/kg), and I had to get that – usually fish is so expensive I hardly ever buy it.. But today I got a pretty fancy meal with low cost!

The important thing in cooking asparagus (whether you cook them in water, grill them, fry them..) in my opinion is to make sure they stay firm and crunchy. I cooked my asparagus in boiling water for about 2 minutes, and then fried them in a pan with butter, garlic and thyme. I didn’t bother peeling the stalks first, just cut some of the ends.

I seasoned the asparagus with salt, pepper and a dash of lemon juice and served it with some grated matured cheddar (had an old small piece in the fridge that needed to be used), fish and grilled tomatos!

- Riikka

A pineapple

Fresh pineapple is one of the best things in the world. It doesn’t really even matter that my mouth hurts like hell after eating it, it’s usually worth it. But it has to be ripe and sweet, and sometimes finding a good one is a bit difficult. Yesterday we got lucky though, finding a pinapple that was just to my liking! We don’t buy them often, but my boyfriend had been obsessing about eating one for a couple of days..

Yesterday we had this for dessert. Pinapple, cream/yoghurt and dark chocolate. Delicious. The cream and the yoghurt balances well the sweet and tangy pinapple and the dark chocolate adds some bitterness and flavour too. It’s a good, simple combination.

This morning I eat some more pinapple  in a slightly different way. I dry fried some coconut flakes and crushed nuts and seasoned them with cardamom and a pinch of cinnamon. Piled some turkish yogurth on top of pinapple slices and then added the warm coconut mix. This was really good! Very flavourful, fresh and crunchy. I also like it when a dish has some cold and some warm components and different textures.

With a cup of coffee this was definitely a good way to start the day!

-Riikka

Sunday burger

Sunday’s are great days for doing everything you normally don’t have time to do. I’ve been doing some spring cleaning all day, packing winter clothes and storing them for the summer, washing the bathroom and doing laundry. As a reward we made some burgers with my boyfriend. We had to run around the city to get the all the ingredients, because we kept forgetting to buy some of the things.. But finally made it home and started cooking.

I baked the buns myself, and then made the patties. All you need for making a nice burger patty is some ground meat, salt, and pepper. Just mix the spices into the meat, divide into pieces of  ~100g and flatten and shape them between your hands. These aren’t meant to be too thick, just thick enought for them to stay in one piece. Then fry in a hot pan for a couple of minutes and make yourself a burger of your choice. Ours had a lot of stuff in them; bacon, tomato, lettuce, two sorts of mayos, ketchup and cheese. It was goooood. And the best part is, that there’s still some left for tomorrow!

-Riikka

pre-easter

It was my turn to cook for the other girls this time. I didn’t really have any good ideas for Monday’s lunch so I decided to get inspired by Easter. I’m not sure when Easter exactly is this year, but since the supermarkets have been selling Easter eggs for some time now, I assumed it has to be pretty soon..

This is soon becoming my classic Easter dish. Eggs in nest. I’ve done it a couple of times now, but always with a different filling. This time it was with shrimp, cream cheese, lemon juice, pepper, dill and a hint of tabasco.

For main course was home-made coleslaw, grilled tomatos and lamb and buffalo sausages. I guess the lamb in the sausage made this eastery in my mind..

And the dessert was a bit of a struggle.. I was meaning to do pasha, but I didn’t have a mold for it. So I tried using gelatine to keep it together, and that didn’t really work because I didn’t put enough of it. So then it became pasha semifreddo. The texture wasn’t too good, but it tasted alright… It had cream, quark, peaches, lemon peel, raisins and almond crush in it. Ok for a first try without a recipe. Maybe I’ll try it again and then share the recipe if it’s any better!

-Riikka

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