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A continuation of the gallery from yesterday, in a way. This is all the stuff that I could carry in my checked-in luggage from that same trip back in 2011. Besides being deterred by my gaudily bright-pink-patterned suitcase set, I'm pretty sure that any would-be thief who peeked inside said suitcases and saw the cumbersome pile of cheap foreign food items would just give up the situation as Totally Not Worth It. Except that it was totally worth it to me, given the difficulty in obtaining some of said items in our little corner of the country.
Asian cooking ingredients! The closest Chinese grocery store we have is an hour or more drive away in Turku, and has ridiculous hours. I've been trying to get there for more than a year and they're always closed. A couple of smaller Middle Eastern convenience stores do exist, which sometimes have some of the items I'm looking for, but it's sort of hit and miss. So I made a point of hitting up a well-stocked Asian grocery as soon as possible during my trip. Clockwise: pandan essence (the green vial), jasmine essence (the clear vial), glutinous rice flour (for all sorts of desserts and dimsum uses), lemongrass powder, azuki bean paste, and tapioca starch. If it was possible to safely transport frozen shellfish, I would have attempted that as well. Their selection was amazing. Wish I remembered the name :-(
 Teas, because I'm something of a collector. The scented ones tend to be given as gifts or used on guests, since I never really developed a taste for flavored teas. They're popular in Finland, though. And that Royal Wedding tin was just too pretty not to buy. Also, natural food color extracts, marshmallows and lemon sherbets.
 The rest of my Waitrose (a sort of Trader Joe's-Whole Foods type of grocery chain that most reminded me of home) stash. On the topic candy — something seriously weird I've noticed about Finnish candy aisles is that they're just not that into hard candies. Most of my favorite candies happen to be of that variety, so I was very disappointed the first few times we went shopping. So I stocked up on those as well. The lemons from the previous picture, the cola cubes and mints here, plus the unpictured rhubarb and custards, which disappeared before you could even blink. Also in the mix in this picture are: arrowroot powder for sauces, some kaffir lime leaves, real wasabi powder (as opposed to dyed green horseradish in tubes), a discounted giant chocolate Easter egg filled with even more sweets, and a packet of dried goji berries.
 Then we stopped by the nearest Hotel Chocolat and loaded up with highly discounted Easter candies :-D Wow, these didn't last long at all once they got home. No, we didn't eat them ALL :-P A lot of them were gifted, thank you very much.
Japan Centre, near Picadilly Circus — super crowded each of the three times I visited (hey, I have a thing for fresh mochi) but stocked just about everything I was craving. Picked up several packets of soba and udon noodles (top row) as well as rice flavoring packets (usually made of dried fish eggs, sesame seeds and shredded seaweed), and little snack-sized yokan.
Wow, look what I found lurking in my old to-post folder! The last batch of photos from my London work trip back in spring of 2011. Yeah, the one where it became my mission in life to order steamed dumplings from every place within delivery range that made them. Seriously, I've got the pictures to prove it. It was an obsession. Just thinking about the woeful lack of delivery dumplings here makes me sad. It's almost criminal. Why do you hate me so, Finland?
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Stopped by a nice little Thai restaurant after work my first night and… guess what I ordered.
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Dumplings in soup AND steamed dumplings.
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Shumai from another place on another evening.
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Shrimp hargao from the same place as the shumai.
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Bonus shrimp crispies! I think this place was my favorite. I have their menu still somewhere.
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And one night, I gave in and just got fried seafood noodles. Because they used actual large prawns and not tiny baby shrimps like in Finland.
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This is what I get for not making notes — the closest sushi place to where my hostesses lived was also pretty good. I miss ikura :-(
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The Warrington, when it was still owned by Gordon Ramsay. Who sold it later that year. Hey, we were curious. It was pretty inside.
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The food was… okay. Not memorable, but better than the questionable meat pie from lunch. Which I actually remember better. I guess that says something.
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The girls took me to this adorable little fusion dimsum place one evening. I think these are sweet buns?
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Fruity drinks. The one on the right even has basil seeds. I can barely find lemonade in restaurants out here.
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These might be the duck ones.
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Classic charsui bun with barbecue pork.
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The squid ink dumplings! So cool. They stopped making these, it seems :-(
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Random squid, I think?
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Fancy shumai. There were twists on all these dumplings, I wish I remembered :-I
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Pretty little desserts. Mine is the mango pudding, of course.
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Ping Pong Dimsum! That was the name. That’s why I took a picture of the menu :-)
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Thought I’d try some fast food sushi as well, since I’ve never done the conveyor belt thing before. There was a Yo!Sushi at the mall, so I went.
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This stuff was actually a half step better than Sushi Boy, the fast food sushi place we went to in Cali. Well, maybe the plates helped.
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That, and they did hand rolls on demand. I miss having a sushi place.
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Sweet shrimp :-D One of my all-time faves and hard to come by in non-shrimp producing places.
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The conveyor belt! All the plates had time stamps on the lids, which probably helped with the freshness thing a lot.
Took pictures because they never last as long as I would like. Pink roses and lavender lilacs, both of which smelled lovely. I was considering pressing some of them, but they were starting to go limp already so didn't make the best specimens for preservation. Maybe I'll start with leaves…
Remember this post about pumpkin puree where I mentioned always saving the seeds from pumpkins to use for another recipe? This would be one of those recipes. Super simple and gives you loads of snacky stuff to have in a bowl for entertaining guests or to keep in your purse for when your stomach starts growling before lunch. You can crack them open like sunflower seeds or eat them whole (the way I do). The crunch is the fun part!
 Two small pumpkins' worth of seeds, rinsed of as much pulp as humanly possible. I did a batch a couple of years before using a simpler method, but tried the SimplyRecipes version last year and found that the extra prep really helped them achieve that perfect level of salty and crunchy. So that's what you will see depicted below.
 Instead of just throwing the seeds straight into the oven, the recipe suggests simmering them for 10 minutes in salted water (exact ratios at the page linked). Then drain and proceed as you would for roasting any other seeds/nuts.
When I do this again, I will actually use wax paper to spare the roasting pan from complicated cleanup. Then I'd just toss the seeds in a small amount of olive oil (in a separate bowl), spread them on the pan, and sprinkle with a bit more seasalt. In the above, though, I decided to do it all on the pan and it got really annoying when I had to scrub that all off in the end. Lower left shows a little more than 10 minutes past, when I took out the tray to toss the seeds around a bit with a spatula and make sure they were roasting evenly. Lower right shows 20 minutes of roasting, with the seeds fully dried and browned. Remove, cool, and serve.
Right around now, when your eyes are inundated with the glare of white snow as far as you can see, it's nice to think about the equally blinding green that will take over a few months later. Seriously, I'm looking at these pictures and squinting from green overload. I don't remember it being quite as overwhelming in person, but then again, I was probably wearing sunglasses for most of the time. So, as I did last year, here is our summer garden in review. Edible things edition first.
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My raised salad bed sprouts in June.
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Squash that was set out a bit early and got nipped by frost, but rebounded.
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Another squash that survived the late spring frosts.
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Developing redcurrants.
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Developing blackcurrants.
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More baby blackcurrants.
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Developing gooseberries.
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Our strawberry patch after I tore down the netting that had fallen last winter.
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Our late-bearing raspberry patch.
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The earlier raspberries.
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A patch of wild strawberries starting to flower.
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The grapevine over the hot tub leafing out.
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The grapevine in the greenhouse already reaching out in every direction in early June.
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A huge mutant asparagus stalk.
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By the first of July, the veggie plot had gotten a bit more wild than I could deal with.
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So a week later, I decided to try some lasagna gardening tactics and laid down a layer of cardboard to smother the larger wild growth.
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Self-seeded stand of wild lupines next the garage.
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Baby grapes forming in the greenhouse.
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Greenhouse grapevine by late June is threatening to eat the entire structure.
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Meanwhile, my cucurbit seedlings are rapidly outgrowing their pots.
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Oregano gone wild in an old herb patch.
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My salad garden proliferates.
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The new netting I put over the strawberries last summer.
Yep, these were made with green tomatoes. I tried growing some tomato plants my first year out here, only the weather never picked up enough for the fruit to ripen, so I ended up with a bag of green tomatoes at the end of the growing season. They were cherry tomatoes, so they weren't much good for the typical fried recipes and I was forced to dig deeper for something to use them in.
See how small they were? Anyway, I happened upon a recipe for Green Tomato Cake with Brown Butter Icing over at the Food Network site. While I'm rather ambivalent about Paula Deen as a television celebrity, I won't deny that southern-inspired recipes have probably come up with some of the best uses for green tomatoes that I've had occasion to try. So cake they would be. I prefer my cakes in smaller and more portable portions, though, so they got turned into muffins. These got shared with a few friends and family, none of whom quite believed that they were eating tomatoes. They have a sort of tangy citrusy taste to them, I suppose, though I could still tell because I already knew. For future batches, I would probably cut them finer or maybe even use a puree. Then again, people who like tomatoes might disagree about trying to hide them that way. If I ever end up with more little green ones, though, this will be the recipe I go back to. Pictures and process behind the cut…
Continue reading Baked Green Tomatoes… muffins, that is.
One of the things I love most about spring in the north is the bonanza of flowering bulbs that burst out nonstop the minute the snows recede. I spent several years back in Cali trying to coax reluctant daffodils and hyacinths into bloom through rigorous refrigerator chilling regimens before finally giving in to the fact that I would only ever have them as cut flowers. Tulips and snowdrops never had a fighting chance. In our Finnish house, though, it's a completely different story. I am already plotting elaborate flower beds and making wish lists from internet bulb suppliers, even though planting time isn't until this fall.
Last May, some friends took me to a family property that was pretty much covered in these flowers, all naturalized after decades of letting them grow where they wanted. Seriously, huge tulips that just kept coming back, year after year. My mind boggled. I brought back a huge bouquet with me and want to create a similar effect in our borders, though it will probably take a long time to look as established as that old cottage garden did. I regret not having taken photos of that garden now, but here are the flowers at least.
So back in Cali, the main thing I knew about blackcurrants were that they were a strongly-scented European fruit that was used to make booze and Ribena. The main thing I knew about Ribena syrup was that it was really handy to use when mixing up blood substitute for film and TV productions. Never actually drank any of the stuff until a couple years ago, since it was usually relegated to some obscure specialty shelf.
First winter we were here, then, T's grandmother merrily handed me a bottle of homemade blackcurrant juice and I thanked her, despite looking somewhat puzzled. We like juice, so why not? But when I asked later if we were supposed to use it like the normal cordials we get at the store, T explained that it was a special thing that you're supposed to use mostly for when you're sick or have a sore throat. Like we do with lemon and honey, only with berries. For the past two winters, one or two bottles was mostly enough, since we didn't get anything serious and never were sick for long. Then the Flu From Hell hit last month.
 That winter's one small bottle was gone within a day or two and we were both unable to ingest practically anything BUT warm tea and juice. Getting lemons required far more effort and grocery shopping than we were capable of, and didn't produce enough juice to keep up with the demand even when we had them, so I developed an addiction to hot blackcurrant juice. I ended up diluting and straining 3 jars of blackcurrant and redcurrant jam from my wedding jam-making binge (which I still need to post about, I guess) to keep up with the demand. At this point, I realized that I really needed to figure out a source for the stuff beyond generous in-laws.
We still had all of the 2012 berry harvest sitting dowstairs in the freezer, but I didn't have the energy to spend an entire weekend boiling and straining and bottling. Time to invest in something more hard-core. I knew about steam juicers, sure. They vaguely looked like they belonged in a meth lab, but were usually found in the kitchens of Finnish grannies. (According to some quick research on the Google, Finnish-made varieties are still among the most reliable and go for obscene prices overseas.) You put fruit in the top and juice magically comes out of the spout. Still, they took up so much space and looked like fiddly to deal with, so I never seriously entertained the idea of getting one. Until now.
So last week, I purposefully marched to the counter of the nearest Finnish-store-equivalent-of-Target and requested a steam juicer. The girl had to go dig one up in the back because they're typically only on display during the big juicing season in late summer/autumn. But I needed one now, dammit. As you can see from the above picture, we now have a new addition on the stovetop. I really have no idea where else to put it, since no single shelf is big enough to store the entire thing and the idea of having various components scattered around the kitchen so I have to scramble to find them every time I make juice is rather annoying. Still. There it is.
And then, juice was made.
Water goes in the bottom pan, where it is heated and sends steam rising to the upper layers. The middle pan is put in place to collect juice, then the fruit is put into the top pan for processing. Top right, you see about 5 1-liter ziploc bags full of frozen blackcurrants from the plants in our yard. They pretty much take up the entire top pan. The instructions said to put in some sugar but didn't specify how much, so I went with 1.5 cups worth. This ended up being totally NOT enough, by the way, so mental note for next time. (I ended up having to sweeten each cup of juice before it was consumed, though that is probably better anyway because it can be tailored to the tastes of each individual.) Will have to step it up closer to the amount used for jam-making, I suppose, since the berries are very tart on their own. Bottom right, you see the results after steaming for 20 minutes — juice is building up in the collection pan and making its way through the hose. I'd already drained some off in the measuring cup there.
The instructions say to drain and pour the juice over the top pan of fruit a couple of times, to settle the fruit and help the juice blend better. So above left, you see me pouring onto fruit that had already settled to half its previous volume after half an hour of steaming. The finished juice is just drained directly into sterilized jars and you're pretty much done. To the right, 1.5 hours of steaming later, you see the layer of raisin-like blackcurrant husks left over. Down to about 1/6 of what was in there at the beginning, I'd say. The pulp could have been ground to paste and used for fruit leathers, but once again, not so much with the energy currently. They went into the compost bin, where they will help feed future generations of garden produce, so it's all good in the end.
 The final result! 4 large jars and one Snapple bottle of blackcurrant juice, ready for making into lovely hot drinks for upcoming cold nights. I've still got tons more fruit in the freezer to process as well, so am excited to try some juice blends in the near future. These will definitely be consumed faster than the jams I made in 2011 and it's awesome to finally be making something that is so constantly on our grocery lists.
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