By Tim on August 26, 2012
So last Sunday was Restaurant Day again. And after years of thinking it would be funny to join in, this year I did.
Restaurant Day from Cocoa on Vimeo.
Firstly, I suppose I should tell you what it is. In short: for one day everyone is encouraged to open their own restaurant. It’s been running now, for probably 2 or 3 years and has been pretty much wildly successful. As I heard the organiser say on the radio as we were in the last throws of hectic prep, food is a common experience for everyone. It brings people together to share and enjoy themselves. It celebrates cultural differences. It’s a genius idea actually. And I’m happy that I’ve finally played a part in that and shared a little taste of my homeland to some of my neighbours too.
Maiju is definitely the one with the craftwork skills.
We had the “South Pacific Sweet Store” which consisted of a handful of sweet treats from NZ. I would have loved to have made my favorite things from NZ: snapper, lamb, mint sauce and kumara, but the reality is that all of those things are either impossible to get here (snapper, kumara), prohibitively expensive (lamb) and/or just basically impractical (cooking things warm on the day would be hard work and with meat of course there are hygiene issues to consider too). After a long time thinking about it, I figured that making sweets was pretty much the most only thing I could do:
- ahead of time (to decrease on-the-day stress),
- at scale,
- relatively cheaply,
- that would be glutenfree and vegetarian and
- that would be from my homeland
An in the end I think that decision was completely justified. The whole thing went better than I could have expected.
We were set up in Karhupuisto, which had was awesome because there was probably another 5 or 10 restaurants there. So there was plenty of people coming through and only a 50 meter walk with our dining table to the park. And I’d say that within about a minute of setting up, we had a queue of about a dozen people. It brings a smile to my face now, thinking of it actually. That’s basically what any food nerd loves about cooking, the chance to make something with their own hands and see people enjoying it. So I stood there for 90mins, smiling, chatting and dishing out slices of pavlova and kiwifruit and lovin it. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in food.
One visitor took some pics so if want to see what we had check this. Including a funny pic of Hip attacking the scraps. I’d forgotten about that, but she was very quick to pounce on any crumbs (or cooking utensils) that happened to fall off the table.
On the more practical side of it, here are a few notes, ostensibly for myself but perhaps useful also for anyone else joining in Ravintolapäivä.
- the pavlova was a huge success. I made a 16 egg pav (which is fucking massive), and went within 20 or 30mins. It seemed to me that lots of Finns knew of pavlova. Were I to do it again, I could probably make about 3 times as much and get rid of them all, with ease.
- The kiwifruit and canned whipped cream were perfect with the pav. Kiwifruit, well you can’t get more Kiwi than that, and the sweet pav needs something sharp to cut the richness and as to the cream, canned whipped cream was a lifesaver in terms of ease (I can’t imagine whipping that must cream by hand and then keeping it cool and having it not split whilst in the sun at the park).
- I guess we could have made more stuff in general. I planned for 200 people and 6 hours, which in reality turned out to be about 100 people (as everyone bought 3 or 4 different things) and about 90mins. I could have had twice as much of everything and not had anything left over. I kinda got the impression that this was a common mistake (perhaps ‘theme’ is kinder than ‘mistake’) for most restauranteurs – not being used to making stuff at industrial scale.
- Having coffee was great, especially to go with the sweet stuff we had. It would have been a lot smarter to have to big thermoses rather than one, to save Maiju running between home and back with refills (thanks Betty!) i.e. filling one while served from the other.
- The pav was clearly the most popular thing. No one knew much of anything about any of the other things, with the possible exception of Rocky Road, which some people asked for even after it’d sold out. And lots of people asked “what is it?” of the Hokey Pokey – I guess it looked intriguing.
- it would be a smart idea to print out ingredients lists for everything for those people with allergies. I imagine it’d be way easier to hand someone something in paper than trying to remember, run-off-your-feet, what went into something. And I should know that as a Celiac, right.
- In the end I think my idea for the menu was proven correct. We got basically everything done beforehand, which made the day pretty stress-free and enjoyable. And sweet things are cheap enough to make that we were able to price things so that: I didn’t feel we were ripping anyone off, I got the impression that people were happy to pay our prices, and we didn’t loose money.
- For the record, it was 3€ for a slice of pav, cream and about half a kiwifruit and 50c for a piece of candy (of couple-of-bite size).
I’ll stick the recipes up here as I get around to typing them out:
Posted in ravintolapäivä, restaurantday |
By Tim on July 28, 2012
Today has been the example of what a great summer day can be in Helsinki. Went for a long walk in the morning, had an awesome gluten-free breaky (apologies, Finnish only, but I recommend if you’re in the area), stopped at the local farmers market and bought a bunch of fresh veges. Then some friends rung and we decided to have a picnic in the park infront of our place – Bear Park. So carrying a catch of the best that late summer has to offer, it’s easy to whip together an awesome feed. Mum’s potato salad with new potatoes and this shaved fennel salad. Add some warm weather, good company and a bottle of white and well, this is what life should be every day.
Not from the day of the story but you get the idea.
We didn’t have all the ingredients so it’s slightly tweaked 101 cookbooks version, but I have to say that in the case of pumpkin seeds for pine nuts I reckon the swap suited even better. It’s a great salad as it’s so fresh and crunchy.
- Juice of one lemon
- one large courgette, finely sliced
- 2 fennel bulbs, finely diced
- a pinch of sea-salt
- a couple glugs of olive oil
- a head of interesting lettuce
- about 200g of feta
- about ½C of toasted pumpkin seeds
- Put the finely sliced fennel and courgette into a bowl with the salt, lemon juice and oil and stir to coat.
- Leave to marinate for a bit (ours was probably only 30mins).
- Meanwhile toast the pumpkin seeds in a dry pan.
- Just before serving, toss in the lettuce, seeds and feta and mix.
PS: as to the ‘best of what Helsinki’ has to offer, for dessert we had blueberry tart, with had picked berries by our very selves. That recipe will have to wait for another day though.
Posted in salad |
By Tim on June 12, 2012
The best thing when making cakes is not to try to ‘tweak’ cakes where wheat flour is the main component but rather focus on those that where gluten was never really a key component to start with. That means forgetting about certain favorites but also means opening up new avenues too. Every cloud has a silver lining as they say. A good brownie or a rich, dark cake like this is a good example: it’s not a gluten-free cake, it’s a cake that just happens to be glutenfree. So everyone loves it: glu-tards and non-gluten-challenged alike.
- 100g butter
- 340g milk chocolate (actually I used half milk and half dark chocolate)
- 1T instant coffee powder
- 3T Dutch cocoa powder
- 5 large eggs
- 225g caster sugar
- 5T ground almonds
- 100g walnut pieces
- Preheat your oven to 180C.
- Break the chocolate into smaller pieces and place it into a bowl with the butter.
- Place the bowl on top of a gently simmering pot of water so that the water isn’t touching the bottom of the bowl.
- Stir the chocolate and butter intermittently until it is melted, smooth and glossy.
- In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until thick and creamy, for about 5 minutes.
- Fold the almond flour and walnut pieces into the beaten eggs and sugar.
- Gently fold together the chocolate and the batter and when combined, pour into a 20cm spring-form cake tin.
- Bake for 40 minutes or until the top of the cake is dry. Turn off the oven and leave the cake undisturbed in the oven until the oven has cooled.
- When cool release the cake carefully from the tin.
- Serve with cream and something sharp and fresh like for example, raspberries.
Posted in cake, chocolate |
By Tim on June 10, 2012
ready to go.
The secret to this are the following things:
- guacamole from fresh avocados (don’t even joke about jarred guac, you may as well use wallpaper paste)
- nice, fresh, glutenfree tortillas
- really well-caramellised, sweet onions and peppers
Guacamole
- 2 ripe avocados
- a small red onion
- 1 juicy lime (or failing that a lemon will do)
- Start by preparing the guacamole.
- Scoop out the avocado flesh (reserving the stones) and mash in a bowl with a pinch of salt and the juice of half a lime.
- Mix and adjust seasoning and acidity.
- Return the avocado stones to the guacamole, as the avocado will otherwise quickly discolour to a kinda unappetising brown – I’m not actually completely sure if this really makes a difference, but I guess it can’t hurt at least.
Fajitas
- 2 large yellow onions
- 3 bell peppers
- olive oil
- salt+ black pepper
- gluten-free tortilla flat-breads, wither store bought or homemade
- tomato salsa, either a good store one or you can make your own too
- Peel and slice the onions.
- Core, deseed and slice the peppers.
- Get a pan on a medium high heat and add a decent glug of olive oil.
- Add the onions, peppers and a good pinch of salt and black pepper.
- Stirring regular, cook the peppers and onions until the peppers are soft and (more importantly) the onions are well caramellised.
- Serve the peppers and onions on top of a tortilla with a dollop of salsa and guacamole.
Posted in Mexican |
By Tim on May 29, 2012
I stumbled across a couple of recipes for tortillas recently. And buoyed by the fact that some other people had had success, and as Mexican food is completely awesome, I had a go myself. And the result was actually better than I could have imagined. Tasty, totally looked the part, pliable and flexible like I wouldn’t have thought possible from glutenfree flatbread. All around, better than any store bought glutenfree tortillas I’ve had and I’d say almost as good as regular, glutenous tortillas.
Waiting to be filled with avocado, salsa and all the good stuff. Watch this space…
Adapted from this and this. Looks like a lot of instructions, but actually it’s easy as an easy thing. Basically, mix everything, roll out and cook.
There are a couple of key points to remember when making this:
- your pan needs to be creaming hot. Set your element to max and allow it to come up to temp. And get ready for a bit of smoke, so an extractor fan is necessary unless you’re making them outside
- they need to be very thin. For this reason, I’d say it’s basically a necessity to roll them out between 2 sheet of baking paper.
Makes about 10 6-inch tortillas:
- 280g gluten-free flour
- 1T psyllium husk
- 1t baking powder
- 1t salt
- 75g butter
- 2T neutral oil
- 1/2 cup to 1 cup warm water
- Mix all the dry ingredients together and mix thoroughly.
- Rub the butter in with your finger-tips until it disappears.
- Add the oil and mash that in with your hands.
- Slowly add the water, mixing at each stage until until you get just to a pliable, clump of dough that holds together but isn’t yet sticky.
- Leave for 30mins for the dough to rest.
- Divide the dough into about 10 evenly sized balls.
- Grab two sheets of baking paper, place a ball of dough between them and roll them out to about a 5mm thickness.
- Now you can, if you like, trim your tortilla up with a sharp knife – so that it’s a neat circle as opposed to a rough, amoeba-shape.
- Repeat until with all the dough so that you have all the tortillas ready to rock. Note, they’ll be thin enough that they’ll probably be a bit tricky to get them off the greasproof paper – it helps to hold them upside down, been the paper and tease them off.
- Get a trusty pan (I use an old cast iron) on max heat and let it come up to basically screaming hot.
- Add a raw tortilla, watch it bubble in about 10s, flip it after about a minute (or when it’s started to take colour of the bottom) and cook on the other side for about another 30s or so.
- Repeat for all the remaining tortillas and leave in a stack to keep them warm (they’re at their most pliable and delicious whilst warm from the pan).
- Fill with your favourite Mexican delicacies and enjoy!
Posted in bread, Mexican |
By Tim on May 17, 2012
In the last couple of years I’ve tried a few cakes is this ilk: which is to say, cakes made from citrus and almond flour. I think this is the best of the bunch. Apparently I’m not the only one who thought it was decent: all Maiju’s teacher colleagues requested the recipe, after I sent the cake there with Maiju for morning tea. I think they must love me at that school.
This actually holds together pretty well for a glutenfree cake – as you might be able to see from the texture here.
The thing with cakes that are made from almond flour is that they’re very dense and rich. What really sets this cake from others I’ve tried is the raw citrus juice added at the end – you really need something sharp to cut all the butter and almond oil. The polenta helps in that way too, cuts back the richness a bit and also adds an interested textural element.
Life in Scandanavia: there’s either way too little light or then way too much. That goes for photography and doubly for sleeping.
- 450g butter
- 450g sugar
- 450g ground almond
- 225g polenta
- 6 eggs
- 1t vanilla essence
- 2 lemons
- a pinch of salt
- 1½t baking baking
- 2 limes
You could use whatever kind of citrus fruit you like though as said it needs to be pretty sharp to cut the richness of the cake, so at the very least a couple of lemons (and then perhaps more lemons, limes or oranges).
This make a really large cake – 3inchs high and 30cm wide, so easily enough for a dozen people. Or a gaggle of hungry teachers.
- Preheat your oven 180C.
- Cream the butter and sugar together.
- Add the almond meal and mix.
- Add the eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly after each one.
- Zest the 4 citrus fruit (and save the zested fruit for later) and add that to the batter along with the polenta, salt, baking powder and vanilla.
- Spoon the batter into a 30cm cake tin and bake for an hour or until such time as a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
- When it’s ready, remove the cake from the oven and skewer it thoroughly with a skewer so that the cake is covered with tiny holes.
- Squeeze the juice the citrus fruit over the cake so that the juice runs through the holes and soaks into the cake.
- You could it eat immediately, but it’s definitely a lot better when it cold, so leave it to cool to room temperature and then serve with a nice dollop of thick yoghurt.
Posted in baking, cake |
By Tim on May 14, 2012
Quinoa is couscous for Celiacs. And like couscous, it’s pretty bland unless you flavour it with something. Harissa is a good something. Combine that with some grilled still warm veges and a citrus vinaigrette and you’ve a pretty damn tasty slap-up lunch.
Not too heavy and pretty damn tasty.
Harissa Quinoa
- 2T Harissa
- 2C quinoa
- 4 spring onions
- a handful of fresh coriander
You can make your own harissa if you have the time (for which you can find numerous recipes on the net) on this occasion I just used a store bought jar. You should at least taste it for heat prior to adding it and adjust the quantity based on the fire-level and your own tastes. Just keep in mind that the quinoa will roughly double in size when it’s cooked.
- Add 4C of water to a pot on a medium heat and stir in the harissa until thoroughly mixed.
- When the water has come to the boil, add the harissa and cover the pot.
- When the pot has boiled dry (takes about 12mins) take the pot off the heat and leave to steam (to fluff up)
- In the meantime you can finely slice the spring onions and coriander. Move a smaller pile of these to the side for garnishing.
- When the quinoa has cooled, add to a serving bowl with the onions and coriander and fluff/mix with a fork.
Grilled Eggplant and Capsicum salad
- 2 medium eggplants
- 1 large bell pepper
- ½ a clove of garlic
- 1 lemon
- olive oil
- salt and pepper
- Get a pan (or a griddle if you’re lucky enough to have one) on a medium heat (4/6).
- Deseed, wash, slice the capsicum into generous wedges and toss them in a little olive oil, salt and freshly milled black pepper.
- When the pan is to temperature, place the pepper wedges in the pan and leave them until they’ve lost almost all their bite and have taken some attractive charred bits on the outside – that’ll probably take about 20-25 minutes.
- Meanwhile you can remove the tops from the eggplants, wash them and slice them into long slivers.
- Place the eggplant slices on a tray, salt them and drizzle a little olive oil over them.
- Add the eggplants to the pan and cook, in a similar vein, turning when the eggplant has begun to soften and taken some barbeque char. Remove when the eggplant is soft but not so much so that it completely fails apart.
- Mince the garlic and mix with juice of half a lemon, about twice that amount of olive oil. Mix the vinaigrette, check and adjust for sharpness, then toss with the grilled veges.
- Enjoy!
Posted in North African, salad, vegan |
By Tim on May 9, 2012
This is kinda ‘cheats’ version of the famous Indian desert. Kulfi to me is like ice-cream, this isn’t that. But it hits the same kind of flavours, is way easier to make, doesn’t require an ice-cream maker or to be kept frozen. So while often it’s nice to take your time and do things properly, sometimes it’s nice to have a quick and easy version they gets you 80% of the way.
Pistachios and cardamom pods.
The final article.
Now that I’ve talked this down a bit I should emphasise that it’s fully worth a go. Precisely because it’s quick and easy and keeps well. And also because Indian deserts aren’t usually the most widely recognised and they’re thoroughly worth a try.
- 250g desiccated coconut
- 1 tin of sweetened condensed milk
- ~⅓C of unshelled, unsalted pistachio nuts
- ½t ground cardamom
- Lightly smash the pistachios (for example in a mortar and pestle).
- Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly.
- Put a nonstick pan on a low heat and add the batter to it.
- Cook the batter out for 10 minutes stirring continuously – you will see it at first become ‘wetter’ and then gradually come together and become sticky again.
- Remove from the heat and then allow it to cool enough to handle but not so much so that it’s stone cool (otherwise you won’t be able to mold it easily).
- With wet hands (as it reduces the sticking) roll the mixture, in about teaspoon measures, between your wet palms into little balls. At this point if you have any extra desiccated coconut around you can dips the balls in that too.
- Transfer the balls to the fridge – after about 30mins they should have firmed up and are ready to be served.
Posted in desert, Indian |
By Tim on April 25, 2012
This is another one of those things where is a way it’s soo simple that it perhaps doesn’t warrant the description “recipe”. And yet, on the flip side, it’s exactly that simplicity and the time it takes compared to the result that makes it awesome. It the perfect kind desert for unexpected guests – you’ll likely have all the ingredients and it takes about 5 mins to make. And if you have the soul of a magician (or perhaps a comedian) you can make quite the theatrical show out of the flambé-ing too.
- 50g brown sugar
- 50g butter
- about 50ml of rum (or suitable liquor)
- 4 or 5 bananas (or suitable fruit)
Notes
- You can, within reason, use whatever fruit is on hand. Pears are lovely for example.
- You can also use whatever alcohol you please. I like rum for this personally but, for example, calvados or brandy suit well too.
- You absolutely need some fluid. So if you don’t have (or don’t like) liquor then use water. I would say your definitely missed out on some flavour there but at least the caramel will still come together (with no other liquid the sugar and butter don’t emulsify).
- Place a pan on a medium heat with the sugar.
- Whilst the pan is heating peel and slice the bananas.
- When the pan has come to temperature add the butter and stir until melted.
- Now you have two choices: the impressive flambé or the safe but boring method. I would suggest that you have a cover for your pan close in case the flames get out of control (the cover will starve the oxygen and quickly put out the flames) – particularly if you’ve never done this before. And don’t have anything flammable next to the pan. And don’t panic. So now that I’ve scared you off, you do this. Light a match in one hand, pour the rum into with your other and then standing back, put the match above the pan. With luck, flames will leap from the pan for 30s or so, you will keep your eyebrows (and be otherwise unharmed) and your guests will oh and ah at your gastronomic and theatrical talents.
- The boring method is exactly the same but without the match – it won’t catch fire in that case (though I’d be a little careful with a gas stovetop).
- The caramel should come together with the rum. When it’s reduced to your desired consistancy and the bananas are cooked al dente it’s ready to serve. If the caramel thickens to much and looks like burning, then add a touch of water.
- Spoon over some cold vanilla ice cream and regale your friends with old war stories of past flamings gone wrong.
Posted in desert |
By Tim on April 21, 2012
I never could have imagined years ago that I’d eat and enjoy pumpkin soup but there you go. This is actually pretty awesome. Creamy, savoury and rich.
Silky smooth and smokey.
- 1 medium sized butternut squash
- 2 red peppers
- 2 medium onions
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 2L vegetable stock
- 1½t smoked paprika (i.s. “spanish paprika”)
- sunflower oil
- 3 bay leaves
- salt and black pepper
- a little cream and chives to serve
To keep it fully vegan you can ditch the cream or substitute it with coconut cream.
- Place a large pot on a medium heat and add a decent glug of oil to it.
- Peel and slice the onions and add them to oil.
- Mince the garlic and add to the pan.
- Peel, deseed and dice the butternut into a rough 1 inch dice.
- Deseed, dice and add the pepper to the pan.
- Add salt, freshly milled black pepper, bay leaves and the smoked paprika to the mix, stir to remove any lumps of paprika and cover with the stock.
- Cook over the medium heat until the peppers and squash is cooked – which should take about 45 minutes.
- Remove and discard the bay leaves and blend the soup to a some puree . At this point you can add water to adjust the texture – but it should be thick and creamy so be careful to not add too much.
- Dish up with a swirl of cream and a pinch of chopped chives.
Posted in soup, vegan |
