Super easy orange-mandarin sorbet

Sorry for not updating my blog for ages but the end of my school-year was pretty hectic. The exams and other works took a lot of time. I'm trying to compensate it during the summer by posting more.

         One day we had lots of mandarins and their peels were so tight that we couldn't peel them. I happened to have an ice cream machine and I used it to make some sorbet. After juicing the mandarins I added some orange juice to increase the amount of the juice. There were at least ten mandarins and after halving them I had 20 halves to juice. That took a while because we don't have a proper juicing machine, just a citrus juice extractor.

         To make this even simpler you don't have juice the fruits yourself. You can add ready-made juice from a bottle. Also you don't have to use just orange or mandarin. The world is full of fruits that can be juiced and be made to sorbet. Experiment with different juices to find your own favourite.

         When I had the juice I just poured it in the chilled ice cream machine and let it freeze for 30 minutes. The machine did all the work for me: the freezing and the mixing of the juice. It's also easy to make without the machine. Just pour the juice in a bowl and put it in a freezer. Let it freeze for a few hours and mix it a few times with an electric mixer during the freezing.

        The result was delicious but in the borders of being too sour. If you like sweet then you can add some sugar but it's not necessary.





 

Reindeer tortilla

 We had some salted reindeer meat and one day we decided to make some reindeer tortilla. I chopped the reindeer and added some sour cream, herbs and onion. Then we wrapped it in corn tortillas.

It was quite salty but it tasted absolutely delicious. I’ll make some tortilla again if we happen to get some reindeer meat somewhere.

Some espresso

Hello everyone who bother reading this! It's been ages since the last time I wrote anything in here. If you have been following my Instagram you may have seen some of my dishes but I have been too busy to write anything (or too lazy). But here's my first blog update for 6 months.
         I have recently become more intrested in different type of coffees. Cappuccino is clearly my favourite but I also like different types. To make cappuccino you need some espresso and milk. We had had a moka pot for years but I haven't paid any attention to it before. The opening of a new coffee roastery in Jyväskylä has strengthed my enthusiasm to coffees. It's called paahtimo Papu. It's the only organic roastery in Finland. Here's a link to  their website: http://www.paahtimopapu.fi/  (the website is in Finnish).

        I bought some espresso grounds tested to make some coffee. It tasted disgusting. The next time I put some less grounds at it tasted a whole lot better. I also tried to make some latte and it tasted pretty good.

Restaurant Pöllövaari

I just had my 16th birthday and my parents gave me as a birthday present a dinner in restaurant Pöllövaari. It's in the middle of Jyväskylä, Finland. The name is Finnish and means owl grandfather. I ordered a menu called Kotimaan matka. It means a trip around the home country. It included goat cheese and onion as an appertizer, lamb as a main dish and crème brûlée as a dessert. The lamb was very tender and I enjoyed the whole meal.

Ravioli

I made some ravioli one day. It took hours to make enough pasta for my whole family but with a little preparing it won't take long. You can make the dough in advance and freeze it. You can find the recipe from my previous post.

Opening the barbeque season

 We started our barbeque season yesterday by grilling some corn chicken and pork. As you might see, there's still some snow on the ground. But I didn't let it matter. I made the dish in the middle of the plate (under) by putting some soft goat cheese, red onion and some devil's jam on the grilled pork pieces.

Devil's Jam

800g Crushed tomatoes
400g Red peppers
1 Onion
2-4 Red chilis
6-8 Garlic cloves
1 tspn Salt
1 tspn Ground black pepper
1 tspn Oregano
1/2 dl Vinegar
1 packet Jamsugar

Chop peppers and onion and crush the garlic. Add all ingredients except the sugar in a pan. I made two batches of this; other one was hotter, other milder. Stir and let it pour for 30-40 minutes. After that add the sugar, stir and let it pour for 5 more minutes. Let it chill for a minute and bottle. I sterilised the jars by putting them in the oven for about half an hour. I like to serve it with this pig, goat cheese and red onion dish.

Smoked Chili

 My father smoked some salmon yesterday and I decided to try to smoke some chili at the same time. I grabbed a random chili from one of the bushes. I thought it wasn't so hot because it was that big. Nope.

When I put the chili in my mouth, it started to burn almost immediately. The pain lasted for about 10 minutes.
      The upper picture shows the chili before smoking and the lower picture after. We used apple tree and alder chips in smoking.

American Chocolate Muffins

 The best things in American chocolate muffins are the big chocolate chips. You never get bored enough to not eat them. It also took me only about fifteen minutes to put these in the oven.  Here's the recipe:

American Chocolate Muffins

• 6dl Flour
• 2tsp Baking powder
• 0.5dl Cocoa powder
• 1.5dl Brown sugar
• 200g Chocolate chips
• 2 Eggs
• 2.75dl Milk 
• 1.5dl Oil 

Mix the ingredients in a bowl and mix. Distribute evenly among the molds. Cook in 200° for about 20 minutes.


 

Smoked Salmon

My father just bought an electric smoker and I couldn't wait to test it. I smoked salmon this time but I'm going to test chili too. Maybe something else later if I get an idea of something.

We used hickory and alder chips in smoking. In the picture (right) those bigger chips are hickory and smaller ones alder. I can't say anything about the taste of the smoke because I have nothing to compare with.

We seasoned the salmon fillets with salt and pepper. The pepper maybe covered a bit of the smoke flavour. So, next time I'll put there a bit less pepper.
 

We put the fillets in the smoker for about 45 minutes.
The smoker was quite hot after that, so we had to use mittens when taking the salmon fillets out. The skin had stuck to the grid and we had to scrape it off.

The salmon was tender and juicy. It had a beautiful brown surface as you can see from the picture in the right. We served it with fresh lime and salad.

Avocado pasta and sun-dried tomato pesto

 One day my mother asked me to make some avocado pasta. She had heard about it on the net. So I decided to make my own version of it. I learnt the recipe to this pesto during my TET-week. So here's the recipe.

Avocado pesto:

Some cooked pasta

2 Ripe avocados

Lemon juice

1 Large onion

Some chili (Preserving chili, 11th October)

Mix ingredients in a hot pan and serve.

Sun-dried tomato pesto

2 jars Sun-dried tomatoes and some oil

10 Walnuts

5 Garlic cloves

Some chili (Preserving chili, 11th October)

Whiz ingredients to make some paste. Serve.

White Chocolate Bread Pudding

 I made this bread pudding a few days ago. It was boosted with white chocolate and raspberries. I used frozen ones because I didn't have any fresh ones. I first forgot to put the liquids (because of small font). Then I put them later. It didn't affect to the taste at all and to the look a lot. So here's the recipe:

    Bread pudding:  

250g White chocolate

25g Salt-free butter

250g White bread or bun

250g Fresh or frozen raspberries

4 Eggs

6dl milk

2 tablespoons sugar

Melt the sugar with butter in a small bowl. Cut the bread into cubes. Put half of the bread into a casserole and pour half of the chocolate mixture on them. Put half of the raspberries on them. Put the rest of the bread onto the casserole and chocolate and raspberries. Whisk eggs, milk and sugar a bit. Pour into the casserole. Let it soak for 20 minutes.

     Cook in an oven in 190°C for about 30 minutes. Let it chill for 10 minutes and serve.

A date cake in a cool pi mold

I made this date cake for christmas table. I made it in a pi model we bought from New York last summer. So here's the recipe:

A date cake

• 250g Dates
• 3 dl Water
• 1.5 dl Sugar
• 200g Margarin or butter
• 2 Eggs
• 2 tspns Baking powder
• 2 tspns Vanilla sugar
• 3.5 dl Wheat flour

Chop the dates and boil in a pan with water and sugar until pureed. Add water to the warm mixture and let it melt. Chill and add the eggs one by one while whisking. Compound baking powder and vanilla sugar with flours. Add to the date mixture.Mix as little as possible. Pour into an oiled mold and cook in 175°C for about an hour.

Simple, but still amazing-tasting gingerbread house

I made this cool house at our independence day (6.12, I'm a Finn). I used some ready-made gingerbread dough and printed the patterns from the net. Then I cut them and rolled the gingerbread. I cut the shapes of each peaces. I baked them in an oven in 200°C for about ten minutes. Then I let them cool and glued the pieces together with a mixture of water and powdered sugar. Then I decorated it with powdered sugar.

My week at work

            

I had a TET-week. It means that I spend a day at work and I don't have to go to school. The abbreviation comes from Finnish words TyöElämään Tutustuminen. It means something like getting to know to worklife.
     So I went to an Italian-Greek restaurant called Etrusco. It was fun. I prepped stuff, cleaned places and washed dishes. All amounts were illustrative purpose only because the recipes in restaurant were inaccurate. Here's a recipe I learnt there:




Chicken pasta

• Some cream
• Some blue cheese
• Some pasta
• Sun-dried tomato pesto
• Parmesan

Warm the cream in a pan and add the blue cheese. Let it melt. Add pasta. Put on a plate and add a tablespoonful of pesto on it. Add parmesan.

Epic crêpes suzette

We made some crêpes suzette a week ago. Its basically just crepes and caramelised orange segments. The brown spots in the plate are just reflections. So, here's the recipe.

For batter:

1kg flour

2kg milk

6     eggs

       Orange zest

For sauce:

       Some orange segments and juice

       Sugar

       Butter

       Some cointreau for flambéing

Mix the batter ingredients in a bowl. Put about two tablespoons of sugar on a pan an let it melt. Add butter and let it melt. Then add cointreau and flambé it. Add orange juice and segments. Serve.

Delicious pasta with tomato sauce

When we had this etiquette dinner, I couldn't resist myself from picking some self-made pasta to the menu. It's simple, delicious and even the most pickiest people will eat this. Perfect choice for a dinner. If you have freezed some dough ahead of time it will be very quick, too. And there's one more thing. You can shape it into anything you like.

     There happened on little mistake with the sauce: We forgot to add any seasonig into the crushed tomatoes. But it didn't even matter. It tasted great anyway.

Here's the recipe from one of my older posts: http://myfoodblogi.blogspot.fi/2013/09/some-ravioli-and-tagliatella.html.

Simple goat cheese salad with walnut and apple vinaigrette

If you didn't know, I'm a scout. So, yesterday we had a meeting where we had an etiquette dinner. We made some goat cheese salad as an appertizer. It was a bit stressing to make these, main courses and desserts for 15 people. But luckily we succeeded. Here's the recipe for the appertizer:

For four:

4 Individual soft goat's cheese with rind
50 g Walnut halves
3 Sprigs of thyme
Some salad

Toast bread

For the vinaigrette:

½ Lemon juice only
6 tbsp Olive oil
½ Apple

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Place the goat's cheese on a baking tray with a walnut half on each. Drizzle some olive oil and scatter on the thyme leaves and season with black pepper. Bake in the oven until the cheese has melted from the inside. 
2. Crush the rest of the walnuts. Shred the salad before adding to a bowl. Add the crushed walnuts. 
3.In a separate bowl mix the lemon juice with oil. Grate in the apple and season with salt and pepper. Drizzle a little vinaigrette over the salad and toss together. 
4.Use a chef's ring to cut the toast into 4 round croutons. 
5.To serve, arrange the dressed walnut salad onto serving plates. Place the crouton on the salad and top with the goat's cheese. Spoon over the remaining vinaigrette and serve.

The best teas

I like drinking tea. My mother says I drink too much. Well, it's very unlikely true because I drink only a few times per month. But when I do I definitely do. I have a one liter teapot and I always drink the whole pot.(Well not always but almost)
     I like especially green and white teas. This morning I drank Chinese kekecha tea. It's yellow tea.(I know, I didn't know about it either before going to the shop)
     I like also four season oolong tea pearls. They are tea leaves wrapped in a pearl shape. When I add the water they open and look great.
     So, found your favourite tea? Drink it, if you like, but remember. You always have to explore something new.

Super easy apple swan

I made an apple swan today. I saw a video in facebook and I had too much time. One thing led to another and I made this and one another swan.

Here's the video in youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLXEiMIiF5E

Roasted pumpkin seeds

We made a pumpkin lantern today and instead of throwing the seeds away I separated them from the flesh and roasted on a small pan with a drop of vegetable oil. After frying I salted them. I can use them on salads.