Middinner: Saffron chicken and mashed potatoes

The days between Christmas and New Year are time for relaxing and resting. One party is done and another one is waiting. The dinner should also be easy and fast to prepeare. Real saffron adds the touch of festivity.

Ingredients:

500 g chicken
0,5 g saffron
4 cloves of garlic
turnip rape oil
wheat grass
1 dl cream
salt, black pepper

mashed carrot-potatoes

Fry the chicken slices in turnip rape oil, add seasoning and cream. Let simmer for about 10 minutes. Add chopped wheat grass just before serving. Serve mashed carrot-potatoes on the side.

Christmas dinner: Redroot salmon and lingonberry whitefish

In addition to traditional Christmas food we prepared fish in new ways.


Redroot salmon:
2 kg salmon
1 dl sea salt
3 tbs sugar
4 grated redroot

2 dl sour cream
grated horseradish
dill
lemon juice
salt, black pepper

Place the salmon skin down in a container. Spread salt and sugar on the salmon and let rest for few hours. Add grated redroot and put a weight on the fish. You get good weights by filling on elitre plastic bags with water. Let marinade over night. Remove the redrood, cut thin slices and roll them into rosebuds. Serve with horseradish-sour cream and decorate with dill.

The recipe is adapted from the recipe published in Asiakaspolar-magazine 4/2008.

Lingonberry whitefish:
2 halves of common whitefish
crude sea salt
0,5 dl lingonberry
2 tsp sugar

Season the fish halves with salt and let rest about 15 minutes. Cover one half with crushed lingonberry and lift the other half on top of the other, skin outside. Wrap in plastic wrap and let marinade in refrigerator over night. Remove crushed berries and cut into thin slices.

The recipe is adapted from the recipe pubished in MTV3.fi.

Independence dinner: Rum Fruit Pavlova

This time the dessert is not for children. The reason for the forbidden delicacy is the careful rum marinading.

Ingredients:

Rum fruits:
5 dl strong (60% vol) rum
1/2 dl sugar
plum, pear, pine apple, apple

Meringue base:
6 egg whites
dash of salt
3 dl sugar
2 tl corn starch
2 tl white balsamic vinegar

Filling:
3 dl cream
1 rkl vanilla sugar
rum fruits
fruits

Let fruits marinade in refrigerator in a closed container for a week.

Separate egg whites into a clean dry bowl. Whip and add salt during whipping. Add sugar in portions, and mix corn starch to the last portion. Add vinegar and whip shining. Spread the foam on a baking sheet in the form of 24 cm diameter circle. The foam expands a little in the oven. Leave a shallower place in the middle for the filling. Bake on the lower part of the oven in 125 C for about 90 minutes. Let the base cool down before moving to the serving tray.

Drain the rum fruits. Whip cream hard, but watch out for the butter-effect. Mix fruits and drained rum fruits carefully with the whipped cream and lift on top of the base. Decorate with fruits and chocolates.

To get ice looking sugar decoration boil 250 g sugar and 1 dl water to 145 C. Pour the mixture on a baking paper and let cool down.

The recipe is an adaptation of the recipe published 27.11.2008 in Helsingin Sanomat.

Independence dinner: Mashed carrot potatoes and oven salmon

Simple and tasty basic courses conquered the table on the independence day dinner. Mashed potatoes get some sweetness and spirit from grated carrot. The salmon some edge from parmesan crust.


Ingredients:

1 kg floury potatoes
3 carrots
50 g butter
2 dl milk

2 kg salmon
50 g parmesan
1 dl turnip rape oil
4 gloves of garlic


Boil the potatoes. Grate the carrots and wok them for few minutes in turnip rape oil. Mask the potatoes, add butter and hot milk. Mix the carrot with the potatoes.

Place the salmon in an oven dish skin down. Cover with garlic-parmesan paste. Bake in the oven 200 C for half an hour.

Independence dinner: Baked apple salad

As a starter saad for the Independence day dinner I made a modified oven apple salad. The original recipe was published in Pirkka-magazine. Instead of a regular oven apple, I sliced the apple.

3 big apples
0,5 dl melted butter
1 tbs grated ginger
salt, black pepper

1 red onion
1 tbs apple vinegar
100 g rucola
1 dl lingonberry
salt, black pepper

Cut the onion into thin slices and mix with the apple vinegar. Let marinade for few moments in the refridgerator. Cut the apples into chuncks and mix the chunks with the butter-ginger mixture. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes in 200C.

Toss rucola and onion together and build the portion on top of the apples. Decorate with frozen lingonberries.

Independence dinner: Goat cheese and portobello

The starter of the dinner for the Finnish Independence Day is oven baked chevre-portobello mushroom. Portobellos can be replaced also with big champignons. Warm chevre gives the richness and taste the starter requires. The recipe is an adaptation of the recipe published in Pirkka-magazine.

Ingredients for four:
4 Portobello-mushroom
1 onion
200 g goat cheese (Chevre)
2 tomato
turnip rape oil
0,5 dl pesto
pine seeds
black pepper

Chop the legs of the mushroom and onion. Fry them in turnip rape oil, add pesto and season with black pepper. Slice tomato and chevre, one slice per person. Spread the onion-pesto mixture on the inside of the mushroom caps. Add tomato and chevre slices and decorate with few pine seeds. Bake in 225 C for about ten minutes or until the cheese gets some color.