Cooking Eating Storytelling
Amazing Coconut Roughs… These are truly amazing little treats to have on hand for when you need a little energy boost… and fantastic for primary schools as they are free from most things that some kids are intolerant to – There is always one kid that can’t have gluten or eggs or sugar etc, in a class and it’s a shame that they always miss out on treats.
I will definitely be making them into little egg moulds for Easter this year!
Guilt free eating – Blondie 🙂
Traditional Finnish Gingerbread Biscuits – Piparkakut … If I were to choose one thing that is significantly Christmas to me, and for most Finns I would assume it would have to be the mounds of gingerbread biscuits that come out at this time of year.
My Nana has always been the one to stock the family with these delicious, spice laden, thin crispy biscuits. She would have tins of them, and knowing how much my sister and I loved them, would keep a continual stock of them throughout the year that we would have with coffee along with other lovely sweets.
I recently acquired a Finnish cookbook published in 1966, Kotiruoka by Uusi Laitos (translates to Home Cooking or something very similar) This is Nana’s and has been well thumbed through. It has nine different recipes for gingerbread cookies… NINE!
The Finnish/Nordic way is to have them neat, no fancy icing decorations and the shapes are simple hearts, stars and a scalloped circle… although I have, in the last several years, started a little tradition with my son and we now decorate large cookies cut from my gorgeous Donna Hay Christmas Bauble Cookie Cutters. The large size means the cookies can be intricately decorated and look stunning (my son channels Jackson Pollock when decorating these)
This amount makes about 50 cookies depending on the size of your cutters, but believe me they will disappear, and very quickly! Going with the FinSki’s theme for edible gift ideas, package them up in little bags or old biscuit tins and give them as gift.
Hyvaa joulua! Blondie
Bella and I are over the moon to have ‘foraging for wild mushrooms’ selected in Lyndey Milan’s “Top 5 Foodie Experiences” for her article in Australian Traveller magazine.
With all the travels she did for her show, Taste of Australia; the multitude of experiences with the amount of people she met, mushroom foraging with FinSki’s ranked up there with the best!
Yay us!!
Pop over to our Mushrooming page for more fantastic stories on wild mushroom foraging in NSW.
Clarified butter and ghee are simple enough products to get at your local shop (well ghee is), so why go to the trouble of making them yourself? Aside from the flavour, it’s simply for the fact that you have control of where the butter will come from. Maybe you like a particular butter from a farm near you or a Danish butter brand or you only eat organic. If this is the case then you need to start making this for yourself.
The difference between clarified butter and ghee is purely the time the butter has been cooked for. Butter is clarified once the milk solids have separated – there will be two distinct layers. Ghee has just been cooked for a bit longer and will have a nuttier more golden hue. Both are far more outstanding products, both in taste and aroma when made yourself… I can absolutely promise you that you will never, ever buy ghee or clarified butter again after you have tasted your own.
This recipe is probably more a ghee than a clarified butter as I cooked it a few more minutes after the splattering stopped. It’s fast to make and it lasts for ages, up to 6 months in the fridge.
Use a butter that you love, (this is my favourite for making ghee). It needs to be unsalted and butter in it’s purest form, no additives at all.
Simple, easy and tasty – Blondie 🙂
I can’t believe I hadn’t put this recipe up yet, so here it is, short and sweet… This is my mum’s marinade for leg of lamb; it’s sweet with a slight hit of mustard heat and makes the most delicious gravy afterwards.
I was raised on this and whenever I make it myself I get a nostalgic whiff of childhood. The aroma that hits you when you walk in the door is divine, hence the title, Mum’s Divine Lamb Roast Marinade 🙂
Get yourself a large leg of lamb so you can enjoy several meals out of it with your family.
Food memories… Blondie
Simple Small Batch Aioli – Mayonnaise is one of those amazing condiments that is used in countries all around the world to add flavour or smoothness to their dishes. Aioli is basically garlic mayonnaise (although the true way of making this is to pound the oil and garlic in a mortar and pestle – no egg is added) but you can use any number of different ingredients to make your own flavoured mayonnaise.
The reason I like this small batch recipe is because I will never get through a cup or more of homemade aioli within a week. This is just the right amount to use on some sandwiches or on toast with poached eggs on the weekend.
If you are feeling adventurous you can add some fresh herbs or throw in some hot smoked paprika or any other spice to complement your meal, maybe add a mustard. Use lemon instead of vinegar, or use a different vinegar, maybe a fruit vinegar… the combinations are endless.
Let your creativity out! – Blondie 🙂
Danish Sweet Cheese Pastries From Scratch comes direct from Nigella Lawson’s, How To Be A Domestic Goddess cookbook. I chose this one for the mere fact that it’s a food processor made dough, which in my mind will make the dough making process easy and clean… hahaha!!
To start with and probably the one thing EVERYONE mentions about this dough is just how moist, messy and sticky it is… and they weren’t wrong. It’s like glue!
In the original recipe it asks to mix the dry ingredients then add the cold butter in the food processor then add this to the combined wet ingredients. That was far too messy for me, considering everyone’s comments on this particular pastry recipe, so I did it slightly different – I did it all in the food processor. The result was still a success, but you are still going to get dirty trying to remove the dough from the processor into a bowl for it to prove.
**Brainwave** Leave the dough to prove in the processor bowl! Will let you know how it goes the next time around.
Get your hands dirty and have fun!.. Blondie 🙂
