Quelques diners "presque parfaits"

This past week, something very strange has happened to me. I’ve suddenly felt unreasonable urge to, er, cook. That is something that will surely surprise some of you readers nearly as much as it did myself. OK, to be fair, I have done cooking before (when I was starving as a student and couldn’t even afford Indian/Chinese takeaway on a daily basis), and I do participate quite actively at home in cooking (but more in a “vegetable chopper/heavy duty mixer” kind of role). One reason could be, I suppose, the fact that my Valentine's dinner meal (Isle of Skye pasta) was not a big success, might have something to do with it.

It all started last week, when I got all nostalgic about being a Finn, and decided to make a Finnish meal for Mathilde. There are not many dishes more typical than “hernekeitto ja pannukakku” (pea soup and pancakes). It is traditionally eaten on Thursdays, but I was too eager to wait, so we decided to cheat and eat it on Wednesday. I even did something which is totally against my principles (which is to do EVERYTHING last minute), and went shopping the night before. Which was really a good thing, as it turns out the peas have to be soaked in water overnight! So I put the peas to soak, feeling quite pleased with myself. On Wednesday, the cooking frenzy started. In the peas went into the big pot, along with the pork lard, onions, and carrots. I then left the pea soup to boil, whilst I started preparing the pancake paste. I was getting a bit worried about the soup, since it didn’t look anything like I remember from my childhood (it should go all green, but in my case, the soup stayed transparent…). Well, at the end of 2 hours, we were too hungry to wait any longer, so we decided to have a go. At least the soup got some colour when I chucked in the cream – but still it wasn’t quite how I remember it. But the most important thing is surely the taste, and we both found that quite OK. We had some Californian red wine with the meal – not very Finnish really (but more glamorous than a glass of milk – which would be the norm back home). The pancakes were not quite the same as my grandma’s either, but the taste was good enough - which is the main thing, right? So all in all, I would call the dinner a success (but maybe not quite “Un diner presque parfait ;-).

I had also misjudged the quantity wildly, so there was rather a lot of soup left over. So the solution to this problem was to invite my fellow Finns over for lunch the next day! (which is actually the traditional day to have pea soup and pancakes). Grudgingly Teemu, Pete and Hannu accepted – whereas Mikko politely declined (he appears to be pretty much allergic to all things vegetable). I was somewhat nervous – since the judgement of my fellow countrymen obviously meant a lot to me. And they all pretty much came to the same conclusion as me – the pea soup wasn’t quite how it’s supposed to be, but still good, and the pancakes were just about right. So I was quite pleased with myself.

My escapades continued on Monday, when my parents came over for dinner (Mathilde was still in Angers). This time I had decided to go for an Asian speciality – a coconut milk turkey stir fry with vermicelli noodles, followed by some brownies. With the self-confidence gained from last week’s qualified success, I confidently got prepared the ingredients for the stir fry, even going as far as attempting some multi-tasking (meaning I started preparing the brownie pasty as the stir fry was on the boil). The timing was even pretty good, as I just had time to welcome my parents and have a quick apero before digging into the food. The main course was again relatively successful (or maybe my parents were just being polite). But as for the dessert… The nicest way of describing the end result would be “rock-hard brownies a la Teemu”, the honest way would be that they were, well, rock-hard. They were barely edible coming out of the oven (my parents politely smiled while chewing/crushing them…). But about an hour later, they resembled hardened pieces of lava or something…

Anyway, I didn’t let this slight failure discourage me, but prepared myself mentally for the next meal – which was an Italian meal for my darling on Wednesday, a little something to welcome her back home with. So this time I decided to use a recipe from our “Jamie Oliver in Italy” cookbook called “spaghetti con gamberetti e rucola” (that would be spaghetti with prawns and rocket), followed by a lemon panna cotta with caramel decoration. The pasta preparation went without an incidents - the only slight problem being that I had bought mash salad instead of rocket (I call it improvisation). The panna cotta preparation went well also, and as the recipe said, I put it in the fridge to cool down (figuring it would surely be ready in an hour or so). So we dug into the pasta, and both found it tasty – although the spaghetti was unfortunately a bit overcooked.




Unfortunately, the panna cotta wasn’t quite ready…. They could’ve mentioned in the bloody recipe it takes 4-6 hours to cool down, dammit! So let’s say the wait between the main course and the desert was bit long… And as for the caramel sauce – it ended up being nearly as hard as the brownie from 2 days earlier…. So after chewing on a couple of bits of it, we gave up (the damn stuff ended up in the dust bin). But the panna cotta, once it was finally ready, I’m really proud of! I dare say it’s as good as the stuff they serve in the restaurants. So again, in the whole, a qualified success then.

All in all, I’m happy about my venture into the world of cooking. Although I don’t think I’m quite ready for “un diner presque parfait” yet…. ;-)