Arctic Cloudberry

Creamy smoked reindeer pasta

13:51

It’s been a crisp and sunny autumn day with air full or earthy aromas. I went to get some Rosemary and Thyme from my garden as the sun was setting and I could feel and smell winter in the air. So I thought it’s the perfect night for some Arctic comfort grub.

I found a packet of smoked reindeer in my freezer and decided on a creamy autumnal pasta with goat cheese and mushrooms. The sauce was a combination of bold flavours – maybe too many for some, but that’s my kind of cooking. Too much is better than not enough in my opinion.

Lots of people in UK are a bit squeamish about eating reindeer. I’m not sure if it’s because people think of them as pets, Santa, Rudolf and all that, or because they are quite cute. Or it might be an animal rights issue to some who think that these are wild animals who are captured to live in cramped, prison like farm conditions or hunted from helicopters. I am all for animal rights – I was vegetarian for 20 years because of my love for animals. (I have now slipped back to my carnivorous ways mainly because I love cooking for my husband and enabled by the growth of organic food industry.)

I don't know what goes on in other countries, but in the Nordics reindeer are not wild animals, neither are they pets. Well there is always the odd orphaned calf who is taken in and brought up by humans. I remember a story of such an abandoned calf called Aatu in Rovamiemi who was raised by humans and never learned how to be a proper reindeer. Now he likes watching telly with his human family and apparently his favourite program is Heartbeat!!! Which is lucky for Aatu because Finnish TV seems to be broadcasting endless reruns of the series.

The reindeer we eat are semi-domesticated animals who year round roam free in the open taiga with their hoofed buddies grazing on lichen. Yes eventually before hitting our tables they end up in the slaughterhouse which obviously is not ideal for the animal. But the reindeer I aim to buy is reared in this traditional way.

In the northern part of Fennoscandia (Norway, Sweden and Finland) and the Russian Kola peninsula live the indigenous Sami people, sometimes called Lapps. Long before the arrival of the nasty new Finns and Swedes and the Viking era the Sami lived in nomadic harmony with the hard Arctic nature and particularly the reindeer. Over time they domesticated this gentle and beautiful animal from the wild reindeer that still also can be found in some of the Sami-land.

See! They even go to the disco every Friday
By Jürgen Howaldt (Own work ) [CC BY-SA 2.0 de
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/de/deed.en)],
via Wikimedia Commons

The Sami people have herded reindeer for centuries and it is still the most important source of income in the far north. Reindeer are kept not just for the meat, but also for the antlers and hides and in smaller extent for milk. Unsurprisingly in the thriving aphrodisiac market of far east there’s a great demand for powdered reindeer antler.

I don’t have a problem with eating reindeer meat when it has been produced this way – modern times may have brought other, less natural methods of farming or hunting reindeer which I don’t approve, but the traditional Sami way of the Nordics is probably one of the most ethical ways to produce meat.

Reindeer meet is very tasty. It’s extremely lean and therefore very healthy. It does have a strong taste of the wild. Much more so than our venison here in the UK for instance.

I always bring some when I visit Finland, or you can also find smoked reindeer in IKEA sometimes. That’s what I used in my recipe today. I must say it’s nowhere near as good as the stuff I buy in Finland.

The amounts are a bit approximate as in my cooking usually, but this recipe is quite a robust little rock star, you can’t really ruin it by improvising a little. Or a lot.

Smoked reindeer, goat cheese and Chanterelle pasta (for 2)

100 g smoked reindeer

1 red or yellow onion

1-2 garlic cloves

½ bell pepper

Mushrooms ( ideally chanterelles or other wild mushroom, but any mushroom will work, chestnut etc)

Glug of white wine or I have used sherry also

Water / chicken stock
Cream

Chunk of goat cheese (just to give a little twang, not to overpower)

Fresh (or dried) rosemary

Fresh (or dried) thyme (or you can use other herbs of your choice

Salt and pepper

Vegetable oil

Chop the onion, garlic, bell pepper and mushroom. Fry the onion in the vegetable oil with a pinch of salt for a few minutes, add the garlic. Fry another minute. Add the peppers and mushroom and fry (medium heat until they start to soften. Add a generous glug of white wine or sherry and let it simmer a minute or two and then add water or stock, around half a cup. Let simmer until mushroom and pepper are cooked. Add chopped reindeer, cream and goat cheese..

Serve with any pasta of your liking – I always use whole wheat because it has more bite and taste. With this recipe it goes particularly well because of all the earthy, full flavours of the sauce. And a sprinkling of parmesan never hurt anything.

Pair with your favourite red wine – I had a Hungarian pinot noir which worked very well indeed.

Poppies

The Tower of London poppies of remembrance

19:33

For a change nothing to do with food. We went to see the Poppies at Tower today.

Everybody seems to be talking about them. We want the poppies to stay. We are deeply moved by these small, simple flowers representing a horrible loss and an unimaginable sadness, and I think – maybe - a hope for a better world.

A silly, pretentious art critic said they are too pretty to adequately represent the horror of war and the fact that it has become so popular must mean it can't be of much artistic value. What utter bollocks.

We know war is terrible. We don’t need to see bones and barbed wire in the moat of the Tower to understand the gut-wrenching hopeless awfulness of people killing each other in an unimaginable scale. Never have I been to a place where so many people have congregated in such silence. We are all moved – some to silence, many to tears - by these little unassuming flowers and what they represent. A hundred years on we still remember them.

Appreciating and being touched by the haunting beauty of the poppies of blood representing our British military dead, doesn’t mean we don’t understand the catastrophic international horror of war. I grew up in cold war Finland. Not many people understand what that means. It means an absolute threat of death to freedom. Look at today’s Russia swallowing Crimea without a hiccup, cruising their submarines freely in the hapless Swedish waters, flying their planes over Finnish airspace. I digress. But this fills me with fear and that’s what I think when I look at the tiny poppies of freedom.

As an immigrant to this wonderful country that I love and serve as my own, I mourn for every young man who gave his life for the independence of this nation which has become a beacon of freedom and tolerance.

But these poppies are for all of us, they are for all the lost and all the loss. I mourn for the German mother who lost his son. I mourn for the boy who wanted to do his duty. I mourn for the young men who played football on Christmas Day – I cry for them all, equally.

I mourn for the young men who fought in the Finnish civil war in 1918 deciding the destiny of our country and died for our freedom. I mourn for my grandfather who as a teenager was put to stand in a firing squad barely understanding what he was killing for.

They all wanted a better, fairer future. Don’t we all.

beef and bean fajitas

Mexican fiesta and and a family Farewell

02:13

4 hour leg of lamb

Greek evening with memories of Santorini - 4 hour leg or lamb, greek roast potatoes, Santorini salad, turkey and feta meatballs in tomato sauce

07:04

My cousin came to visit us this week with her husband and son. Our mothers were sisters and we were best friends growing up.

We used to spend holidays together, either I would go and stay with her family or she would come and stay with us for a few weeks. I remember I was only 7 years old when I flew to see her on my own. My parents took me to the airport and someone escorted me to the plane. I had a sign around my neck saying who I was and where I was going. Even nowadays it would sometimes be useful to have that information handy in clear written form. I remember a nice young stewardess with a magnificent blond chignon and a pillbox hat was looking after me on the flight. She sat next to me for take off and landing in case I was scared. I don't remember being scared, just excited and determined I would become like her when I grew up, chignon and all.

It’s lovely to catch up with my cousin properly as we haven’t really kept in touch as well as we should have. It's been Facebook, the occasional email and bumping into each other at the odd family event.

Today was their first day so they spent the day exploring London, doing shopping and all the normal touristy stuff. The crowds and the bustle of the city were a bit overwhelming particularly to the son, who came home claiming that there are just too many people and they smell bad! So it was lovely to sit down together for a leisurely dinner and a good catch-up over food and wine.

I had decided to go with a Greek theme – I am still in a bit of a love bubble and also still have some olives and wine from our honeymoon to Santorini, so I wanted to build a menu around the gorgeous island. I do a mean slow roast leg of lamb. Unless I run out of time, I never get it wrong, but it does need at least 4 hours in the oven. With the lamb I served crispy potato wedges with Greek spices, and my twist on the Santorini salad. I also made some Greek spiced feta turkey meatballs in tomato sauce in case somebody wasn’t too keen on lamb.

Recipe: 4 hour slow roast leg of lamb

Leg of lamb (appr. 1.5 kg)
4-5 garlic cloves
60 g butter
1 tbsp of sea salt
4-6 sprigs of rosemary

4-6 sprigs of mint (optional)

onion (optional)

1-1.5 cup red wine

1 cup beef stock (optional)

Depending on how much time I have, I might cook the lamb for 7 hours at 120 C, but if I only have 4 hours, I up the oven temperature to 150/160 C. That will give a lovely tender result. Also if the leg is very big I allow more time / higher temperature. The above works for a leg of about 1.5kg.

Make a rub of butter, minced garlic, salt, pepper and chopped herbs. Make several knife holes in the leg a push the rub into the holes and massage all over the leg.

Sometimes i wrap the leg in grease-proof paper and kitchen foil and leave to marinade overnight, but you can also cook immediately.

Place the leg in a deep roasting tin, scatter one large quartered onion around the leg (this is optional but adds flavour to the gravy) and pour a the red wine and a cup of lamb or beef stock in the tin. The stock is also optional, it also works with red wine only, but the stock adds to the flavour and volume of the gravy. We like to have lots of gravy.

Double cover the tray with tin foil and place in the oven. Paste a couple of times throughout the roasting and flip the leg over once or twice. In the end the meat is moist, it falls off the bone and tastes fantastic. You can check the seasoning and add to it towards the end of the cooking if you think you got it wrong in the beginning.

I usually just serve the leg in the sauce like it is (just removing the onion pieces), but if you want you can pour the gravy into a pan and reduce on the cooker for a couple of minutes and serve separately.

Santorini Salad in Fira Old Port

Santorini salad (appr. 4 people)

400 g cherry tomatoes

A medium cucumber

1 red onion
1/2 bell pepper

Handful of capers

Handful of pitted (or unpitted) kalamata olives

150g Feta cheese

Fresh (or dried) herbs of choice

Olive oil

Freshly grated lemon peel and juice (to taste)

Salt

Pepper

Caper leaves for decoration (optional)

Cut the cherry tomato into halfs and cucumber into chunks, deseed if the core seems watery. Slice red onion thinly, add the rest of the ingredients apart for the feta, drizzle with olive oil and lemon, season and mix well. In Santorini often the feta is added on top of the salad as a one big chunk or a couple of fairly big cubes, and sprinkled with Greek dried herb mix – so you can do that. Or you can cube and mix it carefully to the salad. Sprinkle fresh or dried herb on top and decorate the bowl with the caper leaves.

My take on Santorini Salad

In terms of the herbs to use, I left it open. I love dill with feta so I often go for dill, which might be a bit experimental for some. It might be my Scandinavian heritage, so I don’t force it on everyone. I love oregano, fresh and dried and it works well with this recipe. I also do my own greek herb and spice mix that would work perfectly on this salad.

Greek spice mix

2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp dried basil
2 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried dill
1 tsp dried marjoram
1 tsp salt