Neljän Tähden Illallinen: round 2

Our good friends had the good idea to have our own 'Neljän Tähden Illallinen'. That would be the Finnish celebrity version of 'Come Dine With Me'.

The basics of the show are pretty simple. There are four people, and each one of them arranges an three course dinner for the others. After each dinner, each contestant gives some points, and after the four dinners, the winner gets a price.

For the sake of our friendship, we skipped the grading and winning part. We'll all be winners! It is a lot of fun, with good company and with good food!

In the first round, one of our friends did a California themed dinner: sour dough clam chowder, baby rack ribs with mac'n'cheese and wild berries smoothie. The sour dough bread and BBQ sauce for the  ribs were self made! It was certainly an excellent dinner!

Next was my turn and I was out of ideas. Fortunately I had help from my fiancée for the first dish and from Tommin Keittiö for the main dish. I think I did come up with the dessert... not sure though. Let's get down to business!

Beef carpaccio with parmesan cheese and rucola

I found a suprinsingly good looking and well priced piece of beef fillet (K-Market in Iso Omena). What I then did was spice it up with thyme, oregano, salt and pepper by rolling it to a board.

Spices on the board, meat ready to roll!

Spiced and nicely rounded fillet

Then (Jamie Oliver's influence here), I quickly fry it in a hot pan. This gives it a bit brownish color to the outside and sticks the spices to the meat. Then I wrapped it in plastic foil and to the freezer goes for about 20 minutes. It doesn't get frozen, just firms up so it's easier to cut.

The next step is cutting the meat with a sharp knife. I used a ham/salmon knife. Funny, right? According to the label, in Finnish is lohiveitsi (salmon knife), in Spanish cuchillo jamonero (ham knife) and in English just ham and salmon knife. To get the slices thinner we used a rolling pin wrapped in plastic foil (I don't like raw meat and wood combination).

We used olive oil and lemon juice in the base of the plate, laid down the meat and finally add some shaved parmesan cheese, rucola and sea salt.

Mmmmm....

Fried monkfish with sweet potato and  three sauces

The idea was good but it is difficult to find monkfish in Finland (rap in Catalan, merikrotti in Finnish). I did find it though, also in the same grocery store! The person who sold it to me wasn't very familiar with the fish, so I took the full piece and decided to clean it and fillet it myself.

For those of you who may not know it, monkfish is a fish with delicious and very white meat, a big spine bone (?) and no other bones (espines in Catalan), and it is VERY ugly. We saw huge looking ones in Stockholm in the Östermalm Saluhall next to some salmon fillets.

Anyway, the first thing to do is peal it and get all jelly looking stuff from the sides away. If you slice it perpendicular to its spine, once fried you can actually eat pretty much everything, but I wanted to leave just the good stuff for this special dinner.

The full piece, all included. Yak.

Skin pealed, removing the big spine bone.

Two beautiful fillets.

I then spiced the fish with salt, pepper and a little bit of curry powder, fried it in a pan to get it brown and a little crunchy outside. With such thick pieces of fish that means that the inside is likely to be raw still (yak). Tommi's trick is then to wrap it in aluminium foil and finish it into the oven (around 180 degrees and 10 to 15 minutes).

The sweet potato needs a good hour in the oven at 180 degrees. Mine was a bit 'al dente'... not bad, but it should have been more cooked.

And for the sauces I didn't find what I was looking for. What I would have like to do: all-i-oli, tapenade and roquefort sauce. Instead I offered dijon mustard, soy sauce and blue cheese (not roquefort though). Since I was disappointed with the sauce selection I decided to serve them in summer pumpkin. I had to carve them and then cook them 'a la planxa' so everything in the plate could be eaten.

Carving the summer pumpkin to hold sauce

And it was good, the fish was nicely cooked and tasted good as well. The sauces, the sweet potato and the pumpkin... well, next time they'll be better!

The main dish!

White chocolate and lime mousse

I'm hopeless at baking or making any kind of dessert. The only thing I can kind of do is 'crema catalana', but get me out of that and I'm like a fish in a garage.

Luckily for me my fiancée knows about this stuff! So she did guide me along the whole process. Cut this, boil that, stir this, a little more, mix it, pour it... and I was just following instructions. Technically I did it, in reality though the merit is all hers. That's also the reason why there aren't any pictures of the process... The result was delicious though.

White chocolate and lime mousse

Enjoy your meal!

Bon profit!

Hyvää ruokahalua!

R

PS: I'm looking forward the next two rounds now :)

El caganer: one of those traditions...

Today at work one colleague walk to me and asked me a question. "Listen, my kids have been studying Christmas traditions around the world. Is it true that you put a pooping guy in the Nativity scene (Joulu seimi)?". Far from being puzzled I just smiled and said, "yes, of course".

Hmmm... once said, requires some explanation. "A pooping guy" sounds funny but it's a pretty accurate translation from "el caganer"; I still prefer the Finnish "kakkaaja" though. What's that about all then?

The traditional Catalan "pessebre" (Joulu seimi in Finnish) contains Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus. In addition they usually have behind them a mule and a cow. Then there are the three wise men bringing gold, incense and myrrh. I've always seen just a box, I don't think anybody knows what myrrh is. Then we have few shepherds, and few sheep with them. The more serious people may use some natural stones and moss ("molsa" in Catalan and "sammal" in Finnish) to decorate it. The most spectacular ones will contain even a river with running water!

The basics: Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus.

The three wise men on their way!

And now we get to business. It has been a long trip for those shepherds, hasn't it! Walking in the night to see the baby Jesus, and on the way... well, there's no more elegant way to do it that behind the bushes. And here comes the caganer! He's just a poor dude caught in the middle of business.

El caganer, kakkaaja

Though I'll accept few yäk and uuuu, that's just another tradition, and as I posted earlier, keep your traditions! And just for fun, I'd recommend you checking google images for caganer, you'll find few interesting alternatives!!

Bones festes! Hyvää Joulua!


PS: keep your traditions, as long as they don't hurt people or animals... like throwing a donkey down a bell tower (we used to do it but we stopped!), or bull fighting (which some #@!?&s consider and art...)

Keep your traditions!

Christmas is just round the corner! That can be also seen on TV where plenty of Christmas movies are being re-run by the Nth time. Quite many of those are Santa related. And here comes my problem.

The current Santa Claus i pretty much Coca-Cola's invention. It's a cute, friendly and I'd say even huggable character. So far so good. He lives in the North Pole and is famous by his "ho ho ho". And his main reindeer has a red nose, and they fly.Well...

Now let's take a trip to my homeland, Catalonia, more precisely to my hometown Igualada. In the Christmas eve (not too celebrated) or the Christmas Day (the big celebration) we do have our "Tió" (which literally means log) and we make it shit. No worries, the caga tió tradition is actually very cute. (Let's concentrate on the "caganer" in another post).

On December 28th the "patge Faruk" announces to all the children that the Three Wise Men are on their way, and that the good kids (which are in the White Book) will get presents, and that the badly behaved kids (in the Black Book) will get coal! But of course they still have time to change to better.

patge Faruk in the middle, and two of his servants holding the White and Black books.
The kids are really hoping that their names are not in the black one!  

Then in the night of January 5th the three wise men ("els reis mags") and their servants (the "patges") do a parade and after that they deliver the presents to each home. No kidding here, no tricks: they do have tens of trucks filled with presents and they do deliver them door by door. And it's awesome!

Did anybody see any Santa? Any Saint Nicholas or whatever? No, right? Then why are we filling the streets with bearded fat red dudes? We drink Coca Cola already, but let us be with our Tió de Nadal, our Reis Mags and keep Santa in the TV screen!

And now let's go north, to my adoption country, Finland. Santa actually is from here, not the North Pole! And he lives in Rovaniemi! Ups... no he doesn't (but please keep the tourists flowing and spending money there). And he's no Santa.

And let me apologize already to all my Finnish friends and colleagues if any of the following is wrong. Let me know and I'll fix it!

He lives in Korvatunturi and he's Joulupukki, which literally means the Joulu goat. Joulu is likely to be related to the germanic Yule, and to the other scandinavian neighbors Jul: a pagan celebration nowadays assimilated to Christmas.

He doesn't fly, doesn't come down through chimneys, and in the past wasn't that much of a friendly character. He does come home in the Jouluaatto (Christmas Eve) to see if there are well behaved kids and may reward them. To get a taste of what I mean I truly recommend to watch the Rare Exports movie (not for kids!).

Joulupukki belongs here and the Finns have managed to keep it as Joulupukki! And that's awesome!

Sorry but I have to say this... Santa, stay wherever you belong!

And to be fair,

Hyvää Joulua,
and
Bon Nadal

 - R

Customer service? Well... kind of...

We're already in mid December! What does that mean? Christmas shopping!

Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas and I actually do love giving presents! I'm even ok with buying them, though I get stressed with the crowds. Let's take a pause here. My hometown is close to Barcelona, and I've done many Christmas shoppings there... those are crowds! But I suppose I have adapted well to Finland. I thought Helsinki on a Wednesday afternoon was busy and crowded.

And there I was, in Stockmann's electronics department trying to get a Christmas present. I shan't write more to not reveal any suprise. And now let's try to get some help.

This being Finland I had to pick a number (even though there wasn't any queue), but that's fine with me; I like organization. And I got help of one of their experts. I'll try to reproduce the conversation and interject the silly feelings:

Me: "Hi, I'd like to know the differences between this product A and this B."
Stockmann-guy: "Yeah, ok... Hmmm... let me see. Well, B is more expensive than A."
Me: Well, I kind of can read that on the big price tag, can't it? "Ok, why would that be?"
SG: "Hmmm... in the little paper under the product it seems that A is clearly better than B".
Me: I also read that! "'Why is more expensive then?"
SG: "Yeah, it's weird isn't it?"
Me: Right eyebrow lifted up and pulse raising... "Thank you very much for your help, I'll come back later"

Now, let me say that I usually have found especially good service from Stockmann, with helpful people and guys that know the products. That's probably the reason why I get so annoyed when they're rude (happened once) or they have no idea what they're selling (happened today).

Maybe it's because I'm a bit (let's not start arguing now) of a nerd and I expect the guy selling me electronics to know more than me so he can help.

That's why I write something for all:

Dear Stockmann (and any store for that matter), when you put someone to sell something, please make sure that he/she knows something about the product. At the very least something more than the average customer.


Dear customer service or person-selling-things-in-a-store (I'm complaining about electronics mostly) , customers (in general) know how to read. The little labels under the products give some information, if someone asks is because they've read them and it's not enough. If you don't know, it's ok! Just go and grab the colleague that can help.


Dear annoyed customers (like me), try to not get mad or rude to those people in Christmas time. They are busier than usually and they may be just temporary jobs. And say "Merry Christmas" before you leave!

To the rest of you, have good Christmas shoppings!! I'm already ready with mine :)

 - R

I think I should be writing here the purpose of this blog. Not quite sure yet, really.

I have another one, but I have posted in a mix of Catalan and English without a clear target, leave alone a target group. What have I been posting there? Food recipies, some of my obsessions (read "guitars") and them time to time something else; like when I got my new Mac laptop or last winters snow.

And maybe here I'm getting somewhere. Snow. It's what we're missing!

I'm a Catalan in Finland. That should suffice. As an immigrant I'm worried about Perus Suomalainen (a kind of Plataforma per Catalunya in Finnish), but there are plenty of interesting things around!

The name of the bloc, "paciència ficció" is the Catalan for Patience Fiction. Science Fiction is interesting and in many ways coming! Minority Report was cool, and nowadays kids try to change the channel of the  TV by swiping the screen, not so special anymore is it? And why Patience? Well, you always need to wait for whatever you want...

Cheers from the North!

Roger

PS: I'll reserve the right to update this if I figure out a proper purpose.