Happy Whatever

« The passing blur of Helsinki Santa Rampage 2004. »

Just in case I don't find time or opportunity to share my shock and awe while home for the holidays, we at HFB Industries wish you and yours Happy Retail Shopping Holidays and Winter Solstice. If we don't get sent to Cuba, we'll be back before the New Year. :)

permalink Ω 13 December 2005, Helsinki

Riga, Latvia

« The spire of St. Peter's Church and the House of Blackheads in Riga, Latvia. »

A few photos from a weekend in Riga last September. I had hoped to write a bit about Riga and what an interesting place it is with an unusual mixture of old and new, Latvian and Russian, bakeries and casinos and titty bars, but I may never get around to it so perhaps the photos can illustrate the experience better than words can.

permalink Ω 13 December 2005, Helsinki

Tahko

« A rustic privy in the woods of Tahko. As close to irony as it gets in Finland. :) »

A small gallery of photos from a trip to Tahko with a few colleagues back in early October.

permalink Ω 13 December 2005, Helsinki

When life hands you lemons...

« Mmmm...fresh lemon bars. »

I'm procrastinating on packing my suitcase by putting a few things up before I leave. It is a very effective ploy. :)

Last week I heard that new hardware to replace the current headache at work was going to be ordered, so I asked my boss what sort of baked treat he would like in return for the good news and he suggested something with lemon. I immediately thought of lemon bars and found that CI had two different recipes, one with 4 eggs and one with 9 eggs, both with the same amount of lemon juice. I figured I'd give the one with fewer eggs a try and they were incredibly good. So good, in fact, that one of the guys at work had four of them. :) My only complaint is that the filling is very liquid when you pour it into the warm crust and you have to make sure the paper and the crust are flush to the edges of the pan or else it seeps underneath where you don't want it to be. The 9-egg version of the recipe calls for thickening it in a double boiler before pouring it into the warm crust and that might be something to try with the 4-egg recipe but sealing the crust seems to work well enough without the extra work and cholesterol.

It's a nice change of pace to have something with a tangy citrus flavour in the dead of winter. It might be interesting, too, to substitute tyrni/buckthorn berry juice for the lemon juice and add a bit more sugar.

Perfect Lemon Bars

Time: about 15 minutes prep + 80 minutes cooling and baking time
Makes: about two dozen 1 1/2- to 2-inch squares
Source: CI

Crust:

• 1 3/4 cups or 4,25 dl unbleached all-purpose flour 
• 2/3 cup or 1,5 dl confectioners' sugar plus extra to decorate finished bars
• 4 tablespoons cornstarch 
• 3/4 teaspoon table salt 
• 1 1/2 sticks or 170g unsalted butter, at very cool room temperature

Lemon Filling:

• 4 large eggs beaten lightly
• 1 1/3 cups or 3,25 dl granulated sugar 
• 3 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour 
• 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest from 2 large lemons
• 2/3 cup or 1,5 dl lemon juice from 3 to 4 large lemons, strained
• 1/3 cup or 3/4 dl whole milk 
• 1/8 teaspoon table salt 

1. For the crust: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350F/190C. Lightly butter a 13x9-inch/33x22-cm baking dish and line with one sheet parchment or wax paper. Dot paper with butter, then lay second sheet crosswise over it. Make sure that the paper sticks well to the pan.
2. Mix flour, confectioners’ sugar, cornstarch, and salt in medium bowl. Grate butter on large holes of box grater into flour mixture. Toss butter pieces to coat. Rub pieces between your fingers or stir with mixer for a minute, until flour turns pale yellow and coarse. Sprinkle mixture into lined pan and press firmly with fingers into even, 1/4-inch layer over entire pan bottom and about 1/2-inch up sides. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, then bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. While the crust cools, take a spoon and push the edges up to the edge of the pan to keep the filling from seeping underneath.
3. For the filling: Meanwhile, whisk eggs, sugar, and flour in medium bowl, then stir in lemon juice, zest, milk, and salt to blend well.
4. To finish the bars: Reduce oven temperature to 325F/160C. Stir filling mixture and pour into warm crust (Note: crust must be warm). Bake for about 20 minutes. Transfer pan to wire rack; cool to near room temperature, at least 30 minutes. Transfer to cutting board, fold paper down, and cut into serving-size bars, wiping knife or pizza cutter clean between cuts, as necessary. Sift confectioners’ sugar over bars, if desired.

permalink Ω 13 December 2005, Helsinki

Eating Moomins

« A gingerbread Moomin house. »

Gingerbread houses seem to be an essential part of the holiday season. One gingerbread cookie maker even offers a simple pre-baked house that only requires a little icing to put it together. I had bought one of them and was planning to put it together since I hadn't ever built a gingerbread house before...and then I saw the Moomin gingerbread house cutter set and I was sucked into making it instead. Now, everywhere I look there are guides for all sorts of gingerbread houses, but none are as cute as the Moomin house.

I put together a guide for building your own gingerbread Moomin house (~300k pdf) with pictures, the pattern, building hints and recipes for gingerbread and construction icing should anyone else want to build one and not be able to find the cutter set. There is another guide, in Finnish, with forms (12k pdf) as well. All you need is a bit of imagination and candies to make it come to life. :)

permalink Ω 13 December 2005, Helsinki

Let the Drinking Begin

« Lapinlahti hospital. The first mental hospital in Finland and former residence of Alexis Kivi. »

Just as I'm starting to get really wound up about flying home for the holidays I read a few days ago that some nutcase off his meds claiming to have a bomb managed to get gunned down by an Air Marshall in Miami because they were on alert for a potential shoe bomber. Sweet. Aside from the worst-case scenarios I've already been envisioning, now I get to worry if some trigger happy cop of the not-so-friendly skies is going to start shooting a gun loaded with cop killer bullets at passengers who are acting a bit crazy. It's the holiday season, everyone is fucking crazy, with or without meds. I can't even buy a cookie cutter for 5 euro without the cashier asking me if I need it gift wrapped which makes me want to shout, "Fuck no, it's all for ME! I'm a GRINCH!" Just wait until the family holiday party where people will actually talk to each other even before the whisky sours start flowing. My head may just explode on contact. :) Maybe I'll just start drinking heavily before boarding the plane at Vantaa and pass out somewhere over Ireland. Of course, if my mother spends two weeks bitching non-stop about my embittered, self-absorbed and crazy grandmother, a person who is living proof that nasty people do, in fact, live longer, I may regret not getting sent on an all expenses paid tropical holiday to Gitmo courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security. :)

permalink Ω 10 December 2005, Helsinki

Beet Red

« Brownies with an unusual ingredient; beets. »

Beets have always been an icon of Russia and Eastern Europe. Perhaps it is their blazing red colour associated with Communism or the vast quantities of borscht we imagine them eating at every meal. Borscht, borscht, borscht, it's the Russian Chef! I will admit that no day passes at the office lunchroom without beets in one form or another on the menu so maybe the stereotype isn't without good reason. You don't have to like beets to live here, but it certainly helps. :)

While leafing through a few older issues of Ruoka & Viini, I noticed a picture of a chocolate dessert that looked like something I'd want to eat. When I read the caption, I had to read it a few times before I believed what I was reading: Beet Brownies. I thought, oh god, beets are invading dessert now too, and then I smiled thinking that these are so damned weird, I just gotta make some and spring them on my unsuspecting colleagues.

I had never imagined beets might be used in baking even though nobody finds the thought of carrot cake strange or unusual. Both are root vegetables so why is it odd for beets to be used in a brownie recipe? I went hunting for the provenance of the recipe and didn't find much at all, save some certainty that it is surprisingly not from Finland, Russia or Eastern Europe. One interesting shred I found from James Beard was related to the utterly, utterly disgusting red velvet cake fad of late, where enormous amounts of red food dye are added to a chocolate cake, that mentioned maybe the original red velvet cake used beets to get the bright red hue.

The Scarlet Batter. Although everyone in our office could immediately picture this cake (chocolate, bright red crumb, white frosting), its lineage was surprisingly hard to trace. Few of the usual sources even mention it. (Beard, however, does give a recipe in American Cookery, which calls for red food coloring and cocoa.) Webster's New World Dictionary of Culinary Arts describes it as a four-layer American Christmas cake. That didn't sound right to us, so we dug deeper. An amateur culinary historian friend of ours suggested the cake was originally made from beets and cocoa at a time when chocolate was dear. Cocoa, incidentally, accounts for the cake's velvety texture. Several other sources describe red velvet cake as a traditional Southern specialty. We next called Jennifer Appel, who serves a delicious version at Magnolia Bakery in New York City's Greenwich Village. People think it's southern, she told us, but it actually originated in the 1950s in the heart of Manhattan -- at Oscar's at the Waldorf -- and from there traveled South. Joe Verde, the current chef at Oscar's, confirmed the story, but says when he researched the cake's history in the Waldorf archives a few years ago, he couldn't find a single mention of it. "Still, for some reason it's attributed to us, so we take credit for it," he laughed. The cake's popularity faded in the '70s when red dye No. 2 was linked to cancer. Today, Oscar's serves an updated version, which is made from bittersweet chocolate ganache and is dusted with cranberry powder.

The red velvet cake is all over the map, but there is very, very little mention of brownies to be found. I find the suggestion that the beets were used during times when chocolate was scarce somewhat dubious, but it would explain how the mention of beets used in cakes is so scarce after about 1940.

Beets are like catsup where, once outside the containment field of the bottle or skin, you begin to find bits of red everywhere. Use small beets as the big ones are tough and take forever to cook. Presumably you could use non-pickled canned whole beets, but the colour won't be as good.

These brownies disappear fast and few would guess the mystery ingredient is beets. It's yet undecided if they are better with whipped cream or the cream cheese frosting so it just depends on which taste appeals to you more as both are quite tasty. There's great fun to be had serving these and surprising people stuffing their mouths that they're eating beets. :)

Beet or Ruby Brownies

Serves: 8-12
Time: about 1 hour including bake time
Source: Ruoka & Viini

• about 2-4 small beets or 1,5 dl or 3/4 cup of beet puree
• 100g or 3.5 oz baking/semi-sweet chocolate
• 1,5 dl or 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch salt
• 1-2 teaspoons cocoa
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar or vanilla extract
• 100g or 7 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 dl or 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1 dl or 1/2 cup ground nuts

1. Butter and dust with cocoa a 23cm/8-9 inch round cake pan. Heat oven to 175C/350F.
2. Boil beets with skins until soft. Peel and puree with a hand blender or grate finely and mash. You should have about 1,5 dl of beet puree.
3. Melt chocolate and allow to cool.
4. Mix flour, baking powder, salt and vanilla sugar together and set aside.
5. Cream butter and sugar together and add eggs one at a time until the mixture is smooth. Add chocolate, beet puree, and flour mixture individually, mixing well. Fold in nuts.
6. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes.
7. Serve when cooled with whipped cream or ice cream or ice with cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 8 ounces or 225g cream cheese , softened but still cool
• 5 tablespoons or 70g unsalted butter softened, but still cool
• 1 tablespoon sour cream
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups or 3dl confectioners' sugar (4 1/2 oz/ 127g)

When cake is cool, mix cream cheese, butter, sour cream, and vanilla at medium high speed in clean bowl of standing mixer fitted with whisk attachment ( or in large bowl using handheld mixer) until well combined, about 30 seconds, scraping down bowl with rubber spatula as needed. Add confectioners’ sugar and mix until very fluffy, about 1 minute.

permalink Ω 10 December 2005, Helsinki

Christmas Prunes

« Joulutortut / Finnish Christmas Star Pastries »

Prunes; they evoke the image of geriatrics in need of a bit of digestive regularity rather than Christmas cheer, at least on my side of the Atlantic since the California plum growers cemented the connection between prunes and constipation forever in the minds of Americans (52k pdf). The first time I heard of these cookies I wondered if they were some sort of cruel joke played on the young by the Finnish gerontacracy. Since they are traditionally served after the main Christmas meal on the Eve with coffee, it might not be such a leap to think that the whole plan for these treats is to help move the heavy meal along.

I decided to make some of these pastries and was amused to find that 90% or so of the available recipes simply list the commercial dough and jam as ingredients. The frozen dough is usually made with margarine which, in spite of its advantage in the convenience department, doesn't really taste like anything which for all the calories involved is a definite downside. The commercial jam, too, doesn't have much taste either. In fact, the dough is so easy and convenient, that the only thing that might make it even easier is to pre-score the dough for cutting.

First I found a recipe for plum jam after a semi-comic discussion with Jarkko and his etymological dictionaries over the word marmalade since the filling is often called plum marmalade on the containers it is sold in. Marmalade, in English, almost always implies a citrus jam, usually including the rinds. I don't know that we came to an agreement on the how and the why it is called marmalade, but it has roughly the same texture and consistency as apple butter. It's not really a jam either, so maybe it should be called plum butter instead. Semantics aside, I made a plum jam from fresh plums, not prunes, for a nice red colour instead of the brown colour in the usual jam and also added a bit of cinnamon and ginger for taste. The colour and texture (left: store right: homemade) difference is noticeable.

Then I tried making a 'quick' puff pastry dough that didn't puff up like the commercial dough did and my demanding taste testers also commented that, while they liked the jam, the texture was more like a shortbread cookie instead of a flakey pastry. So, I tried again with a real puff pastry recipe and, though it worked better, it still wasn't puffy enough. Irritated, I consulted a few different sources about the untold simple secrets behind such a simple dough and discovered a few things that made sense, like using bread flour instead of regular flour in the dough to make it a bit more elastic which helps to keep it from breaking open when rolling it out. I paid more attention to lining up the edges and always turning the dough in the same direction and, eureka, it worked like a charm. It's all in the technique. It was difficult to keep from eating far, far too many of the pastries from this batch as they were light and flakey and addictive.

In the US, I can't really think of any single food that might be a holiday classic that has one single agreed upon form. Everything from apple pie to chocolate chip cookies have hundreds of variations and holiday meals and traditions tend to be both regional and within families. It's interesting that Finland has quite a few traditional holiday foods that are, for the most part, widely accepted around the country. Having made these pastries both from scratch and from pre-made building blocks, I can appreciate the ease and convenience of the pre-made ingredients, but of all the things on the Christmas table that can, and often are, be bought ready-made the joulutorttu really taste so much better when made with real butter and they're fresh out of the oven. No one ever said that padding your ass and clogging your arteries should be easy or convenient, especially since Christmas only comes but once a year. :)

plum jam/butter

Makes: About 4 dl / 2 cups - enough for 2 batches
Time: about an hour
source: all about canning & preserving

• 2 pounds or about 1kg plums, pitted and quartered
• 2 1/2 cups or 6 dl sugar
• 4 tablespoons lemon juice, fresh or bottled
• (Add ginger and/or cinnamon for a bit of spice)

1. In a tall saucepan, cook the plums, sugar and lemon juice, lightly crushing some of the fruit. Boil rapidly, stirring frequently until it reaches the jelling point and begins to thicken. Puree with a hand blender and/or press through a sieve for a smoother mixture if desired. Simmer for 30 mins to 1 hour to desired thickness, cool and refrigerate up to 1 week.

Puff Pastry

Makes: about 24-36 joulutorttu
Time: active time about 30 minutes
Source: King Arthur Flour Baking Companion

Tips:

• Always use unsalted butter
• Use a pastry scraper
• Keep your workspace cool and refrigerate the dough the moment is gets too warm
• When cutting the dough, cut with a straight, sharp edge or pastry wheel.
• If using an egg wash, take care not to get any of the egg on the edges of the pastry as it may seal the dough and inhibit puffing.
• The dough should be allowed to rest for 5-10 minutes between rolling and cutting to reduce shrinkage.
• Follow the illustrations for rolling out the dough with some degree of diligence.
• Make sure your oven is hot enough and use convection if you have it

Pastry:

• 3 1/2 cups or 8.25 dl bread flour
• 1/2 stick or 60g unsalted butter, chilled
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/4 cups or 3 dl cold water
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice

1. Place flour in a mixing bowl and combine it with the chilled butter until the mixture resembles cornmeal. Add the salt and lemon juice to the water, stir well, then add to the flour. Mix gently with a fork or a dough whisk until you have a rough dough that pulls away from the sides of the bowl. If you need to add more water, do so a tablespoon at a time until the dough holds together. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until it's smooth and a bit springy, 2 to 3 minutes. Pat it into a square, wrap it in plastic wrap, or place in a large plastic bag and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Butter block:

• 1/2 cup or 1,25 dl bread flour
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 3 1/2 sticks or 400g unsalted butter, softened but still cool to the touch

1. Using a mixer, a food processor, or a spoon, combine the flour, lemon juice and butter until they are smooth and well blended. Lightly flour a piece of plastic wrap or waxed paper, and on it shape the butter-flour mixture into an 8-inch square. Cover the butter and place it on a flat surface in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. Adding flour to the butter helps to stabilize it, so it won't "flow" out the seams when it is being rolled.

Rolling and Folding:

1. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and put it on a lightly floured surface. Gently roll it into a square about 12 inches across. Put the butter square in the center of the dough, at a 45-degree angle, so it looks like a diamond in the square.
2. Fold the flaps of the dough over the edges of the butter until they meet in the middle. Pinch and seal the edges of the dough together; moisten your finger with a little water, if necessary. Dust the top with flour, then tap it gently with the rolling pin into a rectangular shape. Make sure the dough isn't sticking underneath, and roll it from the center into a larger rectangle, 20x10 inces.
3. When the dough is the right size, lightly sweep off any excess flour from the top with your pastry brush, then fold the bottom third up to the center, and the top third over (like a business letter). Line the edges up on top of each other and even up the corners so they're directly atop one another. Turn the dough package 90 degrees to the right so it looks like a book ready to be opened. It's okay to use a little water to stick the corners together so they don't shift. If the dough is still cool to the touch and relaxed, do another rolling and turning the same way. If you've successfully rolled out the dough and folded it twice, you've completed two turns. Make a note of how many folds you've completed and the time, and then put the dough back in the refrigerator. Classic puff pastry gets six turns before being formed into finished shapes and should rest, chilled, for at least 30 minutes between every two turns.
4. Repeat the folding and turning process two more times. When all six turns have been completed, wrap the dough well and refrigerate it for at least an hour (preferably overnight) before using.

Assembling:

1. Preheat oven to 225C/435F.
2. Cut dough in half and leave one half in the refrigerator.
3. Roll dough out into a square roughly 34cm/13in on each side.
4. Using a pinwheel cutter or a pastry wheel and a ruler, cut squares roughly 8,5cm/3.35in on a side. See also: cutter pattern.
5. Place about 1 teaspoon of jam in the center of each square.
6. Lift every other corner to the center of the jam and, using the dull end of spoon or knife handle, press the corners firmly into the jam to keep them from unfolding during baking.
7. Bake in 225C/435F oven until puffy and light brown.
8. Decorate with powdered sugar.

permalink Ω 5 December 2005, Helsinki