I have had a bottle of Akvavit sitting waiting for someone to drink it for some time. I bought it in Tallinn a while back, having tried it many years ago on a visit to Aalborg (with which Edinburgh is twinned). No one has ventured to drink it, so it needed some whacky experimentation!
Akvavit Mushroom Pate
This has a mere 4 ingredients:
Mushrooms
Butter
Half an onion
Aquavit
Plus some seasoning
It sounds unlikely but this is terrific. I was going to share it, but selfishly ate it all myself on rice cakes which it complemented perfectly.
Seed scone with linseed, sunflower seed, sesame seed, smoked paprika and cheddar cheese
Continuing in my belief that seeds provide my vegetarianish needs for a variety of protein, I decided to add them to cheese scones:
Bread flour and rice flour to make it less heavy, in a proportion of 3:1 plain flour to rice flour
Beaten egg to add texture
Cheddar cheese, but next time I’d use a smoked cheese like Applewood Smoked
Marge
Sunflower, sesame, linseeds
Half tsp smoked paprika
Baking powder
Milk to mix to stiff dough
The basic cheese scone recipe I use is in an old ‘Farmhouse Kitchen’ recipe book which has some of the best and easiest recipes I can find. Farmhouse Kitchen was a cookery programme which was on years ago and presented by comfortably competent women who really knew their stuff about plain food. When looking for info on the show, I came across the book for sale on e-bay for 75p, which seems a real bargain!
http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/itvyorkshire/programmes.htmlAnyway, being me, I can’t just follow a recipe without deviating from it in some way which is maybe why I have never made straightforward cheese scones, but have to always add seeds or change the cheese or flavouring. This is a personality flaw I could not overcome enough to pursue a successful career in chemistry as raw chemical reagents are not as forgiving as raw food ingredients, it turns out.
Orange ginger loaf with mixed nuts
Oh heaven!
Plain flour
Butter
Equal amounts castor sugar and rich brown sugar
Grated rind and juice of one orange
Grated fresh ginger, not too, too much in case you overpower the orange
Baking powder
Two eggs and a little milk
Mixed chopped nuts
Cream butter and sugar, add beaten eggs and set about it till it is suitably fluffy
Add alternate flour and egg/milk mixture
Then add the orange juice, orange rind, nuts
Cook in a lowish oven for at least 45 minutes in a loaf tin
Pear Toffee and Akvavit
Oh dear I have a dentist’s appointment coming up and how do I disguise the effects of toffee on my fillings? But what else to do with some lonely pears sitting abandoned in the fruit bowl?
Lots of castor sugar
Some butter dotted on it
Several cloves
Slosh x 2 of Aquavit
Quartered pears
Into a hot oven till it looks like the toffee may not come out of the pan without a fight
Simple Carrot, Ginger and Miso Soup
As many carrots as you can face peeling and chopping
One and a half onions
Lots of fresh ginger finely chopped
More miso than you think you need
2 tsp ground coriander
Pepper (no salt as miso is already too salty)
Oil for softening the carrots and cooking the ground coriander
When everything is soft enough, whizz in some kind of blender to a fine puree.
Some of this cooking was helped by a rather nice, if young, Argentinean Sauvignon Blanc and Freddy (what the **** did he mean in Black Bottomed Girls??). Other dishes assisted by Phil Lynott who cannot be bettered in my opinion, to the extent that I could even be tempted to revive my embryonic guitar playing*, just to begin to hope to vaguely approach his style and energy.
http://roisindubh.info/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
*In actual fact, this amounted to a very few lessons which petered out when I discovered I’d have to cut my nails, so the guitar went the same way as the piano, but more quickly, as at least I persevered for a couple of years with that.
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