Crayfish soup after the crayfish party

If you want to enjoy a proper crayfish soup the day after, save all the shells of the crayfish, but without the intestents inside the head. This makes a delicious base for a perfect soup. 

A lot of people in Finland do the crayfish catching themselves. It is, however, perfect to do the dish with the crayfish you can buy in the supermarkets. I usually drain the small bastards and cook an own liquid with a lot more salt and dill. I normally add some 3 tablespoons of coarse sea salt per 1 liter water.  A good 24 hours in the fridge gives a perfect result. Once you add a good amount of dill, of course. 

This time the soup was made of:

The best shells of 2 kg frozen crayfish
1/2 tube tomato paste
1/2 bottle of dry white wine (maybe a bit more). Save some for the chef!
1,5 litres of boiling water
1 big onion
dill
2 dl creme fraiche
3 dl whipping cream
1/2 dl rapeseed oil
salt and pepper 
a few drops of Tabasco
wheat flour 

When you wake up after a good Nordic crayfish party, you might find yourself in need of some liquid for the thirst, but still for something salty as well. This is the thing.

Rinse the shells and drain well. Put the whole bunch in an oven pan and roast in 250 centigrade until crisp but not burned. Take a big kettle, pour in a good amount of rapeseed oil and put in the crisp shells. Put the full heat on and add a chopped onion, the tomato paste, some wheat flour. Mix a little while and enjoy of the great relief as you pour over the wine. Mix again and add the water. Let the whole thing cook for at least two hours. If you loose too much liquid, add some water. 

Using a colander, pour the soup base into another kettle and finish the soup by reducing it still as you please. If the soup is too this after checking the taste, make a beurre mainie to fix it.

If you have some leftover crayfish tails, make a pile of them on each plate. Pour over the soup and enjoy with a good bread and cheese and, naturally some white wine. Finish with some dill.  You might enjoy a finish with some drops of lemon juice as it can lift it all up to a higher level.

Traditional "gravlax" or sugar salted salmon

This is an extremely popular way of treating the fish, especially, salmon, salmon trout and whitefish all over the Nordics. Some prefer is with a lot of dill, but I manage well without it. My favorite way of eating the gravlax is on a toasted, buttered rye bread as on the picture.

This one is so simple to make. All you need is a piece of bone free salmon (350 g in this case), coarse sea salt and a table spoon of sugar.

Put the salmon on a plate. Cover it with salt and sprinkle the sugar evenly on the fish. Cover with foil and let it rest overnight in the fridge. Wipe of the salt and slice the fish in thin slices. Enjoy!

Butter fried vendance, fresh summer potatoes, yoghurt sauce with dill

The vendance is a real treat. It is a freshwater fish, so you can only catch it in lakes in the Nordics.
At leats in Finland the people by the coast prefer the Baltic Herring instead, but it is prepard the same way.

This recipe is for two persons

350 g deheaded and gutted vendance
1 dl rye bread crumbles (can be bought in shops in Finland)
100 g ghee or just butter
salt and pepper
a few truly fresh spring potatoes
dill
yoghurt or sour cream
sugar
a squeeze of lemon

Clean the potatoes and put the kettle on. Whe the water is cooking add some coarse sea salt. If the water is salty enough, the potatoes start floatin when they are ready.

Salt the vendance and batter them with the rye bread crumbles. let them dry a while in order to let the crumbs to stick better.

Make the ghee: Melt some butter in a kettle. Take aside and let the dry matter sink in the bottom of the kettle. Do not shake.



Make the yuoghurt/sour cream sauce by mixing some yoghurt or sour cream with a small bunch of dill, sugar and lemon juice.

Meanwhile the potatoes are cooking and the sauce is done, take a robust frying pan and heat it up. Pour in the ghee and fry the vendance until crispy and dark brown. Serve it all.

Simple and gooooood!

Butter fried whitefish fillets, parmesan spiced potato cakes and cream sauce with lemon

2 fillets of whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus), deboned and descaled

a few potatoes
juice of a 1/2 lemon
some white wine
1 dl cream
butter

Some sallad of your choice

Make sure that the fillets have the skin on! In my opinion it is the
tastiest part after having been fried in butter. What isn´t?

Cut the fillets to nice portion pieces. The rest can be slightly salted to be eaten later the same way as gravlax.

Pour some white wine and half of the lemon juice into a kettle and cook up. Follow up with cream and let it all simmer slowly into a nice consistency sauce. Give it a final touch with some salt and pepper.

Peel and grate the potatoes and mix with some grated parmesan.
Form into small cake shaped thin piles and fry with butter in a pan.

As the potato cakes star to be ready, take another frying pan and throw in a nice amout of butter. Salt and pepper the fish on both sides. As the butter in the pan is silent and nutty brown, put the fish pieces with the skin side down into the pan. Fry until th inside temperature is around 45 degrees centigrade. In fact, you can also trust your eyes as you can the whiteness slowly rise up onto the top of the fish. When it is almost there, it´s done.

Gather it all on plates. The potato cake in the middle topped with the fish, with the nice brown skin up. Pour the sauce around the portion and sprinkle the rest of the lemon juice on the portions. Enjoy with some dry white wine.

What about the sallad? Either you skipped it or you made it somehow...

Vendance roe with sour cream, on a bed of toast and kale

This extremely simple dish belongs to my absolute favorites in starters. What makes it even more tempting is, that it is so very simple to make. We normally buy the roe in small 100 g frozen plastic cups.It is cleaned and salted an ready to eat as it is. However, it should be let to thaw slowly and drop out the extra liquid in a sieve, before serving. This one is the most expensive roe in the Nordics after the Caspian sea Russian Caviar. Yet it costs only around 100 € per kg!

I am very fond of kale, but the more mature it is the tougher it is to bite. Therefore I prefer the very young kale, that is still crispy and tasty, but easy to enjoy as it is. For this kind of dish to be more precise.

Just make a bed of young kale on every plate. Cut out either just the sides of a toast bread or cut a round puck as I did. Spread the bread with butter on both sides and fry them until golden brown. Put aside for a while to chill a little bit.

Put the brad on the kale bed and spoon the roe on them. Top with some sour cream. Finnish with salt and pepper and sprinkle some olive oil around the plate. Enjoy with dry white wine or with frozen vodka schnapps and beer.

The ice cellar´s salmon with dilled mustard mayo served on a archipelago style rye bread

This is a real superdelicacy that combines almost everything the Nordics have to offer. A great salmon from Norway and some Finnish culinary tradition and it´s all there. There is a huge difference between this dish and a traditional gravlax, that is normally salted for a short period an served as very thin slices.

The Ice cellar´s salmon:
600g - 2 kg fresh salmon (salmo salar) from Norway
2 liters of water
180 - 200 g sea salt
80-100 g sugar
1 tsp cumin
a small bunch of dill stalks, gently beaten with the back of your knife to get the flavours out better

Cook the liquid and spices and chill it well. Buy boneless and defatted salmon or do it yourself. No bones no fat left. 

When the liquid is cold enough, put the dill stalks and the salmon fillet, with the skin side up, into a bowl or a kettle and pour the liquid over. Cover the fish with a plate in order to keep it well under the surface. Put the whole dish into a fridge and let it rest fo four days. 

Mustard mayonnaise:
2 dl full fat mayonnaise (make it yourself if you want)
1/2 dl dijon mustard
3 tsp sugar
chopped dill
Mix well and give it a rest. Serve with the fish.

Archipelago style rye bread:
For three medium size bread forms:

1 litre of sour milk (piimä)
50 - 100 g yeast
3 dl syrup/treacle
3 dl wheat bran
3 dl crushed barley malt
3 dl rye flour
1 - 1 1/2 tbs salt
Appr. 1 litre wheat flour

1. Heat the sour milk up to 37 C. Mix the yeast into the liquid and then all the other ingredients and mix well. The dough shall remain quite loose and can be poured into the buttered bread forms.

2. Let the breads rest under cover for two hours.

3. Bake at the lowest level in a normal oven for 2,5 to 3 hours at 170 degrees centigrade. Keep an eye on them and as the breads have risen well and start to darken, lower the temp to 150-160 degrees and cover them with a foil. 

Take the bread forms out from the oven and before you tip them upside down, brush the crust with a 50/50 mixture of water and syrup. Let cool a while. These breads will keep for weeks in a plastic bag, but can also be frozen. I strongly recommend to slice the breads before freezing and you´ll be able to use a slice or a few at a time. 

The serving as a starter:
Slice the bread into 5-6 mm thick slices. Spread with butter and cut some 1 cm thick slices from the salmon to top the breads. Finnish it all up with the mayo and garnish with some dill. The combination of sweetness from the bread, saltiness from the fish and the creamy mayo goes extremely well with a crisp dry white wine, like a good riesling. Some might prefer a schnapps and a beer. No shame on them either!