Our culinary club, Muskottisoturit, gathered again yesterday. This time it was my turn to treat my friends with something special. And in fact I had started to plan this dinner already a long time ago and had such big plans… However, this week was SO different from what I had expected, that all my plans flew out of the window and what became my first priority, was to try to get everything done on time.
I knew I would have some work related projects for this week, as I always do. I just didn’t think they would take ALL of my time. The problem is that nothing went right and everything took much more time that I had expected. First of all, I had spent too much time embroidering a dress for my client. I don’t do that much embroidery, so my hands are not used to that kind of detailing and it is just so slow. But the client wants to have some embroidery on this dress so the décolleté wouldn’t be too revealing.
After finishing the embroidery with the result that pleased me and delivering the dress to my client, it turns out that she does not like sequins on this particular dress. And yes, she does like sequins in general and she even wants to have a dress with lots of sequins – just not this dress. So, I guess I just change those sequins to something else…
My other project is a leather jacket. I have never worked with leather before, so I admittedly took this task on with plenty of reservations. However, everything seemed to be going smoothly and well until I started to sew. There is something not right with the machine and every little seam takes at least half an hour to complete. That is something I had not expected. At all.
The result is quite nice, but not at all as sturdy as I would like it to be. Well anyway, the conclusion is that I had to postpone the deadlines, which is something I don’t do lightly or like doing.
And now we get to the dinner.
I knew what I wanted to make and I knew that preparing it would take a lot of time, so I started early. In fact, some of the things I prepared already a couple of days earlier; like making the sour cream more sour so it would have more of a Finnish flavor. I had also brought some Finn Crisps from my last trip to Finland, as I had thought they would be great addition to the appetizers. But I ate them all while having my latest nervous breakdown. So I had to replace them with just some local biscuits.
So in the pot I had the very sour sour-cream with some sweetened rye bread and fresh basil. On the wooden plate I had the biscuits, caviar and salmon caviar paste.
For the second starter I made a smoked deer soup which is my personal favorite. In the recipe it says 100 g of smoked deer, but I decided to make it slightly heavier and doubled the quantity. It worked well.
For the main course I prepared some moose stew with the side dish of potato – cauliflower purée and steamed courgettes in olive oil and black pepper.
After the Brie and Tomme de Montagne cheese dish I served some cloudberry snow with white chocolate whipped cream and mulled wine or as we call it in Finland, Glögi.