Overdose of sweet from coconut honey

When I take home a can of coconut milk, it's almost always with the thought 'I have no idea where it's going to take me this time'. Sorry if I'm making it sound like an adventure story, but guessing where the canful will eventually end up is like guessing where Indiana Jones will find himself after climbing down a suspicious ladder.

Poor coconut milk found itself in a jar this time, stuck in there together with some sticky good honey and vanilla seeds.

Never seen Indiana Jones in a sweet situation like that after climbing down any ladder, that's for sure...


Coconut honey with vanilla

3 dl coconut milk
1 dl honey
half a vanilla pod
1 tbsp butter

1. Measure coconut milk and honey into a saucepan. Cut the vanilla pod in half and add.
2. Boil the mixture without a lid over low heat until it turns thicker, about 15 minutes.
3. Add butter.
4. Pour the mixture into a jar, close it and leave to cool at room temperature. Store in the fridge.

So what does it taste like? Imagine the word pair 'coconut honey' melting on your tongue, sweet and gooey, girly from the touch of vanilla.

I had my first taste on a chocolate dessert with bilberries, but I imagine it being syrupy good on ice cream or just plain yoghurt. And I'd like to drizzle it onto a bowlful of fresh strawberries. How's that for adventurously good?

This recipe will also take part in the A Fruit A Month event hosted by Tasty Palettes, themed Coconut. Coconut's a fruit, my friends, a fruit:)

Forest pesto

My affection towards fresh bright green fir shoots has not decreased since fir shoot butter. Just mixing them with butter was an easy task, but I needed something more.

I hope you're not so pesto-conservative as to throw me with rocks if I call my creation pesto. Forest pesto, because fir shoots are picked from the forest (the air is the cleanest there, so you should do that if you can) and also because hazelnuts are called 'forest nuts' in Estonian. Clever, huh?;)

Forest pesto

50 g bright green fir shoots
25 g hazelnuts
1 garlic clove
1 tbsp grated parmesan
about 4 tbsp olive oil
salt

1. Process the fir shoots, nuts and garlic together with a bit of oil in the food processor or with an immersion blender. The mixture should be quite smooth.
2. Add cheese and enough olive oil to get a right consistency. Flavour with salt.

Use just as you would use basil pesto. On pasta, on bread...especially on bread and definitely with the addition of cream cheese and some slices of bursting red tomatoes.

The flavour is incredibly fresh.
Imagine standing in a fir forest. Take a deep deep breath. Good, isn't it? Now add a bit of a sour tone to it, the mildness of hazelnuts, the flavour of good parmesan, a bit sharpness from garlic and you're ready.
Then serve this feeling with bread, cream cheese and tomatoes.

If you have never tried fir shoots, I demand you to do so now! No excuses!

TGRWT#3: Coriander and coconut syrup over sunny strawberries

Pairing strawberry and coriander for the flavour pairing event They Go Really Well Together#3 has got me excited.
Well...not always. It's true that this dish was the first one that actually made me use fresh coriander leaves, but its seeds have been good friends of mine for a long time. So of course I thought these friends could give me a hand. But when I wanted to make strawberries with coriander-flavoured chocolate...no matter how much ground coriander seeds got mixed into the chocolate, no flavour whatsoever revealed itself. I know chocolate has a strong taste and I know that strawberries in chocolate taste heavenly even when only dipped into crushed almonds and even without doing that, but I got mad at coriander seeds (I got mad at coriander seeds) and just went and bought fresh leaves.

Luckily. Because this dish here ain't no weird experiment! This dish here makes my mouth water like Niagara Falls. I found the idea of adding coconut milk to coriander syrup on the Internet and created a recipe that would suit my taste the most.


Coriander and coconut milk syrup
(about 3 1/2 dl)

2 dl sugar
2 dl water
1/2 dl chopped coriander leaves
1 dl coconut milk

1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan and heat, stirring until sugar dissolves.
2. When the syrup starts to boil, remove it from heat and add coriander leaves.
3. Leave the syrup alone to cool for 20 minutes and then strain it.
4. Add coconut milk to the strained syrup and mix well.



This syrup is moderately sweet and if tasted, coconut strikes first, but coriander taste will stay in the mouth afterwards. It isn't overwhelmed by neither of the components. I imagine it on pineapple cake, I imagine it on ice cream, I imagine it with bananas.

And I imagine it on strawberries. You can add whipped cream when serving this dessert, because a strawberry dessert is not a true strawberry dessert without whipped cream!

The flavours of strawberries and the syrup 'go really well together' and complete each other. Who could have guessed? Okay, but who could have guessed them to go that well together? It might be a matter of taste, but I was positively surprised. Coconut had been like a missing link in the combination for me. I believe the syrup is a keeper. On strawberries or on anything.

Now I'd like to remind that the deadline for sending in your strawberry and coriander recipes is on the 1st of July. Hope they go really well together!

SHF#30 - Vanilla flowers over cherry sauce

I didn't get around any edible flowers for Sugar High Friday#30 Flower Power hosted by Monisha of Coconut Chutney(a really lovely blog as I've discovered recently). So I decided to just make one. It's the simplest cake - the simplest-simplest cake turned into what's a surprising dessert. It's what you have in your fridge and in your pantry - thrown together. And noone will notice you didn't have to go through a three hour shopping trip to find ingredients for a spectacular extravagant dish. Oh no. Slice-slice-slice-slice and place-place-place-place. Fantasy might just save some money to go shopping and buy...a special treat for yourself. I know, It's hard to believe I'm that selfish. But wouldn't you want to be too? Now don't go shaking your head!


Simple mix-together vanilla cake

130 g flour
200 g butter, melted
4 eggs
2 dl milk
90 g sugar
vanilla
salt

1. Beat the eggs with sugar until fluffy.
2. Add melted butter, then milk and flour, also some vanilla and a pinch of salt.
3. Pour into desired greased baking pan and bake at 170C for about 50 minutes (a toothpick has to come out clean!).
4. For serving - use some coating, jam, sauce or ice cream or cut into slices to serve in a dessert.


Cherry and hazelnut sweet yoghurt sauce

3 dl unflavoured yoghurt
2 tbsp sugar
120 g cherries/morellos (may be frozen)
120 g hazelnuts
some ground cardamom

1. Chop and roast the nuts (I also peeled them first - it's quite easy to use the same technique that's used with almonds: put the nuts into boiling water for about half a minute, cool under cold water and peel)
2. Mix everything together. If using fresh berries, cut them into halves. I used frozen ones and just slightly pressed them with the back of a spoon when mixing to help spread the flavour.

To assembling the dessert now. Spread some sauce on the plates. Cut the cake into slices with desired size (the cake should be cooled before that) and assemble them so that they form the shape of a flower. Put a cherry in the centre and sprinkle with some powdered sugar. That's it!


The cake in its softness, richness (look (or rather don't) at the amount of butter!) and simplicity brings the flavour of vanilla out well. It does not keep very well and is best if eaten the same day it's made. The sauce adds the missing sour note and surprisingly there are a lot more crunchy nuts under the flower anyone could've guessed.
Cake has never been looked as a part of some kind of mixed dessert at our house. The best part (yes, the best part) is that if its sliced, there seems to be a lot more of it on the plate too, even if there isn't. Now that's eating advice!

A sauce to fight the flu

Will it help? Will it? Probably not, but it's worth trying anyway:)

I've been caught into tea mania. Tea here, tea there, tea in the morning, tea in candies, tea in the afternoon, tea with vegetables, tea in the evening, tea in sauces, tea at night, tea in cakes, tea in preserves, tea with meat, tea on my mind, tea in my dreams, tea bloody everywhere. There's tea in this sauce and it's hidden well.
But you will notice.


Yoghurt sauce with onion, garlic and black tea

80 g onion, chopped
20 g garlic, chopped
2 tsp butter
4 dl very strong black tea
1-2 tbsp sugar
salt
1-2 dl unflavoured yoghurt

1. Melt butter in a saucepan, throw in onion and garlic, cover and cook for about 10 minutes until onion has turned transparent.
2. Add sugar and tea. Let the whole thing boil lively until there's not much liquid left (For me this time was about 8 minutes).
3. Now puree everything you have in the saucepan and let it cool a bit.
4. Add yoghurt to taste and also a tiiiny pinch of salt.

The taste has a lot of onion. And quite much black tea, although it's difficult to recognise that taste for someone who would never consider that option in a sauce. It's weird that my mom quite liked it and she doesn't even like onions (okay, except for in minced meat sauce)!
I ate the sauce with some smoked mackerel, but I can only imagine how well it could go with pork. Or as a dip for fresh vegetables.

And yet I like my tea green.