Nutella follow-up
A picture of my lovely Nutella biscotti was included in the round-up for World Nutella Day. If you’d like to see it (and see about a MILLION other uses for Nutella), go here!
World Nutella Day
At the beginning of 2007, a couple of bloggers (the women behind the blogs Ms. Adventures in Italy and Bleeding Espresso) decided to name 5 February “World Nutella Day“, a chance to celebrate the beloved chocolate hazelnut spread. That was soon after I had started reading food blogs, and I thought it was a cute idea and enjoyed reading about all the Nutella recipes people submitted. The next year, 2008, I already had my blog and could have participated in the Nutella blog post round-up, except that I totally forgot about it until long after Nutella Day was over. Bummer. I would’ve wanted to do something. Then, the next year, the exact same thing happened again. I just totally forgot. January is a busy month for me at work, and things like blog-writing and reading get put on the back burner, so I hadn’t had a single reminder of World Nutella Day. But I most certainly was not going to let that happen again, oh no.
This year I got myself a jar of Nutella and got to work. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d bought Nutella. I love the stuff, so having a jar around can lead to bouts of excess consumption.
My first inspiration came in the form of a flashback to my first grocery shopping trip in Brussels in 2008. There I had bought a jar of chocolate cream (just plain dark chocolate, not chocolate hazelnut), some goat cheese, and some plain biscuits. I would eat the three together and remembered it to be a mind-blowing combination, so I thought I’d try something similar with Nutella. I love making pressed sandwiches in our sandwich maker, so I rounded up some bread, Nutella, and goat cheese and got to work.
Hello, old friend.
Spread one side of each slice of bread with Nutella, dotted some goat cheese on top, and pressed. The result:
A warm, crunchy sandwich filled with melty Nutella, which was balanced by the tangyness of the goat cheese. I would use even more goat cheese next time. This is almost too much to be called a snack; I could probably eat this as a special weekend breakfast. Does the addition of goat cheese mean I can call this a grown-up way to enjoy Nutella?
But that wasn’t enough. I was inspired to do even more. I just recently made my first-ever batch of biscotti and had so much fun that I wanted to make them again soon. Enter this recipe for Nutella biscotti.
Half a cup of Nutella. Beautiful.
I got a little bit frustrated because this recipe worked differently than the last one I made and needed quite a bit more time in the oven. However, it did fill our apartment with the most fantastic chocolate smell. Initially I didn’t love the finished product, but I realized that biscotti are not the type of cookie that’s meant to be eaten warm from the oven. The flavors didn’t come out well until they’d been sitting and cooling for a few hours. When I had one with a cup of green tea before bed… mmm. Rich chocolate flavor, and even though the Nutella taste isn’t that pronounced, crunchy hazelnuts bring back some of the nutty flavor. These are incredibly satisfying. So glad I have a bunch in my freezer now to enjoy whenever I want something crunchy and sweet with my coffee or tea.
Happy Nutella Day, everyone!
Blog resolutions
I’m one of those people who likes to make several new year’s resolutions, so that at the end of the year I know I’ll be able to cross of at least some of them. I made some food- and blog-related resolutions two years ago, but last year I apparently didn’t bother to make any. Oops. This year, the first blog resolution that comes to mind is that I will learn how to make and post a custom header. I’ve wanted one for the longest time but don’t even know where to start. But it can’t be that hard, right? It seems like everyone else in the world has one. My other blog resolution is to post at least twice a week. I don’t have the best track record for posting consistency, so we’ll see how that one goes.
For food-related goals, one that I have set for myself is to cook from my cookbooks more. Specifically, that each week I will try one new recipe from one of my cookbooks. Sometimes we fall into food ruts at dinnertime, and usually if I want to try something new, I’ll search for the recipe online. So rather than deciding what I want to try first and then finding a recipe, I’m going to turn to my cookbooks for both inspiration and instruction. I don’t have a whole lot of cookbooks, but the ones I do have are practical and fun. Here’s the list:
- Jamie’s America, Jamie Oliver
- Estonian Tastes and Traditions, Karin Annus Kärner
- 2, 4, 6, 8: Great Meals for Couples or Crowds, Rachael Ray
- 1000 Italian Recipes, Michele Scicolone
- Poole tunni road, Pille Enden, Raili Mikk (an Estonian book of half-hour dishes)
- Totally Cocktails, Maria Costantino (I am totally counting the cocktail book as a cookbook!
)
Then I have two books on entertaining that include recipes:
- Eesti perepeod (Estonian Family Celebrations), Harri Ilves, Lia Virkus, and Tiina Väljaste
- I Like You: Entertaining Under the Influence, Amy Sedaris
And a few memoirs that include recipes:
- Mediterranean Summer, David Shalleck
- A Homemade Life, Molly Wizenberg
I’m hoping that this “project” will help to expand my repertoire and prevent us from getting boring in terms of what we make at home. I’m off to a good start– the past two weeks I’ve tried recipes from my new Jamie Oliver book, and this weekend I might try to make an easy bean soup from the Estonian half-hour meals book. I might not update about my new cookbook recipe every week, but I’ll definitely share if I discover something outstanding.
Ringing in the new year
Yes, I realize that happened over a month ago. I’ll be caught up soon, promise! I just had to mention New Year’s Eve because I feel like I had a pretty unique one at the end of 2009 in Finland.
We hadn’t made much of an effort to make New Year’s plans, so at the the last minute we decided we’d be content to stay at his parents’ house and spend it with them. While I do like dressing up or going out to celebrate the beginning of a new year, I’m all for low-key celebrations as well. During the day we went out and bought some tiny fireworks, a bottle of bubbly, and the traditional Finnish New Year’s Eve foods, which are wieners (nakit) and potato salad (perunasalaatti) (haha– I didn’t even think about this until now, but it’s like American Fourth of July food 
). We ate an early dinner (of other stuff, not potato salad!) with his parents and watched “Dinner for One“, an 18-minute comedy sketch that’s shown every year on New Year’s Eve in Finland (and apparently several other countries as well). The sketch is German in origin, but performed in English. It’s rather funny; check it out on YouTube if you’re curious. Then we enjoyed a nice long sauna, and a little while later– around 11– we decided to take our New Year’s snacks and have a picnic. Outside. It was about -12 C that night, not the coldest day of our trip by far, but chilly enough. We had protection against the cold– a special log that’s cut in such a way that it burns from the inside out, and two awesome snowsuits that used to belong to J and his brother.
See the snowsuit? Rockin’. This year maybe I’ll wear a pretty dress for New Year’s Eve, but last year this was my outfit. And the best part is, the two suits are identical, so we even matched. No wait, that’s not the best part– the best part is that while wearing this baby, one is completely impervious to the cold.
We lit our log-thing in J’s backyard, among the snow and the trees, and as soon as the flames picked up we began to roast wieners and strips of bacon. Mmm… bacon gets so crispy over an open flame, if you have enough patience. The wieners were adorned with mild mustard after roasting, a Finnish staple. Potato salad and beer were enjoyed alongside (both of which began to freeze after a while…).
Don’t mind the scary statue. He’s our travel buddy.
We may have also had a little of this.
Ice-cold. Literally.
At midnight, J’s parents called us and we met them in front of the house for some sparkling wine and the exchange of “Hyvää uutta vuotta!” We also lit our fireworks, which were the kind that just shoot straight up with some white sparks and a “pheeeww” sound. In Finnish they’re called kissanpierut (cat farts). It was cold enough outside that as soon as we left the comfort of our picnic fire, my hands started to freeze. After the festivities, we returned to our fire as it burned down, and everything was serene and quiet save the sound of distant fireworks. It may not have been a typical New Year’s Eve, but to us it was pretty perfect.
What did Joulupukki bring me?
Joulupukki is the Finnish Santa Claus. The name literally translates into “Yule Goat” . Strictly speaking, I don’t think I got any gifts from “Santa Claus” this year– we were, after all, six adults having Christmas together. But I still got some wonderful stuff.
Considering how well-stocked my kitchen was after last Christmas, plus the fact that during the year we acquired a few more new kitchen tools (including a springform pan and an old mandoline of J’s that I’m still too terrified to use), I really didn’t even ask for anything for Christmas. J still came up with some very lovely gifts for me, my favorite being the Jamie Oliver cookbook “Jamie’s America”.
This is a big, beautiful hardcover book, filled with stunning photos and text written the same way Jamie talks– casual, straightforward, kinda goofy. The book was born of his travels to different regions of America, where he learned about America’s “real food”– not the fast food we seem to be so notorious for these days– and created recipes, some authentic and some with his own touches added. I’ve already made two recipes from the book and have about 50 bookmarked to make in the future. For the most part, I think I’ll be able to find all the required ingredients in Estonia.
J presented the book to me wrapped up with a box of candy canes, which of course led me to ask “Where did you get these??” Apparently this year the Stockmann chain in Finland carried them– what an American Christmas treat.
I also received the book “A Homemade Life” by Molly Wizenberg of the blog Orangette. It’s a memoir with recipes, and I’ve heard so many wonderful things about it (plus I love her blog). As I just finished the Bill Bryson book I was working on, I think I’ll start reading it today. The rest of my food-related gifts were of the chocolate variety, about which I am not complaining one bit . And in the gift-giving department, J and his family truly seemed to enjoy the Starbucks coffee and Fortnum & Mason fruitcake I had picked up for them in London (which, I might add, we did not eat until several days after the Christmas feasting was over!).
