Who are we? Our adorableness¹ is up for discussion, but we are siblings - for better and worse :) Personally I like to know a little bit of the people behind my favorite blogs, and some time ago Anna and I realized there is practically nothing about us as persons to be found on these pages. So we decided to compile a small About Us -page with a few pictures from our shared past.

Antti has recently swapped Boston for Helsinki, Anna remains New York based. We grew up in Finland knocking off teeth from each other and sharing the bath. These days we are separated by the Atlantic Ocean. Nevertheless, we still share a weird form of sibling telepathy. For as long as we remember, we have bonded over food – this blog keeps up the tradition.

While Antti earns his living the hard way as a Project Manager in a software company, Anna enjoys the freedom and late mornings of academia. Antti is still a thesis’ worth shy of his Masters - previously known as the Project 2000 ;)

In our blog, we attempt to share our fast-paced world of flashy cars, slow food, and hip boutique hotels:

Antti’s gourmet tendencies, eclectic dress sense, and flair for home decoration became obvious very early on. The only thing missing from this picture is his love of cutting-edge technology.

Cosmopolitan from birth and equally at home on both hemispheres, Anna is seen in this circa 1981 photo taking in the world-class beauty of the pristine archipelago between Finland and Sweden.

¹ Ivonne described us adorable in one of her comments to Anna: “… you and your brother have to be about the most adorable brother/sister blog duo out there! Very sweet!”

Thanks, we were profoundly flattered! We hope the rest of you like us as well :)

This page can also be accessed thru the “Antti & Anna” -link in the main header.

This year we spent the week around Reyes (Epiphany) in Central Mexico. Of all the marvellous sights, tastes, and smells, those of Puebla are lodged deepest in my limbic system. The city is terribly pretty, full of Spanish colonial buildings, but somehow more ornate and painted even brighter than others in similar colonial cities you can find across Latin America.

I’m not sure why Puebla felt so captivating. Perhaps it was that after a very hectic and stressful end of the year, we were at complete leisure: free to spend hours taking in the mild winter sunshine sitting on the Zócalo, lazily leafing through books in the dappled shadow, watching lovers meet, argue, cuddle, and part. The central square is a maze of trees, hedges and benches, filled with the friendly murmur of conversation. Children chased a baby pigeon who finally took refuge in a bronze miniature model of the city, and a bum alternated between a nap and contented slugs from his bottle. We were completely mesmerized by a city-employed shoeshiner who restored a pair of badly scuffed shoes to their former glory. Ancient indigenous women carried ziplocs full of freshly hewn willow whistles: their twitter formed the soundtrack of the city, along with the drizzle of fountains and the blare of car horns.

We slept in a pleasantly situated former monastery where the staff celebrated Reyes by smashing piñatas. Our room was huge but so cold during the high-altitude midwinter that we had to wear extra layers of clothes to bed - it never gets this cold indoors in Finland ;) Even this feels somewhat satisfying in retrospect: one of the many surprising contrasts Mexico had in store for us.

The biggest surprise of the trip was Mexican food. Somehow, the stuff that goes by that name in US restaurants is frequently bland, Anglicized, and of inferior quality: limp nachos, rock-hard taco shells, and dubious dishes smothered with sour cream and shredded lettuce. (I ate much more of this than I really care to remember while travelling in Texas.) What I encontered during my brief stay in Mexico bore little resemblance to my preconceived idea of Mexican food. I encountered an ancient, complex, and original cuisine, completely on a par with France or Italy, but much harder to fathom. Do I understand beurre manié, soufflés, and risotti? Yes, to some degree. But can I confidently balance three different types of chiles in a dish? Or can I soak, grind, knead, and shape corn into a perfect tortilla?

Right now I’m taking my first baby steps into understanding Mexican kitchen a bit better, to recreate some of my favorite antojitos, but also to re-experience the smoky, deep stews and hearty, flavor-packed soups that so surprised me. A decent basic cookbook should be in the mail: while waiting for it to be delivered, I’m toying with chipotles (in this I’ve unexpectedly been inspired by a Swedish fellow food blogger).

Paraphrasing an article on chowbaby.com that gives every novice the basics about chipotles:

Dried or canned, chipotles — ripened, smoke-dried jalapeno peppers — have the magical capacity to turn an ordinary cook into a talented chef. Chipotles pack a sharp burn, but their subtle, complex flavor becomes apparent once you’ve adapted to the heat.

Most supermarkets and corner groceries now stock canned chipotles — usually in a rich, dark, spicy garlic-tomato sauce called adobo. Canned chipotles are dark reddish-brown and high in sodium. The peppers slice very nicely with a knife, or you can dump the entire contents of a can into your blender or food processor and puree for a delicious sauce.

Specialty stores sell dried chipotles, which are lighter in color and give an aroma faintly reminiscent of cigarettes. Before using them, remove the seeds and de-vein them. Then toast them gently in a hot dry skillet to release their volatile oils. Cover them with hot water for a few minutes until the soften and plump up. Throw away the steeping liquid which can become bitter. Either way, you’ll usually want to balance chipotle’s diabolical heat with a hint of something sweet — honey, sugar, fruit juice or the like.”

My Spanish skills are very rudimentary, based on a long-forgotten intensive period of learning during high school. New York is a highly bilingual city, however: at work, the secretarial staff is completely Spanish-speaking, so I can hone my verbal comprehension skills by listening into the local gossip. The Spanish TV channels are still almost too challenging for me. However, the game show “100 Mexicanos Dijeron” where families compete to capture the most widely used words, expressions, and colloquialisms of their local dialect, taught me a while back the world “albóndiga”, a concept that’s very near to the heart of all Finns and Swedes - a meatball. So, tonight it’s going to be

Albóndigas en Salsa de Chipotle

makes about 20 small meatballs

For the meatballs

1 tomato, pan-roasted until blistered, deeply browned, and soft, then chopped

1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
0.5 tsp ground cinnamon
0.5 tsp dried oregano
0.25 tsp freshly ground black pepper
0.25 tsp ground allspice
2 tbsp chopped green olives
2 tbsp golden raisins
1 tbsp drained capers, chopped
1 tbsp olive or canola oil
250g ground beef
250g ground pork
1-3 slices of white bread, crumbled
1 egg
0.75 tsp salt

For the salsa

2 tomatillos or tomatoes, pan-roasted until blistered, deeply browned, and soft, then chopped very finely
2 chipotles in adobe, de-seeded, or dry chipotles, de-seeded, de-veined, toasted, and soaked in hot water
2 roasted cloves of garlic (either oven-roasted or roasted on a skilled turning frequently for about 15 mins)
0.5 tsp salt

Roast the tomatoes, turning them over and over for about 10 minutes until they are softened and blistered all over. Set the tomatoes for the salsa aside; chop the one for the meatballs. Mix with chopped onion, all the spices, olives, raisins, and capers, and saute for about eight minutes or until softened. Let cool, combine with the ground meat (do not use sirloin ground beef for meatballs, higher-fat types of ground beef and pork make much better meatballs, a 75-25 or 50-50 beef-pork ratio is ideal), crumbled pieces of white bread, salt, and egg. If the meatball dough is too soft for rolling, add a bit of crumbled white bread, mix thoroughly. Cover a cutting board with finely ground breadcrumbs (even coarsely ground cornmeal or ordinary all-purpose flour work), roll small 2.5 cm (1″) meatballs. Fry them in two batches on a very llghtly oiled non-stick pan for about 10 minutes, shaking or turning frequently.

In the meantime, either put all the ingredients for the salsa in a blender or use an immersion blender. I don’t have either one here in New York, but I found that just chopping the tomatoes or tomatillos, chipotles and garlic very finely with a sharp knife makes a pleasantly chunky salsa. Remove the seeds from the chipotles first: for me, it makes all the difference between pleasurably fiery and intolerably painful. You can always add the seeds back if you wish to pack some extra heat. Depending on what type of chipotles you use, you may end up using more or less salt than I did.

The meatballs turned out light and crispy; but the real star was the chipotle salsa, which I used as a dipping sauce. I’ve never cooked before with tomatillos, the sour, green, sticky, tomato-like fruits that have husks around them. The fieriness and tartness of the salsa was just right.

I could find tomatillos in the first supermarket I checked out here in Northern Manhattan - any area that has any Mexican presence is a pretty sure bet. However, the bored-looking Puerto Rican checkout girl at Met Foods acted like she’d never seen the fruit before either - “Wha’s that” she intoned and drew a blank on my reply.

In Puebla, this salsa is commonly prepared with ordinary tomatoes, so don’t hesitate to make the substitution if you can’t find tomatillos. The meatballs would work well as party food. If served as a main course, I’d prepare either a green salad or grill a few slices of polenta on the side (fusion-y, but serving anything corn-based is hardly wrong with Mexican food).

I’ve been drooling over the pictures of the Hungarian food blog Chili & Vanilia for months, so when I discovered the story about what Hungarian goulash is and what it is not there (in English, no less), I re-remembered pörkölt and naturally had to try the recipe over the weekend. I’m all about edible souvenirs, so I was eager to use up the Hungarian paprika I had hoarded on a visit to Budapest. Fearing that my paprika might be a bit stale, I threw in a tiny dried chili which gave the sauce subtle fire.

I also sourced the Internet for instructions for Hungarian noodles (galuska). Lacking the appropriate tool, a galuskaszaggató (very similar to a spätzle maker, a kitchen tool I’ve always wanted), I had to resort to making a firmer regular pasta dough that I cut by hand.

Pörkölt - Hungarian Beef Stew

(quoting, with slight modifications, Chili&Vanilia)

4 servings

1 kg beef for stews, cubed
2 big onions, finely chopped
4-5 tbsp canola oil
3-4 tbsp Hungarian paprika powder
1 green pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
(1 peperoncino)

Heat oil in a saucepan. Add the finely chopped onions and cook until translucent. Now comes an important secret step: remove the saucepan from the heat and now add the paprika – this is very important as if you would do this step still on the heat, the paprika could burn from the sudden heat and get bitter. Put it back, add beef cubes and stir so that the spicy onion mix covers the meat evenly. Cover with about 100-150 ml of water so that the liquid doesn’t completely cover the meat. Add the sliced green pepper, salt, black pepper (and peperoncino, if using). Simmer covered on very low heat for about 1-1.5 hours. After 1 hour, check, add a litle more water if necessary, so the stew doesn’t burn. Depending on the thickness of the sauce, cook for 10-15 minutes uncovered so that all the liquid reduces and all what you get is a spicy, thick sauce which covers the meat. It tastes even better reheated.

The resulting slow-cooked stew had a soothing transgenerational vibe, my mother and grandmother would feel very comfortable making and eating it (minus the chili) and I will definitely make it again. The secret step really circumvented burned paprika - I definitely remember the bitter taste from previous not-so-successful experiments. BTW, in the off-beat horror movie Kontroll, filmed entirely in the timelessly elegant metro system of Budapest (this film has some coolest architectural shots of any movie in recent memory), one of the main characters recites a related recipe for pig feet that quotes the same secret step. So perhaps it’s not so secret after all ;)

My everyday life is totally entrenched on the West Side of Manhattan, mainly in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and Washington Heights - areas pretty firmly off the tourist map. Inspired by the sunny weather, I decided to break the mold and walk across Harlem and El Barrio to Upper East Side, in search of an appropriate dessert in the former Central European enclave of Yorkville. Unfortunately, I found that 86th Street was completely taken over by chain stores from Middle America. The likes of GAP, Banana Republic, and Barnes & Noble almost completely obscured what apparently used to be Little Germany. Some vestiges remained: I crossed over to Second Avenue and stopped by at the Schaller & Weber delicatessen (established in 1937) where German-speaking Hausfraus shopped for Pumpernickel and goose liverwurst; I did, too, and also noticed that the deli had a fairly impressive selection of Nordic products, including half a dozen varieties of pickled herring and Swedish Läkerol pastilles. In the next block, I finally spotted a Hungarian bakery. It looked brand new, definitely not a relic from the pre-War era. Inside, the cakes looked delicious and rich, but I couldn’t spot Dobostorta, my favorite. Some of the pastries were shrinkwrapped, too - never a good sign.

I gave up on Hungary and settled for the next best thing, one of the well-hidden gems in the neighborhood, a tiny German bookstore at Neue Galerie on 86th St and Fifth Avenue that has exquisite books I’d never notice anywhere else. The museum itself is very small, yet it features superb Austrian and German art from the early 20th century (Klimt, Schiele, Grosz, and Dix among others). It also the home of the lovely Café Sabarsky, very Viennese in atmosphere and appropriate for browsing the bookstore finds, although I doubt I’ll ever venture there again because I got a violent food poisoning from their Weisswurst last winter.

On the way back home, on a bus slowly inching forward along the northern edge of Central Park, I realized I would not have needed to leave my neighborhood after all. From the M4 bus window, I registered The Hungarian Pastry Shop on 110th and Amsterdam: the ever-popular hangout of procrastinating students, the backdrop to a scene in Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives, and certainly the home of Dobostorta.

Lue Suomeksi ‘What is Left of Little Hungary?’(Hide…)

The region of Modena in Emilia Romagna is home to the alchemists who make gold out of musty grapes. I have been to Modena exactly once, spitted out from a slow commuter train, missing a vital connection back to the unlovely student summer apartment I shared with two Czech biznes student girls in a mildly seedy suburb of posh Verona. My Veronese neighborhood was rife with petty heroin dealers and Nigerian prostitutes. As a bonus, on my first day, I learned extremely useful concepts of the Italian language (never featured at the university language course) from a rude but neatly labeled and anatomically correct piece of graffiti in a sottopassagio.

Indeed, tourists who just make a mad dash for Juliet’s Balcony in the centro storico of Verona have no idea what they miss… In a modern interpretation of the classic balcony scene, the Czech girls and I spent a lot of time escaping the oppressive humidity hanging out on our balcony, dressed in nighties, gossiping, and sipping rotgut Soave from a carton. Let’s just say that we received a plethora of unsolicited love notes and I wasn’t the least surprised when the Czech supermodel explosion took place a few years down the line.

That summer I crisscrossed Northern Italy on slow trains. Just able to afford fantastically cheap student FS tickets (regionale, not IC) but too cash-poor to spend the night in even the most humble hostels and equally unable to afford food at restaurants, I subsisted mainly on tunafish sandwiches and the kindness of strangers. Even in the apartment there was only one kettle, and as I was terrified by our gas stove, I ended up eating so much pesto that it sickened me for years afterwards.

Although my Italian friends were shocked by my diet and soon introduced me to a wealth of their mothers’ home cooking, ultraexpensive vinegar distilleries never figured on my agenda. Thus I chiefly remember Modena as a mecca for sports car aficionados: Ferrari, Maserati, and Lamborghini all hail from there. I came in just in time to catch an evening passeggiata dominated by nattily dressed young men.

* * *

Fiordizucca has repeatedly electrified me with her innovative and delicious recipes. After reading her post on Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena, I perused the balsamic vinegar section of three nearby Manhattan gourmet supermarkets, wishing to upgrade the pretty astringent stuff I had at home. There were way too many brands - I almost gave up. Then I had a change of heart and settled for a mid-level option, a bottle of 22-year-old Manicardi Argento, which, $30 a pop for a tiny bottle commanded a per liter price higher than standard-issue Dom Pérignon. Nevertheless, it is still a humble brew by balsamic vinegar standards.

At home, I tasted my new purchase. I was sceptical that anything could taste ten times better than bulk brands you can buy anywhere for $3, but this time the differences were very clear. My old balsamic was nondescript organic stuff from Whole Foods: mostly just very sharp. The 22-year-old vinegar, on the other hand, had an incredibly rich and full bouquet of fruity and berry-like overtones, and nice rounded mellowness and a very balanced acidity. The manufacturer’s notes boasted about una straordinaria sinfonia dei sapori - and for once there was no hype in this. L’Argento was so delicious I downed it on its own by the teaspoonful - it tasted like really delicious candy. I poured myself a glass of tawny port. The vinegar put the wine to shame. Skip aperitifs and just have a spoonful of balsamic vinegar instead… I’m afraid this bottle of balsamic won’t last very long.

Two weeks ago when I was still in Finland, a co-worker who had recently moved back to Helsinki from the US said that one of the things she missed most about Boston was the plentiful and relatively cheap seafood, scallops in particular. I realized I had completely underutilized the scallop resources of Manhattan supermarkets. Following another of Fiordizucca’s recipes, I bought a few scallops, gently dusted them with flour, fried them for two minutes per each side, finally anointing them with L’Argento and a few crystals of pink Himalayan salt. On the side, I served a salad of fresh spinach, green apples, red onions, crushed black pepper, and balsamic vinaigrette. The scallops were dreamy, and the salad balanced them out nicely. You could add a dollop of buttery mashed potatoes, but I was saving space for dessert.

I thought that something lemony would end the meal on a right note. I had a few organic mini Meyer lemons in the fridge (Meyers were the übertrendy ingredient of yesteryear in NYC restaurants: their taste is a hybrid of lemon and orange, less sharp than that of regular lemons). I had just found a lovely-sounding recipe from Dagmar’s blog that combined lemon zest and ricotta (quark is an easy substitute). Ricotta may very well be my favorite dairy product, and nothing involving it can be all bad. Best of all, fluffy and airy with egg whites, this recipe is closer to lemon meringue than regular pancakes. I sprinkled them with fresh raspberries and L’Argento (with a noble vinegar like this, no added sugar is needed). Their taste and texture was just incredible.

* * *

OK, this very long post has been inspired by Stephanie from Mana Makan who tagged us with a meme. Doughboy’s first, in fact.

1- Please list three recipes you have recently bookmarked from food blogs to try!

Anna: Sloshing about with balsamic vinegar is entirely Fiordizucca’s fault ;) Her ABTM post and scallops were inspiring enough to get me to the store for supplies, and the millisecond I saw Dagmar’s pancake recipe I knew it was a keeper. If this is not enough, I have something coming up from Chili&Vanilia… please bear with me though because I’m too stuffed right now to either write down or test any more recipes tonight. Most importantly, all these recipes were even more delicious than I expected, and will become longstanding favorites.

Antti: OK, I know the meme asked for three bookmarked recipes, but the previous chapter was written by Anna, and I couldn’t go to bed with a good conscience if I didn’t list at least one of my favorites. Kuidaore’s J from Singapore always has the most delicious recipes with brilliant pictures (J and MM alone consume a huge chunk of my food-blog reading time-allotment), and a little while ago she wrote about duck confit. I’ve always wondered those canned duck tins at the supermarket, and after having read her posting I can’t wait to get my kitchen back and start cooking me some duck. I luuurv duck, if you didn’t already know that :o)

2 - A food blog in your vicinity

Anna: Hm, define vicinity? This blog is based in Helsinki and New York, so it’s kind of difficult to tell. At the moment, there are eight time zones between Antti and me: the US and the European Union are woefully out of synch with each other this week, doing the switch to daylight saving time on consecutive weekends. This means that I’m still jetlagged and confused. Brother, I did all the cooking tonight; it’s been a long day and I want to go to sleep now. You are going to wake up soon, so could you please finish this up? (Just tag Polkkis and Mustis for me in the end - that is if these Finnish gentlemen are into memes at all.)

Antti: Sure sis, will do. Anna may have a point with the confusion of our location - especially as we don’t tend to stay too long in one continent at a time. Now that Anna is finally planning on relocating back to Finland, I’m seriously considering to changing my ex-expat status back to expat - or immigrant - and hauling my belongings cross the Ocean once again. But back to the point. A food blog I really enjoy and is only a hundred blocks or so down the street from Anna is Robyn’s The Girl Who Ate Everything. She mostly writes about restaurants and cafés in Manhattan, but has mastered the skill of narrative writing style. Highly recommended! And albeit Nami-Nami’s Pille currently lives in Scotland, she is originally Estonian and as a Finn I’ll definitely consider her local to me - if she lived in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, we’d only be some 40 km (25 mi) apart.

3 - A food blog located far from you

Antti: Singapore is definitely far away from both of us, so I’m going to be boring and once again mention both Mana Makan and Kuidaore. But what can I say - I love both of them so much - and South-East Asia in general - that they totally deserve these multiple references :)

4 - A foodblog (or several) you have discovered recently

Antti: La tartine gourmande - food pr0n and narrative writing at its best. Go take a look - a blog visit is better than a thousand words…

5 - Any people other bloggers you want to tag with this meme?

Antti:

Mustekala and I seem to share a favorite lunch restaurant here in Helsinki. Albeit in Finnish, Mustekala cooks really interesting and inspiring food with his gf and then shares the creations in his blog.

Polkkapossu is another Finnish blogger, a 30ish guy currently studying in a restaurant school to become a chef.

Anna: Actually, I’d love to also include two Swedish bloggers, Dagmar (thank you for the pancakes!) and Anne (whose blog I read religiously). And Pille, since you know more food blogs than anyone else I have come across so far, you are invited too whenever you are done with noshing in London…

The meme ends here, but Anna has included the full recipe for Dagmar’s lemon pancakes under the following link (it’s not in Finnish).
Lue Suomeksi ‘Multipurpose Balsamic Vinegar - Around the World on a Meme’(Hide…)

Harlem is gentrifying like crazy. Crime is down, so brownstones are going, going, gone and craggy old warehouses are being converted to condos for yuppies as we speak. All this is so inevitable that of late even the crunchy socially conscious granola-eating, Subaru-driving community activist types on my block seem to have given up organizing anti-gentrification street rallies.

For about a year, there has been a Citarella on W 125th street. In theory, Citarella sells food, but it is the Vogue of supermarkets: the selection is relatively narrow and strictly based on looks: only the beautiful need to apply. Each and every item is visually perfect, a supermodel of sorts. Citarella seems to be geared toward people who like to have food on display in their house but care little about the disgusting necessity of eating. The Harlem Citarella is surrounded by storefront churches, botanicas, fast food chains, and a sea of public housing projects, but somehow I doubt that an important local form of currency, food stamps and WIC checks, are accepted inside.

Normally, I do my weekly shopping at the boisterous, chaotic, mazelike Uptown Fairway a few blocks west. This weekend, however, I was briefly seduced by the pruned-down Sohoesque industrial chic and lack of throngs at Citarella. Of course, I could find barely any of the mundanities I had jotted down on my shopping list, so I gave free reign to impulse purchases. The Berkeley-based Scharffen Berger cocoa powder was too fetchingly packaged to stay on the shelf. (Antti, do you still ruin your kitchen decor with an O’boy container?)

Pretty incredibly, I never had any hot chocolate during my trip to Mexico in January (how stupid am I? I drank lots of lousy tea instead). Although I can’t vouch for authenticity, the addition of a bit of chili gives this infantile drink a nice, adult edge, and the combination dates back to Aztecs. If you’d rather prepare your drink conquistador style, here is a more historic and involved recipe.

Hot Chocolate with Chiles

1 serving

1.5 dl milk
1 halved dried chili, split with seeds removed
(optional: 1 tsp or stick of cinnamon and half of a vanilla pod)
3 tbsp sweetened cocoa powder or about 30g of dark chocolate squares

Simmer the chili pod (and the vanilla and cinnamon) in milk in a saucepan. Better yet, use the microwave. Whatever you do, not let the milk boil. Whisk in the instant cocoa powder or the roughly chopped chocolate pieces. If using chocolate from a bar, continue to simmer / zap until the chocolate is melted. Take away from the heat and let steep for a bit.

Pretty incredibly, both Antti and I have a wooden tool for the very purpose of frothing hot chocolate: a molinillo, purchased from a gigantic Mexican supermarket in East LA last summer. If you own one, now it is the time to use it to give your drink a frothy crown. Apparently, Mexicans are at least as obsessed by the froth in chocolate as Italians are about the crema in espresso.

Two weeks ago when I was still in Finland, somebody at work brought in Fazer’s chili chocolate. The chili flavor was not jarring and overpowering at all, just a subtle, barely perceptible accent, so I was immediately hooked. Alas, I couldn’t find it anywhere, not even at the airport duty-free :( If anybody knows where to get it, please let me know so I can ruin my diet ;)