It-was-a-horrible Sunday morning. The day before, I had to stay in the same place the whole evening with one person I did not want to see, then I came home at around 1 am, and cried my eyes out until 5 am. I guess you can imagine how awful I was feeling in the morning, when I woke up at 9 after 4 hours sleep.

 

I thought, ok, I cannot do this today, I’ll cancel my co-cooking session and ask Lilli for another date. But, then I decided not to give in to being miserable. I think my real healing process from last autumn’s depression started with that decision.

 

 

I went all the way to Lauttasaari and enjoyed a lovely chat & food with Lilli. Lilli is a friend from school, she is a designer. Lilli moved quite a long for years – lived in Risskov (Denmark) with her family when she was a kid, then moved to Mynämäki (Finland), then back to Copenhagen, then back to Lahti and finally to Helsinki 4 years ago. She moved back and forth between Denmark and Finland because of her father’s work. She always smiles and looks positive to me, so it was really a good decision to go to the session and enjoy her smiles – she didn’t know it but she did heal me a bit that Sunday afternoon…

 

 

Where she lives in Lauttasaari is not so suitable for me for instance, as it is a really quiet and calm place, but she loves it (I still like the bit of chaos I can get in the centre, although time to time I want a short break from it). She learned how to bake with her grandmother; more specifically, she learned how to bake bread with her.

 

 

This recipe is from Danish cuisine; it is a Danish dessert usually served in Christmas. I am not much of a rice pudding person but with the sauce it was really tasty: a hint of sour with sherry and cranberry, combined with sweet(er) rice pudding.. And I have to admit: it looks a bit sexy, with the red sauce..

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Instructions:
(serves 4)

 

For rice porridge:
1/2 cup / 1 dl rice for porridge (Puuroriisi)
1 2/3 cups / 4 dl whole milk (Täysmaito)
1/2 cup / 1 dl heavy cream (kuohukerma)

 

For cranberry sauce:
100 gr. cranberry
1 cup / 2.4 dl water
1 tbsp / 15 ml starch (Perunajauho)
1/4 cup / 1/2 dl dry sherry
1/2 cup / 1 dl brown sugar

 

Soundtrack: Funkhaus Studio Sessions

 

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1. First prepare the porridge. Lilli had prepared part of the porridge before I went there so I will just give verbal instructions: In a casserole, put rice and milk. By continuously stirring, boil milk and rice. Gradually heat down while stirring every once in a while. Cook for about 35 minutes. In the last 5 min, turn down the heat, put a lid on the casserole and leave like that. Below, you can see it cooked.

 

 

2. Put heavy cream in a bowl and start whipping. You can do it by hand – takes quite a long time and muscle work, or you can do it with a mixer / blender if you have any. Do it until you have a nice, stiff cream.

 

 

 

3. Take pieces from the cream, about 1 spoon at a time and mix it with porridge. When all are mixed, the porridge part is done.

 

 

 

 

4. Now comes the sauce. Put cranberries and water in a pan and boil them on medium high heat until they get mushy.

 

 

5. Put sherry (sorry no picture!) and starch, cook a bit more while continuously stirring.

 

 

 

6. Add sugar, continue stirring and cooking, until sugar is dissolved and all the ingredients are incorporated. Starch will make it harden a bit so you should get quite a dense sauce in the end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. Put some porridge in a small bowl to serve. On it, add a spoonful of sauce. The porridge should be in room temperature (or cooler), sauce should be warm. Enjoy!