2012-11-07

Menu: Serenity -- 2012-08-19

Welcome drink:
Vanilla sunrise

Amuse Bouche:
Carbonated grapes

First starter:
One hour eggs on puff pastry with Hollandaise sauce

Second starter:
Apple carpaccio

Third starter:
Green pea soup with goat cheese

First main course:
Mushroom risotto

Palate cleanser:
Lemon sorbet

Second main course:
Cucumber and zucchini lightly fried in paprika infused oil, cauliflower purée, paprika and taboulleh

Cheese:
Brie with orange/lemon zest marmalade

First Dessert:
Green tearamisu

Second Dessert:
Grandma's orange cake

2012-07-18

News: Serenity will return on the 19th of August 2012

Serenity will be taking part in the next Restaurant Day, on the 19th of August 2012.

The concept remains the same:

  • A secret tasting menu with at least 6 courses
  • Two sittings (16:00-19:00 and 19:30-22:30), 8 persons/sitting
  • Reservations needed
  • 30€/person (25€ for students)

2012-06-02

Recipe: Chocolate cake

Type: Dessert

Ingredients:
3 eggs
3.5 dl sugar
150 g butter
1.5 dl cocoa powder
2 dl wheat flour
1 tsp vanilla

1.75 dl cream
150 g dark chocolate (70-85%)
20 g butter

Oven: 175°C

Preparations:
Whip egg & sugar at least 3 minutes. Melt butter, take from heat, add cocoa powder. Gently stir cocoa butter into the egg mixture, add flour + vanilla and stir it all to a smooth mixture. Pour mixture in baking tray with removable edges. Bake for 30-35 minutes depending on tray size.

Mix butter, cream, chocolate and melt on low heat. Take off heat, let solidify in room temperature.

When the cake and cream has cooled, coat the cake with the chocolate cream. Let the cake rest for 2-3 days before serving.

Serve the cake with Limoncello raspberry sauce.

Recipe: Limoncello raspberry sauce

Type: Condiment

Ingredients:
500 g raspberries
2 dl Limoncello
1.5 dl sugar
1 lemon, zest of

Corn starch

Preparations:
Bring the Limoncello to a boil together with sugar and zest, stirring while the sugar melts. Reduce for a few minutes, then pour over the berries. Squeeze the raspberries and mix them thoroughly with the limoncello syrup, then let soak for at least 1h, preferably longer.

Strain the berries through a strainer and let it drip until all the berry juice had been drained out of the berries.

Mix some corn starch with a bit of the raspberry sauce in a cup and stir to a smooth liquid texture. Mix the roux back into the sauce, while stirring constantly.

Note: Make sure not to add too much roux to the sauce, otherwise it'll get too thick. Also ensure that you stir constantly to avoid lumps from forming.

Recipe: Sous vide salmon

Type: Main course

Ingredients:
200 g salmon / portion

Sous vide: 50°C

Preparations:
Pat the salmon dry and seal in a sous vide bag. Cook for 30 minutes.

Pat the salmon dry again and sear the skin side with a blow torch. Serve with oven roasted fennel, apple and red onions and blood orange sauce.

Recipe: Oven roasted fennel, apple and red onion

Type: Side dish

Ingredients:
2 large fennel bulbs, trimmed, diced
2 Golden delicious, diced
2 red onions, in wedges
Avocado oil
Salt
Black pepper

Oven: 200°C

Preparations:
Put fennel dices, apple dices and onion wedges in the bottom of an oven tray, sprinkle oil over and season with salt and pepper.

Roast for 25 minutes.

Recipe: Blood orange sauce

Type: condiment

Ingredients:
3.5 dl blood orange juice
2 tbsp lime juice
0.75 dl white wine
2 tbsp shallots
60 g butter
Salt
Black pepper

Preparations:
Bring the blood orange juice to a boil in a pan and let reduce for about 10 minutes. In a separate pot reduce wine + shallots for about 3 minutes.

Add blood orange reduction to the wine reduction, then add the butter a little at a time and whisk until melted. Take the sauce off the heat and season with salt and pepper.

Recipe: Avocado tequila ice cream

Type: Savoury ice cream

Ingredients:
4.75 dl avocado purée
1.75 dl water
4 dl sugar
3 tbsp lime juice
0.5 dl tequila

Preparations:
Mix sugar and water in a pan over medium heat until sugar is completely dissolved. Let the sugar syrup cool. In a separate pot, reduce the tequila by roughly 50%. Let cool. Mix avocado and syrup using a blender, then add to ice cream maker. When ice cream is almost solid, add tequila reduction.

Recipe: Parsley basil risotto in roasted peppers

Type: Main course

Serves: 4

Ingredients:
3 dl Carnaroli rice
2 tbsp oil
1 onion
2 dl dry white wine
2 cloves of garlic
6 dl vegetable stock
2 dl Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 tbsp parsley
1 tbsp basil
8 Italian peppers

Oven: 225°C

Preparations:
Bring the vegetable stock to a simmer in a pot.

Cut the peppers open and deseed them. Toast the peppers with a torch.

Chop onions and garlic and blanch them in the oil, then add the rice. Toast the rice for 1 minute while stirring, then add the wine. Heat to a boil and add the simmering stock by the spoonful, and let the risotto boil for roughly 20 minutes, while stirring regularly to ensure that the rice does not burn. When the rice is almost done, add the parsley, basil and cheese and stir until it's evenly distributed in the risotto.

Scoop risotto into sweet peppers then bake the peppers for 10 minutes in oven.

Recipe: Sous vide lamb chops

Type: Main course

Ingredients:
Lamb chops, marinated (3-4 per person if served as only main course)

Sous vide: 56°C

Preparations:
Marinate the lamb chops for at least 12h using this marinade. Take the chops out of the marinade and pat it dry. Seal the chops in a sous vide bag. Cook for 3 hours. Pat the lamb chops dry and sear with a torch.

Serve with hasselbackspotatoes, sous vide glazed carrots and roasted garlic cloves.

Recipe: Marinade for lamb chops

Type: Marinade

Ingredients:
2 cloves of garlic
2 tsp tomato paste
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp red wine
1 tsp chantrelle fond
2 drops of Blair's Sudden Death
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp avocado oil

Preparations:
Stir all ingredients together. Apply marinade with brush onto meat to be marinated. Place the meat in a ziplock bag and pour the rest of the marinade into the bag. Evacuate as much of the air in the bag as possible, then seal the bag.

Recipe: Hasselbackspotatoes

Type: Side dish

Ingredients:
Potatoes
Molten butter
Salt

Oven: 225°C

Preparations:
Peel the potatoes and slice the potatoes thinly almost all the way through. Place the potatoes, sliced side up, on a baking tray, then brush them with molten butter and salt them a bit.

Bake the potatoes in the middle of the oven for 45 minutes.

Recipe: Sous vide glazed carrots

Type: Side dish

Ingredients:
0.5 kg carrots, cut to chunks
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp sugar
Salt
Black pepper
Chopped parsley

Sous vide: 84°C

Preparations:
Seal the carrots, butter, sugar and salt in a sous vide bag. Cook for 1 hour.

Pour the contents of the bag in a frying pan and reduce for 2-3 min over medium heat, constantly stirring. Season with salt, pepper and chopped parsley. Serve warm.

Recipe: Roasted garlic cloves

Type: Condiment

Ingredients:
3-4 garlics
Olive or avocado oil

Oven: 200°C

Preparations:
Break off cloves from the stem, but do not peel further. Brush cloves with olive or avocado oil. Place on cookie sheet and roast in oven until golden brown (roughly 15 minutes); flipping them over halfway through.

Let cool enough so they can be touched without burning yourself, then peel the garlic. If the garlic isn't to be consumed at once, put the garlic in a glass jar and pour enough oil in the jar to barely cover the garlic, and refrigerate.

Note: If you choose to preserve the garlic in oil you can later use the oil when cooking, to add a nice nuance of garlic to your food.

Recipe: Sous vide scallops

Type: Starter

Serves: 4

Ingredients:
8 scallops
25 g butter
Salt
Black pepper
1 tbsp white wine

Sous vide: 50°C

Preparations:
Seal the scallops and butter in a sous vide bag. Cook for 45 minutes.

Pour the liquid from the bag in a sauce pan together with the wine and reduce over medium heat.

Pat the scallops dry with kitchen paper and sear them either with a torch or in a frying pan with clarified butter over high heat. Make sure that the temperature is the highest possible, to ensure that the scallops don't overcook when searing them.

Salt and pepper the scallops and pour the reduced liquid over. Serve immediately.

Recipe: Mango soup with ginger and chili

Type: Starter

Serves: 4

Ingredients:
2 large mangos
1 onion
2.25 dl water
1-2 chili peppers
lime, juice from two
1 tsp minced ginger

Preparations:
Peel and destone the mangos, chop the onion, deseed the chili pepper(s). Put all ingredients together in a blender and mix until smooth.

Recipe: Mandel potato pastry with fish roe/caviart

Type: Starter

Serves: 4

Ingredients:
250 g mandel potatoes
1 tbsp chives, finely chopped
2 tbsp crème fraîche
salt
black pepper, freshly ground

100g Fish roe/caviart
½ red onion, finely chopped (optional)

Preparations:
Peel the potatoes and boil them. Pour off the water and let them steam off and cool until completely dry. Mash potatoes with fork and mix in the chives and crème fraîche. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Put a cutter on the centre of a plate or slate, pack the potato mash into the tower, then carefully remove the cutter. Finally put fish roe/caviart on top, optionally adding some finely chopped red onion.

Recipe: Cinnamon honey mushrooms


Type: Starter

Serves: 2

200 g button mushrooms
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp liquid honey
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Preparations:
Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat. Brown the mushrooms in the butter. Add cinnamon and honey and shake until mushrooms are fully covered. Serve warm.

2012-05-31

Recipe: Vanilla salt

Type: Condiment

Ingredients:
0.5 dl gourmet sea salt (crystals)
2 vanilla pods

Preparations:
Carefully cut the vanilla pods open and scrape all of the seeds into a glass container together with the salt. Gently stir the salt until mixed with the vanilla.

Cut the vanilla pod into strips and put these strips in the salt as decoration.

Recipe: Kangaroo

Type: Starter

Serves: 8 (50-60 g per person)

Ingredients:
500 g kangaroo fillet
20 g salted butter
Fresh thyme, chopped
Fresh rosemary, chopped
Juniper, crushed
Black pepper, freshly ground

Sous vide: 56°C

Preparations:
Pat the meat dry and spice it with pepper, thyme and rosemary. Seal in sous vide bag with the butter. Cook for 1h. Take out the meat from the sous vide bag, pat the meat dry, sear the meat at very high temperature in a frying pan or with a torch, cut into thin strips and serve with cranberry relish.

Note: The kangaroo served at Serenity did not turn out as well as intended, so I might update this recipe a bit later on after some experimentation; I suspect that the time and/or temperature is not ideal. Kangaroo is *very* lean meat, and overcooks easily. You have been warned.

Recipe: Cranberry relish

Type: Condiment

Ingredients:
1 orange
200 g cranberries
1.75 dl sugar
0.5 dl chopped walnuts

Preparations:
Mix the juice of an orange plus half the zest together with sugar and chopped walnuts in a pan. Let the relish thicken over medium heat for at least 10 minutes. Let cool.

Note: Allow the relish a bit more time to thicken if frozen cranberries are used.

2012-05-27

Recipe: Walnut cranberry bread

Type: Bread

Ingredients:
3 dl water
2.5 tbsp oil
6.5 dl wheat flour
2 dl graham flour
2.5 tsp salt
2.5 tsp dry yeast

1 dl chopped walnuts
0.5 dl dried cranberries

Preparations:
Add all ingredients except walnuts and cranberries, following the instructions of your baking machine. Baking at the French Bread (or equivalent) setting, with crust set to dark (if such a setting is available). When the baking machine starts the final churning round, add the walnuts and cranberries (some baking machines notifies when it's time to add extra ingredients by issuing a beep).

Serve with unsalted butter and vanilla salt.

Recipe: Lingonberry whisky ice cream

Type: Savoury ice cream

Ingredients:
200 g lingonberries
Water
Sugar
Dark agave syrup
5 dl custard
2 tsp whisky

Preparations:
Boil lingonberries in a small amount of water until they pop, sweetening with dark agave syrup. Mix with custard. Pour the custard in an ice cream maker and let it churn, adding the whisky right before it solidifies.

Recipe: Bacon whisky ice cream

Type: Savoury ice cream

Ingredients:
240-250 g bacon
Brown sugar
5 dl custard
2 tsp peaty whisky

Oven: 200°C

Preparations:

Put the strips of bacon on a bacon tin, spread an even layer of brown sugar over the bacon.

Bake the bacon at 200°C for 12-16 minutes. Flip the bacon over halfway through, making sure to drag the bacon strips in the caramelised sugar.

Take the bacon strips out of the oven, let them cool, then chop them finely into tiny chips.

Pour the custard in an ice cream maker and let it churn, adding the bacon flakes and whisky right before it solidifies.

Note: this ice cream is a starter, not a dessert. Using dark rum instead of whisky makes it more suitable for dessert.

Recipe: Coconut lime lassi

Type: Refreshment

Serves: 8 (0.5 dl per person)

Ingredients:
4 dl coconut milk
1.75 dl cooking yogurt or soygurt
4 tbsp lime juice
0.75 dl sugar
10-12 ice cubes

Preparations:
Mix all ingredients in a blender. Serve in champagne flutes.

2012-05-24

Photos: Serenity -- 2012-05-19


(Copyright © 2012 Lotta Kivelä)

The staff of Serenity, from left to right: Alita (helpfully volunteering even though she was supposed to be a dinner guest), Lilli (sous-chef), Eeva (waitress) and David (chef)


(Copyright © 2012 Ville Nikula)

Preparing the kangaroo


(Copyright © 2012 Ville Nikula)

David reducing the sauce for the scallops



(Copyright © 2012 Ville Nikula)

Searing the lamb chops



(Copyright © 2012 Ville Nikula)

Table decoration artfully designed by Suvi Tulppo, table set by Alita Angel

Menu: Serenity -- 2012-05-19


Welcome drink:
Coconut lime lassi

First starter:
Bacon whisky ice cream
or
Lingonberry whisky ice cream

Bread:
Walnut cranberry bread
Vanilla salt
Unsalted butter or margarine

Second starter:
Kangaroo meat with cranberry relish
or
Cinnamon honey mushrooms

Third starter:
Mandel potato pastry with caviart

Fourth starter:
Mango soup with ginger and chili

Fifth starter:
Scallops

Meat course:
Lamb chops with hasselbackspotatoes, roasted garlic and glazed carrots
or
Parsley basil risotto baked in sweet pepper and glazed carrots

Palate cleanser:
Avocado tequila ice cream

Fish course:
Sous vide salmon with blood orange sauce and oven roasted fennel, apple and red onion

Dessert:
Chocolate cake with limoncello raspberry sauce