Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Summer, Food and No Night

Last weekend we celebrated the summer solstice even though the right day was Wednesday. We have changed it to the nearest weekend to get more time for the celebrations. Now that the children are grown-up, they spend the weekend with their friends and travel usually quite far to a festival or some other place crowded with young people.

We don't own a summer cabin but live near the nature and were going to spend the weekend just between the two of us. However my sister called and told that they had lots of extra food to eat and we decided to go to my sister's place. Their son has also left home so there were four "oldies" and Piitu, my dog.

I have blogged about Hannu's exceptional skills in making traditional Finnish food, but this time the menu was really something many people never have the chance to eat.

Hannu had most of the day been preparing something we call a bandit steak (I have no idea how this food is named elsewhere). Actually our name for it originates from a famous Finnish book, but the food itself is very traditional. Probably the method is from Mongolia but the book brought it to common knowledge. The book tells a story of two men who steal lambs and prepare them as bandit steaks.

First one has to have a big hole on the ground. Hannu has built it and put some bricks as walls to keep the hole together for further use. Then Hannu kept a fire in the hole for 3-4 hours. The fire was put out, the hole opened and the food covered with foil and newspapers put in. The hole was covered again and a new fire is built, again for 3-4 hours.

This is where we got in, ready to eat. The fire was put out again:





And here is the satisfied bandit with his very hot steak :)

The package is carefully opened


revealing the delicious steak covered with potatoes and vegetables.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the delicious dish, but I can assure it was fabulous.

And even Piitu got her part of the goodies.

All of this happened Friday and Saturday we went back to eat delicious salmon Tuula and Hannu had caught themselves. I don't even remember when I have got so good food in a restaurant!

After all the eating we came to our house to play some PS2 Singstars, which Tuula and Hannu had never even tried. They found a total favourite among the songs; Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water and that is why I put that song in my previous post. It's really fun to notice that all these years we have been growing up our children have not really changed anything. We can still have fun together with my sister and her husband!

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