quarantine cooking

It’s Monday and during lockdown it means it’s time for some Monday Margaritas. It’s also the week of first of May or Vappu as we call it in Finland so I wanted to share this recipe with you too. Vappu is not cancelled, it just can’t be celebrated as we are used to but nothing is keeping us from making some Vappu drinks at home. We have been making quite a lot these lately because they are just so good. I was pretty obsessed all spring about the perfect Margarita that I had in a restaurant in New York in January. After some research, I think I’m pretty close to that one with this recipe.

Everything starts by making your own sweet and sour mix in advance, which doesn’t take long and keeps in the fridge for days. The recipe is for a pitcher, which makes about 4-5 glasses depending on the size of your glass, but we have made this in half too for just two drinks. I also recommend using quality tequila for this, and not the kind that makes you blind as my husband would say. We have used both kinds, but it really does make a difference. This time we used Patron Silver for these, which works perfectly.

Sweet and sour mix

2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup fresh lime juice (about 6-7 limes)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)

Pitcher of Margaritas

1 cup Tequila (100% agave)
1/2 cup Cointreau
1 cup sweet and sour mix
sea salt & lime for rimming the glass

Simmer 2 cups of water and 1 cup of granulated sugar until it is fully dissolved. Let it come to room temperature and pour in a jar. Add the fresh lime and lemon juices to the mixture, chill in fridge.

Place salt on a small plate, rim glasses with a lime wedge upside down and dip the rim in the salt. Set aside. Combine Tequila, Cointreau and the sweet and sour mixture in a pitcher. Add ice to your glasses, we mixed some crushed ice with regular ones to make it a bit more frozen margarita type. Pour the Margarita to your glass over ice and decorate with lime wedges, enjoy!

Looks like the official food of quarantine is banana bread, seems that everybody is making it and so are we. It’s been a bit hard to find flour, eggs and sugar these days in our neighbourhood since I guess everyone is baking right now. If you live in a similar neighborhood where these things are rare, you’re in no luck cause this one requires all of those. But in case you are still missing a recipe for banana bread I thought I would share mine, I’ve been using this one for at least over 10 years now, nothing very special but it’s a very easy one and works every time.

It’s from the age before Pinterest and I have no idea where I have found it from but I did write it on a piece of paper in my secret recipe book that I will leave to my children so you could call it my secret family recipe now. It’s not a healthy version, we are already juicing pretty much daily so we like our baking during this confinement with carbs. You can however replace the flour with coconut flour or similar, the butter with coconut oil and put less sugar in if you like, have done that too and it works just as good.

4 bananas + 1 for decorating
1/3 cup melted butter
3/4 – 1cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
Salty butter or butter with sea salt crystals for pan

Preheat the oven to 175c. Mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg and vanilla. Sprinkle in the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered bread pan and decorate with a banana sliced in half if you wish. My trick is to butter the pan with salted butter so that it becomes crunchy and salty on the outside, if you have butter with sea salt crystals that works best, I use regular butter for the dough. Bake for 1 hour, cool on a rack. Enjoy!

quarantine cooking

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