Cooking in Saimaa Style :)

About a week ago, I was trying to think how could I surprise my foreign friends; something else than sauna, rolling in the snow or e.g. skiing, because they have tried those things already...  Then just suddenly I heard there is a kind of cooking school at Hotel Herttua and it was a perfect solution to my problem :) 

The cooking school took a place in hotel's "Kota" - tepee, on a walking distance from the hotel, but still in the middle of lake nature and next to the nice skiing tracks. When we arrived the chef de cuisine, Jussi, was already waiting for us and he had made also some starters for us - maybe he wanted to be sure, that everybody gets at least something to eat ;-) 

Chef de Cuisine "Jussi" was waiting for us in the front of Kota.

Before we had a change to try the starters, we had to make our own main course.. There were different kind of vegetables like potatoes, carrots and sweet potatoes, then fillet of perch (ahven) from Lake Puruvesi (next to the hotel) and some spices. We had to make our own packets of these ingredients and then the packets were put over the fire..    

Making the main course :)

But while waiting for our main course and our own cooking to be ready, we finally had a change to try the delicious starters - which was a rye bread filled with muikku (vendace, a small white fish) from Lake Puruvesi and a piece of glow-fried salmon.

Delicious starters - rye bread filled with vendace (muikku) and some meat and glow-fried salmon.

Here is my specimen of skill of the main course and it actually was really good! 

While we wre eating our main course or cook made us still some broiled vendace :) 

Broiled vendaces are ready! Buy the way, you have to eat a whole fish ;-)

Even we all were quite full already, there was a dessert waiting - which we had to make by ourselves as well. In Finnish the dessert was called "tikkupulla" a sweet bun, which had to be rolled over the stick and then just bake it in open fire. And you can imagine - it was absolutely delicious!!!

Tikkupulla :)