The 6th December is Independence Day in Finland and the flags were flying in an icy cold breeze. In Finland they fly the flag on all important days or for official events. All or most of the buildings have flagpoles and the flags are put up the night before the relevant day and removed again the next night. To celebrate, we went to the annual Independence Day Concert at Finlandia Hall. The program did include Sibelius’ Finlandia (of course) but also featured two other Finnish composers. The piece that really impressed was Missa, composed by contemporary composer Jukka Tiensuu. It is simply a fantastic piece of music for clarinet and orchestra consisting of 7 very short movements. It suited the occasion perfectly. No clarinet ever sounded like this before and the music transported the listener to the Finnish landscape.
Speaking of the Finnish landscape, I have been searching for trolls. I would really like to adopt a little troll (dead or alive) to take back to Australia with me. And if the little guy got too hot down there, I would simply teach him to surf. But finding an authentic troll is harder than I would have imagined before I lived here. Don’t, for one second, imagine that young trolls aren’t keeping up with modern technology and trends. For example, you can buy your very own Longtail Rock-n-Roll Troll (that does have a nice ring to it doesn’t it?) on this website. He comes complete with electric guitar and pink hair. It seems that they even have very good hairdressing facilities in the Scandanavian forests.
Meantime, in downtown Helsinki, old style trolls are guarding the doorways and holding up the stonework with grim determination.
I wanted to make a special brekky for Sunday. Now follows the tale of the Pear Brioche.
One morning, some years ago, we were walking along Hay Street in Perth, West Australia, and stepped into a roadside café for coffee and a pastry. The lady behind the counter recommended their Pear Brioche. It was small, slender, individual brioches with a crème patisserie and poached pear filling. It was so good that I have never forgotten it and it just gets better as time goes by. Now, when we speak about it, you can hear angels voices and violin music floating in the background. Needless to say, when I returned to Perth last October, the café and brioches were no more.
So I decided to recreate it. First problem I encountered was finding tall, individual brioche moulds. Eventually I had to settle for Dariole moulds. Then I spotted a jar of apricots in Amaretto liqueur in the grocery store and thought it would be great to have some variety as well as enabling me to use my standard brioche moulds.
Pear Brioche
I made a classic brioche, leaving it in the fridge overnight, after the first rise. There are many recipes for brioche and crème patisserie on the internet, so I won’t publish yet another set of them. All you need to do beforehand, is to peel, quarter and poach a couple of pears in a simple sugar syrup.
It is quite a labour of love to make brioche. Having tasted both the brioche with the pear and with the apricot, I decided that I could not improve on the original idea and may stick with the pear in future. I thought the pear was subtle enough to suit the delicate brioche dough. But, then again, it may depend on your taste.
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