Mead and doughnuts- Mead şi gogoşi (articol în engleză şi română)

The Walpurgis Night , the first night of May, and the following day, is a big celebration in Finland, Scandinavia and the Northern Europe. In Finland the first of May, called vappu, is a national holiday and traditionally workers’ and students’ festival. If the weather is nice (it usually isn’t) people go out for picnic and champagne, or if you prefer, beer and booze.

People who rather stay home might eat traditional food, and have some home-made doughnuts and mead for dessert. Doughnuts are deep fried in cooking oil just like papanaşi. The home-made mead is a traditional sweet lemon drink with very small amount of alcohol.

Doughnuts

20 large ones or 40 smaller ones

5 dl milk
2 eggs
50 g yeast
100 g sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp cardamom
150 g butter
950 gl wheat flour (circa)

For frying:

1 l neutral cooking oil (sunflower, rapeseed)

Frosting

Sugar or whatever you want on top 😉

Warm up the milk. Add in sugar, salt and cardamom and yeast if you use fresh yeast. Add the eggs and mix them in. Start adding the flour (with yeast if you use dry yeast) and mix with a wooden spoon. Add in flour and mix with hand, then add the butter. Add more flour and knead until the dough is firm and starts to come off the hands and the bowl. Let the dough rise in a warm place.

When the dough has roughly doubled in volume it is ready. Knead out the air bubbles. Divide the dough in two pieces, and roll the pieces into long rods. cut the rods into small pieces and roll the pieces into round balls.

Let the doughnuts rise under a blanket, and start heating the oil. The oil should be around 170 degrees, or hot enough to fry a small piece of bread into a crisp in a minute. Shape the doughnuts with fingers, punch a hole into middle and widen it with fingers.

Fry the doughnuts in the oil for about 2 minutes per side, or until nice brown color. After frying let them dry in a paper. Then add the frosting, or if you want to freeze the doughnuts, add the frosting after taking them out of the freezer.

Keep the lid of the kettle nearby when frying with oil. If the oil overheats and catches fire, do not throw water in it, rather put the lid on and suffocate the flames.

Mead

Makes about 4 liters of mead

4 l water
250 g brown sugar (refined sugar to which molasses has been added, or equivalent amount of sugar and molasses)
250 g sugar
3 lemons
raisins
yeast
sugar

Wash the lemons, and peel them. Remove the white part of the skin. Slice the lemons. Boil the water, and add the sugar and brown sugar in the boiling water, then add in lemon slices and the peel. Remove from heat, and add in yeast mixed in a small amount of water when the mead has cooled down. You can use less brown sugar and more normal sugar to make lighter color mead, and vice versa.

Let the mead stand in the room temperature for at least 12 hours. The longer you let it stay, faster it will be finished.

Before bottling the mead, add small amount of sugar in bottom of the bottles, and add in a few raisins. Filter the lemon pieces out of the mead, and pour it in the bottles. Let bottles stay in room temperature or put them in a cool place. Do not close the bottles too tight, so the developing gas can escape. When the raisins rise to the surface, the mead is ready. The ready mead should be kept in the refrigerator. If you refrigerate it, it will take longer to get ready.

Note: The mead recipe was adapted from the Finnish book: Kotiruoka- uusi laitos