Bright New Potato Salad ‒ Kirkas perunasalaatti uusista perunoista

Ground elder has long been on my list of wild vegetables I'd like to take into my repertoire. It's one of those plants that other bloggers into this kind of things seem charmed about. As I've walked around, it's felt as if I see it everywhere, but haven't had the courage to pick. You see, it's a real danger to mix it up with some other vascular plant, which in turn can be quite poisonous. This is especially an issue if you want to pick young shoots which are all wrinkled. The plants should really be recognised on the previous summer and see there isn't other plants between them before returning to the place.

Yesterday I visited a friend who lives in this lovely little cottage by a small forest, but only a ten-minute bus journey away from the city center. She gave me some rhubarb and lovage from her garden but also showed me a dense growth of ground elders and gave me scissors so I could pick them myself and thus learn how they grow. This feels much more assuring than just looking at pictures of them.

Now I should only learn how to best use them. The first thing I tried was as the salad leaves in this seasonal salad. In Finland potato salad usually means potato cubes drowned in mayonnaise or such but I didn't really think that would make right to potatoes at their best.

- 600 g new potatoes
- 1 big punch of young ground elders
- 1  small punch of pea shoots
- 1 small punch of spring onion
- 1 pickle
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp balsamic or white wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp mustard

Don't peel the potatoes but wash if they're muddy. Cook in salted water. If they're bigger than your mouth, cut them a little. Rinse the ground elders, the pea shoots and the onions. Cut them into convenient pieces and add with the potatoes. Chop the pickle as well.

Mix the salad. Add the sauce ingredients. Mix again. Eat right away or let it marinade for a few hours.

Quickie Ice Cream ‒ Pikajäätelö

Today it already felt like summer and people were lying on the grass as I walked through a park. I have a feeling this summer I'll be making a lot of ice creams again ‒ they're simple and much tastier than store-bought ones. Plus, you get to experiment with your personal favourite ingredients and different bases. My flat mate has an ice cream maker I still haven't tried but the bowl part needs to be put into freezer a day before making the treat so it's not suitable for instant urges. For that kind of situations I recommend a banana based quick version of ice cream or sorbet. So every time your bananas start to look overdone, peel and chop them and move into freezer to wait for the ice cream moment. Multiply the ingredient amounts of this recipe with the amount of eaters.

- 1 ripe, frozen banana
- 1 dl frozen lingonberries (or any other berries)
- 1 dl soy yogurt (or vegetable cream of your choise)
- cardamom

Blend the yogurt and the berries together. Then add banana chunks to the mass and smoothen. If the banana chunks or berries are too tough for your blender, let them melt but only ten minutes or so. If the taste seems too sour for your liking, add some powdered sugar or other sweetener. Decorate with a pinch of cardamom.

Nutritional values / 310 g:
energy 396 kcal
fat 3 g
protein 7 g
carbohydrates 34 g
fiber 5 g

Sailor Steak ‒ Merimiespihvi

I haven't managed to find out the origin of this dish. It used to be quite a common home food, but the name leads to assume it really does originate from ship menus. According to a legend, in the seas it was better known as "One Has Gone from the Lot" ("Yksi on joukosta poissa") as it was usually served right after some crew member had been reported missing. "No land ahoy this week either, but don't worry guys, we did have some meat after all."

Merimiespihvi consists of sliced beef, potato and onion, all simmered in beer (which in some modern versions is unforgivably replaced by regular broth). It doesn't resemble a steak for one bit, so I can only assume this is the closest thing to a steak your average sailors in the old days ever managed to see. Instead of beef I used seitan which we happened to have quite a lot left from this meal. The long preparation time somehow turns these simple ingredients into a rather original tasting dish that wouldn't be the same at all if you just combined them on the plate.

Oh, and by the way: I created a Facebook page for Mämmi  to help some of you to follow what I post and have yet another way for conversation. You're all welcome to join!

- 1 portion of seitan (worth of about 4 dl gluten flour)
- 1 bottle of beer (schwarzbier or smoked beer fit here)
- 8‒10 potatoes
- 4 onions
- oil for frying
- 1 tsp whole black peppers
- thyme or a bay leaf
- stock  in case you need to complement the beer
- salt

Cut and club the seitan into mouth-sized, flat pieces. Fry on a pan. Slice the onions and sauté them a bit as well. Slice the potatoes. Arrange seitan, onion and potatoes in an oven pot layer by layer. Put a potato layer on top. Add the spices. Pour enough beer to just about to cover the upmost layer (and continue with stock in case one beer bottle isn't enough).

Cover the pot. Heat up the oven to 180°C and let the stew simmer there for at least two hours. Add water or broth in case it starts to look terribly dry while cooking. The final Merimiespihvi isn't meant to swim in broth anymore though.

Serve with pickles and/or pickled beet.

Nutritional values / 2295 g:
energy 2316 kcal
fat 49 g
protein 194 g
carbohydrates 226 g
fiber 32 g

Tofu and Nettle Pie ‒ Tofu-nokkospiiras

Your average stinging nettle is very likely the most versatile and nutritious Finnish plant. It grows just about everywhere and is at its best while still young and tender, so if you're planning to fill your freezer with just one foraged plant, this is a great choice. Nettle and spinach are fully replaceable in recipes but nettle doesn't contain oxalate so the taste is milder. This also makes it a great source for iron and calcium. It likes to collect nitrate in itself though, so please don't pick it near nitrogen-rich places such as composts or barns. The stinginess kind of prevents you to use it in salads, but it goes away by blanching, drying or just blending smooth.

This recipe combines a simple quiche-type of crust with Jael's way of making a filling that I've found excellent before and which I should've used back when I made this.

The Filling:
- 2 litres fresh nettle (or 150 g blanched and frozen)
- 2 onions
- 2 tomatoes
- 300 g silken tofu (if you're using regular soft tofu, blend it with a little bit of oil)
- 2 dl oat milk
- 3 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- oil for frying
- marjoram
- salt
- black pepper

The crust:
- 3.5 dl spelt or wheat flour
- 160 g margarine
- 3 tbsp cold water
- salt

On the previous day, wash the fresh nettles and put them in a water bowl to soak overnight. This way they won't sting when you pick their stalks off and you get to use the water to treat you hair or houseplants. Optionally, you can just use gloves and scissors and bleach them right away by cooking in water for a short period.

Make the crust by combining the ingredients by your hand. Butter you pie plate and spread the dough evenly. It's recommended that you cool down the dough in a refrigerator before using it and then precook the crust for ten minutes without the filling but I don't usually bother.

Chop and sauté the onion. When starting to acquire some colour, add the nettle and cook for a moment more. Blend the tofu, the milk, the  nutritional yeast, the cornstarch and the spices together, then mix with the onion and the nettle. Slice the tomatoes and place them on the crust. Then pour the rest of the filling on it and spread.

Cook for about 40 minutes in a 200°C oven. Enjoy warm or cold, as a main course or as  a salty snack.

Nutritional values / 1504 g:
energy 2352 kcal
fat 142 g
protein 61 g
carbohydrates 203 g
fiber 31 g

Garlic Sautéd Fireweed Shoots ‒ Valkosipulissa kuullotetut horsmanversot

We're finally getting to enjoy the first wild veggies. On Thursday we picked some fireweed and nettle from a nearby forest. Fireweed is at its best when the young shoots haven't grown leaves yet and get often compared to asparagus. (It seems like most of the veggies with an edible stalk get compared to asparagus but it's useful in that looking at asparagus recipes gives you good ideas about how to cook fireweed shoots too.) The smallest ones are great  for salads since they still have the sweetness the plant has been hiding in its roots all winter. A bit longer ones, less than 20 cm long, taste mild but delicious and fit in pretty much any cooked dish. The thing why you're not likely to see them sold in stores is that they tend to droop very quickly and lose their wonderful snappiness after you cut them and should be eaten on the same day.

Lightly roasting with oil and salt is usually what I find the best way to enjoy a veggie's aromas. And that felt like the best way to cook these delicacies since this was the first tasting of them this year. They're a nice warm sidekick to any meal but we (after the initial gnawing) had them with pasta and basic soy crumble sauce.

- 1 handful of fireweed shoots
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp rape oil (or other vegetable oil that doesn't have a strong taste)
- salt

See the fireweeds look alright. Rinse or cut the stalks a little if it seems they need it. Mince the garlic. Heat up the oil on a pan and toss in the garlic. Lay the fireweeds on them. Turn around until they look done but haven't completely lost their green colour. Sprinkle with salt. Enjoy on the spot.

Nutritional values / 74 g:
energy 152 kcal
fat 14 g
protein 16 g
carbohydrates 5 g
fiber 3 g

Wiener Rolls ‒ Nakkipiilot

I was born in a completely different world than where I now live. It's not just in the 80's there was no WWW or mobile phones, no one cared whether the environment was being destroyed or not and people lived in constant fear of nuclear war that would destroy the whole planet. Also, Finland was much poorer, closed and conservative place back then. You couldn't import vegetables that were cultivated domestically, which basically means there was no watery Spanish tomatoes during winter. No one had heard of mangos either, and wild veggies were something you wouldn't feed even to your pet rabbit. Perhaps this already explains why there was no vegetarian restaurants either.

Though I wouldn't want to return to that time when I wore diapers, I still have this weird nostalgic affair with 80's recipes which sound just as awful as the clothes they wore back then. These once so popular party snacks are called Wiener Hideouts in Finnish. And yes, that sounds just as suggstive as it does in English. Someday I should really try to make the basic flaky pastry myself, but right now the store-bought just felt too cheap, easy to find and nearly always vegan.

- 250 g flaky pastry (or puff pastry)
- 1 package of gluten-based teeny-weeny sausages (they're called prinssinakit or prince wieners in Finnish)
- 0.5 dl ketchup
- oregano

Roll and cut the pastry into as many squares as you have wieners. Apply spices if you wish. Place the wiener in the middle and close the pastry around it. Place it on a baking sheet with the seam side down. Cook 10‒15 minutes in a 225°C oven.

Nutritional values / 460 g:
energy 1363 kcal
fat 85 g
protein 73 g
carbohydrates 74 g
fiber 4 g

Doughnuts ‒ Munkit

Yesterday I also caught this sudden urge to make the classic May Day sugar dougnuts. My flatmate luckily has a perfect narrow but tall pot which is actually meant for asparagus, so that half a bottle of rape oil I had was enough for the operation. Really it all turned out surprisingly easy. And now that I remember it, I felt just the same way couple of years ago when making another deep-fried May Day treat, tippaleipäs. Perhaps I've been scared as a child about how the oil splashes and how dangerous this is, which of course may have been for a reason back then. But now that I'm a responsible adult (yeah, right) I think I really could try this cooking method for some salty dish as well.

The proportions come straight from Kamomillan konditoria, my absolute favourite blog on the rare occasion when I feel like pastry baking.

- about 8 dl wheat flour
- 2.5 dl soy milk
- 0.5 dl sugar (plus some for decoration)
- 50 g margarine
- 25 g yeast
- 1 tsp cardamom
- 0.5 tsp salt
- oil for deep frying (see it's suitable for high cooking temperatures)

Warm up the milk in a temperature where you can still stick your hand in it. Dissolve the yeast. Add sugar, salt and cardamom. Dissolve the margarine. Add half of the flours and start kneading. Keep adding flour until the dough starts to detach from the bowl but still feels runny. Knead until it doesn't want to stick to your hands either. Cover with a towel and let it rise for about an hour.

Take a chunk out of the dough, roll them into bars between your hands and connect the ends. Repeat until you've finished the whole dough. Let the circles rise for about 30 minutes more under a towel.

Make sure you're aware of the necessary safety precautions and know what to do even in case the hot oil catches fire. Tehn heat up the oil. Drop a small piece of the dough to estimate when it's hot enough. Using a fork or a spoon, lay the dougnuts into the pot one by one ‒do not drop. Wait a few eyeblinks and turn the doughnut around. Wait a bit more, then fish it out and place on a plate filled with sugar. Start the frying process of the next doughnut, roll the previous one in sugar and place on the serving plate, then turn the one frying around.

Keep going like this until all the doughnuts are ready. Let the oil cool down before getting rid of it in the way you local waste authorities advise you to. The doughnuts are at their best when still warm.

Nutritional values / 863 g: (Estimating how much deep frying adds is really all about estimating how well you do it so these amounts only count the actual dough.)
energy 2393 kcal
fat 52 g
protein 79 g
carbohydrates 399 g
fiber 20 g