Hemp Balls ‒ Hamppupyörykät

My blog has been sleeping under all other projects for a long time now. But today I was asked for the recipe of the balls I had prepared for this autumn's kekri table so I thought it would be almost the same to share them with everyone interested.

I've come to love hemp and its versatility more and more. Crushed seeds are something easy to throw into every other pot you happen to be cooking, but this was the first time I tried rolling balls with hemp as the main ingredient. Hemp is an excellent oil plant, which explains pretty well why people said these taste like fish and why they remind me of the oil colours my dad used when I was a child.

This recipe is an adaptation from Jere Nieminen's cook book Vegaanin kotiruokakirja (Kustannusosakeyhtiö moreeni 2010). Originally I made a portion about five times this large since we had 30 people eating them but this amount should be sufficient for about 20 balls.

- 1 mealy potato
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 small punch of parsley
- 4 dl crushed hemp seeds
- 1 dl pea flour
- 0.5 dl water
- 0.5 dl tahini
- 0.25 dl rape oil
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- 1 tablespoon mustard powder
- 1 tablespoon dark syrup
- 1 dried chili pepper
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 teaspoon salt
- rape oil for frying

Peel and grind the potato. Crush the garlic. Mix all the ingredients. Blend a bit to get a sticky paste. Roll it into balls between your hands and fry with oil. Enjoy with some neutral sidekick like mashed potatoes or barley.

Nutritional values / 720 g:
energy 2851 kcal
fat 228 g
protein 109 g
carbohydrates 111 g
fiber 74 g

Stuffed Holiday Roast with Cranberry Glaze ‒ Täytetty juhlapaisti karpalokuorrutteella

Yule ended last Thursday with Talvennapa, "the navel of the winter". It's said to be the coldest day of the year. The Great Oak is symbolically cut down from covering the Sun so it gets to shine and daytime starts to grow longer again. Most people celebrating the day choose a weekend instead of the "official" day when there's more time to relax.

This roast should be a perfect centerpiece for any feast table. I took the inspiration from Vegan Dad's seitan roast and tofu glaze. The latter one especially turned out excellent. The stuffing portions need some adjusting as I got quite a lot of leftovers. But don't worry, you can eat them while waiting for the roast to cook.

- 1 dough for seitan roast

Stuffing:
- 1 dl barley
- 1 dl pine nuts
- 1 dl horse beans
- 1 dl grinded celeriac
- 1 dl frozen cranberries
- 0.5 dl roasted onion
- 1 tablespoon margarine
- 1 tablespoon wheat flour
- green pepper
- salvia
- thyme
- herb salt

Glazing:
- 2 dl frozen cranberries
- 1 dl water
- 0.5 dl dark sugar
- 1 tablespoon vinegar
- cinnamon
- allspice

Roast the nuts if you wish. Cook the barley and the beans. Mix all the stuffing ingredients together. While it's cooling down, prepare the seitan part.

Roll out the seitan dough into a thin rectangle. Spread the stuffing in the centre lengthwise. Make sure it's firm. Roll the seitan tightly so the edges will touch each other. Seal the roast and wrap inside a tin foil. Roast for an hour in 175°C oven.

In the meanwhile, prepare the glaze. In a saucepan, cook the cranberries with the water until they're soft. Blend smooth. Stir in all the other ingredients. Refrigerate. When the roast comes out of the oven, let it cool down as well. Then move the roast into a casserole and cover all over with the glaze. Bake 10-15 minutes more.

Enjoy hot or cold!

Nutritional values / 1680 g:
energy 3318 kcal
fat 121 g
protein 242 g
carbohydrates 321 g
fiber 56 g

Rutabaga Cubes in Syrup ‒ Siirappiset lanttukuutiot

Instead of rutabaga casserole I made what my mum used to cook on Yule. Simple fried rutabaga cubes with syrup. The basic idea was to re-fry them every day as long as there was something left. They just got softer and better each time. But it didn't work like that now. Almost all of them were gone after the first meal and then I ate the remains cold next day when I got hungry,

- 1 kg rutabagas
- 2 tablespoons dark syrup
- 1 tablespoon rape oil
- salt

Peel the rutabagas and cube them. Fry on a hot pan with oil. Season with syrup and a pinch of salt.

Nutritional values / 1054 g:
energy 490 kcal
fat 17 g
protein 10 g
carbohydrates 76 g
fiber 18 g

Carrot Casserole ‒ Porkkanalaatikko

A year ago I posted two of the four essential casseroles of Finnish Yule table: potato and raisin. This time I thought I'd continue with the carrot version. Like so many traditional dishes, this is most often made with rice which at some point was though fancier than home-grown grains, mostly barley. Some like it plain carrot, without any grains. As a halfway solution I use just enough semolina to keep it nicely together.

- 1 kg carrots
- 1.5 dl oat cream
- 2 tbsp dark syrup
- 1 dl semolina
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ginger
- 0.5 tsp nutmeg
- breadcrumbs and margarine

Peel, cook in small amount of water and puré the carrots. Save 1 dl of the broth you used for cooking. Add it as well as all the other ingredients with the carrot mash. Butter a casserole (or six oven-proof coffee mugs as I did) and pour the carrot mixture in it. Top with breadcrumbs and margarine pieces. Put into a 175°C oven for an hour.

Nutritional values / 1300 g:
energy 993 kcal
fat 30 g
protein 19 g
carbohydrates 158 g
fiber 32 g

Tofu and Nut Loaf ‒ Tofu-pähkinämureke

Have a happy year 2011! I guess most Finns were shooting fireworks and throwing wild parties last night but to be quite honest, I've never really understood the fuss over a changing number or why Gregorian calendar even places the New Year to the middle of winter in the first place. After all, I already cast my new year tin during Kekri. So yesterday evening we just took a nap after an exhaustive work week, ate a nice meal, drunk some cider and watched a surprisingly boring movie about the French revolution.

Anyway, here's a loaf recipe on the fancier side for such occasions. I've originally taken it from the Finnish animal rights forum and usually prepare it for the Yule table as the poster suggests (among my non-traditional food traditons). It's quite salty, because it's meant to be eaten together with several other standing table dishes (and fits excellently on toasted bread on the next morning). If you'd rather have it as the star of the table, you may want to replace some of the soy sauce with plain water or saltless vegetable stock.

- 75 g hazelnuts
- 90 g almonds
- 165 g cashew nuts
- 540 g firm tofu (I like it best smoked but plain goes just fine)
- 4 toasted white bread slices
- 1 punch of fresh parsley
- 1 small punch of fresh salvia
- 1 dl soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- basil
- thyme
- black pepper

Add the ingredients into a mixer one by one. Keep mixing until you have a paste. Butter a casserole or and spread evenly into it. Garnish with bread crumbs if you wish and make some wrinkles with your fingers. Bake in 175°C for about an hour or until beautifully brownish.

Nutritional values / 1200 g:
energy 3152 kcal
fat 224 g
protein 177 g
carbohydrates 115 g
fiber 37 g