Rutabaga Casserole ‒ Räätikkäloora

Somehow I've managed to forget posting one of the four classic casseroles of the Finnish Christmas table. The others are of course carrot casserole, potato casserole and liver or in my case, raisin casserole. As a replacement of some sort I have remembered rutabaga cubes in syrup though. Nothing wrong with that, but here's the true classic, too. While potato and carrot only became common relatively recently, rutabaga is something you might call original part of the standing table, after all.

- 1 kg rutabaga
- 2 dl oat cream
- 1 tbsp dark syrup
- cinnamon
- clove
- allspice
- breadcrumbs and margarine to top with

Peel and cube the rutabagas. Steam them soft. Mash smooth and mix together with the cream and the spices. Spread in a casserole and finalize by sprinkling breadcrumbs and margarine pieces. Bake for an hour in a 175°C oven.

Nutritional values / 1283 g:
energy 849 kcal
fat 45 g
protein 16 g
carbohydrates 96 g
fiber 21 g

Yule Stars ‒ Joulutortut

Yule stars or Christmas tarts are one of those things every Finn gets fed up during December. I tried to search the origin of them, but it turned out surprisingly difficult. Some writers say they originated in England which is funny because I haven't heard these would be known outside Finland. I assume we're talking about some tarts resembling them but not exactly like them. The first written recipe we know is by a Swedish cook Cajsa Warg in her book Hjelpreda i hushållningen för unga fruentimber, printed in 1755, but for my knowledge, Swedes of today don't know them either. Anyway, judging from the ingredients alone, these are probably one of those things that became popular in the 19th century among noblemen and which regular folk just couldn't even dream to afford.

This year there was a small public outrage when the public broadcasting company of Sweden (the country which Finns have a very complicated love-hate relationship with) claimed them swastikas. Nothing wrong with Sun symbols during the biggest Sun festive of course, but unfortunately it was more like Nazi symbols. This of course assured their popularity among younger Finns with a bad sense of humour like me. In our this years solstice bring-dish party there was little else than Yule starts to eat.

At least that gave me a change to compare self-made tarts and those with store-bought dough. The store-bought ones win in flakiness and fluffiness but of course, lose miserably in taste category. Making the dough yourself does take a little work though, so it's understandable why modern Finns most often cut corners here. The key words to success are coldness and layers. My personal secret ingredient is booze which boils away in the oven, leaving things crunchier than plain old water. It's not essential but if you don't want the extra taste, you can use good quality, odorless vodka.

- 1 l wheat flour
- 500 g margarine
- about 2 dl cold water
(- 2 tbsp brandy or vodka)

- 300 g plum jam (or apple marmalade)

Measure the flour into a large bowl. Place the margarine on it, cold. Start chopping the margarine with a knife until the pieces are about the size of a pea. Drizzle the brandy on the crumble as well as about 1 dl of cold water. Mix with a spatula. Keep adding water a spoonful at a time until you manage to get it mixed. Even quickly by hand and move the resulting clump into a cold place for half an hour.

Place the dough on parchment paper. Roll it flat and thin. Fold one third from the left on the centre and one third from the right on the centre. You should now have a three-layered dough. Turn it 45 degrees an roll again. Repeat this process a few times. Move into a cold place for half an hour.

Now roll the dough one more time and cut into squares. If you're going for the traditional star shape, make cuts from all corners towards the middle. Portion a good spoonful of jam on the middle. Fold the left side of each corner in the middle. Press a little so they won't open up in the oven. If you're afraid your so-called friends will mistake you for a neonazi, try a flower shape instead. I got three baking shields or 27 stars from this amount.

Bake in 225 °C until the edges start to acquire some colour ‒ that's about ten minutes. For a "snowy" effect, dust with powdered sugar.

Nutritional values / 1 star / 50 g:
energy 203 kcal
fat 14 g
protein 3 g
carbohydrates 16 g
fiber 1 g

Beet Temptation ‒ Punajuurikiusaus

I've talked before about the wonderful casserole type of dish called temptations.They usually involve potatoes cut into strips but it being December and all, this time I wanted to use beets. Their colour is so wonderfully dark and Christmassy, though this is still quite an everyday dish.

This makes a creamy and fruity accompaniment for a more humble main course.

- 1 kg beetroot
- 4 dl oat cream
- 1 leek
- 1 dl barley
- 1 chili (I personally think habanero gives a nice fruity aroma. But if hotness isn't your thing, try a winter apple instead.)
- thyme
- green pepper
- bread crumbs and margarine to top with

Peel and julienne the beets. Cut the leek and chili too. Mix all the ingredients in a casserole. Bake for half an hour in a 175°C oven.

Mix things a bit with a spoon. Sprinkle bread crumbs on the casserole. Top with a few margarine pieces. Bake for another half an hour.

Nutritional values / 1765 g:
energy 1297 kcal
fat 54 g
protein 30 g
carbohydrates 169 g
fiber 45 g

Yule Log ‒ Jouluhalko

On the Finnish Independence Day the president invites war veterans, the parliament and commendable citizens from many areas of life to his palace in the centre of Helsinki. The occasion is televised and people often gather together with their friends to watch how the guest come in certain order to shake hands with the president and president's wife or husband. We try to guess who they are, review their clothing and play silly drinking games. Later, when the dancing begins, we tend to forget they exist and just spend some good time together.

Except not this year. This year the reception was held in Tampere, half a kilometer from my home. And the biggest news wasn't who wore the most revealing dress but the other gathering outside. Some have called it a full-scale riot while others claim it a demonstration where couple of drunkards just happened to hang along. I almost feel sorry I never went out to see myself what really happened. But then again, we were too busy eating the yule log my spouse baked.

Yule log is essentially a Swiss roll made to resemble a piece of wood which was traditionally burned during the celebration. The tradition derives from Germanic paganism, just like Christmas tree. They are rarely seen in Finland though I think it would be a rather great dessert for the traditional standing table. After all, Finns are forest people like ewoks. In our mythology, the Yule is all about how the Great Oak grows huge enough to cover the Sun during the winter solstice and how the light returns after the tree is cut down.

Swiss roll is one of my spouse's kitchen specialities, but we've never managed to prepare a satisfying vegan one. Every time I've seen pictures of pretty and perfectly rolled vegan Swiss rolls, the recipes seem way too complicated and feature ingredients I've never even heard of. So when I found Saara Törmä's perfect looking log with the weirdest ingredient being banana, my spouse wanted to make it right away. The only change he made was switching the filling and the frosting. Now this definitely the holy grail we've been looking for. Next time it might be interesting to try if the banana could be replaced with berries or mämmi.

The cake:
- 2 dl wheat flour
 - 1.5 bananas
- 1 dl sugar
- 0.5 dl oil
- 0.5 dl vegetable milk
- 0.5 dl potato flour
- 2 tbsp coffee
- 2 tsp vanilla sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- a hint of salt

The filling:
- 125 g margarine
- 100 g dark chocolate
- 2 dl vegetable milk
- 1 dl icing sugar
- 1.5 tbsp potato flour
- 2 tsp vanilla sugar

The frosting:
- 175 g margarine
- 1.5 dl icing sugar
- 2 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1 tbsp rum or brandy
- 1 tbsp strong coffee

First, the filling. Mix the icing sugar and the potato flour in a pot. Whisk in the milk. Heat up carefully, whisking all the time, until the mixture thickens. Remove from heat and add the vanilla sugar. After the milk kissel has cooled down, whisk the margarine until it's fluffy and add it to the mixture in small amounts. Melt down the chocolate (bain-marie is probably the easiest method), see it's not too hot, and add into the filling in small amounts. Move into the fridge.

Next, the frosting. Whip up the margarine like you did before. Add the rest of the ingredients and smooth down. Leave in room temperature.

Finally, the cake itself. Mash the bananas. Mix together with the sugar, the oil and the milk. In a different bowl, mix the dry ingredients too. Combine the two and mix well. Spread evenly on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for ten minutes in a 225°C oven. Cover with another parchment paper and then another baking sheet. This should help you to flip the cake over. Detach the paper but don't remove it. Roll the cake loosely, careful not to break it.

After the cake has cooled down, we get to arrange the pieces together. Open the cake and moisten with coffee. Spread the filling evenly. Roll the cake back into a bar again (with the help of the paper under it). Move into the fridge.

When the roll has settled down, move it on a clean parchment paper. See that the frosting is still smooth. Spread it on the log. Roll into the paper and move in a cold place. Take into room temperature about half an hour before serving and remove the paper while it's still easy. Draw lines with a fork on the surface or decorate with crushed nuts if you want to the log look woodier.

Nutritional values / 1349 g (if you really want to know):
energy 4768 kcal
fat 297 g
protein 41 g
carbohydrates 473 g
fiber 12 g

Soy Stroganoff ‒ Soijastroganov

There's a lot of debate about what the original Stroganoff's beaf contained. There was an influential Stroganoff family who used to own practically half the Siberia. A recipe bearing their name was created in the 18th century, perhaps by one of their French chefs. Of the many competing recipes some feature mushrooms, sour cream, mustard or onions while others don't. Most versions of today mention tomato paste though tomatoes weren't even known in Russia at the time.

With not enough historical knowledge I'm not going to take part in this guessing game. Instead, I'm going to tell you how a dish called stroganoff became popular in the Nordic countries during the last century. In Finland different versions of it were served at practically every gas station. One very staple item in them, along with some form of meat and tomato paste, is pickles- Especially sausage stroganoff is still thought as a typical Finnish home food.

Sausages are fine too, but I used textured soy protein strips to make a cheap and easy winter dinner.

- 125 g soy strips
- 2 onions
- 2 pickles
- 2 dl oat cream
- 0.5 dl tomato paste
- 1 tbsp mustard
- 1 dose of stock
- oil for frying

Cook the soy strips for ten minutes in stock flavoured water. Chop and sauté the onions. Drain the soy strips and add them on the same pot with the onions.  Dice the pickles. Mix everything and let it simmer for ten more minutes.

Serve with barley or potatoes.

Nutritional values / 917 g:
energy 1052 kcal
fat 51 g
protein 74 g
carbohydrates 74 g
fiber 29 g

Newborn's parents do get to eat too

Well, to tell you the truth, at first it felt like we wouldn't. Or at least at the point where we did have time to eat, it was so late I just wanted to fall in bed and play dead. Especially my life was suddenly all about eating, but instead of the cook or the eater I had become the food. The days are still short - and I mean that literally. The sun rises at 9:06 and sets at 15:19 currently, so that leaves about 6 hours of daytime. But either we've learned to plan ahead or the little newbie has started to pick up some sort of a life rhythm, since our dinners have started to return towards normal.

After the everyday posting of Vegan MoFo during September it's been relaxing just to cook without thinking if this stuff fits my blog or is there still enough light for taking pictures without colours that would make any dish seem unappetizing. But I have thought about you. I've kept a diary of my main meal of the day for a solid month. Not all of these can be called Finnish or vegan, but perhaps it gives you a bit more honest picture of what I really eat. These kinds of menus people make have been a great idea source for myself when planning what to cook, so I hope to pass the help on.

Some of these are dishes I've already posted, some I might be posting in the future. If something sounds so tempting you'd like to have the recipe for it, leave me a note so I'll remember to cook it soon enough again.

Mon Macaroni casserole
Tue Leftover casserole
Wed Miso soup with tofu, leek, noodles and sweet potato
Thu Leftover soup, convenience food tortellinis (Eating was delayed so late we felt too tired to cook anything real anymore. Again.) 
Fri Salad with quinoa, chickpeas and cucumber (A lot like this, just with quinoa instead of millet)
Sat Tofu and frozen vegetables on a pan (At my spouse's parents.)
Sun Leftover salad, pancakes

Mon Burritos
Tue Spinach pancakes, brown sauce with quorn and mustard, lingonberry cram and alfalfa sprouts
Wed Chickpea, cauliflower and coconut curry with rice
Thu Mozzarella sticks, smoothie (I don't usually count smoothies as a meal but this was one of those badly planned nights again, so I just grabbed something from the freezer.)
Fri Spinach, nettle and lentil lasagna
Sat Chinese take-out (We were having the naming ceremony on the next day so my spouse's sister came to take care of the baby so we could clean and cook. After that it seemed too late for making a dinner, so we ate with sticks on the living room carpet.)
Sun Karelian pasties, beet and bean soup (I made three kinds of filling to the pasties and turned the remains, mostly the beet one into a soup by adding water and couple of handfuls of a colourful bean mixture.)

Mon Leftover soup
Tue French fries and soy sausages
Wed Seitan kebab, rice, tomato sauce and yogurt sauce
Thu Hemp and carrot patties, potatoes and brown sauce with crushed tomatoes
Fri Leftover patties
Sat Kekri feast table (Couple of friends invited us to celebrate the traditional Halloween type end of the year's cycle to the ecovillage where they live. Most ingredients in the standing table dinner had been grown by the villagers or gathered nearby. It featured for example fried green fava beans, mushroom salad and rutabaga casserole)
Sun Pizza / falafel (I don't know whether this is true elsewhere, but at least in Finland Turkish immigrants seem to run restaurants serving pizzas, kebabs and falafels just about everywhere, even in the smallest villages. On the way home we stopped eating at one of these tasty places.)

Mon Pea soup and rye bread
Tue Rieska "pizzas" topped with (lupin) tempeh and pear
Wed Oven tofu topped with bean stalks and pineapple, mashed potatoes
Thu Soy strip and fruit salad
Fri Seitan in red wine, spelt
Sat Quorn burgers
Sun Leftover seitan and braised kale, talkkuna pannukakku

Mon Chili, bell pepper and tofu pie
Tue Savoy cabbage loaf and balsamic beet (Basically, I made just one big cabbage roll instead of many regular ones to speed up the cooking.)

VeganMoFo Round Up

It's been a busy month with MoFo. I didn't quite meet my goal, which was to post every day, but I did easily surpass the official goal of 20 posts. At first I was super excited and thought about food half of my day, but later on it started to feel more like a necessity that often slipped towards the evening. The last couple of days I felt so tired I just decided to skip the whole thing.

Still, this was very educational experience and I'm quite certain I'm going to participate again. It was especially fun to find new interesting blogs and see what others posted. The least fun part of it was to think all your meals in the way you would have something to post about. Think the better way of managing this would be to have "cooking for blogging" days where I could prepare lots of things for one meal and then just forget about it for a few days. That way there would always be some spare recipes and pictures to post about during the eventual busy days.

One thing that really surprised me was that kale chips climbed straight into one of my most popular posts ever. And I thought whether such a simple recipe, previously posted by half the food blogs already, is worth posting at all. Apparently, there are still lots of people who found the idea useful. So new food bloggers, please just forget about all those lame tips aimed for starting food bloggers.

And to satisfy my fetish for making lists:

Out of 25 postings, what did I actually cook?

- 7 mushrooms dishes (much smaller percentage than I expected)
- 5 berry dishes
- 3 brassica dishes
- 3 dishes for preserving autumn harvest
- only one dish that didn't use any autumn harvest
- 3-7 dishes you might call traditional
- 6-10 dishes where i used other recipe at least as the base (more than I imagined)
- 9-13 dinner items (less than I would've imagined)
- 3 dishes I'd call a bit laborious
- around 10 very simple dishes ready in no time

What I'm going to eat this month, now that I don't need to worry about the MoFo anymore?

- What ever my spouse wants to cook. Just bring it on the couch while I play Psychonauts.
- All those delicious sounding recipes other people have posted during the month
- Recipeless dishes like "throw something on the pan"
- Some of my old favourite dishes I have already posted in the year X. Hello cabbage rolls, I haven't seen you for ages.
- Dishes definitely not Finnish in any way. Right now I especially crave for some Thai cuisine.
- Tacos! Taco cleanse sounds for once like a fad diet even I might try. Perhaps it would work with the new baby in the house too.
- Still, I'll need to find use for the harvest from our little garden, hopefully even for more mushrooms. So don't worry, I'm still going to have lots of things to post about.

What kind of theme I might try during the next MoFo?

- Salmiakki!
- Adventures in feeding a one-year-old midget.
- Introducing mushrooms (in case it's still held during September) or beer types
- Dishes from a certain time period. My flatmate would probably love if I asked her advice with medieval cuisine.
- Classic Finnish pastries.
- Reviewing a cook book per day (and of course preparing some recipe from it)
- Finnish versions. Taking well-known dishes from around the world and completely raping them with domestic ingredients.
- Low carb diet.
- Camping/wilderness dishes.
- Cheap and fast dinner ideas. (This might be a little hard since those attributes change depending on who you ask and where they live. But as an example.)
- Chili peppers!

Lingonberry Rönttönens ‒ Puolukkarönttöset

Back to Finnish pie specialities. Before I've written about "regular" Karelian pies, with turnip and a more modern filling idea. I've also written about vatruskas of Ilomantsi, supikases and lihapiirakkas. But there are numerous more of them to go.

This has been a bad berry year. Normally there's an overlap of bilberry and lingonberry season, but this time bilberries vanished before I really picked them and lingonberries haven't really appeared either. I hear my friends in the western coast hoard buckets of them though, so perhaps I'm just going to the wrong woods. now that my spouse's mum sent us some of the lingonberries she had picked, I thought I'd finally try making rönttönens.

Rönttönens are considered a speciality of the Kainuu region. They resemble Karelian pies a lot but are rounder, larger and their crust nearly always contains wheat flour besides rye. Typically the filling is made of potato and lingonberries. In the traditional version they are sweetened naturally with low heat with the same method as tuuvinki or mämmi, which together with lingonberries produces a unique flavour for sweet and sour lovers. These days the sweetening is usually done with added sugar like in this quickie version. I got 15 pies from this portion.

The crust:
- 5 dl rye flour
- 2 dl wheat flour
- 3 dl water
- salt

The filling:
- 6 cooked potatoes
- 7 dl lingonberries
- 2 dl rye flour
- 0.5 dl sugar
- salt

For buttering:
- 100 g margarine
- 2 dl oat milk

Knead the crust ingredients together. Cover with a towel and leave to rest for 2–3 hours.

Mash the potatoes and the lingonberries. Mix all the filling ingredients. Roll the crust as thin as you can, flouring the surface so it won't stick to the table or rolling pin. Take circles of about 15 centimetres in diameter from it. Pile them with flour added between them to prevent from drying or sticking together.

Spread a thin layer of the filling on each circle. Lift about a centimetre of their edges and make wrinkles between your fingers so they'll hold up.


Bake in a 250°C oven for 15 minutes. Melt the margarine and mix with the milk. Grease each rönttönen when they come out of the oven. Cover with a towel when they're still hot to help them soften.

Enjoy with hot coffee or tea.

Nutritional values / 1 pie / 149 g:
energy 220 kcal
fat 6 g
protein 5 g
carbohydrates 36 g
fiber 7 g

Pumpkin and Yellowfoot Spelt ‒ Kurpitsa-suppilovahverospeltti

Pumpkin isn't exactly a plant I grew up eating. Then again, few veggies are. I usually buy one during the harvest season just because they look so adorable and they're only around once a year. Then I start to scratch my head, wondering how to use it and what kind of dishes would it fit into. They taste so mild I'm afraid I'm going to loose that aroma, but then again it doesn't seem to be at its best just eaten raw either. Somehow everything I try always ends up delicious though.

To combine autumnal flavours, this time I used my pumpkin with yellowfoot mushrooms in a risotto type of dish. For garnishment I also fried some soy flakes and since this has been sort of a hit among Finnish vegans with the title "vegan bacon", I bothered to actually measure the amounts for them as well.

- 1 pumpkin (about 500 g)
- 500 g yellowfoot
- 2 dl pearl spelt
- 4 dl water
- 1 small piece of celeriac
- 1 small punch of fresh parsley
- 4 garlic cloves
- 2 tbsp rape oil
- 1 tbsp apple wine vinegar
- 1 dose of stock
- saffron

Smoky soy flakes:
- 4 dl soy flakes
- 0.5 dl soy sauce
- 1 tbsp dark syrup
- 1 tbsp chipotle sauce or liquid smoke
- 2 tsp rice vinegar
- oil for frying

Peel the pumpkin and the celeriac. Cube both. (Don't throw away the pumpkin seeds. They'll make a nice snack, especially when roasted.) Put them into a pot together with oil and turn around until they've softened up.

Add the spelt. Keep sauteing a couple of minutes more. Then add the water, the stock and the spices. While the spelt is cooking, put the mushrooms on a dry pan. Toss around until the extra liquid has boiled away. Finalize by adding some oil at the end of frying. When the spelt looks done, combine it with the mushrooms and the parsley.

For the soy flakes, measure all the liquid parts into a bowl. Mix. Add the flakes. Let them marinate while you heat up the oil in a pan. Fry until they've acquired some nice colour. Use in a pasta, salad or this spelt right here.

Nutritional values / 1820 g:
energy 1135 kcal
fat 58 g
protein 60 g
carbohydrates 80 g
fiber 33 g

Mushroom Hunter's Bread ‒ Sienestäjänleipä

At some point this morning I noticed I had accidentally published a completely empty draft with this headline. That was embarrassing. Apparently it had gained 30 views before I noticed anything. Sorry if you were one those people who clicked in vein. Here's the real post.

In the 70's cafés and bars served warm sandwiches instead of hamburgers. To modern reader those classic recipes may sound somewhat dull or not-so-nutritious but then again, that does apply to most hamburgers too. They can be rather filling evening snacks or lunches even today, especially if served with a side salad. Mushroom hunter's bread is my adaptation from a classic called metsästäjänleipä or hunter's bread, consisting of a meat steak or patty and mushroom sauce.

- 4 rye bread pieces
- 4 basic soy or pea patties
- 0.5 l mushrooms of your choice (I used sheep polypore)
- 2 dl oat cream
- 1 onion
- 1 small punch of fresh parsley
- 2 tbsp rape oil
- black pepper
- salt

Chop the mushrooms and sauté on a dry pan until the extra juice has vaporized and they've even caught some colour. Add the oil and the onion, chopped as well. When the onion has become translucent, add the cream and the spices. Let the sauce simmer until it seems thick enough. Finalize with parsley.

Toast the bread slices. Place a soy pattie on each of them. Pour the sauce generously over them all.

Nutritional values / 1 bread / 343 g:
energy 379 kcal
fat 16 g
protein 19 g
carbohydrates 41 g
fiber 10 g

Cloudberry Cups ‒ Lakkamaljat

My spouse prepared us a habanero pie for dinner so I took care of the dessert. This one gets full 10 points for the effort/luxury ratio. The only part that involves cooking is the caramel sauce, but even that only takes 15 minutes or so. Learning how to make it involves some trial and error (I've usually ended up with a chewable fudge instead of a sauce) but even so the result is rarely anything of which you wouldn't enjoy destroying all the evidence.

I've rarely used cloudberries in my recipes though they're among the most delicate tasting berries I know. It's pretty telling how many names it has even in literary Finnish: lakka, hilla, suomuurain, valokki and lintti are the most common ones you hear. The problem is they live in swamps and though Finland in general is the swampiest land on the planet there's barely any anywhere near where I live. So every time I've met a cloudberry I've picked it straight into my mouth. Picking them isn't quite as fast or easy as say, picking lingonberries either since one shrub only bares one berry and you need to move a lot around, bending and stretching. Which is why they also cost several times more than most berries and I bear to buy them only about once a year.

- 500 g cloudberries
- 4 dl vanilla flavoured soy or oat yogurt
- 1.5 dl farin sugar
- 1 dl oat cream
(- 3 tsp instant coffee powder)

Measure the sugar, the cream and if you wish, the coffee powder into a pot. Cook it on a low temperature, stirring most of the time. When it starts to look more like a pile of frog spawn than just regular boiling liquid you can try dropping a small spoonful into a glass of cold water.

If the result sticks together instead of dissolving into the water you are done and should quickly take the pot away from the heat. In case you can even mold the drop between your fingers congratulate yourself for you have managed to prepare fudge by cooking the sauce too long by a minute or two. You can still probably pour it over the dessert but it does require chewing.

Pour half of the yogurt on the bottom of your serving glasses. Carefully add half of the cloudberries and then half of the sauce. Make a second layer of them all. Serve immediately.

Nutritional values / 1105 g:
energy 1787 kcal
fat 23 g
protein 27 g
carbohydrates 158 g
fiber 36 g

Yellowfoot Pyttipanna with Carrot Ketchup ‒ Suppispyttis porkkanaketsupilla

(First of all, sorry about the terrible photo. This is why you should always prepare dinner at noon.) Yellowfoot might just be my favourite mushroom. Partly because hunting them is so full of feelings. First you gaze into the ground, lift trunks and are certain you'll never going to find a single one. But after that one dead leave turned out to be a yellowfoot you have to sit down to pick them. At the end you have to stare at clouds to get out of the forest, because hey, you can't just leave them in the there alone in case you see more of them. They rarely have bad parts or maggots, the whole cute little mushroom is about the curly but sturdy foot which hides half into the ground. The taste and structure are so pleasant they'll fit into pretty much every dish you can think of.

In case you haven't noticed already, I rarely have the patience to follow recipes thoroughly. I use them more for drawing ideas and in case of baking, for proportions. Saara Törmä's recipe's often make important exceptions. They're homestyle and simple but have that certain twist that makes them special. This one is a variation of pyttipannu she's written for the Green party's newspaper. The name sounded fun and so followed it almost literally, only adding a can of beans into it. I even decided to try the recommended condiment too, although it sounded a little odd. A little googling revealed to me that indeed, the word ketchup doesn't imply tomatoes, it's just that we're so used to the tomato version. Somewhat surprisingly ketchup's origins seem to be in 17th century Chinese fish sauce and the tomato version was only developed in the 19th century USA. Anyway, the carrot version here fits pretty great with the rest of the meal, not to mention adds to the foliage colours.

- 1 l yellowfoot
- 1 kg cooked potatoes
- 2 onions
- 0.5 dl rape oil
- 0.5 dl soy sauce
- 2 tsp curry
- 1 tsp thyme
- black pepper
- salt

The ketchup:
- 500 g carrot
- 1 onion
- 1 dl broth
- 1 dl farin sugar
- 0.5 dl rape oil
- 0.5 dl balsam vinegar
- 1 tbsp paprika
- 1 tbsp salt
- 0.5 tsp cayenne

Start with the ketchup if you plan on preparing them both. Peel the carrots and cook them. Save a decilitre of the broth. Chop the onion, heat up the oil and sauté. Combine all the ingredients and purée smooth. Let the ketchup simmer on low heat for half an hour. Cool down.

Fry the mushrooms until the extra liquid has vaporized. Move aside for a moment. Cube the potatoes. No need to peel them unless you want to. Chop the onions too.

Fry the potatoes alone for couple of minutes. Add the onions and the mushrooms. Turn around. Add the spices. Keep frying until the onions are soft and the potatoes have acquired a pretty colour.

Enjoy with the carrot ketchup. The leftover ketchup stores for about a week in the fridge but you can also store it longer by freezing.

Nutritional value / 1835 g (the pyttipanna):
eneergy 1247 kcal
fat 48 g
protein 32 g
carbohydrates 163 g
fiber 29 g

Nutritional value / 850 g (the ketchup):
energy 730 kcal
fat 46 g
protein 5 g
carbohydrates 70 g
fiber 15 g

Milky Caps in Vinegar ‒ Etikkarouskut

Yesterday I went mushroom hunting and got my backpack so full you'll be getting a fair share of mushroom recipes too. I picked one bag of yellowfoot, one of sheep polypode and one of rufous milk cap.

Rufous milk caps are a very common milk cap variety. In countries where it's not habitual to parboil mushrooms they're considered inedible, sometimes even poisonous. Technically speaking they are indeed slightly mutagenic but you wouldn't eat them raw anyway because of the burning peppery taste.  For many Finnish mushroom hunters they're one of the favourite species, especially appropriate for preservation and to be used in basic mushroom salad. Even Finnish officials notorious for excessive cautiousness when it comes to food or medicine consider them perfectly safe. Then again, mycologist David Arora speculates there may be some differences of edibility between European and North American varieties. I wouldn't know anything about that but this basic method fits perfectly well for any milk caps, as well as most other mushrooms you'd like to preserve.

- 2 l milk caps
- 1.5 dl white vinegar
- 1.5 dl water
- 1 dl sugar
- 1 small piece of horseradish or ginger
- 1 tbsp cilantro seeds
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1 tsp salt

If your milk caps are large, cut them a bit smaller. In case they need parboiling, boil them in plenty of water for about ten minutes and rinse well.

Measure all the ingredients into a pot. Bring to a boil and then pour into a clean and preferably sterilized glass jar. The liquid amount here should be enough for parboiled milk caps but in case your mushrooms need more to cover them, just add vinegar, water and sugar all in equal amounts. I used a jar too big so it'll be easy to add more mushrooms since this is a species I can be quite certain I'll be finding all autumn.

Preserve in cool temperature. The mushrooms should be ready to eat within a few days and store well until the next autumn. They're especially great in salads or as an accompaniment on the plate. The broth brings taste into soups and sauces too.

Nutritional values / 1447 g:
energy 892 kcal
fat 5 g
protein 19 g
carbohydrates 172 g
fiber 19 g

Soy Lihapiirakka ‒ Soijalihis

This is a bit of a deviation from the "seasonal" theme since lihapiirakkas are sold rather evenly around the year. The name literally means "meat pie" which gave me some trouble naming the soy version since I don't think anyone would understand if I just called them soy pies. You do see a lot of naming variance like "meatless pie" or "soy meat pie", but I decided to go with a shortening in Finnish and keep the English name intact since it's already detached from the original meaning. Anyway, they're deep-fried pastries made from a doughnut type of dough and filled with rice and minced meat. Or, in the vegan version, usually rice and TVP.

Lihapiirakkas are an extremely popular fast food in Finland. You can find them cheap from practically every food store's convenience food section. Non-chain-owned street kiosks sell them even in the smallest villages with one shop and no restaurants, along with french fries and hamburgers. In bigger cities you have a chance of finding them all self-made and vegan. Quite often they're cut in half and filled with things.

When I was a teenager, a friend of mine ate at least one of them every day after school, filling them with ketchup and liver sausage, along with a glass of cold cocoa as the drink option. To her and her parents' defence I have to say my diet at the time wasn't exactly from the healthiest end either.

The regular kiosk filling includes what I like to call "the grill spices", the holy trinity of ketchup, mustard and cucumber relish. In case of cheap cucumber relish raw onion is also often added for crunchiness. With a little extra fee the fillings may include different meat products, but nothing stops from using the same forms made from plant-based ingredients, like bean patties, chickpea omelettes or soy weeners. The kiosks often serve their own specialities and understanding the subtle differences takes a real connoisseur. For a little vocabulary, these have become regional dishes known nation-wide:

Atomi and vety (Lappeenranta): "Atom and hydrogen". Vety includes a boiled egg and ham, atomi either one of these.
Hotsi (Hämeenlinna): It's role model probably being hot dog, hotsi is filled with half cut lauantaimakkara or "Saturday sausage", a certain thick and floury sausage type. In Forssa two wieners are used instead.
Möttönen (Helsinki): An especially big and thick lihapiirakka which were originally sold at the main train railway station.
Riihimäkeläinen (Riihimäki): Includes a fried egg and a minced meat patty. In Rovaniemi the same version is called ropsilainen after the local football team.
Lörtsy (Savonlinna): The good people of Savonlinna are probably going to hang me from balls for implying these are the same thing, and I do need to write a separate post about them sometime later. I haven't been able to find a recipe for lörtsy or any "official" difference in their dough, but lörtsys are about twice as large and always flat. They're one of the oldest variants and have been around since the fifties. Originally they had an apple jam filling instead of meat but nowadays you can find them in all possible sweet and savory flavours.

The dough
- 14 dl wheat flour (many prefer a version where some of this is graham)
- 6 dl oat milk
- 50 g yeast
- 2 tbsp rape oil
- 1 tbsp dark syrup
- 1 tbsp salt

 The filling
- 2.5 dl soy crumble
- 1.5 dl barley grains
- 1 dl roasted onion
- 1 dose of stock
- 2 tbsp rape oil
- 1 tbsp apple wine vinegar
- smoked paprika
- white pepper
- salt

Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water. Add the oil, the syrup and the salt. Knead in enough flour to achieve a consistency that doesn't stick to the bowl but still feels a bit runny. Cover with a towel and let rest for an hour.

Cook the barley. Soak the soy crumble in water where you've added the stock. Fry on the pan, adding the spices as you go. Combine the barley, the soy and the onion.

Divide the dough into 16 pieces. Roll each of them round between your hands, flatten and roll into a disc of about 15 cm in diameter. Keep more flour at hand to help the dough from sticking. Scoop a spoonful or two of the filling in the middle of the disc. Fold one edge on the opposite one and press it to keep it closed. Secure the edges by pressing with a fork.

Deep fry from both sides until golden in neutral tasting oil that is fine with high temperatures, for example non-virgin rape oil.

Nutritional values / 1 lihapiirakka / 114 g (before deep frying):
energy 299 kcal
fat 7 g
protein 10 g
carbohydrates 48 g
fiber 4 g

Creamy Plum Sauce ‒ Kermainen luumukastike

About a year ago when I had a big bag of freshly picked plums I tried them in a bit of everything. Jams, liqueur, pies and other desserts, as such... One of the best ideas was a sauce I threw together on a spot. Can't remember what an earth I put into it but today I thought I'd try something similar. After licking the plate my spouse announced this just became one of his favourite dishes, which sounded like an indication of me needing to prepare it again. So perhaps this time I ought to write it down.

The important part of this sauce are those small and very, very sour plums. If you can only find sweet ones, try with some other fuits or bring in something else to add sourness and remove the syrup respectively.

- 9 plums
- 4 dl oat cream
- 1 red onion
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1 chili pepper
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp rape oil
- 1 tbsp dark syrup
- green pepper
- smoked paprika
- cinnamon

Chop the onion and sauté in oil. When it's turned transparent, add the cream. Remove the stones from the plums, cut smaller if needed and add them into the pot. Spice. Cook with mild heat until the plums have fallen apart and the consistency of the sauce seems nice. Remember to stir.

Serve as the perfecting element of a savory dinner.

Nutritional values / 942 g:
energy 845 kcal
fat 54 g
protein 12 g
carbohydrates 75 g
fiber 11 g

Stuffed Black Currant Leaves ‒ Viinimarjanlehtikääryleet

I'm a bit of a fan of making "Finnishized" versions of dishes normally attributed to whole different nations. You take the basic idea of the dish but swap the main ingredients into some local ones. Often the result is closer to the original idea than the hardcore versions that count on finding preserved but hard-to-acquire ingredients in the place of fresh ones.

Last summer I got a packet of grape leaves so we made a large pot of dolmades, a Greek dish where rice is wrapped inside the leaves. They were great though I still don't know what grape leaves really taste like since those were heavily preserved in tartaric acid.

This year I thought I'd localize the recipe. Black currant leaves are very aromatic and currants in general are called "wine berries" or viinimarja in Finnish so I thought they'd work great in this type of a dish. Seems I'm not exactly the first person who's used them this way so I took some model from this recipe which also uses rice as the stuffing. Whenever a recipe calls for rice I usually apply oat but it tastes a bit mild. So this time I thought I'd try processed spelt for a slightly nuttier flavour. Most recipes seem to call for a really long list of spices which to me sounds like they're not sure to what direction they want to take it, so I went with a fairly simple list instead.

- 40 large black currant leaves
- 2 dl pearl spelt
- 0.5 dl pine nuts
- 1 small punch of fresh mint
- 3 garlic cloves
- 2 tbsp rape oil
- cinnamon
- clove
- salt

For the broth
- 1 dl rape oil
- 0.5 dl lemon juice
- 1 dose of stock
- 2 tsp brown sugar
- salt

Cook the spelt in salty water for about 20 minutes. Roast the nuts on a dry pan a bit so they'll get colour on their cheeks. Mince the garlic and the mint. Mix the stuffing ingredients together.

Cook the currant leaves in plenty of water for about five minutes to soften them up. Take two leaves at a time. Cut their stems off and place them on each other so they'll overlap in the middle. Scoop a teaspoonful of the stuffing in the middle. Fold the edges of the leaves on the stuffing and roll them into small cigars. Place each cigar carefully but tightly into a casserole.

Mix the broth ingredients and pour over the casserole. (Add some water too if the amount of liquid doesn't seem enough.) Place in a 150°C oven for about an hour. You can eat them right away, but if you have the patience you can wait a day or two for them to juice up in the fridge. This is also the reason why it's a great idea to make a big portion of them while you're at it.

Nutritional values / 628 g:
energy 2371 kcal
fat 192 g
protein 43 g
carbohydrates 149 g
fiber 30 g

Kale and Fava Bean Dip ‒ Lehtikaali-härkäpapudippi

I've had this wonderful sounding spinach dip in my bookmarks, waiting for me to do it with fresh nettle. There are some new shoots growing now, but since I have a lot of kale and green fava beans waiting I thought I'd try something similar with them instead. I did add some dry nettle from last year though.

The amounts in the original recipe are in those archaic measures that are a pain to convert into SI-system (I know, you doing the conversions the other way around end up with just as cumbersome fractions). Since this type of dish doesn't really call for specific amounts like, say, cookies would, I just added things with a freehand style. This base I developed would call for more liquid, but I have absolutely no complaints about the taste. It goes best together with rye crisps, corn snacks, veggie sticks or other such stuff with a more flavour and toughness than your average potato chip does.

- 200 g kale
- 200 g soy cheese
- 3 dl cooked fava beans
- 2 dl cashew nuts
- 0.5 dl lemon juice
- 0.5 dl dried nettle
- 0.5 dl  nutritional yeast
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp rape oil
- 1 tbsp pesto
- salt and pepper

Soak the nuts overnight or boil for about 20 minutes (this "quick-soaking" must be among the best kitchen tips I've heard for a while) to soften them up. Blend all the ingredients together, but save some of the cheese to sprinkle on top.

Bake for 15 minutes in a temperature of 175°C. Serve as a hot dip sauce or use between sandwiches.

Nutritional values / 969 g:
energy 2105 kcal
fat 139 g
protein 94 g
carbohydrates 119 g
fiber 32 g

Aronia and Rye Foam ‒ Aronia-ruisvaahto

Oh crap,  seems I've caught myself a cold. Not exactly the thing I'd need at the end of pregnancy, which already itself makes me feel tired. I wouldn't want to use medication either unless it's necessary. Just hope this goes away before the actual labour takes place. And I'll try to eat a lot of berries to tank up with vitamin C and antioxidants. You know that annoying word "superfood"? It gets flashed around a lot when talking about aronia.

Flipping throgh a book about regional Finnish dishes I realized you can make vispipuuro or lingonberry foam with rye flour too. Another recipe I found used bilberries which always pair nicely with rye. I thought I'd try aronia instead. Just like rose, it's a very common decoration bush, but the big, yielding berries rarely get used. People don't seem to realize they're edible, though they make excellent juices, wines and jellies. Perhaps because the taste is so much on the sour side they're not really a nice thing to eat straight from the bush.

The consistency isn't quite as fluffy as in the semolina version, but still surprisingly so. If you want to add the effect, you can whip some vanilla foam into the result too. The ingredient proportions in different versions seem to vary quite a lot, so feel free to experiment with them as well.

- 3 dl water
- 3 dl aronia berries
- 1.5 dl rye flour
- 1 dl sugar

Bring the water to a boil. Add the sugar and the berries. Let simmer until the sugar has dissolved. Whisk in the flour as well. Remove from heat and start to beat with an electric mixer. Continue at least 15 minutes for a fluffy structure.

Nutritional values / 670 g:

energy 745 kcal
fat 3 g
protein 13 g
carbohydrates 166 g
fiber 25 g

Pirana

Oops, I managed to miss posting yesterday. But it's halfway already and 14/15 is still something I can feel satisfied with. Perhaps from now on I should still prepare couple of "just in case" -recipes beforehand.

I did cook though. Actually getting to eat just went a bit late. Madeleine.teacup has been doing a really educational series about pre-colonial dishes of the Americas. One of them was called Inca chilcano de pirana, which basically means piranha soup. This kind of reminded me for a totally different Finnish dish also spelled pirana, a traditional South Karelian dish. (There's two of them to be precise. Another one is a lingonberry rye porridge, but I'll get back to that another time.) It's been hanging on my to-do list for years so now I finally got myself to try it.

There are quite many originally vegetarian dishes from Karelia. Of course meat used to be consumed a lot less during the time when it meant slaughtering your perhaps only cow, but this is also due to the orthodox fate where meat isn't even allowed during the fasting. For a modern Finn they may seem a bit anemic since usually the only spice the recipes mention is salt, but I think this aspect can be tweaked if done with respect. So for example here I used some stock base and bear's garlic for more taste.

Pirana is basically a stew consisting of rutabaga, potatoes and dried fava beans or (today more often) peas, which are all used in equal amounts. I thought I'd try this with fresh fava beans now that I have some, as well as those purple potatoes we've gardened, so the stew would get some pretty colours. Potato didn't become common before 19th century, so one modernized version I found even replaced them with sweet potatoes which feels as exotic to us now as potato must've been back then.

In older versions barley, sometimes also rye flour or even talkkuna is used for thickening but modern versions usually shy away from the porridge-like consistency. I kept the flour since I think it's one of the key elements of the dish but scaled the amount down significantly. Only one version I found added cream to the result but I took that too since it seemed like a reasonable way to bring a little some fat into the dish. In another modern version I saw this problem was solved by first sauteing the veggies in a little oil.

- 5 dl fava beans (or peas)
- 500 g rutabaga
- 500 g potato
- 2 dl oat cream
- 1 dl oat flour
- 1 portion of stock
- 1 tbsp dry bear's garlic
- salt
- water (about 1 l)

(I you're using dry beans or peas, first soak them overnight.) Peel and cube the rutabaga. Cover it with water and add some stock base and salt. Set the pot to simmer. When the rutabaga is starting to soften up a bit, also cube and add the potatoes, as well as the beans. Add water if needed.

When things are starting to seem edible enough, add the cream and thicken with flour. Continue cooking for another 15 minutes, while stirring since the stew can burn easily at this point.

Like this recipe instructs, the ready pirana is to be eaten as the main course just like porridge. Margarine "eye" and milk can be added on the plate. The recipe also reminds this can be eaten cold as well!

Nutritional values / 2765 g:
energy 1413 kcal
fat 23 g
protein 60 g
carbohydrates 242 g
fiber 48 g

Kale Chips ‒ Lehtikaalisipsit

My MoFo month is starting to become a series of "what new ingredient did I try today" posts, but it's not that bad. That can happen during autumn if you're curious to try out new stuff. Much worse thing is that I got along this hyped idea for a snack only now. I've often seen kale being praised and it's especially unavoidable if you follow any American cooking blogs. But it's not too commonly grown in Finland though it would manage long into autumn, even through a little frost. I haven't seen it sold anywhere until yesterday, right at the market square in my neighbourhood.

I got so excited seeing those huge dark green bushes sold with three euros I didn't even realize they were still attached to their roots. Not until the seller lady started wrapping the rather large growing pot into a bag, that is. At the moment I'm not quite sure whether I should eat or cherish my baby. But the first thing I wanted to do in any case was to try out this all-too-healthy sounding snack. As with raw porridge, the result was really worth all the hype.

- 100 g kale
- 2 tbsp rape oil
- salt (and other spices if you wish)

Tear the kale into mouth-size pieces. Sprinkle with oil and salt. Spread on a baking sheet and cook for about ten minutes in a 175°C oven. Notice these will probably disappear before you have the time to start the movie.

Nutritional values / 127 g:
energy 279 kcal
fat 28 g
protein 3 g
carbohydrates 4 g
fiber 2 g

Cloudy Brussels Sprouts ‒ Lakatut ruusukaalit

It's usually the protein on the plate that gets the most attention, while the sidekick is some quickly tossed salad or potatoes. Thought I'd turn this upside down for a change and learn to use my imagination on sidekicks as well. So I took some store-bought tofu steaks, smeared them with smoky chili sauce and fried on the pan. Then I turned my attention towards the sidekick, which today was all about those small but sweet cabbages that so many people seem to mistake as bitter and bland after they've met badly cooked individuals one or two times too many.

Brussels sprouts are often combined with smoky flavours and nuts but orange and sweet things also seem like common pairings. I thought I'd replace orange with something more appropriate for autumn, and so cloudberries happened to match the colour. These came out really quickly but seem fancier than you'd expect for a regular Thursday meal.

- 400 g Brussels sprouts
- 0.5 dl cloudberry jam
- 50 g margarine
- 2 tsp apple wine vinegar
- mint

Set the sprouts to steam for about ten minutes. In the meanwhile, whisk all the other ingredients together. If your sprouts are really big you can half them after they've softened up. Otherwise, just mix them with the sauce. Spoon on your plate. Try not to lick your plate like I did.

Nutritional values / 518 g:
energy 505 kcal
fat 37 g
protein 6 g
carbohydrates 34 g
fiber 17 g

Green Fava Bean Toast ‒ Härkäpapupaahtoleipä tuoreista härkäpavuista

Today I got to taste fresh fava or horse beans for the first time in my life. They're one of those plants traditionally grown in Finland, which have almost been forgotten from the way of imported goodies, along with other such nutritious and tasty plants like hemp, turnip and buckwheat.

I do understand why restaurants don't want to use these fresh. Processing just a small patch like this meant several hours of work - and by work I mean the actual active time I did something with my hands, not just waiting while it cooks. But you never see these sold fresh either. This rare chance was all thanks to us planting and harvesting the beans ourselves in our small allotment garden.

So why is it such a hard work? Well, first you have to peel the beans out of their pods, then boil in water for 3-5 minutes and then individually pop them out of their skins as well before continuing to the actual cooking part. Of course, one way would also be to just serve them with greasy sauce and let the eaters peel the skins off. They're not related to new world beans in any way, so they're not poisonous to eat raw, just a bit unpleasant unless really young and small (in which case it's OK to use the pods as well). It's enough to cook them lightly so the aromas don't get waisted and the structure doesn't go mushy.

I wanted to try a rare treat like this really simply, so I used this recipe from a Swedish book Smakernas återkomst: när maten följer årstiderna (Ordfront förlag 2011) by a reporter Mats-Eric Nilsson. The instructions were a bit vague so I'll just tell how I did them.

- 5 dl precooked fava beans
- 6 slices of white sour bread
- 2 shallots
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- basil (I mostly used dill since we happen to have lots of it fresh)
- salt

Mince the shallots and sauté them in olive oil. Add the beans. Fry a few minutes more. Sprinkle with salt, basil and more oil. Move aside. Toast the bread slices on the pan as well.

Scoop the beans on the bread slices and enjoy on the spot.

Nutritional values / 790 g:
energy 1319 kcal
fat 44 g
protein 56 g
carbohydrates 173 g
fiber 32 g

Warm Harvest Salad ‒ Lämmin sadonkorjuusalaatti

I'm really happy about the fact I've learned to cook many different types of salads. Couple of years ago, basically all my salads contained the same ingredients. And nothing wrong with them still. But variance is the salt in life. This time I took model from this salad, but since the result doesn't really resemble it at all, I thought I'd better change the name too. This one went just for a sidekick, but if you'd like to turn it into a your evening's main course, try frying some smoked tofu cubes or toss horse beans in the oven as well.


- 5 apples
- 5 potatoes
- 1 red onion
- 2 dl gooseberries
- 1 dl pecans
- 1 punch of salad leaves
- 3 tbsp rape oil
- salt

For the sauce:
- 2 tbsp apple wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp mustard
- 1 tbsp spruce syrup
- 2 garlic cloves
- black pepper

Cut the potatoes and the onion in discs. Apply oil and salt. Stick them into a 225°C oven for 15 minutes so they'll soften up.

Cut the apples and the salad a bit smaller. Crush the nuts. Add the gooseberries into the same bowl as well. mix the salad sauce ready.

When the potatoes come out of the oven, toss them and the sauce over the rest. Jump right in.

Nutritional values / 1183 g:
energy 1371 kcal
fat 86 g
protein 17 g
carbohydrates 240 g
fiber 23 g

Polypody Crème Brûlée ‒ Kallioimarrepaahtovanukas

My spouse's sister and her kids came for a visit yesterday. Since it's always a great idea to try some completely new method of cooking when there are guests coming along, I decided to make a crème brûlée for dessert. Now, French style of cooking has always felt a bit bizarre to me, but perhaps it's just my mental image of how you always need to cook things several times, in most difficult ways and loose all nutrients and original aromas in the process. At least this one was rather easy at the end, though there was enough time for several points where I went certain the whole thing has failed miserably. Especially the flaming part was so fun I want to try it soon again.

Couple of days ago, we went to search for common polypody, a fern often referred with the name mesijuuri, nectar root. Its root is very sweet and tastes a lot like liquorice. I've wanted to try it out in cooking for a while, but now that it's autumn already it's starting to be the best time for root collecting. I find ferns in general quite hard to distinct, but this one looks so cartoonish and grows on bedrocks where you wouldn't imagine anything growing, it makes an exception. In those hills I knew I had seen it before, so we didn't have to come home empty handed. We found a fern-invaded rock where we were able to take couple of root pieces without killing the whole bush.

I've never had a crème brûlée before, so I'm not sure if this came out like it's supposed to, but all of us agreed it tasted wonderful. Especially the burnt sugar part. The root itself didn't taste nearly as much as I had hoped, but luckily I didn't filter out the pieces, so there were occasional occurrences at least. Although you could do this from regular vegetable milk, I recommend using the thickest and fattest cream you can find. (For my Finnish readers, I used the brand Sunnuntai.) That's kind of like the point of this dish. If you want a healthy dessert you can eat every day, go with juicy berries instead.

- 6 dl heavy oat cream
- 1 dl soy milk
- 1 common polypody root (or a liquorice stick)
- 3 tbsp vanilla sugar
- 1 portion of gelling agent (I used a carrageenan and carob mixture but good old agar should probably give you the least trouble)
- some regular sugar for the torching

Wash the root well and grind it as small as you possibly can. Mix your gelling agent in the milk as instructed. (Mine only said it should be used to replace gelatin, which was a bit of a thanks for nothing instruction for someone who's never even seen gelatin being used. But apparently you need to apply it a lot more than most gelling agents and it should be dissolved into cold liquid before heating.)

Add the root pieces and the sugar into the boiling milk. Remove from heat after the sugar has thoroughly dissolved. Add the cream and mix well. Pour into a small enough oven casserole or better even, ramekins for each eater. (At this point the stuff looked much firmer than after coming out from the oven. The baking part is worth it though, since it changes the structure quite a lot from a regular pudding or kissel.)

Place into a bigger casserole filled with water and cover with a tin foil. Bake for about 45 minutes in 160°C oven. Let it cool down and move into fridge for a few hours.

When the brûlée looks firm again and sticks in its holder even if you turn it upside down, sprinkle a layer of sugar on top of it. Caramelize it with a blow torch while the kid afraid of the thing isn't around watching. Serve while the bottom is still cold and the top is still hot. Discuss about who gets to crack open the tough layer.

Nutritional values / 790 g:
energy 1875 kcal
fat 122 g
protein 7 g
carbohydrates 182 g
fiber 3 g

Mushroom Loaf with Black Currant Jelly ‒ Sienimureke mustaherukkahyytelöllä

The bolete season seems to be closing its end already. Two weeks ago the forest was so full of porcini it was hard to walk without stumbling on them. Now the only one I found was almost eaten by worms. Instead, fly agaric has become the king of the forest. They're pretty but don't make such a good meal. Since there wasn't any clear one species to pick I did what I usually avoid: mixed them in the same dish. There are for example velvet boletes, slimy spike-caps and purple russulas hidden in here.

I couldn't find a loaf recipe only using mushrooms instead of mixing them with lenses, meat, rice or nuts, so I made one up. (If you feel like adding any of the aforementioned, go ahead though.) It worked out wonderfully. The jelly idea came from Sillä sipuli's post about wild food and thought black currant juice would fit here especially well because its colour is the same as the caps of my russulas. I exaggerated a bit with the agar and used twice the amount I recommend here since the result was even too sturdy, but the taste fits here well.

- 1 l  mixed mushrooms
- 2 dl oat cream
- 1 onion
- 1 starchy potato
- 1 dl breadcrumbs
- oil for frying
- tarragon
- green peppers
- salt

For the Jelly:
- 1 dl blackcurrant juice (I used unsweetened but it's your call. Aronia would also fit here well.)
- 4 dl water
- 2 tsp agar

Clean and chop the mushrooms. Mince the onion and sauté until you start to see through it. Add the mushrooms and let them acquire some colour. Mix all the ingredients and pour into a buttered casserole. Set in a 200°C oven for 30-45 minutes.

In the meanwhile, you can also prepare the jelly. Mix the juice and the water. Let it come to a boil. Add the agar. Pour into a flat casserole, preferably of same size as the one containing the loaf.

When both have cooled down, carefully detach the jelly and place it on the loaf. You can cut serving-size pieces to help out the eaters. Serve cold.

Nutritional values / 1389 g:
energy 812 kcal
fat 37 g
protein 21 g
carbohydrates 91 g
fiber 18 g

Rose Raspberry Sorbet with Bilberry Basil Sauce ‒ Ruusu-vadelmajää mustikka-basilikakastikkeella

Besides the Mofo, I though I'd also take part in the food challenge Finnish food bloggers circle around every month since these are both wonderful ways of connecting us food bloggers into a community. This month's theme is the ball shape. Mushroom balls would be my oblivious choice at the moment, but instead I decided to go with something more experimental.

I just gathered a bag of rose hips and since cleaning them out is quite a hard work, I wanted to use them in  something that would really bring out their flavour. Kissel is a classic for a reason, but you can do it with dried rose hips too. Paula of Veikeä Verso just made rose ice cream from the flower petals, and that sounds beautifully aromatic as well, but this time I thought I'd try sorbet for the first time in my life. After all, sorbet is just as great for rolling cute little ice cream balls. And that raspberry still sounded like a nice pair for rose.

I find it a shame how most rose hips just rotten in bushes though they grow everywhere. Still, I felt a bit nervous, picking the hips in the middle of bright daylight. As if I was a kid stealing apples. An old lady came to me and I was sure she was going to scold me off for stealing something from their housing cooperative, but instead she just asked me what I was going to do with them and told how delicious they are.

This doesn't really need a sauce, but once I had my mixing wand in my hand, I thought I'd try the idea of combining bilberries and basil which I nicked from here. They fit together just perfectly, though next time I might omit the sugar.

- 200 g cleaned rose hips
- 200 g raspberries
- 2 dl water
- 1 dl dark sugar (I find this more aromatic)
- 1 tsp agar (not really necessary, just wanted to play it safe)

For the sauce:
- 2 dl bilberries
- 2 tbsp bilberry juice
- 2 tbsp basil leaves
- 1 tbsp sugar (unless the juice is sweetened already)

Bring the water to a boil. Add the agar and once it's dissolved, also the sugar. Mix in the rose hips and raspberries. Blend smooth. In case you want the sorbet really smooth, press the mass through a filter. This is a nice option if you're using rose hips without cleaning their seeds out beforehand, but not necessary otherwise.

Place the bowl in the freezer. Blend smooth again after couple of hours. Repeat every hour until the sorbet feels sturdy enough.

For the sauce, just blend everything together. Adjust the consistency by adding bilberry juice if needed.

Nutritional values / 850 g:
energy 698 kcal
fat 3 g
protein 10 g
carbohydrates 148 g
fiber 24 g

Dill Seitan ‒ Tilliseitan

I've written about school meals and most hated memories about them before. But one of the classics of those dishes is still tilliliha (dill meat). The name itself has become kind of a symbol of how badly cooked institutional kitchen food can be. It was banished from schools before my time however, so I've never actually tasted it before.

But as I already told you, we have a nice bed of dill growing, so the first dish we came up with that would contain a lot of the stuff was dill seitan. This is not a new idea. Tofuhead and Nomad from Elitefood have also posted a version of the same dish. I have no idea what the cookers of the 50's did wrong, but this one turned out absolutely delicious. The combination of sour and sweet, perfected with fresh dill and cream worked so well we both licked our plates. I'm almost certain this version is much closer to the dish once popular during the beginning of the century than the one so loathed by many.

- 1 portion of seitan
- 2 carrots
- 1 small piece of celeriac
- 1 white part of a leek
- 1 punch of fresh dill (or 2-3 tbsp dried dill)
- 5 dl broth (the one you cooked the seitan in serves well)
- 2 dl oat cream
- 50 g margarine
- 3 tbsp wheat flour
- 2 tbsp white vinegar (some modern versions use lemon juice)
- 2 tsp sugar
- 10 allspice fruits
- 1 bay leave
- salt (if the broth doesn't already contain some)

Melt the margarine. Shift in the flour. Keep turning them around for ten minutes or so, being careful not to turn them brown. Add the broth, as well as the peppers, the bay leave and half the cream. Chop the veggies into the pot as well.

When the sauce has thickened, combine it other ingredients. Chop the seitan into mouth-fitting chunks. Wash and mince the dill. Finalize by adding vinegar and sugar according to your taste buds. The amounts I've given here are here to give you some direction, but really you should taste how much the sauce needs.

Enjoy with potatoes or barley.

Nutritional values / 1861 g:
energy 2147 kcal
fat 92 g
protein 187 g
carbohydrates 133 g
fiber 24 g

Plum Liqueur ‒ Luumulikööri

I feel I'm cheating a bit with this post. See, I made this liqueur a year ago already. But it would also feel stupid to post about a recipe if I haven't got to actually taste the result, and almost as stupid to post something you can only prepare during the harvest season just before Yule. So this is as early as possible, really.

Finland has one the highest alcohol taxation in the world, which is of course typical for all well fare states. Also, all consumption is heavily regulated, sometimes to the point of absurdness, and all drinks containing more than 4,7% alcohol can only be sold from bars or a state-owned monopoly store Alko. This has lead to a situation where everyone who possibly can buy their drinks in very large quantities from Estonia or Russia. Since Alko's assortment is rather limited, the traditional beer culture has somewhat withered and drinking is often done with all that you possibly can principle.

So, this drink really isn't ideal for that type of alcohol culture. It takes a few months to brew and the result is more appropriate for a dessert than getting drunk. But the experience of finally being able to open and taste what's inside that long-pampered jar is very rewarding. Plus, playing a home chemist with alcohol gives me this small but satisfying feeling of being on the rebel side. You can prepare this with berries or berry mixtures too, but don't pick holes into them with a needle one by one like a friend of mine did. Those were the most alcohol tasting bilberries I've ever chewed.

- 1 kg plums
- 500 g sugar
- 1 l vodka

See that your plums are washed and healthy looking. Half them and remove the stones. Fill a glass jar with them. Add the sugar and the vodka.

Leave the drink on a sunny window shelf. It makes a beautiful decoration. Turn around every now and then. Don't taste before winter solstice. If you can wait half a year, even better. Use the well marinated plums in a dessert.

Nutritional values / 1 l:
energy 4690 g
fat 3 g
protein 8 g
carbohydrates 577 g
fiber 16 g

Zucchini Lasagna ‒ Kesäkurpitsalasagne

I've been planning to do lasagna to get rid of the spinach lasagna noodles that have been sitting in the closet for almost a year now. But then I decided that instead, I'd make the zucchini version that all low-carbers hype about, now that the zucchini season is still on.

Zucchini doesn't need softening like pasta or rye crisps in rye lasagna, one of my favourite dishes to date. So you can discard the white sauce and just sprinkle some soy cheese instead. Also, the tomato sauce should be a bit sturdier than the one you'd normally make.

Even with these precautions the end result reminded more of a stew than a layered dish. There was absolutely no way of holding it together on a plate long enough to take a pretty photo. This one here I've taken on the next morning. You can clearly see how it's the sauce that holds the piece together, not the actual "pasta". But the main thing, the actual taste was just yummy.

- 1 portion of marinated horse beans
- 1 portion of basic brown sauce
- 1 zucchini
- 400 g tomato sauce
- 200 g melting soy cheese
- 0.5 dl sun-dried cherry tomatoes
- 4 garlic cloves- basil
- marjoram or oregano

Set the horse beans to marinate on the day before if possible. Prepare the brown sauce. When it starts to thicken, add the tomato sauce in it. Spice with herbs and garlic. Cook a little to reduce the liquid, then add the horse beans and cherry tomatoes along.

Slice the zucchini length-wise. Try to cut as thin strips as you can. Scoop a generous amount of the sauce in the bottom of your oven casserole. Layer with zucchini slices. Sprinkle some cheese on them. Continue by making another sauce layer and so on, until you've used everything. Aim to finish with the cheese layer. A few pieces of margarine or some breadcrumbs aren't a bad idea either.

Set in a 200°C oven for 45 minutes.

Nutritional values / 1818 g:
energy 2380 kcal
fat 126 g
protein 97 g
carbohydrates 206 g
fiber 73 g