Dandelion Soup ‒ Voikukkakeitto

In case that supikas recipe yesterday sounded appetizing, here's a suggestion for the remaining broth. But if you want the soup only, dice a small rutabaga to cook with the potatoes.

Dandelion is among one of my favourite wild veggies because it's so multifunctional and grows just about everywhere. The leaves and buds for this soup I picked when returning along my jogging path, trying to find my breath that had got lost somewhere on the way.

- 20 unopened dandelion flower buds
- 2 dl young dandelion leaves
- 2 l rutabaga broth
- 5 dl new potatoes (or noodles)
- 0.5 dl seaweed
- 0.5 dl dried onion (or caramelized)
- 1 chili pepper
- whole black peppers or juniper berries

Wash the potatoes and remove the bad parts but don't bother to peel. Cook them in the rutabaga broth until soft. Add the rest of the ingredients and let the soup come to a boil. Eat right away.

In the present form the soup is more like a starter or an evening snack but if you want to turn it into a lunch you might want to add beans or such.

Nutritional values / 2 l:
energy 500 kcal
fat 3 g
protein 27 g
carbohydrates 96 g
fiber 11 g

Strawberries in Sparkling Wine Bath ‒ Mansikat kuohuviinikylvyssä

Tomorrow it's May Day. Finns call the day Vappu after German Walpurgisnacht since it's quite a new carnival of labour and students. There are much more traditional holidays during springtime and just as riotous but I'll tell you about them some other time. Right now I have my mind set for tonight.

The previous night, you see, is the one of jolly picnics. Or so it would be if it didn't rain. Me and my friends decided to have a picnic inside instead, at my place, and so I thought I'd repeat the dessert we had last year. Lea's version also had cucumber slices but for my level of experientialism they were a bit too much. Actually, in the tasting of last year each one of us wanted to leave out a different ingredient but since I'm the one who prepared the dish this time I got to decide. In any case, it certainly features things you won't see in my kitchen every day so it's perfect for this type of special occasion. Perhaps even more so for some summer parties when strawberries are in season and taste like strawberries.

- 0.75 l sparkling wine (Real, not champagne. Good quality cider goes fine as well.)
- 2-3 strawberries per portion (about 250 g)
- 0.5 dl dark sugar
- 1 dl water
- 1 punch of fresh lemon balm (or mint)
- 2 teaspoons agar powder (you can also use pectin but that means you'll need more sugar as well)

Slice the strawberries and arrange them into your serving glasses (I used six glasses). Mince most of the lemon balm. Cook it with the water for a few minutes to seize the aroma. Filter out the balm parts.

Add the sugar, the agar and some of the wine. Let the mixture come to a boil, then move it out of the stove. Mix very carefully with the rest of the wine (so you won't loose the bubbles) and pour evenly on the strawberries.

Decorate with lemon balm leaves. Refrigerate for couple of hours.

Nutritional values / 1 portion / 206 g :
energy 139 kcal
fat 0 g
protein 1 g
carbohydrates 12 g
fiber 1 g

Verdant Lunch Salad ‒ Vehreä lounassalaatti

Now that it's bright again and things are getting warmer it feels more attempting to skip a warm meal.

- 4 dl canned peas or pea sprouts
- 10 g arame (or seaweed of your choice)
- 1 dl pickle dices
- 1 red onion
- 2 slices of rye bread
- 1 tablespoon oil used in preserving sun-dried tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon hazel nuts
- 1 tablespoon sea buckthorn juice

Let the seaweed soak in water. Dice the bread and sauté the cubes in the oil. Slice the onion into circles. Crush the nuts. Fish the seaweed out from the water (which you can use in a soup or sauce) and spice with the juice. Arrange everything but the nuts into an aesthetically pleasing art work that you can jumble up when eating. Sprinkle the nuts on top for the final touch.

Nutritional values / 648,5 g:
energy 734 kcal
fat 24 g
protein 34 g
carbohydrates 88 g
fiber 26 g

Saturday Temptation ‒ Lauantaikiusaus

Kiusaus, meaning temptation, is a popular type of oven dish around Scandinavia. While I find it hard to explicitly tell how they differ from casseroles or gratins, at least in my mind there is a clear difference. Temptations tend to be care-free main courses, quick to prepare on any night of the week. You can just lay shred root vegetables in a casserole, adding spices and such between the layers.

This one is an ideal supper for a lazy Saturday. You can put it in the oven and go to have a sauna. It should be ready by the time you come back.

- 500 g sunroot
- 250 g tofu
- 1 red onion
- 1 sheet of nori
- 2 dl oat cream (or oat milk)
- 2 tablespoons margarine
- dill
- thyme
- coriander
- black pepper
- salt

Wash the sunroots and remove bad parts but don't bother to peel. Slice as thin as you can. Julienne the tofu. Mince and saute the onion.

Oil a casserole and arrange a thin layer of sunroots on the bottom. Sprinkle with spices, onion and nori pieces. Add a layer of tofu. Repeat layering as long as you have something left. Lastly, cover with a few sunroot slices, sprinkle with spices and pour the cream on the temptation evenly. Top with margarine pieces.

Stick into a 200°C oven for about 45 minutes. (One way to make it even juicier is to turn the oven into a low heat after the temptation has acquired some colour and let it simmer for one more hour. In this case you may need to add some stock in the middle to prevent it from drying up.)

Serve with pickles.

Nutritional values / 1103 g:
energy 1016 kcal
fat 63 g
protein 48 g
carbohydrates 63 g
fiber 27 g

Blins ‒ Linnit

Remeber when I frowned upon vegan caviar? Well of course I had to try it. I've never eaten roe so can't say if it reminded that or not but I did love the taste and the structure. And so did my seaweed hating spouse so I guess we'll be buying these again. Wonder if something like this could be made home?

The natural thing to eat with caviar is of course blins. Finns usually think them as a Russian dish but in Russia the word may mean any kind of pancakes. In Finland the name always means small, round and above all, sour pancakes made from buckwheat. They're the salty option for sweeter pancakes that are usually eaten as a dessert.

I've tried many recipes for blins but before this all of them have involved eggs. Now that I left eggs out I couln't tell the difference. I used this recipe with couple of minor changes.

- 3 dl oat milk
- 2 dl soy yoghurt
- 15 g yeast
- 3 dl buckwheat flour
- 1 dl spelt flour
- 1 tsp dark syrup
- 1 tsp salt
- 50 g margarine
- 1 dl beer, for example Lammin käki or Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA
- rape oil for frying (about 2 tbsp)

Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm milk. Mix in the yoghurt, the flours and the syrup. Cover the bowl with a towel and leave in a warm place for couple of hours.

Melt the margarine and whisk it in as well as the salt and the beer. Fry small pancakes with plenty of oil.

Besides red Caviart we enjoyd these with fried shiitake mushrooms, minced onion, pickle slices and whipped soy cream. Yummy!

Nutritional values / 1000 g:
energy 2259 kcal
fat 73 g
protein 50 g
carbohydrates 244 g
fiber 19 g

Stock ‒ Liemipohja

One characteristic feature in Finnish cuisine is soups. They aren't just appetizers or snacks but quite often very filling main courses of the day. And all the cooks in the world know that the secret of a good soup is the broth, which is why they keep their special stock recipes secret. You should always have couple of different kinds of them available cause otherwies all your foods start to taste the same. Cooking a stock is all very easy but if you make a larger portion at once it quickens things up for busy days.

Some general guidelines:
1. Making a stock is a perfect way to recycle all the vegetable leftovers like peels and heads. If you use whole vegetables wash them normally and remove the clearly rotten parts but don't bother to peel. Remember you're not going to eat them.
2. Try to add something from all the basic tastes (except fat which has also got into this category lately): bitter, salty, sour, sweet and savory (aka umami).
3. Keep fat out of this since it doesn't store well. You can always add margarine or cream to the soup itself to make it richer.
4. Many alcohol drinks like wines or brandies fit this purpose well. But as much as I love beer this isn't the place for it since it turns bitter when boiled (as I learned when trying to make beer soup).
5. Don't exaggerate with any of the ingredients. If you want your broth to taste like white wine add white wine to the broth itself. Try to keep the stock well balanced and multifunctional.
6. Frying the veggies isn't necessary but it adds to the taste. The one you shouldn't fry is garlic since it may turn bitter.
7. If you for some weird reason want to clarify the stock use for example a clay called bentonite which is widely sold for winemaking.
8. When you're using the stock remember to let it come to a boil to get the taste out of it.
9. How much you should use the stock at once depends on your personal likings, the amount of other spices you're going to use and the denseness of your stock (aka how tighly you concentrate it). It may just as well be 2-3 ice cubes or 1 dl at a time.

Just to show you a couple of examples, here are the recipes for three stocks I've made so far. Next time I might try for example yeast pate (for example Tartex), cider, laurel, lovage, juniper berries or birch sap. Perhaps even a hint of strong tastes like salmiakki (Ammonium chloride), tar or horseradish might work.

Hearty stock:
- 0.5 rutabaga plus the skin and the head of the other half
- skins and heads of 500 g carrots
- skins and heads of 500 g beets
- 1 onion
- 1/2 garlic
- 1 punch of dill
- 8 whole black peppers
- 0.5 dl dark syrup
- 0.5 dl miso (dissolved in water)
- 0.5 dl apple wine vinegar (more aromatic than apple cider vinegar)
- 1 tsp monosodium glutamate
- 1 tsp salt

Zesty stock:
- leftovers from 1 white cabbage
- leftovers from 1 cauliflower
- cores and peels of 3 apples
- 1 sheet of algae (nori)
- 2 tsp dried yarrow flowers
- 2 dl white wine
- 0.5 dl lemon juice
- 0.5 dl mustard powder (Remember mustard condiment also contains oil and sugar.)
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tsp monosodium glutamate
- 1 tsp salt

Spicy stock:
- 1 leek
- 500 g tomatoes
- 1 bell pepper
- 1 chili pepper
- all the dried herbs I had in the closet but couldn't recognize anymore
- 2 dl red wine
- 0.5 dl mämmi
- 0.5 dl sea buckthorn juice
- 1 tsp monosodium glutamate
- 1 tsp salt

Chop and fry the veggies on a dry pan. Put them in a cattle with the rest of the ingredients and 1.5 litres of water. Let them simmer without a lid. The stock is ready when at least half of the liquid has vaporized and the veggies have turned mashy (after approximitely two hours). Filter the stock, pour it into an ice cube tray (if you've saved plastic soy yoghurt cups or such they're also ideal for this) and freeze. The part that didn't fit there stores a few days in the fridge.

Sea Buckthorn Parfait ‒ Tyrnijäädyke

My mother-in-law and her husband came for a visit. We never have anything to offer with coffee so they've learned to bring their own buns. Thought this time I'd surprise them and moreover, my spouse.

The idea comes pretty much from Finfood's recipe. This was my first enocunter with agar so I had no idea how much I need it but this amount seemed to do well enough. Can't imagine any more elitist sounding dessert than sea buckthorn parfait (which is probably why I wanted to try this in the first place) yet it tasted absolutely decadent. This can also be done with black currant or any other sour berry juice. Both sea buckthorn and black currant contain an excessive amount of vitamin C by the way. Too bad it doesn't store.

1 small apple
2 dl sea buckthorn juice
1 dl water
1 dl sugar
2 dl whippable oat cream
2 tbsp agar-agar

Grate the apple and mix it with the juice. Mix the agar with the water and boil them for at least five minutes. Add the sugar and boil them another five minutes, enough to make it look like a pot full of pearls. Combine it with the juice as well. Put in the freezer for an hour and remember to stir occasionally. In the meanwhile whip the cream. Fuse it carefully with the rest. This time let the parfait freeze thoroughly. Half an hour before it's time to serve the parfait flip it over onto a plate as if you were taking ice cubes from a mold.

Didn't have any whole sea buckthorn berries (Although I soon will since my mother-in-law promised me some from their backyard.) so I quickly decorated the parfait with soy chocolate pudding where I added more cocoa (Some leftover cream with that cocoa would've probably done better.) and orange slices which I marinated in peppermint oil, sea buckthorn juice and brandy.

Nutritional values / 725 g:
energy 960 kcal
fat 43 g
protein 2 g
carbohydrates 137 g
fiber 4 g

Finncrisp Rolls ‒ Hapankorppurullat

Once again I read about algae and how I should eat more of it since it contains iodine and Finnish soil doesn't. (Iodine is added to table salt but I almost never use it.) For some reason only the Celts seem to have eaten algae in Europe. I'm not completely convinced that Finns living by waters could have scorned such a great nutrition source only cause it looks slimy but anyway, raised amongst modern customs I have no idea how to use seaweed. Last time I tried to make crippled sushi my spouse wouldn't come ten metres close to the kitchen. He said the doggone thing smells like fish. I tried to explain fish merely smell like seaweed cause they rub themselves against it all the time but it was no use.

Quite recently, I bought a cook book called Herne rokkaa (Jere Nieminen, Multikustannus) which has nothing but pea recipes. It's more of a picture book with migren launching graphics than a serious receipe book, but there are also some excellent ideas buried between the empty pages. It showed me peas can be used anywhere pretty much in the same way as soy or other beans.

One of them involved rolled finncrisps with a filling, just like the ones served at every birthday party when I was a kid. Nieminen called them ryeish pea sushi but I really wouldn't wanna mock Japanese cuisine which I truly respect. (Much like Finnish cuisine it values local high quality ingredients but also sour tastes. There are also many weird similarities between Japanese and Finnish cultures and languages.) Maybe that's why this filling I improvised involved seaweed. Or maybe it's there only cause I'm trying to foist it somewhere. Or perhaps it's meant to give taste. You decide.

- 20 small and narrow finncrisps (If you'll only find wide ones you can always halve them after rolling.)
- 1 bottle of beer (or broth or soy sauce)
- 200 g peas
- 1 sheet of algae (I used nori which has a very strong sea flavour but not as much iodine than most. Milder arame is a better choice for beginners.)
- 3 tbsp soy yoghurt
- 1 pickle
- 1 punch of fresh mint
- dried chili
- a cucumber piece twice the width of your finnstrips

Dip the finncrisps in beer and lay them down. Mash the peas, the seaweed, the yoghurt, the mint and the chili. Cut the pickle in really small cubes and mix them in the paste. Cut the cucumber piece in 20 strips.

By now your finncrisps should be soft and rollable. If not, find a pastry brush, brush more beer on them and wait another ten minutes. Spred a thin layer of the filling on the not-so-crisps. Place a cucumber strip on one end and roll. Place the rolls close to each other on a plate so they won't open up.

If you leave the cucumber piece out you'll get more Swiss roll looking bars. In the unlikely case I'll ever host a coctail party I'd try that side by side the same thing with a red filling.

Nutritional values / 1 roll / 46.1 g:
energy 37 kcal
fat 0 g
protein 2 g
carbohydrates 6 g
fiber 2 g