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

Rectory's Makeshift ‒ Pappilan hätävara

Pappilan Hätävara (literally Rectory's Makeshift, sometimes Finnish Trifle) is the traditional dessert you can put together in three minutes when surprise guests arrive or the movie you're watching goes for a commercial break. In the most simple form you just crush some dry bun pieces or biscuits on bottom, juice them up with apple juice, place lingonberry jam or fresh strawberry pieces in the middle plus whipped oat cream on top and stir with a spoon.

This time I thought I'd prepare a bit more time consuming version. Chocolate compliments both rhubarb and spruce tips so I decided to combine all three of them. After all, the period when you can get both rhubarb and spruce tips fresh is so short it has a rather luxurious cling to it. I also had an idea about oat and hemp biscuits but was out of rolled oats so I just used some hemp seeds I had in the closet.

- 300 g rhubarb
- 2 dl spruce tips
- 1 tablespoon water
- 2 tablespoons dark sugar
- 100 g white chocolate (I prefer soy based to rice based varieties)
- 2 dl soy yogurt (or nut yogurt)
- 1 dl roasted hemp seeds (or oat bisquits)

In a sauce pan, dissolve the sugar into the water and heat up. Chop the rhubarb and add most of it as well as the spruce tips into the pot. Keep cooking until you have a soft compote. Remove from the stove and throw in the fresh rhubarb pieces.

While the compote cools down, melt the chocolate carefully in bain-marie (I've managed to completely liquefy it several times when using a microwave). It doesn't matter at all if there are some little chocolate pieces left. Combine withe the yogurt and let it cool down as well.

Arrange the hemp seeds, the compote and the sauce into your serving bowls in layers. (I got three from this amount). Refrigerate if not eating on the spot.

Nutritional values / 720 g:
energy 1579 kcal
fat 58 g
protein 37 g
carbohydrates 131 g
fiber 21 g

Sweet and Salty Winter Salad ‒ Makeansuolainen talvisalaatti

Everyone hopefully knows by know what a wonderful pair raw carrots and salted nuts make. Well, I was chopping carrots for a soup on the other day and thought I'd make a hi-fi version of the theme while I'm at it.

Once I remember seeing a satay carrot salad recipe I thought awesome but can't find anymore. The carrots were first grated the way Finns normally serve them but then the cold salad was garnished with hot and sweet nuts. I had been thinking a way to variate the idea without making it too similar to this hot and sweet salad. Then I saw Kahvila Vegaani's excellent selection of winter salads where the idea was to marinate (and raw cook) root vegetables and then combine them with vinaigrettes made of fruits. The combination of hot and cold fits salads well and combining sweet and salty at the same time gives it even more twist. I'm sure I'll be trying more of these.

- 300 g carrots
- 0.5 dl black currant juice (non-sweetened)
- 2 tablespoons spruce syrup
- aniseed (or star anise or liquorice)
- 0.75 dl hemp seeds (sprouted if you have time)
- salt

Peel and shred the carrots. Put them into a bowl, add the spruce syrup and sprinkle with a fair amount of aniseed. Pour the juice over the carrots and turn them over a bit. Refrigerate the bowl and forget it for a night.

Arrange the marinated carrots on your serving plate. Gulp down the remaining juice. Roast the hemp seeds on a dry pan. Salt them well. Place over the cold carrots while still hot. Serve immediately.

Nutritional values / 389 g:
energy 351 kcal
fat 17 g
protein 13 g
carbohydrates 39 g
fiber 19 g

Hemp Pancakes ‒ Hamppuletut

In Finnish, January is called Oak Month (tammikuu). Most Finns won't be able to tell you why since the school system generally teaches very little about our cultural heritage. And still, it's quite an oblivious thing if you know anything about the mythology or traditional holidays. Even our national epic Kalevala tells one version of the story. On the day of Talvennapa ("the navel of winter"), the Great Oak that blocks the Sun is symbolically cut down. Yule time ends, weather starts to warm up again and the days grow visibly longer.

My calendar says this is the so-called official day. But for practical reasons, couple of my friends are coming over next Saturday for the occasion. And of course, I'm already nervous about the food part. We'll see about that.

In the meanwhile, I stumbled across a recipe for hemp pockets. The original directions are very vague so I followed them just as vaguely. They never explained how these are supposed to be pockets so I just made small pancakes. Even though I ended up using more wheat flour than the original called for and adding some water instead of a massive amount of oil they can't be folded into pockets without breaking them. I haven't decided yet whether I like these or not. The taste is nutty, very robust and down-to-earth. But I ate them with a dip sauce I can most certainly recommend for anyone.

The pancakes:
- 1 dl hemp flour
- 2 dl wheat flour
- 0.5 dl rape oil (or to be consistent, hemp oil)
- 1 dl water

Mix the ingredients. Mold into small balls and then into thin discs between your fingers. Fry on a dry pan from both sides.

The dip:
- 1 dl soft tofu (or if you're a fan of hemp seeds, 1 dl of them roasted and crushed)
- 100 g pickled bell pepper (or 1 roasted)
- 3 tablespoon nutritional yeast
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 2 sun dried tomato pieces

Blend all the ingredients into a smooth sauce.

Nutritional values / 350 g and 227 g:
energy 1066 kcal and 238 g
fat 54 g and 10 g
protein 41 g and 24 g
carbohydrates 103 g and 13 g
fiber 12 g and 6 g

Yogurt ‒ Jukurtti

Soy yogurt is sold in every food store I use. It's a nicely multifunctional thing in cooking but sometimes you want some extra flavour. Luckily, making different yogurt varieties yourself couldn't get any easier.

All you need is some nuts, oatmeal or seeds. First soak them overnight and in the case of nuts and seeds, drain and rinse. You can even sprout the seeds a little. Then you just have to purée the ingredients with some water. (The idea is basically to get unfiltered vegetable milk or cream so it's more complicated process when making soy yogurt. Like this.) Pour the cream into a non-metal container and let it go sour on the kitchen table for couple of days (taste every now and then to decide the best length for you) and refrigerate if you're not using it right away. Don't bother to cover the bowl or glass unless you have pets or an insect problem. Just check there's enough water for the yogurt to swallow. Some people like to add some of their own bacteria starters (usually the remains of the previous yogurt) before the fermenting to get more health benefits or speed up the process.

I thought I'd compare different sorts of yogurts a bit which is why there are as many as four of them in the photo. The ingredients from left to right are rye flakes, oatmeal and sprouted buckwheat, pine nuts and finally hazel nuts. The structure depends on the initial amount of water but generally nuts make creamier yogurts than flakes since they contain more fat. For the same reason, you can clearly see how water separates from the nut cream during the process. Think the oat version has the most pleasing sourness of these. On the other hand, the hazel version has the most recognizable original flavour left.

Besides sauces and other cooking, these yogurts can of course be eaten on their own or crowned with berries and talkkuna.

Malty Seed Bread ‒ Maltainen siemenvuokaleipä

Continuing with the theme "how to use the leftover mash from beer brewing". An oblivious use is of course baking bread. This particular recipe is mostly based on this mämmi bread and this flax bread.

- 5 dl water
- 50 g yeast
- 5 dl barley mash
- about 12 dl dark wheat flour
- 1 dl flax or hemp seeds
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 tablespoon dark syrup
- aniseed

Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water. Mix in the mash, most of the seeds, the syrup and the aniseed. Add the flour little by little, keep stirring all the time. Last but not least, throw in the salt and mix it well.

Now you should have a runny dough. Pour it into an oiled baking tin. Cover with a towel and leave it in some warm place for an hour. Sprinkle the remaining seeds on the bread for decoration. Bake in a 200°C oven for about forty minutes.

Nutritional values / 1500 g:
energy 3630 kcal
fat 45 g
protein 134 g
carbohydrates 650 g
fiber 82 g

Hefu

I've made tofu from soybeans twice. Coincidentally I've also sworn twice I'll never make tofu again. The amount of work for a small cube of goo seems just overblown. Compared to that making hemp tofu or hefu is a piece of chocolate cake.

- hemp milk

Boil until the hefu starts to separate from water. (About ten minutes, quicker in microwave.) Remember to stir occasionally. Filter through a cheesecloth. (I just use old stockings.) Flavour at this point if you want. You get firmer hefu by placing a weight (for example a pot full of water) on it for at least half an hour (it's a good idea to use a mold).

Hefu can be used just like tofu. So every time I write "tofu" in a recipe you can use hemp tofu just as well as soy tofu.

(In case someone can tell the nutritional values, feel free to post. I've got absolutely no idea.)

Good Morning Smoothie ‒ Hyvän aamun pirtelö

I'm not really sure if it's right to call this a recipe cause it's so simple anyone can make it up. Still, I thought I'd share with you one of my favourite treats from my teens.

I call it good morning smoothie since if I was the morning person I dream to be this would be my ideal breakfast after jogging. Actually I'm not so I rather enjoy this in the evening under a blanket with the company of a good book.

Must have:
- 200 g frozen berries (in my case typically a mix of black currant, strawberries and raspberries but bilberries are great too)
- 1 blender

Optional additions:
- 200 g silken tofu (If you use tofu but not milk this actually becomes more of a silken sorbet.)
- 1 dl soy yogurt or oat milk
- 2 tbsp hemp seeds or almonds
- 0.5 dl soy flour
- 0.5 oat meals
- 1 fruit, for example a banana or a kiwi
- 1 tsp vanilla sugar

If you're using hemp seeds or almonds blend them first with a small amount of water. Then pour everything else in too and blend until mostly smooth. Enjoy right away.

Hemp Milk ‒ Hamppumaito

Making vegetable milks involves no magic. The instructions nearly always follow the same pattern: rinse the seeds you're using and soak them, blend smooth with some water (how much depends on the structure you're looking for), filter and season if you like (for example with vanilla and syrup). If you're using something like oatmeals you don't need the blending. If you're using things like soy flour you don't even need the filtering. Soy beans are probably among the hardests ones as they also need simmering for about half an hour.

Whether you make your own milks or buy them, I strongly encourage you to experiment with various milks. The same ice cream can have a very different underlining mother taste depending on whether you use oat milk, coconut milk, rice milk, soy milk, hemp milk, almond milk, hazelnut milk, sesame milk, peanut milk, quinoa milk or yam milk. Also their structures vary a lot: coconut milk is very creamy and soy milk gives the nicest flavour to coffee. So even if I usually write "oat milk" (which is produced in Finland, sold in every food store and gives the pleasently round oat taste to most basic foods) in recipes you can substitute it with any one you want.

Here's for example the simplest recipe for hemp milk:

- 5 dl hemp seeds
- 1.5 l water

Let the seeds soak in water overnight. Next day, smash them. Keep adding water as you proceed. The smoother you make, the better the result. If you use a mortar or a grinder it's even possible to make fine powder you don't have to filter at all.

If this is not the case filter the milk through a cheesecloth. Be sure to use a dense enough textile. First time I tried this with a standard strainer and old stockings which of course resulted in a lot of hard black pieces in my milk and later in my hemp tofu or hefu. (Old t-shirt then again works better.) If the milk seems too dense add more water. Remember to shake before using. This isn't homogeni

The nutritional values depend on the hemp variety you're using (They vary surprisingly much. For example mine were especially rich in fat.), how well you've managed to grind them and how much water you used. Just to give a reference, here and here are the values of two commercially produced hemp milks.

Hemp butter ‒ Hamppuvoi

Nowadays it is possible to find domestic hemp seeds from a grocery store. The world's probably most multifunctional and one of Finland's oldest cultivated plants is slowly starting to gain back the wide-used position it had a hundred years ago. Which is great, since it has the potential to solve all mankind's energy and hunger problems plus be used to make better paper, fabric and medicine. Maybe the drug police isn't allowed do anything they come up with after all.

Happy for this discovery I thought I'd try out some of the different dishes you can prepare of hamppu or liina. There are some basic recipes in the pages of the local vegan organisation. Following their instructions I managed to make hemp butter or hempini (named after tahini, a sesame seed paste). Here's what I did:

2 dl hemp seeds
3/4 dl rape oil
4 garlic cloves
1,5 tbsp basil
1/2 tsp salt
1 dl water (more or less, depending on the structure you want)

Roast the seeds on a dry frying pan enough for them to start smell and get some colour. Blend them smooth with the rest of the ingridients. Be sure not to leave those crunchy seed bits there.

The basil part made me suspicious since so far I've only found it useful with tomato soup, (And I'm not saying an Italian cook couldn't make excellent things with it.) but for once I did what I was told. And they were right, it doesn't taste too much, perhaps cause I also used a lot of garlic. (Still, next time I think I'll try a bit more Finnish type of spices.) Mine is rather strong and meant to be used for cooking in the same way as for example Italian pesto sauce is. This is mostly cause I roasted the seeds rather well. If you want to use this on the bread, roast them only lightly and use spices in a more conservative manner.

Nutritional values / 420 g (This varies quite a bit from one hemp breed to another. The one I used is particulary oily and therefore relatively lower than most in protein.)
energy 1814 kcal
fat 150 g
protein 58 g
carbohydrates 80 g
fiber 59 g