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

Fermented Rowan Tee ‒ Hiostettu pihlajatee

The easiest way to get herb teas is just drying up the leaves and flowers you plan to use. This summer I thought I'd learn a new method of finding some new tastes from familiar plants by fermenting. This is how green tea turns into black tea.

The leaves in the photo are from a rowan tree. I also mixed some bilberry and fireweed (which is by the way an excellent basis for any tee mixture) leaves with it. Other plants more than appropriate here include for example raspberry, black currant and birch.

When the leaves you plan to use are still fresh, crush them (between your hands or using a rolling pin for example) so they juice up evenly. Lay them fluffily in a large glass jar and cover. The process needs some oxygen so see the lid isn't too tight.

Place the jar in a hot place (40-50°C) for as long as the leaves have turned brown. You can for example cover the jar with a black t-shirt and leave it on a window sill on a hot summer day or put it in a polystyrene box with hot water bottles. Depending on the plant this may take only an hour (as in the case of rowan) or several days. Last, make sure the leaves have dried up as well so they won't mildew. (I spread them on a newspaper for a night.)

The aroma lasts longer if you store the leaves intact and crush them only a moment before usage.

Runeberg's Tart ‒ Runebergintorttu

Today is a flagging day for the honour of Finland's national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg. These little cakes are just as much named after his wife Fredrika Runeberg who is nowadays also a highly respected writer but was left in the shadow of her husband at the time. The recipe she had probably adapted from a confectioner called Lars Astenius was found recently and naturally has very little to do with the numerous versions we now know as Runeberg's Tarts.

At this point I have to confess the only work I've ever heard or read from either of them is Johan's poem Vårt Land (Maamme in Finnish, Our Land in English) that became Finland's national anthem ‒ and I don't even like the song. The Runebergs were a part of the Swedish-speaking elite whom I can hardly relate to. The reason I find this couple so important is that they were key figures among the Fennomans who created the idea of Finnish people as we now understand it. Thanks to them, I can now get academic education in the language of my ancestors and read the most massive poem collection of the whole world: the Finnish Folklore Archives, mostly written in the magical ancient poem form Kalevala metre. In a way I even feel me and my spouse are following their large footsteps, trying to get Finnish cultural heritage better known in our humble ways. Perhaps I really should read some of their writings.

The tarts of today typically feature almonds and gingerbread crumbs. They're decorated with raspberry jam and powdered sugar plus water icing. I used arctic raspberry, possibly the most decadent tasting berry on the face of the planet, but apple sauce fits here as well. Store-bought tarts are usually cylinder-shaped though you could also make small muffins or just one big cake. A major part of the taste comes from the moisturizing and it's hard to spread it evenly so make sure to choose something you love. (I strongly recommend my Finnish-speaking readers to read this story about making a cut brandy version.)

- 150 g margarine
- 1 dl sugar
- 2 dl almonds
- 2 dl bread crumbs (preferably consisting of gingerbread and rye crisps)
- 1 dl wheat flour
- 1 tablespoon flax seeds
- 1 dl water
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- rum or arrack punsch for moisturizing (about 1 dl)

Heat up the water and leave the flax seeds soak in it. Beat the margarine and the sugar together so they form a fluffy mixture. Grind the almonds. Add everything except the moisturizer into the batter. If you're using baking tins (or four oven-proof coffee mugs like I did) oil and sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Be careful not to overfill your tins or paper cups since the tarts will rise in the oven. Even the surfaces and put them into a 175°C oven for about half an hour.

Let the tarts cool down. Moisture and wait a few hours before flipping them out of the tins. Add more rum onto the other end and decorate if you wish.

If you have the patience, refrigerate them overnight. I didn't. Eating half of these after only couple of hours was the only way to save the pecan chocolate cheese cake my spouse made for his mum.

Nutritional values / 1 mug-size tart:
energy 707 kcal
fat 48 g
protein 13 g
carbohydrates 42 g
fiber 6 g

Vodka Sauce ‒ Votkakastike

Happy this year! Quite many people in Finland have a habit of going totally teetotal for January. This questionnaire even suggests that during 2008 as many as a quarter of the whole population stuck to tipaton tammikuu, "dropless January". I've never heard of anything like that happening in any other country. The rest of us on the other hand are persistent alcohol people. That means alcoholics as much as outdoors people means homeless.

Those who aren't alcohol people often think that such delicate drink as vodka doesn't have any other taste besides alcohol. Sure, most vodkas are made by distilling it almost to pure alcohol and then diluted down to about 38 percent (the ideal volume according to Dmitri Mendeleev who worked several happy years for the Russian Tsar to find this out). But that 2 percent of impurity or possibly the water lead into significant results in character. If you're not used to spirits, try comparing them mixed with water. The differences should become quite oblivious.

Why am I jabbering about this? Because the key to success in the following recipe is to select a quality vodka with a smooth taste. Most of these are made in the traditional Vodka Belt of Northern and Eastern Europe. I prefer Russkiy Standart, Finlandia or Smirnoff, you may like something else. The point is it should be something you could enjoy on its own. And of course, your homemade moonshine can only be called vodka if it's made exclusively out of grain or potato, although EU has some twisted ideas about this definition.

As you may have noticed, I like to use alcohol beverages in cooking. I don't do it only to bring a whip of their own aged flavours into the food but also to release some of the alcohol soluble components (which tomato has quite a lot). Alcohol acts as a flavour enhancer. Sorry to crush your hopes but most of the alcohol content burns off when heated so it won't get you drunk, unless you pour the lion's share of it directly into the chef. I got the idea for this sauce from Veganomicon (Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero, Perseus Books Group 2007) and decided to add raspberries that pair nicely with tomato. Besides pasta, it fits for example with seitan or simple fried veggies. This time I went for the easy way and added some beans to call it a full supper.

- 1 dl vodka
- 400 g canned, crushed tomatoes (If you absolutely insist to start with fresh ones you'll first have to roast them or simmer them for about an hour.)
- 100 g frozen rasberries
- 1 dl soaked almonds
- 2 dl cooked fava beans
- 1 tablespoon rape oil
- 1 dose of stock
- 3 cloves of garlic
- basil
- dragon's wort
- marjoram

Sauté the beans in the oil to get some colour on them. Add the raspberries, the tomatoes and the spices. Simmer until the sauce has a nice, thick structure. Add the vodka. Cook a few minutes more until the stinginess of ethanol has given way to caramel-like sweetness, with just a hint of that wonderful burning bite left. Make a smooth paste out of the almonds and add to the sauce. Sprinkle some nutritional yeast flakes on your pasta portion.

Nutritional values / 834 g:
energy 1076 kcal
fat 53 g
protein 32 g
carbohydrates 60 g
fiber 22 g

Tokero

Talkkuna (or kama in Estonian) means a finely milled mixture of roasted grains or pea flour. The combination varies a lot according to the province, as well as the right way to eat it. Today it's mostly used in desserts but a hundred years ago it was combined practically with anything to form a quick snack. In Tavastia talkkuna was normally mixed with sour milk products but in South Ostrobothnia it was coped together with berries and in Savo it was used with pork lard. My home town even has a street named Tokerotie since during the building in the great hunger years the workers got talkkuna porridge for salary.

Talkkuna's taste is hard to describe. As a kid I hated it, now I've come to love the bizarre combination of chocolaty and malty flavours. I've often envied the way today's Estonian kitchen seems to use talkkuna much more creatively than Finns do. Even though our test group recently decided that an Estonian chocolate bar spiced with kama tasted like old stockings, I did notice that kama and coffee used in that bar might actually make a great combination. So here's a coffee-spiked simple talkkuna snack or dessert.

- 1 dl talkkuna
- 1 dl coffee (or to be a purist, water or oat milk)
- black currants
- raspberries
(- sugar)

Mix the talkkuna and the coffee. Top with berries. Sprinkle sugar on top if you wish.

Nutritional values / 200 g (without sugar):
energy 192 kcal
fat 2 g
protein 5 g
carbohydrates 36 g
fiber 7 g

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.