Soy Kebakkos ‒ Soijakebakot

I always thought kebakkos are about as boring as food can get, but actually they're an interesting example of fusion kitchen. Guess this only proves how blind you can get for things common in your own culture. Somehow it should've been oblivious as the name already is a combination of Finnish and Turkish. The Finnish word kepakko means a stick. The Turkish word kebab apparently in English-speaking world usually refers to meat in a skewer, in Turkey to any kind of meat prepared over or next to a living fire and in Finland has come to mean certain type of spicy meat dish cut from a large skewer into strips.

Kebakkos became a popular dish somewhere in the 80's in the same time when Turkish immigrants and their restaurants started to appear in Finnish city environment. They are nowadays sold as a convenience food and at least in my childhood were served at school meals. The dish combines Turkish kebab with Finnish meatloaf. The stick makes them easy to dip and they also fit with such typical Finnish sidekicks as mashed potatoes. I find them an ideal food to warm up in grill or on the flames of a campfire.

- 400 g tomato sauce
- 4 dl soy crumble
- 1 large potato
- water (about 1 dl)
- 1 onion
- 1 dl bread crumble
- 0.5 dl rape oil
- 0.5 dl soy sauce
- your favourite chili sauce
- (smoked) paprika
- marjoram
- black pepper

Cook and mash the potato. Mince and sauté the onion. Mix all the ingredients together. Add water enough to get a structure that feels easy to mold.

Between your hands or with a help of a baking sheet, roll into bars. Place into sticks. Cook in a 200°C oven for about 20-30 minutes or until the surface looks good. If you're going to barbeque them up in a grill later, oil the surface before that so they won't dry up. With my experience of grills, I'd recoomend precooking in the oven anyway.

This could be served with just salad and a good dip sauce, but this time we had it with cauliflower purée.

Nutritional values / 990 g:
energy 1280 kcal
fat 69 g
protein 62 g
carbohydrates 103 g
fiber 26 g

Pimped Soy Balls ‒ Tuunatut Soijapyörykät

Soy balls are such a basic everyday meal that nearly everyone has developed their own special way of preparing them. No big surprise, I like to keep pimping them a bit differently every time. Yesterday I seasoned them with onion and pickled beet which gave them not only more taste but also this adorable pink colour. I also tried baking them in oven instead of frying on a pan as normally, but that didn't really work out. The structure came a bit too soft and many of them broke down from the bottom. Oh well, didn't effect the taste.

- 3 dl textured soy protein crumble
- 3 dl water
- 1 dose of stock
- 1 onion
- 1 dl pickled beetroot
- 1 dl breadcrumbs
- 3 tbsp soy flour
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- your favourite chili sauce
- black pepper
- 2 tbsp rape oil

Heat up the water and mix with the stock. Let the soy crumble swallow in it. In the meanwhile, mince the onion and sauté lightly. Mix everything but the oil together in a bowl. Roll the paste into balls between your hands. Cook on a pan or in a 200°C oven for about twenty minutes, in any case with plenty of oil.

Nutritional values /  718 g:
energy 1004 kcal
fat 52 g
protein 57 g
carbohydrates 76 g
fiber 20 g

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

Wood Hedgehog Steaks ‒ Kääpäpihvit

Happy Equinox! The time of death is obliviously amongst us. Nights are getting so dark that all my dinner photos look awful plus I've been having a rather dizzying flu for the past few days. No, I'm not exactly an autumn person. Autumns might be nice in their own right but they suffer from the same problem as Sundays which might be idle and comfy if they weren't followed by Mondays. Oh well, a cup of hot chocolate, candles, some classical Russian music and a good book might do the trick.

Albatrellus ovinus (lampaankääpä) and wood hedgehog (rusko-orakas) grow large and fleshy sporocarps perfect for simple mushrooms steaks. You could just put them on the pan with some oil, but I also battered them to keep their inside soft and juicy.

- 4 well-sized mushrooms (about 400 g)
- 1 dl bread crumbs
- 1 dl soy yogurt
- dragon wort
- garlic powder
- white pepper
- salt
- 1 tablespoon rape oil

Wash the mushrooms and remove the bad parts. Trim them so that you end up with flat pieces. Mix the spices with the bread crumbs. Moisture the mushrooms with the soy yogurt and then roll in the bread crumbs. Fry on a medium-temperature pan with the oil until they look golden.

Nutritional values / 579 g:
energy 668 kcal
fat 20 g
protein 22 g
carbohydrates 62 g
fiber 11 g

Clover Balls ‒ Apilapyörykät

I could swear I've seen a recipe for red clover balls somewhere but can't find it anymore. Now I just had to guess what would make a fitting base. Instead of just adding the flowers to my classic soy balls I decided to use raw nuts and prepare the balls like raw foodies do. With spices I thought it best to be careful and only use couple of my favourites. Oh well, I'm assuming the original recipe was published in the beginning of the last century so it wouldn't have helped me in deciding the spices anyway.

This small test batch of mine turned out nice (especially with a spicy dip sauce) but not good enough yet for me not feeling the urge to fry them on a pan. Feel free to add all kinds of stuff you need to get rid of. Carrots, leek, champignons or rye bread should fit to suggest a few, and of course your favourite spices.

- 2 dl red clover flowers
- 2 dl hazelnuts
- 2 garlic cloves
- smoked paprika
- salt

Soak the hazelnuts in water overnight if you have time. Wash the clovers. Make a paste out of all the ingredients. Add water if you need to. Check the taste.

Roll into balls and dry them up. In most kitchens this is easiest done by turning your oven to a low temperature (I use 50°C), possibly keeping the door just a little bit ajar and turning them around couple of times. The problem with this method is that it takes some time, about 2 hours depending on the moisture of the paste.

(This time I'm leaving out the nutritional values since I wasn't able to find any source for the flowers and it doesn't make sense to count the nuts only.)

Pea Sticks ‒ Hernepuikot

As I've been home alone lately my cooking has mostly been on the line of "let's throw something quick in the pot". Just to avoid eating pasta, veggies and textured soy protein for a solid month I thought I'd make something simple out of chili peas that had gone a bit too crunchy. The resulting paste is basically a mix of peas, spices, bread crumbs and oil.

- 1 portion of dried-out chili peas
- water (about 2 dl)
- bread crumbs (about 1 dl)

Soak the peas overnight in a small amount of water, just barely covering them. Next morning they should be swollen and have absorbed all the water. Make a paste out of them, leaving some of the peas intact. Shape into sticks and cover with bread crumbs. (I got 14 pieces.)

Put the sticks into a 200°C oven for twenty minutes. Serve with one sweet and one sour dip sauce or use as a sandwich filling.

Nutritional values / 1 stick:
energy 161 kcal
fat 7.2 g
protein 4.8 g
carbohydrates 19.1 g
fiber 2.6 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

Turnip Discs ‒ Nauriskiekot

Every now and then I manage to find real swidden turnips (kaskinauris, the earliest turnip variety cultivated by Finno-Ugric peoples). Since it's a rare pleasure I want to savor them on their own, cooked in a simple and humble way.

- 500 g turnips
- about 0.5 dl spruce syrup (plus some water if it looks too thick)
- 2 dl bread crumbs (preferably rye)
- 0.5 dl nutritional yeast
- 2 tablespoons mustard powder
- herb salt
- powdered orange zest or ginger
- rape oil for frying (about 2 tablespoons)

Wash the turnips carefully and remove the bad parts. Cut thick slices out of them with a good knife. Mix the bread crumbs, the nutritional yeast and the spices. Pat the discs with spruce syrup (I find this easiest to do with fingers). Dip the discs in the bread crumb mixture and throw on a hot and oiled frying pan. Turn them over a few times to get them evenly cooked. The discs are ready to eat as soon as they've acquired that beautiful golden colour.

Nutritional values / 702 g:
energy 981 kcal
fat 39 g
protein 27 g
carbohydrates 129 g
fiber 14 g

Warmer Röstis ‒ Lämmitysröstit

This time of the year I tend to long for all kinds of things that warm my bones. Therefore this challenge for hot recipes circulating in Finnish food blogs seemed to come straight from heaven. I've never taken part of these before but as you may have noticed already, I use chili in everything but strawberry cake (well there's an idea), even though my own babies never seem to grow old enough to bare fruit. And so I thought I'd post a dish where chili is truly essential part and not just my personal soft spot.

Röstis are fried root vegetable patties most often made of potato. For some reason I've most found of the beet version, perhaps cause the colour won't reveal whether I've managed to grate some of my fingers in them as well. (You wouldn't believe if I told you how good I am in that. At the moment I've got a plaster in my right index finger and two smaller cuts in my left hand.)

A must spice with any beet dish is chili. The amount of course depends on your choose of species and how used you are to capsaicin. The ideal dosage should give that heavenly endorphin stimuli but not block all the taste which is what happens if there's more chili than your tongue buds can handle. In my household a good balance means about 4-5 small rawits or 1 habanero.

- 1 kg beetroot
- 3 dl soy crumbles (TSP)
- 3 dl rye flour
- 1 onion
- chili peppers
- 1 tablespoon dark syrup
- 1 teaspoon salt
- white pepper
- dragon's wort
- rape oil for frying (about 0.5 dl)

Peel and grate the beets. Chop and sauté the onion. Mix all the ingredients except the oil together. Pat the mush into thin discs.

Fry the röstis from both sides on a hot pan to get both a crispy surface and a soft inside. Beet turns dark when fried but don't mistake that as scorched. If you're hosting a dinner party or posting to your food blog, cut the röstis into heart shapes. Otherwise, enjoy as such.

Warmer Röstis are best accompanied by a sour sauce that softens the burning sensation a bit and emphasizes the sweetness. The next day they're terrific on a rye bread.

Nutritional values / 1659 g:
energy 1833 kcal
fat 66 g
protein 68 g
carbohydrates 238 g
fiber 71 g

Mushroom Balls ‒ Suppispallerot

My plan this autumn was to fill the fridge and cook a million different mushroom meals only using mushrooms I've picked myself. But of course I've once again managed to load myself with so many responsibilities that the couple of small mushroom preys I've caught have flown straight to the frying pan. So while the season is still on, here's at least one excellent recipe.

- 2 dl minced mushrooms (for some reason, Cantharellus tubaeformis or suppilovahvero seems ideal for this)
- 2 cooked potatoes
- 1 onion
- 1 dl crushed finncrisps (took me about 3 large ones)
- 2 tablespoons soy flour
- 1,5 dl soy yogurt
- 4 garlic cloves
- black pepper
- salt
- 2 tablespoons rape oil

Mash the potatoes with a fork, mince the onion and squeeze the garlic cloves. Mix everything into an even past and roll small balls out of it between your hands. Place straight away on a hot and oily frying pan.

Nutritional values / 1027 g:
energy 1046 kcal
fat 33 g
protein 37 g
carbohydrates 74 g
fiber 19 g

Nettle Pancakes ‒ Nokkoslätyt

Stinging nettle is often said to be the healthiest plant in Finland due to its richness in vitamins and minerals. There's for example seven times as much iron in it than in its cultivated comrade you can use the same way, spinach. My plan is to collect and precook many bags of it in the freezer for winter. Besides food you can use it for fiber, cosmetics (especially hair), herbal medicine, dyeing and as a fertilizer.

Remember, nettle leaves are at their best when young. Use plants that haven't flowered yet, after a sunny period when the nitrate concentration is at its lowest. Cooking or drying completely destroys the stinging toxic. And of course, you should never eat anything that grows close to a road or such. The taste flavours many kinds of soups, sauces, fillings, beverages and breads. And of course nettle pancakes, a comfort food that even every health food hater loves:

- 1 l young nettle leaves (or 150 g frozen spinach)
- 3 dl wheat or spelt flour
- 1 dl potato flour
- 1.5 dl oat milk or water
- 1.5 dl cider (made from real apples, not those disgusting fake ciders)
- salt
- rape oil for frying

Lingonberry cram is a must have with these. I also made a quick sidekick from fava beans, soy yoghurt, mustard and black pepper.

Nutritional values / 742 g:
energy 1322 kcal
fat 34 g
protein 36 g
carbohydrates 205 g
fiber 16 g

Mämmi Patties ‒ Mämmipihvit

Most mämmi recipes are for desserts. Which is why I wanted to try a salty recipe I found from here, a bit veganized. I was very suspicious about them but at the end they did taste rather good. And even better cold in the next day. The mämmi however just somehow vanished so if you want to get the mämmi taste in them I recommend you try to increase the amount of it.

- 2 cooked potatoes
- 1.5 dl mämmi
- 2 dl soy yoghurt
- 2 dl wheat flour
- 100 g melting soy cheese
- 1 onion
- chive
- parsley
- black pepper
- salt
- rape oil for frying

Mash the potatoes. Grind the cheese. Chop the herbs and the onion. Sauté the onion. Mix everything together. Mold the paste into patties that you fry golden from both sides. (Got myself ten patties.) Put them in a 200°C oven for ten minutes. (Next time I think I'll keep them there a bit longer though.)

Nutritional values / 1 pattie:
energy 194.3 kcal
fat 7 g
protein 5 g
carbohydrates 17.9 g
fiber 2.1 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

Pea Omelet ‒ Hernemunakas

This is a quick and cheap but tasty dinner for weekdays. You can make it more foody by adding beans, mushrooms or veggies like tomato, bell pepper, beanstalks and onion. Just saute them a little before pouring the paste over them. It's also possible to roll stuffings into the omelet. That way you can substitute a snack sandwich or even prepare a dish for a bit fancier dinner party.

- 3 dl pea flour (or chickpea flour aka gram flour aka garbanzo flour aka besan flour)
- 3 dl water (sparkling water if you want a fluffier kind of structure)
- 1 chili
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp mustard powder
- 0.5 dl soy sauce
- 0.5 tsp turmeric
- 0.5 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tbsp rape oil for frying

Chop the chili and whisk everything well together. Pour half of the paste into a hot oily frying pan. When the edges start to look golden turn the omelet over and also fry the other side for a moment. Then add oil and make another omelet in the same manner. (You can also spread the paste into a casserole and cook the omelet in a 250°C oven until it's turned golden.)

Nutritional values / 1 omelet (counted with chickpea flour):
energy 491 kcal
fat 21 g
protein 22 g
carbohydrates 53 g
fiber 10 g

Horse's Cutlets ‒ Härän pihvit

Wee, I found some dried organic horse beans. They used to be a common ingredient in Finnish food before Christian invaders brought peas here. Ketunleipä had this patty idea which is apparently originally from a book called Veganomicon. That sounded like an ideal way to use the beans and make cutlets without lots of the costy gluten flour. (Moreover, these don't look quite as much like fried pieces of someone's bottom, which was a bit of a problem the first time I tried seitan.)

The stucture turned out nicely chewy but the taste was a little stale. Either I haven't familiarized myself into the flavour of horse beans yet or there was something wrong with my standard spicing. Maybe I should settle for just some apple cider, cranberries and herbs next time?

- 3 dl cooked horse beans (fava beans)
- 2 tbsp rape oil
- 2 dl gluten flour
- 1 dl breadcrumbs
- 0.5 dl water
- 0.5 dl smooth tomato sauce
- 1 tbsp hemp butter
- 1 tbsp apple vinegar
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 chili
- 2 garlic cloves
- oil for frying

Mash the beans and the oil into a paste. Throw in the rest of the ingredients. Shape into cutlets and fry. (I got 8 rather large ones from this portion.)

Enjoy with mashed potatoes. Or place between two toasts with onion, mustard and ketchup and voilá ‒ you've got yourself a hamburger.

In case I'll find the right way to spice these I just might make some for the freezer. They seem like something to take for a picnic or a grill evening.

Nutritional values / 1 cutlet / 73 g:
energy 150 kcal
fat 5 g
protein 13 g
carbohydrates 14 g
fiber 2 g

Can Patties ‒ Tölkkipiffit

Normally I feel recipes using convenience foods despise my intellect. The recipe magazines published by big store chains will tell you to spice your soup with their instant soup bag since that way they'll get a better prize than if they'd just teach you how to prepare your own stock. That's not really a recipe. Anyone can figure out how to open up a bag.

This however is just too beautiful an idea to be sneered at.

- 1 can of thick pea soup (The kind with carrot and onion will fall apart.)
- mustard
- breadcrumbs
- rape oil for frying

Open the soup can from both ends. Use a drinking glass with a flat bottom to press the bar out intact. Cut it in six flat pieces. Smudge with mustard, roll in breadcrumbs and fry from both sides. The result has a similar type of structure to that of Arabian fallo... sorry, falafel balls but the taste fits better to Finnish mouth.

This also works when camping. Just leave the breadcrumps out and use the mustard only just before teeth. I'm sure my Trangia will be happy to prepare peas in some other form than soup for a change.

Nutritional values / 1 pattie / 90 g:
energy 128.6 kcal
fat 3.5 g
protein 6.8 g
carbohydrates 17 g
fiber 3 g