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

Doughnuts ‒ Munkit

Yesterday I also caught this sudden urge to make the classic May Day sugar dougnuts. My flatmate luckily has a perfect narrow but tall pot which is actually meant for asparagus, so that half a bottle of rape oil I had was enough for the operation. Really it all turned out surprisingly easy. And now that I remember it, I felt just the same way couple of years ago when making another deep-fried May Day treat, tippaleipäs. Perhaps I've been scared as a child about how the oil splashes and how dangerous this is, which of course may have been for a reason back then. But now that I'm a responsible adult (yeah, right) I think I really could try this cooking method for some salty dish as well.

The proportions come straight from Kamomillan konditoria, my absolute favourite blog on the rare occasion when I feel like pastry baking.

- about 8 dl wheat flour
- 2.5 dl soy milk
- 0.5 dl sugar (plus some for decoration)
- 50 g margarine
- 25 g yeast
- 1 tsp cardamom
- 0.5 tsp salt
- oil for deep frying (see it's suitable for high cooking temperatures)

Warm up the milk in a temperature where you can still stick your hand in it. Dissolve the yeast. Add sugar, salt and cardamom. Dissolve the margarine. Add half of the flours and start kneading. Keep adding flour until the dough starts to detach from the bowl but still feels runny. Knead until it doesn't want to stick to your hands either. Cover with a towel and let it rise for about an hour.

Take a chunk out of the dough, roll them into bars between your hands and connect the ends. Repeat until you've finished the whole dough. Let the circles rise for about 30 minutes more under a towel.

Make sure you're aware of the necessary safety precautions and know what to do even in case the hot oil catches fire. Tehn heat up the oil. Drop a small piece of the dough to estimate when it's hot enough. Using a fork or a spoon, lay the dougnuts into the pot one by one ‒do not drop. Wait a few eyeblinks and turn the doughnut around. Wait a bit more, then fish it out and place on a plate filled with sugar. Start the frying process of the next doughnut, roll the previous one in sugar and place on the serving plate, then turn the one frying around.

Keep going like this until all the doughnuts are ready. Let the oil cool down before getting rid of it in the way you local waste authorities advise you to. The doughnuts are at their best when still warm.

Nutritional values / 863 g: (Estimating how much deep frying adds is really all about estimating how well you do it so these amounts only count the actual dough.)
energy 2393 kcal
fat 52 g
protein 79 g
carbohydrates 399 g
fiber 20 g

Tippaleipä

Tippaleipäs saw the day of light during the 18th century in the homes of the nobility but ironically enough they're nowadays almost entirely associated with Labour Day, along with potato salad, donuts, wieners and mead. The basic idea is pretty much the same as in strauben from Austria or funnel cake from Dutch area of the U.S. You drizzle batter into hot oil and get little cakes that demonstrate how human brains work. Somehow tippaleipäs manage to be crunchy and soft at the same time. Some find their outlooks rather dubious but I think they're fun to look and eat, tube by tube.

So yes, they seemed like enough reason to boil a litre of oil for the first time in my life. To my surprise that turned out quite easy. Didn't get even first degree burns though I happen to be rather prone to accidents.

The batter:
- 5 dl dark wheat flour
- 4 dl soy milk
- 3 dl water
- 0.5 dl dark syrup
- 0.5 dl flax seed
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 0.5 lemon peel (plus a drop of the juice)
- salt

Other stuff:
- 1 l rape oil
- piping equipment (I used a washed ketchup bottle)
- round metal mould (I used washed fruit cans)
- tongs for the mould
- a slotted spoon for the tippaleipäs
- newspapers

Soak the flax seeds in the water for about an hour to achieve slime. (Filter out the seeds if you don't want them in the final pastries.) Whisk the slime together with the other batter ingredients. See that your batter is very even and clumpless. Fill the ketchup bottle.

Heat up the oil. Place the mould into the hot oil. Squeeze a free-form batter web into the mould. (If you have more patience than me you can add more layers after the previous layer has started floating, achieving a tall type of tippaleipä they sell in markets. If you add batter too soon it will loose its shape. I find it easier to just pile them up.) Let it fry for a moment, detach from the mould and flip it over. When the tippaleipä looks golden and delicious, fish it out with the slotted spoon and drain over newspapers. Repeat as long as you have batter.

If you wish decorate with powdered sugar. Serve with mead.

Nutritional values / 1285 g:
energy 3160 kcal
fat 206 g
protein 50 g
carbohydrates 277 g
fiber 29 g