Lettuce Wraps ‒ Salaattikääröt

I've sometimes thought about ordering tempeh fungus and try if it would work with peas as well. Turns out someone else has thougt about that as well and succeeded. You can now find domestic pea and lupine tempeh from Finnish stores. Apparently, horse bean tempeh is also possible to make. Next time I feel like a chemistry project, this is very likely the way to go. In the meanwhile, I can recommend at least the lupine version. In this case it's made of blue lupins grown in Lapua.

The package was rather small, so I had to come up with a way to incorporate it into a bigger dish without losing the tempeh taste in the mix. So I tried using salad leaves as a wrap like I've seen done in raw food blogs. On paper the combination sounded great and fresh but in practise these started to turn me off quite soon. Perhaps I shoul've used some less bland type of lettuce or collard than an iceberg head. Or maybe I shouln't have used that virgin oil when making the mayo since it tends to have much too strong a flavour. Nevertheless, this combination was clearly missing something. Perhaps this combination was a bad one all in all. Still, I'm going to write it down to hopefully give you guys better ideas.

- 1 lettuce head
- 150 g lupine tempeh
- 2 dl hazel nuts
- 1 dl mayonnaise
-  240 g canned artchoke hearts
- 1 tbsp mustard
- oil for frying
- black pepper
- salt

Blend the mayo with artichoke hearts and mustard. Slice the tempeh and fry lightly, seasoning only with salt and pepper. Crunch the nuts.

Carefully peel the lettuce leaves off. Fill them with a spoonful of artichoke mayonnaise, tempeh pieces and nut crunch. Wrap the edges on each other so the fillings will keep inside. Enjoy fresh.

Nutritional values /  1144 g:
energy 1575 kcal
fat 125 g
protein 52 g
carbohydrates 62 g
fiber 29 g

Strawberry Cake ‒ Mansikkatäytekakku

I haven't blogged a total failure for a while so perhaps this was bound to happen. I've been watching how to make basic layered birthday cakes all my life but I've never tried one myself. It turned out much harder than I had thought. Needless to say, I'm no confectioner but perhaps I should just stick to salty dishes altogether.

I took the crust recipe from a forum post. It gave 75 minutes for the oven time but after 50 minutes I started to smell something burning. The cake had got scorched only a little but simple moistening didn't really return the softness I had hoped for. After the first bite I also had to check if I had read right the amount of sugar which it seemed to drown all the other tastes, including pineapple weed (pihasaunio) which I have just come to like on its own right and not just as a poor man's camomile.

As if this wasn't enough I couldn't just frost the cake with the standard oat cream you can by from food stores. I tried this topping recipe but apparently wasn't patient enough since it remained all runny and kept bringing down the strawberries on top. At the end I tried fixing the edges with a store-bought soy cream spray I don't really like but didn't have much better luck with it either.

If possible, the whole thing became even more crooked looking as I carried it across the town for a picnic meeting. Miraculously it was edible although not exactly the best cake I have ever tried. Here are the measurements I used. Be careful with them.

The cake:
- 190 g margarine
- 9 dl wheat flour (I mixed graham and white flour)
- 5.25 teaspoons baking powder
- 3.4 dl sugar
- 4.5 dl oat milk (or mineral water)
- 1 tablespoon flowers and leaves of pineapple weeds
- apple juice for moistening (approximately 1 dl)

The frosting:
- 2 dl soy milk
- 75 g margarine (or 50 g coconut butter)
- 2.5 tablespoons potato flour
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- piece of a vanilla pod
- salt (just a pinch)

The filling:
- 500 g strawberries
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon flowers and leaves of pineapple weeds

Mince the pineapple weed. Mix the dry ingredients together and shrub together with the margarine. Add the milk, carefully. Pour into a buttered cake mold and put into a 200°C oven for as long as needed (45 minutes?). Let the cake cool down a bit and flip over to a sugared parchment paper.

When the cake has fully cooled down cut it in layers (I only used two layers but if you want three or more you might want to find some other filling to the second layer. Some jam for example.) Moist with apple juice. Mash the filling ingredients together with a fork. Spread between the cake layers and let it rest in the fridge.

For the frosting, heat up most of the milk, the margarine, the sugar and the salt in a saucepan. Let the mixture come to a boil and remove from the stove. Mix the potato flour with the rest of the milk. Blend the two together. Refrigerate. When the frosting has cooled down completely (think this was the part where I lost my patience), continue by whipping it into a fluffy cream. It should be thick enough for spreading on the cake as such and possible to pipe if you cool it down again.

Let the cake juice up in cold before serving. Decorate with strawberries or pineapple weeds.

Nutritional values / 2445 g:
energy 5468 kcal
fat 209 g
protein 92 g
carbohydrates 793 g
fiber 37 g

Vatruskas of Ilomantsi ‒ Ilomantsilaiset vatruskat

Vatruskas are a close relative of Karelian pasties. They're usually round and open from the top but the good people of Ilomantsi like to fold them crescent shaped. Again, you can use pretty much anything for the filling. I first thought I'd just make a simple porridge but then I ended up adding mushrooms which North Karelians so dearly love.

These didn't exactly come out right with the first or second try. I managed to make a big bucket of glue several times before understanding to ask help from a friend who happens to be a chef specialized in local and traditional food. (Thank you Päivi, once again!) The most important instruction she gave me was not to use the same potato variety you would normally use for mashed potatoes. Another one was more about relieving my mind. You see, most recipes I've seen don't mention anything about the flour amount and the ones that do tell to use it as little as 1 dl. Luckily, she didn't understand how anyone could make a rollable dough with so little flour either.

The crust:
- 1 kg waxy potatoes
- dark wheat flour (I needed 7 dl)
- salt

The filling:
- 1 dl buckwheat grains
- 1 onion
- 1 dl oat cream
- 2 dl frozen mushroom chunks (for example russulas and milk-caps)
- 1 tablespoon oil for frying
- dill
- parsley

- margarine and oat milk for buttering

Cook and mash the potatoes. Season with salt. Chop and fry the onion. Cook the buckwheat. When it starts to get soft, add the onion, the mushrooms, the cream and the herbs into the same pot.

When the potatoes have cooled down enough for you to stick your hand into them without screaming, start kneading in the flour. Little by little, add as much flour as you need for a rollable dough. For me, the easiest method is to mix only some flour straight into it, then flour my hands well and make small balls out of it. Roll the dough into small, flat circles. (This makes about 15 pieces.)

Portion a tablespoon of filling on each of the circles. (I like to make them quite chubby.) Fold and close by pressing with floured fingers. Bake 10 minutes in a 250°C oven. Butter with melted margarine and oat milk mixture, then cover with a towel.

Nutritional values / 1 vatruska:
energy 177 kcal
fat 3 g
protein 6 g
carbohydrates 32 g
fiber 3 g

Mustard Foam ‒ Sinappivaahto

I find the experimentalism of molecular gastronomy really fun and interesting. How could we ever come up with new recipes if we never played with food? That being said, this experiment clearly went onto my failure pile.

I saw this idea of mustard foam and thought it would make a nice dressing for my lunch salad featuring pear cubes and the remains of a seitan roast (the structure of which I like to make as dry and crumbly as I can). But the foam turned out way too faint and quickly vanishing for the mission so I had to substitute it with normal mustard instead. I can't really come up with any way to use this foam, save for the fact that fruit flies were happy to drown themselves in the liquid. Well, while I still have lecithin left I guess I'll have to make some other uses for it. Apparently it should make bread fluffier, and perhaps this type of foam would work better in hot drinks.

- 3 dl water
- 1 tablespoon mustard powder
- 1 tablespoon soy lecithin
(vinegar, salt, paprika)

First blend the mixture into a smooth liquid. Let it stand for at least fifteen minutes to let the mustard build up some burning sensation. Add some flavourings if you wish. Whip to get foam. Spoon the foam on whatever you wish to use it with.

Sauerkraut ‒ Hapankaali

Last Sunday I got to see a Unesco world heritage site called Sammallahdenmäki. It's a Bronze age burial site that was used for a thousand years. Nowadays it's a beautiful granite hill covered by colourful lichen species and a few dwarfy pines but in the beginning of the construction it must have looked completely different. The place used to lie on a seashore and the climate was subboreal, meaning the temperatures were much like those that Central Europe now enjoys. Pine hadn't arrived yet and nut trees were fairly common. Weirdly, we know more about the religious views and language of those people than such tangible things like what they ate. Judging from what was available it might have been much closer to what dietitians recommend than a typical nutrition of today, at least during the good years.

One food preparation method that was very likely used intensively was fermenting. And as a food enthusiast I of course want to learn how to do that myself. After all, fermented dishes are still something that everybody should eat on a daily basis and the commercially produced ones tend to be spoiled by pasteurizing. The classic to start with is naturally sauerkraut.

This doesn't really require a recipe but I'm going to tell you how I made it anyway. There are varying instructions out there and my chemistry knowledge is scarce so I can't really tell which ones are based on actual evidence and which are more like folklore. That's why I try to explain just the guidelines and leave the experimenting for you.

(That miserable greyness in the photo is by the way the view from my kitchen window at noon. That's the brightest it gets right before winter solstice.)

- 1 cabbage head
- 2 carrots (or other veggies)
- 1 tablespoon caraway (or other spices)
- 1 tablespoon salt

Grind or shred the cabbage and the carrots. Add the caraway and the salt. When the cabbage starts to sweat (because of the salt) start beating it with any mallet or jar available. The idea is to get so much juice out it covers the cabbage. If the cabbage has already seen it's best days it may be so dry that this never happens. In that case dissolve some salt into boiling water, cool down and pour over the cabbage.

Put the cabbage with its juices into a clean and airtight vessel (I just use glass jars with a weight on top). Press the cabbage below the juice level so it won't touch the air and rotten instead of lacto-fermenting anaerobically. Let your forthcoming sauerkraut sit in room temperature from 3 days to 6 weeks depending on how strong you want it to be. The reason for moving it into a colder storage place after couple of days in some recipes is to slow down the process. Notice the vessel will flood over unless there's a lot of empty space left. Sometimes mold appears on top but this isn't dangerous ‒ just peel it off.

When sauerkraut has stopped bubbling it should taste pleasantly tart. Don't eat if it has turned soft. The taste matures for about six months if stored well in cool temperature (like fridge). If you think it tastes too sore rinse with cold water before eating. Sauerkraut can be used as a salad, in green smoothies or even in hot dishes (though heating of course destroys the largest health benefits). It's a good habit to always add a spoonful on your dinner.

Nutritional values / 1730 g (counted from the ingredients, also see Fineli):
energy 534 kcal
fat 3 g
protein 19 g
carbohydrates 102 g
fiber 37 g

Gallop Sausage ‒ Laukkamakkara

I'll post this experiment for making up usage for leftover mash (from beer making) as well though it didn't really work out. The idea is nevertheless so interesting I think I'll want to keep on trying. And of course I hope that someone can help me.

There are several traditional Finnish sausage types that contain no meat. Unfortunately, I haven't found any recipes for them and I'm doubting if there are any. This type of dishes tend to be made up from things you happen to have in your closet and the expertise comes with trial and error.

Laukkamakkara's name may make a Finnish speaker think about garlic since it's nickname is "fingernail gallop" (laukka is one of the many names for onion). This is what initially made me want to use garlic as a spice, purely traditional or not. But actually this time laukka comes from Swedish lake which means salty water. This is because these type of sausages used to be preserved in salty broth.

Since I couldn't keep the sausages from crumbling apart and the taste needs some adjusting as well I'm not going to tell you any (apparently wrong) amounts. Perhaps I'll try with some potato flour or other gelatinous agent. And try to make a way to preserve them in liquid while still keeping them in one piece. In the photo they're coming from the oven, lying on a sauerkraut bed and covered with apple slices. There's also a basic seitan-based sausage between them.

- mash
- cooked potatoes
- barley grains
- garlic
- salt
- black pepper
- stock

Cook the barley grains with water and some stock. Mash the potatoes. Mix everything together and shape into phallic symbols. Wrap them tightly into folio and steam as long as needed (apparently more than 45 minutes).

Pine Nut and Root Vegetable Mash ‒ Männynsiemen-juuressose

Potato mash is one of the standard sidekicks in Finnish cuisine. I often like to tune it with beet or spinach but seeing this I knew I have a sidekick to offer even when Tarja Halonen shows up for a dinner.

The original recipe didn't give any amounts so I tried to document what I used. The oat cream however, wasn't such a good idea since the mash turned a bit too runny. Oh well, the taste is what matters and I already have a long experience of claiming my beet mash is meant to be a puré soup. Next time I'll just replace the cream with some margarine and perhaps roast the pine kernels a bit before marinating them.

EDIT: Yeap, as you can see from the new photo, this turned out just perfect without the cream. Didn't even replace it with anything. Roasting the kernels was also a good idea.

- 2 large carrots
- 4 potatoes
- 1 small rutabaga
- 1 dose of stock
- 1 dl pine nuts
- gin (about 1 dl)
- spruce syrup
- salt
- white pepper
- 0.5 dl oat cream

Put the pine nuts in a mug and pour enough gin on them to cover them. Peel the root vegetables and cook them in water with the stock. Pour the water away and mash them. (If you're really clever you can save the water to make a sauce for example.) Spice with spruce syrup, salt and white pepper. Add the cream, the soaked nuts and as much of the gin as you wish. Let the mash marinate at least for an hour before serving.

Nutritional values / 1080 g:
energy 1197 kcal
fat 61 g
protein 21 g
carbohydrates 99 g
fiber 19 g

Rievä of Tampere ‒ Tampereen riävä

Not sure why my attempts to make white loaf from levain always end up in the trash can. They're usually just tough, dry and bland. I've already thrown away two baking sheets of rievä, the local soft barley bread (the very name of which means fresh.) Third time I just took a basic recipe that uses a huge amount of yeast but even that didn't go as planned. I kept adding more and more flour to the dough and it kept looking runny enough to be used for pancakes. Comparison between different rievä recipes helped to identify the problem: looks like the amount of water had been doubled at some point!

So I did manage to make edible barley bread eventually. Still, I'm doing something wrong. It's just normal white bread, not that kind of fluffy and soft-textured it's supposed to be. Anyway, here's the edited recipe for you to defeat me:

5 dl lukewarm water
2 tsp salt
70 g yeast
9 dl barley flour
6 dl soft wheat flour (At least I think this is the English term though in Finnish it's called "coarse flour" for a reason unknown to me.)

Dissolve the yeast and the salt in the water. Add the wheat flour and stir even. Keep adding the barley flour until the dough starts to detach from the bowl. Even the surface sprinkle some flour on it and make a cross on it with your fingers. Cover with a towel and leave it in a warm place for half an hour.

Flour the table and your hands. Knead the dough until it feels firm. Form four hemispheres of it, put them on a baking sheet and press them gently lower with your palm. Cover them with a towel and come back after half an hour. (Longer rising time makes them tougher.)

Punch holes on the surface of the rieväs with a fork. Bake them in a 250°C oven for 35 minutes. The orthodox way to eat rievä is with fingers, untouched by a knife. Perfect for a picnic!

Nutritional values / 1 rievä:
energy 815 kcal
fat 5 g
protein 26 g
carbohydrates 165 g
fiber 14 g

Apple Goodness ‒ Omenahyve

My parents came for an Easter visit and since it's a couple of hours drive we decided we should prepare them a lunch. Of course they had eaten on their way here. Which was great since that way it didn't matter so much that I managed to bake a raw seitan roast. I kept it in the oven for 1.5 hours but apparently the frozen cranberries I stuffed it with barely managed to melt during that time. So we just ate potatoes and brown sauce with fried mushrooms and veggies.

Since I had exhausted all our baking powder and white flours the night before when trying to make a swiss roll (It came out a raw mush as well. Maybe there's just something wrong with our oven, not my cooking skills.) I made apple crumble for dessert. Luckily it came out perfect. Even my parents liked it though they usually make fun of everything I do. (Blame the oven!) Next time I think I'll try to add some rhubarb to bring more bitterness instead of the lemon juice.

- 5 large, bitter apples (or 10 small)
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- nutmeg
- cardamom
- 1 dl sugar
- 1 tbsp vanilla sugar
- 2.5 dl rolled oats
- 100 g margarine (for example Keiju 70%)
- 1 dl talkkuna

Cut the apples in slices. Sprinkle them with the lemon juice, the cinnamon and dashes of nutmeg and cardamom. Lay them on an oiled casserole. Sprinkle the sugar on top. Rub the margarine together with the oats, the kama and the vanilla sugar by your fingertips. Cover the apples with the crumble. Put the goodness in a 225°C oven for 30 minutes or until the crumble on top looks golden brown.

Serve with ice cream or vanilla sauce.

Nutritional values / 1060 g:
energy 1756 kcal
fat 69 g
protein 21 g
carbohydrates 248 g
fiber 27 g

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.

South-Ostrobothnian Beer Soup ‒ Eteläpohojalaanen kalijavelli

\o/ I made it! I cooked edible beer soup! And it only took me two tries.

This is a treat that my granny used to make. For some reason my spouse - and now that I think of it, pretty much everyone not from from South-Ostrobothnia - was very suspicious of this. I guess it just sounds like a weird idea for them to use beer in any other way than on it's own. Still, I recommend you to try. Remember, you've got nothing to loose, only to gain. And there's really only one thing you can do wrong with this: boiling it bitter.

- 270 g firm tofu (This replaces an oven fried fresh cheese called leipäjuusto. It fits great since it has the same kind of squeaky texture, but one day I'm going to try if it's possible to make leipäjuusto from soft tofu. Can't see no reason why it wouldn't work.)
- 1 l beer (traditionally kalja but any "easy" and soft one should do.)
- 0.5 l oat milk (actually, I substituted part of it with oat cream)
- 3 tbsp wheat flour
- 1 dl dark syrup
- 2 dl raisins
- a hint of salt
- margarine for frying

Cut the tofu in cubes and fry them well with margarine and part of syrup. Put them in a kettle with everything else. Whip it up a bit to make sure the flour has dissolved instead of forming clumps. (There also exists a clump soup but that's a different dish not involving beer.)

Warm up the soup until it has thickened. Keep stirring constantly. Be sure not to boil it! Beer will quickly turn bitter and inedible when boiled. (Believe me, I know what I'm talking about.)

Remember: it's better to leave the soup a bit runny than overboil and thus ruin it!

Nutritional values / 1.5 l:
energy 1524 kcal
fat 38 g
protein 58 g
carbohydrates 232 g
fiber 18 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

Bilberry Pie ‒ Juolukkapiirakka

While the oven was hot anyway, I thought I'd make the dessert as well. So I just improvised a quick sweet pie as well. Used mostly frozen bog bilberries cause I happened to have them left in the freezer (gods only know from which year) but any forest berries will do.

The paste:
- 1 dl rape oil
- 3 dl graham flour
- 1/2 dl sugar
- a dollop of water
- 1 tsp baking powder

The topping:
- 4 dl bog bilberries
- 2 dl whippable oat cream
- 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar (unless the cream itself is already flavoured)

Heat the oven to 200°C. Mix the paste ingredients together and spread it on a cake tin. Top with bilberries and put it in the oven for 20 minutes. In the meantime whip the cream and flavour with vanilla sugar. Spread the whipped cream on the pie and let it bake another 5‒10 minutes.

My first version of this pie didn't come out exactly as planned. Actually it was quite boggy. So couple of good tips: if you use frozen berries, let them melt a little so you can pour out the extra water. And make sure you've whipped the cream long enough. (Not sure if mine was even meant to foam in the first place.)

It's also possible to leave the cream all out or add it only just before serving on the chilled down pie. Next time I thought I'd try this with ice cream instead of ‒ well, warm cream.

Nutritional values / 900 g
energy 2232 kcal
fat 124 g
protein 31 g
carbohydrates 250 g
fiber 33 g

Anarcho Pie ‒ Anarkopiirakka

One reason more to hope I was an anarchist!

This recipe from Vegaanin keittokirja by Mirka Muukkonen and Anna Särkisilta (Like Kustannus 2008) seems to have almost a canonical status among Finnish vegans. Another version of it has been turned into a punk song by Oi Polloi. Of course I had to try it out!

- 5 cooked potatoes
- 5 dl wheat flour (replaced half of it with graham flour myself)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 200 g margarine (only used 100 g plus some water)

The topping can be be almost anything you happen to have in your kitchen. I used:

- 1 chili
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1 broccoli
- 1 onion
- 340 g silken tofu
- 1/2 dl nutritional yest

Heat the oven to 225°C. Mix the dough ingredients together and spread it in a baking tin. Save a piece. Add the toppings. Form a big anarchy symbol from the rest of the dough and decorate the pie with it. Stick it in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until it looks golden on top. Enjoy with punk music and a punch of hippies.

My first try didn't come out exactly perfect. First of all it didn't bake enough in the given time. (I'm starting to suspect there's something wrong with the oven) And even if it did it still might be a good idea to fry the toppings a bit. Second of all that silken tofu isn't that good a topping alone. I knew it's quite tasteless but thought it would melt nicely in the oven which it of course didn't. Have to mix it with something next time. But the pie did vanish in an eye blink anyway.

Nutritional values / 1600 g (Like always, I've estemeted this according to the measures I myself used.)
energy 2665 kcal
fat 100 g
protein 125 g
carbohydrates 311 g
fiber 44 g

Shepard's Pie ‒ Paimenpiiras

For dinner, I tried to make a Shepard's Pie according to this recipe. (Still don't understand why every other vegan recipe name has to refer to carcasses in one way or another. This week I even saw vegetarian roe being sold.) It's not really a pie but almost like one of the many Finnish casseroles, except that the layers aren't mixed together.

Didn't stick to that recipe too obediently, and didn't get anything like the things in those pictures either. More than a pie, it reminded me of a casserole. First of all, I replaced most of the vegetables with one cup of textured soy protein crumbles (after all, the original versions contain leftover meat, not vegetables), frozen spinach and sun dried tomatoes. Instead of cornstarch (which I've never heard anyone using in Finland) I used some potato starch as thickener, apparently not enough though. Oh, and I was out of nutritional yeast (oluthiiva), but that shouldn't make much difference. I didn't have enough mashed potatoes to cover the whole thing. Also, the thing was in the oven (200°C) over half an hour before it even started to brown.

Nevertheless, it's the taste that counts and in this case it was excellent. Next time I'll just try it with more solid vegetables, more potato starch and more potatoes. I'll post the recipe after I've made it work myself.