Beetroot Soup with Potato Dumplings ‒ Punajuuri-perunamykykeitto

All beetroot soups aren't borschtes, just like all cold tomato soups aren't gazpachos. According to Jaakko Rahola's excellent food glossary, borsch is a hot or cold Eastern European soup consisting of different vegetables. In Russia, these veggies always include beet and fermented broth used for pickling the beets, giving its distinctive taste which for most Finns is way too sour. One ingredient it never ever includes is vinegar, which by comparison is nearly always found from Finnish beetroot soups. So I wouldn't call this pink treat with the name of the famous Russian stuff but there is nevertheless a lot of resemblance with the neighbor. Shall we say it has a rather Eastern Finnish cling to it.

Then again, I topped my soup with dumplings which are more of a Western Finnish thing. Myky or more often klimppi is basically the same stuff as Russian pelmeni, German knödel, Italian gnocchi and numerous other dishes found around the world. But for some reason mykys aren't nearly as popular. In fact, many modern day Finns seem to find the whole idea of them repulsive. This shall definitely change if I can do anything about it!

- 5 beetroots (plus their leaves if you manage to acquire them intact)
- 300 g cabbage
- 1 carrot
- 1 onion
- 1 apple
- 1 sausage
- 1 dose of stock
- 2 tablespoons rape oil
- 1 tablespoon vinegar
- 1 tablespoon ketchup
- 1 small bunch of thyme
- 1 dried chili pepper
- salt
- 2 l water

For the mykys:
- 5 cooked potatoes
- 1 dl semolina
- soup broth for boiling

Peel the root vegetables and shred them. Cook them together with the water and the spices. In the meanwhile, shred the cabbage and cook it on a frying pan with oil until it has softened up. Add the cabbage into the soup pot. Chop the sausage, the apple and the onion and roast them a bit on the pan as well. Add into the pot with the rest. The soup is ready when the beetroot pieces have turned soft.

If you wish to have mykys as well, simply mash the potatoes and mix the semolina thoroughly with them. Shape small balls out of the mass, a dessert spoonful at a time. Take enough broth from the soup to fill a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Drop the balls into the boiling broth carefully one at a time. Let them simmer for about ten minutes. Serve with the soup.

Nutritional values / 3773 g:
energy 1420 kcal
fat 36 g
protein 62 g
carbohydrates 198 g
fiber 40 g

Rowan Fudge ‒ Pihlajatoffee

This time of the year you really notice how many rowan trees there are in the city center as they all bear loads of delicious-looking (and very bitter) red berries. Too bad there are almost as many cars so we can only use the berries for throwing them at friends or admire them with dignity. Luckily this pet of the Finnish thunder god grows in some more peaceful places as well. After all, it is the first tree you should plant on the yard of a new house.

The recipe is an adaptation from the lingonberry fudge in the cook book Härkäpapua Sarvista (Irina Somersalo & al., Multikustannus 2007). The amount of brandy I added is so small you can't really taste it but this is easy to fix if you wish. And with the same basic method you could prepare salmiakki fudge or even garlic fudge which was also suggested by the book.

- 2 dl oat cream
- 3 dl dark sugar
- 2 tablespoons margarine (or coconut oil)
- 1 dl rowan berries
- 1 tablespoon brandy

In a saucepan, heat up the cream, the sugar and the margarine, stirring often until the basic fudge mass is ready. It may take some experienting to figure out the right time between caramel sauceness and lollipop hardness. After about 40 minutes it should have turned into a dark brown pile of thick bubbles. If you drop a bit into a glass of cold water, it should form a firm bullet but not become rock solid yet.

See all your berries are clean. Crush them a bit and add into the mass in small batches. Add the brandy as well and let the mass come to a boil once more.

Spread as a thick layer into a casserole covered with parchment paper. Let it cool down and refrigerate for a few hours. Cut in pieces.

Nutritional values / 547 g:
energy 1381 kcal
fat 41 g
protein 2 g
carbohydrates 244 g
fiber 5 g

Oven Baked Apples ‒ Uuniomenat

Have apple trees always made this many fruits? Seems that everywhere I look there are delicious looking red dots to test my moral. Quite a large percentage of them are newcomers since during the exceptionally cold winter of 1709 most apple trees in Scandinavia and even in northern Germany froze to death. And yet, the only good apples I've ever tasted have all been domestic (no, not even necessarily stolen).

I snatched the recipe for these oven apples from here but changed it for whole apples. The problem in cooking them like that is they tend to fall apart easily if you won't keep an eye on them. Oh well, at least that doesn't affect the taste.

- 5 apples
- 2 rkl margarine
- 1.5 dl oatmeal
- 1 dl lingonberries (or red currants)
- 1 dl sugar
- cinnamon

Wash the apples and remove the core. Melt the margarine and mix together with the rest of the ingredients. Fill the apple holes and top with one more spoonful. Bake in a 200°C oven until the crust has acquired some colour (about 20 minutes).

Enjoy with vanilla sauce or ice cream.

Nutritional values / 1 apple / 137 g:
energy 181 kcal
fat 5 g
protein 2 g
carbohydrates 30 g
fiber 3 g

Körpäkkä

This should be no big surprise to anyone who's talked five minutes with me but I'm a rather careless person when it comes to smaller-than-life scale things. When camping for example, I grap along a bit of this and that and only figure out what I'm able to cook out of them when I'm at it.

Körpäkkä is a perfect dish for meals like that as the very idea is making use of things available, usually the remains of the previous meal (much like in pyttipannu). The name just couldn't sound any more traditional but actually it's only about twenty years old, invented by Jaakko Juvonen for his pike dish. Since then it has started to live a life of its own. Sometimes I've seen it explained as something to combine both pork and fish but then again there are quite many versions without either one. This time I wanted to cook something out of golden chanterelles since the forests of Eura were all yellow of them (false chantarelles actually, but I can't really see or taste the difference). Too bad they loose their colour on the pan! I forgot to bring oil or spices so I used the marinade I had made for my seitan cutlets instead.

Maybe it's the outdoors but the sweet combination of chanterelles and turnip spiced up with lemon pepper turned out the most delicious thing I have come up with for a while. My friends noticed it as well and kept stealing yummies right under my nose!

- 5 dl golden chanterelles
- 1 turnip
- 1 onion
- 2 dl soy strips (TSP)
- 100 g Brussels sprout
- 1 dl oat cream
- 1 tablespoon spruce syrup
- 0.5 dl oily seitan marinade (consisting of rape oil, lime juice, ketchup, peanut butter, salt and lemon pepper)

Chop the onion and the turnip and sauté in the marinade. Add the soy strips (no need to moisture beforehand) and the sprouts (halved if they seem large). Let them cook while you was the mushrooms. Add them on the pan as well. When things have aquired some colour, complement with cream and syrup.

For perfection, use large cabbage leaves as plates, enjoy together with unleavened pea bread and finish off with unfiltered coffee.

Nutritional values / 770 g:
energy 609 kcal
fat 31 g
protein 31 g
carbohydrates 50 g
fiber 21 g

Bilberry Möllö ‒ Mustikkamöllö

There's something extremely Finnish about these simple berry desserts. You can tell your kids to go picking berries and when they came back with a full bucket, reward them with a sweet "recovery snack" made out of the berries. The smashing part which these always involve is especially fun. Naturally, the preferred recipes used to differ quite a lot amongst different Finnish peoples but nowadays with the integrated culture we get to enjoy them all. This one is decisively Karelian. Modern versions often use rye bread pieces and cream but somehow, those seem to miss the whole point.

- 2 dl bilberries
- 0.75 dl rye flour
- 1 tablespoon (preferably dark) sugar

Grab a spoon. Mash it all together. Make it disappear.

Nutritional values / 188 g:
energy 260 kcal
fat 2 g
protein 6 g
carbohydrates 55 g
fiber 12 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

Pumpkin Soup ‒ Kurpitsakeitto

Couple of weeks ago I accidentally got a huge, home-grown pumpkin. Some of it I stuck into a rye lasagna, some of it I used as an extra spice in my signature tar turnips but most of it was still left. People often make a soup out of it so I decided to try one as well. Now pumpkin is an odd vegetable to me and its taste seems rather faint so I spiced it with exotic spices which I rarely use otherwise, in the same manner as I've previously done to a carrot soup.

- 1 kg pumpkin (or carrots)
- 1 leek
- 1 l water
- 1 tablespoon rape oil
- 2 dl coconut milk (or oat cream)
- 200 g red lentils (or horse beans)
- 1 lime
- 1 tablespoon dark syrup
- 1 dose of stock
- 1 chili
- ginger
- salt

Peel and chop the pumpkin. Don't remove the seeds. Cut the leek into circles. Soften the veggies on a frying pan with the oil. Put them into a pot with the water, the lime and the spices. Cook for about ten minutes. Blend smooth. Add the lentils. The soup is ready when the lentils are done.

Nutritional values / l:
energy 1429 kcal
fat 54 g
protein 67 g
carbohydrates 173 g
fiber 48 g