Yule Bread ‒ Joululimppu

As I've mentioned earlier, here in western Finland soft bread or limppu used to be eaten only couple of times a year. One such important holiday was ‒ and still is ‒ Joulu or Yule. My idea of a proper joululimppu involves black skin, softness, sweetness and a lot of spices. Such taste needs some time to evolve.

My inspirations for this creation come mainly from mustaleipä ("black bread") of Åland islands and fairer looking but spicier joululimppu recipes. I also thought about throwing in some dried cranberries or nuts but totally forgot. Well, it's not like this would exactly need them. Ideally the bread should be baked couple of days before the actual eating but guess if I could keep my hands off for so long.

- 4 dl oat yogurt (or soy yogurt ‒ anything goes as long as it's sour)
- 3 dl rye malts
- 0.5 dl dark syrup
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 dl rye flour

- 25 g yeast
- 3 dl wheat bran
- 5 dl dark wheat or spelt flour (This is how much I counted I'd need based on other recipes but it seemed to take quite a lot more. Next time I make this I promise to update the amount.)
- 3 tablespoons rowan jelly (just for the flavour, this can be dropped out if you don't have any)
- 1 teaspoon fennel
- 1 teaspoon anise
- powdered bitter orange peel
- some mixture of dark syrup and coffee for buttering

Mix together the yogurt, the malts, the syrup the salt and 2.25 dl rye flour. Sprinkle rest of the rye flour on the composition and cover with a towel. Leave in a warm place for a day (or two if it seems to bubble lazily).

Dissolve the yeast in a drop of lukewarm water. Add the yeast and the rest of the ingredients into the fizzy drink you made yesterday. Cover with a towel again and let it rise for 6 ‒ 8 hours.

Knead it into a semicircle or an oval. Let your loaf rise under a towel for ten minutes. Bake it 10 minutes in a 200°C oven. Butter with the syrup and coffee mixture. Bake 10 more minutes and rebutter. Wrap the loaf into folio, turn the oven to 150°C and leave the bread in there for three hours. Turn off the oven and take the bread out when the oven has gone cold.

Nutritional values / 1150 g:
energy 2705 kcal
fat 23 g
protein 77 g
carbohydrates 537 g
fiber 64 g

Red Onion Sauce ‒ Punasipulikastike

This quick sauce seems to be on everybody's Christmas dinner list in this animal rights forum. And no wonder. Oat, syrup and red onion form a pleasant, sweet trinity where the spices bring the final kick.

- 2 large red onions
- 4 dl oat cream
- 1 tablespoon rape oil
- 2 teaspoons dark syrup
- 2 teaspoon paprika
- 2 teaspoons milled black pepper
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon tomato paste
- 1 good punch of fresh parsley

Cut the red onions into semicircles. Sauté in oil. Pour on them everything but the parsley. Let the sauce simmer for 5 ‒ 10 minutes. Remember to stir occasionally. If your sauce looks too thick add water, and if too thin add potato flour.

Chop the parsley and sprinkle on the sauce. Enjoy together with casseroles and other Joulu dishes.

Nutritional values / 4 dl:
energy 862 kcal
fat 54 g
protein 14 g
carbohydrates 80 g
fiber 9 g

Plum Seitan ‒ Luumuseitan

Though I actually eat them rarely, plums are among the tastiest fruits I know, be it straight from a tree or dried ones. Chocochili's seitan dish reminded me of a simple meat dish my mum used to prepare although BBC's original pork version of it doesn't look like that at all. But at the same time, there was something so christmassy in this I thought I'd save it for December.

When I finally started cooking, I noticed I was out of vinegar so I replaced the stock part with red wine (and had to finish the rest of the bottle as well so it wouldn't turn into vinegar). Oh poor me. Also, I assumed the plums in the original are fresh ones so I doubled the amount for dried ones and dismissed the sugar. So finally, I ended up with a treat like this:

The seitan:
- 3 dl seitan flour (aka gluten flour)
- 1.5 dl pea flour (or chickpea)
- 0.5 dl soy sauce
- 0.5 dl rape oil
- 2 garlic cloves
- smoked pepper powder
- water (just enough to make it stick together, about 1 dl)

The rest:
- 1 onion (or 10 pickled spring onions)
- 10 dried plums
- 1 carrot (or celeriac)
- 4 dl red wine
- 1 dl tomato sauce
- 1 dried chili
- anise or star anise (I bet salmiakki would work as well)
- cardamom
- juniper berries

Mix the seitan ingredients. Slice into strips and drop into boiling water. Precook about half an hour (I like to season the water with some stock). Slice the onions and the carrots. Halve the plums. Combine everything in a casserole. Let the plum seitan simmer for 45 minutes in a 175ºC oven. Thicken the marinade by boiling it together in a sauce pot and return on the seitan (or if you're lazy like me, just sprinkle some potato flour on top and stir).

Serve with mashed potatoes.

Nutritional values / 1272 g:
energy 1890 kcal
fat 54 g
protein 143 g
carbohydrates 139 g
fiber 21 g

Karelian Pasties ‒ Karjalanpiirakat

Yesterday was Finland's Independence Day. In most countries, that's a lively carnival. In Finland it has evolved into a more dignified, even pious day, largely consisting of remembering World War II and honouring the veterans who ‒ as the only nation ‒ managed to fight back against Stalin's invasion. For my generation which doesn't even remember there ever existed a place called Soviet Union it's more about gathering together some friends, burning candles, eating well, talking about new laws that threaten our freedom of speech or right to privacy and of course, laughing at the dresses of the president's ball that YLE broadcasts every year.

While others played a game where you get a point every time you know a name of a ball guest and another one from knowing the reason they're invited I pinched up some Karelian pasties. From numerous hand-size Karelian pie types these are the ones that have an almost iconic status so I thought they'd make an appropriate snack for Independence Day. They have a thin rye crust and just about anything as a filling. Nowadays rice porridge is the filling number one and potato second but barley, talkkuna, buckwheat, carrot or rutabaga would make them a bit more "authentic" (what a terrible word). They can even have a sweet berry porridge inside. This time I used a simple turnip filling and a crust recipe straight from a flour bag.

The crust:
- 5.5 dl sifted rye flour (if you can only find normal kind you should replace some of it with wheat flour)
- 2 dl water
- 2 teaspoons salt

The rest:
- 1 kg turnip
- white pepper
- 100 g margarine
- 1 dl oat milk

Cook the turnips. Peel and mash them together with the pepper and half the margarine. While the filling cools down, mix the crust ingredients together with your hands. Roll the paste into a thin layer (use extra flour generously so it won't stick). Take circular pieces from the layer with the help of a floured water glass.

Now roll each circle into an oval. Lay a spoonful of turnip mash on it and fold the edges with your index finger and thumb, from both sides simultaneously, pinching "wrinkles" on the filling as you go along. Bake about fifteen minutes in a 275ºC oven.

Melt the rest of the margarine and add the milk into it. Butter the oven-fresh pastries from both sides and lay them into a bowl over each other. Cover with a towel and let them soften up for about an hour.

Serve hot or cold, perhaps together with tar syrup.

Nutritional values / 1785 g:
energy 2084 kcal
fat 82 g
protein 48 g
carbohydrates 284 g
fiber 78 g

The Weirdest Glögis

A punch of friends invited themselves at my place to throw one more pikkujoulu party. We listened to the greatest Christmas songs (like this or this) and tried the weirdest glögi ideas we could find. These are starting to get pretty far from any definition of glögi but what matters most, all turned out surprisingly delicious. Exceptionally, I'll write just one long post about them.

Carrot Glögi ‒ Porkkanaglögi

This one sounded like the most awful one so we started with it. But the drink came out quite yummy and didn't taste healthy at all.

- 1 l carrot juice
- half a lemon
- 1 tablespoon cloves
- 2 dl vodka (the bottle in the photo actually isn't vodka)

Wash and grind the lemon half (don't peel). Put the lemon and the cloves into a kettle together with the juice and let it simmer for a moment. Filter out the bits and pieces. Pour into mugs. Finalize with vodka.

Beer Glögi ‒ Olutglögi

I bought three bottles of Sinebrychoff's excellent porter for this and felt so bad in advance for having to ruin it. But no, this came out good as well though there was a bit too much ginger in relation to cinnamon.

- 1 l porter
- 2 dl water
- 1 piece of fresh ginger
- 5 cinnamon sticks

Peel the ginger piece. Let the ginger and the cinnamon sticks simmer in the water until you've caught their taste. Combine the liquid part with the beer and warm it up. Be careful not to boil the beer since it turns bitter quite easily. Beer glögi is best enjoyed while still hot.

Snowball Glögi ‒ Lumipalloglögi

The last one was the winner. There are quite many flavours in this drink but they all seemed to stand out. Sadly, the snowball itself melted all too fast.

- 1 l soy milk
- 2 dl water
- half vanilla pod
- green tea (I used a variety spiced with fruit pieces)
- spruce syrup
- 2 dl whipped oat cream
- cinnamon
(- brandy to taste)

Let the vanilla and the tea simmer in the water. Add the syrup and the milk and warm up the whole thing. Filter into mugs. Pour in some brandy if you wish. Let your guests crown the drink with a cream snowball and cinnamon.

Gingerbread ‒ Piparit

Warning: Keeping a food blog may cause you to try the weirdest things. Last year my spouse came home from a journey just in time for Yule so I surprised him by decorating gingerbread cookies with obscene symbols and hanging them all around our home. Knowing exactly how good I am with handicrafts I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have even crossed my mind to build a full gingerbread house if I couldn't tell about it here. The artwork in the photo is my third one and it was built together with three friends of mine. If you want to see more traditional examples gather ideas from here.

In different countries, gingerbread can mean all sorts of cakes or biscuits. In Scandinavia it means a dark, thin and crunchy biscuit with a generous amount of spices. They're eaten almost exclusively during Christmas time. Besides houses, they often have a shape of people, pigs, spruces, hearts, stars and bucks. The Finnish name piparkakku comes from Swedish pepparkaka, "pepper cake".

Here's the most basic gingerbread recipe I can think of (combining at least this and this recipe):

- 2 dl dark syrup
- 2 dl sugar
- 1 dl water
- 200 g quality margarine (for example Keiju 70 %)
- 1 l wheat flour (or spelt)
- 1 tablespoon baking soda
- 2 tablespoons cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon clove
- 1 tablespoon cardamom
- 1 tablespoon ginger
- 0.5 tablespoon bitter orange peel

Melt together the sugar, the syrup, the water and the spices. Pour the hot mixture over the margarine. Keep stirring until the margarine has melted as well. Let the mixture cool down a bit and then whip it fluffier. Filter in the flour and the soda in small amounts. Leave the paste in the fridge for overnight. Try not to eat it all.

Next day you can roll the paste out into a thin layer (I recommend sprinkling some flour on the table first). Cut it into merry shapes and put them into a 200°C oven until they've gotten some nice brown colour (10-15 minutes).

If you wish, decorate the cookies with an icing made of water and confectioner's sugar. You can get a pink colour by adding a drop of beetroot juice in the icing or a blue one with bilberry juice.

When building a house you should first draw blueprints (if creating your own architectural design it helps to make a model out of cardboard). Cut the paste into flat shapes you can put together after baking. Don't forget to make a soil from the last lump to build your house on. The pieces will swell in the oven so it may be a good idea to cut the edges a little right after they come from the oven and are still soft. Let them cool down and then decorate. Glue the pieces together (and repair the broken ones) with sugar melted on a non-sticky frying pan. You need to be quick, careful and precise with this phase so a calm, grown-up assistant would certainly help. Finally, turn the collapsing side of the house towards a wall and sprinkle some more confectioner's sugar ("snow") over it to cover the ugliest seams.

Nutritional values / 1500 g:
energy 4990 kcal
fat 156 g
protein 87 g
carbohydrates 802 g
fiber 25 g

Food Blog of the Month \o/

Wow. Mämmi was chosen the food blog of the month by Suomalaisen ruokakulttuurin edistämisohjelma ("Program for Promoting Finnish Food Culture"). It's a three-year program started by Finnish government and aims to uplift the respect of good food. Judging by the list of the previous acknowledged blogs I'm in first-class company. Mämmi isn't even the first vegan blog that has been selected but it is the first one in English. Excuse me for repeating myself but wow!

Here are the reasons they mention:

"Mämmi on blogi, joka on selkeästi profiloitunut suomalaisen ruokaperinteen sanansaattajana. Se muistuttaa unohdetuista suomalaisista herkuista ja luo niistä omia, tuoreita versioitaan. Englanninkielisyytensä ansiosta Mämmi kertoo ruokakulttuuristamme myös ulkomaalaisille - tehden sen iloisesti ja nöyristelemättä. Blogin jokainen postaus vakuuttaa lukijansa rikkaasta ruokakulttuurista, jonka antimia voi soveltaa monenlaisen ruokailijan tarpeisiin sopiviksi."

Apparently I've managed to do something right for a change. It's been less than a year but I find food writing abnormally fun and addictive. It encourages me to try new things in the kitchen (which certainly improves at least my own nutrition) and gives the satisfaction of filling a certain empty spot in something I care about. Hope I'll stay this excited in the future as well!