Hamburger Buns

We kicked off the grilling season last weekend with these extremely conventional hamburgers. In truth, it could have happened a lot earlier, weather-wise, but the barbecue, which had wintered on the balcony, had mysteriously acquired a layer of greeny-gray mold, and it took some girding of loins, etc, before it could be tackled. (Please tell us how to avoid this fate next year, as it will then be my turn to clean it!)

Anyway, the point of this isn't the grilled patties (since I'm not the designated griller in this household), or even the rest of the fillings. (Look, it was the first hamburger of the season. Nasty processed cheddar-like substance is totally required. I think there's a law somewhere.)


The point is, I love these hamburger buns. It's slightly embarrassing, because it's basically just... white bread. Very unhealthy white bread. That goes stale in, like, twelve hours. Still. They taste right, and not like the plastic-textured ones you buy ready made.

Hamburger Buns
based on Jorden runt på 80 degar by Annica Triberg

for 6-8 buns

25 g (scant 1 oz) butter
250 ml (&1 cup) milk
25 g (scant 1 oz) fresh yeast
½ tsp salt
½ tbsp sugar
600-700 ml (2½-3 cups) all-purpose flour

1 egg
sesame seeds

Melt the butter in a pan, add the mil and heat until lukewarm. Crumble in the yeast and stir until dissolved. Add salt, sugar, and most of the flour and knead until you have a smooth dough. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes.

Punch down the dough and roll it out to a thickness of about 1cm (scant ½inch). Cut out rounds about 10 cm in diameter and transfer to a cookie sheet. Cover and let rise about half an hour.

Whip the egg lightly and brush the buns with it. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and bake at 225°C (440°F) for about 10-12 minutes. Cool on racks.

Recipe after the jump!

White Bean & Pecan Salad

I usually see beans as belonging in stews and soups, mostly because I can't for the life of me cook them to perfection. Beans turn mushy, this is a fact of life, and mushiness in salads is generally frowned upon. Imagine my joy when I noticed, in a recent issue of Ruoka & viini, a recipe for a bean salad where you overcooked the beans on purpose. (This was part of a Georgian - the country, not the state - menu with several other dishes I've been meaning to try out - there's a cheese pie that sounds divine.)

Then, of course, I forgot about it for over a month until one day while grocery shopping I thought I remembered the details well enough to wing it. I didn't, as it happened, and wound up having to improvise a bit. It's not a very pretty dish - the pecans are ground together with spices and herbs, the browned onions are kind of the same color as the mushy beans - but there's a nice piquant edge to the thing, where the sharpness of the vinegar is cut by earthy, cinnamon-dominated spiciness.

White Bean & Pecan Salad
serves 4 as a light lunch/starter; adapted from Glorian ruoka & viini 2/2007

150 g dry white beans (cannellini or navy)
2 large onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp white wine vinegar
150 ml pecans, lightly toasted
a bunch of fresh basil
a bunch of fresh parsley
½ tsp each ground coriander and cinnamon
¼ tsp each ground cloves and nutmeg
1 tsp Maldon salt
(fresh greens)

(the original used walnuts instead of pecans and dill and cilantro instead of parsley, among other things)

Soak the beans in plenty of water overnight. Drain and cover with fresh water in a largeish pan. Cook for about an hour, until just slightly overcooked. Drain and set aside.

Fry the onions in the oil until nicely browned. Reduce the heat, add the minced garlic and stir until the garlic's cooked through. Add the beans and cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.

In a blender, grind the pecans, basil, parsley and spices. Mix with the vinegar, add salt and blend with the beans. Let stand at room temperature for about half an hour.

Toss with a few handfuls of greens just before serving.

Recipe after the jump!

Vuohenjuustotryffelit (Goat Cheese Truffles)

This post is an answer to the Finnish food blog challenge for April. Recipe & writeup in English after the Finnish versions.

Ihanko oikeesti piti vuohenjuustostakin värkätä makea haastevastaus? Ilmeisesti. Tämä resepti osui alkukuusta silmään kun mietiskelin haasteideoita. Pistin sen varoksi muistiin "jollei muuta keksi" - ja kuinka ollakaan, huhtikuu on ihan loppumetreillä eikä vuohenjuustosta sen pahemmin ole täällä kokkailtu.


Koska halusin osan tryffeleistä sisuksiltaan valkoisiksi muokkailin tuota alkuperäistä aikalailla. Myöskään "tuoretta" vuohenjuustoa ei kuun aikana osunut kohdalle, joten päädyin käyttämään jonkin verran mascarponea äksyn vuohen taltuttamiseksi. Puolet tryffeleistä on suklaassa käytettyä juusto-voi-sokeri-sössöä, ja loppuun juustosekoitukseen sekoitin suklaan jo valmiiksi. Ne pyöriteltiin sitten pistaasirouheessa, lähinnä ulkonäkösyistä.

Ja se maku sitten? Hieman yllättäen ihan tajuttoman hyvä. Vuohenjuusto terästyttää kummasti tryffeleiden makua jännällä, vähän kahvimaisella(?) tavalla.


In English: the theme for April's food challenge was goat cheese. No, not goat cheese in sweet dishes, just goat cheese. I noticed this recipe when surfing for ideas earlier this month, and saved it "just in case" - right. Since I wanted to keep the filling of half the truffles white, I had to do quite a lot of changes: half the truffles are just balls of cheese-butter-sugar mixture dipped in melted chocolate - for the rest, the chocolate is mixed in with the cheese etc, then formed into balls and rolled in chopped pistachios.


I have to admit I chose to make them solely for the truffles with WHAT?? aspect, but they're really surprisingly yummy. Like mini chocolate cheesecakes with a nice tang of something I bet people wouldn't be able to put a name to if they didn't already know.

Vuohenjuustotryffelit
innoitus: Gourmet lokakuu/1993

75 g pehmeää vuohenjuustoa
75 g mascarponea
50 g voita (huoneenlämpöistä)
2 rkl tomusokeria
¼ tl vaniljauutetta
75 + 100 g tummaa suklaata
(pistaasipähkinöitä koristeluun)

Notkista juustot keskenään (jos tykkää vuohenjuustosta ja vahvoista makuyhdistelmistä vuohenjuuston osuutta voisi mielestäni vielä lisätä) ja sekoita joukkoon sokeri ja vanilja. Vaahdota voi ja sekoita muihin aineisiin.

Rouhi 75 g suklaata ja sulata joko mikrossa tai vesihauteessa. Ota juustoseoksesta noin kolmannes ja sekoita suklaaseen. Anna sekä suklaa- että maustamattoman juustoseoksen jähmettyä jääkaapissa noin tunti. Tee kummastakin seoksesta noin kymmenen pikkupalloa. (Melkoisen sottaista puuhaa, toim. huom.) Kierittele suklaapallot heti pistaasirouheessa (tai muussa vastaavassa).

Valkoisten tryffelien kohdalla minulla ainakin oli sen verran ongelmia löysyyden kanssa että käväytin niitä pakkasessakin sillä aikaa kuin sulatin loput suklaasta kuorrutusta varten. Rouhi loput suklaasta ja sulata kuten aikaisemmin. Anna jäähtyä viitisen minuuttia. Dippaa juustopallot suklaaseen ja asettele voipaperille (jääkaappiin) jähmettymään.

Säilytetään jääkaapissa.

Goat Cheese Truffles
based on a recipe from Gourmet, Oct. 1993

75 g soft goat cheese
75 g mascarpone
50 g butter (softened)
2 tbsp icing sugar
¼ tsp vanilla
75 + 100 g dark chocolate
(pistachios for decoration

Blend together the cheeses; add sugar and vanilla and blend until smooth. Cream the butter and add to the cheese mixture.

Chop or grate 75 g of the chocolate and melt either in a water bath or the microwave. Take about a third of the cheese mixture and fold into the chocolate. Let both the chocolate and plain batter rest in the fridge for about an hour, then form each into about ten small balls (this will be somewhat messy). Roll the chocolate truffles in chopped pistachio - or your topping of choice and set aside (in the fridge, where the truffles should be stored).

I had to put the plain cheese balls in the freezer to firm them up enough to coat with chocolate, ymmv. Melt the rest of the chocolate as before and let cool for a bit, then dip each ball in the chocolate to coat completely and transfer to a plate (again, in the fridge) to dry.

Recipe after the jump!

Ginger Mead

inkiväärisima / ingefärsmjöd

Note: apologies for the lack of decent pictures! Today was a rainy, dismal day, besides which, I don't really have a finished product yet. I'll update with more pictures later in the week.

It's that time of the month again - Leftover Tuesday! This time, I'm using some extremely potent ginger syrup, a by-product from making crystallized ginger, to make a slightly different version of a very topical Finnish treat: mead, which is typically served with May Day fritters or doughnuts on, yes, May Day (and Walpurgis Night, the day before).


Now, making Finnish mead isn't quite as involved as brewing in general, nor does it produce a beverage with any more than a negligible alcohol content. You don't need any special equipment - I've even made it in regular plastic bottles - or ingredients, since it's made with regular fresh yeast. What you do need, however, is a bit of time and patience, and since I only bottled this last night, I can't even tell you what it tastes like yet. I'll be making a post on regular sima later in the week in honor of the upcoming Walpurgis, but if you want to get some ready by the 30th, here is a very typical recipe.

Of course, for the impatient among us, there's always ginger ale - a splosh of ginger syrup, another of soda water, and some ice.


Look for a roundup of all the fabulous leftover ideas over at Ceres & Bacchus later in the week.

Ginger Mead

350 ml strong ginger syrup (leftovers from making crystallized ginger last week)
125 g dark brown sugar
250 g caster sugar
4.5 l water
1/5 tsp fresh yeast
(raisins)

Dissolve the sugars in about half of the water. Mix with the syrup and the rest of the water in a large pan/jar/bucket and leave to cool a bit. Once the mixture is lukewarm, sprinkle on the yeast (yes, that is one fifth of a tsp) and stir to dissolve. Cover loosely and let stand at room temperature overnight.

Once the mixture has started to ferment the following day, strain through a sieve into bottles. Sprinkle a tiny bit of sugar and some raisins into each bottle, then close tightly. The mead is ready when the raisins puff up and rise to the surface, about three days at room temperature or 5-7 days in the fridge.

Be careful when opening the bottles - it can be very fizzy!

Recipe after the jump!

Crystallized Ginger

This may sound a tiny bit twee (making your own candied ginger?), but as a mitigating circumstance I should say that this isn't a condiment to be readily found in the shops here - I'm sure you could get it, but I've never come across any. Which is kind of a pity, because I have a weird obsession with it: I could eat it like candy! At first, there is the pronounced sweetness of the sugar it's rolled in, then the slight tang of ooh, fruity, and then finally the wonderful burn. Oh, how I love it.


Sadly, I'm the only one who does, it seems. Someone should really hide that jar from me, because I can't walk past it without grabbing a slice or two of ginger and gobbling it up. I had plans for this batch! Plans which included doing stuff with it. Other than coating it in chocolate and eating it all up (instead I settled for mixing it with some mocha beans I got for my birthday - one of each, open mouth, savor).


I'm not going to post the recipe here, since it's available on the internet and I followed it to the letter (how could I not - there was 7-up! steaming! 6 hours of cooking!). Just keep in mind when starting out that although there's not much actual work involved, it does take the better part of a day to finish, so make a big batch. Supposedly it will keep forever, but I doubt I'll ever find out.


Oh, and don't throw away the syrup! Make mead with it instead.

Recipe after the jump!

Ansjovis- och lökpasta (Sprat & Onion Pasta)

As before, there's a writeup and recipe in English if you scroll down.

Tidigare i veckan skrev jag ett inlägg om nåt som jag kanske mot lite bättre vetande ville kalla "frestelse" - främst för att det är roligare att tala om "temptation" än om "casserole" som låter direkt mos(s)igt. Nå, oberoende fick jag till min stora förvåning reda på att det vi på svenska (och finska, måste man väl därmed anta) kallar ansjovis inte alls är anchovies på engelska, utan sprats. (Anchovies är sardeller.)

Nu har jag en längre tid kockat främst från engelska recept, ganska ofta från sådana som innehåller "anchovies" ty det blir gott och pikant tycker jag. Fast jag alltså gjort helt fel hela tiden. Efter att ha återhämtat mig från chocken insåg jag såklart att detta i praktiken utökar min lista på favoritrecept avsevärt, eftersom man ju såklart måste testa allting också på det avsedda viset.

Sen hade min närbutik inga sardeller alls, så då fick jag nöja mig med det gamla vanliga ändå. Lite snopet, såklart, men å andra sidan kan jag då lägga in det här receptet i Jespers ansjovistävling. Så värst originellt eller nyskapande är det ju inte, men tycker man om karamelliserad lök (vilket jag gör) så blir det här en mumsig och enkel (om än inte så snabb) pastarätt.

I övrigt är det på riktigt bästa ansjovisreceptet gubbröra, men det har jag aldrig gjort själv, bara glufsat i mig mammas och mormors.



In English: having detailed my problems with the "my anchovies aren't anchovies but sprats" conundrum earlier this week, here is a recipe that would probably work just as well with either fish. Not fast, and not very elegant (a broader pasta would do the trick but I didn't have any), but if you like caramelized onions (and I do), this makes for a very pleasant lunch.

Ansjovis- och lökpasta
för två-tre personer

3 stora lökar
en slurk olivolja
8 små ansjovisfileer (hälften av en 80g burk)
5 soltorkade tomater
(en slurk vin eller sherry)
lite persilja
peppar
pasta (själv har jag en konstig med fullkornsspagetti, men man tager såklart vad man haver lust för)

Skiva löken fint och fräs den mjuk i en ordentlig slurk olja (använder jag oljedränkta tomater så tar jag av den) på relativt hög värme. När löken börjar ta färg sänks värmen och stekningen fortsätts (under omrörning) tills den är helt igenom gyllenbrun.

Tärna den soltorkade tomaten och ansjovisen fint och blanda dem med löken, eventuellt också med en slurk vin eller sherry. Koka i några minuter, smaka av med peppar och blanda i persiljan.

Blanda med den färdigkokta pastan i kastrullen och servera genast, med parmesan om du inte är Fiskpasta Utan Ost!!!-purist.

Sprat & Onion Pasta
serves 2-3
3 large onions
a tbsp or two of olive oil
8 small sprat filets (or anchovies, about 40 g drained fish)
5 sun-dried tomatoes
(a few tbsp of wine or sherry)
a few tbsp of fresh parsley
pepper to taste
pasta

Slice the onion thinly and soften on moderate heat in the oil (if I'm using oil-stored tomatoes, I use oil from the jar). Once it starts getting a bit of color, lower the heat, cover, and keep frying, stirring every now and then, until the onion is a deep golden brown color.

Chop the sprats and tomatoes finely and add to the onions, possibly with a splosh of wine or sherry. Keep frying for a few minutes, then toss in the parsley and season with freshly groud black pepper. Mix with the pasta and serve immediately, with parmesan if you don't disapprove of the cheese-and-fish combo.

Recipe after the jump!

Fish & Quips: Cottage Pie

I love English desserts. When I think of English food, it's not blandness that springs to mind (of course, Finnish cuisine is the only one inferior to the English, so my opinion shouldn't count for very much), but an abundance of hearty, unfussy sweets, laden with fruits and especially berries - take a look at summer pudding as a prime example. Not to mention trifles, and fools, and crumbles. (I've even tried to make my own clotted cream, with, erm, interesting results.) Oh, and custards. Homemade custard is so good... In fact, I think I've solved my what about Sunday's dessert problem, or rather, replaced it with its opposite: how to choose from all of those...

With all this love for English desserts, it may be a bit of a surprise that the dish I'm presenting for the English food isn't a joke-event, hosted by Sam of Becks & Posh, is a savory one, and it's not even an English breakfast (mmm, fried tomatoes and rashers and eggs and baked beans). And there's nothing funny about cottage pie other than the name - that the lamb version is a shepherd's pie is quite understandable, if you overlook the fact that it is in fact not the least pie-like, but rather a casserole. A layer-deficient casserole. But what's so cottage-y about beef mince?


Anyway, we all know how I like my casseroles, and the weather is obliging me by being very English (pouring rain and 10°C), so we're going to tuck into this hearty and comforting dish RIGHT NOW.

Cottage Pie

I don't really have a recipe for you: I made a mince sauce out of finely chopped onions, celery and carrots, half a package of bacon and about 800 g of minced beef, a can of crushed tomatoes and a squeeze of tomato puree, a bay leaf, some beef stock, and salt and pepper. (I let the sauce simmer gently for about half an hour, while preparing the mash topping and heating the oven.)

Then made a mash out of four medium-large potatoes and two parsnips by boiling them, peeled and cut into chunks, in salted water and mashing them together with an, ahem, generous amount of butter and some finely grated cheddar (not exactly kosher, but good), seasoning with freshly ground pepper and nutmeg.

Transferred the meat sauce to a large ovenproof casserole (plus some portion-sized ones) and topped with the mashed root veg, dotted the whole thing with butter, and baked at 175°C until it got a nice color, about 45 minutes.

And, erm. If you fill your baking dishes very full, make sure to have a piece of foil or something at the bottom of your oven catching drips.

Just saying.

Recipe after the jump!

Hay, Hay, It's... Earl Grey Mousse with Pear Slices and Raspberries

As far as I can recall, I haven't made mousse since home ec class. No, wait, I lie! There was this FABULOUS Mint Chocolate Mousse in Nyt (that would be the weekly supplement to Helsingin Sanomat, not the Times) maybe ten years ago, and I made it once and loved it... and lost the recipe (fellow Finns, I would be eternally grateful for that recipe). No, wait, I lie some more! Last year for Independence Day I made a three-mousse dessert (Lemon, Dark Chocolate and Mascarpone & After Eight) that was just... wow. Especially the After Eight.

Maybe I've made mousse once a month my whole life and just keep forgetting about it? This mousse will be remembered, at least, because I made it for Helen's edition of Donna Day, the 11th all-in-all. And because it was interesting - in a good way! It's definitely a grown-up dessert, even though no booze is involved: the combination of Earl Grey tea and dark chocolate gives it quite an edge, which is beautifully cut by the oven-dried pears it's served with.



Indeed, when, erm, licking the bowl, I had some pangs of doubt - the taste of tea felt a bit harsh and overpowering. I don't know whether it was the time in the fridge, settling, or just pairing it with the sweetened, crisp pears and juicy raspberries that brought everything together beautifully by the time it went on the table.

Earl Grey Mousse with Dried Pear Slices and Raspberries
adapted from Glorian Ruoka & Viini, serves 5-6

for the pears:
2 pears
icing sugar

for the mousse:
100 g dark chocolate (I used Lindt 70%)
150 ml + 150 ml + 2 tbsp thick cream
1 tbsp Earl Grey leaves (my tea is VERY strong, so you may want to up this if yours doesn't fill the entire kitchen with bergamot fumes when you open the tin)
150 ml sugar
2 tbsp water
4 egg yolks
2 sheets gelatin

to serve:
raspberries

Wash and dry the pears and slice them thinly. Place the slices on a papered cookie sheet and sprinkle with icing sugar. Dry in a 125°C oven for about an hour or until they're crisp to the touch. Let cool, then carefully peel off the parchment paper.


Chop the chocolate very finely and place in a bowl. Bring 150 ml of cream and 1 tbsp tea to the boil. Take off the heat and let steep for a few minutes, then strain and discard the tea leaves, bring the cream back to the boil, and pour over the chocolate, stirring gently until the chocolate melts.

In another pan, bring sugar and water to a boil. Slowly add the egg yolks to the hot sugar syrup while beating with a handheld electric mixer. Keep beating for a minute or so, then transfer to the bowl of your KitchenAid standing mixer of choice and beat until very light and airy.

In yet another bowl (I know!), beat 150 ml cream to soft-ish peaks. Fold the chocolate mix and the cream into the beaten egg mixture.

Soak the gelatin leaves in cold water for five minutes, then squeeze off excess water and dissolve into the remaining 2 tbsp of cream. (Um, which you've heated. Or it won't dissolve.)

Fold the gelatin cream into the mousse and let rest in the fridge for about an hour (alternatively, spoon into whatever dishes you want to serve it from and save yourself the bother of trying to do the next step). Spoon lumps of mousse onto pear slices; try to make this look attractive.

Serve with raspberries.

Recipe after the jump!

Sweet Potato and Bacon Temptation

OK, so strictly speaking, it's probably not traditional enough to be a temptation: the ur-temptation, Jansson's frestelse (Janssonin kiusaus) consists of layers of julienned potatoes and anchovies (which that wiki article just told me I should be calling sprats - I had no idea!) drenched in cream, and I'd have no qualms about calling a potato-and-ham casserole a temptation, but this? It doesn't even look very tempting (I hate it when that happens), even though I made a few portions in those snazzy little cups, which is so not How It's Done.

Yes, whatever. It's another mushy casserole. I love them. This one involved bacon and cheese, so of course it was yummy. Enough said.

Sweet Potato and Bacon Temptation
based on two different temptations from an old issue of Ruoka & Viini

about a kg (2 medium/large) sweet potatoes
1 medium potato
170 g bacon
3 large onions
3 cloves garlic
a big bunch of basil
350 ml cream (or milk, or a mixture of both)
100 g feta, crumbled
salt & pepper
butter

Julienne the potatoes. Cut the bacon in bite-size pieces and fry until slightly crisp; drain on kitchen paper to get rid of excess fat.

Chop the onions and mince the garlic and mix together in a bowl. Mix with the (coarsely chopped) basil.

Arrange layers of potatoes, onions, feta and bacon in a pan (or several), salting and peppering between layers. Pour over the cream, dot with a bit of butter, and bake at 200°C for about an hour, until the surface of the dish is slightly crispy and the inner parts very very soft.

Recipe after the jump!

Sans Rival

Much like Haalo, when it comes to birthday cakes I am the designated baker even when the birthday is my own. This year, one of my presents was a cream-colored KitchenAid (and believe me, you were *this* close to getting a postful of KitchenAid porn instead of this recipe - it is perhaps the prettiest thing in this apartment, save one of my three cats), so naturally I wanted to make something with lots and lots of whipped things. Such as egg whites and, oh yeah, buttercream. How convenient, then, that I'd already earmarked a recipe that consists almost (actually, there's no "almost" about it) exclusively of meringue and buttercream.


This cake is also known as Ellen Svinhufvud Cake in Finland, after the wife of one of our presidents who liked to have this served at receptions and the like. In other countries I think it's known as Fragilité, but I'm not sure if the recipes are exactly the same. Either way, it's decadent without being cloying, which is always a plus.


It consists of layers of crackling macaroon sheets and is filled and covered with mocha-flavored buttercream and sprinkled with toasted flaked almonds. It's not nearly as difficult to make as I'd thought, and like a lot of things it improves if you have the patience to let it sit in the fridge for a day or two.


And yes, it's exactly as healthy as it sounds.

Sans Rival
the recipe for this was all over the newspapers this winter because of some sort of legal battle. I snagged the proportions from Hufvudstadsbladet and the method from, I think, Helsingin Sanomat

Macaroon layers
150 ml icing sugar
200 ml egg white (~6 eggs)
150 g (very finely) ground almonds

Filling
150 ml strong coffee
5 tbsp sugar
150 ml cream
300 g butter
100 g (very finely) ground almonds

Garnish
25 g flaked almonds, lightly toasted
icing sugar

Cover two cookie sheets with cooking parchment.

Whip the egg whites and sugar for about 15 minutes, until it turns sticky. Carefully fold in the ground almonds.

Divide the meringue in four parts, two on each sheet, and spread into 25*16 cm rectangles. Bake both sheets simultaneously at 125°C for about an hour (switching the positions a few times during baking), until they are completely dry.

C-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y loosen the macaroon sheets from the parchment with the help of a spatula and equally carefully transfer them to wire racks to cool.

Blend the sugar into the still-hot coffee, stir to dissolve. Add the cream and let the mixture cool. Whip the butter until light and fluffy. Adding just a little at a time, drizzle in the coffee-cream mixture while beating continuously. Finish by beating in the ground almond.

Spread the mocha cream on the cooled macaroon layers and assemble the cake. Sprinkle with the toasted almond flakes and finish with a dusting of icing sugar. (As you may notice from the pictures, I kind of forgot the icing sugar part. Maybe I'm getting old.) Transfer to fridge until you're ready to serve (can be made 2 days ahead).

Notes: yes, you are meant to ruin the smooth buttercream with ground almonds. I did, although it PAINED ME to see my lovely shiny frosting turn all gritty. It tasted good though. (Maybe almond extract would do the same?) If you buy ready-ground almonds, be sure to grind them some more in a blender, both for the frosting and macaroons.

Recipe after the jump!