Taste of Helsinki

Easily the most beautiful portion of the day

For the second time many of the best restaurants in Helsiki present their style and food during the four day food festival Taste of Helsinki. We visited the festival area yesterday. We were lucky with the weather. Today its pouring rain but yesterday we only got a few drops.  

Organic egg and mushroom toffee by Luomo

The Food

When the city's top restaurants are present, the expectations are sky high. It was difficult to choose where to go first. It would not be possible to taste everything. Below is a selection of the most memorable dishes in their own categories.


The most exotic : This goes clearly to the EARTHQUAKE” – Organic egg 64,7°C with mushroom toffee Luomo.  The egg was, well an egg. It was even a bit weird with all the cold softness. The mushroom toffee was so good I could have eaten just that. The mushroomy umami and the toffee sweetness just worked wonders together. This will require some experiments in the home kitchen as well. Luomo in general represents the more experimental style of cuisine in the Helsinki area.


The most beautiful : This is easily the PATÉ OF PIKE with beetroot and cucumber, seasoned with currant leaves by Juuri. (photo on the top of the article). Juuri is also the home of Sapas (i.e. the Suomi/Finland tapas) of which the delicate paté is a quality example.

To be tried at home : and probably real quickly. I just loved the taste of the beetroot aioli in ORGANIC BEEF CARPACCIO, beetroot aioli and juicy salad by Bistro Omat. The beetrood sweetness combined with the little garlic tang in the end was fantastic and should be attainable at home (?) Bistro Omat represent the Scandinavian cuisine from local ingredients. You can find quality farmer's products near the city.

The chosen dessert : There were many different kinds of desserts available but I went directly towards the macarons of Petris Chocolate Room. They were big enough to have more than one bite and also transportable. That is what I brought home. Our Toto (2 years) just loved his passion fruit macaron. "Mjam,mjam" was heard more than once. The chocolate room is situated in Fiskars. The old "industrial" village which is nowadays the home of many artists and full of interesting handicraft.

Macarons with Taittinger rosé... the cheaper one available

Taste of Helsinki was an interesting experience. I hope this short sampling of restaurants also helps all of you traveling to Helsinki area in the near future. These are all places to go to.

4 boys + 2 adults = one oven pancake

Well, perhaps not on one go, but I can tell you there was a big whole in it already after the boys.
 Strawberries with icing sugar and vanilla sugar + whipped cream. Not bad as an afternoon snack for the children on holiday.

This is a very traditional and a very common Finnish dessert / afternoon snack. Pancake made in the oven is the option chosen when you get lazy for staying by the stove for making crêpes. Perfect for the warm summer days.

I used the whograin flour as part of the mixture so this can be considered the healthier version... I also reduced the amount of butter a bit.

Our healthier oven pancake

1l milk (not the nonfat version please)
3 eggs
70g melted butter
1 dl sugar
1,5tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1,5 tsp vanillasugar
3 dl wheat flour
3 dl wholegrain wheat four


Mix all the ingredients together and leave for at least 30min.
Put into a deep oven tray (the size of the oven...) on baking paper and bake for 30-35min in 200 degrees.

Spanish Pork Chops ?

Not being a "connaisseur" of the Spanish cuisine, I'm not sure what is so Spanish in this recipe. That's how the original was called in the Delicious magazine. Perhaps it is the combination of porc and olives, and the smoked paprika ?

Be what it may, this was eaten in our house in record time... Of course, the boys were starving as well - having run outside for the whole day. They're already on summer holiday. Here in Finland the schools close in the beginning of June, and the children return to the classrooms in the middle of August. This year the summery weather started at the same time that the school ended. We've had 10 days of fantastic beachweather. So much it seems that the rest of Europe has been under water and shivering with cold. Is this the Nordic warming instead of the global one ?

I felt the original recipe was a bit grey. It's summer after all - there needs to be colour. So I added a few things - chorizo, onion, sweet peppers... I changed some other things as well, so below the recipe as we had it. 

Spanish Pork Chops 

4 big chops
olive oil
3 crushed garlic gloves
2 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp ordinary paprika
fresh thyme sprigs
1 lemon zest and juice
2 tsp fennel seeds
2 tsp red wine vinegar
half a kilo small (new) potatoes
2-3 chorizo sausages. sliced
big splash of white wine
1,5 dl vegetable stock
handful of green olives
parsley and mint
2 onions thinly sliced
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
salt and pepper
little sweet peppers sliced

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Put the chops into a bowl with the olive ilive, garlic, paprikas, thyme, lemon, fennel seeds and vinegar. Add salt and pepper and let marinate for 30min.

Put the sliced onion in a little bowl and add vinegar, salt and pepper. Let marinate until the dinner is ready. In half an hour the tang of the onion has mellowed into a refreshing sweetness.

Clean and slice the potatoes and mix with some olive oil, salt and pepper and the chorizos. Roast in the oven for 20min. Add the wine and stock and set the chops on the top. Put back in the oven for 15min. Add the olives, half of your sweet peppers and put the tin again in the oven for 5min.

Let the tin wait for a few minutes and sprinkle parsley, mint, onion and rest of the peppers on the top.
Enjoy.

Summertime and strawberry menu

Summer is here. How do I know ? Well, you can't get the children to bed in the evening and you can't get them up in the morning. Too much light they say. Perhaps that's true as we are approaching the midnight sun and there is light still late in the evening.

Then there are the strawberries... no, not the Finnish ones yet. These come from Spain or Holland, but they can still be used. One of our favourite lunches with straberries of any origin is a salad with halloumi and strawberries. Simple and delicious.

Some time ago I tried the lemon posset for the first time ever. This time I made it with our own rhubarb and that was the point of no return. I cannot understand  how I've managed not to taste nor make before something as good as posset seems to be, whatever the variation. The rhubarb posset was heaven on earth when flavoured with vanilla, with strawberries, of course.

Strawberry-halloumi salad

So simple. Just mix saladleaves with cucumber, spring onion, strawberries and avocado. Fry the cheese slices on a pan with little oil and put on top. We like balsamicosyrup as dressing, but you can, of course, put whichever dressing you like best.

Rhubarb posset with strawberries

I found the recipe in one of the Finnish blogs (Maistuis varmaan sullekin) and modified it to fit the quantity and family mood in our house i.e. added some vanilla extract and more sugar.

3,3dl cream (one packet size in FInland, thus the funny quantity)
3 branches of rhubarb cleaned, peeled a little and cut into 2 cm pieces
1,5dl sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
0,5dl lemon juice

Cook the sugar and rhubarb pieces with half of the lemon juice until rhubarb is almost dissolving. Let the cream boil for a few minutes in a separate saucepan and mix then with the rhubarb and add the rest of the lemon juice. Divide into little bowls (I got 5 of them) and let cool and set in the fridge for a few hours preferably until the next day.

30min before serving, mix the strawberry pieces with icing sugar and some vanilla sugar.  Eat on top of the rhubarb posset.

And yes, be warned. If you have not made posset before, remember, this is incredibly addictive Especially the rhubarb flavoured.

Time for a picnic

The sun is shining. I'm sitting outside with my boy, enjoying the garden picnic and having faith in the beach picnics coming soon. This bread tastes like summer.

I've made something similar years ago- probably a recipe from Mr Oliver. This time I was reading the new Finnish Food and Travel magazine when a recipe by a Finnish chef Timo Linnamäki caught my eye - The below recipe is my take on the idea.

The great thing about the recipe is that everyone can fill the bread with whatever they prefer. Next time I'll try parma ham and blue cheese or mozzarella with pancetta and tomatoes... Mozzarella should be fun on a picnic - who can stretch the longest string ?

Anyways, give this a try. I guarantee you'll feel the summer coming.


 Picnic Bread

3 dl hot water
1small pot (200g) turkish yoghurt
2 small bags of dry yeast (11g each)
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp salt
4 dl wholegrain wheat flour
4 dl ordinary flour  (+ the help needed for working the dough i.e. 1-2 dl - depending on the weather and flour)
1-2 handfuls of mixed seeds (sunflower. pumpkin)

Fill the bread with your favourites - this is what I used this time.
shredded spinach
1 red onion
a couple of spring onions
half a packet of feta
2 tbsp chili-paprika sauce (by Tannisen a Finnish brand)
2 boiled eggs
mint and basil

Mix the water and yoghurt. Add the yeast, honey, salt and 1 tbsp of olive oil. Mix and leave for a few minutes. Add the flour gradially mixing and kneading well. Add the seeds.
The dough is pretty wet at this stage. If you want, you can add 1 dl of flour but I let it rise for 30min and used then a lot of flour while working with the dough on the table.

While you wait for the dough to rise, sauté the onions on a pan and wilt the spinach on them. Leave to wait.

Add 1 tbsp of olive oil to the dough and scrape it on the table (with generous amount of flour). I worked directly on the parchment paper so there was no need to move the bread in the end. Roll the dough to the size of an oven pan. Add the filling and roll the bread. Form a big bagel out of it.

Put the oven on to 200 degrees (C)  and put the baking tray in the oven. Leave the bread to rise for at least 15 min. Cut the surface and spread some water on it so that some more seeds will stick onto it.

Bake the bread with the fan on for 10 minutes and then without the fan for 15-20 min. Take out of the oven but leave to cool on the baking tray.

Yes, the name says it all : Chocolate - coconut - pistachio - muffins

 

One of the recipes that caught my eye in the magazine pile was a new take on chocolate muffins. Chocolate-coconut- pistachio sounded exotic and decadent to a point where we just had to try the recipe. And yes, these were delicious, although a bit dry - probably as we did not follow the recipe to the letter due to lack of some of the ingredients. You may want to halve the amount of desiccated coconut in the recipe below... 

Chocolate-coconut-pistactio muffins

75g unsalted, peeled pistachios
150g dark chocolate
75gbutter
3 eggs
150g sugar
150g flour
1tsp baking powder
50g desiccated coconut flakes  (only half of this if you like them moister)

Preheat the oven to 200C. Crush the pistachios and mix with the coconut flakes.

Melt the chocolate and butter together. Mix evenly and let cool.

Whisk the eggs and sugar to form a pale foam. Mix with the flour and baking powder. Add the chocolate mixture and half of the pistachio-coconut mix.

Divide the mixture into cupcake tray. They don't rise just as much as many of the other muffins mixtures so fill the wholes well.

Bake the bigger ones for 20min and the small ones 10-12 min. Let cool for 5 minutes in the tray and move then on a rack.

Delicious with coffee. 

Sunday roast with a new spring coat

I know this is not trendy. We are supposed to buy pieces with bone, cook them for hours and be content with our economical approach. However, I could not resist the special offer in the shop next to our home and bought some fillet of beef. I don't regret.

This was the perfect Sunday lunch with a salad made of green lettuce, avocado, cherry tomatoes, cucmber, olives, spring onion, sweet peppers, feta and roasted almonds. The coating brought some heat and the herby zing.

Another plus in favour of this meal was the speed to prepare it. All in all it took less than an hour to make. Great advantage when the sun is shining and the garden waiting for being worked on.

Sunday roast with a spring coat

First cut the meat to a nice even piece, brown it well in pan with some butter and olive oil. Then put the meat to the oven (130 C).

While the fillet is in the oven, prepare the salad and the coating. Finely slice a couple of red chilles (quite mild) with a big bunch of coriander and mint. Mix with the grated lemon zest and the pressed juice of one lemon. Add salt and pepper and spread on a board.

When the meat is ready (55C inside) take it out of the oven and roll on the coating. Add all the coating on a piece of folio and wrap the meat inside. Leave for 15min.

Red wine onion jam put in a tart... can you think of anything better for an April lunch ?

 Well, add the gorgonzola type blue cheese and a lot of thyme...

Cooking is 1/3 creativity, 1/3 luck and 1/3 innovative stealing. It is not easy to come up with something totally new in the kitchen nowadays. Seems like most of the ideas have already been presented by someoe else. At least in our house, cooking is mostly a patchwork of ideas picked up in different places and put together to create something that is more than the sum of its parts.

This tart definitely adds up to the level of eternal favourites "chez nous".  The main idea comes from Delicious-magazine (my favourite), the onion jam is slightly modified from the one from Rachel Allen and the pastry is the old Finnish favourite for pigs in a blanket. In the pastry I use the Finnish "rahka" which is a kind of quark but in a completely unsweetened form. If you can't find similar, you can try with Greek yoghurt or just buy ordinary readymade puff pastry.

Salty-sweet red onion pie

Make the jam and the pastry the day before - less time and work required during the morning before lunch.

Jam :
25g butter
6 red onions
150g caster sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 dl balsamic vinegar
1,5 dl red wine (something quite sturdy)
a splash of Marsala (or sherry or something similar)
2 tbsp blackcurrant jam 

Slice the onions and cook them at a low heat with butter and sugar for about 30min. Add the rest of the ingredients and let it cook for 45min more. The jam is quite liquid still in the end but don't worry, it'll set once cold.
Put in to a jar and into the fridge to wait.

Pastry (or readymade puff pastry)  :
250g  rahka (quark)
250g soft butter
4 dl flour

Mix quickly to form a dough. Wrap with clingfilm and put to fridge until the next day (or at least for 30 minutes before using)

The next day

Roll the dough and put it to a pastry tin (diameter appr. 24 to 26 cm) Don't roll it too thin but leave at least to 5 mm. 

Spread the onion jam to the bottom. Cut pieces from the blue cheese and drop them evenly on the onion jam. Chop a lot of thyme and add on the top.

Mix 2 eggs, 4 egg yolks, 2 dl cream and 2 tbsp Dijon mustard and pour the mixture into the tin.

Scatter crushed hazelnuts on the top.

Bake in the oven (200 degrees celsius) for about 30min. Let it cool to room temperature and serve with green salad.

Going crazy at the magazine stall...

Or what do you say about this ?

Our weekend trip to EuroDisney in Paris ended with mum emptying the shelves in the airport magazine stall. Shouldn't be too difficult to find recipes to test with all these. :-)

Hazelnut chocolate meringues

Whenever I have some eggwhite leftovers, I seem to make meringues. This time I also had some hazelnut crush and when I hear "hazelnut" my brain immediately thinks of chocolate.

So, there was no way around it. This is what we had for dessert yesterday.

Valrhona is the preferred dark chocolate brand in our house. This time we opted for the fruity Manjari (64%) which was melted and spread on the meringues with a little silicon brush.

What chocolate brands do you find the best to use ?

Meringues are so easy to make and the variation possibilities are endless. Look here for the basic recipe and one of our latest taste experiments.