Cashew Cheese with Garlic and Herbs

This post is dedicated to a dear friend of mine, who happens to dislike cheese beyond measure!

She had dinner at my place last Sunday and looked at me incredulously when I offered her a slice of sourdough with garlic-herb “cheese”. Of course, I would never serve her real cheese – just this mock  cheese made with cashew nuts.

But the texture and taste of this nut cheese are very close to those of the real stuff – it takes a true cheese hater to tell the difference ;)

For a perfect result, soak the cashews overnight, make the “cheese” mixture in the morning, and serve your cheese in the evening. It can be served immediately as well, but the flavours and the texture are optimal if you can wait a couple of hours.

This is what you need:

• 200g cashews, soaked overnight


• 70ml water


• 1 tsp salt


• pepper to taste


• 1 small garlic clove


• a generous handful of 4 herbs of your liking (parsley, basil, chives, thyme, arugula…)

Drain the cashews and place them with the cold water, salt, pepper, and garlic clove in a bowl. Pulse with a hand mixer (or in your food processor) until creamy. Add some more water if needed. The mixture should be firm enough so that you can easily form it into small balls with your hands. If the mixture is too liquid, don’t worry: when you wait a couple of hours, it will be firmer; and if not, you can add some almond meal.

Place the cheese-to-be in the fridge for a couple of hours. Just before serving, roll the mixture into small balls (about 1 heaped teaspoon per ball), which you coat generously with chopped herbs. Serve with good bread or crackers!

P.S. Inspiration for this recipe came from Nicola Graimes’ awesome vegetarian cookbook, “The New Vegetarian Kitchen”. A must-have in every self-respecting kitchen!

Pastéis de 4114 km de Belém

All my friends know how good I am at keeping secrets. Not very good, I’m afraid. In fact, I suck at it! So no way I’d be able to keep the recipe of almost perfect pastéis as a secret for two centuries… even two days would have been tough!

So here you have it, the not-so-secret recipe of mine. It's quite complex, though, so please ask if you've got any problems at any point!

It is mandatory that the puff pastry be homemade. But don’t worry, I suck at making puff pastry almost as badly as at keeping secrets. And yet I managed to do it – for this purpose, the dough just doesn’t have to be perfect (like, say, for croissants, which I’ve failed miserably every time I’ve tried to make them so far). Any attempt you make will be good enough for pastéis!

I used 1/3 whole-grain wheat and 2/3 all-purpose flour, but for a more traditional result, use only all-purpose. Not everyone is a fan of whole-grain like myself! And not everyone has as good flour as I have, and even I am tragically running out of it. (Time to visit Germany to get some more?!)

For about 30 pastéis you need:

For the dough:

• 400g flour


• 225ml warm water


• 200g butter


• (1/4 tsp salt but only if using unsalted butter)

For the filling:

• 12-14 egg yolks (reserve the whites to use for some other purpose)


• 200g sugar


• 4 Tbps cornstarch


• 1,2 liters heavy cream


• zest of one organic lemon, cut in long stripes


• one vanilla pod

First, make the filling. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan. Bring slowly to the boil, stirring constantly. This tends to burn really easily, so don’t even think of leaving the custard, even for two seconds! Let cool completely and make the dough in the meantime.

To make the dough, place the flour in a baking bowl. Make a hole in the middle, pour in the warm water, and work the dough with your hands until it’s smooth. Always start with a bit less water and add more if needed. It should be firm and smooth at the same time.

Now roll the dough out to a rectangle a bit smaller than an A4 paper. Smear half of the dough with softened butter. Fold the unbuttered half over the buttered one. Now, turn the dough 90 degrees and roll it into a long rectangle. Fold in three parts and let rest in the fridge for about 10 minutes. Repeat this rolling-out-and-folding-in-three still twice. Don’t worry if some butter comes out – just make sure to use enough flour so that the dough doesn’t glue to the baking surface!

After the last fold, let the dough rest in the fridge some 10 minutes and roll it out into a rectangle as thin as you can. Then, roll the dough in just as when you’re making cinnamon rolls.

Now comes the hard part: cut the rolled-in dough into pieces of about 1,5cm thick and place each in a buttered pastéis form or a muffin form. Take the form into your hands and with your thumbs, work the dough gently so that it in the end covers the sides of the form as well. (This might sound complicated, still hanging there?) It’s important to find the right amount of dough: it should be very thin but not break. Once you’ve done a couple of them, you’ll find the ideal amount of dough!

Then return to your filling. Remove lemon zests and vanilla pod (which you can use 2-3 times) from the custard. Fill the dough-covered forms with the custard. Bake in a pre-heated oven (250C) for about 10 minutes or until your pastéis get brown spots but don’t burn (which happens very easily, so don’t leave them unattended in the oven!). I’ve been told that the real pastéis get baked in 400C, but even 300C was way too much for my oven and my pastéis. Remember to place an extra tray on the bottom of your oven to catch any extra butter that might drip during the baking.

Serve your pastéis warm or cold, with or without some cinnamon on top!

P.S. Of course,  you can use ready-made puff pastry – but it just won’t be the same…

P.P.S. Needless to say, the distance between my new home and  Rua de Belém, 84-92 is 4114 km!

 

Putin's Pickles

I was strongly advised against calling my pickles “Putin’s Pickles”. I didn’t follow the good piece of advice, though, as very often is the case. (Will I ever learn?!) These pickles don’t actually have anything else to do with good old Vladimir except for the fact that they are made with a Russian-style recipe – without vinegar, that is.

Besides, many things in Finland are called Putin’s something these days: there’s been Putin’s cheese, Putin’s butter, and there’ll be Putin’s fish, from what I’ve read. All this because European products are no longer welcome in Russia, and now we poor Finns are drowning in food that is not good enough for uncle Vova.

But enough of politics and back to the pickles.

This is the way my parents used to prepare pickles every autumn. I’d never done it before myself, but now it was really the time! It’s not difficult at all, and the result is so much superior to anything you can buy that it is more than worth the trouble (not as much trouble as waiting, by the way). All you need is a bucket with a lid, cucumbers, blackcurrant leaves, horseradish, dill, and brine. One slice of rye bread is also needed to start the fermenting process.

What you need is:

• enough pickling cucumbers to fill a 3-liter bucket


• about 30 large blackcurrant leaves


• a couple of slices of horseradish


• some dill


• 1,5 l water


• 1,5 tbsp salt


• one slice of rye bread

First, make the brine: Bring the water to the boil, add the salt and let it melt. Let cool a couple of hours or overnight. Wash the cucumbers well and place them into cold water. Let them stand a few hours or overnight.

Then take cucumbers out of the water and place them in layers with blackcurrant leaves, dill, and horseradish in the bucket until you’ve used up all of the cucumbers. Pour the brine over the whole – they should be completely covered. If not, prepare more brine. Place one slice of rye bread somewhere in the middle!

Now starts the waiting part: first, only partly cover the bucket with the lid (that means, the cucumbers should get some air). Let stand in room temperature about 2-4 days, or until some foam appears in the liquid. By this time, the cucumbers will have gained their typical smell – a bit sour, yet fresh and very pleasant. The time needed depends on the temperature – I did mine during the great heat wave, and only 2 days were needed.

Then place a small plate on top of the cucumbers and press, making sure all of your future pickles are under water. Close the lid well and place the bucket in your fridge. Check once in a while – after 2 to 4 weeks (mine took almost 4 weeks but do check every few days), the cucumbers will have turned into the most delicious pickles you’ve ever had! They will have changed colour from fresh green to yellowish green, they should be soft yet not too soft, and when you cut them (lengthwise, of course!!), you can see that they are almost translucent from the inside.

That’s when it’s time to enjoy your pickles: cut them lengthwise and eat with rye bread, butter, smetana, and a bit of honey. Or the vegan way: just with sto gram vodka!

Home-Made Tortillas with Kidney Beans and Fresh Vegetables

Have you ever taken a closer look at the ingredients of any given tortillas available at the supermarket? I recently did. The ones I found contained 14-15 ingredients, among other things emulsifiers, stabilizers, and preservatives…

Then I read the preparation instructions: one is supposed to warm the tortillas in the oven for 10 minutes. (In the microwave it would go faster.)

Ok, I thought, it can’t take much longer than those 10 minutes to make eight tortillas from scratch. And it didn’t. To be exact, it took 10 minutes and a half for me to have 8 home-made tortillas ready! When the first one was frying, I rolled the next one out, and so on. Note that you need a cast-iron pan to get soft tortillas – oddly enough, when I fried them in a Teflon pan, my tortillas turned too crispy to fold.

And if for the filling one chooses something that doesn’t need to be cooked – like canned beans and fresh veggies - it takes no longer than 15 minutes to have 8 delicious filled tortillas ready to be eaten. From scratch!

So, no reason anymore to buy those industrial “fresh” tortillas as they are ironically called!

This recipe is for 8 tortillas, which is just enough for 4 people as a main course or 8 as a snack.

This is what you need for the dough:

• 300g flour (I used half whole-grain, half all-purpose wheat flour)


• 150ml water


• 50ml sunflower oil


• two pinches of salt


• ½ tsp baking powder

And for the filling:

• 150g sour cream or soft cheese (for a vegan option, use a non-dairy option)


• 2 large ripe avocados


• 2 Tbsp olive oil


• juice of half of a lemon


• a couple of drops of Tabasco sauce


• two tomatoes, chopped


• half of a red pepper, chopped


• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced


• 120g canned kidney beans


• a few lettuce leaves


• fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley


• salt and black pepper to taste

To make the dough, just combine flour and salt in a bowl. Make a hole in the middle and add water and oil. (Note that if you’re using only all-purpose flour, you’re likely to need a bit less water. Start with 100ml and add gradually more if needed.) With your hands, work the dough until it’s easy to form it into a ball. Divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll each of them into a very thin tortilla. Don't worry if they're not perfectly round: when you fill and roll them, no-one will notice! Fry your tortillas on a hot pan (without oil) on both sides about 30 seconds, or until dark spots appear. Remember to use cast-iron pan only! Pile the tortillas on a plate and cover them while frying the rest – that way, they’ll keep soft and warm.

For the filling, peel the avocado and crush it with a fork. Add lemon juice, olive oil, Tabasco, and salt and pepper to taste. Spread a generous tablespoon cream cheese or sour cream and avocado paste on each tortilla, then divide tomatoes, onions, red peppers, kidney beans, lettuce, and cilantro/parsley. Add a bit more salt and pepper if you want, then roll the tortillas and serve immediately!

Mushroom Bruschette with Lemon and Parsley

Making a bruschetta is a perfect way to use up bread that otherwise would not be eaten – and as I’ve told, we quite often have to deal with that problem due to our “broken” oven ;)

Everyone loves tomato basil bruschetta, but this mushroom version is at least as tasty! Besides, it’s very quick to make. For this portion for two, I only needed 8 minutes.

 

 

For 2 as a light meal or 4 as a starter:

• 4 large slices of bread


• 1 garlic clove


• 200g mushrooms


• 2 Tbps lemon juice


• olive oil


• a handful of flat leaf parsley


• salt and black pepper to taste

This is how to do it:

1. Heat olive oil in a pan. Quarter the mushrooms (or cut them even smaller if the mushrooms are big) and fry over a high heat about 5 minutes, stirring once in a while.

2. In the meantime, toast the breads and rub them with garlic clove.

3. Now,  add lemon juice, salt, pepper, chopped parsley in the pan, stir, and then remove from heat.

4. Place the bread slices on a plate, divide mushrooms on top of them, and decorate with some more parsley. Serve immediately!

Raspberry Rugelach with Hazelnuts

These croissant-shaped little sweet pastries are my new favourite! They are easy and quick to make, they look pretty, and taste fantastic. I first baked rugelach with a chocolate filling, but didn’t like them at all. The dough was great, though, so I made a new attempt with raspberry jam and hazelnuts as filling - and this time I hit the jackpot...!

For 24 rugelach you need:

• 120g butter


• 170g whole-grain spelt flour


• a generous pinch of salt (less generous if using salted butter)


• 120g quark or sour cream

For the filling:

• 200g raspberry jam


• two handfuls of coarsely chopped hazelnuts

To decorate:

• 1 Tbsp vanilla-scented confectioners’ sugar

Cut the butter in small cubes and place in a baking bowl. Add flour and salt, and work with your fingertips until the texture is like fine crumbles. Then add quark or sour cream and work with your hands until you can form the dough into a ball. Then place the dough in your fridge for at least 30 minutes, but you can make the dough even several hours before.

When you take the dough out of the fridge, set your oven to 190 C. With a rolling pin, roll the dough out into two 25 cm diameter circles. Cover both circles evenly with raspberry jam and chopped hazelnuts. Cut each circle into 12 triangular pieces, as if you were cutting a pizza. Roll each triangle and form a small crescent. Bake for about 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Let your rugelach cool some 10 minutes. Then sprinkle them with confectioners’ sugar and enjoy!

P.S. To make vanilla-flavoured confectioners’ sugar, take a glass jar with a lid. Cut one vanilla pod lengthwise into two pieces and place in the jar. Now fill the jar with confectioners’ sugar, cover, and wait one week or so – and voilà, you’ve got your own vanilla powder sugar!

Day Three: Flammkuchen, or Pizza the Alsatian Way

Once upon a time there was an Alsatian who wanted to bake pizza. Unfortunately, he had run out of most of the basic ingredients: he didn’t have tomatoes, he didn’t have yeast, nor cheese. But he insisted on baking pizza anyway - and invented Flammkuchen - or tarte flambée! Good for me, because I’ve run out of tomatoes and yeast as well, and the rest of our cheese is already earmarked for something else ;)

Flammkuchen is a pizza-like bread topped typically with sour cream, ham, and onions. In my veggie version, I used smoked tofu, chopped carrots and red pepper, corn, and onions. It was a good combination, but I’m so going to try with fresh tomatoes and rucola once this no grocery shopping week is over..!

Flammkuchen exists in sweet version as well. On top of my sweet Flammkuchen I spread sour cream, sour cherry jam, some sugar, and almond flakes. I was very pleased with myself for having thought of a use for my delicious cherry jam - that for some reason no-one eats! - and for the almond flakes that were left over from Christmas baking. And it tasted great as well! The traditional sweet topping would be apples, sugar, and cinnamon, and I’m planning to give that a try later, too.

One big Flammkuchen is enough for two eaters - especially if the dessert is half of a sweet Flammkuchen :)

For two big Flammkuchen you need:

• 300g flour


• 4g salt


• 2 Tbsp oil


• 125-150ml water (a bit more if you use plain flour, a bit less if not)

Salty topping:

• 150g sour cream


• 2 Tbsp water


• salt and pepper to taste


• any veggies of your liking


• smoked tofu, cut in small cubes


• onions, cut in thin rings

Sweet topping:

• 150g sour cream


• 2 Tbsp water


• 2-3 Tbsp sugar


• 150g sour cherry jam (or other jam you’d like to get rid of :) )


• a handful of almond flakes

First set your oven to 225 Celsius. Then prepare the dough: in a bowl, combine flour and salt, then add water and oil and work until it’s easy to form a ball out of the dough. Take half of the dough and roll it out on a floured work surface. Place the Flammkuchen on an oven pan covered with a parchment paper.

For the filling, combine sour cream and water (and salt and pepper for the salty version) in a bowl. Spread the mixture on the Flammkuchen. Then add the other ingredients you’ve chosen for the topping.

Bake in the oven until the edges start to get colour, or about 15 minutes. Flammkuchen is supposed to be really, really crispy, so don't underbake it!

This was a very practical dish: while we were eating the salty Flammkuchen, the sweet one was in the oven - and it was ready just in time for dessert! A Güeter!

P.S. I have no idea how this dish REALLY was invented :D

Day One: Falafel

Yesterday was the first day of my No-Cost Food Challenge. I served leftover pasta for lunch, and for dinner I opted for homemade falafel - for two reasons: my fresh coriander needed to be used or it would have ended in the garbage. Second, I had found what seemed a perfect recipe, from my newest cookbook called Jerusalem.

And the recipe really is perfect. I just had to re-read it a couple of times to make sure I’d understood it correctly: and yes, falafel are made out of soaked but uncooked chickpeas. This turned out to be a bit of a challenge as I don’t have a proper grinder to grind the chickpeas, so I had to manage with my Bamix hand blender. But it wasn’t impossible. And as a result I got the best falafel I’ve ever eaten: delicious and oh so crunchy! I changed the spices a bit to correspond to my taste. Feel free to add some cayenne pepper and cardamom as the original recipe suggests.

For about 30 falafel you need:

• 250g dried chickpeas, soaked 8-12 hours


• 1 smallish onion


• 1-2 garlic cloves


• a handful of chopped herbs - I used coriander and mint, parsley would work as well


• 1 tsp ground cumin


• ½ tsp ground coriander


• 1 tsp salt


• ½ tsp baking powder


• 1 ½ Tbsp plain flour


• 3 Tbsp water


• about 750 ml frying oil


• 2 Tbsp sesame seeds for coating

Drain chickpeas and combine them with chopped onion, crushed garlic, and chopped herbs. Now comes the tricky part: all of this should be turned into a paste, not too coarse, nor too mushy. It should be easier with a meat grinder, but I haven’t got one. So what I did was to take small amounts of chickpeas and pulse them with my hand mixer - the result wasn’t perfect, but it worked. Then it’s time to add spices - cumin, coriander, and salt, baking powder, flour, and water. Work the paste with your hands until everything is well combined.

Let the paste stand for at least one hour in the fridge before using it.

Heat the oil in a pan - the temperature should be about 180 C. I don’t have a kitchen thermometer either, so I use a trick I learned from my mother-in-law instead: I cut a raw potato wedge and test the temperature with it. If it starts kind of bubbling but not too much, the oil has the right temperature. (And if it starts browning immediately it’s too hot! This never happened to me, though, ‘cause I’m so so scared of burning the oil ;) )

Wet your hands and form small balls out of the batter. Coat them with some sesame seeds and fry 6-7 falafel at a time until they are golden brown - this takes about 4-6 minutes. Drain your falafel in a colander to get the extra oil out.

To avoid food waste, fry only the amount of falafel you’re going to serve at one meal. Falafel doesn’t taste that good the day after. The rest of the batter can be used next day, or even frozen and used within a month or so.

I served my falafel with cooked rice, potato mash for the kids, hummus, and avocado-cucumber-mint salad.

Hummus, or When the Chickpea Died and Went to Heaven

I had cooked too much chickpeas for my tagine (see my previous post) and was wondering what to do with them when I saw this recipe for hummus, a delicious spread made of cooked chickpeas, tahini paste, lemon juice, garlic, and salt. The recipe comes from my newest cookbook, called Jerusalem and written by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. A very recommendable book with interesting stories, great pictures - and foolproof recipes, at least so far!

I wanted to make a smaller portion, so the quantities are not exactly the same in the “Jerusalem” version of the recipe.

You need:

• 300g cooked chickpeas


• 150g tahini paste


• 1 big garlic clove or 2 smaller ones


• 2 Tbsp lemon juice


• salt to taste


• about 50ml water (I used the cooking water from the chickpeas)

Place all ingredients apart from water in a food processor bowl. Pulse until smooth, and then add enough water to form a creamy paste. Place your hummus in a serving bowl and cover. Let stand in room temperature about 30 minutes before serving. If anything is left over, store in the fridge.

I decorated my hummus with black olives, slices of red pepper, lemon, and some parsley, and served it with fresh white bread as a starter. Yum!

P.S. In my opinion, hummus is at its best the day you make it!

Grissini with Rosemary and Olive Oil

Among my favourite Italian bread types are grissini, those long bread sticks that you can nibble on while waiting for the meal to be served. They come in various different flavours, but I prefer the ones with rosemary.

On Wednesday, I tried baking my own grissini for the first time. The taste compensates the somewhat imperfect shape!

I made the dough using sourdough starter instead of commercial yeast and once again, you really don’t taste it. I love to play with the idea that in 1679 when grissini are said to be invented there was no commercial yeast - so the recipe that follows just could be the original one..! Who knows?

For 20 long, thin grissini you need

• 450g flour (I used spelt, type 630 - next time I’ll try with whole-grain)


• 300g water


• 150g sourdough starter, refreshed 3-4 hours before (but doubled in volume - if not, wait until it has)


• 3 Tbsp olive oil


• 2 tsp dried rosemary


• 11g salt


• Plus some more olive oil, salt, and fresh rosemary (optional) for finishing.

In a baking bowl, combine flour and water and let stand for about 30 minutes. Then add all other ingredients and knead 10 minutes or so. Cover the dough with a damp kitchen towel and let ferment 6-8 hours.

On a baking surface, work the dough so that the air bubbles disappear. Divide the dough in 20 parts, and work each part into a long, thin bread. Place on an oven pan (either greased or covered with greaseproof paper) and let ferment about 20-30 minutes. Brush your grissini evenly with olive oil and grind some salt on top. If you want, you can also decorate your grissini with fresh rosemary leaves. Bake in a preheated oven (225C) 10-15 minutes or until golden brown (but be careful, they burn easily!).

Serve as an appetizer with a glass of red wine! If anything is left over, store in a dry and cool place.

Salmon Pastries

We’re on the road quite a lot, and when travelling, I prefer taking a packed lunch with us instead of always ending up eating fries, or Pommes as they call them here in Germany. These small salmon pastries my Mom used to bake when I was a kid are ideal for that purpose! I don’t feel good about eating fish, so I bake these quite rarely these days, make sure I buy organic stuff with a WWF label on it - and keep telling me it’s still a better option than buying our kids some Schnitzels that they’d insist on having with their Pommes anyway. Later I’ll post a vegetarian version with potato filling which I love just as much but that the kids unfortunately won’t eat...

Here’s what you need for some 20+ pastries:

Dough:

• 250g butter


• 250g quark


• 260g wheat flour


• 2 tsp baking powder


• ½-1 tsp salt (depending if you’re using unsalted or salted butter)

Filling:

• 200g smoked salmon


• 2 boiled eggs


• 1 raw egg


• 2 Tbsp chopped dill


• salt (and pepper, if you like) to taste

In a baking bowl, combine butter with flour, baking powder and salt, working them with your fingers until crumbly. Then add quark, mix thoroughly and put the dough into the fridge for the time you prepare the filling - which won’t take long, if you’ve boiled the eggs already. Just peel the boiled eggs, chop them together with salmon, then mix all the ingredients of the filling together. Note: if the salmon is very salty, you don’t necessarily need any extra salt.

Now, take your dough out of the fridge, roll it out and take out circles with a round mold - ideal diameter is 10 cm. On each, set about 2 teaspoons of filling in the middle (don’t worry, you’ll quickly learn how much is the ideal amount.) Wet the edges slightly with water (use your fingers or a small brush). Then fold the pastries to enclose the filling, and finally seal the edges with a fork (see the photo for an idea of how to do this.) Brush with egg or milk and bake in a preheated oven in 225 degrees for some 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown. Let them cool on a rack.

And then it’s time to pack everything else together and head for an adventure! Have a nice Sunday everyone! The picture below is from our latest adventure in the mountains.