Apple, Golden Beet and Savoy Cabbage Salad

Have you ever wanted to pick an apple from your own apple tree?  Me too.  I dream about it all the time. There remains just that one small problem of living in an apartment with no back yard.  Or maybe you have a back yard but no apple tree in it.  Or the apples on the tree you have are not fit for eating.  Or, or.  In Finland, there is now at least one solution to that problem.

Last week was a celebration of the Harvest season.  It started off with a trip to Råbäckin maatila, a small organic apple farm in Espoo run by an entrepreneurial farmer Rikard Korkman who sells his apples in a different sort of way.  Instead of waiting for his apples to ripen, to see what kind of yield he’ll get, and then going down to the local bulk buyers to see what kind of price they’ll offer him, he’s made the apple season much more fun and personal for those of us who don’t own apple trees.  You can buy annual “shares” of the apple farm.  Yep, that’s right:  you can “own” an apple tree on his farm  Or two.

Since this year was the first year of yield, each share, costing €40 annually, was comprised of 10 trees per share owner, and each owner received whatever yield those trees delivered.

The estimation is that you’ll get about 15 kilos (33 lbs) per share; this year the summer crops delivered in abundance with each share owner getting roughly 50 kilos (110 pounds!) of apples.  The winter apples didn’t fare quite as well due to an unusual cold spell during all of June which reduced the rate of pollination, so the average yield came in at 8-12 kilos, which the Rikard supplemented with other apple varieties to reach the 15 kilo mark.   Look at these beauties:

My apples:  Punainen Åkerö (substitute apples, left) and from my trees, Amarosa (right)

It’s an excellent deal all around:  Rikard knows he’ll sell all of his apples; in fact, they are sold before the first apple bloom blossoms on his farm each Spring.  He knows to whom he is selling his apples, so the relationship feels much more personal, for both Rikard and for consumers like me.  I love feeling like I am helping to support a local producer, and so do 131 other people/families/shareholders.  The waiting list is long too, with 90 people/families in line waiting for Rikard’s apple trees to grow in size so that they too can join in on the apple harvest.  Next year and each consecutive year afterward, as the apple trees provide a larger yield, one share will be comprised of fewer trees, with the intention of keeping the target yield per share the same.

We went down to the orchard to take a look at “our” trees (of which I sadly have no picture), and it is clear how much love and care is put into the place.  I loved seeing my name hanging on the trees, and picking a few of the apples hanging from the branches.  Walking into the barn felt like a step back in time:  as the sweet, sharp, cozy scent of apples met my nose, I was drawn back to my childhood, when Mr Block the apple farmer from Eastern Washington would show up with a huge delivery of apples for our friends, neighbors, and quite a pile for us kids to munch too.  I am already looking forward to going back to Råbäck Farms next year.  Thank you, Rikard!

On Saturday and Sunday, 4-5 October, Slow Food Vastnyland held the Slow Food Farmer’s festival in Fiskars, a lovely artisan village about 1.5 hours outside of Helsinki.  This was the second year I had visited this market, so I knew what I was looking for:  fresh, crisp, sweet Savoy cabbages; red and golden beets, dark malted rye bread from Backer’s Bakery, Butternut Squash and Uchiki Kuri Squash (I saved the seeds from both for my own garden next year); huge, red Rosamunda potatoes for making baked potatoes (though I didn’t find the Blue Congo I was hoping for), and cauliflower in purple, neon green and white.  Not to mention big jars of gorgeous, green, garlic scented olives from Ruukkikylän Herkut – my oh my, those olives are worth the trip all by themselves.

So there I was with my 15 kilos of apples and my huge bag of produce so I had to get cooking.  All week, the kitchen has smelled of apple crisp and apple cake, and the hum of the food dryer full of apple slices has been filling this house with music.  We’ve had roasted butternut squash with sautéed Savoy cabbage, flavored with Asian spices and served over soba noodles; butternut squash pancakes flavored with chili and Rosemary thanks to Jamie Oliver’s Jamie magazine and the delicious recipes found within…

…and then we’ve had salad.  Like this one.

I needed a salad fit to put the full flavors of that beautiful fall produce on display.  So I roasted a golden beet, shredded and apple, chopped some cabbage, and alongside of a small stack of butternut squash pancakes, served a salad fit for the Harvest season.

Apple, Golden Beet & Savoy Cabbage Salad served with Butternut Squash Pancakes – delish!

Apple, Golden Beet and Savoy Cabbage Salad

2 large leaves of Savoy Cabbage
1 golden beet, roasted until tender
1 large winter apple, grated on a box grater
1/2 onion, diced, rinsed under running cold water and drained
1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
2 teaspoons lemon juice
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

If you don’t already happen to have roasted beets on hand from another project, roast them first.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F.  Wash the beet to remove all dirt and cut off the long root tip.  Prick holes in a few places with a knife tip, and wrap the beet in aluminum foil.  I usually cook several beets at once as they take a long time to roast, but keep well in the fridge for a few days.  Place the foil-wrapped beets on a pan in the oven and bake until they are tender when a knife is poked through:  45 – 90 minutes (seriously!) depending on the size of your beets. Remove from the oven, cool completely, and remove skin.

Now that you have your beet ready to go, slice it into thin rounds, then stack the rounds and slice the beet again to form matchsticks.

Remove the rib from the center of each cabbage leaf, cut each leaf into quarters, stack the quarters, and cut the cabbage quarters into thin slices.

Combine the beet, cabbage, apple and onion in a small mixing bowl.  Add the olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper and mix to coat the vegetables with the dressing.  Taste; and add salt and pepper as needed to your liking.

Serves 2-4.  Easily doubled or tripled to serve more hungry people.

Sprouted & Roasted Olive Oil Almonds

If you’ve never had a sprouted almond, you are in for a treat even before you turn your oven on for this recipe.  Take dry, raw almonds, cover with twice as much water as you have almonds, and let it soak for four hours or overnight.  The almonds will go from being slightly chewy and wrinkled, and grow to almost twice their size:  moist, crisp and immensely satisfying to eat.

You can stop there, refrigerate your almonds, and snack on them until they are gone.

Or… You can add 4 cups of fresh, cold water for every cup of sprouted almonds, spin them in your blender, strain the almonds, and with a little effort, you have yourself a liter of almond milk, plus almond meat that you can sprinkle over salads, put in bread, use in muffins or as a meat substitute.  This almond milk has none of the preservatives or additives you’ll get in your liter of store-bought almond milk, and you’ll be patting yourself on the back about how easy it is.  It’s a revelation.  And so delicious.

But then, you can take these almonds one step further, and you really should.  The thing is: when you combine plump, crisp sprouted almonds with a little olive oil, a little salt and a hot oven, you arrive at a flavor that is unbelievable addictive.

When I first made these, using local Sicilian olive oil and almonds,  at a Yoga & Food Retreat near Scopello, Sicily this summer, one of the yogis asked: “what kind of magic did you use on these?”, as the entire bowl disappeared into mouths around the table.

These are perfect as an appetizer, a little snack, sprinkled over morning oatmeal, or yogurt, or on top of salad.  You won’t be able to keep a batch around for long because nobody can keep their hands off of them, but it doesn’t matter.  They are so easy to make that you can just get another batch rolling and your back in business in no time.

Up close & personal

Sprouted & Roasted Olive Oil Almonds

1 cup of raw almonds
2 cups of water
1-2 teaspoons of olive oil
1/2 teaspoon course sea salt

Soak the raw almonds in the water for 4 hours or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F.

Drain the water and return the almonds to a bowl.  Add the olive oil and salt and toss to combine.  Spread the almonds in an even layer across a parchment covered baking pan.  Bake 15-20 minutes until the almonds are fragrant and roasted.  You can pull one out and cut it in half to check:  you want the internal color to be a light golden brown and the outside to have darkened slightly.  Allow the almonds to cool for 5 minutes or so before serving as they’ll be crisper when cooled.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

Option:  add minced fresh rosemary into the mix – the fragrance and flavor are lovely.

Makes 1 heaping cup/ 250ml.

Forest Lamb Mushroom Chili / Lampaankääpa-chilikeitto with Cornbread

A discussion around what exactly is “real chili” can turn quickly into a heated debate among those who take their chili seriously.  The recipe I’m about to give you may raise the eyebrows of those in the strictly beef and/or bean crowd since the main source of protein here comes from mushrooms, but please read on.

At first I was afraid this may be a recipe designed just for Finns, as the first name in English name I came across for Lampaankääpä, “terrestrial polypore fungus” doesn’t sound very appetizing, and, according to Wikipedia’s entry for Albatrellus ovinus, it’s “edible and sold commercially in Finland”, but doesn’t mention any other locations.  I began to wonder: anybody out there not from Finland and still picking and enjoying this fine mushroom?

Fortunately, further research yielded both a more appealing English name:  Forest Lamb Mushroom.  Now that makes a lot more sense, and gives nod to the Finnish name using the Finnish word for sheep “Lammas”as well as the Latin “ovinus” from “ovis” meaning sheep.

And if this all getting too detailed for you, bear with me here, check out the video above (in Finnish) and know that this fine mushroom, with a distant resemblance to the back of a white, fluffy, woolly sheep, , is not only delicious and versatile, it’s extremely easy to recognize, grows across Europe and North America, and we are having a bumper crop here in Finland this year.  A weekend visit to Sipoonkorpi, the national park area east of Helsinki, yielded far more of these than I cared to bring home; I packed several kilos worth in my basket and left the rest for other mushroom hunters sure to come along behind me.

A note to all of you mushroom hunters around the world who are reading this and wondering if you should bother, give it a try!  Every site I came across mentioned that it’s eaten in Finland.  The reference was so unusually specific that I am still wondering if any other nationality has embraced it as edible.  Let me know!

Forest Lamb Mushroom, Lampaankääpä, Albatrellus ovinus

This is a firm, clean mushroom.  They have a smooth, white to light brown top, dry to the touch, with dips and curves.  They stand close to the ground on a very short step, quite often overlapping with each other.  The underside has very fine, dense, pure white spores. When you find them, as always, check for worms while you are in the forest and leave the infested parts behind.  While usually pure white when you pick them, these mushrooms turn yellow when cooked.  Once home, you can fry them up in a pan like you would beef patties; rinse under water, dip in flour, then egg, then a flour mixture seasoned with parmesan, salt, pepper and oregano and fry in butter, or, you can use them as a meat replacement in chili.

What?!?  Chili?  Well…I’ve been wanting something with a warm, spicy kick to go along with the cooling weather.  I’m a big fan of chili, find myself consuming less & less meat these days, and didn’t have any beans in the house.  I was staring at the big pile of Forest Lamb Mushroom aka Lampaankääpä in my refrigerator and I realized that it would serve as a fine substitute for meat.

You could add beans to this as well, and I may do that next time.  There is a long-standing argument among chili aficionados as to whether “real” chili contains beans at all or meat at all.  There are strong advocates in both the beef only camp and the beans only camp, and a long line of people who combine the two as well as advocates of White Chili made with chicken and white beans.  Some wonder about the use of tomatoes, saying it has no place there, while others wouldn’t dream of making chili without it.  The bottom line, I would say, is that the best thing you can do with a pot of chili is make it your own.  If you love beans, toss them in.  If you have a sweet pepper/paprika that needs a home, dice it and toss it in.  Would you like to add corn?  Great idea.  And so the story goes.  In fact, if I’d been facing down a plate of porcini/herkkutatti, they would have found a welcome place in this chili as well.  But given the abundance of Lampaankääpä in every forest I’ve walked in during the last couple of weeks, I suggest you start your Mushroom Chili adventure with this.  Enjoy!

To serve with it, I highly recommend you make this cornbread.  Get your chili simmering in the pot, mix together your cornbread and get that in the oven, and you’ll be sitting at a table, surrounded by a mouth-watering, fragrant meal, in about 40 minutes.

Forest Lamb Mushroom Chili / Lampaankääpä-chilikeitto with Cornbread

A few notes before you begin:

• You can substitute other, meaty mushrooms for the Forest Sheep Mushroom:  Chantarelles (Kantarelli), Hedgehogs (Vaaleaorakas), Porcini (Herkkutatti) and Portobello would all work here.
• Adjust the amount of chili to your liking.  I like it spicy, so I used 1.5 teaspoons of cayenne.
• If you have a can or box of pre-cooked kidney beans, black beans, or white beans, by all means add them.  Next time I make this, I will definitely include beans.
• Other vegetables I’d suggest here are zucchini (kesäkurpitsa) and cauliflower (kukkakaali).

Forest Lamb Mushroom Chili / Lampaankääpä-chilikeitto

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
400g / 1 pound Forest Lamb Mushroom / Lampaankääpä, diced
1 large onion, diced small
1 stalk celery, diced
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons salt
1 – 1.5 teaspoons ground cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
650 g / two cans tomato sauce

Heat the vegetable oil of your choice in a heavy-bottomed pot (don’t use unlined cast-iron as it will react with the tomatoes).  Add the mushrooms, onion, celery and carrots and cook at medium low heat for 5 minutes, until the onions are soft and translucent.  Add the remaining ingredients and stir well to combine.  Increase the temperature and bring the mixture to a boil.  Reduce the heat to low, and cover the pot.  Allow the chili to simmer for 30 minutes.  Serve; with shredded cheese if desired.

Serves 4-6.  Reheats and freezes well.  Serve with Fresh Cornbread