Golden Cherry Tomato, Spring Onion, Rucola and Bacon Fettucine

It’s official:  Spring has arrived.  Yes, I know that the Vernal Equinox happened weeks ago, but the calendar date has nothing to do with Spring in this part of the world.  But finally.

Finally – the snow has given way to the rain and crocuses and daffodils are popping there bright heads up to brighten an otherwise gray landscape.  Finally – the ice has given up its grip on the sea, and the waves are once again lapping up against the shoreline.  Finally – the temperatures are consistently on the plus side of things, and I’ve ditched all of my winter jackets, gloves, hats and sweaters to storage to make way for a new season of lighter, brighter outfits.

Spring flowers in Rauma

The days are getting longer, yes, and that means the food options are slowly beginning to increase:  Spring onions have found their way to grocery store shelves.  Cherry tomatoes, tasteless through the winter, are now coming back into full flavor, slowly but surely.  I saw the first market stand yesterday in the railway station – selling fresh strawberries from Italy and fresh peas from Spain, and though I have no intention of buying either at the moment, I couldn’t help but smile at another symbol that Winter has passed.

You’d think we’d have more time to cook as the days get longer – but no.  Our lives are busier than ever, and between work and working out, spending time with friends & family and keeping up with our hobbies, food often gets shifted into a tiny place in time where we want something amazing to eat, but our cupboards are as empty as our minds at the end of a long day, and we stumble home, hoping for a way to get something quick and easy on the table.

Daffodils spanning the river in Turku – before the ice met its demise

This is a dinner for just such a night.  Easy to make.  Looks like Spring on a plate.

Here’s how:  Stop by your local grocer.  Grab a package of fresh fettucine, a container of golden cherry tomatoes, a bundle of green onions, a bunch of rucola and a small package of bacon.  If you don’t have these staples already:  add garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper to your cart.

Drop your bags by the front door, kick your shoes off, wash your hands and get a pot of water boiling for the pasta.  Heat a frying pan over medium heat and as it warms up, begin.  This ought to take about 10-15 minutes from start to finish, depending on how fast you can chop.  Recipe is easily doubled if you are serving more guests.

Golden Cherry Tomato, Spring Onion, Bacon and Rucola Fettucine

300g fresh Fettucine
6 tablespoons olive oil

3 spring onions, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
3 slices bacon, chopped into 1/2″ pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional:  use Lemon Maldon Salt)
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 oz of fresh parmesan, grated
2 small handfuls of rucola, washed and dried

1.  Bring a pot of water to boil.

2.  Heat a frying pan over medium heat.  Pour in the olive oil and allow the oil to heat for about 30 seconds.  Add the spring onions, garlic, and bacon.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the garlic and onions are tender and the bacon is cooked through, about 2 minutes.

3.  While the onion mixture cooks, give your cherry tomatoes a quick rinse and cut each one in half.  Add these to the pan and give it a quick stir. Add the salt and pepper and stir briefly to combine.

4. Once the tomatoes are in the pan, put the fettucine into the boiling water and set the timer for 5 minutes.  When the timer beeps, quickly drain the water from the pasta and remove the frying pan with the onion mixture from the heat.

5.  Pour the pasta into the frying pan and toss with a spoon to combine all ingredients.  Sprinkle the parmesan cheese over the mixture and toss again.  Divide the pasta onto two places and top each with a small handful of rucola.  Serve.

Serves 2 hungry people generously.

Honey Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Raisin Cookies and Milk

Some days there is no better idea than to rise with the sun and start a batch of cookies almost immediately.  Today was one of those days.  I was up at 4:45 and raring to go, with a quiet house and an idea:   Honey Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Raisin Cookies.

Now I won’t deny that I may have had one of those cookies somewhere around breakfast time, but before you judge, stand back a little and consider that these have nearly all of the components of your morning granola, only I’ve swapped the nuts for chocolate and the olive oil for butter.  I replaced all of the sugar with honey purchased locally and now I am anticipating dipping one of those gorgeous cookies into a glass of milk, because that’s just how things ought to be done, for the kid within us.

Chocolate Chunks.  Red, Yellow, Black Raisins.  Oatmeal.  Honey.  Oh my.

When I was a kid, we’d buy peanut butter in gallon-sized jars.  The jars, once empty, were perfect for storing an admirable quantity of cookies – usually chocolate chip.  I never liked raisins when I was young, and in that way I’ve not really grown up as I’d still generally prefer to skip them.   So though I liked the flavor of oatmeal cookies, I always felt compelled to pick out the raisins, which kind ruined the cookie, so they weren’t the ones I reached for.

And then one fine day at a cafe somewhere in Europe, there were Oatmeal Cookies with Chocolate Chunks and Raisins.  They looked delicious:  crisp around the edges, soft in the middle.  When I bit into one the chocolate sort of oozed into my mouth and then there was the chewy texture of the oatmeal and the raisin that had me grinning in gleeful surprise.

Maybe I’m thinking of cookies.  I’m definitely happy to be outside in the sun!

I’ve been itching to remake them ever since, but somehow years have gone by, and it wasn’t until I bought a jar of local honey this weekend during a Slow Food field trip to Kristinestad, Finland that they came to my mind again.

One of the two churches in this town of 7000 people

Kristinestad is a long haul from Helsinki – we rode a train for 3.5 hours to Seinäjoki, through the frozen, sunlit countryside, and then hopped in a taxi for a slightly bumpy 1.5 hour ride.  The honey was a surprise purchase from the taxi driver,  whose son & daughter-in-law are beekeepers.  We had plenty of time to discover this by the time we arrived in Kristenstad, a Swedish-speaking town formerly a shipping hub for transporting goods to and from Finland to places all over Europe, and now the supplier of most of Finland’s potatoes.

House owned by a ship captain.  Ship captains were among the elite and most wealthy during the boom.

Since it is currently still cold and snowy all over the country, we didn’t see many potatoes other than those that accompanied the dinner on the first night and lunch the following day.  I was hoping to meet producers in K-town – the people who actually grow the potatoes and crayfish, make the sausages & bread, etc, but unfortunately, not this time.  So I was extremely thrilled with my two jars of honey.

The town’s beautiful old wooden buildings and quaint feel have been well preserved.

Back to the cookies.  I decided today was the day to create the recipe for them.  I’ve read a lot about using alternatives to white sugar and white flour when cooking and baking.  White flour is something that has been easy to replace – in this recipe I used whole-grain spelt flour.  Sugar, on the other hand, is a bit of a mystery as I’m not always certain how a recipe will behave when a sugar alternative is used.  I had purchased two kinds of honey in Kristinestad:  one was the runny type and the other was the nearly solid form.  I decided to take the gamble that the latter would be a reasonable substitute for sugar, and to my great pleasure, the cookies turned out to be as delicious as hoped for.

These cookies will freeze well and I can imagine them as part of a phenomenal ice cream sandwich, with a reasonable sized slab of high-quality vanilla ice cream nestled between the layers.   Mmmmm.  Summer is coming.

Honey Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Raisin Cookies and Milk

But for now, I’m sticking with a glass of milk for dunking a few, and freezing the rest to eat over Easter weekend.   Seriously.  So good.  Maybe not really a replacement for my morning granola, but certainly coming with me on the next hike.

Enjoy!

Honey Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Raisin Cookies

Preheat oven to 350°F / 175°C.

1.  Prepare the following items first in separate small bowls:
3.5 cups old fashioned oats / 7 dl Iso Kaura Hiutaleetä
1 cup / 2 dl mixed golden, red and black raisins, chopped
300 g / 12 oz milk chocolate bar, roughly chopped

2.  In a small bowl combine with a fork:
1 + 3/4 cup / 3.5 dl whole-grain spelt flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt

3.  In the bowl of a stand mixer or in a large bowl if you are using a hand mixer put:
16 oz (2 cups) / 230g butter, softened
1 cup / 2 dl firm honey

Beat the butter and honey together until well combined and the mixture looks light and fluffy.  Add:
2 eggs 
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

Beat again until eggs and vanilla are fully incorporated.  Add 1/3 of the flour mixture at a time until the it is fully incorporated.  Pour in the raisins, chocolate and oats and mix with until just combined.  I usually remove the mixing bowl from the mixer at this point and mix by hand with a spatula.

Place spoonfuls of the dough onto a parchment covered baking sheet, leaving room for them to spread. Bake 9-12 minutes until crisp around the edges and soft in the middle.  Remove from oven and allow them to rest for 5 minutes on the pan to firm up a bit.  Transfer to a wire rack and let them cool completely.

Makes about 48 cookies.

Now there’s a snack for you:  Preserved Lemon Hummus and Fresh Veggies

I’m sending you all off for the weekend with a short post.  The days here are so gloriously sunny that it’s hard to stay inside long enough to cook much, but the truth is that you don’t need to spend hours in order to make something awesome.   So I whipped up some hummus yesterday afternoon, and then grabbed my skis and hit the trail.  Good stuff.

I’ve written about hummus before in this post about Homemade Tahini.

Hummus is one of the most satisfying snacks I’ve ever had – great with cut up fresh vegetables, excellent spread on a sandwich with a big stack of lettuce, tomato and alfalfa sprouts, and a great dip for rye crisps or pitas if you want to serve it as part of the appetizer table.  This stuff is good.  And easy.  And oh by the way – good for you!  High in protein, low in fat, and destined for vegetables – what more could you ask for?

I have made it many different ways, but this time I added a twist by using up some Preserved Lemons and some of their liquid.  You may remember I pointed you toward Eating from the Ground Up and her  recipe for Preserved Lemons – nothing’s changed there – it’s still the one I use, though I typically double the amount of cardamom in the recipe.  It’s so good.

To use the preserved lemons for this recipe, take 2 lemon quarters and rinse them thoroughly to remove some of the salt.  Don’t discard the lemon pulp this time, though – toss that into the hummus with the rest of the recipe.  I also made this batch of hummus light on garlic, using just two cloves.  I like garlic to sit in the background when I am eating hummus.  I don’t want it overpowering the rest of the flavors and then have it continue to make itself known for hours afterward.  If you like a stronger garlic flavor, taste this, and then add a few cloves if necessary.

Preserved Lemon Hummus with Rye Crisps and Cucumber

I always soak and cook my own chickpeas for making hummus:  soak them overnight in a generous amount of water at room temperature, and then cook them for one hour in fresh water until they are tender.  Cool before beginning this recipe.   If you’d rather, you can use canned.  Just remember to reserve one cup of the liquid when you drain the chickpeas.

Lastly, add salt only at the very end.  The lemons you are using are preserved with salt, so you can adjust the salt needs at the end to suit your taste.

No Preserved Lemons?  If you don’t have preserved lemons, you can still follow this recipe to make hummus.  You’ll want to add an additional 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice and you’ll need about 1 teaspoon of salt – but add the salt slowly and taste as you go to suit your personal preferences.

Preserved Lemon Hummus

3 cups cooked chickpeas, or the equivalent of canned chickpeas
1 cup of cooking water, reserved
1/4 cup Tahini
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 preserved lemon quarters, rinsed and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons of the liquid from the preserved lemons jar
Juice of 1/2 lemon, about 2 tablespoons
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

Place all ingredients except the cooking water into a food processor.  Process the mixture until completely smooth.  If the mixture starts to look stiff and won’t mix well, add some of the cooking water.  Start with a half cup, and then add small amounts from there until you get the consistency you want.  I like the hummus to be fairly fluid while I am processing it as it makes it easier to dip and spread.

Stop the food processor.  Taste the hummus.  Add additional salt to taste, if needed.

You’re done!  Enjoy.

Makes about 3 cups.