Eat Simply, Eat Well

Healthy recipes & tips to help you live the good life. by Ann Plough

You know it’s cold when the weather warms up 15° and your breath still freezes

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Parked for the winter

 February in Finland is cold.  Bone-chilling cold.  When I complain that we’ve hit -23°C in Helsinki, I quickly get notes from my friends in the north reminding me to count my blessings:  it’s -32°C in Oulu, I’ll hear, or -27°C in Jyväskylä.  This is too cold for human beings.  Or at least too cold for this Seattle girl, who thinks of February as the beginning of spring, particularly when reminded by certain dear friends living on the west coast that it is possible to see small blooms appearing outside already (you know who you are!), when all I can see for miles is a frozen, snow-covered landscape.

-23°C

But today, the weather has warmed up, and it was -5°C.  Beautiful!  Sunny!  Skiing weather…and down on the shores of Uunisaari, apparently it was swimming weather as well.  At any rate, it was a balmy day by Finland’s February standards, so I went out shopping after enjoying a long girls’ chat with a good friend over a fresh munkki and a copy of coffee.  (Thanks A – it’s always good to catch up!).  I can feel the beginning of spring in the air, and the cheerful yellow tulips on my kitchen table give me hope that it’s not far away.  Spring in Helsinki doesn’t mean blooming tulips, though – it means longer, brighter, sunnier days, when the snow glints off the frozen land and sea, and sports enthusiasts get their boots on to enjoy the prime weather.  It’s a beauty all its own.

Wandering through the small boutiques in Eira, stopping for coffee and quiche at Cafe Succes (that’s not a misspelling btw), in and out of organic food shops and my favorite chocolate Chjoko, I came home with, among other things, two fresh potato rieska from Eat & Joy Maatilantori’s shop in the Kluuvikeskus, baked this morning in their brick ovens, and as beautiful as could be.

Prepped.
Rosemary Garlic Olive Oil

After all that wandering, I was definitely hungry, but not in the mood for starting from scratch. Using the rieska as a base, I took advantage of the fresh winter pears and pulled together a quick meal for a lazy Saturday night.  It took longer to warm the oven to 250°C than it did to put the rest of this together, so this one will be returning to our table in near future.  Easy.  Delicious.  It disappeared quickly. Nothing left but a drip of olive oil as evidence…

You could almost eat it raw…

Rieska isn’t available outside of Finland, though you can make it yourself.  If you don’t feel like doing that, a soft flour tortilla could work, or else some thin flat bread or use the same topping on a pizza dough.

Potato Rieska / Perunarieska 
If you can’t buy your own, or are feeling ambitious – they are actually pretty easy to make.  From Parasta Kotiruokaa  by Aura Liimatainen.  For another recipe and pictures, check out Scandic Foodie‘s recipe.

Nothing beats fresh rieska baked in a stone oven, but if you heat your home oven to it’s maximum heat, you can still get pretty decent results.  


2 1/2 dl or 1 1/4 cup mashed potatoes, cooled
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 dl / 1/2 cup wheat flour
1 1/2 dl barley (ohra) flour or 3/4 cup (you can use all wheat flour if you don’t have barley flour)

Heat your oven to at least 250°C/500°F.

In a bowl, mix together all ingredients until the come together to form a smooth dough.  Divide the dough into two parts, and on a large pan covered in parchment paper, using hands covered in flour, form the dough into oval shaped rounds about 1/2″ thick.

Bake in the oven for 15 – 18 minutes until golden brown.  Remove from oven and cool.

Makes 2 large rieska.

Pear, Blue Cheese, Red Onion and Rosemary Rieska Pizza

Preheat oven to 250°C / 500° F.

In a small bowl combine:
1/4 cup or 1/2 dl olive oil
2 Tablespoons chopped rosemary
1 garlic clove, minced


Heat in the microwave for one minute, and set aside.


To assemble the Rieska Pizza:
1 large Rieska
1 pear, sliced, then each slice cut into quarters
1/4 red onion, thinly sliced
1/3 cup or 3/4 dl blue cheese, crumbled

Serves 2.



Place the rieska on a pizza stone, or place on a parchment paper.  Brush the olive oil mixture over the top of the rieska.  Top with the pear, red onion and then blue cheese sprinkled over the top.  Toss a few fresh rosemary leaves over the top and place in the oven.  (the parchment paper can be placed directly onto the wire oven rack.  Bake 8-10 minutes or until slightly golden brown.  Serve immediately.

Karjalanpiirakka & Sisu: After the war, Karelia went to Russia but the pies stayed here.

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Finns have sisu, a term that has no single word equivalent in any other language.  It is a combination of guts, perseverance, stubbornness, and courage in the face of a seemingly impossible situation.

The Winter War between Finland and Russia, which ended with a  War Treaty in 1940, demonstrated this clearly.  The Russians had ten times the soldiers, thirty times the aircraft and a hundred times as many tanks.  But, Stalin’s great Russian army lacked experienced leadership:  many of its higher-ranking officers, due to Stalin’s Great Purge in 1937, had been executed or  imprisoned – a series of events that is arguably  bad for the morale of those troops still left fighting the battle.  Finland, on the other hand, had a much smaller yet more determined army defending its rights as an independent nation, and as a result were able to hold off the Red Army of Russia much longer than anyone, including themselves, ever expected.  My guess is that it has something to do with the skiing skills all Finns begin to learn starting at age two, the adaptation to cold and uncomfortable winters, and the determination that “they could not become Russian” that gave them the necessary sisu to stand up and hold off the invaders.

As a result of the Winter War, Russia, its reputation greatly battered and suffering high losses, nevertheless gained a buffer for Leningrad.  Finland maintained independence and a enjoyed a higher appreciation and reputation internationally for standing up to the Russian Bear.

But Finland did lose something:  11% of it’s territory (Finnish Karelia) and 30% of its economic assets were given to the Russians during the signing of the War Treaty of 1940.  12% of its population, the Karelians who lived in the newly lost territory:  415,000 people, moved to other regions in Finland rather than live under Russian rule.  The government of Finland offered these migrant citizens compensations for their losses:

  • the resettlers were subsidized. Families were allocated land in proportion to their former property. Everyone evacuated from Karelia had the right to receive a homestead. City-dwellers and business-owners were given a monetary compensation. The right to homestead was extended also to other groups: veterans of war, widows and orphans of war.
  • the private owners of the land given to resettlers were monetarily compensated for the loss of real estate.
All this was very important for the Karelians – many of whom are still very bitter about their displacement and some of whom still call for the return of Karelia to Finnish hands.

From a culinary standpoint, Karelian Finns gave the rest of Finland something very important:  Karelian Pie, more commonly known all over Finland as Karjalanpiirakka.  


Kneading and Shaping
Ready to roll…
Into the oven 
Work in progress

Walk into any coffee shop anywhere in Finland, or take a look into the bakery cases of any grocery store or bakery window, and you are sure to see the beautifully shaped rye pastries, filled with rice pudding and brushed with butter, waiting to be consumed by the millions in Finland every year.  These delicious morsels come in small and large sizes, sometimes enhanced with carrot cooked into the rice pudding or barley flour replacing the rye.  They are sometimes served up with egg butter, sometimes with pickled herring or a slice of cold smoked salmon, a dollop of sour cream or creme fraiche and dill, or served up plain and delicious, exactly as they come.  You can buy them in bulk in the freezer section to bake at home, from the local church and school bazaars, and find them in nearly every home you visit.  These are at once a delicacy and a staple in Finnish life.  

Remove from oven; brush with butter; first quality control test…


They are a bit time-consuming, though not difficult, to make.  I recommend at least tripling the recipe below, as the bulk of the time goes into forming the dough and making the rice pudding, and once you have the mess started, you might as well gain maximum benefit by filling your freezer with these beautiful gems so you can enjoy them on a cold, dark winter evening.  If you have a pasta roller, use this for thin, even crust – it’ll make your life much easier.  If you don’t have one, a rolling pin works fine as well.  And if you can rope a friend into joining you to make these – it’s a great job for a team.



Karelian Pies/Karjalanpiirakka
Adapted from Nordic Bakery Cookbook by Miisa Mink and Parasta Kotiruokaa by Aura Liimatainen


Filling: Rice Pudding
250 ml/1 cup water 
150 g short-grain rice (pudding rice)
750 ml/3 cups milk
1 teaspoon sea salt

Put the water into a suitably sized pot (if you are tripling the recipe as I suggest, use a large stockpot) and bring to a boil.  Add the rice and simmer fro 5-10 minutes.  Add the milk and continue to simmer over low heat for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally so the mixture doesn’t stick to the bottom.  The mixture will be ready when you have a thickened rice pudding consistency – similar to oat porridge. Stir in the salt and set aside while you make the pastry.  (I usually make the pastry in between stirring the rice mixture, but do whatever is in your comfort zone).

Tempting…


Crust
250 g wholemeal rye flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
200 ml of water
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
plain flour, for dusting
75g unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 220°C/425°F.

Put the rye flour and salt in a mixing bowl, add oil, and gradually add 200 ml of water, mixing with a round bladed pastry knife or by hand until a dough forms (or if you have a kitchen aid, insert the flat beater attachment, mix until dough forms, and finish by hand).  Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and shape it into a long sausage roll shape.  Divide into 20 pieces for large pies and 40 pieces for small pies.  Roll each piece into a small, uniformly shaped ball.  At this point, if you have a pastry roller, you will be thrilled to see how easily you can form beautifully shaped crusts.  If you don’t, use the rolling pin to roll each ball into thin rounds.  The thinner the crust here, the better the pie as it will be nice and crispy-chewy in texture. 

Assembly
Put 2 Tablespoons of filling into the middle of each round, leaving about 2 cm/ 1/2″ around the edge.  Lift up the edge of the pastry at opposite corners to begin forming an oval, and pinch the pastry between your thumb and forefingers.  Repeat around the edge of the pie, so that the edge is standing up and encasing but not covering the filling.

Place the pies, evenly spaced, onto parchment paper-covered trays.  Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until golden brown and crispy around the edges. 

Dwindling stock…already!

While the pies are baking, melt the butter.  Remove the pies from the oven, place on a cooling rack, and brush the entire surface and edges of the pies lightly with melted butter.  Allow to cool.  


Traditionally, these are served with egg butter mixture (see below).  If you are like me and don’t like egg butter, try them with a slice of boiled egg and a fresh basil leaf or two.  Delicious!

Makes 20 large or 40 small Karelian Pies.  I prefer them small…

These freeze well.  To serve after frozen, reheat at 200°C/400°F for 10-15 minutes.

Egg Topping (traditional but optional.  I actually don’t like it)
1 egg, hardboiled
40 g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature

Smoked Salmon, Fennel & Broccoli Quiche

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Winter Warmth

 I remember the first time I cooked salmon – mostly because it was a resounding Fail.  I was in junior high school, and one of my jobs was to make dinner for my family every night.  I’d get home from school around 3:45 PM, eat a snack, and get something into the oven.  I had figured out how make a beef roast, chicken breasts, turkey drumsticks, pork chops, meatloaf, spaghetti – of course back then my default was to put the meat-of-the-day into a roasting pan add a little water, onions, salt, pepper and garlic powder – or maybe a bag of Mrs Grass’s Onion Mix, cover the whole thing tightly with foil, and put it in the oven at 425°F for 3ish hours.  This worked pretty well most of the time – or at least, I didn’t get many complaints.

Then my mom bought salmon.  We didn’t usually have salmon when I was a kid.  I’m guessing that for a large family, even in the Pacific Northwest where salmon is abundant, it was pretty expensive.  So I am pretty sure that this salmon would have been a treat for us.  That is, if I had known how to cook it.  But, having no clue whatsoever about cooking fish, I did what I always did:  the salmon went in the roasting pan.  I added a little water, salt and pepper, and some onion slices.  I covered the whole thing with foil, popped it into the 425°F oven, and went about my business (homework, house cleaning, laundry, computer games…) for about 3 hours.  I took it of the oven about the time my Mom arrived home from work.  I lifted the lid and it looked rather dried and charred and not at all appealing.  A bit like poorly done salmon jerky.  I remember the bewildered, disappointed look on my Mom’s face, but we served it up for dinner with potatoes and a salad, and I decided that I didn’t really like salmon anyhow.
Grilling salmon at the cabin
Fast forward many years later, after I’d had grilled salmon and poached salmon by people who knew the art of cooking fish well.  I too learned how to cook fish, and salmon is now one of my favorite foods to eat.  It makes an easy yet elegant dish, and allows for creative outlets in cooking as well.  When we are at the cabin, one of the favorite treats there is salmon cooked slowly in the smoke and heat of an open fire.  It is brined first, then pinned to a wooden plank with wooden pegs, set into a metal frame over the open fire, where it cooks slowly; the top layer caramelizes a bit; the aroma of the smoke melds into the tender flesh of the fish; and the end result is better than candy.  
Smoked salmon, if there is any left over after the initial fish fest immediately after the salmon is ready, is good in so many things.  On of my most recent concoctions is to throw it into a quiche for a warm dinner and a cold lunch the next day.  Putting it together is easy, and the oven does most of the work.  Serve it up with a green salad, and you’ll have a table full of smiling faces as they dig in and indulge.  The mild licorice flavor of the fennel is a nice complement for the smoked salmon.  One other note:  most quiche recipes call for using heavy cream.  I never liked the idea of fattening up a wonderful meal for no good reason, so I use 2% milk in all of my quiches.  I’ve never been sad with the result, but feel free to use heavy cream if that makes you happier!  Also, you can substitute half of the butter for with sour cream (nonfat works fine) or greek yogurt if you want to lower the fat content of the crust as well.  The result will be a slightly chewier crust, but it still tastes great!

Smoked Salmon, Fennel & Broccoli Quiche
Preheat the oven to 450°F or 225°C
Good to the last crumb.

Crust

100 g/4 Tablespoons butter, softened
1 large carrot, grated
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
Mix the in a bowl until thoroughly combined and a soft dough forms.  Press the dough into the bottom and up the sides of a 10″ pie pan.  Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.  Remove from heat and lower the oven temperature to 400°F/200°C.
Filling
Whisk together, then set aside:
4 eggs
1 cup milk
Heat a large frying pan over medium heat and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil.  Heat for 30 seconds, then add:
1/4 cup fennel, diced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
Cook until onion and fennel soften, about 5 minutes.  The add:
1 cup broccoli florets, chopped small
Cook until the broccoli turns bright green.  Remove from heat.  Stir in:
300 g (about 1 1/2 cups) smoked salmon, cut into small pieces, taking care to remove all bones
1 cup mild cheese, shredded (mozzarella or edam work well here)

Stir mixture to combine, and pour into the prepared crust.  Pour the egg mixture evenly over the top, and bake in oven for 30 minutes  or until the top puffs slightly and the quiche is a dark golden brown.  Let rest for 10 minutes.  Serve with green salad.
Serves 6-8, depending on how hungry you are.
Note:  if you are using salmon that has been grilled rather than smoked, I recommend adding 1/2 teaspoon salt to the egg mixture, as the salmon problem has a lower salt content and you’ll need the salt for balance in this recipe.