I suppose it may be a little strange to think of eating duck meat when there are flocks of ducks heading back north as the winter snows melt away, rather than in the fall as they are flying south to escape the cold, incoming arctic winds, but there was a nice plump package of duck meat waiting in my refrigerator last week, and a new recipe book begging to be tested.

I have learned while living in Finland that I love foraging.  Heading out into the woods with a pail in one hand and either a mushroom knife or a berry fork in the other hand, is one of my great joys for 4 glorious months out of each year in Finland.  From July through October, the forests are packed full with all kinds of good things ripe for the picking.  So when I discovered that I can actually start this self-indulgent hobby a few months earlier, you can imagine the smile on my face.  May hasn’t arrived yet, but my plans have:  I’ll be foraging for nettles and fir tips and who knows what else out there, and making them into food for our table.

That I discovered these things in California forager Connie Green’s book The Wild Table seems fitting to me.  Connie writes about year-round foraging in California and creating wonderful meals out of seasonal foraged food.  With the help and sure hand of Chef Sarah Scott, the book is full of tips for the amateur forager like me, or for food lovers who are simply curious.

Browsing through the pages I found a recipe for duck using juniper berries and maple syrup, I knew I needed to experiment. As Connie says, you’ve probably never had a meal flavored with the essential flavors of two trees before!  Correction.  Make that three.  Orange features heavily here as well!

I had a jar of dried juniper berries in my cupboard, and there is always a bottle of Vermont’s finest in my fridge, so all I need to do is let the duck sit in brine for 48 hours before roasting it up with root vegetables for Sunday dinner.  Oh people, get yourself a duck and try this.  It’s too good to be missed!  Buy Connie’s book – you’ll be glad you did – especially those of you on the west coast who are lucky to have all the wild ingredients she talks about available in the woods not too far from your front door.

You can get Juniper berries in the spice section of nearly all grocery stores I’ve been in.  You may actually have some in your yard if you live on the West Coast of the US:  many times I’ve seen a huge and unruly juniper tree shrub nestled up against the front porch of a split-level home – and of course out in the woods – their natural habitat.  If you can’t find Juniper, I might try fresh rosemary or some fresh pine or fir tips.

Juniper and Maple-glazed Duck
adapted very slightly from The Wild Table by Connie Green

One note:  Since I was serving two people, I bought 2 duck breasts instead, weighing 700g (1.5 lb) total, and then cut the recipe by a third and it worked beautifully.  I did make the full quantity of the syrup and there wasn’t much of it left as a lot drips off during the glazing process into the oven pan, so I’d at least double it if I were roasting a whole duck.

For the brine:

One 4-5 pound duck
1/4 cup sugar
3 dried bay leaves, crushed
1 tablespoon fresh, frozen, or dried juniper berries, crushed
Zest of 2 oranges
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
3 garlic cloves, crushed
4 fresh thyme sprigs, chopped coarsely (I used dried thyme and it worked well too)
6 quarts of water (or enough to cover the duck completely).

Rinse and pat dry the duck.

Place the remaining brine ingredients except for the water into a container large enough to hold the duck.  Heat one quart of water to boiling and pour it over the dry ingredients.  Stir until the sugar and salt are dissolved.  Stir in the remaining water (I actually recommend stirring in 3 quarts of the remaining water, letting it cool, and then seeing if you need the rest to actually cover the duck).  Let the water cool to room temperature.  Submerge the duck in the brine and refrigerate overnight or up to 48 hours.

One hour before cooking, remove the duck from the brine and drain it in a colander or on a rack placed inside a baking sheet.  Pat the duck very dry before roasting.

For the glaze:

1 tablespoon dried juniper berries, roasted until fragrant (2-3 min) and crushed
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons soy sauce
Finely grated zest from one orange

Position rack in the center of the oven.  Preheat the oven to 450°F/230°C.

Place the juniper berries on a baking sheet and toast them in the oven for 3-4 minutes, being careful not to burn them.  They will be fragrant when ready, but become bitter if burned.  Let them cool slightly, and then crush them in a mortar or with the back of a heavy spoon.

Combine the remaining glaze ingredients in a small sauce pot and add the juniper berries.  Bring to a boil, and reduce heat to medium-high so that the mixture is at a vigorous simmer, for 2-3 minutes until the glaze is slightly thickened.  Remove from heat and let sit for 5 more minutes to let the juniper berries infuse, and then pour the syrup through a fine mesh sieve to strain out the chunks of juniper berry juice.  Return the glaze to the pot and keep warm while you roast the duck.  Set aside 1/3 for serving.  Use the rest for glazing the duck during the roasting process as follows.

For the duck:

Line a roasting pan with aluminum foil and place a wire rack inside.  If using a whole duck, truss the duck, pat very dry, and place on the rack.  If using duck breasts, pat them very dry and place them skin side up on the rack.  Cook for 30 minutes.

Remove the duck from the oven and turn down the heat to 350°F.  Carefully pour of the excess fat from the pan (I didn’t, but I’ve heard that duck fat is delicious and healthy, so if you do this, reserve the duck fat for something else.).

Prick the skin of the duck all over with a fork.  Brush with one-third of the remaining glaze and return the duck to the oven.  Cook for 15 minutes.  Baste with another third of the glaze.  Cook for 15 more minutes and baste with there remainder of the glaze.  Cook for 30 minutes (you’ll need less time for the duck breasts – test the temperature in the thickest section of the duck breast at this point).  Cook until the internal temperature of the duck is 175° – 180°F.

Hold in a warm place to rest for at least 10 minutes.  Serve the reserved glaze along with the duck.

Rosemary-scented Roasted Root Vegetables

2 large orange carrots
2 large yellow carrots
1/2 rutabaga
1/2 celery root
2 parsnips
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 large rosemary branches, chopped
salt & pepper to taste

Wash and peel the root vegetables and cut them into sticks.  Toss with the olive oil, salt and pepper and place into an oven-safe dish, preferably with a lid.  If you don’t have a lid, cover the dish tightly with oil.  Bake in a 400°F/200°C oven for 30 minutes.  Remove from oven and allow to rest with the foil tightly on while roast the duck.

Once the duck is roasted and resting, turn the oven temperature back up to 400°F/200°C.  Remove the lid or foil and return the vegetables to the oven.  Cook for 10 minutes and remove from oven.

Serve the duck with oranges slices, roasted vegetables and the reserved glaze.

Spinach Pancakes with Lingonberry Syrup, Quark and Pear

Pancakes go by many different names around the world.  A tall or short stack (your choice!) can be found at any truck stop in America, topped with a  generous dollop of creamed butter and saturated with a heavy dose of maple syrup.  If you are lucky, you’ll get the real thing:  Pure Maple Syrup from Vermont.  If you are less lucky, or if you taste buds are inclined in a slightly less (ahem) refined direction, you may be pouring amber colored Aunt Jemima’s or Old Fashioned Log Cabin syrup from your jug or pitcher over your fluffy stack of buttermilk, buckwheat, blueberry or sourdough pancakes.  If you are blessed with a few days in Maui, you’ll be looking at toasted macadamia nuts and sliced bananas dressing your pancakes which you can then pour coconut syrup over, or introduce east to west and follow the tropical topping with Vermont’s finest.

Around Europe, I have encountered pancakes in two forms, neither of which are really very similar to the American style I ate for breakfast at home:  lettu (Finnish) or crepe (French) are essentially the same thing, though varied in the way they are cooked and presented. The Finns tend to prefer their lettus as far from the city as possible, frying them up over the campfire at their cabins and and out in the woods somewhere, fried in butter and topped with strawberry jam.  The French crepes I enjoyed were typically ordered at the window of a small outside kiosk, where the crepe was made to order, the batter spread thin and carefully with a long, flat blade, topped with nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread) and bananas, carefully folded, wrapped in paper, and handed to me, steaming hot to enjoy while standing up.  Both are delicious.

The other form is a pancake cooked in the oven:  the Finnish pannukakku, German pfannkuchen, the Dutch pannekoeken – a batter of milk, eggs and flour is poured into a pan in which butter has been melted, and is baked in the oven until it poofs up mightily.  It is removed and served, preferably hot with your choice of jam or berries (typically strawberries, and freshly whipped cream.  This version is not so bad either.

Prep the ingredients

And then there is one more – to me the most surprising of the lot.  The Finnish like something they call Pinatti Ohukaiset – Spinach pancakes.  The first time I had them is also the only time they were served with a white sauce flavored with egg.  Everytime afterward, I have had them served with puolukka hillo (lingonberry jam) which is very similar in flavor to the cranberry sauce my mother served with the Thanksgiving turkey when I was a kid, though the flavor is slightly more mild.  Spinach pancakes can be purchased from the grocery stores in Finland in long, skinny packages containing 20 or so of the pre-fried pancakes in the microwave.  They are typically made with milk, flour, eggs, a little oil, sugar, salt and pepper.  They are delicious made at home and eaten fresh and hot from the pan.

They can also be made, as I discovered last weekend, using no milk at all, but by replacing the milk with sourdough starter, the sugar with honey, and omitting the black pepper.  The added baking soda helps them puff up a little in the pan.  I served mine with lingonberry syrup, rahka (quark) a fresh pear, and some frozen lingonberries tossed over for a delicious supper.  If you can’t find quark, greek yogurt makes a wonderful substitute.

Sourdough Spinach Pancakes

2 cups sourdough starter
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons liquid honey
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
150 g of spinach (can be frozen spinach that you’ve thawed, or freshly steamed spinach, cooled and chopped fine)

Combine and set aside:
1 tablespoon warm water
1 teaspoon baking soda

Mix all ingredients except water and baking soda together thoroughly in a large bowl until the texture of the batter is smooth and the spinach is incorporated evenly throughout.  Add the baking soda-water mixture and gently stir to incorporate – do not beat.  Allow the batter to fizz and rise for 2 minutes.

Fry them up!

Heat a frying pan, preferably cast iron, over medium heat.  Melt a small amount of butter in the pan and pour one scant tablespoons of batter in the pan to form small pancakes.  You will be able to fit four pancakes at a time in the average sized frying pan.  Cook until the surface of the pancake is covered with bubbles – 1-2 minutes, and then flip over using a spatula.  Cook another 1-2 minutes, and then remove the finished pancakes from the pan and place on an oven-proof plate in the warm oven.  Repeat until all pancakes have been cooked.

Lingonberry Syrup
you will want to make this before you make the pancakes as it takes more time.  

2 cups of fresh or frozen lingonberries (you may use cranberries instead)
water, enough to cover the lingonberries
2/3 – 1 cup of sugar (depending on how sweet you like your syrup

Put the lingonberries in a pot and pour in enough water to just cover them.  Bring the mixture to a rolling boil; reduce the heat to medium, and allow to bubble for five minutes.  Smash the lingonberries with the side of a fork, wooden spoon or a potato masher  – this doesn’t need to be done perfectly – you just want to break down the berries somewhat.  Boil for another 5 minutes.  Remove from heat. 

Strain the mixture through a sieve, catching all the berry pulp and reserving the juice.  Discard the berry pulp and return the juice to the pot.  Add the sugar, bring the mixture to a boil.  Stirring occasionally, boil the mixture, uncovered, for 15 minutes.  Remove from heat.

Makes 2 cups.

To serve:

Hyvää Ruokahalua – Bon Appetit!

Finished pancakes
2 pears, halved and cored
1/2 cup fresh or frozen lingonberries
1 cup quark or greek yogurt
Lingonberry syrup

Stack the pancakes seven or eight high on a plate.  Place a pear half next to each pancake stack, put a generous scoop of quark or greek yogurt next to the pear, and fill the cavity of the pear with fresh or frozen lingonberries.  Sprinkle lingonberries around the plate.  Pour warm lingonberry syrup over the top of the pancakes, and serve.  Put extra lingonberry syrup in a small pitcher on the table so that you can add additionally syrup as you go.

Serves 4.

For Traditional  Finnish Spinach Pancakes:
modified from Yhteishyvä Ruokamaailma, August 2009.

2 cups of milk
2 eggs
1 – 1/4 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
150 g of cooked, finely diced spinach

Whisk all of the ingredients together in a large bowl and allow to rest for 30 minutes.  Heat a frying pan over medium heat.  Once the pan is hot, melt about a teaspoon of butter in it, spread the butter evenly across the pan, and pour a scant 1 tablespoon of batter for each pancake.   Cook until bubbles form across the surface of the pancake, and then flip the pancake over to cook the other side until both sides are goldn brown.  You can fry about 4 small pancakes in the average size pan.  Repeat until all the spinach pancakes are fried.  

Topping:
2 boiled eggs
1 tin of anchovies
1/2 cup of creme fraiche
chives to garnish

Mash the eggs with a fork until they are the size of large bread crumbs.  Drain the anchovies and cut into small pieces, removing any bones.  Top each serving of spinach pancakes with a generous spoonful of the topping and sprinkle with chives.  

Serves 4 – 6 (about 24 small pancakes)

Now that is a good directive!  Yes, please.

Today I read an article on Mashable.com titled Plastic-Eating Fungi Found in the Amazon May Solve the World’s Waste Problem.  

“A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest that can degrade and utilize the common plastic polyurethane (PUR).”


This is good news for us, who live in a world where PUR is one of the largest forms of waste – filling our ditches and our oceans, our beaches and our forests with waste.  But the bigger problem still lies at the source of PUR:  You and I as consumers and the companies from whom we buy our goods who tend to prefer plastic products or products wrapped in plastic over other methods.  Even products that arguably don’t benefit the user in any way by being wrapped in plastic:  individually wrapped bell peppers (paprika for some of you), parsnips, plastic tubs for tomatoes, styrofoam (plastic) wrapped packages of beans, apples individually wrapped in styrofoam netting…this is just the beginning of the waste.  Even my flowers often come tucked in plastic.  Or how about any electronic item you’ve ever received – I sometimes wonder how long it takes the assembly line workers at the electronics manufacturers in Asia to wrap the cables and metal ends and boxes in plastic, and shrink wrap and cardboard and more shrink wrap.  Why?  Some manufacturers are moving away from plastic and using recyclable cardboard instead, and I commend this.

I wait all winter for these happy buds to bloom!

When summer comes and I do a happy dance because it means I can shop at the market.  There I see towering piles of fruits and vegetables – which are not wrapped in plastic – in fact, they are usually arranged in reusable wooden or cardboard boxes.  And when I buy them, I receive them in paper, not plastic bags, which I can then recycle.  Yes, some plastic can be recycled.  But the rules in so many parts of the world are complicated, and not all plastic is created equal.

In the beginning of summer

But we don’t have to wait for summer.  If you are buying a nice, long leek (purjo) in the winter, does in really benefit you to stick one end in the plastic bag, slap the label you’ve just printed on to the bag, and have the other end sticking out?  Or put bags around all of the other produce you buy?  Or opt for plastic at all when you are at the grocery store – there is usually a paper option.

And many stores around the world have started to make us pay for the bags we use at the checkout to pack our groceries in if we don’t bring our own.  I’m plenty guilty of reaching for another plastic bag, and the 25 cent fee for it doesn’t slow me down at all.

So yes, it’s great news that there is fungi out there growing in the Amazon that may help us get rid of the plastic that already exists.  And though this blog isn’t designed so that I can stand on a soap box and tell you to change your ways, I can’t help but note the irony of such a discovery by the same humans who caused the trouble in the first place.

With that, I bring you my recipe for today:  Spring is arriving slowly in Finland, as these spring onions attest.  Let the (plastic free) celebration begin!  And I’ll get better at bringing my own bags food shopping.


Blue Cheese, Roasted Tomato, Spring Onion Quiche

Kale…and just a little plastic

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:

3 spring onions, sliced thinly into rounds

Cook until onion softens, about 3 minutes.  Then add:

1 cup oven-roasted cherry tomatoes

Just before roasting – love the ray of sunshine!

Cook 3 minutes longer to heat tomatoes thoroughly  Remove from heat.  Stir in:

1/2 cup blue cheese, chopped into small pieces

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.