Eat Simply, Eat Well

Sweet Potato Finnish Flatbread.  Mysteriously, there are already a few missing…

I know my last post was about sweet potatoes too.  I know.  But I had a hankering for a nice, soft, warm bread today, and rieska, a Finnish flatbread, came to mind.  Rieska is an unleavened flatbread made with barley flour and/or rye flour for a very thin bread that looks similar to crisp bread but is not dried completely; or in the case of perunarieska, with white potatoes that have been cooked and then mashed (a great way to use up your leftovers) for a thicker, softer, slightly smaller flatbread.

I didn’t want white potatoes and I didn’t want the white flour that is typically added to rieska nowadays either, so I decided that it was a fine day for a Finnish flatbread makeover to make these beloved treats a little healthier.

With a sweet potato staring up at me from the countertop, waiting to be used, the choice was obvious as to what could be swapped in for the standard spud: Sweet Potato Finnish Flatbread was born.

It’s easy.  It’s fast.  You can serve it up in all the places when you would use naan, soft flour tortillas (though these are a lot thicker than your standard tortilla), or if you have made rieska before, than definitely try this recipe instead. You can use rieska to make an open face sandwich; use it as a pizza base; serve it warm with a little butter alongside a light soup or salad, or, instead of making the larger version in the photos, make small ones and cover them with different toppings for an appetizer or party food (hello again, Super Bowl fans).

Keeping with my theme of trading up ingredients for their healthier cousins, I went back to the roots of the traditional Finnish flatbread and used whole grain barley flour instead of standard white flour and
reduced the sugar to one teaspoon (some recipes call for up to 1/2 cup!!!) – the sweet potato is nice and sweet on its own, so you could probably skip that too.  I used olive oil instead of the butter only because I didn’t want to melt butter, but either option is fine.

Boil the chunks of sweet potato; drain & mash. Add egg & oil.  Dump in flour and its friends.  Stir well with spatula to combine.  Bake.  Wait briefly.  Begin piling on your toppings of choice.

Today we topped the warm Finnish flatbreads with cold smoked salmon a.k.a. gravlax; a little plain yogurt with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, and some fresh alfalfa sprouts.  Perfection.  Go crazy.  Make a big pile.  They freeze really well, and all of your friends will want seconds anyway.

Finnish flatbread topped with cold-smoked salmon, lemon yogurt and alfalfa sprouts

Sweet Potato Finnish Flatbread a.k.a. Bataattirieska

1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon coconut sugar, Indian sugar, maple syrup or liquid honey (optional)
4 dl / 1.5 cups whole grain barley flour or whole wheat flour
1.5 teaspoons salt
1.5 teaspoons baking powder

Put the sweet potato cubes into a small pot and cover them completely with water.  Bring the pot to a boil; reduce the heat to a steady simmer, and cook the sweet potatoes until they are tender when poked with a fork; 15-20 minutes. Remove from heat; drain; set aside to cool.

Heat the oven to 200°C/400°F.

In a large bowl, beat together the egg, oil, and your choice of sweetener if using. In a small bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking powder.

Mash the sweet potato until it is smooth.  Measure 2 cups / 5 dl of sweet potato mash into the bowl containing the egg and oil mixture (save any remaining sweet potato for another use).  Whisk the sweet potato – egg mixture with a fork to combine.  Add the flour mixture, and using a spatula, fold and stir the mixture until the flour is fully incorporated.  Let the dough rest 10 minutes.

Spoon the dough out into 12 equal portions onto two parchment-lined baking trays.  Sprinkle flour over the top of each mound of dough.  Using heavily floured hands, pat each dough mound out into an even circle.  Poke each circle with the tines of a fork to make holes.

Bake for 15 – 18 minutes or until nicely browned.

Makes 12 flatbreads

Roasted Sweet Potato Fries and Salsa Yogurt Dip

I know this is old news for those of you who care about (American) Football, but the Seattle Seahawks are on their way to the Super Bowl for the second time in two years.  Woohoo!  Go Seattle!  Go Hawks!

Actually, I don’t really care that much about following football or any other spectator sport for that matter; however there is something different about a big game that carries big dreams and big hopes with it.  The Super Bowl.  For professional football players, winning the Super Bowl is the culmination of years and years of dreams and practice and sacrifice and hard work to get a chance to carry, kick and throw a beautifully shaped pigskin (by the way footballs never were made of pigskin) to victory, proving to themselves that it was all worth it.

It’s no different, really, than the striving of any individual to reach the peak of their chosen endeavor – whether it be in sports, art, medicine, engineering, teaching, business – anything that someone is passionate enough about to want to do well.  In his best-selling book The Outliers Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hours it takes to become an expert.  Consider that there are 168 hours in every week, 8,736 hours in a year; 2912 of which, per doctors’ orders, we should be sleeping.  If during that remaining 5,824 hours, we are doing something other than working on the thing we are passionate about, it is perhaps safe to assume that no more than roughly 6 hours per day on average would be focused working toward the goal of being expert in our chosen subject, or 2,184 hours per year. That means that if we are really focused and really going for it on average 42 hours every week, it would take us roughly 4.5 years from today to become the expert we want to be in anything.

Roasted Sweet Potato Fries and Salsa Yogurt Dip

Is there anything you spend that much time on?  I love the subject of food and health and how good food is only one component in a healthy lifestyle; and some weeks I do indeed spend 42 hours working on learning more about it.  But life happens too.  We have other obligations.  We get distracted.  Our focus slips. We may lose sight of the goal. For these football players (and other young prodigies), they have become experts over 20+ years of practice while going to school, being kids, growing up, figuring out who they are.  That they were focused enough (or in some cases their parents were) to channel their energies primarily toward a single goal is remarkable.

Why do so many people watch sports?  Follow every game?  Cheer on their chosen team?  Feel, alongside of the players, both the pain of defeat and the exultation of victory?  It’s because anybody who has really put their heart and soul into become excellent is, when given the chance to to exhibit that excellence, a reminder to all of us of what a human being is capable of.  There is a video series on YouTube called People are Awesome.  It shows people performing athletic tricks that would sound impossible on paper, but which have been made possible through practice and determination and an unwillingness to give up when things get tough. It is, indeed, pretty darn awesome.

But for me, it’s even more awesome to watch the brave, 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai become the youngest person in the world to receive a Nobel Peace Prize or to see young entrepreneurs, who heard plenty of “no ways” and “it’s not possibles”, who went ahead anyway to follow their dream and create the companies that provide excellent products and services that the make life easier and more enjoyable for the rest of us.

The thing is, we all can be excellent at what we want to do; but for most of people, “pretty good” is satisfying enough; allows us to lead a comfortable life; gets us home to our families on time; allows us to live in a place we like with a lifestyle we enjoy.  That’s OK.  As Brene Brown has said, there is nothing wrong with wanting a good, ordinary life.  That doesn’t stop us, though, from enjoying the victory of a top performer in any field, and being grateful for the inspiration that they can all give us; for pulling humankind just one step further forward into what we are all capable of, even if it’s only by proxy.

If you follow the game on Feb 1, 2015, as you cheer for your team and your favorite player(s), and feel the emotional ebb and flow that comes with every play and point, enjoy as well the reminder that people are awesome, and that includes you.

In his book The Dip Seth Godin talks about what it means to be the best in the world, and about the “extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick).”  It doesn’t, he asserts, mean being better than everyone else in the entire world at what you do.  It can also mean being the best in your world at what you do: your family, peer group, business, neighborhood, city, state.  It means making a commitment to your own excellence, and continuing to deliver on promises you make to yourself, it means not giving up just because because you are stressed out in the moment, but it also means being brave enough to quit when where you are is on a path that leads to nowhere.

As you mull that over and get geared up to enjoy the game, you may be needing a few snacks.  Or if, like me, you’ll skip the game to focus on something else, you may still need snacks.  I’ll tempt you with an alternative that doesn’t include deep frying, and which your most awesome nutritional advisor would love.

Roasted Sweet Potato Fries and Salsa Yogurt Dip

Roasted Sweet Potato Fries and Salsa Yogurt Dip

1 large sweet potato
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground Chipotle powder
1 teaspoon smoked ground paprika
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup low-fat Greek or Turkish yogurt
3/4 cup hot salsa

Preheat oven to 200°C/400°F

Scrub the outside of the sweet potato well to remove any dirt.  Leave the skin on.  Cut the sweet potato into slim sticks.  In a bowl, combine the oil, cumin, chipotle powder, smoked paprika and salt.  Add the sweet potato pieces and toss well to coat them thoroughly.  Spread the sweet potatoes out on a parchment covered baking sheet.  Place into the hot oven and bake for 20 minutes, flipping the sweet potatoes once, halfway through.  Check for doneness:  they should be crisp on the outside and tender in the middle.  Remove from oven and serve with the Salsa Yogurt Dip.

To make the Salsa Yogurt Dip, pour the salsa and yogurt into a bowl and stir well to combine.  If you’d like the dip to be even spicier, add a little Sriracha or hot sauce.

Serves 4-6 as a snack.

Roasted Sweet Potato, Pear & Barley Salad

Sometimes good things come in small packages.  Sometimes through the mail slot.  My Feb/Mar 2015 issue of Fine Cooking arrived with thunk and clunk through the mail slot last Friday, which meant I spent the evening flipping through the pages, dreaming of my next meal.

Our refrigerator was nearly empty, containing the last bits and spoonfuls and leaves from grocery shopping done days ago.  But, with proper inspiration, you can make something from nearly nothing…and p.46 brought just the inspiration I was looking for: ‘hearty roast vegetable salads‘ was the title of the article, and called for a pile of mixed greens, caramelized fruits and vegatables, a warm vinaigrette, and any other toppings that might suit a person’s fancy:  nuts, dried fruit, cheese.

I pulled every available item out of the fridge and made inventory: one pear just shy of expiration. 1/2 of a sweet potato.  A few leaves of kale.  Several Brussels sprouts. An onion half.  Mustard.  A lemon.  A knob of ginger.  Yes, this could definitely be dinner.

I followed the instructions for roasting the fruit and veg, slicing the pear and sweet potato into pieces, tossing with olive oil and a little salt, and put them to roast in a hot oven.  I shredded the kale and sprouts, made a modified version of the lemon-ginger vinaigrette from p. 49, and on a whim, set a pot of pearl barley to cook on the stovetop.

If ever there was a winter salad that everyone should add to their menus, this is it.  You can, of course, feel free to swap other winter vegetables and fruits for the ones I chose; select a different variety of greens; add nuts if you please, or cheese, as suggested by the article’s author, Susie Middleton.  Buy the magazine.  Take a look.  And consider adding whole grains, as I did, for the perfect and complete meal.

Roasted Sweet Potato, Pear & Barley Salad
inspired by and adapted from Fine Cooking Feb/Mar 2014 issue

Roast:
1/2 sweet potato, washed, peel left on, cut into sticks.
1 pear, washed, peel left on, core removed, cut into large chunks
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
Combine the sweet potato, pear, olive oil and salt and spread into a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake in a 450°F/225°C oven for 20-25 minutes, until the potato and pear are tender and slightly browned.  Remove from oven.

Cook the pearl barley:
1/2 cup pearl barley
1.5 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine the barley, water and salt in a small saucepan.  Bring to a boil; reduce heat to a simmer; cover, and allow to cook for 15 – 20 minutes until tender.  Drain, and set aside.

Note:  please make sure you are using pearl barley as regular barley takes much longer to cook.  If you prefer to use regular barley grains, make sure you allow for a 50 minute cooking time.

Prepare the dressing:
1/2 onion, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon chopped fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon maple syrup or liquid honey
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
2 teaspoons chopped fresh mint
1 teaspoon mustard
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Heat the olive oil in a heavy frying pan over medium heat.  Add the onion, reduce temperature to medium, and allow the onion to simmer until it is very soft, about 7 minutes.  While the onion cooks, combine the remaining ingredients except for the ginger in a small bowl and whisk well to combine.

Once the onion is soft, add the ginger, stirring well to combine for another 15 seconds to heat the ginger, but not cook it.  Remove from heat and spoon the onion mixture into the vinegar mixture. Stir well to combine.

Prepare the salad leaves:
4 large kale leaves, rib removed and sliced thinly
8 Brussels sprouts, shredded
Combine the kale and Brussels sprouts in a bowl.  Pour the warm dressing over the top and smash the salad greens together with your fingers to tenderize them slightly.  Set the salad aside until the sweet potatoes and pear are roasted and the barley is cooked.

Assemble the salad:
Add the drained, hot barley and the roasted sweet potato and pear to the bowl containing the salad leaves and dressing.  Using your fingers, toss well to make sure that all salad ingredients are lightly coated with the dressing.  Transfer to a serving platter and serve.

Serves 4.