Girls' night - Saltimbocca

Cooking runs in my blood. When my parents got divorced, we started a tradition with my mum & sister to have dinner every Monday. We are all grown-ups now, but this tradition has stayed the same for almost 10years now. This Monday, we made Saltimbocca, an Italian dish. However, we don't take it too seriously, so this was pretty much made with what we had at home.
Basic ingredients you need is either veal or pork, both will work great, fresh sage (don't subsitute for dried) and prosciutto, which is the Italian air dried ham. You can use serrano ham (Spanish)or similar products, whatever is available. Just don't tell an Italian that...

Slice the pork/veal in thick slices (or buy ready) and then batter them thin. With pork there can sometimes be a thick fat layer, you can cut that away.

The next step is to place the prosciutto on top of your meat, and on top of that a sage leaf. I used a regular toothpick to keep the whole thing together.

Next heat up a pan, add about 1tbs of olive oil, and quickly sear the meat on both sides.

Then put all the meat in a ceramic pan that can stand the heat of an oven. Put the pan in the oven for about 10min on 220C.

 

While the meat is in the oven, you can prepare the sauce. Use the same pan where you seared the meat, add 1dl of water, 1tbs of soy sauce, 1/2 cube (or 1tsp) of stock powder, 4tbs of sherry and 1tsp of honey. Taste and att soy for saltiness or honey for sweetness. Let the sauce simmer together, and finally add some sauce thickener to thicken it up.

 prepare a nice salad. This is a very simple one with arugula, lettuce, avocado slices, roasted pine nuts and crumbled goat cheese.

Really the only trick here is to use ripe avocado's and to cut them just before you serve. Squeeze some lemon over the avocado and it will keep them from turning  brown.

Take the meat out of the oven, pour the sauce over them and serve with the salad. My mother really felt like having some potato wedges with this, but it's striclty optional. If you have a salad with avocado and goat cheese you will feel perfectly full without the carbs in potatoes. Enjoy!

 

Apology and update

So sorry I haven't updated my blog in a while, I've been really busy with work but I promise to be better. Thanks for all the outreach, encouraging words and comments. I really appreciate them!

So what's coming up? My trip to Madrid the 17th of April, I'll make sure to post about my culinary experiences there. Also I'm going to Paris in May so more travel blogging.

For now, I'll try to update my latest recipes and cooking during this week..

Also, I heard that some restaurants in Helsinki are trying to make life harder for bloggers by stopping them to take pictures. Apparently because we don't "picture the food right". Meaning it doesn't look as fancy and more realistic than when the restaurants organize professional shoots. Pahhh, I'd like to see them stop me ;)

Speaking of which I recently visited Boulevard Social, and will write about that soon too! Here's a little sneak peak:

Salsa Verde Scallops - Boulevard Social

Gluteeniton lasagna (herkkusieni & pesto) - Gluten free lasagna (mushroom & pesto)

I'm not a vegetarian, but this is a 100% vegetarian dish that tastes great! It's a mushroom lasagna served with pesto. The great thing with lasagna is it's pretty inexpensive to make a large batch, cooking for the week is done, and it stays well preserved in the fridge. It's easy to heat up a piece fast after work.

One thing with pesto is that if you need to make a large batch it can become fairly expensive fairly fast. The great thing about this pesto is that it's made with frozen spinach. Spinach is a fraction of the price of basil. For this recipe you need two bags of spinach around 40cents/each. In the 90's, and when I was a kid spinach had a "bad name" to it. It also led to me not really knowing how to use it in food, and spinach itself (especially frozen) isn't exactly a delicacy in taste. So it's all about the flavoring and knowing how to use it.

These days I love spinach! It's healthy, high proteins, has a great taste, and it's inexpensive. So if you like me had a prejudice towards spinach, this recipe is the best way to change your opinion!
If you want to make pesto the real/fancier version, use basil, in which case you need 2-3pots. 

Pesto

2 small bags of frozen spinach

1 garlic clove

1 bag of pine nuts (the less expensive version is to use almonds)

1dl of grated Parmesan cheese or Grana Padano

1-2dl olive oil

Salt to taste

I start this recipe by turning the oven to 220C and preparing the pesto. Begin with melting the frozen spinach. Put them in a pan on low heat. Once all the ice has melted and it's a soft green mush you can take the pan off the heat to cool down.

Meanwhile the spinach is melting, start by slicing mushrooms and putting them in a pan on high heat. Mushrooms have a lot of water in them, which is why high heat is preffered. Also thinly slice a garlic (this is for flavoring the mushrooms).

Lasagna

2 boxes of mushrooms (400grams total)

 dried oregano

1 garlic clove 

Semper lasagne plates

1 bag of shredded mozzarella

Once the mushrooms start to give away water and shrink, add some butter, add the sliced garlic clove and dried oregano. Keep the heat high until the mushrooms start to turn brown. Set them aside.

Time for the white sauce = the bechamel. This is what most people struggle with, because if you don't pay attention it tends to get lumpy or burn. If you prefer to buy a ready sauce, that works too. However I haven't found a gluten free ready sauce, which is why I decided to try this myself. I use a teflon kettle, they are super practical when it comes to heating anything with milk for example, because it keeps the milk from burning to the bottom of the pan. Now that you start making the sauce nothing else should be going on: Your mushrooms are ready and waiting, your spinach is cooling down. It's all you, the stove and the bechamel. Give it your full attention.

Gluten free Bechamel (white sauce)

3 tbs butter

0,7dl Gluten free flour

1L milk

1dl grated Parmesan or Grana Padano

salt & pepper

Start by melting 3tbs of butter. Add about 0,7dl of gluten free flour. This is a little less per 1l milk than in a regular recipe because gluten free flour is more starchy --> It become thicker with less. Mix in the flour in the melted butter over low heat, it will start to look like the picture below.

Finally start to slowly add the milk while you're whisking. Whisk whisk whisk whisk away, never ever stop. As you've added the 1l milk it might feel a little loose, and here is the most common misstake. You think "oh it's gonna need a little while to heat up to thicken, I'll just..." And then the sauce is ruined. The process of when it will start to thicken is very fast, not to mention how fast milk burns. So stand by the stove, keep stiring until the sauce is thick like a gravy. Then you can turn the heat of and put the pan to the side.As you do that, add the grated parmesan cheese and flavor with salt & pepper.

Now you can make the lasagna, i start with a layer of bechamel, then a layer of lasagna plates, on top of that a layer of mushrooms + bechamel, another layer of lasagna plates, an additional layer of mushrooms + bechamel. Top the whole thing of with shredded mozzarella cheese and put it in the oven for about 40min (220C).

Meanwhile it's time to finnish the pesto now that the melted spinach has cooled down.

Pesto

2 small bags of frozen spinach

1 garlic clove

1 bag of pine nuts (the less expensive version is to use almonds)

1dl of grated Parmesan cheese or Grana Padano

1-2dl olive oil

Salt to taste

Put all ingredients in a bowl. I usually press the garlic, and I chop the pine nuts before adding to the spinach. Use a bamix (sauvasekoitin) to "puree" the wole thing. It's up to you how purée like you want it, I want it to have texture. So in fact I also add some extra chopped pine nuts after to get some bites in my pesto. Anyways that's how easy it is. Flavor the pesto with salt, and put it in the fridge to rest while your lasagna is in the oven. When it's time to serve, take the pesto out, and usually you have to add a little olive oil to losen up the consitency. If you prefer to use less oil, you can add a little water instead.

Take the lasagna out of the oven and let it "sit" for a while. This is not just to let it cool down, but also it makes the bechamel stay together better.

Finally serve a piece of you lasagna with the pesto. Enjoy the fresh cool taste of the pesto with the warm creamy lasagna!

A restaurant with no name - The quest for great food at an affordable price

There's a new place in Punavuori on Pursimiehenkatu 16. It used to be Old Anchor, it has changed now and the place has no name yet.. Yes it's a little weird. Anyhow me and my friend decided to go there yesterday for dinner. We had sort of assumed it to be a nice cosy place in style of Bar N0:9 or Lungi.

Atmosphere wise it was great, also alcohol was fairly priced at like 5-6€/glass, bottles around 30€.
Food wise.. well the prices were nuts! Tiny salads for starters at 12€/each. Dinner plates were around 22-30€.

The  actual menu was a on piece of paper, yet prices more fine dining and through the roof! With the restaurant not having a name either, it seemed like they were a bit lost about the concept..

 I got the Arctic Char (Nieriä) with cauliflower purée. The plate wasn't big but had a nice pricetag of 22€. It tasted good, put pricing was totally off.

 My friend got the Veal Cheek with potato gnocchi. Once again, wonderful taste but overpriced and tiny portions.

Also, the waitor got our orders mixed up, so we had to wait longer for our food. As an apology he did give us free glasses of wine. That was great service and I really appreciated it.

Would I go back? For food - no way! For drinks, absolutely. This restaurant needs to come up with a name, get their concept together, and lower their prices on food. Otherwise they will go bankrupt within months.

Brooklyn Café Helsinki - The best way to start a morning

This morning was so beautiful in Helsinki, bright sunlight and very cold around -22C. There's no better way to start my morning on a day like this than going to Brooklyn Café at the corner of Fredrikinkatu and Merimiehenkatu.

Their morning coffee just gets you inspired for the day, it's so good. I just drink regular coffee, black. 2,5€ for a perfect start. What else? Playing Avicii - X you on full volume on my Lumia!

Home made tortillas with Masa Harina

I have never been to Mexico, so these tortillas might not be "atuthentic" Mexican style, but they are damn good anyways! I read online that tortillas are made with Masa Harina. Before February I had never even heard of that stuff. Masa Harina is a special corn flour traditionally used in mexican cooking.

Now for some unexplainable reason all store bought ready tortillas in Finland are made with wheat flour. Even those that say "Corn Tortillas". Which of course makes perfect sense. (Not!) With the exception of Patrona, all Tex Mex/ Mexican restaurants in Helsinki serve wheat tortillas.

I also read online that Masa Harina can be found in eco stores, or online. My first choice was Aitokauppa, however they had never even heard of Masa Harina.

Finally I found Cool Chile Masa Harina flour from Ruohonjuuri in Kamppi. There's two ways of making the tortillas. One is easier, the other tastes better (of course!). The easy way is to use hot water, in order to process the dough it needs to be warm. However the tastier way is a recipe below.

Recipe

5,5 dl  Masa Harina
2 dl Bulgarian yoghurt

1,5 tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt
1,5 tsp baking powder

1.  Mix all ingredients together and start working the dough. You can't use a food processor because the key here is the heat from your hands. Work the dough for at least 10min, the longer the better. 
2. Divide the dough into pieces (this recipe makes about 6 larger tortillas or 12smaller)
3. Keep working each piece with your hands until it feels clay like and elastic.
4. Put the piece on to a baking sheet and spread it out. It is usually easiest to put it in between two pieces of baking sheet and use a roller/or hands.

 Heat up a pan and put one tortilla at a time in the pan. Don't remove the baking sheet.

Flip the tortilla over after about 3-4min, and then flip it once more 3-4min later. Then the tortilla will start to puff up.

 Keep tortillas heated by wrapping them in a warm, moist towel. For filling you can put whatever you like! Below are some tips.

Corn

Chicken with Taco Spice, red and yellow peppers

Chopped Cucumber salad with spring onions and a splash of lime juice

Salsa

 I also love guacamole! A great guacamole recipe is below, the same I used for my Superbowl Nachos'.  For this version of guacamole, I also added some chopped cilantro.

Guacamole

2 Ripe avocado's

1 garlic clove

1/2 lime

Gluteeniton suklaa kuppikakku / Gluten free Chocolate-Orange Cupcakes

It's really annoying at work when it's coffee time and they bring out the buns... When you can't eat wheat you just sit there and watch everyone else enjoy their treats. Yesterday was a day like this, so when I got home, I decided to make chocolate-orange cupcakes. The decision was purely based on what I had at home, since I didn't want to go to the store :) This recipe makes 11-12 cupcakes, and feel free to double the recipe if in need.. It works just as well with regular wheat flour, but perhaps make sure you check your amount of liquid. Add slowly, gluten free flour can be thicker..

Recipe

  75grams butter

  1 dl sugar

  2,5dl Semper Mix gluten free flour

  1tl  baking powder

2 tbsp cocoa powder

1 dl Orange juice (freshly squeezed)

  1 egg

orange zest(from 1/2 orange)

Begin by mixing the butter and sugar together with an electric whisk. Add the egg and mix it in, use a regular whisk. In a separate bowl mix flour,  cocoa powder and baking powder together. Add this to the butter, sugar, egg mix. Stir it together. Add the orange juice and the zest and keep stiring.

Finally, with the help of a spoon, fill your cupcake forms up to half with the batter. Put them in 220C for about 10min, until theu look like in the picture below. Take them out of the oven and let them cool down.

While the cupcakes are in the oven you can make the frosting.

Frosting

1 pack of Philadelphia Cheese

50grams butter (room temp.)

Powdered sugar to taste (0,5dl)
Vanilla flavor

1-2 tbs cocoa powder

I just simply add all ingredients together and mix them with a bamix or electric whisk. In this frosting I use cocoa powder, so keep tasting and perhaps add a little more sugar. Cocoa powder is bitter, so that needs to be balanced out. Once the cupcakes have cooled down, use a pastry bag or ziplock bag to frost them. Enjoy!

Low Carb Burger

I have a friend that's on a low carb diet, and we decided to make burgers.. This is slightly challenging since potatoes, corn, rice, any wheat flour is off limits.. I actually got a tip from another blogger (fashion blogger) about this pizza dough/burger bun you can make with eggs and cream cheese. Thank you Heidi!

Recipe

3 eggs

80grams (3oz) cream cheese

1/2tsp vinegar (etikka)

1/2tsp dijon mustard

salt

pepper

oregano

Turn the oven to 150C. Start by separating the egg yolks from the whites. Mix in one bowl egg yolks, cream cheese, mustard, salt, pepper. Use a bamix/electric whisk so the mixture becomes smooth. Add oregano to taste

Add the vinegar to your egg whites, and whipp them hard in glass bowl. When you can turn the entire bowl with whipped egg whites upside down (and nothing falls out) The egg whites are ready.

Carefully mix the whipped egg whites with the yolks, use a spatula (don't break the texture). It won't mix perfectly and can look marble like.

Put baking sheet on a tin, pour the mixture in six circles on a baking sheet.
Put in the oven for about 20-30mins. When the "buns" turn brown on top take the tin out and let it cool down for about 5-10min before trying to remove them from the baking sheet.

I can honestly say these were very tasty! And they do hold together, you can eat your burger with hands. Try it and love it!

BBQ Patties

400grams of ground beef

1 egg

 1/2 tsp mustard

1tbs of Tony Cachere creole seasoning

1/2tsp of Hickory Liquid Smoke

Mix everything together and make patties with your hands. Because there are no breadcrumbs in this recipe the most important thing when making the patties is to have heat under your pan! Make sure your pan is hot before you put your patties there. Otherwise they will start to give away liquid.

Sides/Filling

We filled our burgers with salad, pickles, mayo, cheddar... Whatever you feel like works!
As another tip, sweet potatoes has seriously a lot less carbs than potatoes. So make sweet potatoe fries (Recipe under my pulled beef burger post).

Patrona Helsinki - The quest for great food at an affordable price

On Tuesday me and my friend went to try out Patrona. A fairly new Mexican restaurant in Helsinki. I was really excited to try the food, because there are no Mexican restaurants in Helsinki.There's texmex (like Santa Fé), which is good too though.

First off, service was so friendly! They immediately asked what we wanted to drink, and explained about the food. I was a little apprehensive about the drinks. I'm not a fan of Tequila. OK, who am I kidding, after a very drunken night 8years ago the thought of tequila makes me vomit. I'm sure you've all been there.

My solution to the problem was to ask for a drink that isn't for a tequila lover, but a drink that could make me a tequila lover. This is what i got, the patrona. An amazing drink (margarita style) with tequila, lime and guava juice. The edges were covered with half salt half chili.. I must say the drink was amazing, for the first time in 8years I enjoyed drinking tequila. I even had another one.

My friend got a tall drink with passionfruit, this didn't even taste like tequila, but was of course wonderful none the less. Drinks were a little expensive around 9,8€. I say that because prices on food and wine were much lower, so I feel 7€ drinks would fit the concept a little better.

We started by sharing two appetizers, the chevicé (with whitefish and shrimp) and guacamole with tostodos. This ceviché was very different from what I had before, soaked in lime juice and served with a side of habanero sauce. It's actually a brilliant concept, because this way you can regulate the amount of heat yourself. I used a lot of heat - love spicy food. The guacamole was amazing, and their home made tostadas so incredibly good! Seriously huge points, and appetizers were between 7-9€ and that's a fair deal since there was plenty food.

For our main course, we shared the tortillas with braised pork belly and pineapple salsa (which is actually a warm starter) and also the chicken tortilla with mole sauce (a main course). The pork belly tortillas were amazing, and especially the pineapple salsa. They were overshadowed by the chicken tortilla with mole sauce though.

Molé is a chocolate sauce, this one contained five different types of chocolate, and also peanut butter and chili. Though it looks like a dessert, it most def. is not. This was my first try of Mexican Molé sauce and it blew me away! So incredibly tasty!! Apparently a lot of finnish customers don't appreciate this dish, since the server warned us it will be different... But damn it was good though!

At the end of the day, our bill was about 40€/person, which is ok. Especially considering 20€ of that was drinks.. Had we taken wine, a bottle would have been around 30€. Was the food Mexican? I have never been to Mexico, hard to say. However, it's def. not texmex, and  just like Mexican restaurants in NYC. Either way drinks and food, both delicious! I would go back anyday!

Pasta Diavolo Semplice

Sometimes all you want to do when you get home is eat a ready meal and watch TV. This dish is so fast, and so easy it will make never eat a ready meal in your life again. The name means the pasta is spicy (diavolo is really devil, but it's getting on the same point), and semplice means easy.

Recipe

Spaghetti or Linguine pasta (gluten free if you need it)

1/2 fresh chopped chili, you can use caynne pepper or dried chili flakes instead too

1 garlic clove (pressed or chopped)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Salt

1dl oil

dried parsely, or herbs de provence (any dried herb mix really)

Put water in a pot, bring it to boil, add salt and a dash of oil to the water. Don't add the pasta before the water is actually boiling. Otherwise the pasta will become discusting. Never add a lid, always boil pasta without a lid! Boiling time will vary about 8-12min. Read the lable, and leave the pasta al dente.

In a pan add 1dl of oil, heat it up slightly (low temp) add the chili, and garlic. Let the flavors get heated up and spread in the oil. Finally turn down the heat even more before adding the juice of 1/2 lemon. If you have white wine, this works as a perfect acid as well. Just remember when adding any water based liquid to oil all hell will break lose if the oil is too hot! Finally flavor the heated oil with a little salt and whatever dried herbs you have at home.

Finally pour the pasta through a strainer to remove the water, put it back in the pot. Add the heated oil and do like in the Sopranos: Mix together over heat for about 45sek. This way the flavored oil will get absorbed in the spaghetti. Pour the spaghetti in a bowl, and you are ready to eat! Fast and easy, and really really good..

Tournedos Rossini

I critiziced earlier the price range of Restaurant Sunn, and claimed to be able to make the food better myself. Well, time for proof. I decided to try making Tournedos Rossini, this is once again a version with a twist. The original dish has fois gras (duck/goose liver), however my mother oppose eating that for ethical reasons, so I had to skip it. Instead I use bacon as a fat component. Also, I was all out of Madeira wine so the sauce is red wine with a vanilla twist. Finally since black truffels are hard to find, I did my usual trick; using regular mushrooms flavored with truffel oil..

Also I used spelt bread (if you're gluten free this is a no go, IBS friendly though for some) I recommend anyone to use spelt instead of wheat, the bread is more crispy in texture..

Tournedos Rossini is made with Filet Mignon, and the one thing you can absolutetly not change is that: The meat, the heart of the dish!

Recipe (2people)

400 grams Filet Mignon (two filets of 200grams each)

1 pack bacon (150grams)

1 pack mushrooms (200grams)

Truffle oil

2 pieces of bread (Spelt, wheat or gluten free)

Start by wrapping one or two slices of bacon around each filet. Set aside and let the meat become room temperature. The bacon will protect the meat and att natural fat when searing. Cut the mushrooms in slices (leave 4-5 for the salad), sautée mushrooms, once brown take off the stove and flavor with about 1-2 tsp of truffel oil. Cut the two slices of bread, cut the crust away and set aside.

Sage potatoes

8-10 potatoes

Olive oil

dried sage

salt

Turn the oven to 220C. Cut potatoes in half along the long edge, and then in half again so you get cloves. Drizzle olive oil, dry sage and salt over the potatoes. Put on a tin and place in the oven. The potatoes will take around 40min to cook.

Sauce

2dl Red wine

1/2 tsp stock powder (meat)

1/2 carrot

1 piece green celery

1 Vanilla pod (vaniljatanko)

50 grams of butter

1tbs tomato purée

1/2 tbs Maizena sauce thickener (suuruste)

Start making the sauce by pouring 2dl red wine in a pot and heating it up, add the stock powder. Peel and cut half a carrot in pieces, wash and cut the celery. (piece size won't matter, feel free to make them look as ugly as you like!) Add them to the wine, let boil for about 15-20min. This will make the alcohol evaporate and make the sauce friendly for kids too.. When about 20mins has passed, pour the wine with the carrots and celery through a strainer in a new pot. This way the carrot and celery has given flavor to the wine. Put the pot with the strained wine back on the stove. Take the vanilla pod, cut it open and scrape out the vanilla seeds. Add them to the wine. Add 1 tbs of tomato purée, stir and let the sauce simmer. Add the sauce thickener carefully while stiring. The Maizena one I use, you don't have to mix with water. However check, if you use potatoflour for example you absolutetly must mix it with cold water first. Let the sauce simmer and thicken, if you want to make it thicker add some thickener. Finally add the butter. Butter will make the sauce shine (I'm not kidding) and improve the taste.

Salad

Rest of the bacon

4-5 mushrooms

1/2 cucumber

lettuce

Chop the bacon, and fry it crispy. Slice mushrooms, cut the cucumber in slices or squares, and mix the lettuce, mushrooms and crispy bacon in to a salad.

Preparing  & serving the meat

Now that everything else is done, heat up a pan and put some butter in it. Place the meat in the pan, fry it on each side for about 4min to make it perfect. This will make the meat medium rare, and this is how Tournedos Rossini should be served. If you don't like medium to medium rare meat, don't make the dish. I'm actually not kidding, Filet mignon is expensive meat and cooking it well done is a complete waste of your money. If you regardless feel like doing this, after 4-5min/side put the meat in the oven to cook through ( You're breaking my heart if you do it. Seriously!) Take my word for it, if there ever is a time to try medium to medium rare meat, this is it! Just do it!

Take the filets of the pan, and let the meat rest for a while (5min) this way the juices won't escape when you cut it. During this resting period you can throw the slices of bread to the pan with a little butter and fry them quickly (30sek/side).

Constructing the dish

 This dish is always served on a plate, so it's all about constructing next.


Start by placing the fried/roasted piece of bread one on each plate. On top place the meat, and on top of the meat the seared truffle flavored mushrooms. Finally pour the lovely red wine sauce on top. As a side serve the potatoes and the salad. Perfection!