Tagliatelle with mushrooms and gorgonzola in the oven

This was my improvisation for lunch today. It came out perfect!

Ingredients (x2):
1 clove of garlic
160 g table mushrooms
200 g tagliatelle
olive oil
½ dl cream
some milk
basil
salvia
black pepper
salt
80 g gorgonzola cheese

Preparation:
Cook the tagliatelle in lightly salted water. While the pasta is cooking, start preparing the sauce. Cut half of the mushrooms into pieces of approximately 1,5 cm in diameter. Put the other half of the mushrooms into a mixer. Pour a bit of olive oil on the mushrooms that are going to be mixed and add a bit of salvia and basil. Mix until all the mushrooms have stopped looking like mushrooms.

On a pan, heat the chopped clove of garlic with olive oil and let it gain a more golden colour. Add the mushrooms cubes on the pan and fry them on high heat for about 6 minutes. Then add the other half of the mushrooms that you mixed with the mixer, the "paté". Add salt and black pepper. Keep on frying for at least 5 more minutes. Then significantly lower the heat and pour the cream on the pan accompanied with a bit of milk. Let the sauce cook while mixing it for most of the time.

When the tagliatelle are ready, pour the water off them. Add the sauce into the pan with tagliatelle and mix them well together. Check that the amount of spices is right. Pour the dish into an oven plate. Cut pieces of the gorgonzola and place them over the whole surface of the pasta.

Bake the dish in the oven at 180'c for some 7 minutes.

Rosolli

This mix of vegetables, called rosolli, belongs to the Finnish Christmas as tightly as ham.
It is usually combined with other Christmas food.
Some people like to prepare a creamy sauce for rosolli but I prefer to skip that.

Ingredients (x2):
1 beetroot or two if smaller
some white vinegar
1 big carrot
1-2 cooked potatoes
1 pickled cucumber
½ red onion
½ apple
a pinch of black pepper

Preparation:
Cut the vegetables into cubes. Put the cubed beetroot, apple and red onion into a glass and pour some vinegar on them, and mix. After a while pour the vinegar off.
Lay the vegetables on a plate separately or, alternatively, mix them together (in that case the beetroot will colour the whole rosolli red).
Dust some black pepper over the vegetables.

Fusilli with tomato&soy sauce, roasted pine nuts and minced rucola

I prepared this for lunch yesterday and it really made my day!

Ingredients (x2):
160 g fusilli
70 g grinded soy
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
2 tomatoes
1 tablespoon white winegar
50 g pine nuts
30 g fresh rucola
salt
pepper
olive oil
parmesan cheese

Preparation:

Roast the pine nuts on a frying pan if they are not readily roasted.

Chop the garlic and the onion finely. Peel the tomatoes and remove their insides, and then cut them into cubes. Pour some olive oil on a pan and add the garlic. Heat it on relatively high heat until the garlic has gained some colour, and then add the onion. Remember to mix. Soon after lower the heat a bit and add the grinded soy and the winegar, and dust some salt and pepper on it. Mix the soy frequently and let it gain a bit darker colour. Next, add the cubes of tomatoes on the pan. Keep a medium heat and mix the sauce in 5-7 minutes every once in a while.

Cook the fusilli in salted water.

Rinse the rucola and stuff it into a mixer. Add a bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Mince the rucola with the mixer.

Pour the water off the pasta. Mix the soy&tomato sauce and pine nuts with the pasta and then (separately) add the minced rucola. Turn the pasta around a bit so that the rucola spreads more evenly. Add grated parmesan cheese on top.

Tunaballs

Here's a really nice Saturday lunch recipe for tunafish balls. I tend to eat them with potatoes and a lemon-ish sauce.

Ingredients (x3-4):
2 cans of tunafish
1 small onion
250 g bread
2 eggs
3 tablespoons of olive oil
bread crumbs
salt
pepper
more olive oil for frying

Preparation:
Open the cans of tuna and press the water off the tunafish. Put the tuna into a bowl. Tear the bread into small pieces with your hands and mix it together with the tuna. Add into the mix the eggs, olive oil, salt, pepper and the finely chopped onion. Mix well. Add some bread crumbs if the dough is still too soft to handle. Spread bread crumbs on the working surface and start to form balls out of the dough with your hands. Roll the balls in bread crumbs.

At the end fry the balls in olive oil until they have gained a bit of colour. Serve them warm.

Pipe rigate with tomatoes from the oven and rucola

This is a very easy-to-prepare dish. It will always come out good, unless you add too much (sea) salt, like I once did and made my boyfriend's heart go too fast... Only a few ingredients and a fresh, warm taste.

Ingredients (x2):
175 g pipe rigate or another short pasta
2 big or 3 medium-sized tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
1 onion
olive oil
black pepper
salt
1 bundle of rucola
parmesan cheese

Preparation:
Chop the garlic and onion. Cut the tomatoes into slices in shape of a half moon. Lay these tomato slices on each other in domino-like rows on an oven plate. Add the chopped onion and garlic all along these rows on top of the tomatoes. Grind black pepper on top and dust some salt. Pour a bit of olive oil throughout the rows of tomato. Put the oven plate into the oven and bake it for 30 minutes on 180 c degrees. Meanwhile cook the pasta in salted water and rinse the rucola. Pour the water off the pasta when it is al dente. When the tomatoes have been baked, take them out of the oven and mix them with the pasta and add the rucola into the mix. Serve the dish with grated or sliced parmesan cheese.

Soup of beans, leek and potato

Ingredients (x2):
400g green beans
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
1 leek
1 big potato
500ml chicken bouillon
1,5 tablespoons olive oil
salt
(croutons or bread)

Preparation:
Chop the onion and garlic and cut the washed leek into rings. Cook these ingredients in a pan with olive oil and add the beans. Cook this mix of vegetables on low heat for 10-15 minutes. Peel the potato and cut it into cubes. Prepare the bouillon by letting a bouillon cube dissolve in water. Add the potato cubes to the rest of the vegetables and pour the bouillon on top. Cook the soup covered, on low heat, for one hour. When an hour has passed, take your immersion blender and give the soup a puré-like composition with it. Add salt according to your taste. Serve the soup with croutons or bread.


The recipe of the bread pictured above can be found here.

Mushroom fusilli

I have usually been doing this dish with tagliatelle, but due to my boyriend's kitchen experiments of one evening, I didn't have tagliatelle left anymore and I opted for fusilli. It was a good choice (these fusilli here are by a Dutch brand and their shape reminds me more or less of worms ;) I have made this with different kinds of mushrooms. Make sure your mushrooms are not poisonous!

Ingredients (x2):
180g tagliatelle, fusilli or another pasta
2 cloves garlic
300 g mushrooms
olive oil
cream (if you want it lighter, use milk instead)
a tiny bit of peperoncino
salt
pepper
parsley (fresh or dried, but preferably fresh)

Preparation:
Start boiling the pasta in abundant salted water. Chop one of the garlic cloves and cut half of the mushrooms into small pieces. Add the chopped galic clove on a pan and heat it, and soon after add the mushrooms you preciously cut into pieces. Fry the garlic and mushrooms for 5 minutes and add the spices (except the parsley) on the pan. During or after this pour the remaining garlic clove and remaining mushrooms together with the parsley into the mixer, and add a bit of olive oil. Mix these ingredients fine with the mixer in order to obtain a puré. Add this puré to the pan where the pieces of mushrooms are. Fry for a for more minutes. At the end add the cream or milk and lower then heat to below medium. Mix the sauce and take a few minutes of time until the sauce becomes more creamy. Pour the water off the pasta and mix it with the sauce. Serve with parmesan cheese.

Bell peppers with mushroom-leek and soy fillings

I have been completely absent in this blog for several weeks, and I am really sorry about that! I was working a lot of hours each week, and even if I did make yummy food worth posting here and I even took pics of them, I never got down to updating. Now I want to update more regularly again.

So, here goes. This is the recipe of what I made for lunch today, and it was praised by my bf and he smiled for a long time after the lunch. I think that is enough to describe how delicious it turned out!

Bell peppers with mushroom-leek and soy fillings

Ingredients (for 2-3 people):

3 bell peppers (any colour you like)

filling #1:

2,25 dl cooked rice
3,5 dl table mushrooms
1,5 tablespoons butter or margarine
½ a small leek
1,5 dl grated cheese
paprika spice
pepper

filling #2:

1,5 dl cooked rice
150 g grinded soy
1 small onion
pepper
aromatic salt OR salt + half a grinded vegetarian bouillon cube
1,5 dl grated cheese

Preparation:

Cut the bell peppers in halves horizontally. Remove their insides and wash them. Cook the bell peppers in salted water for 8 minutes. When cooked, remove the water from the pan and let the bell peppers vapour.

Prepare the filling #1: Cut the mushrooms into small pieces. Heat the butter in the pan and add the mushrooms into the pan. Fry the mushrooms for 5 minutes. Chop the leek finely and add it into the pan.

When they both look good and and the leek has become more yellow, add this mushroom-leek-mix into the rice. Spice it up and add one dl of grated cheese. Mix.

Prepare the filling #2: Fry the grinded soy on a pan and add the finely chopped onion into it. Add spices. The spicing can be rather abundant. Mix the grinded soy + onion with the rice. Add 1/4 dl of grated cheese into the mix.


Place the bell pepper halves into an oven mould and fill them with the fillings. Add what remains of the grated cheese on the filled bell peppers.

Bake them in an oven heated to 200'c for half an hour.

Salmiakki Swiss roll

Swiss rolls (fi: kääretorttu) are a very common dessert in Finland. The crust can be made brown by cacao powder or it can retain a light colour. The fillings are many and diverse, and this one here is a rarity. A few friends of mine sounded astonished when they heard I was making a salmiakki Swiss roll. Fantasy, however, is a good quality! And since salmiakki (=strong salted liquorice, nh4cl) is inevitably the most fantastic candy in Finland if you ask me, I felt like trying this out! I recommend to use a kind of salmiakki that is easy to cut. Unfortunately I didn't and so I, to avoid excess suffering, left the pieces bigger.

Ingredients:

The dough:
3 eggs
1 dl sugar
½ dl wheat flour
½ dl potato flour
1 tl baking powder
2 tablespoons cacao powder
sugar
bread crumbs
baking paper

The filling:
1,5 dl whipped cream
1,5 dl vanilla flavoured quark (That's Dutch, and it's something like a very thick yoghurt)
salmiakki candies

Preparation:
Cut the salmiakki into pieces. Mix the whipped cream and the quark and add the pieces of salmiakki into it. Put the filling into the fridge to wait for the crust to be ready.
Mix the sugar and the eggs into an airy foam. Mix the flours together and add them carefully into the foam. Pour the dough on baking paper on an oven plate. Bake it in a 225 c oven for 7 minutes.
Take a sheet of baking paper and put it on the table. Dust some sugar on it. Set the crust, on its other side still attached to its baking paper, on the sugared baking paper. Remove the baking paper that was with it in the oven.
Spread the filling you previously prepared on the crust.

Roll the crust into a roll. The result is the best if you let the Swiss roll stay in the fridge overnight and serve it the next day.

Farfalle with soy-tomato-zucchini sauce

Ingredients (x3):
260 g farfalle
1 onion
1 clove garlic
150 g grinded soy
1/3 zucchino
2 tomatoes
4 tablespoons tomato puree
1 tablespoon white vinegar
olive oil
salt
black pepper
parsley

Preparation:
Remove the seeds of the tomatoes and peel them. Start cooking the pasta. Chop the onion and grind the garlic. Heat these two on a pan with olive oil. Pour the grinded soy on them. Cut the zucchino into thin sticks max. 3 cm of length and add it on the pan. Cut into small cubes the tomatoes that you previously peeled. Add the tomato cubes on the pan along with tomato puree. Keep the heat pretty high but not at maximum. Add a tablespoon of white vinegar. Add salt and black pepper according to your taste. Cook on high heat for a couple of more minutes and then let the sauce cook on lower heat for still some minutes.

When the pasta is al dente, pour the water off. Serve the pasta with the sauce and with chopped parsley.

Apple-white chocolate cupcakes

Ingredients (7 cupcakes):

The dough:
75 g margarine or butter
½ dl sugar
1,5 dl wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon vanilla sugar
½ egg

The filling:
1 apple
60 g vanilla chocolate
cinnamon

Short crust pastry on the top:
20 g margarine
0,3 dl sugar
0,5 dl wheat flour

Preparation:
Put the warm margarine and all the other ingredients of the dough into a bowl. Mix them with your hands. Do the same with the short crust pastry ingredients in another bowl. Cut the apple and the white chocolate into small pieces. Form 7 balls out of the dough and settle them on the bottom of the cake cups. Add the pieces of apple and white chocolate into the cake cups. Dust the short cust pastry on top of the cupcakes. Finally add some cinnamon.

Bake in the oven heated to 200'c for about 20-30 minutes.

Serve the cupcakes after having stored them for 1 hour in the fridge.

Potato-bean-tuna salad

Here's a salad recipe that I could think of meeting both in the Finnish as well as in the Northern Italian kitchen. It is served warm and it contains only a little greenery.

Ingredients:
potatoes
tuna fish in water
chives
beans (preferably of different colours)
egg(s)
white vinegar
olive oil
salt
pepper

Preparation:
Peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes. Cook them in water. Cook also the eggs in water. Rinse the chives and cut them in shorter pieces and put them on a plate. Place the readily prepared beans on the plate too. Remove the water of the tuna fish and add the tuna in the form of flakes on the plate. Add the potato cubes. Pour a little vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper on the salad and mix. Slice the egg into a few pieces and dispose them on the plate.

Finnish style oat & chocolate cookies

Here's a recipe for cookies including dark chocolate, hazelnuts and lots of oats. They even made me think of how great it would be to eat them along with some hot chocolate, having a view on the lake at sunset. Maybe I am getting Finland-nostalgic.

Ingredients (12-14 cookies):
100 g dark chocolate
50 g hazelnuts
2 dl wheat flour
2 dl oats
1 teaspoon vanilline sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
100 g margarine or butter
1 dl sugar
1 egg

Preparation:
Cut the chocolate and the hazelnuts into small pieces. Mix together in a bowl the dry ingredients. Mix the soft butter with sugar. Add the egg and mix intensely. Finally add the dry ingredients and mix the dough until it becomes uniform. Form a bar 20 cm long and 6 cm wide out of the dough. Cut the bar into 1 cm wide pieces and place the pieces of dough on baking paper on an oven plate. Bake them in the oven heated to 175 c for around 12 minutes (they are ready when they have got some colour).

Potato gnocchi with beetroot sauce

This was really good, even if I first had no idea what to expect from it! It is a bit agrodolce, both sweet and sour. If you're looking for ideas on what to serve your potato gnocchi with, I warmly recommend this sauce!

Ingredients (x2):

For the gnocchi:
600 g potatoes
100 g flour
½ egg
1 tablespoon parmesan
a pinch of salt
(bread crumbs)

For the sauce:
3 tablespoons olive oil
250 g beetroots
1 small onion
1 small clove garlic
150 g grated cheese (for example Edam)
a pinch of salvia and thyme
salt
pepper

Preparation:
Peel the potatoes and cook them in a pan. When they're ready, mash them and let them cool down for a while. Add the egg, salt, parmesan and bread crumbs into the mashes potatoes. Start adding flour and mixing the dough. Add more flour until the dough is easily manageable in your hands and you manage to make balls out of it. When you have transformed all the dough into small balls (2-3 cm of diameter), fill a pan with water and make the water boil on the cooker. Add the potato balls into the pan and wait until they come to the surface and then take them out of the water.

Chop the onion and grind the garlic and fry them on a pan with olive oil. When they have gained some colour, add the beetroots that you have previously cooked and cut into small spieces (or use readily cooked ones). Add salt and pepper. Let the sauce flavour for 5 minutes on rather low heat.

Apply a light layer of butter on the surface of an oven mould. Place a part of the gnocchi in the mould, and cover them with a part of the sauce and grated cheese. Repeat this procedure two or three times. When you're done with the last layer, pour some olive oil all over the dish and dust the surface with a bit of thyme and powder salvia.

Cook the food in an oven pre-heated to 180 c for 7 minutes.

Vegetable&soy macaroni pot

This is a vegetarian version of the Finnish and Swedish dish macaroni pot (makaronilaatikko or makaronilåda in Finland, makaronipudding in Sweden). It's great that this way even vegetarians can enjoy this dish where meat is normally considered pretty central.

Ingredients (x5):
400 g dark macaroni
2 carrots
1 big onion
peas
1 clove garlic
1 vegetarian bouillon cube
½ dl ketchup
1 ½ dl grinded soy
2 ½ dl water
1 ½ dl cheese
basil
black pepper

For the egg-milk:
3 eggs
7 dl milk
salt, grinded paprica, black pepper

Preparation:
Boil the macaroni. Grate the carrots and chop the onion. Fry them in a pan and add the boullon cube, water, grinded soy, ketchup and the spices. Pour the water off the maraconi and add the soy-vegetable mix and grated cheese into the macaroni. Mix and spread it evenly into an oven mould. Mix the ingredients of the egg-milk well and pour the egg-milk on the food in the mould.

You may dust some bread crumbs on top if you want.
Bake in the oven heated to 200 c for about an hour.

Ideally served with ketchup.

Beetroot steaks with cottage cheese sauce

Here's the recipe for a traditional Finnish vegetarian main course, beetroot steaks, served with a lightly spiced cottage cheese - sour cream sauce. In Finland nowadays you can get cottage cheese (fi: raejuusto) in different flavours, but since here we only have plain cottage cheese, I spiced it up myself with some garlic and cayenne pepper.

Ingredients (for some 10 steaks):
3-4 potatoes
2 beetroots
1 carrot
100 g white celery or rutabaga
1 onion
2 eggs
½ dl water
½ dl potato flour
½ dl wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon dried thyme or salvia (or mixed)

The sauce:
2 dl unflavoured yoghurt
1 dl cottage cheese
1 small clove garlic
a pinch of cayenne pepper or some other similar spice
1/4 teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon vinegar

Preparation:
Mix the ingredients of the sauce, check that it tastes good and put it into the fridge to for the steaks being ready. Peel the potatoes and the other vegetables and grate them. Mix the eggs, water, potato flour, wheat flour and the spices in a large bowl. Finally add the grated vegetables into the mix.

Put some butter or olive oil on a frying pan and fry steaks out of the dough on medium heat.

When each steak is ready, keep it warm by wrapping it into aluminium foil.
Serve with the sauce you previously prepared and with cooked potatoes or mashed potatoes.

Banana-chocolate muffins with a shade of lemon

Here's a recipe for muffins of sophisticated taste characterised by the richness of dark chocolate (although I don't use the darkest one possible), the sweetness of banana and the freshness of lemon.

Ingredients (x12 muffins):
150g butter or margarine
2 dl sour cream
zest of one lemon
2 eggs
1 ½ dl sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
3 dl wheat flour
1 dl cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
a pinch of salt
3 bananas
200 g dark chocolate

Preparation:
Heat up the oven to 175 c. Melt the butter and add into it the sour cream and the lemon zest. Mix together the eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar so that the final result is light and airy. Mix the sourcream-butter mix into it. Mix in another bowl the wheat flour, cacao powder, baking powder and salt and add this flour mix into the dough. Slice the bananas and cut the chocolate into pieces and add them into the dough. You can however set aside some pieces of clocolate in order to decorate the surface of the muffins with them.

Fill cake cups with the dough. Bake in the middle level of the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Penne in tomato-basil sauce, au gratin

This is the pasta I (or most Italians) do on a regular basis when we don't have any special idea on what to cook, hehe. This is the way I do it. This time I however cooked it au gratin at the end with readily grated regular cheese and parmesan on top. Yum!

Ingredients (x3):
270 g penne (I prefer my penne rigate and integrali)
2 cloves garlic
1 big onion
5 tomatoes
70 g tomato sauce
2 tablespoons white vinegar or apple vinegar
a tiny pinch of dried peperoncino
pepper
salt
olive oil
grated cheese
grated parmesan
basil (fresh or dry)

Preparation:
Cook the pasta in salted water. Grind the garlic and chop the onion quite fine. Peel the tomatoes and remove their insides. Cut the tomatoes into sticks. Fry the garlic and onion on a pan with olive oil, and when they have gained a little bit of colour, add the tomatoes. Add salt and pepper plus a tiny bit of peperoncino. Pour in the 2 tablespoons of vinegar. Cook on heavy heat for some 2-3 minutes and then lower the heat by half. Add the tomato sauce and cook for 6-8 minutes still. At the end add the basil.
Mix the pasta and the sauce together and pour it on an oven baking plate. Add some regular cheese and parmesan on top.
Bake in the oven set to the gratin function for 10 minutes.

Apple pie featuring oats

Here's the recipe for a heavenly oat-driven apple pie. Yes, Finns use them even in apple pie. Comes out really good! I recommend it if you still haven't tried!

Ingredients (8 portions):
100 g butter
1 egg
1 ½ dl oats
½ dl sugar
1 ½dl wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

2-3 apples

On top:
50 g butter
½ dl sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
1 ½ dl oats

Preparation:
Mix the sot butter, egg, sugar, oats, flour and baking powder together. Apply butter on the surface of your baking mould. Press the dough onto the bottom of the mould and use extra flour to help. Peel and slice the apples and settle them on the dough.
For the topping: Melt the butter and mix into it the sugar and the oats. Dust the mix equally on the whole surface of the pie.
Bake the pie in 200 c for 25 minutes.
Excellent served with vanilla sauce or vanilla ice cream!

Summer soup

Today it is Midsummer and yesterday I prepared Summer soup (fi: kesäkeitto), a traditional soup for this season in Finland (even though my boyfriend thought it was pretty Thai). Ideally it is prepared with new, fresh vegetables of the summer. It is sweet and has milk, which makes it a bit controversial to some people. But it isn't good to judge it by that! It is very good with rye bread or crispy rye bread.

Ingredients (x2):
2 carrots
½ small cauliflower
2,5 dl water
½ teaspoon salt
1 dl peas
2 ½ dl milk
65 g soft cheese (in Finland, Koskenlaskija)
a pinch of sugar
parsley

Preparation:
Peel and slice the carrots. Cut the cauliflower into smaller pieces. Cut the well-washed potatoes into cubes.
Put the vegeables to boil in salted water. Cook them for some 10 minutes until they are done. Add the peas and milk. Cut the cheese into small cubes and mix it into the soup. Heat it so that it starts boiling and take it off the cooker. Spice the soup with a bit of sugar and add abundant chopped parsley.

Finnish-style oat bread

I'm totally a sucker for such bread that you can get in Finland - partly or completely full-grain stuff, with not much yeast or none at all, firm, and so charming of taste that you prefer to eat it without anything on it so that the bread itself is the centre of attention. I couldn't find the right flour here though so I had to use white wheat flour. But anyway the bread came out so beloved that both of them were eaten in less than 10 minutes. Oats are very popular in Finland, and it is a common conviction there that you should eat some oats every day to be friendly to your heart and to reduce LDL cholesterol.

Ingredients (for 2 breads 20 cm of diameter):
3 dl dark wheat flour (hiivaleipäjauhoja/jästbrödsmjöl)
1 dl oats
½ teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 dl grated cheese
50 g margarine
2 ½ dl milk

Preparation:
Mix the flour, oats, salt and baking powder in a bowl with a wooden fork. Add the grated cheese, the milk and the margarine that you've previously melted. Mix quickly, don't mix a lot! It is normal that the dough is very loose. Put baking paper on an oven plate. Pour half of the dough on the baking paper and pat it with floured hands into the shape of a bread of 20cmx20cm. Form another bread next to it (or after the first one has been baked). Bake in the oven in 225 c for 15 minutes.

Tagliatelle with pistachio-zucchini cream

Here's an excellent tagliatelle recipe where I make use of pistachios, those that you usually associate with snacking. Pappardelle are just as fine as tagliatelle.

Ingredients (x3):
200 g tagliatelle
2 small cloves garlic
½ onion
1 zucchina
4 tablespoons crème fraîche
3/4 dl milk
(instead of these last two you can use just plain cooking cream instead, or only milk if you want a lighter version)
black pepper
salt
olive oil
25 pistachios
parmesan

Preparation:
Put the pasta to cook in a pan with salted water. Grind the garlic and chop the onion and heat them on a pan with olive oil. Grate the zucchina and add it on the pan. Fry it on pretty high heat for three minutes. Mash 12 pistachios and add them on the pan. Add salt and pepper. Lower the heat considerably. Add the crème fraîche and milk into the vegetables and mix. Let the sauce cook on low heat for some 3-4 minutes. When the tagliatelle are al dente, remove the water. Mix the pasta with the sauce and mash the rest of the pistachios and dust them on the portions along with grated parmesan cheese.

Spaghetti with parsley cream

This dish is very easy to make and the result tastes soft, charming and fresh. With the short preparation time of some 15 minutes it's a good one to make even if you're in a hurry. Capellini are just as suitable as the good old spaghetti.

Ingredients (x2:)
175 g spaghetti or capellini
15 g parmesan
60 g crème fraîche
1 medium-sized onion
4 tablespoons chopped parsley
salt
black pepper

Preparation:
Chop the onion and put it into a pan with along with a bit of water. Add the cream on the pan and mix to form a crema out of it and add salt and black pepper. Heat up the crema. Chop the parsley and add it into the crema. Cook the pasta in salted water and when ready, pour the water off and serve it with the parsley cream and grated parmesan.

Carrot muffins

These are absolutely delicious muffins with carrot. Alike with the carrot cake, but in muffin form. Common in Finland.

Ingredients (12 cake cups):
around 300 g carrot
4 dl wheat flour
3 dl sugar
2 tl baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
3/4 dl crushed almonds
100 g margarine
3 eggs

For the topping:
200 g unspiced unripened cheese (for example Philadephia)
1 dl icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preparation:
Mix all the dry ingredients with each other. Peel and grate the carrots. Melt the margarine and then let it cool down a little. Mix the eggs, margarine and carrots together.

Add the dry ingredients into the wet dough and mix. Fill the cake cups quite full with the dough. Bake in 200 c for 20 minutes.

Mix the ingredients for the topping. Wait until the muffins have cooled down before you spread it on them. You may even add some more decorative things on them, like we did by adding extra pieces of carrot.

Vegetarian pyttipannu

Here's my vegetarian version of pyttipannu (Swedish: pyttipanna). It is a lot more unhealthy if prepared with sausage, like traditionally (but luckily I am vegetarian!) It is part of the Swedish and Finnish food tradition, and it used to be prepared of leftover ingredients, which isn't always the case nowadays. The name of this dish probably derives from "pytteliten" (=very small), which describes how all the ingredients are cut into small spieces.

Ingredients (x2):
4 middle-sized potatoes
250 ml water
½ vegetarian bouillon cube
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons olive oil
150 g chopped onion
150 g soup vegetables
1 teaspoon salt
a pinch black pepper
½ dl chopped parsley

Served with:
2 eggs
2 tomatoes

Preparation:
Wash and peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes of 1 cm. Heat the vegetarian broth and add the bay leaf. Cook the potato cubes for 5 minutes so that they get a bit softer. Pour the broth off and let the potatoes emit steam. Heat a pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil and add the chopped onion into it. Add the soup vegetables and let them steam off the liquid. You can take the vegetables off the cooker when they have gained some colour. Spice them with salt. Keep them warm under the cover. Heat the rest of the olive oil on a frying pan and add the potato cubes on it. Keep the pan hot and keep on turning the cubes around.

When they have gained some colour on all sides, add them into the rest of vegetables. Dust some black pepper on the food. Add parsley and mix. Fry the eggs on the frying pan and slice the tomato and serve the pyttipannu with them.

(Here in the Netherlands the [not-frozen] soup vegetables included a lot of greenery, in Finland they have a pretty different makeout of vegetables. Don't care, as long as they are soup vegetables.)

Soup of three onions

This is a nice onion soup that differs from the traditional onion soup by having 3 key ingredients: yellow onion, shallot and leek. Worth a try next time you want to make onion soup! To be served with croutons, a good idea is to make them yourself the way I suggest here (they come out pretty luxurious!)

Ingredients (x2):
2 yellow onions
2 shallots
½ leek
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
½ l water
2/3 bouillon cube
1 small bay leaf
1 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Garlic-croutons:
(semi-)dried bread
1 tablespoon oil
1-2 cloves garlic
(1 teaspoon dried parsley)

+ grated cheese

Preparation:
Peel the onions, cut them in halves and then cut them into thin slices or pieces. Wash the leek and cut it into pieces.
Melt the butter in a pan and add the onions. Give them 5 minutes to gain some colour, but don't let them become brown.

Add the water, the 2/3 bouillon cube and the spices. Cook under cover on mild heat for half an hour.
Cut the bread into cubes. Grind the garlic and fry it on the pan with oil. Add the bread cubes on the pan let them become slightly brown in colour. Optionally add some parsley on them.

Serve the soup with the croutons and grated cheese.

(Sorry for taking the picture a bit too late!)

Feta-spinach pastry

Not sure how Finnish this is, but this kind of pastries (resembling the quiche en France) are very common in Finland, and this recipe is originally from a Finnish recipe magazine. Attention, it's very filling. I served it along with onion soup yesterday, and it was an excellent combination.

Ingredients (for a mould of 24x24cm):
3-4 layers puff pastry
1 big onion
2 tablespoons oil
150 g frozen spinach
200 g feta cheese
3 eggs
2 dl light cream or cream-milk
1/4 teaspoons black pepper
a pinch of nutmeg

Preparation:
Chop the onion and sauté it on a frying pan with olive oil. Melt the spinach and squeeze the excess liquid off it. Pour the liquid off the feta cubes.
Cover the mould with puff pastry. Spread the spinach, onion and feta cheese on the puff pastry.

Mix the eggs, cream and spices together. Pour this mix on the mould.
Bake the pastry in the lower part of the 200 c hot oven for about 45 minutes.