Wild macaroni

Ingredients (x4):
1 small-ish onion
350 g short pasta
around 200 g of champignons
200 g soy sausage (I can recommend the ones by Hälsans Kök for those who live here up North)
white vinegar
olive oil
cream
bouillon
black pepper
(tiny bit of salt)

Preparation:
Cook the pasta al dente and pour the water off it. Chop the onion and cut the sausage into small pieces. Put the onion and sausage into a pan with a bit of olive oil and roast them. Add a bit of white vinegar plus the champignons cut into slices and keep on roasting for a few minutes.



Then milden the heat and start adding bouillon gradually. Cook on mild heat for 15-20 minutes. At the end add the amount of cream that you prefer and add the pasta into the pan of the sauce. Mix them on mild heat for a while. Ready to serve.

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.

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.

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.