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.