Mushroom salad

I guess mushroom salad is not that common in other countries than it is in Finland, Eastern Europe and Russia. In this recipe I have taken some ideas from Russia adding some pickled cucumber in it.

The ingredients are so easy.

3-4 dl salted woolly milkcaps

½ onion

1 dl of leek

2 dl crème fraiche

1 dl pickled cucumber

Pepper

(salt)

Let the salted woolly milkcaps to be in plenty of cold water over night. This will decrease the amount of salt in the mushrooms. If you want saltier taste have them less time in the water.

You can also enjoy the
salad as such :)

When starting to make the salad squeeze the water out from the mushrooms and chop the mushrooms in small pieces. Also chop the onion, leek and pickled cucumber. Mix all together with crème fraiche. Season with pepper (and with salt depending on how salty the mushrooms were).

Here I think also capers could work instead of pickles.

Serve the salad with meat and mashed potatoes or then just on top of piece of rye bread.

Scandinavian style pancakes

Scandinavian pancakes are much thinner than the American version. So here is the recipe for the Scandinavian version.

2 eggs
8 dl milk
4 dl flour
(0,5 dl oil)
Salt
Sugar

Mix the eggs, add the milk and flour. Season with salt and sugar. I only use sugar in order to get a nice brown color on the pancakes but of course it sweetens the taste too. Oil I use only so that I do not need to use that much when frying the pancakes on a pan. Let the dough rest about 20 minutes before cooking the pancakes.

Cook the pancakes nice and brown from each sides. Serve with blueberry, strawberry or raspberry jam and some ice cream.

Weekend ham

Serve the ham with cream sauce and
rustic mashed potatoes.

This is a simple weekend recipe and the sauce that comes with it is so delicious. Not healthy but delicious J

Ca 2 kg og roast ham with skin

Salt Pepper

Sauce:

Bouillon from the ham

2 dl cream

Mustard

1 tbsp of Maizena

Butter

Cut squares on the skin and rub salt
and pepper all over. Put it in a fridge
over night.

Cut squares on the skin and rub the ham all over with salt and pepper. Place it in the fridge over night. Take the ham out next day for 2 hours in the room temperature. Put the oven to 230 ˚C. Put 2 dl water on an oven pan and place the ham on it. Cover well with tin foil and let the ham to steam under the tin foil 40 minutes. Reduce the heat in the oven to 175 ˚C, remove the tin foil from the ham and let the inner temperature of the ham reach 68-74 ˚C. Take the meat out from the oven and cover with tin foil.

Pour the fat/bouillon on a pan, add the cream and mustard according to your taste. Cook the sauce together so that the amount of it decreases (10-15 minutes cooking time is ok). Mix Maizena in cold water and add it to the sauce mixing the sauce all the time. Do not let the sauce to boil at this point. Add some butter and the sauce is ready. I added also some butter fried false saffron milkcaps in this sauce.

Cook the sauce together.

Let the ham to be under tin foil
before cutting it. In this way
the meat will stay juicy.

Preserving mushrooms with salt

Preserve milkcaps in heavily
salted water in a cool place.

This autumn I found a lot of false saffron milkcaps (lactarius deterrimus) and woolly milkcaps (lactarius torminosus). The latter must be cooked because of its bitter taste. Woolly milkcaps are much appreciated as salted mushrooms and this is a preserving method for them.

For 1 kg of woolly milkcaps you need 5 liters of water. Boil the mushrooms about 5-10 minutes in water. After this wash them with cold water, and squeeze the rest of the water out of the mushrooms. Take a vessel, put salt in the bottom and place mushrooms on the salt. Add salt on the mushrooms and then mushrooms and then salt again. Continue like this until the vessel is full. Pour cold water on the mushrooms and make sure that the mushrooms are covered in heavily salted water. The parts that are not under water will get mold on them so make sure that they are under salt water. Store the mushrooms in a cool place.

When you want to use the mushrooms wash them in plenty of cold water in order to get the salt out of them. It may take 1-2 days to with 3-4 change of water when taking the salt out from the mushrooms. Use the mushrooms to salads, soups etc.

WARNING: If you are not sure what mushrooms are safe to eat, leave it in the forest. Always check and identify the mushrooms again at home. Milkcaps can be recognised from the milk that comes out if you cut or break them. Woolly milkcaps has white milk and false saffron milkcaps have orange or red milk that turns green after some time.

Milkcaps to be cleaned

Woolly milkcap on the left and False saffron milkcap on
the right. You need to cook the woolly milkcaps but the
false saffron milkcaps you can cook on a pan straight
away.

1 kg mushrooms needs 5 liters water.

Cook 5-10 minutes so the taste is not so bitter.

Use a lot of salt when preserving milkcaps.

Finnish style mocha squares

Finnish style mocha squares.

My mom used to make this dessert when I was kid. I don’t know the correct name for these in English so I call them Finnish mocha squares. They were my favorites with glass of cold milk. In my family we always used hundreds-and-thousands for decoration but some use coconut flakes.

This recipe will give you one oven pan:

5 dl flour

2 dl milk

Mix the eggs and sugar
into firm foam.

3 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla sugar

3 tbsp. cacao powder

200 g melted butter

4 eggs

3 dl sugar

Add some flour to the foam...

Set the oven for 200 ˚C. Melt the butter. Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix the sugar and eggs into a firm white foam. Here the best result will be if the eggs are warm as room temperature. Add some flour to the foam and then some milk, mix carefully together. Continue like this until you have mixed all the flour and milk in the dough. Finally pour the cooled melted butter in the dough and mix it. Pour the mix on an oven pan and let the cake be in the oven about 15 minutes.

Pour the dough on an oven pan.

...and then some milk and continue with
flour and then with milk etc.

While the cake is in the oven you can prepare the icing. You will need

500 g powder sugar

2 tsp vanilla sugar

1 tbsp. cacao powder

5-7 tbsp. strong coffee

50 g melted butter

Melt the butter.  Mix the powder sugar, vanilla sugar and cacao powder together. Add the coffee and finally the melted butter.

Put the icing on the cake and
decorate as you like.

Spread the icing on the cake that has cooled down. The icing will get a bit hard when it gets cold so you should spread it rather quickly. Decorate the icing with hundreds-and-thousands.

Smoked salmon and sweet potatoes on a grill

Mmm... Barbeque...

I usually grill just honest meat on the grill but his time I wanted to try something else. I grilled a sweet potato and smoked salmon. As a side I cooked an artichoke. I heard that you should reserve 1 artichoke per person but as we had other things as well 1 artichoke was enough for 2 people.

1 lemon is enough for 1 artichoke and sweet potato.

Start the whole thing by steaming the artichoke because it can take up to an hour before it’s ready. Cut one third of the top of the artichoke. Also cut the stalk so that about 1 cm is left attached to the vegetable. For steaming you can use those fancy pots with steamer function in it or just put small amount of water on the bottom of the kettle with three slices of lemon and a bit of salt. Place the artichoke upside down to the kettle (some say it should be the stalk towards the water but I did it this way). The artichoke is cooked when you can pull out the leaves with no trouble at all. The artichoke also is ready if a small stick goes through the stalk. Serve the artichoke with melted butter that is seasoned with lemon juice. Eat only the “white” and soft parts of the leaves leaving the green and hard parts on the plate. When you come to the heart do not eat part that is “hairy”, but the soft part under the white hair.

Put the fillet(s) skin side on the grill.

Preparing the smoked salmon (4 people)

300 g salmon fillet

Salt

Pepper

Sugar

Liquid smoke

Season the salmon with salt, pepper and a bit of sugar. Drizzle liquid smoke on the fish according to your taste. Place the fish skin side on the grill and grill the salmon for 30-40 minutes on a low fire.

Preparing the sweet potato

1 sweet potato

1 chested lemon

Chili powder

Slice the sweet potatos long side and season them.

Salt

Pepper

Olive oil

Cook the sweet potato half soft so that it almost is ready but not quite. Take it out from the kettle and cool it down. Slice it long side to about 6-8 pieces. Mix all the ingredients and season the slices. Drizzle some olive oil on top and grill about 1-2 minutes both sides.

Bruschetta

Bruschetta!

Dip the white bread in olive oil and fry the bread golden brown on both sides.

Slice the tomatoes and basil and mix it together with minced garlic. Add some olive oil and vinegraitte.

Serve the tomato basil mix on top of the bread. Voilá, you have made yourself a bruschetta!

Mix the garlic, tomatoes and basil
with some olive oil and
vinaigrette.

Fry the bread golden brown.