Creamy Cauliflower Soup and Basil Oil

Since last autumn I have felt a need to start eating lighter meals and less calories. I have always had a tooth for food that could perhaps contain a little less cream, cheese, sugar and chocolate. I think lately as I passed the border of 30 years I have also started to notice my eating in my body. Not anymore I can simply eat what I want and not think of the consequences. Actually, I’ve been quite active gym-goer for most of my adult life, but now it seems I should be even more.

So, as kind of a new year’s resolution me and S decided to start eating lighter in the dinner time during the working days. We both eat lunch in restaurants near our offices every day, so we found it quite a good idea to lighten up the evening meals mainly to soups and salads. 

For the following cauliflower soup I got an inspiration from the newest edition of a Finnish food magazine Kotiliesi. I however made some changes in the original recipe, like added cheese, haha! Actually, in this soup I again used a cheese product I have been discussing in my earlier post of Swiss rösti. I still don’t know what is the name for this product in English, but here’s a photo of how it should look like. In Finland we call it melted cheese, and for all the Finns: in this recipe I used the one in the pic, Koskenlaskija strong.

Here it goes, probably the best cauliflower soup I have ever had.

Cauliflower Soup with Basil Oil

900g cauliflower head, washed and cut in florets

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 leek, well washed, green parts cut out, white part chopped

1 clove of garlic

1 liter light chicken/vegetarian broth

100 ml cream

150g processed cheese/cheese spread

pinch of smoked paprika

pinch of white pepper

salt to taste

Basil Oil

2 handfuls of fresh basil leaves

3-4 tablespoons good olive oil

pinch of pink Himalayan rock salt

Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Sautee leeks and garlic for a couple of minutes until the leek starts to get color. Be careful not to burn the garlic, as it gets a bitter flavor.

Add the cauliflower florets and broth. Bring to a boil and let bubble until the cauliflowers are completely cooked. Lift the soup off the fire and puree using a hand blender. Add water if needed.

Lower the fire to low and place the pan back on the stove. Mix in cream and the cheese. Let boil gently until cheese has melted completely. 

Spice up with white pepper, smoked paprika and salt.

Prepare the basil oil. Place the oil and basil leaves in a high edge container and puree using a hand blender (you can also do it with a regular blender). Season with pink Himalayan chrystal salt.

Top the soup with basil oil and enjoy!

Apple & Cinnamon Pancakes

Hello dear friends, fellow home cooks, food lovers and everyone else! I am so deeply sorry to have kept the blog in silence for almost 6 months now. Oh I cannot believe it was actually so long! But now we’re back online, back in cooking and sharing the best recipes with you.

So many things have happened during the silent period: we have moved (still living in Helsinki) and we both, me and S have new jobs from the same field, which I could say is something like consulting/content/web/communication. Not much more about that though, because this is not a blog about my work life - just saying I really enjoy it, and have been happy to learn so much new already. And so is S. He’s doing great in his job, and I am extremely proud about that!

Anyway, the most significant thing about the new year, concerning this blog, is that I’m trying to find time to make it bigger and better. First of all I have already invested in it as we bought a new camera, which hopefully will make the pictures better than they have been. In Christmas I also got a book called Styling, Lighting and Photographing Food, which I’m gonna read throughout as I am still learning the secrets of great food photography. The next thing is to get proper lights for our tinier than tiny home studio (if anyone has any suggestions about how to best imitate daylight in darker conditions, I would love to hear), and then everything should be set. Except for the styling part of course, as at the moment I own quite a small amount of kitchenware and dishes to style the images with. So here I come, stores full of lovely stuff!

Today we woke up real late and I made us some pancakes. The recipe was found from my new site crush, Williams-Sonoma. I changed the way of doing the pancakes slightly: Instead of frying the apples straight with the pancake batter I first fried them with butter and sugar and then again under the pancake.

Fluffy Apple & Cinnamon Pancakes

2 eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk

50 grams + 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 peeled green apples, 1 cored and finely grated, 1 thinly sliced

Mediterranean Turkey Burgers with Halloumi Cheese & Tomato Mint Salsa

Thank you thank you thank you everyone of you who still has kept reading and liking my posts, even I am nowadays updating new stuff so rarely! Your feedback is super important, so please stay tuned in future too.

As you might guess, the reason I haven’t been actively posting these days is that I’ve been….WORKING! I love my work, it’s not that, but I seriously haven’t even had time to properly relax while at home, not to even talk about seeing friends or, well, cooking.

I’m working quite a lot of evening shifts lately, which means I don’t have a chance to prepare dinners, and usually before going to work early afternoon I just wanna chill and not use too much time for cooking special breakfasts etc. Today is my only free day this week, so I have a blueberry mascarpone tart crust in the oven, and plans for some sinful cheeseburgers in mind for dinner.

Talking about burgers, it’s the recipe of today in this blog too. A while ago I ran into a recipe of a Turkish köfte style lamb burgers, and it sounded so delicious I had to try it. The burgers were accompanied with Greek halloumi cheese and tomato-mint-pine nut salsa. The original recipe I took here. I substituted the lamb meat with ground turkey and arugula with some crispy romaine lettuce. This time I didn’t bake my own burger buns but used store-bought.

The lack of images is because S went to shoot a short film last week, took my memory card and this one was the only one I could save before all the images were disappeared.

By the way, does anyone else think that burgers are one of the most difficult foods to photograph? Cause I do!

Turkey Burgers with Halloumi and Tomato Mint Salsa

For the burgers:

500 g ground turkey

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1 teaspoons ground coriander

bunch of fresh cilantro, chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

salt and pepper to taste

For the tomato salsa:

2 medium tomatoes, cut in small cubes

half red onion, cut into small cubes

2 tablespoons pine nuts, lightly toasted

2 teaspoons olive oil

 1 teaspoon lemon juice

salt and pepper, to taste

bunch of fresh mint, chopped

And:

halloumi cheese, sliced in desired thickness and grilled on a skillet

romaine lettuce

burger buns, lightly grilled

Turkish yogurt mixed with 1 crushed clove of garlic + salt + black pepper

Mix all the ingredients of the burgers until properly combined. With moist hands form the mixture into 4-5 round burgers.

Preheat your oven to 225 C°. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place the burgers on it. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or until almost done.

Heat a drop of olive oil in a skillet and quickly fry the ready burgers from both sides over medium-high heat, just to get some color on them.

Mix the ingredients of the salsa. Remember to toast the pine nuts on a dry skillet, no oil.

In a little olive oil over medium-high heat, lightly grill the halloumi cheese from both sides. Cut the burger buns in half and grill the cut sides lightly too.

Build your burgers and enjoy!

Chocolate Truffle Tart

A while ago in my post I told you about a Monday morning when I woke up as usual, followed my morning routines, and then realized I’m having a free day from work!

While I went back to bed me and S talked about the day that was starting, and he draw me a riddle. I’m not sure how this is called in English, but in Finnish as well as in Portuguese that particular word riddle is called “gallows”. Sounds brutal, yes, but the idea is to give the other person the amount of letters there are in the words, and she has to guess what those words are by asking, one at the time, if the words contain certain letters. If they do, the riddler adds the letter into the words. If they don’t, the riddler draws one piece of a gallows next to the words. The aim is for the player to guess the words before the gallows is ready and she is “hanged”.

You have this game too? I’m curious! At least it was known is Finland as well as in Brazil, even with the same name, so I guess it’s rather universal.

Anyway, my words in the game were _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _   _ _ _ _. And for some reason (maybe I was too tired) I didn’t get it right! The words were of course “chocolate cake”, which S wanted me to bake as for once I had time.

He spent his evening in a Finnish course (which by the way now ended and he did so well in the exam!) and I spent mine baking not a cake but a chocolate tart. I found two recipes, that I put together. The originals can be found here and here.

The Gourmet.com recipe for the filling says it should be chilled in a fridge for hours before serving, but we couldn’t wait and ate (+ photographed) it immediately when it was cooled.

Just a word of warning before I give you the recipe. Bake this tart to share it with a bunch of people. Otherwise you will eat it all by yourself.

Sinful Chocolate Truffle Tart

For the chocolate pastry:

5 dl all-purpose flour

1,5 dl cocoa powder

2 dl minus 2 tablespoons caster sugar

160 g butter, diced

2 eggs

(pinch of salt if you used unsalted butter)

For the chocolate truffle filling:

300g good-quality bitter-sweet chocolate, chopped

100g unsalted butter, diced

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

100 ml heavy cream

0,5 dl caster sugar

pinch of salt

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Prepare the pastry.

Place flour, cocoa, sugar, salt and butter in a bowl of food processor and process until fine as breadcrumbs. Add eggs and process until it holds together. 

Turn onto a lightly floured board and gently knead until smooth. Shape into a thick disc and cover with plastic wrap. Place in fridge for 10 minutes to rest. 

Line a bottom of a springform pan with baking paper. Lightly rub the sides with butter. I suggest you use a springform pan with removable sides because this tart is easier and prettier to serve like that. I used a 22 cm diameter pan.

Roll out pastry on a floured surface into about 5mm thickness. Place it in the pan so that the sides rise about 4cm.

Let it rest in the fridge while you preheat your oven to 175 C°.

Line pastry with baking paper, fill with beans or pie weights and bake for 10 minutes. Take it out, remove beans, and bake again for more 5 minutes or until firm. Set aside and let cool.

Prepare the filling.

Melt chocolate and butter in a bain marie over a saucepan filled 1/3 with water, over medium heat. Constantly stir until smooth, then remove from heat and let cool for 5 minutes.

Whisk together eggs, cream, sugar, salt, and vanilla in a bowl. Whisk chocolate mixture into egg mixture until combined well.

Pour filling into cooled crust and rap pan once on counter to eliminate any air bubbles. Bake until filling 1 inch from edge is set and slightly puffed but center trembles slightly when pan is gently shaken, 20 to 25 minutes. (Center will continue to set as it cools.)

Cool tart completely in the pan, about 2 hours. Chill, uncovered, until center is firm, at least 4 hours. Remove sides of the pan and sprinkle with cocoa to serve.

Baked Apple and Pecan French Toast Casserole

I used to be eager to try new things for breakfast every weekend possible. Great sides of student life! As I started to work I’ve grown lazier and lazier, and rather spend my late mornings sleeping than preparing luxurious brekkies to S and myself. 

While browsing through the memory card of my camera I came across with this breakfast dish I prepared already some months ago. It was a perfect breakfast in a sense that it took only a quick moment to prepare. Next time I would perhaps make it a brunch dessert, as it’s too sweet to be a breakfast dish alone.

In case you’re not a big fan of apples, I assume you could substitute them with pears, pineapple or peaches as well. Talking about peaches, I’ve been thinking of this supergood looking grilled peach dessert for some time now, and will do it sometime soon!

The basic casserole recipe was adapted from here. 

Baked Apple and Pecan French Toast Casserole

1 loaf brioche or French bread, sliced into 2cm thick slices

8 eggs, slightly beaten

500 ml whole milk

1,5 dl light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 green apples, halved, seeds removed and rather thinly sliced

0,75 dl brown sugar (I used muscovado)

50g butter, softened

1 teaspoon cinnamon

handful of pecan nuts

+ butter to grease the baking dish

Preheat oven to 175 C°. Rub a medium baking dish with butter.

Place the bread slices on the dish, overlapping. 

In a small bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla. Pour 2/3 of the mixture over the bread slices.

Arrange the apple slices nicely on top of the bread and top with rest of the egg mixture.

Mix together brown sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle evenly on top of the apples.

Dot the surface generously with butter and pecan nuts.

Bake casserole for 30-40 minutes on a center oven rack. Let cool before serving and enjoy with some vanilla ice cream.

Pasta Puttanesca

Hi all! I can’t believe I’ve stayed away for so long! I mean, I’ve been around all the time, just not updating the blog. Just one word of explanation: work.

But now as I’m back I don’t wanna waste time in writing something that might not interest you, like the weather conditions in Finland (awful) or my work (tough) or other things not concerning food. So straight to the point.

I love Italian food - who wouldn’t!? I love pasta and I could eat pasta dishes every day. Or at least Italian dishes, when I could include also pizzas and risottos into my daily diet. Yum!

One of my favorite pastas of all times is spaghetti alla puttanesca, spaghetti in whores’ style. It traditionally consists of tomato, anchovies, capers, olives, chili and garlic. There are many explanations to the spicy name of this spicy dish. The ladies of the night wanted to have quick meals between the customers, so this one was super simple to prepare. Or they attracted the men from the street to the brothels with the wonderful scent of this food. Or, as it’s strong in flavor, by eating it they could keep the customers from trying to kiss them. And of course, the dish is as hot and spicy as the women themselves.

I don’t normally cook many pastas with tomato, simply because my better half S is not very fond of tomato sauces. This time I didn’t ask, which was smart, because S loved it. For once I will be able to prepare a tomato based pasta again!

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca

300g dry spaghetti

500g whole canned tomatoes

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

6 canned anchovy fillets

3 cloves garlic, finely minced

1 red chili or 2 smaller peperoncinos if you can get them, finely minced

1/2 small onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons capers

20 black olives (I used kalamata), stones removed

salt and black pepper to taste

chopped fresh parsley or basil

parmesan cheese, to serve

Prepare the sauce. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add anchovies, garlic, onion and chili. Let simmer constantly stirring until the anchovies have “melted” in the oil, about 5 minutes.

Crush the canned tomatoes and add them to the skillet. Let the sauce simmer while you boil the pasta according to the package instructions.

Drain the cooked pasta. Add capers and olives into the tomato sauce, heat up and toss with the pasta.

Serve immediately with chopped herbs and grated parmesan cheese.

African Sweet Potato, Peanut and White Bean Soup

Today I woke up early, as normally, did my morning routines, took a shower, brushed my teeth, made and drank coffee, did some pinteresting and browsed the news online. I was about to leave home when I started to check my shifts, in order to be sure I had the morning shift. The amazement was huge when the list said “free”! I had to call my colleagues at the office and ask them to check if that was really true.

And it was, so me and S decided to clean up the apartment, I planned to go to the supermarket to get our weekly stuff and S was going to spend the evening at the Finnish language course, where he’s doing really well (I’m so proud, as anyone who has ever tried to learn Finnish knows it’s one of the hardest languages in the world, alongside of Hungarian and Estonian). So when we were waking up in bed very late this afternoon S made me a riddle by drawing…which I had to solve to find out he wished me to bake a chocolate cake.

So after his daily dose of Finnish there was a chocolate tart waiting for him. The recipe will follow, but first I want to tell you what I cooked for dinner tonight.

The soup was so hearty, so flavorous and so good. The recipe is adapted from Vegetarian Times. The original calls for spinach, but I forgot to buy it. Instead I used some baked white beans, as I guessed S would like some protein in the soup. It worked fine, but I am sure spinach would have been lovely too!

A word about harissa paste too. This North African delicious spice paste is so rich in flavor, that I just love it. However, I’ve noticed some brands are hotter than others. So I have decided to use the mildest one I’ve found, so that I can use it in quite large amounts and get all benefits of the wonderful flavors. 

African Sweet Potato, Peanut and White Bean Soup (serves your whole family)

2 large sweet potatoes, washed

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small leek (white and light green parts), halved and washed

2 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 teaspoon cumin

3 tablespoons peanut butter

2 heaping tablespoons harissa paste

750ml light chicken stock

1 can baked white beans, drained

salt to taste

peanuts, fresh coriander and Turkish yogurt to garnish

Place the sweet potatoes in a microwave and cook in full power for 10 minutes. Cut the potatoes in half lengthwise, and cook for 10 minutes more, or so long that they are relatively soft.

Cut the meat off the potato skins with a spoon.

Heat the olive oil in a medium/large saucepan or a Dutch oven. Chop the leaks and sautée them over a medium heat for 5 minutes. Add garlic, turmeric and cumin, and keep sauteeing for 1 minute more. Add harissa, peanut butter, sweet potatoes and chicken stock and let simmer for 20 minutes, half covered.

Take the pan off the heat and puree the soup by using a stick blender.

Put back to heat and add the beans. Add some water if the soup is too thick. Season with salt if needed.

Serve with some yogurt, coriander and peanuts.

Red Chard, Cheddar & Lemon Quiche

Last night my friends arranged a wonderful cocktail party at their place. All the guests were dressed up in their best outfits, there was a wide range of drinks, and what’s the best, a wide range of lovely cocktail bites. I still don’t know how many days my friend has used in preparing all that, but I assume MANY.

The best things I got to taste there was a cracker with apricot and miso jam, and a chocolate tart with pistachio halva and sesame salt. I really have to try these out myself too!

In a manner of fact, I had promised to help in cooking something for the party. What happened was that I got a mild food poisoning from something I ate on Friday, so I was not feeling very good yesterday. Bravely I still started to prepare the red chard mini quiches I had promised, but what eventually happened was that they got stuck in my cupcake pan and broke. Almost all of them. So that was it. Luckily I had still half of the dough as well as the filling left, so I decided just to make a traditional quiche and bring it to the party.

Cut in small bits it was almost as nice as the individual mini quiches would have been!

Red Chard, Cheddar and Lemon Quiche

Basic pie crust:

125g butter (salted)

3dl all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons ice cold water

For the filling:

bunch of red chard, washed and stems cut off

1 tablespoon olive oil

small bunch of rocket, washed

200ml heavy whipping cream

200g creme fraiche

3 large eggs

100g yellow cheddar, grated

50g parmesan cheese, grated

1 teaspoon lemon peel, finely grated

salt and black pepper to taste

Prepare the crust. Using your fingertips, work together butter and flour until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Quickly mix in the ice cold water, form into a ball and refrigerate while you make the filling.

Roughly chop chard and rocket. Heat the olive oil in a skillet and sautée chard for 30 seconds. Set aside.

Mix together cream and creme fraiche. Whisk in the eggs, cheeses, lemon peel and rocket.

Preheat the oven to 200C°. Cover the base of a springform pan with baking paper and grease the sides with butter.

Take the dough from the fridge. On a floured surface, roll it out into a round slightly bigger than the diameter of your pan.

Place the rolled dough in the pan so that it covers the bottom and about 1/3 up the sides. Pour the filling on the crust, top with sauteed chard and bake about 30 minutes or until golden.

Baked Buffalo Chicken Taquitos

Something that I was earlier totally unfamiliar with, is buffalo sauce. I started to see it in so many websites and blogs, in so many recipes that I had to find out what it was.

As I’ve understood, buffalo sauce is a quite American thing. It’s like hot sauce, with a big splash of vinegar. It should also have a flavor of butter in it. You can prepare your own buffalo sauce, but I started to hunt for the real American one, and could find a bottle from a big market nearby. I’ve seen from several recipes, that a brand called Frank’s Red Hot is quite popular when preparing food with buffalo sauce. Mine was called Texas Pete Hot Sauce, and I suppose they are all quite the same.

The recipe for the following dish is adapted from Taste and Tell. This eventually became one of the best mexican foods, and definitely one of the best comfort foods I have ever prepared.

I highly recommend you to try it out!

Baked Buffalo Chicken Taquitos

350g chicken breast, cooked and finely shredded

8 wheat tortillas

250g cream cheese, softened

50g blue cheese, crumbled (I actually used 100g blue cheese flavored cream cheese, which I recommend if you can find it)

100g yellow cheddar, grated

5-6 tablespoons buffalo sauce

2 spring onions, finely chopped

handful of fresh coriander, chopped

black pepper

1 tablespoon olive oil

For the dressing:

200g creme fraiche & some crumbled blue cheese

Preheat oven to 175C°

In a bowl, combine all the ingredients except for tortillas and olive oil. Mix well.

Place 2-3 tablespoons of the mixture in the middle of each tortilla and spread vertically. Roll the tortillas up and place the seam side down on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. 

Brush the rolls with oil and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. They should be nice and golden when ready.

Mix the dressing ingredients and garnish the dish with some fresh coriander.

Serve with the dressing and buffalo sauce.

Beetroot Risotto with Chèvre Mousse

First of all, thanks so much everyone for your comments on my posts! Today I prepared my second favorite noodles (after pad thai) for dinner, and found a comment in the recipe. This kind of advising and giving ideas and hints is so important when learning more about food and cooking (or about anything, generally). So please give more feedback and also share your recipes with me!

Yesterday at work I got involved with the topic of healthy eating. I am not so much of a healthy eater myself (I probably shouldn’t tell this but today I had an ice cream AND two teaspoons of Nutella, which is my weakness) but it was interesting to read about this new Swedish research that confirms the old facts already learned at school: the Scandinavian “plate model” is the healthiest way to eat. It’s similar to many international plate models I found, and close to the Harvard food pyramid, but stresses the importance of veggies on each meal (half of the plate should be those). The Scandi plate rarely includes fruit, but substitutes them with berries that have less sugar and that, of course, also grow here up North.

The plate model says 50 percent of the meal should consist of vegetables, 25 percent of protein, 20 percent of carbs (the more fiber the better) and 5 percent of unsaturated fats. You should also have a glass of low-fat milk and a slice of rye bread on your meal. The dessert is berries. In the era of diets, and especially low-carb diets this model seems somehow old, but seems to be the one that is scientifically proved to be the best. It’s funny, by the way to compare it to this old Finnish eating recommendation model, that contains way too much of carbs and starch. I’m curious to know how in your country people are advised to eat, what are the proportions, etc?

A curious detail, that I heard from a nutrition researcher yesterday was that Finns get 20-25 percent of their daily calorie intake from “empty eats”, like candies, baked goods and alcohol. There we still have a lot to learn - me included.

Anyway, the recipe I’m sharing today I tried last night. Beetroot is a veggie I like, but which I rarely cook. Maybe because during the winter time the roots are so hard that they take too long time to cook, eh. Now anyway I decided to do something out of beets, so here comes a beetroot risotto. 

It was very delicious, but also very sweet. I highly recommend you also prepare the chèvre mousse to serve with risotto, as it nicely balances the sweetness.

Beetroot Risotto with Goat Cheese Mousse

2 large beetroots

2 tablespoons dark balsamic vinegar

2+2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

3 dl risotto rice (I used Arborio)

650ml chicken broth

50g parmesan cheese, grated

1 teaspoon salt, or less to taste

freshly ground black pepper

150ml heavy whipping cream

200g soft goat cheese

Preheat the oven to 200°. 

Wash, peel, halve and slice the beetroots. Place them on a baking sheet over a parchment paper and drizzle with 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Roast in the oven for 30 minutes, then drizzle with 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, toss and roast for 30 minutes more. Let cool and puree with a stick blender or food-processor. Set aside.

Whip the heavy cream into a thick foam and let it wait in fridge.

Heat 2 remaining tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over a medium heat. Add the onion and garlic, and sautee for 2 minutes. Add the rice and sautee for more 3 minutes, until the rice starts becoming transparent.

Start adding the chicken broth 100ml at the time. Whisk constantly with a wire whisk or a wooden spoon, to create the crema. Then the liquid is absorbed, add the next 100ml.

When you have used all the broth (this should take about 15 minutes) the rice should be soft but not overcooked.

Stir into the risotto the pureed beetroots, grated parmesan and 3 tablespoons whipped cream. Spice up with salt and black pepper. Remember to taste the amount of salt, as the beets can give the food a very sweet flavor.

Keep the risotto over a very low fire while you prepare the mousse.

Using an electric mixer toss soft goat cheese to whipped cream. Mix well and serve immediately with the risotto.

Garnish the dish with some parmesan and black pepper.

If you want something green with your risotto, I have heard dill goes surprisingly well with beets. I should try that too!