Pasha, Russian Easter Dessert

First of all, let me start with my amusement caused by the fact that in English the traditional Russian Easter dessert I’m going to present here is called pashka. Now there’s a reason I am going to use the Finnish (& original Russian) name pasha for this delicious dessert, as the English one doesn’t really make justice to it. Why? Because in Finnish pashka means something that comes out of you after you have eaten your pasha, so we better not go further with that.

Last Easter I blogged about the traditional Finnish Easter dessert mämmi, which is made of rye flour, malts and sugar, and typically served with double cream. But pasha…my favorite of all the Easter desserts. Originating from Russia and into the Orthodox Christian Easter tradition it has also found its way to Finland probably centuries ago. Many might know we have a lot of Russian influence here after being under the Russian rule in the 19th century, and pasha is one of those. In Russia pasha is traditionally prepared on Good Friday and enjoyed as a dessert or with afternoon coffee, typically with kulich, a sweet Easter cake. 

The recipe of pasha varies depending on who does the treat and where. The two main ingredients, however, stay. They are butter and quark, a thick, sour and very low-fat milk product, typical here in the North. Actually I think I have mentioned quark in my other posts too, wondering what it might be called in other countries. Might also be cottage cheese in the US, for example. Am I any right? With the main ingredients there are many ways to spice pasha, most common of which are orange, lemon (especially the dried and sugared pieces of lemon peel), raisins and nuts or almonds.

Before starting to make pasha, it’s good to know that this version of it is not a “mix & go” type of a dessert. It’s very quick to prepare, but has to drain at least overnight (mine did for 16 hours and could drain even more). So you need also a cheese cloth and a coffee filter to do the draining.

It was the first time for me to prepare this silky dessert, so I modified the original recipe a little bit to suit better my own taste. The recipe can be found here (in Finnish).

Russian Easter Pasha

100 g butter, slightly softened

1 dl sugar

1 egg

200 g quark

2 dl heavy whipping cream

juice of 1/2 lemon

1 heaping tablespoon orange marmalade

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 dl almond chips or crushed almonds

(1/2 dl raisins)

Lemon/orange peel and almonds to decorate.

Whip the cream until soft peaks lightly form. Using an electric mixer cream together butter and sugar until light in color.

Mix into the butter mixture all the other ingredients and beat gently to incorporate everything.

Line two small or one big steady coffee filter with damp cheese cloth. Spoon the mixture in it until the very top of the filter. Fold the rest of the cheese cloth on the mixture and top with a heavy weight.

Place the filter in a plastic jar where it doesn’t hit the bottom. The excess liquid will drain into the jar without making the pasha wet.

Let drain in a refrigerator for at least 12 hours. Pasha is at its best on the next day.

Individual Rhubarb and Oatmeal Crumble

I’m slowly getting a bit better. I am already able to cook! At least in small portions. I’m not super tired all the time and I have high hopes that tomorrow I’ll be ok at work. I really cannot be absent from work, as there’s a lot of stuff to do.

Today I made two experiments in kitchen, actually. A productive day, I would say! For the breakfast we made Russian syrniki, curd pancakes. They were totally delicious, but not very photogenic. I need to fry them in a cast iron skillet next time, and not in a non-stick frying pan. They didn’t stick, but didn’t look very pretty either. So for the recipe you’ll have to wait…but try this following instead!

A while ago a friend of mine (she’s having a wonderful food blog, take a look!) gave me a few rhubarb stalks from her parents garden. Now they’re in the fridge, getting bad and I had to quickly rescue them. So I made the most simple rhubarb dessert there is, a rhubarb oatmeal crisp. It was improvised, so I try to remember the amounts I used. This portion is for two people only, as I made two individual desserts (see in the pic).

Serve this summery dessert with vanilla ice cream, we didn’t have, what a pity!

Rhubarb and Oatmeal crumble (serves 2)

2 stalks rhubarb

0,5dl light brown sugar

2 tablespoons water

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

a pinch of cinnamon

50g salted butter

about 1dl oatmeal

0,5dl all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons sugar

Preheat the oven to 175C°. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Peel the rhubarbs if necessary and slice them crosswise. Toss together rhubarbs, light brown sugar, 1 tablespoon of flour and cinnamon. Press the rhubarbs with the spoon so that they let out some juice. Set aside.

Using your fingers, mix together the rest of the ingredients until everything is crumbly and well mixed.

Spoon half and half of the rhubarb filling into individual ramekins. Top generously with the oatmeal crumble.

Bake on the center rack of the oven, over the covered baking sheet for 30 minutes or until the filling starts to bubble.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Finnish Easter dessert, Mämmi

We Finns love holidays (who wouldn’t). Even we’re very conscientious workers we surely try to have as many days off-duty during the year as possible. Easter is a good example. It’s a four-day holiday, when all the places (markets, banks, post offices, liquor stores) are closed. So to speak, for us this Monday after the Easter Sunday is still a holiday when we can stay at home, petting our artificial Easter chicks and eating the leftover food from the weekend.

One of the most peculiar dishes in the Finnish Easter table is a dessert called “mämmi”. Mämmi is a pudding-like dish, that is made of rye flour, malt and sugar. Mämmi is most often served with heavy cream, vanilla sauce and/or sugar and it’s very rich and tasty in all its simplicity. It’s almost black in color which might make it seem a little bit suspicious for people unfamiliar with the dish. Actually, some Finnish people find it funny to present this delicacy to foreigners in a humorous way, as many people get some, ermh, particular connotations from it. I don’t think that’s so hilarious at all, as I love this dessert and am proud of the Finnish food culture in general.

There are several recipes for mämmi, but as I have never tried to prepare it myself, I rather not give any tips about which would be the best way to do it. Instead, when you have found your way to prepare mämmi, you must try the following dessert, that takes your mämmi to a new level of deliciousness. The recipe is taken from a Finnish lifestyle magazine Kodin Kuvalehti (in Finnish). 

Layered Mämmi Mousse (serves 4)

300g mämmi

200ml double cream, whipped

250g fromage frais/quark/curd cheese

100ml caster sugar

1/2 teaspoon ginger powder

canned peach or grated orange peel, for garnish

Using an electric mixer, mix together whipped cream, fromage frais (or a substitute), sugar and ginger until smooth.

Spoon 3 tablespoons of mämmi on the bottom of your dessert cups. Top with a similar layer of the cream mixture. Add one more layer of mämmi and of cream mixture on top. 

Garnish with chopped fruit or grated orange peel.

Banoffee Pie

I have to admit, I am such a fan of sweets! I mean, not like ordinary sweets fans, but like… a chocoholic. Yes, that tells it all. Chocolate is one of my biggest weaknesses. I like it in so many forms, but my favorites are definitely the darker bitter ones, the ones that contain more than 70 % of cacao. I also love to bake things with chocolate. I have collected a massive source of chocolate cake recipes, and I am constantly on a quest to find the best chocolate cake in the world. So in case you have found one, please share your secret with me! So far I have tried several but none of them has exactly fulfilled me. My dream cake would be a mud cake like, very fudgy from the middle, but very dense at the same time. With deep flavor of chocolate. The closest I’ve gotten so far was with a Brazilian recipe that I found after eating one of the most divine pieces of chocolate cake at Sao Paulo Guarulhos airport a year back. That recipe I will also share with you as soon as I get to bake it again. Last time the cake disappeared so fast that I could not even take pics, haha!

As you see, when I get to talk about chocolate I never stop unless stopped. The aim of this post was not to talk about chocolate but something almost as divine. One week ago I got dinner guests when a friend couple was visiting. The theme of the food was Korean, but as I never really liked to have my desserts very light (like often in Asian cuisine they are) I decided to do something outside the theme. As my adventures with chocolate are well known for people that would have been a rather boring choice. So I ended up doing a Banoffee pie. A sweet, soft, creamy, delicious banoffee pie, that makes me drool even when thinking about it.

When you’re fixing a bit more challenging dinner a Banoffee pie is a perfect dessert as it requires very little work. Also my recipe for it couldn’t be more simple, here it comes!

Oh So Divine Banoffee Pie

300g assorted biscuits of your choice (I used some chocolate drop cookies with some non-frosted cupcakes I had forgotten in our freezer some time ago)

100g unsalted butter, melted

1 can (397g) condensed milk caramel, or one of just condensed milk

2-3 bananas, sliced (the not too ripe ones are the best for this)

200ml heavy whipping cream

100g dark chocolate

If you are using condensed milk and not ready caramel, start with the condensed milk. If you already have the caramel ready, skip this part. Bring water to boil in a preferably big saucepan. Remove the labels from your tin can of condensed milk and place the can as it is (do not open it) into the boiling water. Let simmer for about 3 to 3,5 hours, adding water into the pan if necessary. The can should stay under the water at all times, so more water might be needed.

Carefully remove the can from the water after the time is due and let cool in a cold water.

Line the bottom of an approx. 22cm springform pan with baking paper.

Prepare the biscuit base. Crush the bisquits in a large bowl until they’re small crumbs. You can use a potato masher, a steak hammer, a wine bottle or anything you have at hand. If you have a food processor to do the work, even better. You can also put the biscuits in a plastic bag and crush them with a rolling pin. All the means are okay for this!

Stir in the melted butter until the mixture is smooth and sticky. Press the mixture on the bottom of your springform pan and 3cm up the sides. Refridgerate for about one hour.

When the the biscuit base is firm, it’s time to fill the pie. Open the cooled can of condensed milk caramel (or the ready caramel) and pour it on the biscuit base. Top with sliced bananas. Whip the cream with an electric mixer until fluffy and thick foam. . The cream doesn’t need sugar as the pie contains other elements that are already very sweet. Spoon the whipped cream over the bananas, and don’t be too careful with this, the pie should have kind of a careless look.

Top with roughly chopped dark chocolate (or sifted cocoa powder). Enjoy immediately in good company, with sweet dessert wine and a clear conscience!

Opening a new blog with a chocolate soufflé

Welcome to enter my brand new food blog! I have been maturing the idea of a blog for a longer time now, and finally, here it is.

I get inspired by food, very much so. I like to stimulate my senses with it. Another thing that strongly inspires me is cinema as a form of art. Especially important for me are the films of French new wave, directors like Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Jaques Rivette and Alain Resnais. My ultimate girl crush is of course Anna Karina, who’s known as a muse of Godard, as well as the star of several Nouvelle Vague films. As maybe obvious when considering my love for French new wave, the inspiration for the title of this blog is taken from Nouvelle Vague too. One of my absolute favorites in this film genre is Jean-Luc Godard’s À Bout de Souffle (Breathless by its English title), starred by Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.

Photo: fact.co.uk

Photo: fact.co.uk

Photo: fact.co.uk

Besides being a place for myself to save the recipes that I have successfully (or not always so successfully) tried along the time, the purpose of this blog is to inspire and get inspired by other food (or film) lovers. After all, food is not only a source of nutrition, but a source of life in many other ways too. It’s nutrition for senses, for soul, for social interaction and gatherings. It’s succeeding, sometimes failing and learning. It’s something for relaxation, for your own time, or something for enjoying together. So feel free to comment, ask and share your ideas with me!

The only possible way to kick off this blog is with a recipe of soufflé, a lightweight French cake based on egg whites beaten to glossy meringue, typically baked in small size ramekins for a beautiful look. It’s a delicate form of art, this making of a soufflé and everyone who once tried it, knows how easily they fall flat. I succeeded pretty well this time, although my soufflés ended up being much smaller than in the original recipe.

The recipe was adapted from Martha Stewart. I added my own chocolaty twist with a ganache, the simple recipe of it can be found below.

Fluffy Chocolate Soufflés (6 small ones)

150g bittersweet chocolate (I prefer the ones containing at least 70 % of cocoa)

6 tablespoons sugar + some extra for baking dishes

250ml milk

5 large egg whites

3 large egg yolks

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Unsalted butter, for baking dishes

Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 200 C. Butter your chosen baking dishes (this recipe is enough for approximately 6 of 150ml dishes, I made mine in small coffee cups) and coat with sugar.

Chop chocolate and melt it in a plastic/glass bowl in a microwave or placing the bowl over a pot of boiling water. Stir occasionally until smooth. Set aside and keep warm.

Heat up the milk in a saucepan but don’t let it boil. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer combine yolks and 4 tablespoons of sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in flour until well combined. Still mixing, slowly add half of the hot milk.

Add mixture to the saucepan with remaining milk. Bring to boil stirring constantly. Simmer for 2-3 minutes more, then add the melted chocolate. Transfer into a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap and keep warm.

In a bowl, beat egg whites using an electric mixer until the mixture forms soft peaks (approx. 5 minutes). In the original recipe it says to add a pinch of cream of tartar in this phase, but as I am unfamiliar with this product, I omitted it. Gradually add 2 remaining tablespoons of sugar and mix until stiff and shiny.

Gently spoon 1/4 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and stir until smooth. Add the rest of the whites and mix carefully. Spoon the batter into the baking dishes and bake for 12-15 minutes until the soufflés have risen slightly and become crusty. Don’t open the oven while baking.

Dust the soufflés with confectioners’ sugar and serve immediately with warm chocolate ganache.

Easy Chocolate Ganache

100ml heavy cream

100g semi-sweet chocolate

Chop chocolate in a small saucepan, pour in the cream and heat up until silky and smooth.