onion-mushroom-pie

A some sort of quite modified quiche, the bottom has a dough made with yeast and the onion-mushroom- filling spiced with vermouth is... well... simply really good! As I have a seemingly unlimited supply of home-made vermouth I use it a bit excessively. But then again, it is really a great spice!


Dough:

1dl milk
20g yeast
a tiny bit of sugar
a tiny bit of salt
2 eggs
2 tbs oil or goose fat (gives a nice and special flavour!)
2 dl rye flour
1 1/2 dl wheat or spelt flour

Make the dough as any basic yeast-dough and let it rise while you prepare the filling.

Filling (quite approximate, I tend to make too much...)
2 onions
1 leek
some bacon if you want
some zucchini if you want
a handfull dried spicy mushrooms; Craterellus cornucopioides is the very best one but Cantharellus tubaeformis can do as well
1dl or so vermouth 
3 eggs
2 dl milk
1-3 dl grated rather strong cheese

Put the dried mushrooms to soak. Chop the onion, leek (zucchini and bacon). Fry the onion, leek (zucchini and bacon), with a bit of oil or buter. I imagine this pie would also work with fresh mushrooms, and then one would simply fry them with the onions. Add the soaked mushrooms and vermouth, let the vermouth simmer away and spice up the filling. Let cool down a bit. Mix the eggs, milk and cheese in another pot. Mix the two parts of the filling. One can add some salt, chives and other spices according to taste, but the mushrooms, vermouth, onion and cheese do already have quite a lot of flavours.

Spread the dough at the bottom of a pie-form, add the filling on top and fry in 200 Celcius about 45 min. Or, depending on your oven - until it is done.

Fried cabbage flowers

Asiatic cabbages (mizuna, komatsuna and pak choy) that we have in the garden have a tendency to start flowering a bit sooner than they should. Instead of throwing the flowers away, they can be eaten. After all, it is the same part of plant as what is eaten as broccoli.

So:
- pick flowers
- rinse them
- fry them in oil
- spice with for example zataar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Za'atar)

Nice little snack or a side dish!

Beetroot ice cream - rødbeteis - punajuurijäätelö

Yes it sounds weird. And - not everybody likes it. But... actually it is like beetroot salad, just frozen. And creates quite spectacle in a party ;) Should be prepared day before so it has time to freeze properly.

125g sill (kryddersild, matjessild or so)
1 small onion
1 beetroot in vinegar (from a jar...)
1 tbs of the liquid from the vinegar-beetroots
100g natural cream cheese (Philadelphia or so)
2 dl cream, whipped
1 tbs (or less or more, what you prefer) lemon juice
white pepper

Chop the non-liquid ingredients into very very small. Add the rest. Freeze, as ice ice cream (mixing every now and then while it freezes) or just simply in a cake form. Decorate with chives.

Beetroot salad

2 -4 Beetroots, boiled
1 onion (depends how much raw onion you like in a salad)
1 green sour apple
about 2dl sour cream (rømme, kermaviili, yoghourt or rømmekolle are all fine)
pinch of salt, pinch of sugar

Chop the vegetables into small pieces. Add sour cream and spices. Yes, it is possible to add other spices as well but it is actually very good without.

Janssonin kiusaus, Janssons fristelse, The Temptation of Jansson

As it happened that there were too many anchovy in a jar to be marinated, I made this as well. It is a traditional Swedish and Finnish dish, the typical type of "not exactly light food".

1 kg potatoes
2 onions
anchovy filee, more or less like 250g
few dl of cream (in this one, I used around 4)
salt, pepper

Peel potatoes, and chop the into sticks, resembling french fries. Soak them in cold water to get rid of the starch. While the potatoes soak, peel, chop and fry the onions. Then dry the potatoes. Oil an oven-form, and fill it in some kind of mixed order (not exactly layered) potatoes, anchovies and onions. Add pepper (and salt, if you want) on top, pour cream on the mixture. The cream should almost reach the top of the mixture, so neither just a drop at the bottom, nor cover everything, but something in between. Cook in the oven for about an hour in 200C. If the top starts to bee too brown, you can cover it with aluminum foil for the rest of the cooking.

Marinated anchovy, Anchois au persil

- recipe from Mamie Clo, south France.

anchovies from a can - in salt or in combination of salt and oil
a whole lot of parsley
olive oil
garlic - as much as you think tastes good
The amount of oil and parsley should be about twice the amount of fish.



If the anchovy is too salty, soak it overnight. And if it is whole fish, start by filleting them. Chop garlic and and parsley very very small. This is easiest with a machine, but works also with an appropriate knife-cutting-board combination. For example use knife with round blade and cutting-board with a rounded depression in the middle; or the kind of knife and cutting-box used for salted mushrooms. Put the anchovy, spice-mixture and oil in a bowl/jar/some appropriate container. It should be green, not gray; if this is the case, you should add more parsley. And in case your soaking has been too efficient, add some salt.

Salty muffinses

4 dl whole wheat flour
1 dl oat flakes (or something similar)
2 ts baking powder
2 eggs
2 dl natural yogurt
1 red pepper, chopped in small cubes
1 tomato, chopped in small cubes
1dl chopped olives
a dash of parmigiana
herbs
salt, pepper

Make a mixture of all the dry ingredients, and another one of the moist ones. Combine these. Put in muffins-forms, and fry in 200C for 15-20 min. This recipe makes about 12 pieces. Perfect trip-food, bread and pålegg in the same, and not as tricky to eat without a plate as a quiche-type-of-pie.

You can change the pepper, tomato, olive and cheese combination to something else, like ham and pepper, feta cheese, onion and sun dried tomatoes... whatever you happen to have that fit together. I think I have even seen a recipe (cant remember if I used it...) for grated beetroots and some sort of meat.