Karjalanpiirakka...

...is something that most of the Finns consider to be a pretty traditional Finnish pasty. It's basically a small salty pie with a rye crust and it's most likely filled with rice. There are also alternative fillings like carrot, potato and in the really old days (days before rice or potato had reached Finland) it was probably filled with barley.

Karjalanpiirakka with rice-carrot filling

Today I made some Karjalanpiirakkas filled with rice and carrots. They are very easy to make but you need some time to make them. First you have to do rice porrige. I don't use any certain recipe but an estimation instead. First add some water (about 1 dl) to the pot. Bring it to boil and add about 2 dl rice. When the rice has absorbed the water add about 5 dl milk and bring the milk to boil. Place a lid to the pot and switch off the stove. Let the rice absorb all the milk and if needed add some milk. When you have a nice porridge consistancy add some butter (about 40 g) and season with salt. While waiting for the porridge to cook boil the peeled carrots (I had four) and puree them. When the porridge is ready add the carrot puree to it and taste once more. The filling should be salty.

For the crust I took about 4 dl water, 4 dl rye flour, 1 dl wheat flout and 1 tsp salt. Mix all the ingredients into a thick dough which doesn't stick to your fingers. This is how you assemble the pies:

Form the dough into a bar und cut to desired size pieces

Use a rolling pin to roll the pieces until really thin. In Finland we use a piirakkapulikka but unfortunatly I don't own one so I use a normal rolling pin. With piirakkapulikka you can get really nicely round form. I usually still use a round stencil mold so that I will have equal size pies.

Pile the round pie crust on each other and place flour between each layer. This way they won't dry out. Try to work rapidly because the rye dough gets fast dry

When all the pie crust are ready take them out of the pile a couple at the time and brush the extra flour away.

Place the filling to the middle of the crust.

Lift the rim of the dough on to the pie and form it wavy

Place the pies on an oven sheet and bake at 250 degrees for about 10 minutes

After baking..

...dip the pies quickly into a milk, water butter mixture. If you want you can also only brush the pies with butter,

Serve the pies with "eggbutter". For the egg butter dice three cooked eggs, add some soft butter and salt. Mix with a fork to a spreadable cosistancy.

Vermicelles

Vermicelles...I know in the tube it looks a bit like dog food packs

Who knows what is Vermicelles? I for sure didn't until I came to Switzerland! Basically it's sweetened chestnut puree possibly flavoured with vanilla sugar or Kirsch (clear and colourless fruit brandy made of morello cherries) and it's served as a dessert or to a coffee and it looks like worms :D It can be served with whiped cream or meringues, or it can be used to top tartlettes. Here in Switzerland it's eaten specially in autumn and winter. 

So far I have always bought my Vermicelles tartlettes ready so thought to give it a try myself. Vermicelles is available in any normal size food store in Switzerland. I bought a double pack of Vermicelles in Coop because it was on sale. There are various different companies producing the chestnut puree and depending from the brand the ingredients in the puree can vary a bit. The puree I boght has chestnut 62%, sugar, water, glucose sirup, sunflower oil and acidifier E300. Properly packed and stored it's good for keeping some months. It can also be frozen down and this will further the use by date even further

Vermicelles press

To give the vermicelles that traditonal wormly look you will need a vermicelles press. I needed to buy one because as mentioned I had never done vermicelles before. I found my press in Coop after some searching...I think I bought the last one :D

Pressing vermicelles through the press. The name vermicelles comes apparently from the latin word vermiculus, little worm

 I was lazy and I just wanted to do me a quick dessert so I used ready made tartlette bases. I prepared some Kirsch flavoured pastry creme (quick to make Coop pastry cream powder) and piped it to the bottom of the tartlette. On the pastry cream I placed one small meringue with I topped with melted chocolate. On all that I pressed some of that vermicelles puree.

A tartlette topped by vermicelles

In the evening, before serving the tartlettes, I piped some or the left over pastry cream on the top and decorated with some raspberry marmelade. I actually wanted to use some whipped cream but unfortunately I was out of cream. They tasted really good. If you get hold of some chestnut puree you should definitely give these tartlettes a try.

Some finishing touches with vanilla creme and raspberry marmelade

Book tips

Zimtschnecken und Blaubeerkuchen and Servus Bayern

Couple of days ago we did some shopping in Glattzentrum in Zürich. I have only been there for twice: once for a job interview and the second time for test shift...and that was back in 2011. As it turned our I decided for a job in one particular hotel in Zürich instead of the Glattzentrum ;D When I left the hotel I was given some Glattmoney as a farewell present. Glattmoney is basically coins of golden colour and each coin is worth 25 CHF. The coins you can use in every shop in Glattzentrum. I find it a quite nice idea because this way the  person getting the present can get for himself what ever he wants instead of getting stuck with unwanted presents.

So I had some of this fancy money to use and because my Hubby had never been to the Glattzentrum we thought it might be nice to pay it a visit. There we found some pretty nice book, cd, game and dvd store. I decided to invest for some Blues and funk CDs and of course for some cook books.

I make this every year for Christmas (Nordic bakery cookbook)

The first book is called Zimtschnecken und Blaubeerkuchen - Die besten Backideen aus Skandinavien (Oh, Finland belongs to Scandinavia!?) from Miisa Mink. I paid 33.90 CHF for it. The book is also available in English with a name Nordic Bakery Cookbook. The name nordic could pretty much be changed to Finnish. The writer was born in Finland and now lives in London. If you interested of baking in Finland you should buy this book. For me the recipes seem to be quite authentic. What I really like about this book is that every recipe has a photo to it.

Funny sounding German (Servus Bayern)

The second book is called Servus Bayern - So schmeckt's dahoam from Monika Schuster and Anna Cavelius. The book cost 40.90 CHF. I think you can't buy this book in English at least I could not find it anywhere. As the name says this is a book for those who are into Bavaria.

This was also a theme in this blog (Servus Bayern)

Pumpkin Mousse with Pumpkin Florentine biscuit

Here is something for you to sweeten up the autumn. The original recipe I once found in the Essen und Trinken online platform. For the pumpkin mousse I had only Butternut pumpkin at hand which worked okay. I have done it before with Potimarron (Red kuri squash, Oranger Knirps) and it worked better for this recipe. The best variety to use is the Muscade de Provance. It gives the best colour and a bit sweeter taste. By the way, here is some info about pumkins in English: All about pumpkins. And here is something for the German speakers: Kürbisportal.

Pumpkin Mousse 

(makes 4-6 servings)

450 g pumpkin, peeled and chopped in cubes

vanilla pod

cinnamon stick

piece of ginger (about 2cm)

juice (and zest) of  1/2 orange

juice (and zest) of 1/2 lemon

some water

80 g eggwhite

2 1/2 dl heavy cream

50 g sugar

5 gelatin leaves

 Place the pumkin pieces, vanilla pod, cinnamon stick, orange and lemon juice into the pot. Add water to more or less cover the pumkin and boil until soft. Puree the pumpkin preferably with blender.

Whip the cream into soft peaks. Whip the eggwhite with sugar. Add the soaked gelatin leaves into the hot pumkin puree. Fold the pumpkin puree into the eggwhites and at last fold in the whipped cream. Let the mousse set in the fridge and pipe it into the desired serving glasses. You can also pour the mousse directly into a serving dish and let it set in it. Decorate with pumpkin florentine.

Pumpkin Florentines

(makes one oven sheet)

80 g sugar

20 g honey

40 g butter

40 g cream

 40 g dried cranberries, chopped small

40 g almond flakes

80 pumpkin seeds

10 g wheat flour

Mix the cranberries, almond flakes, pumpkin seeds and flour in a bowl. Place the sugar, honey, butter and cream into a pot and let them melt into a sirupy consistency. Let the sirup boil and bubble a couple of minutes and pour it over the dry ingredients. Mix well and spread the mass on an oven sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes in 170 degrees. Let cool for a while and cut into desired pieces.

In Bavaria? / In Bayern? / Baijerissa?

In a couple of days time we are gonna have a whole three days off together! Jippii! We were planning to travel to München to visit Hubby's brother. We wanted to book a room in a hotel but as it turned out there is the Oktoberfest going on in München. God, had totally forgotten about it! So many of the hotels are either booked out or pretty nice expensive. So we are gonna end up staying home after all... maybe go to the movies, eat out somewhere nice or a day trip to the mountains. And instead of going to Bavaria we made the Bavaria to come to us: Knuckle of pork, bread dumpling, beer sauce and sauerkraut (Schweinshaxe, Semmelknödel, Biersauce and Sauerkraut. Hier we go:

Found the right meat at the Carna Center and the beer in Coop

Knuckle of pork

We needed the knuckle of pork, bay leaves, pepper, juniper berries, cloves, garlic, onions, salt and water.

We cooked the haxe for about 2 hours in a simmering water under the lit

Afterwards it was grill time for about an home. One could also use an oven.

Adding some coal

While the haxe was on the grill it was time to prepare the dumplings. We have this nice old (1992) book which has really good basic recipes and I used the recipe of Semmerklösse for my dumplings

Here's the recipe. I^m feeling a bit lazy so I will only translate it  if somebody wishes so.

Dumplings waiting to jump into the pot. I cooked them in the cooking liquid of the meat.

And ready it is!

And that sauerkraut? I admit, we bought it ready :) En Guete or as we say in Finland: Hyvää ruokahalua!