抹茶アイス - Green tea ice cream

Easy. Tasty. Looks funny.

抹茶アイス - Green tea ice cream

- 1/2 l vanilla ice cream

- 1,5 tsp matcha powder

-Cut the ice cream into thin slices. Mix with matcha. Eat.

抹茶ケーキ - Matcha keeki

When loved friends drop by one should pamper them with food - am I right?

Tonight we ate spring rolls with rice. I wasn't fast enough to take a picture of the rolls, but I managed to take a picture of the dessert cake. Since me and my friend talked about tea cakes I've been craving for matcha cake. On friday I finally got time to go and buy matcha - it's powdered green tea (awesome and bloody expensive = 300 €/kg).

This cake is not vegan, but it should be possible to make something similar without eggs. Anyways this turned out to be better than I hoped for. Delicious, I'd say. Here goes:

抹茶ケーキ

2 eggs

2 dl sugar

100 g lactose free margarin (melted, cooled)

2 dl water

3 dl all purpose flour

3 tsp matcha powder

1,5 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla sugar

-Set the oven to 175 Celcius. Grease and flour a relatively small cake mold. 

- Mix matcha, flour, baking powder and vanilla sugar.

- Beat the eggs and sugar. Add melted, cooled margarin and mix.

- Add about 1/3 of the water and 1/3 of the flour mix to the dough, stir and repeat until you've mixed all in.

 - Pour into the cake mold and bake for 30-40 minutes.

- Serve with tea or coffee and sophisticated (crappy) jokes.

Morotslåda

It's not Christmas, but I made it anyways. Although it's not exactly carrot casserole but something similar.

Morotslåda

2-3 dl short grained rice, or barley, boiled in a generous amount of water

500 g Pirkka-juuressose (root veggie paste)

0,5 dl oil

2 tsp salt

marjoram

white pepper, ground 

3-4 tbsp wheat flour

0,4 dl syrup

-Wash the rice and let it soak in water overnight. Or half an hour. Add some salt and boil until soft. Add water if needed, it should look like wet porridge.

- Add the rest of the stuff, put in a pot and bake in 200 centigrades until it gets a nice color.

- Serve with steamed/boiled potatoes, pickles, beetroot, whatnot. And red wine. I've craved for red wine the whole week, so I finally went and bought some. Yes, thank you, I know its Monday.

Molecular gastronomy

A friend hinted of an article (in Finnish), from which I found a link to my favorite journalist-researcher-mad scientist's blog (in Finnish, too bad)!

http://molekyyligastronomia.fi/

This lady, Anu Hopia, used to write for Tiede (science) magazine about chemical reactions in kitchen and her column was my favorite from the beginning. Last year the column was replaced (with another interesting one, about Finnish etymology). My disappointment vanished, as I now know she has a blog, where she has more room to describe molecular gastronomy! Thanks for the hint, Pauliina <3

Birthday Punch

Hey!

Before I forget: I made really good punch for my birthday. Although the alcohol volume wasn't much, the taste was good. I need to write it down somewhere (lit. here) while I still remember.

Synttäribooli

2 bottles of Magyar white wine

0,5 liters of vodka

0,75 liters of Sour Apple

3 liters of non alcoholic apple cider (Rainbow)

lime slices 

When a vegan drops by, don't panic!

A couple of years ago, before I started this vegan weirdness of mine, I used to think vegans are freaks who like to make their life hard. I though it would take huge amounts of time and effort to build a balanced vegan diet.

(Pic unrelated, cats are not vegan)

I was wrong. Even with this half-hearted, lazy ass attitude of mine I've done better than with vegetarian diet. All I really did was change the margarine I used to the lactose free version of same brand and stop buying cheese. I also got used to eating soy products. And yes, it took time. It's beans, you know what happens when you eat lot of beans. But since I liked the taste I just kept going and nowadays my intestinal fauna is perfectly okay with it. And the soy product variety just keeps growing and the prices go down day by day.

So, what to do if a vegan drops by? Just don't panic. There is vegan food around you, you just don't call it vegan. It's not expensive and you don't need to be vegan to enjoy it. And remember, it's not your job to ensure they get every single vitamin they need from that one meal you make.

What is vegan:

• Veggies, fruits, nuts. Oh my...
• Pasta (except for lasagna pasta and fresh pasta, those have eggs in them) 
• Bread. In most cases it's vegan. Bread with cheese naturally isn't.
• Lactose free margarine. Brands like Flora, Keiju, Sunnuntai, Rainbow and Becel have lactose free margarines. (Low lactose margarine, HYLA, is not vegan. Butter is never vegan. )
• Soy products (Alpro, GoGreen, Rainbow, Pirkka, Keiju, Soyappétit...): crushed soybeans, soy bites, tofu, soy milk, soygurt, soy ice cream... 
• Soy products are made of soy beans, and are a good source of protein. They have a mild flavor of their own, it takes time to get used to it. Tofu and crushed soy beans need some marinade and spices to actually taste like food.
• You should really try chocolate soydrinks and Keiju soygurts! They are awesome.
• Oat products (Keiju, Eloveena, GoGreen): are basically the same as soy products, but made of oats. They taste good, but don't have as much protein as soy products do.
• Cookies: some safe bets are Kantola's Ballerina vadelma (raspberry) and lakritsi (liquorice), Marie-cookies, LU's Muumi cookies, many gingerbread brands... a rule of thumb would be: the cheapest cookies don't have milk in them. Most chocolate and caramel cookies have milk and eggs in them. 
• Donuts: HAPPYYY! Most donuts are milk and egg free, but you need to check the ingredient listing to be sure. 
• Candy: some examples  - Fazer Wiener nougat, liquorice in most cases, most of the hard, sugar based candies, Panda's dark chocolate (Fazer's dark chocolate is not vegan), Fazer Marianne
• Eating out: Surprise! Our very own Finnish fast food chain has a vegan meal (Falafel-burger). All you need to do is to say you don't want the mayonnaise. Falafel, Indian and Chinese restaurants usually have vegan food. Although, you need to make sure they don't use some weird fish sauce in the Chinese food, and remember to mention you don't want mayonnaise with falafel. And there is always the sad choice of ordering vegetarian pizza without cheese. Pathetic.

What is not vegan:

• meat, any meat. Fish is meat, so is poultry.
• milk products
• eggs 
• whey (milk plasma, hera) 
• vitamin D3
• gelatin (liivate)
• honey (hunaja)
• E120 (karmiini, carmine), E901 (mehiläisvaha, beeswax), E904 (sellakka, shellac), E966 (laktitoli, lactitol), E1105 (lysotsyymi, lysozyme)
• wines, as sad as it it's, are usually not vegan
• Guinness, this breaks my heart (not, I still drink it as I could care less)
• most red pops (= soft drinks - for those, who don't speak Canadian) and red juice concentrates have E120 in them
• Worchestershire sauce, btw, is not vegan. Why would someone use anchovy anyways... weird shit.

PS. Oh well, it's not like I'm 100% vegan, but I do prefer vegan food as it makes me feel better. Yes, physically better. So if I drop by, don't panic if you just made a cheese cake, I'm not gonna say no. But I'm just saying you might like vegan stuff, it's actually pretty damn good.

чаю

Tsaju!

I found it! The book of my happiness! Also, I went to see my parents and visited Kofeiinikomppania, this lovely coffee and tea boutique in Oulu. I would have loved to buy more (lit. every sort), but I figured I shouldn't, as I'm moving out pretty soon. So I only bought this black chili-mango tea, which turned out to be lovely. And some fatty-fatty cookies I made:

Kahvipöydän kunkku (Puputyttö ja Vohvelisankari, p.68)

2,5 dl wheat flour

1 dl dark cocoa powder

0,5 tsp baking soda

0,5 tsp salt

100 g lactose free margarine

3 dl sugar

0,5 dl soy milk (the original recipe used 2 tsp Orgran No-Egg, vegan egg replacement weirdness and  4 tbsp. water)

1 tsp vanilla sugar/vanilla aroma

1 tbsp instant coffee

120 g vegan dark chocolate, melted

120 g vegan dark chocolate, crushed

- Set the oven thermostat to 175 Celsius. Mix flours, cocoa powder, soda, salt and vanilla sugar (if you use liquid vanilla aroma, add it to the margarine-sugar mixture).

-Whisk margarine and sugar, add egg replacement weirdness or soy milk. I would have used soyguyt, but it was growing legs already...

-Mix instant coffee and melted chocolate. Add to the margarine mixture. Add dry ingridients and crushed chocolate. Mix well, but not too much.

-Make little clumps of dough on parchment paper and bake for less than 15 minutes.

-Eat. Wait for the new kitten (!!!) to make omnomnom sounds -> panic, as you realize you haven't seen the kitten for the last two hours. ( I still have no idea where it is, must be sleeping with my dirty underwear somewhere.)

(-Featured in the picture: cloudberry jelly I made a couple of weeks ago, new chili-mango tea.)