Playing with agar agar

Wow, it's been busy times and that's why I have been mostly cooking something quick and not even taken any pictures for a while..I have also tried some new things which I want to share with other curious cooks.

My mum had bought agar agar for our first attempts to make vegetarian panna cotta. As I eat dairy products and eggs, it's not too difficult for my family members to cook and bake for me. Gelatine I try to avoid if I just can: I usually check package information carefully and leave cakes and desserts with gelatine for the others. Sometimes I would like to try making a cheese cake, so it's time to try agar agar, gelling agent made from seaweed. In many countries it can be purchased from supermarkeat, but here in Finland it's sold in pharmacies and ecoshops.

In fact I tried agar agar for two dishes: panna cotta and white chocolate & coconut cake. I found several vegetarian panna cotta recipes in fact in various languages, but just checked them out for the approximate amounts of agar agar. I had a one small cup of cooked cream (around 1,5 dl) and I mixed 1 teaspoon of agar agar in it. It was too little and it ended up being like thick cream with some bigger pieces of jelly in it. Not very pretty, but tasty with blueberries ;) I hope to try it soon again.

Because it was mothers' day, me and mum also baked a cake together. My mum has been making some no-bake cakes with jellified coffee or cream filling, and this time we tried one with a white chocolate and coconut combination. I was suprised how well it worked and how pretty the cake looked in the end! The original recipe was taken from the website of a Finnish cooking programme and slightly modified; there would have been a caramel sauce on top of it, but we left it out.

So here's a recipe for it:

Bottom:
150 g cookies (e.g. digestive)
1 dl grated coconut
75 g butter or margarine

To the side decoration of the cake:
a sliced carambola fruit

Filling:
(gelling agent, see later)
3 dl cream
200 g white chocolate
250 g curd
1 dl sugar
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice

(Caramel sauce:
1 dl sugar
1 dl grated coconut
1 dl cream)

Mix the cookies and coconut in a food processor and pour in melt butter. Press the mixture on the bottom of a springform pan, which is covered with baking paper (just to get it out easier). Place the sliced carambola on the sides of the form.

At this point mum soaked the gelatine, but if you don't want to use it, boil some hot water and mix agar agar with it. Since I mixed the gelling agent with about 2-3 dl of filling, I took 1,5 tbsp agar agar and mixed it with some tablespoonfuls of hot water. It dissolved quickly into a jellified mass, which I left aside to cool a little.

Prepare the filling: melt the white chocolate in the microwave or water bath and let cool a little. Whisk the cream and pour the chocolate into the bowl, beat again. Add curd, sugar and vanilla sugar. Spice with some lemon juice. Then add the agar agar mass, mix very well until the consistency is smooth and pour into the baking form.

Let it cool at least for some hours and then remove carefully from the springform. You can also cook some caramel sauce to decorate it: boil cream and sugar together on a low heat until thick brown sauce and add then the grated coconut. Let cool and spread on the cake.

As you can see, we made one bigger cake (with gelatine) and one smaller one (with agar agar). I took maybe one fourth of all the filling, so my cake was thus very small 2-3 persons' cake :) I also used for the bottom just 3 cookies, some coco flakes and a knob of butter. However, this was a good attempt and I'm positive about trying it again. I have read that it might not work so well with dairy products and end up being gritty and not very prettily jellified, but I liked the consistancy of the cake. However, since I'm just experimenting for the first time with agar agar, all tips and recipes are welcome. Mum said that she'll happily leave gelatine out of all the cakes and desserts, if she's convinced enough about switching to the veggie-friendly version :)

Carrot & lentil soup

I have always carrots in my fridge and I must admit that my favourite soup and favourite cake are made of carrots..today is not a cake day, but instead I thought of making some soup. In fact not only "some", but in quite a large quantity, because there were so many "old" carrots in the fridge and yesterday came the organic food circle staff, including also carrots.
I thought of being creative and looking for a new recipe, but I just got lost on websites like The Carrot Museum, so after all I just picked up the good old recipe for carrot and lentil soup..originally it's from the Vegan's Cookbook (Vegaanin kasviskeittokirja), which I have had for years, but I have also made my own variations of it. Today I made it like this :)

1 big onion
a small piece of ginger (+chili, curry, garlic)
1 turnip (or 2-3 potatoes)
4-5 carrots (depends on the size, mine were huge)
2 dl red lentils
1 dl grated coconut
vegetable stock (e.g. vegetable stock cube or 1 tsp vegetable stock powder)
water
oil
salt, pepper

Chop the onion and fry it in a drop of oil. Add finely chopped ginger (and fresh chili, curry and/or garlic if you like). Chop the turnip and carrots into rather small pieces and add to the kettle. Add enough water to cover the vegetables and the stock cube or stock powder and cook for some 10-15 minutes. Add lentils and grated coconut and let it simmer until all the vegetables and lentils are soft. Whizz with a stick blender or food processor until smooth, season to taste. Enjoy with warm bread.

You can make a huge portion of this soup and freeze it - it tastes better that the ready-made portions from the supermarket :)

Baci di dama

Right now I'm involved in a translation project, which takes a lot of time and effort, but it's also nice: translating cookie recipes from all around the world :) I was working on Italian recipes yesterday: I had chosen amaretti, cantuccini and baci di dama. I was very inspired by the website of Sonia Peronaci called Giallo Zafferano (Yellow Saffron) - great recipes, clear pictures and videos, good layout..well, too bad that it's available only in Italian! Maybe the pictures help to cook and bake even if the text would be incomprehensible? :)

I just tried for the first time the baci di dama cookies and that's indeed a very good recipe, but takes some time..so don't try to make these if you are in a hurry!

I read here that they come originally from a Piemontese town called Tortona, where they have been created 1893 in Pasticceria di Zanotti, and ever since they have used the same recipe and same form for the cookies that indeed look like kissing lips :)

Baci di dama (40-50 cookies)

Ingredients:

200 g hazelnuts or almonds
200 + 20 g plain flour
20 g (1,5 tbsp) cacao powder
200g butter
200 g sugar
for the filling 200 g dark chocolate (I used around 130g plate, which was enough)

Preheat the oven to 180 C and roast the nuts or almonds for 10 minutes, let cool. Mince them in a food processor with 2 tbsp of sugar, then mix in a bowl with 200 g of flour. Divide the flour mix into two bowls and add 20 g or 1,5 tbsp of cacao powder to one bowl, 20 g or 1,5 tbsp flour to another bowl, mix well. Add 100 g of butter to both of the doughs - I added also a drop of water because the dough was dry and crumbling. After having formed two even balls of dough, chill them in fridge for at least 30 minutes. Roll the chilled doughs into long bars and cut them into evenly small pieces. Roll the pieces into small balls and place them on baking sheets. Bake for 15 minutes in 180 C, let cool.
Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a kettle of simmering water. Fill the bacis with a drop of chocolate. Place them on a plate and let cool in a fridge before serving them.

I'll bring them to my Italian group tonight, I hope they will like them, too!

Easter food

I have been spending my Easter at my parents' as usual, and cooking some vegetarian food for myself and my family :) Here's some good stuff I tried for the 1st time: the whole family had as a starter hallomi salad with citrus fruits and some home-made herb baguette. As a main course they had some meat and I had Indian tarka dhal and potatoes. Tasty!

This recipe is originally from the Finnish household magazine (Pirkka 4/2010) but as I saw after a little searching, there are many recipes for making a halloumi salad. Halloumi, salty hard cheese from Cyprus, is really delicious when grilled and it doesn't melt too much, as feta does. This is worth giving a try, everyone liked it!

Halloumi salad with citrus fruits (5 servings)

1 grapefruit
1 orange
1 yellow bell pepper
150 g thin green beans
250 g halloumi cheese
lettuce (in the original recipe 150 g ready-made package, but I used just chopped iceberg salad, around 200-300 g)
1 dl mixed seeds (pumkin, sunflower, sesam seed, roast if you like)
(pea sprouts)

Dressing
0,5 dl olive oil
2 tbsp balsamico vinegar
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp mustard
a pinch of salt
a pinch of black pepper

Peel and section the grapefruit and the orange with a sharp knife, remove the white membranes between the segments. Cut them into small pieces. Chop the bell pepper. Boil the beans in hot water for some minutes and let cool. Tear the lettuce into small pieces. Chop the halloumi into small slices and fry on a pan in a drop of olive oil.
Mix all the ingredients for the dressing in a small bowl or a jar and shake well. Place on a big platter the lettuce, citrus fruits, bell pepper and drizzle the dressing on it. Place the halloumi on top of the salad and decorate with some seeds (and pea sprouts, if you like). Serve immediately.

Very often during the Christmas and Easter meals I end up eating some sort of a "meatloaf" made of red lentils and vegetables, but now I wanted to turn the usual red lentils into something else. I searched for a dhal recipe, because I like the savoury, subtle taste of the Indian dish - or is it Indian, as I can find recipes of it also on Pakistani, Nepali and Bangladeshi websites..? Well, it seems to be most of the time a side dish, but it worked just fine as a main course too :)

I took the recipe from Indian Snacks:

Tarka dhal (1-2 servings as a main dish, 3-5 as side dish)

1/2 cup red split lentils
3 cup water
1 teaspoon level salt
1 small onion chopped
3 cloves garlic finely chopped
4 tablespoon melted ghee (or just oil)
1 pinch turmeric
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1 small tomato
2 teaspoon chopped coriander


Check the lentils for stones and wash them in several changes of water or until the water starts to run clear. Put the lentils into a saucepan with the water and salt and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and simmer uncovered for around 10-20 minutes - at least my lentils are soft quicker that in the original recipe. At the end of boiling you should have a pale mashy mixture.

While the dal is cooking fry the onion and garlic in the ghee until the onions are pale brown. Be careful not to burn the garlic as this will add a bad flavour to the dish. Add the turmeric and garam masala to the onions and cook for a few more seconds.

Stir the onion mixture into the cooked lentils. Serve hot sprinkled with chopped tomato and green coriander.

I ate this with smashed potatoes instead of usual rice, a good combination with the salad :)

Mireille Guiliano's Chocolate Cake

Because my sisters were asking me to give this recipe, I thought of typing it here now as well, both in Finnish and English! I don't have a picture of it, although I have been making it many times, mostly for guests, as it is rather heavey stuff to eat alone :D It's from Mireille Guiliano's French Women For All Seasons that followed the bestseller French Women Don't Get Fat. Well, despite the message of these books, everything enjoyed moderately is good for you, share this cake with other gourmands!

Jauhoton suklaakakku (8 annosta)
225g tummaa suklaata
225g huoneenlämpöistä suolatonta voita
4 isoa munaa
2,5 dl sokeria
1 dl Grand Marnieria tai muuta (appelsiininmakuista) likööriä
6 rkl maissitärkkelystä

Kuumenna uuni 175C. Voitele rengasvuoka tai 20-senttinen pitkulainen vuoka.
Paloittele suklaa ja sulata se vesihauteessa. Anna jäähtyä ja vaahdota sillä aikaa voi. Kaada jäähtynyt suklaa voin sekaan ja vatkaa kaksi minuuttia. Seoksen pitää olla sakeaa
Vaahdota munat eri kulhossa. Lisää sokeri vähitellen, koko ajan vatkaten, kunnes seos on vaaleaa ja sakeaa (n. 6-8 minuutin ajan).
Vatkaa suklaa-voiseos muna-sokerivaahdon sekaan ja lisää Grand Marnier. Vatkaa vielä minuutin ajan. Siivilöi maissitärkkelys taikinan joukkoon ja sekoita varovasti nostelemalla.
Kaada taikina vuokaan ja täytä se piripintaan. Peitä leivinpaperilla. Nosta vuoka uunivuokaan, joka on täytetty miltei kiehuvalla vedellä kakkuvuoan reunaan asti. Laita kuumaan uuniin 45-50 minuutiksi. Anna kakun jäähtyä ennen tarjoilua. Kumoa se tarjoiluvadille ja tarjoa sokeroimattoman kermavaahdon kanssa. Kakku on parhaimmillaan valmistamista seuraavana päivänä.

Itse olen tehnyt tavalliseen pyöreään kakkuvuokaan, enkä ole koskaan laittanut sitä vesihauteeseen. Joskus voisi kyllä kokeilla sitäkin vaihtoehtoa, ehkä kakusta tulisi silloin vieläkin parempi :) Koska ostin Grand Marnier -pullon vasta hiljattain, olen laittanut kakkuun myös lakkalikööriä ja marsalaviiniä, molemmat toimivat hyvin kakun maustajana. Onnistumisen takaamiseksi kannattaa ostaa mahdollisimman tummaa suklaata (min. 70%) ja oikeaa voita, lisäksi raakaruokosokeri, kuten Mascobado sopii suklaakakkuihin ihan loistavasti :)

And the same recipe in English!

Flourless Chocolate Cake (8 servings)

8 ounces (225g) dark chocolate
8 ounces (225g) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for buttering pan
4 large eggs
1 cup sugar (around 2,5 dl)
1⁄4 cup Grand Marnier or orange-flavored liqueur
6 tablespoons cornstarch

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Brush a 4-cup ring mold or a 9-inch springform pan with butter.

Chop the chocolate and melt it in a bowl set above a simmering pan of water. Remove and let cool. While the chocolate is cooling, cream the butter in a mixing bowl.

Pour the cooled, melted chocolate into the mixing bowl with the butter and beat for 2 minutes. The mixture should be thick. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs. Start adding the sugar, beating at high speed, until the eggs are thick and very pale yellow (6 to 8 minutes). Both the egg-sugar and chocolate-butter mixtures should have a similar consistency.

Beat the chocolate-butter mixture into the egg-sugar mixture and add the Grand Marnier. Beat another minute to mix. Sift the cornstarch into the batter and gently fold in.

Pour the batter into the prepared mold. Tap the mold on the counter to level and cover with buttered waxed paper. Put the mold in a baking dish and fill the dish with near-boiling water, almost up to the top of the mold. Put the baking dish with the mold in the preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes. Let cool. Turn upside down on a serving platter, but wait 30 minutes to remove the mold.

Serve with unsugared whipped cream.


I have never prepared this cake in a water-filled baking dish, but maybe I'll try once, maybe it makes this cake even better! Because I bought my first bottle of Grand Marnier only recently, I have baked this cake also with Finnish berry liquor and Italian Marsala wine, both versions were tasty alike. I think it's worth using good ingredients for this cake, so choose dark chocolate (min. 70%) and real butter, not margarine. Cane sugar, like Mascobado, works fine especially in chocolate pastries.

Barley cake

During some really busy weeks I haven't really had time for cooking, but I wanted to post something that I tried some weeks ago for the first time at home, a barley cake or a barley ring! In my childhood memories barley equals to barley porridge, sticky, sweet, oven-cooked yellowish mass of something unidentified extra-terrestial material, which I didn't like to eat even if I saw how my daddy carefully prepared it! However, now it's time to get rid of my barley fears, so I picked a recipe which I had seen being prepared on a climate-friendly vegetarian cooking course in January.

It seems that there's a growing interest in eating healthily, but also take other point of views into consideration: fair trade, organic, demeter, vegan-friendly and so on seem to be already widespread terms. Climate-friendly (or maybe in a broader sense environmentally friendly) food is considered to be vegetarian, simple, following the natural cycle of seasons, locally near your home grown, organic...in fact we should look at the whole process: less processed and overpacked food with tons of plastic, cooking big quantities at the same time, using all the stuff you have grown or bought etc. So that has an impact not only on reducing the greenhouse gas emissions, but aims to more sustainable, environmentally-friendly food production.

Here are some good links to read more about climate-friendly kitchen and labelling climate-friendly food in Sweden and about global picnic (in Finnish).

And here's the recipe. It's translated from the notes I got from the teacher of the cooking course, Päivi Mattila, an author of climate-friendly vegan cookbook (available in Finnish only: Härkäpapua sarvista)

2 tbsp oil
1 onion
0,5 tsp sugar
1 tsp paprika powder
0,25 tsp turmeric
100g piece of swede turnip
3 dl barley grits
1 vegetarian stock cube or 1 tbsp of vegetarian stock powder
8 dl water
1 tbsp dried basil
(0,5 dl roasterd hemp seed)

Peel and chop the onion, cut the swede turnip into small cubes.
Heat the oil in a kettle and fry the onion lightly. Add swede turnip cubes, paprika powder, turmeric and sugar. Cook for some minutes.
Add barley grits, vegetable stock and water, cook on a low heat for around 35 minutes. Stir every now and then, in the end swich off hotplate and let it cook without the lid for some five more minutes. Add basil and hemp seeds.
Rinse a round, deep cake mould with cold water and pour the barley mass into it. Press it tighly to the mould and let it cool for 5-10 minutes. Turn the cake out of mould on a plate and serve e.g. with vegetarian patties.

Tips: if you like spicy food, double the amount of spices and add some chili and cumin :) I used brown mascobado sugar and other organic ingredients. Wholegrain barley grits were ready in around 35 minutes, as mentioned in the recipe, but check the cooking time on the barley package.

Raspberry and blueberry pie

Where to begin? I have a head full of tasty things I want to share, but this first recipe ever is an old favourite..when I became a vegetarian around 10 years ago, the first cook book I bought was a Finnish veggie classic, Vegaanin Kasviskeittokirja (Vegans' cook book). I carefully read information about beans and protein, how to make tofu and replace eggs. Some of those recipes I have learnt by heart, like carrot-lentil soup with grated coconut. This is my favourite pie recipe, which I made yesterday with raspberries and blueberries:

150 g margarine
2 dl sugar
3 dl fine wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
some soy milk (or water)

3-4 dl blueberries and raspberries (frozen or fresh)
2-3 tbsp potato starch
2-3 tbsp sugar

Heat the oven to 200 C. Beat margarine and sugar together in a bowl. Mix the dry ingredients and add to sugar and margarine. Add also a drop of soy milk or water to form a solid dough. Place the dough in a prepared pie shell and prebake for 10 minutes, if you like. You can also add the filling right away: toss together the berries, starch and sugar, place evenly on the dough. Bake alltogether for 20-25 minutes until the crust is golden. Enjoy with a scoop of soy ice cream :)

I like to improvise in the kitchen and thus I followed the recipe otherwise, but I tossed also a can of curd (200 g) on it before baking. It's also a good variation, but not so vegan!

I usually bake with cane sugar (Mascobado) and like to replace some of the wheat flour with wholewheat flour, so all the bakings are a little bit browner than if you use white sugar & fine wheat flour.

Eventually...

Yes, I grew tired of listening to my friends nagging at me: why don't you have a food blog? You should have a food blog and share there those recipes you tell us about! SO, you won, and here I am, a fresh owner of a blog!
I wished to call it "happybean", mainly because it sounded childish enough and also because I am cooking vegetarian or vegan :) When I noticed that that name is taken, I was thinking what would describe my new blog in a proper way...even if I live in Finland, I plan to write in English (for my non-Finnish speaking friends) and most of the recipes are international, literally from all around the world. As I love travelling, but can't be on the road all the time, cooking is one way of experiencing those cultures that are far away, and to relive memories from places where I have been. So, this is the beginning...