Salmon and egg brunch salad

I have been wondering whether there is more traffic accidents on Friday than on any other day. At least based on my limited experience of living out in the countryside and driving to work for the last seven or eight months or so, it seems that on Fridays there is always an accident somewhere along my route. And with the weight of traffic being much heavier on Fridays anyways, it makes the trip home last forever. It is so frustrating to see all the routes turn red in an instant on Google Maps when people fill up the alternative routes once the main dual carriageway is blocked. The road infrastructure in this country is so incapable of sustaining the weight of traffic. We will have a brand new A14 in say 10 years or so, but it isn't much comfort right at this minute when the only option to get to work in a sensible time is leave home no later than 6.20 am in the morning. And even at that time I rarely get to do 70 on the A14 for long stretches at a time. 

Traffic has become one of my pet peeves, how people are so hell-bent on "Me, Me, Me, I need to get through here quickly" and no thought on the big picture of how your behaviour affects the traffic flow in general. When I lived in Cambridge and could walk everywhere I barely noticed the traffic jams, although they were always there. But they didn't touch my life in any way. Now, it's just such a gamble every time I look at Google Maps before leaving work. Is that red stretch on my route bad enough that I should take the alternative, longer route? I used to try and logically plan my choices, but I have learned that here the traffic situations change in an instant and looking at maps before leaving work amounts to no good, as by the time I have reached the car park there is another accident out there somewhere and another route is blocked. People, be careful out there! Everyone gets home quicker if we have some patience and don't do idiotic and stupid manoeuvres that cause high risk situations to occur. Ok, stepping off the soap box now. But promise me you will drive carefully!!! 

Ok, on to the main star of today's pos. This salad is a great healthier alternative to your usual salmon and poached egg muffin. Perfect for a delicious lunch or weekend brunch. Loads of flavour, healthy fats and protein along with several of your five a day. As easy to make for one, or scale up and make for a bigger party.

Salmon salad (for one):
big handful of mixed greens (I included spinach)
cucumber, chopped into sticks
handful of cherry or plum tomatoes
2 slices of smoked salmon
1 boiled egg
2 tbsp mozzarella pearls

For the dressing:
1/2 tbsp cider vinegar
1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tbsp finely chopped dill and chives
black pepper

The howto:
Pile all salad ingredients onto a plate. Mix the ingredients for the dressing, pour over the salad. All done! Can food get any faster than this?

The verdict:
I like to make my salads with lots of things in them. The lettuce and cucumber are there just for the background whereas the main stars of the show are always something delicious like chicken or smoked salmon, and some cheese too from time to time. Salmon and egg is one of my favourite salad flavour combinations. Healthy fats from the fish and lots of protein from the egg. Also, the right way to eat a salad is to eat the lettuce and cucumber first, and then leave all the goodies to finish with. I should maybe start assembling the salads upside down, with all the filling at the bottom and the greens on the top to make it easier to eat in my preferred way... Although that wouldn't make a very pretty photo now would it? 

Steak and warm kale salad

I am less than a week away from my summer holiday in the sun. A multitude of maxi dresses have been eBayed and I'm hoping my huge sun hat will arrive in time. I need to nip by Boots for some sunscreen and some other summer necessities tomorrow, other than that I should be more or less good to go. Although I'm hoping all I will be needing is a toothbrush, a bathing suit and a few dresses.

I should start packing soon, as we leave on Monday. Incidentally we are having some of the Culinary Consultant's family over on Sunday for a BBQ (this was agreed on before the summer holiday had been booked, have to admit the timing is not optimal). And I need to make the whole BBQ menu dairy free... oh deary (or dairy, hehe) me, I have no idea how to make a dairy free pudding. Anything I can think of has milk or butter. Maybe Eton mess with coconut cream instead of whipped cream? Or a nice dark chocolate sponge cake with oil instead of butter? I shall have to turn to my dear friend Pinterest to figure this out. At least doing dairy free BBQ should be quite easy. No cheeseburgers though... And I am thinking of having a salad station where everyone can make their own salad, bowls of ingredients like lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, feta, onions, sweetcorn, chorizo and whatnot. I just want to make it as easy as possible. And I'm happy the Culinary Consultant will be left to clean up the mess while I jet away to sunny Cape Verde. So expect an update on Cape Verdian food coming up!

Today's recipe is perfect for a quick and easy weeknight dinner. It takes less than 15 minutes to prepare if you multitask preparing the warm salad and cooking the steaks, and it will help you get rid of those last few leftover handfuls of spinach and kale. I always have a bit of kale left and never a good idea what to do with it.

Steak and warm kale salad (serves 2):
2 steaks of desired size
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
150 g mushrooms
2 big handfuls of kale
2 big handfuls of spinach
1 clove of garlic
salt, pepper

The howto:
Slice the onion and mushrooms. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, and cook the onions over medium heat until starting to soften. Increase the heat a bit and add the mushrooms. Let cook for a few minutes. Add the kale, and cook until starting to wilt. Add the spinach and finely choppped garlic. Toss well, season to taste and cook for another minute or so. 

Cook steaks to desired doneness. Let rest in foil wrap for a few minutes before serving with the warm salad.

The verdict:
This was something I just tossed together from the left overs in my fridge. I had a few traditional, "cold" salads over the weekend, and with the weather all overcast and chilly today I thought I rather have a warm salad instead. And it turned out rather nice even if I do say so myself. The kale was still a bit crunchy and the flavour of garlic came through really well. The Culinary Consultant, who is back from his weekend of debauchery also enjoyed it, although I served him some boiled potatoes with butter and mint to make it a bit more substantial. And I might just have had one or two of those potatoes when I tidied up after dinner. Leftover calories don't count! 

Beside the seaside

I can't believe it's Friday again. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy about the fact that weekend is upon us. But I have had such an unproductive week, I've been working from home as I've been suffering from strange flash headaches, and when they hit, I need to lie down and close my eyes. Thankfully they usually pass really quickly, but I would love to know where they came from. And what to do to make them go away. So far, apart from lying really still, the only other thing that helps is exercise. As long as I'm doing sports, they stay away. But there is only so much sports you can squeeze into a day, especially after a ten day holiday during which I did practically no exercise at all, so have to try to keep the rest of my body from breaking down on me. Well, next week should be better as I'm going to the Lake District to enjoy what I'm sure will be fabulous British fall weather, and one or two full English breakfasts. 

Approaching Suomenlinna on the ferry.

Ok, well onto the theme of today. The sea. When I was back home in Finland for my summer holiday, I had a whole afternoon all by myself in Helsinki and there is only one thing to do on a sunny summer afternoon in Helsinki. Stop by heaven, aka. the amazing big grocery department at the Stockmann department store (very appropriately named Delicatessen), get some picnic food (which could be anything but for me has to be chicken Cesar salad, Karelian pastries and donuts), and hop on the ferry to Suomenlinna. Suomenlinna is a group of islands outside of Helsinki, formerly a sea fortress and currently a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a popular picnic- and hanging out spot, located a short, 15 minute, ferry ride from central Helsinki. There are plenty of things to see if you go there for the first time, old buildings, fortifications, museums, old cannons, stuff like that. However, if you have visited countless times, you just want to go to the more secluded regions, sit down on the rocks by the sea and stare out on the horizon. 

Sitting on the rocks and staring out at sea.

In the summer Suomenlinna can get crazy like any other popular tourist attraction, but I was lucky that it wasn't too busy although I went out on a Friday evening. The first year students have just started their studies at universities across Helsinki, so there were big groups of students picnic-ing and enjoying a drink or two. It's one of those really traditional things people do when school starts. Watching the big groups students wearing overalls brought back warm memories from my own student days. In Finland, university students often wear overalls when having university related social outings. The colour of your overalls reflects your place of study or the student union you belong to. When I was studying at the university of technology, I was wearing the Swedish speaking student's burgundy overalls with yellow print, and when I was studying at the department of genetics, I was wearing a dark blue overall with white print. Given the activities that used to go on at those parties, having protective wear was actually not a bad idea.

View from the Southern part of Susisaari (Wolf island)
towards Downtown Helsinki (in the background)

My Friday quickie today is also sea inspired. I made a really amazing omelette with salmon and prawns. I've been craving prawns like crazy lately, and have had them for three days running now. And smoked salmon in an omelette is great for flavour, not to mention for good fats as well. After working out in the morning, I also like to have a bit of salt in my breakfast, so the salmon is perfect for that as well. Anyways, this is of course not the most exciting recipe ever, but it turned out so great I wanted to share it with you.

Sea inspired omelette (serves 1):

1 tsp virgin coconut oil

1 medium onion

1 cup spinach

2 eggs

1 slice smoked salmon

50 g king prawns

The howto:

Finely chop the onion, and sauteé in the coconut oil. Add spinach, and cook until spinach is wilted. Use a fork to mix the eggs, and pour on top of the onions and spinach. Let cook for a minute or so, add sliced salmon and prawns on top. Cook for about five minutes, until the underside has set but the top side is still soft. Fold over and slide onto a plate.

The verdict:

Overall, I'm not a huge fan of coconut oil, the flavour is a bit too coconut-ty for me. Also, I know it's all the health rage right now, and I know it's good for frying as it's thermostabile, but I do worry a bit about the saturated fat content. Anyways, I have decided to vary my fats, so that I use a bit of butter, a bit of coconut oil, some olive oil and some rapeseed oil, figuring I should get a bit of the goodness of everything and hopefully spread out the possible unhealthy effects. However, I think coconut oil goes really well with prawns, which is why I used it for this omelette. And the combination of flavours really was spot on with the onions, coconut oil, prawns and the salty yummy smoked salmon. And for once I managed to cook the omelette to perfection, not dry at all. The secret is to get the omelette off the heat at least three minutes before you think it's done. I'm happy I still have a slice of salmon and some prawns left for tomorrow, I think my sea omelette will make a reappearance tomorrow morning after my Saturday morning workout.

Spinach and feta rice-crepsies

Spinach pancakes (sorry, recipe in Finnish) are a traditional Finnish dish, hated by many school-children but also loved by many. The pancakes are cooked small (about 6-7 cm in diameter), often served in a stack on the plate, and always, always, always served with lingonberries. You can even get them ready made from the grocery store, but the flavour has nothing on the home-made ones.

I have always liked these pancakes, but back home I always made them from frozen spinach. During the last half year or so, I have come to love fresh spinach. In fact, it is one of the few things (together with organic, full fat yoghurt, eggs and tomatoes) which I buy every single time on my weekly trip to the grocery store. I like to buy organic spinach, and I always feel like my world is tilted slightly off it's axis if I can only get the regular stuff. Last week I worked my way through two 200g bags of spinach, I eat it almost at every meal. In smoothies or effins in the morning, in my salads for lunch, and often I serve my dinner on a bed of spinach if I can't find a way to incorporate it into the dinner dish itself. Spinach is healthy, although I'm not sure I believe all health claims, at least those without a reference (anything from burning fat to curing cancer...) According to Wikipedia (yes, I'm too lazy to actually look up proper references) "It is a rich source of vitamin A (and especially high in lutein), vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, magnesium, manganese, folate, betaine, iron, vitamin B₂, calcium, potassium, vitamin B₆, folic acid, copper, protein, phosphorus,zinc, niacin, selenium and omega-3 fatty acids." It's also virtually calorie free, so you can indulge as much as you want. However, spinach also contains oxalate, which will inhibit the absorption of the iron. The amount of oxalate can be reduced by boiling the spinach quickly. Be it this way or that, I'm sure at least part of all the goodies in spinach will be absorbed, oxalate or not. 

As I said before, the Finnish spinach pancake is always served with lingonberries or lingonberry jam. However, it seems it's absolutely impossible to get lingonberries on this godforsaken island. Well, actually you can get them from Scandinavian kitchen in London, and I have to get around there next time I'm down to London. As I had no lingonberries, I thought I could do some tweaks to the recipe. First tweak is adding something with a lot of flavour to replace the lingonberries. Instead of going for something sweet and tangy, I went for salty and added feta cheese. Then I wanted to make it dairy free (well, as dairy free as something with feta can be...) as well as wheat free, so instead of doing a pancake batter with milk and wheat flour, I substituted with rice milk and rice flour. I have become a huge fan of rice flour, it works really well in pancakes as it gives a more crispy texture than wheat flour. 

The batter is rather runny, therefore these are more like crepes than pancakes. Don't even think you can cook them to be small pancakes without a proper pancake pan (which is another thing that Brits apparently don't do, need to bring one with me from back home next time I go), the batter will spread to fill the whole pan. I didn't let that bother me, I just cooked them big in a regular pan. You also need to have some patience cooking the crepes, as they benefit from being cooked slowly on medium heat, and should not be flipped until properly cooked on one side to stay whole through the flipping process. If you have a bit of patience, you will be rewarded by some great tasting and almost healthy (apart from the huge amount of carbs...) crepes.

Rice-crepsies (makes 6 big crepes):

500ml rice milk

166g rice flour

3 eggs

1tbsp butter

200g spinach

100g feta cheese

Be patient and let the underside cook well before flipping the crepe.

The howto:

Mix rice milk, eggs, melted butter and rice flour. To give the batter a better consistency and making the crepes easier to cook, let the batter stand for at least an hour, stirring every once in a while. This allows the rice flour to puff up in the liquid. If you use wheat flour, you don't need to let the batter rest for such a long time. Chop up the spinach, and cook quickly in a pan until it has started to wilt a bit. Then add the wilted spinach and crumble in feta. Cook on a non-stick pan on medium heat, letting the crepe cook well on one side with lots of small bubbles forming on the surface before turning it over. 

1 serving (2 crepes) contains 500 kcal, 19g fat, 64.6g carbs and 16.8g proteins. It also contains 133% of your recommended daily amount of Vitamin A!

The verdict:

The crepes require a bit of work to cook, but are definitely worth it. Substituting regular milk and wheat flour with rice milk and flour give the pancakes a bit of a different taste from what I would expect from a traditional Finnish spinach pancake. Of course if you never have had them, you don't know what to expect so you might not be as impressed as I was. I personally think the substitutions were very successful (but I'm admittedly a bit biased...), and this is a very different dish from the original, which was my intention. I also think the combination of spinach and feta is absolutely lovely (although not very original), the salty feta and the mild taste of the spinach just work so well together. I didn't season with salt or pepper, as I think the feta is salty enough, and the dish doesn't need pepper, but you can add some if you want. Thanks to the rice flour, the crepes have a great crispy texture despite being cooked on a non-stick pan with no oil or butter. I will certainly be making this again, but I'm also going to experiment a bit with substituting part of the flour with quinoa flour or rye flour to see what it does to the taste. Oh and if you can get your hands on fresh nettles, replacing or partly substituting the spinach with nettles is amazing. Just wear gloves if you are picking them yourself!