Sweet potato boats with delicious cargo

So, I have a confession to make: sometimes I cheat on coconut with the other love of my life, sweet potato. Give me fries, wedges, brownies, mash - anything goes, as long as it's orange. This dish is a true ode to that wonderful root vegetable. It is again from Outi Rinne's wonderful book Mieliruoka and cooked to (almost) perfection in my mom's kitchen. The boats carry a truly nutrious cargo of quinoa, black beans, tomatoes in two forms and a wonderful array of spices. Absolutely delicious!

I roasted way too much of the sweet potatoes, so the rest of them I mushed and smuggled into a batch of cookies I promise to share with you later. Watch this space! :) And really, there's no such a thing as too much sweet potato. You can put it anywhere: bake into bread rolls, make brownies or cookies, just eat it as is, make veggie patties, paint the walls with it, marry it... The choices are endless. Or if in doubt, just ship it over to me and I'll make short work of it ;)

I also put a little too much of the sundried tomatoes in, since I thought the "6" that's called for in the recipe means 6 whole tomatoes, and my sundrieds were halves. But I think 6 halves would have been more than enough since they do lend a very "dark" and pungent-y sour taste to the filling.  

These babies are really yummy by themselves, but once again, like in the lentil watermelon salad, the mint vinaigrette makes a real change. Sooo fresh and yummy! Also a nice salad would be great as a side dish, if you want to have more greens with your orange. 

Sweet potato boats

2 small plump or 4 skinnier sweet potatoes

coconut or sesame oil

Filling

1 dl quinoa

1 tin (285 g) black beans

6 sundried tomatoes

2 fresh tomatoes, chopped

1/2 onion, grated

1 clove of garlic

grated zest and juice of 1/2 organic lemon/lime

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp coriander powder

black pepper to taste

1/2-1 tsp salt

3 tbsp cacao nibs (I didn't have these so left them out)

1 tsp smoked bell pepper powder (mom can't deal with bell peppers so left this out)

2 dl soft innards of sweet potatoes 

For garnishing: fresh coriander

Mint vinaigrette

Heat the oven to 200 degrees. Scrub the sweet potatoes clean under flowing tap water. Split in four wedges lengthwise (or in 2 wedges if the sweet potatoes are very skinny). Give the wedges a nice oil massage and roast in the oven for about 30 min or until they are soft and done.

Meawhile: prepare the filling. Cook quinoa according to the directions in the package. Grate lemon/lime zest, garlic and onion in a large bowl. Grate also the fresh tomatoes (best to halve the tomatoes and grate with the cut surface facing the grater). Pat the excess oil out of the sundried tomatoes with kitchen roll and chop the tomatoes, add into the bowl. When the quinoa has cooked, drain it well and add 2 dl in the bowl. If there's something left over, save it for other use. Add the remaining filling ingredients in the bowl (not the lemon juice or the sweet potato meat, since it's still in the  oven (d'oh!)). Mix.

Take the soft and lovely sweet potatoes out of the oven. Scrape the innards out of the boats carefully, so that there will be a hole where you can put the filling. I didn't manage to do this very well and we ended up having just filling on sweet potato skins, mainly :P. Equally delicious but not as pretty. Add the scraped out sweet potato innards/meat/flesh or whatever it's called (2 dl or more of it) into the bowl. Check the flavour and add lemon/lime juice if needed. Spoon the filling into the awaiting boats and finish with fresh coriander.

Serve with mint vinaigrette. Devour.

Coconut bacon aka. the most awesomesauce thing ever

So, I made a salad. And it called for an interesting sounding topping, namely coconut bacon. Say what, you say? My thoughts exactly. Coconut that tastes like bacon? Well, why not. And since I'm a complete coconut junkie anyway, another way to prepare the delicious thing didn't sound like a bad idea at all.

So, after scoring some smoked bell pepper powder on the nearby Boxi farmer's market (where I end up spending all my money every Saturday) there was nothing that could stop me from trying out this weird but wonderful sounding thing.

And, oh my Gods... I mean, really. I cannot even.... Well, let me try. You know those moments, where you don't quite know how to describe the noise of pure pleasure that comes our of your mouth when it encounters something ultra specially delicious. No? Is it just me? Well, I moaned, giggled, laughed and groaned. All at once. And many tines. One might have thought there was someone else with me in the kitchen than just food and me, but no, it was just a foodgasm. Ridiculously overwhelmingly wonderful, this thing. Crunchy, sweet, salty, smoky, aaaargh just so good.

You really really need to make this. Really. You will regret it if you don't. I mean it. Do you need me to go on? OK, I'll shut up now. Here's the recipe. Thank you, Outi!

Coconut bacon

3 dl

3 dl coconut chips (the nice chunky ones)

1 tbsp tamari / organic soy sauce

1 tbsp maple syrup

3 drops of liquid smoke + 1 tsp bell pepper powder OR 

1 tsp smoked bell pepper powder

1 tsp olive oil

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Spread on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. Warm the oven to 75 degrees and roast the chips until they're completely dry. Toss and turn them once in a while (and take some samples. You know you want to.) If you're lucky enough to have a dehydrator, you can also dry the chips there. Or in a 45 degree oven overnight (leave the oven door cracked open a little). 

Store in an airtight box if there's some left. Which I highly doubt. 

Lentil watermelon salad with a Secret Ingredient

Lo and behold, a post that's not about sweet stuff! I had a brunch with my lovely ladies here in Berlin, and I wanted to test out a recipe from a wonderful new book, Mielekkäät eväät by Outi Rinne, who is the multitalent behind a delicious Finnish blog Mieliruoka. Outi writes that lentils are a good vegetarian source of iron that needs vitamin C for its absorption, so combining lentils into a salad with fresh veggies is a good idea. The salad is very nice by itself, but it is made absolutely perfect by a mint vinaigrette and my newest addiction, coconut bacon, which deserves its own post where I will sing its praises in more detail.

But here, without further ado, Outi's wonderful recipe. Enjoy!

Lentil watermelon salad

4 portions

Salad

2 1/2 dl beluga lentils (or some other small, shelled lentils. I used troy lentils)

1/2 tsp salt, black pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 l water melon cubes

2 young red onions with their stalks (or 3-4 scallion stalks)

250 g lollo rosso or some other reddish sort of lettuce 

1/2 red radicchio (or more of some sort of lettuce you can get your hands on)

coconut bacon / parmesan chips

Mint vinaigrette

1 pot of mint 

5 sprigs of parsley

(some coriander leaves, if you happen to have some)

1 dl basil leaves

1 1/2 dl olive oil

juice from 1/2 lemon + 1/2 tsp grated lemon zest

1/2 tsp salt

black pepper

1 garlic clove

Prepare mint vinaigrette by putting all ingredients into a blender or hand mixer jug and buzz into a smooth vinaigrette. Put into the fridge while you prepare the salad and the Awesome Secret Ingredient (aka. coconut bacon).

Cook lentils according to the package. Note that some lentils require soaking; I soaked my troy lentils overnight although the package called for only 3 hours. I wasn't entirely sure if the recipe called for 2,5 dl cooked lentils or the amount of lentils you get when cooking 2,5 dl raw lentils, so I soaked 2,5 dl, ended up with 6 dl of cooked lentils of which I used 3 dl for the salad. After cooking rinse the lentils with cold water. Add salt, black pepper and olive oil and mix.

Cube watermelon, slice the onion into thin slices and mix with the lentils. Spread the lettuce on a tray of  line a salad bowl with them. Spread some of the vinaigrette on top. Spoon the lentil melon onion mixture on top and finish with the rest of vinaigrette before serving. Sprinkle with THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER, aka. coconut bacon, or parmesan chips.

Snickers bites

Everyone likes Snickers, right? At least I do. There's something magical about the scrumptious get-together of salty peanut, caramel and chocolate. The ingredients in the normal Snickers, though? Less magical.

So,  let's make a goodie version out of the teeth-jarringly sweet snack bar, shall we?

Syötävän hyvä beat me to it again. Or inspired me to get snickering in the first place, actually. I chose to take the "cover everything in double chocolate" route (because, why not?). And it was good and bad at the same time. Good, because more chocolate = more chocolate. Bad, because in this case, as I doubled the chocolate amount, I added way more sweetener than I should have. Also, the honey I was using was a spreadable type, not the runny one. So the chocolate became super thick. Yummy, but very very super honeylicious and thick.

I felt slightly sick after a few samples. to be honest ;). But what wouldn't I do for the sake of experimenting! Now I know. Next time: start easy on the honey. Or use maple syrup. Or coconut syrup.

I also decided to go for bite size goodies instead of full bars, since nobody could eat a whole bar of this stuff (or if they could, I'd very much like to see that). And I even halved the bites in the end. So these were more candies than bars in the end, but hey, more for everyone!

Next time I'd also like to get the chocolate a bit crunchier, which would probably mean less sweetener, more cacao butter. Something to think about, for the next time around.

I bought unroasted and unsalted peanuts, but ended up roasting and salting them :D. So, just buying the regular ones would probably have made more sense. But making stuff from scratch is also fun. At least I didn't grow the peanut trees (bushes? where do they grow?) myself :D

Snickers bites

Base

1 dl peanut butter

2 tbsp liquid sweetened (I chose maple syrup)

2 tbsp almond meal

(a dash of salt if using unsalted peanut butter)

Filling

8 soft dates, pitted

1 tbsp coconut oil

1 tbsp water

dash of vanilla powder

dash of salt

peanuts on the top (unroasted and unsalted or the normal ones)

Coating (for the double chocolatey way)

6 tbsp melted cacao butter (melt in a double boiler)

2-4 tbsp liquid sweetened (I used honey and 4 tbsp was way too much)

6 tbsp raw cacao powder

dash of vanilla powder

Line a freezer box/suitable container (ca. 10 x 20 cm) with baking paper. Mix the base ingredients. Spoon into the container and flatten out. Put in the freezer.

Mush the filling ingredients into a smooth paste with a hand mixer. Spoon on top of the base, spread out evenly. Press a desired amount of peanuts on top and stick in  the freezer for a couple of hours (or overnight).

Make the chocolate coating by mixing the ingredients together. Add sweetener if desired, but take heed from my mistake and start with a smaller amount. Lift the frozen snickers chunk out of the container using the baking paper. Cut into bars or bites. 

Dip bites in the chocolate and, ideally, lift onto a rack to drain. If, like me, you don't own a full set of praline making goodies which includes a fancy rack, just let a little of the excess chocolate drain back into the bowl and then set the bites on a plate and watch the excess choco melt into a charming little puddle around them.

Put back into the freezer and take out only as much as you're serving: the chocolate starts melting quite quickly. If you're particular about the look of the bites, you can cut out the excess chocolate from around the bites if you want them to resemble squares more than blobs. I tried my best, but since my chocolate was very thick, my bites remained adorably plump :).

Heavenly soft licorice chocolate truffles

Oh my Gods, my mouth starts watering when I even think about these wonderful little balls. I had some licorice powder left from the best licorice chocolate mudcake ever that I wanted to use for a light little snacky something. So, *Internet scour*, and ta-da: Syötävän hyvä delivers again. This one is actually not her recipe, but comes from the kitchen of the lovely Hannamari of Yellow mood. She's published a nifty little book about the ABCs of raw baking and these delicious treats are featured there.

So, without further ado, 1-2-3, bake! I added the ingredients into a blender, but the heat apparently did its thing, as all the mass was literally swimming in oil by the time I was done. I tried to massage it into the mass but it just wouldn't stick. So I poured the rest of it off and still the mass was the oiliest thing ever. I already thought I'd lost this round of the game, but I decided I'd let the freezer try to persuade the little beasties that were huddling together, not very keen to keep their ball shape.

So, a round of freezing and a round of reforming into balls the next day, and a round of rolling them in cacao powder. And, Oh My Sweet Soft Truffle Gods. The consistency was absolutely silky, the licorice flavour bursted into a dark symphony in the mouth after the initial tartness of chocolate powder, and I could have easily eaten the whole container full of the balls on one go. They only remained as balls in the fridge, though, and started to get soft the minute I got them out, but they were so absolutely wonderfully delicious that I couldn't have cared less. The mass was actually so pliable at this stage that I could have formed a bunch of licorice sculptures out of it, or little cups, or whatever people make out of Play Doh (I was never very talented with the stuff). I made a couple of hearts.


So, I was definitely not sorry that something weird happened with the blending process. Sometimes the almost-disastrous version turns out to be infinitely better than the one that was sought after. I might try to do these another time, just to see if I can get the "normal", not Play Doh type consistency to work. But if not, hey, there will be another round of something truly delicious to nibble on.

Silky soft licorice chocolate truffles

Recipe here on Syötävän hyvä

3 dl cashews

1 dl coconut oil, melted

3/4 dl honey/coconut nectar/maple syrup 

5 tbsp licorice (root) powder

3/4 tsp salt

Optional: contents of 5 medicinal coal capsules for black colour (I didn't use it)

Cacao powder/licorice powder for coating

Add all ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. If you blend too long, it might be that the consistency turns into a ball of dough swimming in a pool of oil. If this happens, drain the excess oil. Form into small balls and stick into the freezer for ca. half an hour.

Original recipe had the truffles rolled in licorice powder, but since I ran out I used cacao, and boy was the match of chocolate and licorice heavenly! So, your choice: add either licorice powder or cacao on a plate and coat the balls in the powder. Store in the fridge, if there are any left after you're done with the game of "just a little taste more".

Cinnamon roll soft serve

The next N'ice cream creation I wanted to test out was something that had to do with frozen bananas. As the Monkey madness ice cream I made, sold and devoured on Koh Phangan was such an amazing step into the land of banana ice cream, I couldn't wait to take one step further. Since cinnamon is one of my all time favourite spices (along with turmeric and ginger) and I absolutely adore cinnamon rolls, the choice was pretty easy. Cinnamony soft serve! How could that be bad?

So off to the work I went. My mom's new blender didn't co-operate with the frozen bananas as well as the food processor back on KPG, so the consistency became quite thin as I had to blend it for a while to get all the bananas to let go of their solid form. I stuck the mass into the freezer for a while to think about things and wait for its fate. Quite cruel, I know, but sometimes needs must.

Runny, cold things have always had a special place in my heart. Let's take a trip down memory lane. When I was a kid, my favourite kind of ice cream treat consisted of banana slices, vanilla ice cream, heaps and heaps of caramel sauce and sprinkles. Nothing earth shattering here, I know, but wait, it gets better. The best part was to mush the ice cream and bananas and let it melt into a runny, vanilla-caramelly goo. An ice cream soup! I was a genious already as a kid, apparently :D

Back to today: This cinnamon creation wasn't as runny as my childhood treat, but it was good nonetheless. The only thing I'd do differently next time would be to wait for the bananas to ripen a little more. Now the ice cream tasted mainly of slightly too yellow bananas, while the other subtle flavours were a bit lost. And maybe add more cinnamon. There can never be too much cinnamon! But it was still so good we gobbled it up with my mom in no time.

Cinnamon roll soft serve

Recipe from the lovely N'ice cream bible
2 servings


Cinnamon roll mixture

1/2 dl almonds

1/2 dl pecans

1 tsp ceylon cinnamon (add more for a fuller flavour)

1/2 tsp ground cardamom (same here, I'd say it's safe to add more)

5 fresh dates, pitted

1/2 dl water


Ice cream

3 ripe bananas, chopped and frozen

3 tbsp coconut milk

1 tsp vanilla extract/powder


Add almonds, pecans, cinnamon and cardamom into a blender and blend into a fine crumble. Add one date and blend some more. Scrape half of the mixture into a bowl (the mixture should be dry but formable. Mine was more on the crumbly side, so maybe I should have added one more date).

Add the rest of the dates and water into the blender (the remaining half of the cinnamon mixture is already waiting for company there) and blend into an even paste. This worked better with a hand mixer than a blender. Scrape the mixture into another bowl.

Wash and dry the blender. Add frozen bananas, coconut milk and vanilla and blend into a soft serve. You might have to scrape the sides of the blender jug with a spoon a couple of times before the mass will have the right consistency. Scrape the ice cream mixture into the bowl that has the softer cinnamon roll mixture and stir. Divide into bowls and sprinkle crumbles of the drier mass on top. Serve and enjoy!