Finnish Salmon Soup / Into the wild

I am so blessed. This summer has been really warm and I finally have my summer break ‘almost’ free after 3 years of intensive studies pursuing my bachelor’s degree in Hospitality Management. My husband and I already went to Barcelona in July and last week we even drove all the way from Helsinki up north to Norway and back, 3029 km in total. 😀 Imagine I have already had 2 holidays! Yes, I know, I’m so lucky. Barcelona was great, full of delicacies, cultures, architectures and energy! But I’ve got so tired. Don’t get me wrong, it was the excitement of the city; I was overjoyed. 🙂 But what I want to emphasise is that Finland is one of the most beautiful places in the world where you can really let go and loosen up completely, particularly during the summer time. When the sun is up, the water is cool, the sauna steaming hot, fishes jumping out from the lake, sausages grilling on the coal, and cold beers. Birds fly, wind blows. The sound of leaves, the smell of birch, period. And my phone battery ended, how perfect. That was when I finally disconnected from everybody, everything else that does not really matter. The moment of stillness, emptiness and silence is so calming that it made me feel like it was worth dying for. It was real that felt so unreal. If you can only imagine.

Kaamanen, a village where we camped in Inari, Lapland of Finland.

My husband and I were camping along our way, mostly next to the rivers. During our road trip, we met countless reindeers and sheep on the road as expected. We also saw them crossing the river and running under the mountains, amazingly beautiful. I can tell you that we were truly back into the wild. How? We drank straight from the clear rivers, we cooked and ate organic foods (we picked wild berries and mushrooms), we washed ourselves in the rivers and we also tried to fish our dinner. 😉 On our way we visited my husband’s uncle Kari in Tervola, where his partner Sinikka has her own garden, how cool! Before we headed on to Norway, Kari gave us some fresh dill, onions, new potatoes and salmon that he caught from the Kemi river next to their home.

Here come the new potatoes and fresh dill.

Kari is kind, truthful and super humorous. He loves to watch Bold and Beautiful. 😀 😀 Kari and Sinikka are one of the most caring people we know. It is completely stress-free to hang out with them. ❤

Alright back to the business. What do you eat when you go into the wild? You can make sushi straight from the fresh salmon, if you happen to have sushi rice with you. 😀 Or sashimi. I happened to have fresh dill, onions, new potatoes and salmon, so it called for a Finnish classic cuisine ‘Lohikeitto’,  salmon soup. It’s like sweet and sour from China, fish and chips from UK and mac and cheese from US for examples. You can’t miss a salmon soup when you visit Finland, at least it is one of the most common Nordic dishes among the locals. It is great all year around, during winter -30 celsius or summer +30 celsius, it tastes always as good! And it’s super easy. Learn it and you won’t regret it.

(Make 2 servings)

Ingredients:

500g Salmon, skinned and cubed
6 Medium size potatoes, cubed
1 Onion, sliced
1 l High fat milk (3%)
1 bunch dill, chopped
1 tbsp Butter
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Pepper

Methods: (When you are inside a tent)

1) Melt butter in pan/pot. Add sliced onion and fry until fragrant. Add potatoes and sauté until soften (I think it is faster to cook by sauteing than boiling with a portable stove).

2) Add in salmon and sauté until it turns pink (cooked). Add in milk, salt and pepper. Cook with high heat but do not let the milk to boil.

3) Cook the soup until the potatoes are soft and good to eat. Mix in the chopped dill and served warm with rye bread.

Note: In a proper kitchen, people cook the onion and potatoes with water, and add in salmon and dill just before serving, cream is rather optional.  By accident I found it better in taste by just adding milk instead of water. Thanks for my mother-in-law who taught me to use high fat milk for this recipe. It tasted so ‘complete’! Pure satisfaction!

Hyvää ruokahalua!

Here is a picture of me preparing to cook inside of our tent. WILD! 😀

Clear Noodle Soup / 清汤面

In case you wonder, I am a huge fan of noodles! 😀 I eat noodles every other day in my daily life. I guess it is a typical Asian/Chinese habit. Once I was into a low carb diet, you can imagine how hard it was for me. I felt shaky for not eating carbs, my body simply did not like it at all. Anyway, noodle is being a big part of Asian’s life. We never get bored of it, because you can make so many version of noodle: stir-fry, cold & warm salad, soup, wrapped in spring roll, deep-fried, ‘dry-mixed/干捞’, and even as a sweet dessert. I simply love it!

Chinese people eat noodles any time of the day, at least I supposed. For me it has mostly been my breakfast, even in Finland. When I was little, I lived in a village where there is a local noodle hawker stall by the street run by my grandma’s friend. And that was mostly what I ate during my childhood, just before my kindergarden bus came to pick me up. 😀 However, that egg noodle is different than this recipe. It is actually called dumpling noodle soup (云吞面), which I believe is cooked with pork bones broth and usually served with Char Siew and dumplings with minced-pork and prawn filling. But guess what, this vegetable broth that I made is so tasty and sweet that it goes so well with egg noodle! And it’s healthier and lighter too, without the unnecessary animal fat. Once you get the broth done, it takes minutes to get your noodle soup ready. Excellent!

Vegetable broth ingredients:

I Celery stalk

2 Carrots

1 Onion

1 Spring Onion

3-5 Dried Chinese shiitake mushrooms, soaked in water

3-5 Champignon mushrooms (optional)

3 l water

Dash of salt and pepper

Methods:

1. Cut vegetables in chunks. Bring water to boil in a broth pot and add in all the vegetables.

2. When it comes to boil again, turn to medium heat and cook for 2 hours. Season with salt and pepper.

Note 1: You can play around with the ingredients, for example by adding ginger, pickled mustard, garlic, dried chill, cabbage, tomato, spring onion, leek, lemongrass, soybean, etc. These all bring extra flavour and fragrance to broth/ soup in general. But not too much of each, and please don’t put everything I just said! Otherwise the taste will be overpowering, or completely mess-up.

Note 2: You wanna add enough water when making a broth, and not to add water anymore once you get the cooking started. It will ruin it. 😉 Taste bland. 

(Make 2 servings)

Warm noodle soup ingredients:

100 ml Vegetable broth

150g/ 2 portions Dried egg noodles

4 tbsp Soy sauce

Dash of white pepper

4 Champignon/ Shiitake mushrooms

6-8 Broccoli florets

1 cup Dried soy meat

Methods:

1. Pour broth in a sauce pan, add in noodles, dried soy meat and vegetables and bring to boil. Cook for another 3 minutes (or depends on how long your noodle needs to be cooked). Season with soy sauce and white pepper. Served with additional fried onions or chopped spring onion. Enjoy!

Note 1: Any meat or ingredient could go well with this broth, like pork, tofu, chicken, fish balls, anchovies or dumplings, as well as the vegetables. I like to add in ingredients that help me to balance my carbohydrates, protein and veggies intake. And you should too! 

Note 2: Cook the noodle separately if you know your noodle will release too much starch, which can change the flavour of the  soup.

You wanna get a good broth for noodle soup because that seems to be the most essential thing in the final outcome, and it is worth to invest in a bottle of good quality soy sauce as well ( I recommend buying from ethnic stores). And I’m not saying that my broth recipe is perfect, but it is good enough for home cooking at least. And it is also money wise. 😉

In Finland, whenever you get sick, the doctor often asks you to drink tea and honey for healing. But in Malaysia, the doctor will ask you to eat porridge and this kind of clear noodle soup. And I think I might have converted my husband to a Chinese too, since what he asked for was noodle soup whenever he got sick. Ha ha ha! (evil face)

ABC Soup / A popular Eurasian dish in every Malaysian home

Want to try some Malaysian home cooking that is super easy? Here is one for you, and it happens to be very nutritious and always goes right! ABC soup is by far one of the most commonly known soups in Malaysian home kitchen, I would say that Tom Yam soup ( which influenced by Thailand) and Soup Tulang (Beef bones soup) come next, we shall talk more about them some other time.

And here comes the interesting part, why is it called ABC soup? I have always understood that the soup is packed with Vitamin A, B and C from the the main ingredients. It’s true, you get Vitamin A from carrot, Vitamin B  from potato, and Vitamin C from tomato and potato again. Some people argued in the Internet that it’s ABC because it is so easy to make like ABC. Well, anyway. The good thing about this soup is that it can be cooked with meat or just vegetables itself and it will taste as good. People sometimes add ingredients such as celery, soybean, pickled mustard (榨菜) or mushroom to give extra flavours. Help yourselves. 🙂

My mom always uses pork ribs or whole chicken to make this soup, and it gives such intense, natural sweet flavour that no salt is needed for the soup at all. It always tastes heavenly good. In here I am using soybeans to replace the meat to get my protein and flavours.

My new philosophy:

Okay, you may wonder why I have been posting vegetarian recipes. Yes I am eating more plants now. As mentioned before, I am a bit concerned with the meat industry, moral, ethic, environment, eco and health issues. You know what, it is actually a really big problem in this world! And no, I am not (yet) a vegetarian, more like a ‘flexitarian’ instead. Interesting huh? I read about this new term, if I understood right, it means someone who is becoming a vegetarian but not yet giving up on eating meat. In wikipedia, it says flexitarian is a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat.  Well I wouldn’t call myself a vegetarian really if I still eat meat, sometimes. So flexitarian it is! And why am I still ‘sometimes’ eating meat is that, it just tastes so good…..( SORRY! My mind is not strong enough yet) Well it is also a social issue. It just makes my life and everyone else’s life easier if I am not too strict about my diet. I am trying my best to find meat replacement and substitutes for great recipes. So watch me!

(Make 4 servings)

Ingredients:

1-2 Carrots, cut into 3” sizes

2 Medium size onions, quartered

2 Potatoes, quartered

2 Corns, halved

4 Tomatoes, halved

100g Pickled mustard (optional)

1/2 cup Soybean (soaked overnight) / 1/2 kg Pork ribs, blanched with boiling water

3 l Water

1 tsp Black pepper, crushed

Salt to taste

Methods:

1. Bring water to boiled in a deep pot, add in all the vegetables and crushed black pepper(and pork ribs). Bring to boiled again and turn heat to medium. Cook for 3 hours.

2. Season with salt and ready to serve. Enjoy!

This soup can be served already after 1 hour or 2; some people argued that it loses the nutrients if it cooks too long. I personally like a stronger taste, so to me at least 3 hours cooking is needed for that powerful, natural sweet taste to happen in the liquid.

Those of you may also wonder why is this dish Eurasian (European and Asian mix). It is believed that potatoes, carrots and black pepper have been some of those items that were brought in to Malaysia by the Europeans during 15th century. The mixture of cultures directly reflects on the local way of cooking in every homes.  And here it is, steaming hot in my bowl. A perfect example of fusion cooking. 😉  Must try!

Oh in addition, I always make this soup for my husband whenever he feels sick. Because liquid does him good and it is packed with nutrients. Plus it has such ‘luring’ taste, if you get what I mean. He loves it!

Chinese Vegetarian Steamed Bun/ 素食叉烧包

In Malaysia there is a wide range of foods selection for all meal types, some are even available 24 hours. You name it and we got it, and that is one of the things I’m proud of my homeland. Today I’m gonna introduce something that I used to eat as breakfast or snack for anytime of the day. It’s Char Siew Bao, or Barbecue pork bun in direct Chinese translation. Our Chinese ancestors have brought it to Malaysia long time ago from China. But the Malaysian people like them with more dough, whereas in China it is crucial to keep the dough thin, which they also call it Jiao Zi/饺子.

Since I am recently into the ‘eating less meat’ mode, thanks to all the TED Food Matters documentaries about meat industry and health issues, I’m twisting the recipe to a vegetarian version to satisfy my needs and desire for eating these buns.;-) FYI, this is the third time I made it because the first 2 times were complete failures. Wrong yeast, wrong technique, tasted good though, but looked ugly. It takes a lot of practice to get it right especially in the wrapping part.

You can use any type of vegetables for the filling, or with meat if you like as Char Siew/Barbecue pork is the original recipe. Sweet version of the steamed buns are also very popular in Malaysia, normally found in red bean (豆沙包) or lotus-seed paste (莲蓉包), and those can be easily made or found in ethnic stores too.

(Make 16 medium/ 3” wide buns)

Ingredients for the dough:

2 cups All purpose flour + 1/2 cup for knitting

1 cup Warm water

4 tbsp Sugar

1 tbsp Sesame oil

1 tsp Instant yeast

1 tsp Baking powder

1/2 tsp Salt

Methods:

1. Melt instant yeast into warm water until it bubbled up.

2. Put flour, sugar and salt into a deep bottom bowl. Make a well in the middle of the flour, gradually stir in the yeast water to form a dough. Slightly knit and cover with wet towel. Let it raise for 2 hours. (You can put it into the oven with a bowl of hot water beneath it to raise the temperature)

3. When the dough has doubled its size (that’s when it should be really soft in texture), knit the dough on a floured table and add in baking powder and sesame oil. Cover and let it raise for another 30 minutes.

4. Roll dough into a long cylinder shape and cut into half. Each halves can be rolled again and cut into 8 equal pieces, that makes a total of 16 pieces. Make them into balls by hands, and then flattened with wooden roller into round-flat sheets. ( You can also cut the dough into a total of 8 to make 8 big buns).

5. Place about 1 tbsp of the mushroom fillings (see below) into the middle of the sheet and fold it to closure. (There is a video I found teaches you how, click here.) Place each buns on cupcake papers or shaped baking sheets.

6. Let buns rest for 10 minutes and place them to steam with cold water. When the water starts boiling, let it boil for 10 minutes and then remove from heat. REMEMBER: Let the buns to be in the steamer untouched for at least 2-3 minutes before opening the lid. It will prevent the skin of the buns from wrinkling. Served immediately.

Mushroom fillings:

7-8 Mushrooms, diced

1 Carrot, diced

2 Spring onion stalks, diced

2 Garlic cloves, minced

2 tbsp Hoisin sauce

2 tbsp Soy sauce

2 tbsp Sesame oil

1 tbsp of Minced ginger

1 tbsp Shao Xing wine/ cooking wine

1 tbsp Sugar

1 tsp Five spice powder

1,5 tsp Corn starch/ potato flour

150 ml Water

Methods for Mushroom fillings:

1. Heat up oil in wok, fry garlic until slightly brown. Add in ginger and all the vegetables, cook until softened.

2. Season with Hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, wine, sugar and five spice powder. Cook the vegetables through (10 min).

3. Mix corn starch with water and stir gradually into the wok to make gravy. Set aside and let it cool before wrapping.

It helped me when I practiced the wrapping with a piece of kitchen paper! 😀  I didn’t waste any of my precious dough.

My amateur bun making ❤