Beetroot hummus, tzatziki and dried tomato pesto with arabic/asian salad

Today, I wanted to make hummus. I love beans, I love hummus and sometimes I buy it in supermarket, but today I decided to try myself, and I'm not kidding, is super fast!!

Beetroot season is almost over so wanted to use the last bits of fresh beetroot, and seemed a good idea to mix it with hummus, and it was!

So the idea was to make this three delicious side dish sauces and with a bit of leftovers I did an amazing salad! I have to confess that coriander and I weren't good friends, but I'm starting to appreciate the little spicy aromatic kick of this plant.

Ingredients

Beetroot hummus 

• 150g chickpeas
• 1 lime
• 1 small finely grated beetroot
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• salt
• pepper 
• 1 nail garlic

Dried tomato pesto

• 10 dried tomatoes
• 8-10 roasted hazelnut
• 100g grated parmesan cheese
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 1 nail garlic

Tzatziki

• half lime
• 2tbsp thick yogurt
• 200g finely and medium grated cucumber
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 nail garlic
• olive oil

Salad

• 50g green pepper
• 50 g chickpeas
• 180g kidney beans
• 20g couscous
• 20g sunflower seeds
• half small onion
• half thick grated carrot
• half thick grated cucumber
• coriander
• half lime
• olive oil

Preparation

Beetroot hummus

From a can of chickpeas, use 3/4, aprox 150g (dried weight) and rinse it with water, then pour them into the food processor or blender.

Grate finely a peeled beetroot and put it together with the chickpeas. Add 1 lime juice and olive oil.

I use lime because I like it much better than lemon, which I find too strong taste and somehow masks all other flavors.

Give it couple minutes in the blender and try it. Put black pepper and salt as desired as well as water if you prefer a less thick hummus.

Dried tomato pesto

Again, with a blender or food processor, add 10 dried tomatoes, 8-10 roasted hazelnuts (I didn't have pine nuts but roasted hazelnuts taste amazing) 100g finely grated parmesan cheese and a bit of garlic and olive oil.

Couple of minutes in the blender and it is ready. 

IF you want to freeze this for another occasion, like that is perfect, otherwise add more olive oil before serving.

Tzatziki

In a bowl, add 2 big table spoons of thick yogurt, juice of half a lime, grated cucumber (most of it finely and a bit quite thick) a crushed garlic, 1/2 tea spoon of sugar, 1 tea spoon of salt and stir it till it becomes homogeneous. Taste it and add more lime juice, salt or whatever you like best and in the end add the olive oil.

Asian/Arabic salad

Ok first of all, there is no name for the salad, I just started adding things I had and thought would go together.

In a serving bowl, add the leftovers of chickpeas, open a can and rinse it of kidney beans and pour it too. Grate in the thickest size, half a carrot and half cucumber. Chop really small half a small onion and green pepper and add it to the serving bowl.

For the couscous, a bit more boiling water than amount of couscous, 1:1,5 I use. In a bowl, add the couscous, a bit of salt, black pepper, olive oil and a bit roasted curry powder (careful it is strong stuff). Then add the boiling water, give it couple of stirs and place a dish on top of the bowl so the steam can't escape. Live it rest for 5 min. When ready pour it to the serving bowl.

For finishing, add the sunflower seeds, chopped coriander, olive oil and half lime juice. Mix it together and it is ready!

For serving we had pita bread; take it from the bag, splash some water in top, 30seconds microwave and good to go!

 

Hope you like it!

Mr South

Roasted duck leg with Porto wine and beetroot sauce

Wanted to try duck leg for really long time, I´ve always eaten duck breast or magret, but never the leg. Wonder around how to cook it, it was for sure that oven was the only way to go, in a pan, it is really difficult to get the bone meat cooked without not burning the outer skin.

Duck meat is really intense, almost as game meat, so I thought it need a slow cooking. This dish was a bit of experiment and test for my skills, I love to experiment with new flavours or techniques, most of the times goes well but there has been times that the result is not eatable!

My idea was to give a slight marinate to the duck leg, achieve a crispy skin and a juicy interior. For the marinate I used mainly Worcester sauce, Lea & Perrins, don´t try any other brand, don´t taste not even close to the original!! The problem here in Finland is that they only sell Heinz Worcester sauce, got mine in a recent trip to Italy and was so eager to use it!

Ingredients

• Duck leg
• Lea & Perrins Worcester sauce
• Dried rosmary
• 1dl Porto wine
• Beetroot
• Onion
• Carrot
• Garlic
• Laurel
• Red pepper

Preparation

Prepare the duck leg, don´t trim too much the fat, we want a bit for the cooking proces. With a sharp knife, make some small holes, pinching, in the duck skin. Place the duck leg in a tray and add salt and pepper and rosmary for both sides, add two table spoons of Worcester sauce making sure the whole meat is soaked in the sauce. Let it rest in the fridge for two hours.

Chop the vegetables in fairly big pieces but the beetroot, otherwise it will be raw. Peel the garlic and with a big knife, press till it breaks.

In the same tray where you had the duck marinating, add the vegetables, a laurel leaf, 1dl of port wine and same amount of water and put it straight to oven at 180C for 30 min.
 

After the 30 min take it out, and with the help of a spoon, mix the vegetables and use the sauce of the tray to get the duck moisture by dropping some sauce on top. Put it back to oven for 15 min more. and repeat the operation.

The duck leg it need 1h 15min to be ready but depend on how thick is it, so an hour would be a pretty standard time.

With the roasted vegetables we are gonna make a thick sauce. For that we will place most of them in a blender with almost all the "juice" of the tray and making sure the laurel is not there. We will get a sort of mashed potato texture.

Now there is nothing but serving it! put a bit of the sauce next to the vegetables and the duck leg, and pour the little bit of the "juice" remaining in top of the duck leg.

Hope you like it!!

By the way, you can see the last pictures the duck has changed a bit, the thing was when the duck was ready and almost going to serve it, we had a kind of emergency that make me postpone it for next day. Then I had to reheat the duck leg in the oven and that's why the colour changes a bit!

Beetroot burgers

Hei!

we bring you today a vegetarian recipe, with a really typical Finnish style, beetroot burgers. We have done many experiments about vegetarian burgers, we have tried Jamie Oliver 15 min meals vegetarian burgers, we have tried the burgers from www.greenkitchenstories.com and in the end...we have picked an idea from here an there as to make our own recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2-3 beetroots
• a can of kidney beans (aprox 200gr dried weight)
• 4-5 marinated garlic with olive oil
• half small onion
• 100 gr feta cheese
• parsley
• tsp whole grain mustard

Preparation

Peel, clean and grate the beetroot with a fine grater. Put in the blender the beans, the onion, parsley, the whole grain mustard and add a bit of salt and pepper, blend it as to achieve an homogeneous mix.

Mix it with the grated beetroot and and add the feta cheese which you will mince with your fingers. Stir it and it is ready.

Now the moment to get dirty!

With the proportions given above, you will get four nice hamburgers. Before putting them into the pan with a bit of olive oil, we have sprinkle a bit of flour, not to get sticked, but it is not mandatory. 

Fry them 5 min each side and place them into a tray as to put into the oven at 220°C for 10 minutes. That will get the outside crispy and the inner part cooked!

Then it is just matter of building your desired hamburger!! in the pictures I use a whole wheat bun with lettuce, red pepper, pickles, cheese and mustard, it was delicious!!

hope you try this recipe and if you have your own version we would love to hear it!

Beetroot and barley casserole

Hei!

yesterday we attended a Finnish typical food masterclass, it was amazing!! We could discover so many new ingredients and one of the recipes we liked best was this one, for the simplicity, and for using totally new ingredients!

Ingredients:
- 1/2 kg beetroots
- onion
- 2 dl barley
- vegetables stock
- butter
- garlic

For the barley, we used this broken one, the result feels like a thicker couscous.

As we said, the recipe is really easy, it takes a bit of time though.

Wash the beetroots and peel them, cut it in small cubes, fine chop the onion and the garlic. Add a knob of butter to the casserole and add the beetroot, onion and garlic, saute for 5-10 min, season with salt and pepper.
Add the barley and the stock, let it simmer under the lid for an hour or so, we added 1 liter, it need a bit more. The time of cooking might be different, the barely doesn't take more than 15-20 min of cooking, but the beetroot need longer cooking time. We added a bit of timjami as decoration.