Tasty And Easy Goat Cheese Pie

Savory pie is perfect dish for a get-together and I have really tasty recipe for a goat cheese pie. It takes an hour, few basic ingredients and is a guaranteed success.

For pie crust you need 100 grams butter, 3 decilitres flour, 1 decilitre grated cheese and 3/4 decilitres water. Blend hand-warm butter (do not heat the butter) with flour and grated cheese with your fingers and then add water.

Tap the dough flat on pie dish (diameter appr. 27 cm) and add stuffing. Base for the stuffing is 2 decilitres sour cream (kermaviili), 2 eggs and 150 grams of grated cheese. Then you can choose which flavours to add. I often use goat cheese and artichoke hearts, but you can also add sun-dried tomatoes or whatever you want.

Then 40 minutes in oven in 180 degrees...

... and some roasted pine nuts and on the top as garnish and voilà!

Fine Dining At Nokka

Restaurant Nokka is located in a charming old red-tile building in an idyllic Katajanokka area.

It was chosen as the Best Restaurant in Helsinki by the food critics of Finland's leading newspaper Helsingin Sanomat so I was tempted to go and check the menu. On a Saturday evening the restaurant was fully booked so table reservation was needed. Portions on the menu were named after the place where they come from, which was a nice idea.    

As Nokka is specialized in local food we chose selection of Finnish farm delicacies as a starter. All small portions had a perfect blend of basic Finnish food flavours and they were extremely tasty. 

I really like reindeer, but do not eat it that often so that was easy choise for a main course. The portion was named Salla after a place in Lapland where the reindeers are from.

And the crown for the tasty dinner was a delicious Bûche de Noël as a dessert. So rich and so good!

Excellent service together with gorgeous food and a great company so definitely worth its price!

Hooked From The First Bite: Rulla & Nudge

Nudge is a coop store by few selective companies with ecological mindset located at Yrjönkatu in Helsinki.

Nudge, Yrjönkatu 30, Helsinki

Store has beautiful interiors and so many fascinating clothes, cosmetics and decoration items to discover in a pleasant athmosphere.

Perfect time to discover Nosh children's clothes before Christmas shopping.

I also found lots of stuff for myself, like Bio Nature cosmetics, ethical clothing by Yalo, shoes by Idun's Apple and decoration items from Kolme ja puoli. You can also test the different shades of nail polish in the nail bar so it is easy to spend time here (and shop). 


















And maybe the best of all Rulla restaurant with delicious rice paper rolls.

I tasted 4 different flavours and got hooked from the first bite! Salmon, beef and prawns all worked really well with salad and vermicelli. Normally I do not like coriander, but it did not bother me in the rolls.

Tangy taste of the fish sauce dip sauce is so addictive. Here I want to come to eat again and again and again...

My New Favourite Brunch in Helsinki

Culture Factory Korjaamo has so many great things going on, like concerts, theatre, art exhibitions, book shop, tram museum etc.

Now they also have re-newed brunch by New York Ninja, which instantly became my favourite one in Helsinki.

Good buffet with wide selection of salads, vegetables, fruit, yogurt, eggs and bacon etc.

And the dessert cakes were heavenly!

For brunches I also like Dylan a lot, but Korjaamo is much more convenient due to its location in Töölö and also for the athmosphere.

Pret A Manger

Pret A Manger is a British sandwich chain I prefer besides my other favourite chain Le Pain Quotidien. I first discovered Pret in London (well, you cannot really miss the chain there) and now have also found shops also in New York, where they were advertised as "The best thing that has come from England since The Beatles".

I always choose Pret over Starbucks and to my delight Pret has arrived also to Chicago so I was able to have my coffee breaks there. 

 
















I really like their philosophy about the fresh food made from natural ingredients and good service.

And it tastes good as well!

If there are going to be more restaurant chains landing to Finland I would hope that they would be chains like Pret A Manger, Le Pain Quotiden and Wagamama rather than Starbucks...


 

Salmon With Pesto Sauce

Today it was rainy autumn Sunday and I cooked salmon with pesto for lunch at home.

Pesto sauce ingredients:

2 pots of fresh basil

75 grams of parmesan cheese

1-2 garlic cloves

50 grams pine nuts (seeds)

3/4 dl of olive oil

lemon juice

salt

After cutting basil leaves and garlic clove, crating parmesan and heating pine nuts, I added some salt, lemon juice and olive oil and mixed all incredients in a blender and the pesto sauce was ready.

For 3 people I bought little bit over 1/2 kgs boneless salmon. I placed the fish on oven dish skin on top and had it in oven in 175 degrees C for 20 minutes. Then I took the skin off and added pesto sauce on top and put the fish back in oven for another 10 minutes.

Served fish with simple salad and strawberry balsamic vinegar dressing.

Dessert was quick Finnish squeaky cheese warmed in oven with cream and served with berry jam.

As it was a laid-back Sunday afternoon so ideal time to have a nap after the lunch.

Dinner At Juuri

Restaurant Juuri is located in Korkeavuorenkatu near Design Museum.

The speciality of the restaurant are Sapas appertizers with traditional Finnish flavours. Sapas are really tasty mouthfuls and there are some 15 different options on the menu priced EUR 4,50 each. You can take 2 each and share with 2 people so both get to have a taste as starters. But these are so tasty one wants to eat them all and as a main dish it was recommended to have 6-7 sapas each.

This time we chose Smoked bream and potato mousse with fried rye dough, Mushroom brioche with onion and cream cheese, Black sausage and Baked oregano cottage cheese with gooseberry and green pepper jam. All were delicious!

As a main course we both chose the dish of the day which was really nice salmon.

Two desserts were tested and I preferred Apple and rowan berry crumble with birch and yoghurt sorbet and salty liquorice sauce over Swiss roll with chocolate and caramel, salt caramel ice cream and pine fudge sauce.

Overall really good experience and excellent food. Sometimes the service can be little bit stiff, but now we had really good waiter. The only thing was that the noise level at restaurant gets pretty high at times so it is hard to have a conversation.

But the restaurant is definitely worth a visit because of the great food! And after dinner you can have a drink at next door Latva Bar.

  

Breathtaking Athens

In July I did my first ever trip to Greece. Since I prefer city holidays I chose Athens as destination instead of popular Greek holiday islands.














This year summer temperatures in Finland this year were pretty moderate even in July (+17 degrees C when my holiday began) so it was nice to get to enjoy sun and warm summer weather Greece where it was +38 degrees C.

 

 

Some places you instantly know if you like them or not and I knew it right away that I really liked Athens. I stayed in Monastiraki area within walking distance from Syntagma (airport bus' departure and arrival place) and had great public transportation (metro) connections everywhere.

Town was full of historical places of which the Acropolis being the main sight.

 

As Acropolis means the highest place there was a great view over the city from the top.

Another great vantage is Mount Lycabettus.

So many interesting museums, theathres and sights to explore. I visited the main historical sights such as the Acropolis and the Parthenon, the Accra, Syntagma Square and the Parliament House, National Garden, Temple Of Olympic Zeus, Lycabettus Hill, few museums (New Acropolis Museum and National Archeological Museum) and went to see Socrates Now threathre play at Athens university.

 

And there were also many ancient churhes.

Town is scruffy in a charming way...

 ...with street art everywhere

Athens Flea Market is full of brick a brack

 

There are also many small and attractive market places with fresh and cheap fruits and vegetables.

 

You could see several well-behaving stray dogs in the streets.

 

Lots of cool places to hang out like Booze Cooperativa.

Gazi is a great area to have a dinner as there are lots of restaurants.

Other nice and trendy area with even more bars was Psiri.

 

Sunset seen Mount Lycabettus.

Night view towards Acropolis