Aune's Pork Casserole

This dish is named after Aune Merikallio, a Finnish home economist. I guess she lent her recipe to the author for his book. I couldn't find anything about her on the internet so there's not much of a story there. Sorry.

This did not feel like a casserole to me, it was more of a roast, but maybe casserole is Finnish for roast? I dunno, just not very casserole-y (that's a word!) to me.

I just Googled "casserole" and the definition is "a kind of stew or side dish that is cooked slowly in an oven"  And a "roast" is "a cut of meat that has been roasted or is intended for roasting" but "roast" as a verb is "to cook by prolonged exposure to heat in an oven or over a fire." Well, there you go. It is both a roast and a casserole. Boom! English lesson!

The ingredients, of which I forgot to take a picture:

1 4-5 lbs fresh pork shoulder. I bought a pork shoulder that was just under 3 lbs because I knew there was NO WAY we'd eat that much meat. Also, the only pork shoulder I could find was some that was meant for carnitas so it was broken up into a few pieces. Don't know if that's the norm for pork shoulder but just wanted to mention that.

2 tsps salt

1/2 tsp pepper

2 tsps prepared mustard

3 cups drained sauerkraut

3 medium apples, pared, cored, and sliced. I used two.

1 tbsp sugar

4 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced. I used five small red potatoes.

Trim the meat of excess fat. Rub all sides with salt, pepper, and mustard. Place meat on a rack in a roasting pan and roast for an hour; drain fat. Remove meat and rack from the pan. In the pan, make a layer or sauerkraut. Sprinkle apples with sugar and layer on top of sauerkraut. Top with potatoes. Replace the meat in pan on top of potatoes. I just realized I didn't do this, I put the rack back. Woops. Cover pan with lid or foil, return to oven, and bake for another 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Since I didn't have as much meat, I roasted for a little over an hour.

I also made some Mushrooms with Sour Cream.

1/4 cup butter

2 tbsps grated onion or 1 medium shallot, sliced thinly

1 lb mushrooms, sliced

1/4 tsp white pepper. I used black because I forgot to buy white pepper.

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1 cup sour cream

Melt butter and cook onion for 3 minutes. Add mushrooms, s&p, and nutmeg. Cook over medium heat until mushrooms are brown and liquid almost evaporated. Remove from heat and stir in cream. Reheat but do not boil.

The pork was kinda dry. Maybe it would have turned out a little juicier had I put the meat directly on the veggies...The flavor was great though. A little on the spicy side but still tasty. Both my husband and I enjoyed how the apples made the sauerkraut less bitter. I'm not a huge fan of sauerkraut so this was an appreciated take on it. The mushrooms were amazing! I also love sour cream so that might have had something to do with it. As good as they were, they were very heavy. I hadn't eaten lunch that day so I was starving and had two large servings. I was pretty miserable afterwards.

The baby also really enjoyed the mushrooms; the three year old not so much. And I know I mention how she doesn't eat most, if not all, of my dinners but I promise you, the kid is healthy! She does eat breakfast and lunch so that makes up for  not eating a big dinner. She did eat some pork though so that was good.

If I make this again, I won't add the potatoes because I don't feel they really contributed all that much and I will put the meat directly on the veggies. Definitely making the mushrooms again, I just won't eat so much next time.

Baked Stuffed Fish and Spinach Pancakes

So I have to be honest, after the liver casserole, I was questioning my decision to eat Finnish food. That dish scarred me for life! 

The next day I attempted to make Hiivaleipa, Finnish Brown Bread. The recipe seemed pretty straight forward: mix hot water with butter, sugar, and salt. Let it cool to lukewarm. Stir yeast into lukewarm water and let it dissolve. Add to the mixture. Beat in rye and another unsifted flour. Knead for ten minutes, let it rise, and bake. Up until the holidays, I was baking bread once a week so I know enough about bread making to where I felt comfortable making this. I tried twice and I couldn't get it right. The first time the dough was super sticky so I had to chunk it. The second time it came out okay but after an hour, it didn't double in size like it was supposed to so I chunked that as well. By then I gave up on it and made another donation to the food bank. This disaster combined with the liver casserole made me feel like a failure. I know it's silly and really, there are bigger problems in the world, but it was still a blow so I really needed this fish dish to come out okay. I have feelings, okay?

The ingredients

For the stuffing:

1/3 cup rice

1/2 lb fresh spinach or a package of frozen chopped spinach

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

2 eggs, beaten

Cook the rice and the spinach, separately, and then combine them. Season with salt and pepper. Blend in the eggs.

For the fish:

1 3 lb pike. I don't know much when it comes to fish. I've had the very basics, tuna, salmon, trout, tilapia; I had orange roughy once and it turned my poop orange. Won't do that again. Anyway, I decided to go to Quality Seafood Market to get my fish because 1. figured I wouldn't find pike at HEB and 2. actually that was the only reason. I thought there were two. I was wrong. I told the man behind the counter that I needed pike but if they didn't have pike, I would take something similar. He gave me walleye and he only had a pound of it in fillets, which was fine because I didn't think we'd eat 3 lbs of fish anyway. Also, it was $16.49 a flippin' pound. 

1 tbsp salt

1/4 cup butter

2/3 fine, dry breadcrumbs

about 2/3 cup hot water

Pre heat oven to 350

Rub the fish inside and out with salt. I didn't have an inside and out, I had a one side and another side so I just rubbed the fillets with salt.

From the book "Stuff with stuffing and sew up or fasten with skewers in the usual manner" Um, I don't have a usual manner for stuffing fish so I used what I had: toothpicks. Also, since I didn't have a full fish, only fillets, I sort of just rolled the stuffing in and secured with toothpicks. In case you didn't know this, fish skin in hard! I broke like ten toothpicks trying to pierce it!

Melt the butter in a casserole dish and place the fish in the dish; spoon melted butter on all sides. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and bake for five minutes. Pour hot water into the dish around the fish and cook for another 30-35 minutes. Baste fish when it turns brown.

So this looks weird because half of the stuffing leaked out but it looks a lot worse than it was. As a side I made Spinach Pancakes. I forgot to take a pic of the ingredients:

1 cup milk

1 tsp salt

1/8 tsp nutmeg. I am so over nutmeg at this point.

1 cup flour  

2 tbsp melted butter

2 eggs

1 tsp sugar

1/2 lb spinach, chopped, or 1 package frozen spinach

Season milk with salt and nutmeg. Sift in flour a little at a time, beating constantly. Stir in butter and let the mixture stand for thirty minutes to an hour. I let it sit for an hour. Beat eggs with sugar and stir into batter, Add spinach. Prepare pancakes as usual. They should be thin, not like big, fat, American pankcakes.

This meal TOTALLY made up for my previous failures. And the liver casserole wasn't even a failure, I just didn't like it, but regardless, this improved my mood drastically! I think this would be really good as a brunch meal since it has the basics and it's kind of light. I think the baked fish would work with any white fish but with this being my first time eating walleye, it was good. The husband looked up some facts about walleye (cause he's a nerd) and it turns out it's the most popular fish in Michigan. We have some friends who are moving to Michigan so I'll pass this along to them so they can blow everyone's mind with it.

And yeah, the kids didn't eat this. I think they had pasta instead.

Liver Casserole

One of my biggest motivators for doing this is to get my family and myself to eat different foods. Like I've said before, we get into ruts of familiarity and the girls are at an age where they should be experimenting with different foods so they don't become too obsessed with junk food. I feel that as long as we're exposing them to various textures and flavors, it makes up for the days that I allow them to have ice cream for lunch.

So I made liver casserole.

My mom used to make liver and onions a lot when I was a kid and I hated it. I don't think I ever finished the meal and thankfully my mother wasn't one of those sadists that made their kids eat ALL THEIR FOOD. I've taken her approach on eating, which is if you don't like it, don't eat, but you're not getting anything else. The three year old is very picky and unless it's bread, pasta, corn tortillas, or rice, she will always say "I don't like it" before even tasting the food. We always say the same thing "You don't have to eat it if you don't want to" and about 50% of the time, she'll taste it and eat it. The other half is spent with her asking for her favorites and we just ignore her. We've already started saving for the eventual therapy sessions. 

I was not jazzed about this but I wanted to stick with trying  new things. I also thought that I might like it. I didn't like a lot when I was a kid. Tomatoes, squash, onions, and okra stand out as foods that were my least favorite but now I like all of them and eat them regularly. I was hoping that the same would happen with liver. I think you know where this is going.

The ingredients

1/2 cup melted butter

1 medium onion chopped

2 eggs

3 cups milk

1 1/2 lbs beef liver, ground. I couldn't find ground liver so I had to chop the liver up myself. It looked like a crime scene in my kitchen. 

3 cups cooked rice

3/4 dark corn syrup

1/2 cup raisins

1 tbsp salt

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

Use two tbsp of butter to cook the onions. Beat the eggs until foamy and blend in the milk. Mix in the onions and the other ingredients. Pour into a casserole dish and bake for 1 1/2 hours or until firm.

I also made a carrot casserole, which I found online. 

Liver casserole

Carrot casserole

Okay, I tried to keep an open mind, I really did. I ignored the texture of the liver when I was chopping it. I ignored the smell. I ignored the raisins. I ignored a lot. 

I could not ignore the taste. Apparently I have not outgrown my distaste for liver. I know there are people who love it and good for you; you are a more evolved person than I. I can't even describe the taste, all I can do is sit here with a grimace at the memory. The husband tried to add ketchup, hoping it would make a difference but it didn't. I hated throwing all that food away but after my neighbor turned down the offer of leftovers, I had no choice. To make up for it, I made a donation to the Capital Area Food Bank through my local HEB. 

The carrot casserole was great though! If I could do it again, I'd use less breadcrumbs and cook it for about ten minutes less. 

I'm making fish tonight. I really hope it turns out better.

Summer Vegetable Soup

This week we are in Finland.

Kun menee sutta pakoon, tulee karhu vastaan. 

That means "When you flee from a wolf, you run into a bear" This has nothing to do with this post. I just Googled "Popular Finnish proverbs" and I liked this one. It's supposed to be mean to not give up on one situation for another. I don't get it either. 

FINLAND. The biggest deciding factor in choosing Finland was, and this was backed by some super scientific thought, that it's cold in Finland. It's currently cold in Texas. So I figured the food would be agreeable with the climate. Granted I'm currently wearing shorts in January so maybe I didn't think this one through. I rarely do.

Choosing a cookbook for Finland was pretty easy. My three choices at Half Price were a $40 book that wasn't going to happen in any world, a $30 book that focused on Finnish country cooking which involved a lot of wild game like reindeer, and the $10 book I ended up buying. The price was right! Also, the book I ended up buying uses American measurements (in yo face metric system!) and is actually a book on Scandinavian cooking. It's titled "The Art of Scandinavian Cooking" by Nika Standen Hazelton. It was written in the mid-sixties but the recipes seem to hold up pretty well so far. There's an intro to each country, with a little synopsis of their dietary customs and traditions. It's a fun read.

The first recipe is Summer Vegetable Soup, even though it's not Summer. And people say GMOs are bad...how else would I make this recipe in January, hippies?!

The ingredients

1 quart water

1 tbsp salt

1 cup Frenched green beans. I chose fresh green beans for health reasons but if you don't love yourself, canned beans are good, too. I also cut them myself. This would have been a billion times easier if I had a food processor but I recently gave mine away because I never used it. Foiled by my generosity once again!

1 cup sliced carrots. Again, the food processor would have come in handy.

1 cup cubed peeled potatoes. I almost always cook with red potatoes. They are lower in fat than white potatoes and higher in potassium and anti-oxidants than their paler counterpart. It's just science!

1 cup fresh peas. I couldn't find fresh peas so I used frozen. I made up for it by using fresh everything else, though!

1 cup cauliflower buds

1/2 cup chopped spinach

2 to 2 tbsp flour

1 quart milk. I did not use a quart of milk, no one needs that much milk. Except for baby cows but we aren't bovine. I used about two cups, so about half a quart.

3 tbsp butter

1/4 cup chopped parsley

Bring water to a boil. Add beans, carrots, and potatoes. When they are half cooked, add peas, cauliflower, and spinach. When veggies are almost tender, make a paste of flour and a bit of milk; stir in. Then add remaining milk and simmer for ten minutes. Remove from heat and add butter and parsley.

It was forty degrees the night I made this and it.hit.the.spot. I was a little worried about it being bland but the butter and sweetness of the peas and carrots added some great flavor. It was very filling but wasn't too heavy. It probably would have turned out different had I used the full amount of milk but I feel this worked perfectly.

The three year old wouldn't touch it but the nineteen month old asked for seconds. Seriously, she has the best taste.