Dandelions!

Polish: mniszek
Slovakian: púpava
Upper Sorbian: mlóč
Czech: pampeliška
Ukrainian: кульбаба
Russian: одуванчик
Croatian: maslačak
Slovenian: regrat
Bulgarian: глухарче

I hope that other food lovers will forgive me that I lied when I said that spring means young beet and radish leaves. I really didn't mean to forget about dandelions, young nettles, violets and woodruff. I just spent a weekend at my grandparents' village and I am so relaxed and happy, with a bag full of ecological fresh dandelion greens. I collected them thinking about Swiss dandelion pie, quiche dent-de-lion. Of course, as a true soups lover, I was experimenting with dandelion soup, too. Pictures below.

pie shell:
200 g flour
1 teaspoon salt
80 g butter (cold!)
50 ml (cold!) water

filling:
50 g dandelion leaves (chopped)
100 g camembert cheese
100 ml 30% cream
200 ml milk
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
few freshly ground nutmeg

1. Prepare the pie shell by kneading rapidly all the ingredients (they have to be cold, as said above). make a ball and leave in the fridge (min.30 minutes!)

2. Prepare the filling: beat eggs with milk and cream, add finally chopped camembert, salt, nutmeg (pepper, paprika) and chopped dandelion leaves.

3. Cover your pyrex dish or baking tray with few butter, roll thinly the dough and place in the dish, pick several times with a fork and pour egg-dandelion filling. Bake about 30 minutes in 180C oven. I guess that meat-eaters could add some cubes of ham or favourite sausage to the filling. This pie can also be made with fresh spinach or (especially) bear's garlic (ramsons).





A dandelion leaves soup was very easy to make. I was actually looking for some traditional regional dandelion soup recipe, but I didn'y find any, so I used my imagination and chopped some handfuls of dandelion leaves, 3 onions, 6 small potatoes, fried raw vegetables, cooked in homemade vegetable broth and thickned with sour cream mixed with fat countryside milk and 1 tablespoon of flour. It tastes nicely sourish and bitter and a bit like spinach and this is how it looks like:



And, one of the most important things to do in spring is to collect dandelion blooms! don't forget to do it right now to prepare dandelion syrup! (recipe available here)

Swiss mirabelle tarte

Polish: mirabelka
Spanish: ciruela amarilla
Persian: آلو قطره‌طلا
Portuguese: mirabela
Austrian German: Kriecherl
Romanian: corcoduş
Swedish: mirabelle
Russian: мирабель

Mirabelle is the oldest kind of plums. My father makes a delicious mirabelle syrup which we drink later during cold winter dark evenings, and my mum prepares wonderful mirabelle jam, sweet and sour.



It is not a season to buy mirabelles now, you will have to wait until next late summer, but if you like these yellow small plums, don't forget to try Swiss mirabelle tarte, Mirabellenwähe!

150 gr flour
50 gr ground almonds (almond flour) + 3 tablespoons (separately)
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
80 gr butter
1 kg mirabellen (weight with seeds)
50 ml milk
150 gr cream cheese
2 eggs
3 tablespoons sugar + 3 tablespoons vanilla sugar
icing sugar to sprinkle

1. Sieve flour, add ground almonds, sugar, salt and cold butter. Knead fast while adding 5 tablespoons water. Leave in the fridge for 1/2 hour (or more, can be left overnight) and after that, fill the tarte mold with the dough.

2. Throw the seeds from mirabelles away. Spread 3 tablespoons of ground almonds over the dough (which is already in the mold) and put mirabelles on it.

3. Mix milk, cream cheese, eggs and both kinds of sugar together. pour over mirabelles. Bake about 50 minutes in 180 C oven (or until the top is golden)

Swiss carrot cake

Polish: ciasto marchewkowe
Indonesian: kue wortel
Turkish: havuçlu kek
Latvian: burkānu kūka
Welsh: cacen foron
German: Karottenkuchen
Afrikaans: wortelkoek
Hebrew: עוגת גזר
Basque: azenario tarta
Portuguese: bolo de cenoura

Carrot cakes are commonly eaten and appreciated in Europe since medieval period. The thing is that beet sugar was very expensive in the middle ages, cane sugar was still unknown while honey was not so commonly available, so sweetening with sugar beets and carrots was carried on. Generally, carrot cakes can be divided into two groups: gingerbread-like and spicy or soft, with just a bit of shredded carrots or carrot puree to give light taste and colour, topped with philadelphia cheese icing. Third group is not that common and contains no-flour, but almonds. Like this Swiss Rüeblitorte. The idea of making this delicious cake came on my mind in German grocery store, where I saw packed powder to make this cake. I asked my friend google how to make this cake from fresh products and compared all the Swiss recipes I found. The result is this natty recapitulation of all of them, excluding one ingredient: Kirschwasser (I never drink alcohol but you can add it, but I think it could kill the lovely subtile taste of almonds)

300 gr almonds or almonds + hazelnuts
300 gr carrots
250 gr sugar + 1 pack vanilla sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
juice and zest from 1/2 lemon
50 gr flour + 1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
(in the original Swiss version you would also need marzipan carrots and some apricot jam as a topping)*

1. Peel almonds (you can do it easily if you pour boiling water on them first) and grind (I did it in meat grinder to obtain crunchy texture instead of homogeneous mass). Grind raw peeled carrots too (or shred very finely)

2. Beat yolks with sugar, add almonds, carrots, lemon zest and juice, salt, and flour sifted with backing powder and cinnamon.

3. Beat whites and when stiff, mix lightly with carrot mass (it will not be easy but try to be as delicate as you can)

4. Bake 45 min - 1 hour in 180C oven. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, almond or coconut flakes or* smear with apricot jam and decorate with marzipan

For me, it was one of the best cakes I ever ate. My brother shared this opinion but my mum didn't like this taste :(