Sea-buckthorn berry jelly served with squeaky cheese

Hi Hoggers!

Today's dish uses similar ingredients as yesterday's salad but is still quite different and whimsical. Please have a look at the previous post, where also the sea-buckthorn berry and the Finnish squeaky cheese are explained. I utilised these very typical western Finnish ingredients again, but tried to create a more modern approach.

This is how you can make this salad/starter:

Prepare the sea-buckthorn berry jelly. Dissolve a sachet (about 6g) of vege gel, vegetarian gelatine, into 2dl of cold water. Then heat the liquid up to the boiling point. Add one tablespoon of sugar and dissolve it into the liquid. Puree about 100g of sea-buckthorn berries with a hand mixer and press them through a sieve to the gelatine liquid. Whisk carefully so that there are no lumps. Pour it to a container or glass of your choice depending on how you want to present the jelly later. I poured mine on a plate with high edges in order to make fairly flat jelly.

Then dice some squeaky cheese. I diced both the cheese and the jelly to approximately same sized cubes and presented them as a chessboard, but the possibilities are limitless. I appreciate that you might not get any sea-buckthorn berries, but please also consider cloudberry or cranberry jelly with cheese!

Get creative!

Your VegHog

 

Sea-buckthorn berry and squeaky cheese salad

Us Finns are crazy about berries, mushrooms and all sorts of forest and natural produce. Visit our country for unforgettable culinary experiences. I mainly try to make nice fusion dishes with Finnish produce when I have the chance.

Sea-buckthorn grows wild and in people's gardens in western Finland where The VegHog comes from. Here we know it as tyrni. The sea-buckthorn berries contain loads of vitamin C and the flavour is very crisp and strong. It also makes brilliant juices and jams. As I'm on a holiday at home now, I have picked these berries and utilised them in my cooking. I really want to take some dried ones with me back to England.

Today's dish is a simple sea-bucktorn salad with some squeaky Finnish cheese, leipäjuusto.The squeaky cheese is a traditional mild homemade cheese from my region with distinctive charring marks and it's a great addition to salads. I used to be lucky enough to get the fresh homemade cheese charred at an open fire while following the cheese making process of my grandparents, but nowadays I get mine from the supermarket.

For this salad I combined the sea-buckthorn berries I had picked myself with squeaky cheese cubes and fresh local lettuce and enjoyed it as a colourful side dish to new potatoes.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog