Soon after I started the Facebook page of the blog, a Turkish girl liked the page: Erin Turkoglu. As I do with any other “liker” that I do not personally know, I checker her Facebook profile. To my surprise, she was living in Helsinki. Oh wow, she was even a student in Aalto ARTS! How come didn’t I see her?

 

After a while I also added her in Facebook and the first personal contact was my message asking if she would like to participate in a co-cooking or co-baking session with me. She was very positive, said yes immediately, and we agreed on the date.

 

That morning when I went to her place was one of those that everything went wrong. I do not know if it was because I was really packed that week and thus, I was really tired. Well, it could be also because that day the Kotivinkki’s issue featuring me would be out and I was extremely excited..

 

 

Anyways, I finally got to her and saw this tiny, big-eyed girl, who was way younger than me and who turned out to be a very nice person to talk to! We had a nice chat, a nice co-cooking session and I got to have an absolutely gorgeous breakfast! The best part of it was the dish was her own experiment! Ever since that day I make this for breakfast every now and then, I replace beetroot a few times with other root vegetables and the result was equally tasty.

 

Erin is quite a new Helsinki resident, she’s been around since last August. She also lived in New York and in Istanbul before – both huge cities – but she still likes the teeny-tiny Helsinki as it is easy to explore.

 

 

This is an easy dish with a rich taste – the combination of beetroot and blue cheese is perfect. Added to that, poaching the eggs, there is a variety of tastes in your mouth. It is roasted in the oven for quite a short amount of time, the only thing that takes time is boiling the beetroot so if you plan to make this for breakfast or brunch, plan ahead.

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Instructions:
(serves 2)

 

1 medium sized beetroot
4 slices of rye bread (For friends in Finland: Reissumies is my favourite)
1/2 tsp / 2.5 ml (x4 times for each slice of bread) truffle oil (you can also use olive oil)
50 gr. blue cheese
2 eggs
Salt and pepper to taste (Viispippuri – with 5 kinds of spices – works really good)

 

A few fresh basil leaves to serve

 

(by doubling the amount of blue cheese and using all four slices of bread for beetroot and cheese mixture, you can serve for 4 people. 1 beetroot will still be enough.)

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1. Boil beetroot, peel it when ready and slice into pieces. Or, you can also peel it first and then boil and slice (this is how I do). Keep the water in the pan, you will use it for poaching eggs.

 

 

2. Preheat the oven to 160C.

 

3. Pour 1/2 tsp / 2.5 ml truffle oil on each bread slice. Put them on an oven tray covered with aluminium folio and put in the oven, in the middle rack. Leave them in the oven just for a few minutes, until the oil is soaked.

 

 

 

 

4. Crumble blue cheese.

 

 

5. Take bread slices out of the oven. Put blue cheese crumbles and a few slices of beetroot on 2 of the slices. Put it back in the oven, roast until blue cheese melts. Do not leave bread too long in the oven, they get too crispy quite easily. When ready take them out of the oven.

 

 

 

 

6. Now poach the eggs. To poach the eggs, first crack each into a bowl, without spoiling the yolks. On medium heat, while water is boiling in the pan, using a wooden spoon or similar, make a swirl in the middle. Take the spoon out, as swirling continues, put the egg gently in the middle, one egg at a time. Continue stirring near the edge of the pan until egg is cooked.

 

 

 

 

 

7. Take the egg out and put on one of the roasted bread slices with beetroot and blue cheese. Poach the other egg. Decorate with a few basil leaves, and season with pepper (as blue cheese is salty, you do not need extra salt, but if you absolutely adore salt, you can also season it a bit with salt). Use the other 2 slices of bread without beetroot mixture as as cap. Have a nice breakfast!