Food in Finland I: What is the traditional meal?

Finnish cuisine is based on simple dishes made from essential ingredients that fill ones up without necessarily being drowned in fat. The dishes provide long-lasting energy, which is important for cold days and the Finnish lifestyle in general.  Finns spend a lot of time outdoors in the fresh air. Finnish cuisine is grounded, just like the Finns. Rich soups full of potatoes with a slice of dark bread, roasted root vegetables, mushroom dishes, vegetable pies and legumes. From meat are a lot eaten freshwater and sea fishes and game. Two species are restricted to North, namely moose and reindeer. Potatoes are the most popular side dish. Almost in all canteens, there is a salad bar and seeds for sprinkling.

Traditional meals

Many types of food are typical of a certain region of Finland. There is no national food as such. In Helsinki, salmon soup with cream and potatoes is available everywhere, and somehow it has become one of the traditional dishes. From the archipelago around south-west Finland comes the rye bread saaristolaisleipä, which has a sweet taste and a coarse texture. The slices of saaristolaisleipä are often spread with butter or topped with fishes. A huge fish market is held every October in Helsinki, where Finnish fishermen sell their catches and products. It's also the best place to buy saaristolaisleipä.

Fish market in Helsinki
 

In the Savonlinna region of eastern Finland, there is a well-known delicacy lörtsy, which can be prepared both sweet and salty. It is a thin, fried crescent-shaped yeast dough with a filling.  The sweet version includes marmalade inside, usually apple, but also raspberry, blueberry or cloudberry. Sweet lörtsy are coated in crystal sugar. The salty lörtsy are either meat or vegetable. The largest selection of lörtsy is available at the market in Savonlinna. They can also be bought in the supermarket, but there are only a few types, from the sweet ones are most often available with apple filling.

Another speciality of eastern Finland, particularly Kuopio, is a traditional dish of fishermen and workers called kalakukko. It is a loaf of rye bread with fish stuffing, such as common whitefish or perch. The filling can be mixed with turnip. A nutritious, filling, quality meal that lasts for a few days without refrigeration. It was originally invented for heavily physically working men who were away from home for a few days.  I find kalakukko as genial meal for this kind of purpose.

Many recipes contain turnip lanttu, which was developed from differ type of turnip nauris and cabbage kaali. Turnip nauris was the oldest cultivated crop in Finland and was an essential part of the diet until potatoes were introduced to Europe. Turnips are excellent as baked in the oven for a long time, when they get a mushy consistency and sweet taste highlights. These mushed baked turnips are suitable as a side dish and also as a stuffing.

Bread and pastry

It is baked mainly from rye, oats and barley. A typical Finnish pastry is a dense rye bread, on which Finns often spread margarine. Also available is bread containing oat flour, which is soft and almost cake-like in consistency. And an endless variety of knäckebrots. My favourite is hapankorppu, which is a thin, crispy bread made from rye flour that tastes great with a slice of cheese topped with cucumber slices. Finns like to cut their cheese with a cheese slicer, even if it's only some basic everyday cheese. Maybe because it's slower and more relaxed.

Rye flour is also used to make oval savoury cakes called karjalanpiirakkat, which is a thinly rolled pastry with a creamy rice or potato filling. They are available everywhere, from the supermarkets through the gasoline stations to cafes. On top may be a lump of butter mixed with shredded egg, which partly melts when heated. Or the butter can be spread on a karjalanpiirakka, depending on everyone's taste. In a cafe, they usually ask if you want the karjalanpiirakka warm. Another type is a rye pocket filled with egg. All of these types of rye pastries are great for hiking, as they look the same even after spending a few hours in the backpack. Lanttusupikkat are pockets made of a thin layer of rye dough filled with a delicious turnip filling.

Karjalanpiirakka

Lanttusupikkas

Then there are perunalepuskat pancakes, which are based on potatoes and barley flour, but can also be classic wheat flour. A similar variant is perunarieskat, which contains a little more flour and it is thus more similar to a pastry. Ohrarieska is a thin square of whole barley grains and piimä sour milk, but can also take the form of dry barley pancakes.

Mushroom salad – friend or enemy?

A Finnish specialty, that goes well with a dark bread, is a mushroom salad. I'm of the opinion that the liking of it comes gradually. I'm not sure there's love at first bite in this case. Traditionally, it is made with ugly milkcap mustarousku, which is bitter in flavour. Recently, this mushroom has been found to have carcinogenic effects, so its use in the food industry has been banned. It is now possible to buy mushroom salad in the shops, where the ugly milkcap mushrooms have been replaced by champignons mushrooms. Finnish households prepare this salad according to the original recipe and evaluate the new scientific findings on the toxicity of ugly milkcaps as a mere phobia of mushrooms.

The first time I encountered mushroom salad was in the canteen, I scooped a hell of a lot on my plate. Because I expected it to taste different. Like a creamy, mild-tasting mushroom sauce, which I adore. However, the mushroom salad had nothing to do with it. The combination of mushrooms, raw onions and mayonnaise was harsh, heavy and I knew after the first lick of my fork that I was going to sweat through this dish. In Finland, meals are often served buffet style so that one only takes what one eats to avoid waste. I like that, but by the time I had a bloody huge portion of mushroom salad on my plate I wasn't so excited about it. Eventually, I got through it and was convinced to never eat mushroom salad again.

But time heals and after a while, I forgot about how the mushroom salad and I didn't get along, and when it was on the table with a rye bread, I wanted to taste it again. This time I was more careful and only put two small bites on my plate. And it wasn't too bad. Gradually, I found my way to mushroom salad. I don't need to have it all the time, but every now and then, why not.

Mushrooms for mushroom salad must be firstly shortly boiled