Fishy tale

Loimulohi: From Finland winter 06/07

It was a Friday evening and my turn to cook.

I thought that on my way home from work I can pick up something nice/easy from the local supermarket (there is a reason why I have not mentioned the shop's name here) and enjoy the evening over a glass of red wine & good food...

So I grabbed a basket; picked & weighed & labelled tomatoes (yes, here in Finland you weight & label the fruits before you walk to the tills...), toured pass the milks & juices, reached for a jar of green olives, approached the fish counter in order to continue my shop tour via fresh bread section & candy land to the exit...

Ok, back to the fish counter where I was weighing the options for the evening. Bought two pieces of 'loimulohi' (salmon cooked next to an open fire). Pieces were the size of your remote control unit (smallish, thin type of remote that is...) - and the label screamed 16 euros. SIXTEEN euros... Huh. Ymph. Ugh.

Quick thinking... picked up 2 ciders (realised ALKO was closed already = no to red wine) and ... dumped the 'loimulohi' in 'makkara-allas' (=chiller cabinet full of sausages)... Do not worry a second before I had looked around like little Miss Marple in order to assess if anyone was looking...

I can only blame the lad at the fish counter for not wrapping 'loimulohi' properly as it was now laying on top of all the makkara's in the world (out of it's wrapping paper) and screaming to me: 'Why did you do this to me you petty criminal?!' And to my dismay a strange fellow nearby was staring at my direction his fillings clearly visible. A nano second decision later I hurried with a steady, determined pace towards the tills, wondering when is the claw of a security stewards landing firmly on my shoulder...

These moments in terror made me pick less important items like suklaa (=chocs) in the form of Kitkat, Geisha, Fazerin sininen etc into the half empty shopping basket. Payment done, sliding doors closed - I think I was safe... still on the shop's land so hurried accross the car park towards the safe house. Safe.

Friday night dinner consisted of chocolate, olives, tomatoes (which were able to accompany tomatoes in the fridge bought a day before) & milk with 2 ciders...

Not so bad after all.

Going home?

Fish'n'chips via.

That was weird. Without thinking about it I just typed the title of this post (before I added the question mark) - I wonder if that means something? So actually our 'holiday' back in UK visiting my family is ending today, and we will be back in Finland tonight. After three weeks of unusually sunny, warm weather in Blighty, with only the first autumnal tinges showing, we will be greeted by temperatures 10 degrees cooler, and touching zero at night, and autumn in full swing... the first snow has even fallen in Lapland.

But is Helsinki 'home' now, after only fifteen months? Strangely it is Stadilainen Konna who keeps saying 'If we come back in a year's time ... we'll wish we hadn't sent six more boxes of stuff over' or '... we'll want most of this stuff that is now filling your mum's spare room'.

While I've been here I've been keen to partake in several important local cultural culinary treats:

• Battered fish and chips (not fries) with salt and vinegar - from a fish'n'chip shop, in paper
• Steak and kidney pie - mmm pastry
• 'Proper' italian style, wood oven roasted, thin crust, pizza (no Finnish kebab-shop minced-meat pies thanks)
• Sunday Roast (lamb) - cooked by my Mum (who makes fantastic crispy roasties)
• Sitting and reading the weekend papers

I've also realised that I actually missed British TV and radio (particularly radio channels that play new and current music... a radical idea that doesn't seem to have reached Finland yet).

Maybe this all explains why I managed to lose 7 kilos this summer (leading to some comedy trouser issues) not having this stuff around to eat, but I dread to think how much I've regained in the last few weeks. Back on the bike for me then until the snow comes.

In which summer hurtles towards us

mmmmm, ihana

It only seems like a couple of weeks ago since I was still writing about snow.  Now all the snow is long gone, winter gear retired to the attic/cellar and even the grit has been swept up and taken away.  Suddenly the bare birches have got this season's must have look (in leafy spring green) and as I look out the window at 22:31 twilight is falling, although the sun will be back in just six hours.  In a few weeks the schools will break for summer, and Juhannus - the nightless night - is only five weeks away...

Anyway we have been absorbed in working up our ideas for Europan (which has only six weeks to go - oh-ho!), and otherwise kept busy Nordic walking and going to an Utzon lecture (where we also bumped into Lewism) in the last week, and now my back is finally better I'll be back on my bike this week.

I also cooked a rather fine (even if I do say so myself) roast beef dinner for some friends today - but I'll show you a salad as it seems more seasonal - as well as better for you...

Mämmiä - kiitos!

nam nam...

'Mämmi' is a traditional Finnish Easter time dessert made from rye flour and malt. It has a brown and sticky appearance (yes, it does look like...) and as far as mämmi is concerned there are two types of people: those who love it; and those who hate it. There's no middle ground.

'Mämmi' can be bought ready-made from a shop during Easter in a variety of boxes and sizes. Making mämmi isn't hard either; it just takes quite a lot of time... As you might not get this delicacy elsewhere than in Finland - you might wish to prepare it yourself (we strongly advise against this!): 5 bowls made out of birch bark (?), 3.5 litres of water, 1kg of rye flour, 1/4kg of malt (preferably rye malts), 2 tablespoons of syrup, 2 teaspoons of salt and 2 tablespoons of orange peel. 'Mämmi' is usually eaten with cream or milk & sugar. And apparently it will take you approx. 30mins of nordic stick walking to burn a small bowl of this stuff - so perhaps you don't eat it at all...

Red tape & Perunoita

Perunoita

Potato planting has begun: I had to smile when I saw this headline featured on YLE's english news web page. Maybe it was a slow news day, but at least it suggests that (along with the fact that the ground is no longer obscured with a thick layer of white stuff) that spring has finally sprung in Finland. Those of you who think it is almost summer where they are (in toasty northern Britain for example) for can sod off and read another blog. Anyway maybe people pay more attention to seasonal food in Finland than in UK?

I also thought my brain was turning into mashed potato at one point today (well actually I didn't but I'm trying to stretch a link between two unrelated pseudo-news items).  This was because we have had several brushes with Finnish 'red tape' (punaisen nauha?) this week as we needed to get copies of our passport certified (€30+ at British Consulate; €6 from Notary Public at the Maistratti - although I'm glad to say the consulate did tell me when I was enquiring), and have been trying to figure out how to get the payments for 'workforce training'. This 'training' (studying Finnish in my case) support payment is €8 per day as long as you do less than 20hrs a week (otherwise it is considered a full-time course in which case you can't be unemployed) which the EURES Työvoimatoimisto (employment office) adviser said I could get when I signed on. With me so far?  I knew two more things: Kela pays; the course has to be approved by them before it is booked or paid for.  Except it turns out neither of those things is strictly true. 

First we hunted through the Kela and Mol.fi websites without much success.  I did work out that time spent on the course had to be logged on the same form as used for unemployment benefit claims - but there didn't seem to be a form for applying for permission to take a course. After a brief argument dicussion with Konna we decided to go to the local Kela office and ask (luckily realising that Kontula doesn't have one before we went there so head off to Itäkeskus). Arrive. Take ticket - oh look, 25 people in queue for 5 desks... 

Wait. Time passes (and if you know Konna you can imagine how much she enjoyed that).

One hour later... Get as far as introducing myself suomeksi before handing over to Konna to explain. Discover Kela needs instruction from työvoimatoimisto to make payments, but usually it is for their own courses... oh and have I got my E301 from UK yet? (Luckily yes!)

Okay so now we need to go to Hakaniemi.  Arrive and marvel at lack of security or clear signs,but  eventually find 'immigration' section. Take ticket - ooh only 12 people in this queue, but only 2 desks. 

Time passes... bing-bong 749 flashes up - our turn.

Hei, olen Emmdee.  Tämä on minun kela-kortti; ja passi jos tarvitset. Olen rekisteröidänyt työtön, ja haluisin mennä suomen kielen kurssi...

[They don't have any courses, I have to find one first...]* 

*in Finnish - hey, someone spoke to me in Finnish! 

That's okay I already have found one - and have the details. How do I get permission to take it and get the payments?

[Okay, I've noted you have asked on the system.  Now you need to get a certificate from the course organiser to say you are enrolled. Then we will tell the Kela they can make the payments when you do the course]

So no forms?! And do we have to come back here again! No - luckily it can be posted, but now a trip to the Helsingin Seudun Kesäyliopiston toimisto (luckily only 10mins away) is needed... trudge to the Open Summer University office; enroll; pay; get certificate. Phew. Saga over.

Laskiainen

Pikkan laskiainenpulla Porvoosta (manteli, ei hilo)

Tänään on laskiassunnuntai ja on seitseman viikkoa ennen pääsiästä (Easter). Myös tänään on kaksi päivää ennen laskiaistiistai - englanniksi Shrove Tuesday. Syödään laskiainen pulla (kanneli manteli tai hillo) suomessa. Englannissa tehdään pancakes (lettuja) laskiaistiistaina. Pidan lettuasta enemmän kuin laskiainenpullasta - ehkä minun täytyy tehdä niitä itse Konnalle ja Hiirille.

As well as eating those slightly strange cream and almond (or jam) buns, laskianen Sunday is traditionally celebrated with a 'sliding festival' of sledging and other winter sports - but don't ask me why!

24 - Joulupöydällä (On the Yule table)

From Finland winter 06/07

Today is Christmas Eve. Which in Finland, unlike Britain, is the main event - ruokaa, joulupukki, lahjoja (food, santa, presents) ...

In the morning, it is traditional to eat riisipuru which is salted with 'lucky' almonds for the unwary. Then (if you have one) perhaps a morning sauna to get relaxed (and clean) for the day's 'exertions'.  The visit to the cemetery to place candles on family graves is perhaps for me the strangest thing of the day, with no similar tradition at home; traffic jams forming at the main cemeteries, directed by police make the whole thing slightly surreal, although the sight of the snowy graveyard filled with candles in the early darkness is eerily pretty.

By tradition dinner can start when the first star is in the sky (not sure what you do if it's cloudy) and the birds have been fed. After dinner, joulupukki and his tonttu may visit to deliver the presents... although strangely ours are already under the tree. Hmm.

---

So then to the groaning christmas pöytä, from which one can take food for the rest of the afternoon and evening. But how does it compare to (tomorrow's) traditional British christmas dinner?  Last year we even managed to have both (with my family in UK) so here are both for the curious of both nations...

Suomen joulunruokaa: From hölynpöly

Starters

Suomi: Lax (smoked salmon), Silli (Herrings in various sauces), Fish roe

UK: Scottish smoked salmon & champange

Suomi: Lutefish (pre-soaked in lye... probably an aquired taste)

UK: nothing comparable

Suomi: Joulukinkku - the huge christmas ham: cooked overnight, slavered in mustard and breadcrumbs

UK: Turkey - huge, golden, with fragrant stuffing (the older British tradition is actually Goose, but I've never eaten that)

Suomi: Laatikkot - different casserole 'boxes' of carrot, sweetened potato, turnip and liver

UK: Roast potatoes, parsnips & carrots

Suomi: Rosolli - beetroot and mixed vegetable salad, Lingonberry and cabbage salad, Mushroom salad

UK: Brussel sprouts

Suomi: Pate, meat aspic, smoked reindeer.

UK: Liver pate, pressed tongue, stilton

Suomi: Gingerbread cookies, Joulutorrtu.

UK: Mince pies, christmas pudding, trifle

And to drink: Glögi, wine, beer, milk, and coffee (of course - Finns start to get the shakes if they don't get coffee every few hours...)

UK: Wine, beer, fruit juice, mulled wine, coffee

Later: 

2 burana and a lie down...

2 neurofen, the Queens Speech and a lie down...

A British Christmas plate: From hölynpöly

Hyvää joulun ruokaa!

Lost in Translation

-  I think I might try making some mince pies for Christmas for people to try. I'll have to make the mincemeat from scratch though.

- Ihana. Can you get all the ingredients here?

- Most of them are fairly easy; but I haven't seen candied peel or suet anywhere. What do you think?

- Mitä heleveti on suet!?

- It some sort of shredded fat. In the dictionary it translates as tali, if I ask in the shop do you think they'll have it?

- Ehkä... in a pet shop. That's what we call the ball of fat we put out for the birds!

- Perhaps we'll stick to joulutorttuja...

But is it as good as a mince pie? via by Robmcm

PS: Somehow I managed to scrape a 5 in my latest Finnish exam. 

Well actually I know how really: a) it was a fairly easy exam (compared to the course ); b) they lowered the pass mark for this grade as it has so many new grammar concepts in it. I would have got a 4 normally, which is still better than I expected. They are actually going to split it into two modules in the future (i.e. 8 weeks to cover instead of 4) this make sense as we had to cover - passiivi present & it's three past tenses, i-monikko one the plural forms (there are at least three I know of; this one applies to the 6 local cases, partitiivi and genitiivi, and is probably the most complicated thing to learn the rules for), the imperative, and more sentence types e.g. prediktiivi; all in only nine lessons. Actually maybe the sentence types are the hardest thing.  Although it was the passive I messed up on in the exam, so maybe... oh, never mind.

Anyway, this was the last part of the intensive basic grammar course I was doing, so next year I am looking for something more about actual spoken and written communication.  I'll probably will go back and do their advance course (levels 5-8) sometime though...

9 - Joulutorttu

Joulutorttuja, joulutorttuja...

Luumuhilloa tähdenmuotoisessa voitaikinapläjäyksessä... Tarviiko sanoa muuta - Nam ;)

Bet you wish you had some (plum jam in starshaped puff pastry) but I ate them already...

kun olen tehnyt kaksi tavaraa

Who made all the pies? 

As I had passed another language test - level 3 with a grade 4 (out of 5) since you ask - and to avoid doing anything really useful like my portfolio or making christmas cards (or god forbid - cleaning!) I made a couple of quiches/flans (what is the difference anyway?) one tuna, pesto, onion & pepper the other mushroom, cheese & tomato. The latter was more photogenic, but the former more tasty.  This is another first for me in the cooking area now I have discovered how to make pastry.  Well, reasonable pastry anyway if you don't mind it very short. One disappeared  yesterday as it was sauna night, and the rest goes with us to yet another weekend mökki retreat with Konna's käverinsä.  

The weather is now more realistically wintry outside - a dusting of snow and five-below, with a few fat flakes drifting around for effect.  Although Hiiri did say that there looked like there was more of a snow storm in her kitchen after I had finished with the flour... lucky she liked the end result, otherwise that might have been the end of my baking for a while.

The 3rd thing (he says referring to the title) was that I now officially exist here and have my very own personal identity code from the Helsingin maistraatti to prove it. Next on the list - kela kortti.

Sunnuntai paisti (redux)

sometimes it's not stressful to have a lot on your plate...

Well we got my Sunday roast this time (the full works: roast beef with red wine and mustard gravy, yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and parsnips, cauliflower, sprouts and carrots with white sauce) for my birthday weekend after all. Not that I really needed it after Ravintola Kuurna last night (which I recommend to anyone in Helsinki by the way) ...but anyway. 

'This seems very complicated food' said Hiiri. 'Not really' I thought. 'But what am I going to eat next Sunday if your not here to cook?' asked Hiiri.  Next weekend Konna and I are off to Vieromakki mökki for Bore's birthday, so no strange British cooking for her next week.

I also have my level 1 Finnish exam on Tuesday. Already. So I should be revising the local cases (inesiivi, illatiivi, ellatiivi, adessiivi, allatiivi, ablatiivi), verb types, vowel harmony and consonant gradation (hard to soft: eg. kukka - kukat; katu - kadulla; kenka - kengat; etc) and about twenty other things. Instead I'm going to this award winning film. Well I do need to balance out going to see this one (organised by SAFA-hesari) on Friday after all.

Piirakkaa

P. Jarlan Rivo-Riittakin (kuvassa P. Jarlan piirtämänä Taiteiden Yönä) olisi ollut  tyytyväinen tähän piirakkaan... 

Murotaikinan aineksina käytin: 

150g voita, 

1 munan, 

3dl vehnäjauhoja,

1tl leivinjauhetta ja 

1.5 dl sokeria 

ja päälle

10 omenaa tädin puutarhasta + kanelia ja sokeria...

Onneksi Rivo-Riitta ei tuprutellut röökiä vieressä...

Ja lopputulos oli tämä (hieman palaneena :)):

P.S. Boren mielestä piiras oli omenaisen maukasta.

A taste of home

Who ate all the piirakat?

Not that I'm getting any twinges of homesickness you understand, but two tastes of home came recently.  For lunch today I cooked a home-made Steak & Kidney pie (as you can't get anything like this here) using BBC Good Food website recipe; whilst it is a bit more rustic looking that it might be, I didn't let a lack of rolling pin, pie dish or scales get in the way of tasty British stodge. Thumbs up from the Finns too.  The other taste of home? Well that came courtesy of Ruotsi (Sweden) in the shape of a visit to Ikea the other day; we could have been in Edmonton just as easily.  

As a postscript to that, we went to our local big blue and yellow box in Vantaa with Konna's isä (dad) who had unbelievably never been before! I mean is there even a house left in UK not at least half furnished from there? Maybe it is just deep seated resistance to Swedish cultural imperialism...

Sämpylä

Sämpylä

Well not quite made the next day (see New Experiences, Old Ways), but baked for breakfast a few days later:

Sämpylä

here is the bread
made from the flour
ground by hand
at Sysmä's fair
with Taiska's dad

keeps tradition alive

[edited 18/8/08]

New experiences, old ways

Smoke Sauna

Having visited Finland half a dozen times I've already experienced some of the more obvious (perhaps stereotyped) parts of Finnish culture and cuisine: like taking saunas and eating reindeer. But the start of this trip has given me the chance to try some new (to me) Finnish traditions.

We had been invited to visit at Konna's laid-back friend Taiska's family cottage - this worked quite well for us as it is on the route to Kesälahti from Helsinki - so we decided to stop over on the way. We were warned that T's mum had a reputation for providing a very generous spread, and we weren't disappointed. Included in the feast was roast elk (hirvipaisti), a bit like beef but richer, softer and almost crumbly, and which I found out later T's dad said he had a close relationship with, meaning he had hunted it himself.

T & family have been building additions and improvements every summer for years, the latest being a Kota (a sort of teepee shaped hut) but more importantly they have a savusauna (smoke sauna) which is 
the old way to heat a sauna using the smoke from the burning wood not 
just the heat for the stones and water. This gives a much 'softer' and more mellow sauna, less harsh löyly (steamy heat 
that comes from throwing water on the stove) particularly compared to 
modern electric stoves; the drawbacks are it takes a long time to heat 
(as all the heat is stored in the massive brick stove as it can't be 
burning while you use it), and smoke=soot so touch any surface and you 
get equally sooty. Not only was the sauna itself different, but for 
the first time this was taken by me with a group of Finnish males, 
including an enthusiastic and talkative rock singer, and a more 
phlegmatic T's dad; so none of that self conscious modesty needed ... 
To cap off this cultural social experience we also drank sahti (an
acquired taste - being a sort of prototype for beer with no hops and very strong) between sessions. I think I'll stick to the Lapin Kulta.  

The next day, after sleeping in an 18th century log out building 
(aitta), we went to the local town's Uotinpäivät (which is a fair that 
commemorates the Viking Olaf's involvement in the area) where amongst 
the stalls selling birch bark baskets, fake crocs, felt shoes, and 
lehtuja (fake crepes) I got the chance to hand grind some flour on T's 
Dad’s stall. And tomorrow we'll make sämpylä (something like bread rolls)...

[edited 18/8/08]