Cuisine of Finland

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The cuisine of Finland' uses a large amount of wholemeal products (rye, barley, oats) and berries (such as blueberries, lingonberries, cloudberries, and sea buckthorn). Various turnips were common in traditional cooking, but were substituted by the potato after its introduction in the 18th century.

Modern Finnish cuisine combines traditional country fare and haute cuisine with contemporary continental style cooking. Spices have been adopted from West and East. Fish and meat play a prominent role in traditional Finnish dish from the western part of the country, while the dishes from the eastern part have traditionally included various vegetables and mushrooms, of which especially the latter were introduced to the dining tables of the western side as late as during World War II by refugees from Karelia.

In the new Finnish kitchen, dishes are lighter, smaller, and generally contain several different vegetables. This mode of cooking is highly influenced by European and American cuisine.

Contents

[edit] Examples of Finnish dishes

Traditional Finnish cuisine has been heavily influenced by Swedish, German and Russian cuisines. However, there are differences in preparation techniques: for example, Finnish dishes tend to be less sweet than Swedish ones, and Finns use less sour cream (smetana) in preparation than their Russian neighbours. The following list is a sample of typical dishes traditionally consumed in Finland.

[edit] Traditional dishes

and Baltic herring)

[edit] Bread

  • Bark bread
  • Svartbröd, Åland's Black Bread
  • Maitorieska, milk flat bread
  • Pulla, sweet bread
  • Ruisleipä, rye bread
  • Sihtileipä, rye and wheat bread
  • Rieska, barley bread (in the shape of half ball, Savo, or very flat and baked with naked flame, Kainuu North Finland)
  • Läskirieska, flat(ish) barley bread with pieces of lard (west coast)

[edit] Drinks

[edit] Desserts

  • Mämmi
  • Golden cloudberry dessert
  • Fruit soups – a mixture of liquidised berries (nowadays often canned or frozen) and potato flour, served with milk/cream and sugar.
  • Runeberg's tart
  • cinamon rolls (korvapuustit)

[edit] Sweets

[edit] Meals

There are three meals per day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. In all schools including high school, a hot free lunch is served as part of Finland's welfare state agenda. Among workers, lunch is often not so heavy, and may be a sandwich or a salad, depending on whether the company has a lunch restaurant. In the evening, the dinner is usually a hot meal.

[edit] Breakfasts

Breakfast usually consists of open sandwiches. The sandwich is often buttered (with margarin), with toppings such as hard cheese or cold cuts. Finns usually do not have sweets on their breads such as jam (like the French and the Americans), or chocolate (like the Danes).

Sour milk products such as Yogurt or viili are also common breakfast foods, usually served in a bowl with cereals such as corn flakes, muesli, and sometimes with sugar, fruit or jam.

A third food that is commonly eaten at breakfast is porridge (puuro), often made of rolled oats, and eaten with a pat of butter (voisilmä, lit. "butter eye") and/or with milk, or fruit or jam, especially the sort made of lingonberries.

Drinks are milk, juice, tea, or coffee.

[edit] Meats

There are long traditions of hunting and fishing in Finland. The hunters focus on deer and moose, but small game such as hare, ducks and grouse are popular for their taste. The game food makes natural additions to the Finnish cuisine. Approximately 70,000-80,000 moose are culled yearly producing signifficant amounts of meat. Due to very strict food hygiene regulations, moose meat is mainly consumed within households and is rarely attainable in restaurants. Finnish restaurants are accustomed to serving reindeer dishes instead.

[edit] Berries

To add some vitamins and make the rather heavy food more enjoyable a traditional jam is made from lingonberry and served with meat. A more exclusive but not uncommon jam is the cloudberry jam.

Blueberry soup and blueberry pie are very traditional Finnish desserts. The wild strawberry (metsämansikka) with strong aroma is also a seasonal delicacy decorating cakes, served with ice cream or just cream.

[edit] Critique

Amongst some people, Finnish food suffers from a poor reputation. In the olden times the country's harsh climate meant that fresh fruit and vegetables were largely unavailable for nine months of the year, causing a heavy reliance on staple tubers (initially turnip, later potato), dark rye bread and fermented dairy products, occasionally enlivened with preserved fish and meat. Traditionally, very few spices other than salt were available, and fresh herbs like dill were limited to the summer months. Many Finnish traditional dishes are prepared by stewing them for a long time in an oven, which produces hearty but bland fare. Famines caused by crop failures at 19th century caused Finns to improvise by eating, for example, bread made from pine bark (pettuleipä), which was nutritious but rock-hard and anything but tasty.

Even with the advent of modern agriculture and transportation, heavy taxes and outright bans on imports that could compete with local produce severely limited the availability of foreign or unseasonal food. Only the advent of European Union membership in 1995 and the consequent elimination of trade barriers opened the floodgates, with prices of some products like grains, meat and milk dropping by up to 50%[1], and now Finnish supermarkets and restaurants serve up a wide variety of food from all over the world. The simplicity of traditional Finnish food has also been turned into an advantage by placing an emphasis on freshness instead, and modern Finnish restaurateurs now blend high-quality Finnish produce with continental cooking techniques, culminating with Helsinki's Chez Dominique receiving two Michelin stars in 2003.

However, in 2005 Finnish cuisine came under heavy fire from two leaders of countries renowned for their cuisine. The Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi claimed that "I've been to Finland and I had to endure the Finnish diet so I am in a position to make a comparison." Berlusconi started his anti Finnish food campaign in 2001. He went on: "The Finns don't even know what prosciutto is." This followed the initial decision by the European Commission to establish the European Food Safety Authority in Helsinki. On July 4, 2005 French President Jacques Chirac claimed that "After Finland, [Britain is] the country with the worst food." [2] [3]

After Jacques Chirac's and Silvio Berlusconi's critique some international food reporters answered it:

"Chirac and Berlusconi are wrong! Finnish cuisine is much more international than I expected. I have eaten very good food in wonderful restaurants, visited market places and enjoyed in good cafeterias. Cheese is very good in Finland. I also love Finnish cloudberry and smoked fish." (Ute Junker, Australian Financial Review Magazine, Sydney, Australia)

"Food in Finnish restaurants is extremely good. Especially I love Finnish salmon, mushroom soup and desserts. I have also got very good Finnish wines. The worldwide reputation of Finnish cuisine isn't very good - but it should be!" (Liliane Delwasse, Le Figaro, Paris, France)

"I have eaten only good food in Finland. Food in Finland is very fresh. Bread, berries, mushrooms and desserts are very delicious. Finnish berries (especially cloudberry), salmon, cheeses and reindeer should be available in London, too." (April Hutchinson, Abta Magazine, London, England)


[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Tietoaika 2/2005: EU:n tuoma hintaetu on tallella [1]

[edit] External links

Wikibooks
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