We are now into February, traditionally the coldest month of the year in Finland – at least in my experience during the last four years spent here.  More than once I have found myself walking down Aleksanterinkatu or Esplanade on a frigid, windy February day, hat pulled firmly down over my ears, scarf wrapped around my face so only my eyes are visible, and hood pulled as far forward as it’ll go, with the sharp fingers of the wind tugging at the hem of my long, down jacket and biting through my wool pants, the long johns underneath, pricking the tender skin below.  It’s no wonder, as Richard D. Lewis writes in Finland, the Cultural Lone Wolf, that Finns are not the most talkative bunch.  As Lewis astutely remarks, you wouldn’t have much time for small talk either in the weather conditions I described above.  Best to restrict your communication to a cursory nod when meeting a familiar face on the street in the winter, and beat tracks as quickly as possible to the nearest indoor space for warmth and comfort. (This isn’t entirely true – most Finns I’ve met are friendly and amiable people, but the stereotype continues nevertheless!)

But it’s February, and there is a bright mark on the landscape:  Runebergintorttu.  Runeberg’s torte is a pastry rumored to have been created by Frederika Runeberg, wife of Finland’s national poet, Johan Ludvig Runeberg.  Made with almond flour, texture added through the use of leftover bread crumbs, and topped with a dollop of raspberry jam and a circle of sugar frosting, Runeberg’s tortes are traditionally consumed from early January to February 5th, when Runeberg’s day is officially celebrated in Finland.

And what, you may ask, is so special about J. L. Runeberg?  In my homeland the USA, poets are rarely celebrated.  If they are, it is during a short stint as U.S. Poet Laureate – well deserving talents such as Robert Frost, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver may have their poems read and recited throughout the country by those who appreciate fine verse – but never have I heard of a pastry marking the anniversary of a poet the way I have seen here in Finland.  But Runeberg is no ordinary poet.  His words are those to which the Finnish flag is raised and which every Finn, both Finnish and Swedish speaking, know by heart from an early age: the words of the Finnish National Anthem based on Runeberg’s Tales of the Ensign Stål:  Maamme (Finnish); Vårt land (Swedish); Our Land.

Maamme                                                                               Our Land
                                                                                               (translation from the Finnish version)

  Oi Maamme, Suomi, synnyinmaa,                                       Oh our land, Finland, fatherland,
  soi, sana kultainen!                                                              echo loudly, golden word!
  Ei laaksoa, ei kukkulaa                                                          No valley, no hill, 
  ei vettä, rantaa rakkampaa                                                  no water, shore more dear,
  kuin kotimaa tää pohjoinen,                                                than this northern homeland,
  maa kallis isien.                                                                   this precious land of our fathers.

  Sun kukoistukses kuorestaan                                               One day from your bud
  kerrankin puhkeaa;                                                             you will bloom;
  viel’ lempemme saa nousemaan                                         From our love shall rise
  sun toivos riemus loistossaan,                                            your hope your glorious joy,
  ja kerran laulus, synnyinmaa                                             and once in song, fatherland
  korkeemman kaiun saa.                                                     higher still will ring.

Source for original and translation courtesy of Wikipedia.

It’s seems fitting that in Finland’s coldest month, throughout Finland we enjoy a fine pastry dedicated to a poet who captured the Finnish spirit in words of quiet hope and firm pride.  We may still be firmly in Winter’s grip, but Spring is just around the corner.  So I started my morning J. L. Runeberg style:  with a sweet almond pastry and a cup of coffee, looking out over the frozen landscape knowing that the buds will bloom someday soon.

The recipe below is not the traditional recipe.  Why?  Well…  I flipped through pages of the Helsingsanomat’s Torstai section this Thursday morning and found their recipe for Runebergintorttu.  The list of ingredients included 1 cup / 2 dl of heavy cream and my heart nearly stopped there.  Nope.  Not gonna happen.  (I substituted Greek yogurt instead). The original recipe also calls for bread crumbs (I used oatmeal) and wheat flour (I used spelt flour and wheat germ) and no salt, so I’ve done some heavy adaptation to create a lighter, brighter version, including the use of Blood Orange Juice for color and flavor instead of the traditional sugar water or punch to moisten the cakes.  Also, though these are typically made in a special pan that gives a tall shape with straight sides, I don’t have such a pan in my kitchen and suspect you don’t either.  I used a standard 12-cup muffin tin, with no adverse effects. The results are a bit healthier than Frederika’s work, but are, in my humble opinion, delicious.

Hyvää ruokahaluaa!  Enjoy!

Runebergintortut / Runeberg’s torte, reconstructed

Blood Orange, Roasted Root Vegetable & Barley Salad

Inspired by books like Good to the Grain, websites like My New Roots, and spa destinations like Champneys (where I spent a blissful week one spring a few years ago) that focus on a healthy lifestyle, not to mention the memory of December’s overindulgence on sweets and my own desire to eat more real foods, I’ve been cooking and baking more and more with whole grains and the fruits and vegetables that are now in season, in particular citrus fruits and root vegetables.

Winter is the season with the leanest offering of seasonal or local fresh fruits and vegetables, but those on offer have a great variety in color, texture and flavor.  Take a look next time you visit the grocery store and pick up some of these root vegetables:  Carrot, Garlic, Onion — all old standbys that you probably buy all the time.  Less commonly used but readily available and delicious are parsnip, celery root, beet root.  Try roasting them in oven or boiling them in a vegetable or chicken broth for a fantastic soup.  Stir them into your pilaf or risotto, or make this hearty, filling, colorful, full-textured winter salad, and rejoice at how summer’s underground bounty stores up so well for winter.

And then.  The citrus!  Lemons, limes, oranges, blood oranges, grapefruits, pomelos, mandarin, clementine, tangerine… that’s what we have around these parts this time of year, and you’d be surprised at how well the flavor of their juices marries with the inherent hearty sweetness of a roasted root vegetable submerged in pile of robust whole grains or lentils.  Ah yes.  Winter food is here to fill you up, satiate you, make you sit back and relish the cold days, the snowy weather, the high winds howling outside, the dusky afternoons and the dark nights…because with food like this, you can get it started and let heat do most of the work for you.  Then fill your plate, your belly, your senses with warmth and flavor, and be ready for anything:  an evening tucked under a blanket on the sofa with a good book in hand, or a long ski across the frozen sea.  Your choice.

Blood Orange

And speaking of good books, stacked on my reading table now are Season to Taste by Molly Birnbaum about losing one’s sense of smell and the ability to taste food along with it; a cookbook Roast Figs Sugar Snow by the inspirational Diana Henry; a book of poetry Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins;  a novel about balance in nature Prodigal Summer (just finished!) by Barbara Kingsolver; and the thought-provoking Fat Chance – The bitter truth about Sugar by Dr. Robert Lustig about what sugar really does to our bodies (here is a link to a Lustig speech that will change the way you look at food and sugar, no question).   No surprise, there is a strong food theme here – capped by the sweet music of Collin’s poetry.

What better time a year to read and be inspired than these early winter months?!  I’d love to know what you are reading and cooking.  Please share your recommendations with me!

This blog’s salad served with a soft boiled egg and a roasted beet salad on lightly dressed beet greens

Blood Orange, Roasted Root Vegetable & Barley Salad
Don’t be alarmed by the length of this recipe.  It really does come together quickly and easily with very little “hands-on” time.

2 cups cooked barley (see instructions in Step 1)
1 cup of roasted, chopped carrots and parsnips (see instructions in Step 2)
1 teaspoon ground flaxseed soaked in 2 teaspoons water
2 green onions, chopped
1/2 cup chopped almonds (or use almond meat from making Almond Milk)
juice and reserve pulp of 1/2 blood orange
1 tablespoon olive il
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1/2 blood orange, supremed; for garnish (Here is a great tutorial on how to supreme citrus)

1.  Cooking Barley
Cook the barley as follows:  In a medium-sized pot, combine:
2 1/4 cups / 4.5 dl water
1/2 cup barley / ohra
1/2 teaspoon salt

Bring to a boil then reduce heat to a low and cook, covered, until the barley is tender and the water is absorbed, about 45 minutes.  Remove from heat and drain off any excess water.  This will make 2 cups.

2.  Roasting Root Vegetables
Roast the vegetables while the barley cooks as follows:  Preheat oven to 200°C / 400°F.  On a parchment-lined baking pan place:
1 large parsnip, peeled and cut into sticks
3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into sticks

Drizzle with 3 tablespoons olive oil and sprinkle all over with salt and pepper.  Toss to coat evenly.  Roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes until fork-tender and slightly browned.  Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly.

Chop enough enough of the root vegetables to form one cup and store the remainder in a covered container in the refrigerator for another use  – or eat them right away with your fingers like I usually do.

3.  Combine the flaxseed and water and set aside to soak

4. Assembly
Combine green onions, orange juice and pulp, salt, pepper, soaked flaxseed, salt, pepper and olive oil in a medium-sized bowl and stir to combine.  Add the barley, almonds (or almond pulp from making almond milk), and chopped root vegetables and toss the whole mixture to combine thoroughly.

Transfer the mixture to a 1 liter / 1 quart / 4 cup serving bowl and top with the supremed orange slices.

Serves 4.

Here’s a quick post for a snowy Friday afternoon:  a easy to make and healthy snack.

It’s a vegetable dip to love:  no funky ingredients whose names you can’t pronounce.  No monosodium glutamate (MSG).  Nothing that resembles an E-code.  Nothing that reminds you of a bad day in your high school Chemistry class.  Just pure, simple, fresh ingredients coupled with a few simple dried ones, and you have a veggie dip to make the guests at your next party sing a little.  Or maybe you’ll break out a tune all by yourself, at the kitchen table, staring out the window into the sunshine, like I did.  What’s not to love?

I love a good creamy dip.  I have purchased my share of dips over the years – both pre-made and the ones where you buy a packet of dried seasoning and mix it into a mound of yogurt or sour cream.  While often tasty, they also typically had a few dubious ingredients that nowadays I am trying to avoid whenever possible.

You’ll be surprised (or maybe not if you are already reading labels), how much weird stuff goes into our foods; the funny places where large quantities of sugar or corn syrup show up (hello Heinz ketchup, I am talking about you); and the seriously crazy amount of E-codes that usually hold down the last few places in the ingredients list (some codes are INS codes and used in the US and other countries for colors, emulsifiers, stabilizers and preservatives added to food).  Do you even know what that stuff is?  I have been trying to figure it out.  Stefan Gates of BBC wrote a couple of years ago about the fact that not all E-codes are bad for you.  I believe that.  But I also believe the evidence that demonstrates problems with certain E-codes in foods, particularly for those with allergies who likely have no idea what it is that a particular E-code represents.

All I can say until I am more educated on the subject is that the more often I use ingredients whose every component I recognize, the more happy I am about eating the food that results from my efforts.  It’s a bonus if I can pronounce the names of the ingredients I am cooking with as well – it took me a while with some of them like “jicama” which I pronounced firmly with a “J” like “Jake” instead of an “h” like “hello!”.  Who knew?  And then the Brits use “aubergine” for “eggplant”, and make it even more fun by pronouncing the “g” the way one pronounces the “g” in “regime” so that it’s “ah-bear-ʒiːm“, and actually sounds quite elegant, just the way eggplant can be when added to a dish that’s properly made, as it was in the vegetarian moussaka I had for lunch yesterday at Kellohalli in Teurastamo.

Kellohalli’s Vegetarian Moussaka

View from my table at Kellohalli

Speaking of which: If you live in Helsinki and haven’t been to Kellohalli yet, jump on the metro and exit at Kalasatama.  Check out the map on the link above, and enjoy the short walk from the metro to the restaurant, or drive there, if you insist!  It’s a great big open space in the old meat factory, soon to be joined by other great restaurants, a food school, and already neighbors to the Pasta Factory, Helsinki’s own fresh-made pasta company.  Nope, they didn’t pay me to say this – I just think it’s a really cool place for a weekend brunch, a weekday lunch (anybody tried to find good food in Vallila lately?  It’s a rough search, and mostly fruitless.) I haven’t tried their dinners yet, but the menu looks promising and it’s on my to-do list.  

Ok.  Ahem.  After that long diversion, back to the Veggie Dip.  Here it is, folks.  Enjoy!




Herbs & Spices Veggie Dip

2 cups / 4 dl Greek Yogurt or Turkish Yogurt (I aim for 2% – 3.5% milk fat to keep it lean)
1 large garlic clove, chopped fine
2 green onions (kevätsipuli), chopped fine
1/2 cup / 1 dl Thai basil, roughly chopped (substitute other basil if you can’t find Thai)
1 heaping tablespoon chopped dill
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder (taste after one teaspoon is added)
1 1/2 teaspoons smoked paprika
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

Mix all ingredients together in a small bowl.  Chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to allow flavors to blend.  Stir briefly once more before serving.

Serve with a big tray of mixed, cut vegetables.  Cauliflower, carrots, cucumber, red pepper, lightly steamed broccoli and cherry tomatoes are all great choices for this.  It would also be great with pita chips or as a spread on a sandwich.

Enjoy!

Makes roughly 2 1/2 cups / 5 dl