Plum Liqueur ‒ Luumulikööri

I feel I'm cheating a bit with this post. See, I made this liqueur a year ago already. But it would also feel stupid to post about a recipe if I haven't got to actually taste the result, and almost as stupid to post something you can only prepare during the harvest season just before Yule. So this is as early as possible, really.

Finland has one the highest alcohol taxation in the world, which is of course typical for all well fare states. Also, all consumption is heavily regulated, sometimes to the point of absurdness, and all drinks containing more than 4,7% alcohol can only be sold from bars or a state-owned monopoly store Alko. This has lead to a situation where everyone who possibly can buy their drinks in very large quantities from Estonia or Russia. Since Alko's assortment is rather limited, the traditional beer culture has somewhat withered and drinking is often done with all that you possibly can principle.

So, this drink really isn't ideal for that type of alcohol culture. It takes a few months to brew and the result is more appropriate for a dessert than getting drunk. But the experience of finally being able to open and taste what's inside that long-pampered jar is very rewarding. Plus, playing a home chemist with alcohol gives me this small but satisfying feeling of being on the rebel side. You can prepare this with berries or berry mixtures too, but don't pick holes into them with a needle one by one like a friend of mine did. Those were the most alcohol tasting bilberries I've ever chewed.

- 1 kg plums
- 500 g sugar
- 1 l vodka

See that your plums are washed and healthy looking. Half them and remove the stones. Fill a glass jar with them. Add the sugar and the vodka.

Leave the drink on a sunny window shelf. It makes a beautiful decoration. Turn around every now and then. Don't taste before winter solstice. If you can wait half a year, even better. Use the well marinated plums in a dessert.

Nutritional values / 1 l:
energy 4690 g
fat 3 g
protein 8 g
carbohydrates 577 g
fiber 16 g

Waxwing Nectar ‒ Tilhinektari

 

VeganMoFo 2013

This month is going to be busy in Mämmi. I signed myself to VeganMoFo, which is kind of like NaNoWriMo for foodies. Since we can't write a novel in a month, we instead blog about food every day during the month. I made the decision in a bit whim after I saw Mihl of the wonderful blog Seitan is My Motor planning to participate with the theme of classic German desserts. To the theme question I just wrote "Finnish seasonal dishes", though perhaps I should've thought about that more thoroughly considering that's pretty much the theme of my whole blog, but hopefully it does give some idea for those who haven't visited here before. At least that way I shouldn't be running short of ideas. And if this one goes well I promise to consider following a low-carb diet next year. Or perhaps blog about puréed baby food.

So, you can expect a lot of mushroom and berry recipes, along with root veggies and other new harvest treats. I guess this could be characterized as a budget theme too, unless I decide to drown them in alcohol, since most of my main ingredients are going to be completely free for me. I already made a list of 30 dishes I might post on the upcoming weeks, but some of them involve finding the right ingredient besides the regular not failing epically part, and then again I'll probaly find and thus cook something completely unexpected too. Oh, and I do have a reservation: there's a good chance our child is going to be born during this month. If that happens, you probably understand why you won't here about me for a while. :)

Apples, apples everywhere

As an opener, I'll tell about something that's so simple it really doesn't even need a recipe: juicing. This is the time when many Finns find their apple trees bearing so much fruit they don't know what to do with it all. So a friend of ours invited us to pick as much apples as we can carry from his backyard and told us to come again after couple of weeks. Now, I never buy apples during wintertime. Those imported apple varieties you can find from every store are huge in size, perfectly shaped and don't seem to taste like anything at all. But there are few better things in the world than fresh domestic apples. So we rushed there.

Only after having a sauna and getting back home did we start to wonder what we'd do with all those apples. Pies are great but even with them there's a limit of how much you can eat them. I've had this hope of making cider myself, but right now with the baby coming and all I wouldn't get to drink it myself. So making juice would be good practise and we surely wouldn't have a problem in drinking it all during the winter, if not even before that.

There are juicing stations in the city where they squeeze fresh juice out of the apples with reasonable price. But it would feel a bit stupid to go to those with only one plastic bag. Most Finns make berry juices with a steam-based home juicer called mehumaija, but those things cost and require a lot of space all year long. So I did a bit of googling and realised the oblivious: you can do juice just by boiling the apples on a normal cooking pot and then filtering the result. That worked out quite nicely. I also added some rowan berries I picked from the nearby forest with the apples since they are often mentioned as a well-balanced combination. Plus, rowan gives the drink a fresh orange colour.

How to

Just wash your apples and chop them into chunks. Remove the bad parts but don't bother to peel or remove the seeds since that way you're only going to waste precious apple flesh. Fill your biggest cooking pot and add enough water to just about to cover the apples. Cook for about twenty minutes, mashing the apples after they've got soft enough. Filter the bits and pieces with a cheesecloth, or with a regular sifter like I did to achieve a cloudier result with more fruit flesh. Press the mash until there's only a little bit of it left and discard the rest. Before bottling, make sure your bottles are well cleaned and preferably sterilized.

If you leave the juice untreated you have to freeze it or drink it right away. If you have too many bottles for that like I did, you need to add either sugar or preservative. I don't like my juices too sweet and sugar would also limit the ways I can use it in cooking, so I added some benzoic acid and sodium benzoate mix meant for this purpose. If you'd rather go with the sugar option, use 300–400 grams per litre.

Cold Brewed Iced Coffee ‒ Kylmähaudutettu jääkahvi

This isn't a typical Finnish beverage, not really. Coffee certainly is, but not this version. I'm posting it because I see the potential of it becoming one, especially now that a heat wave is on again.

Generally speaking, Finns don't exactly shy away from coffee. We consume it more than any other nation in the world, 12 kg per capita, when the world average is 1.3 kg. If you look at the statistics, Scandinavian countries in general lead them pretty straight, which might feel surprising considering the darn bush doesn't even grow up here.

There are of course historical and cultural reasons. Coffee used to be regarded as a luxury item, even wellcomed with prohibition laws, and the consumption of those things usually rises in the clouds. A coffee package used to be a valuable gift item even in my childhood but nowadays it's something that stores compete who offers it with the lowest price. The coffee table culture used to be and in some places still is an important social gathering regulated by rituals almost as finely tuned as in the Japanese tea ceremony. I could also speculate that the punctual and hard-working nature of the Scandinavian culture – often called protestant work ethic – might urge you to large caffeine consumption.

The most often used preparation method is filtering. Though other forms are also pretty wildly available, they tend to be called "special coffees" and to the real consumers usually just serve as a sweet piece rather than the real thing and tend to cost at least double as much. My spouse is the only person I've ever heard to drink decaf. Another thing worth mentioning is that the coffee is practically always arabica and usually roasted only lightly. Milk and sugar are common additions and people tend to choose a very fixed side in whether to use them or not.

The iced version on the other hand has never been a favourite, perhaps because of the short warm period we have. The ones I've managed to find have mostly consisted of milk and sugar, which I don't find that pleasing at all. When visiting Japan during summer heat a whole new world opened up to me. Ice coffees and teas were sold cheap in automatic machines behind every corner, and they actually tasted like the real thing. My normal breakfast started to look like this.

Now, the first way of making iced coffee that comes to mind to most people is just brewing hot coffee and cooling it down. That works but it's not necessarily the best method. Cold brewing makes coffee smoother, less acidic and perhaps even a little bit sweet. I find it brings out the flavour profile pretty well so you'll want to use good quality coffee here. This is also why cold brewing is a great way to experiment with different varieties and roasts. The ratio of coffee and water is of course up to your personal taste and depends on the coffee type but here's a thumb rule to help you to begin with:

- 1 dl ground coffee
- 5 dl water

Place the coffee in your preparation container. Pour the water on it. Stir. After the coffee has started floating, stir again. Cover and let the two just sit there together until the next day. Filter and enjoy.

Now, if you still want to ruin the experience with milk and sugar, feel free. But first take a sip to taste how it's like without them. Ice cubes are a great idea but remember to take the added water into account.

Dandelion Sima ‒ Voikukkasima

Gardening is about trying to weed out the plants that flourish in certain soil and conditions and trying to make plants that don't want to live in those conditions prosper instead. This summer we rented an allotment garden from the city for the first time, so we'll see if that's true. Already when seeding I did get this strong feeling we'd be at constant war with certain grass types that grow just awesome roots that snap every time you try to pull them out. Dandelion is perhaps more common plant that some people really try to fight with on their lawn. This is something I've never understood. I mean, they're really beautiful and may even make those otherwise awful golf yards look almost bearable. But perhaps that's just me who mostly likes yard that look like no human hand has ever touched them.

At least these "teeth of a lion" or "butter flowers" like they are called in Finnish can be quite delicious to get rid of. Their leaves can be used as salad leaves and their pungent taste gets often compared to that of salad rocket. Their roots can be roasted, ground and used as a herbal tea or coffee substitute. And those pretty flowers themselves, well, they smell and partly even taste like honey. Which is why I like to make a sparkly summer drink out of them.

- 3 l dandelion flowers
- 6 l water
- 1 dl farine sugar (or muscovado)
- 4 dl sugar
- 1 rhubarb stalk (or a lemon)
- 1 fingertip sized piece of fresh yeast

Right after you've picked the flowers, boil them and in three litres of water for about ten minutes. Fish out the flowers, save the liquid and boil the flowers again in a fresh batch of water. This time discard the flowers altogether. Chop the rhubarb and add it as well as the sugar to the liquid. Stir to make sure all the sugar has dissolved. When the liquid has cooled down to lukewarm, add the yeast piece. Let it rest for a day or so.

Next day, bottle the sima into clean bottles. You can also add a teaspoon of sugar to each bottle to assure they'll sizzle. Leave them in room temperature and let the extra pressure out every now and then so they won't explode. I personally prefer plastic bottles because of this. Check the taste after three days. Serve cold on a hot day.

Nutritional values / 6 l:
energy 2040 kcal
fat 7 g
protein 21 g
carbohydrates 491 g
fiber (not applicable)

Juniper Sima ‒ Katajasima

Unlike in most of the Europe, in Finland May Day is a huge carnival. Students may start a moist celebration even a week early. Streets are full of paper streamers and balloons. The eve is usually reserved for heavy drinking and the actual day off has traditionally had more political approach. Especially leftists are famous for their parades and speeches, though they're not what they used to be when the Soviet Union was still alive and kicking. It doesn't really resemble the more traditional spring celebration hela at all and could be more accurately described as a newcomer tradition.

Me and couple of my friends have usually hold a picnic on the May Day eve, inside since it's usually raining and as far as possible from all that merry-go-round. This year our health care professionals had to work on the eve, so we moved the partying for today. Since there isn't much growing outside yet I thought this year I'd try spicing my traditional sima with juniper berries.

- 4 litres water
- 500 g farin sugar (Muscovado would probably work just as well, but you might condsider replacing some of it with regular sugar.)
-  1 dl juniper berries
- about 50 g piece of ginger
- a fingertip sized piece of fresh yeast

Crush the juniper berries a little so they're more ready to release their aroma. Peel and chop the ginger. Put both of them into a bucket that is able to hold the whole portion. Boil 2 litres water and pour over the spices. Add the sugar and the rest of the water straight from the tap. Mix it all. When the water has cooled down to lukewarm, you may let the yeast loose. Cover the bucket.

Wait a day or even two. Stir the liquid a few times. Through a filter, pour the sima into bottles. Add a teaspoonful of sugar into each of them if you want your sima to sprinkle. The drink is ready in three days and at its best after a week. Remember to monitor the pressure isn't driving it out of the bottles before you want it out.

Here's an apropriate song to accompany the tasting.

Nutritional values / 4 l:
energy 1950 kcal
fat 0 g
protein 1 g
carbohydrates 485 g
fiber 0 g

Return of the Weird Glögis ‒ Outojen glögien paluu

Exceptionally, this Yule I don't plan to travel around the country but stay home and be lazy. I started it early on 21. with a friend of mine (since he didn't remember Winter Solstice was 22. this year) by raising a pint of Hyvä Tuomas for the rising Sun on the ice of the lake Näsijärvi. We didn't actually see the star of the 5-hour day at all since it was so cloudy but seeing that neverending white horizon I felt sorry I didn't bring my camera. Well, my fingers were all frozen already so maybe it was for the better.

Since I'm defintely not going to do anything useful during these few days the Sun rests on the shoulders of the Great Oak (in Finnish mythology they're called Pesäpäivät, "nest days") I could finally do things I've wanted to do quite a long time: read some novels, install Ubuntu and update this blog for a change. These hot drinks are from the pikkujoulu party me and my friends had. As you may remember, we did the same last year. (If the word "glögi" is all Creek to you, read this post first.) Everyone got to bring one recipe (I did the sea buckthorn version). I've made some minor alterations to them, for example by removing extra sugar if it seemed way too sweet. But feel free to adjust them according to your own taste.

Apple Tea Glögi

- 1 l water
- 2 dl apple juice
- 6 teaspoons of your favourite tea
- 4 tablespoons fariinisokeri or muscovado
- 2 tablespoons glögi spices (cinnamon, clove and ginger)
(- mint liqueur)

Prepare the tea. Remove the tea leaves. Add the other ingredients and let the mixture simmer for another ten minutes. Pour in cups and let everyone add mint liqueur as much as they please.

Black Currant Glögi with Mandarine

- 1 l apple juice
- 2 dl black currant juice (without added water)
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 5 cloves
- 0.5 dl sugar
- 1 dl raisins
- 200 g preserved mandarine slices
(- vodka)

Put the juices, the sugar and the spices into a pot and let them simmer for five minutes. Pour the liquid part into cups. Finish off with the raisins, the mandarines and the vodka.

Pirate Glögi

- 8 dl pineapple juice
- 4 dl orange juice
- 2 dl water
- 2 dl dark rum
- 2 tablespoons fresh ginger, chopped

Cook the ginger in the water for about ten minutes. Add both the juices. Heat the whole thing up but don't boil. Portion the rum into four glasses and pour the mixture on it. Decorate with small Pirate Party flags.

Sea Buckthorn Glögi

- 1 l unfiltered apple juice
- 2 dl sea buckthorn juice
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 star anises
- 1 piece of ginger
(- sugar)

Let the apple juice simmer together with spices for about an hour. Mix with the sea buckthorn juice only a moment before serving. Add sugar if you wish. I don't recommend alcohol with this since we noticed a surprising effect: half the taste seemed to disappear somewhere after adding only a sip of vodka.

The Drink of Louhisaari ‒ Louhisaaren juoma

Louhisaari is a manor in Masku, built by the dreaded noble family of Fleming and best known as the birth home of C.G.E. Mannerheim. It's signature drink is Louhisaaren Juoma aka Marskin Shampanja ('Mannerheim's Champagne'). Unfortunately, I have seen all kinds of beverages made out of those oh-so-aromatic black currant leaves claiming the name and frankly, I have no clue which one is the original. Most of them are different types of simas (an American friend of mine told me to stop calling them mead so I better listen) but I decided to go for the citric acid variety this time since I've never tried one before.

I do have a powerful backup: the drink recipe page I found contains separate instructions for the Sima of Louhisaari and the Drink of Louhisaari, both of them containing black currant leaves. The site is held by Marttaliitto, an organization for advising in home economics. Interesting group, by the way. It was founded in 1899 for house wives and long known as a socks knitting circle of conservative grannies but lately they have managed to modernize quite a bit. Nowadays they accept men as members and even promote some environmental values, even if not perfectly openly.

But back to the business! This is the latter recipe, only cut in half.

- 2.5 l water
- 2 l black currant leaves
- 12.5 g citric acid
- 250 g sugar

Wash the leaves. Boil up the water and pour it over the leaves. Add the citric acid and stir well. Cover with a lid and leave in room temperature for 12 hours. Fish out the leaves. Sweeten with sugar.

The drink can be enjoyed as such, mixed with sparkling water or as a part of different cocktails. If you're not going to slurp it all right away you better freeze it or boil and seal carefully into air-tight, sterilized glass bottles.

Nutritional values / 2.5 l :
energy 1000 kcal
fat 0 g
protein 0 g
carbohydrates 250 g
fiber 0 g

Salmiakki Milk ‒ Salmiakkimaito

From all my weird heat drink mixtures usually involving either tea or coffee, this one goes perhaps best together with 600-page academic books. It's very simple but unless you're using liquid or powdered salmiakki you'll need some patience.

- 26 g salmiakki sweets (I used Lakrisal)
- 3 dl soy milk
- 1 dl cold coffee
- ice cubes

Crush the salmiakki a bit and with the milk. Leave it in the fridge until the next day. Mix with the coffee. Enjoy with a lemon slice.

For a quicker and alcoholic version use 1 dl of Salmiakkikossu instead of the sweets.

Nutritional values / 4 dl:
energy 192 kcal
fat 6 g
protein 12 g
carbohydrates 25 g
fiber 0 g

Fermented Rowan Tee ‒ Hiostettu pihlajatee

The easiest way to get herb teas is just drying up the leaves and flowers you plan to use. This summer I thought I'd learn a new method of finding some new tastes from familiar plants by fermenting. This is how green tea turns into black tea.

The leaves in the photo are from a rowan tree. I also mixed some bilberry and fireweed (which is by the way an excellent basis for any tee mixture) leaves with it. Other plants more than appropriate here include for example raspberry, black currant and birch.

When the leaves you plan to use are still fresh, crush them (between your hands or using a rolling pin for example) so they juice up evenly. Lay them fluffily in a large glass jar and cover. The process needs some oxygen so see the lid isn't too tight.

Place the jar in a hot place (40-50°C) for as long as the leaves have turned brown. You can for example cover the jar with a black t-shirt and leave it on a window sill on a hot summer day or put it in a polystyrene box with hot water bottles. Depending on the plant this may take only an hour (as in the case of rowan) or several days. Last, make sure the leaves have dried up as well so they won't mildew. (I spread them on a newspaper for a night.)

The aroma lasts longer if you store the leaves intact and crush them only a moment before usage.

Birch Bud Schnapps ‒ Silmuviina

Although this is already starting to resemble more of a drink blog than a food blog...

Along with most plant roots, one of the first things you can forage after the spring has arrived are birch buds. They are a refreshing spice to many salads, sandwiches and drinks. The only problem is that there's only a few days time to gather them ‒ when they're still young and tender, just barely opened up, feeling a bit sticky from sap. The easiest way to preserve the characteristic taste is making a tincture. Save it for winter and you will literally taste spring.

- 1 dl birch buds
- 3 dl good quality vodka
(- 1 teaspoon sugar)

Put the buds into a glass jar and pour the vodka on them. Seal the jar. Let the mixture stand for 2-3 weeks in room temperature, shaking occasionally. Remove the buds or keep them as a garnish.

Enjoy chilled as an aperitif or use in cooking.

The same thing can be done with most herbs. Just remember that some of them (like dill) quickly develop a bitter taste so you should taste the stuff every now and then to decide when it's best to your liking.

May Day Sima ‒ Vappusima

The must have drink for May Day or Vappu is low-alcohol mead known as sima in Finland. Last year I made some rhubarb sima for the occasion, this year I was planning to have dandelion mead but the preceding week turned out so busy I didn't have the time for picking flowers. So instead, I brewed a portion of the basic type so strongly associated with Vappu.

I asked my spouse to bring me couple of lemons for this but I should've been more precise: he bought a whole kilogram. So I decided to double the lemon amount from what it said on the sugar package. (Also, we've been having a lot of noodle soups imitating Thai cuisine lately...) Because of that and the fact I only used fariini sugar my version tastes a bit stronger than most simas. If you'd rather have it light you can replace half of the fariini with white sugar and use only 1-2 lemons.

- 4 l water
- 4 lemons
- 1 pea-size piece of fresh yeast
- 2 dl raisins
- 500 g fariini sugar (A byproduct of sugar making, highly aromatic and moist, not as sweet as pure sugar. I haven't found any English name for the stuff. However, I've been told dark muscovado and molasses share a similar taste but I can't guarantee this is the right amount for them.)

Wash, then slice (or smooth down) the lemons. Bring half of the water to a boil. Pour into a a fermentation vessel. Dissolve the sugar in it (save about two tablespoonfuls), then throw in the lemon slices and the rest of the water as well. When the water has cooled down to the room temperature you can add the yeast. Seal the lid air tight but don't forget the fermentation lock.

Next day, wash and sterilize (for example with boiling water) some empty glass bottles. Portion the remaining sugar and the raisins into the bottles. Remove the lemons and bottle the mead. Seal the bottles. The sima is ready to drink when the raisins have started floating. (This normally takes 2-3 days.)

Enjoy chilled with donuts or wieners while listening to left-wing political speeches and wearing a silly hat.

Nutritional values / 4 l:
energy 2240 kcal
fat 4 g
protein 5 g
carbohydrates 529 g
fiber 14 g

Spring Welcoming Drink ‒ Kevääntoivotusjuoma

My spouse is usually the smoothie expert in our family but this time I thought I'd try something as well. With this quick and festal drink I'm taking part in this month's food challenge. It's perfect non-alcoholic but if you wish, the sea buckthorn should cover up the taste of bad spirits quite easily.

- 2 pears (I used canned)
- 1 dl sea buckthorn berries
- 3 dl birch sap (or sparkling water if sap is not available)
- 1 tablespoon spruce syrup

Chill down the ingredients. Blend smooth. Chill down yourself and enjoy while admiring the awakening nature.

Nutritional values / 723 g:
energy 229 kcal
fat 3 g
protein 1 g
carbohydrates 45 g
fiber 12 g

The Weirdest Glögis

A punch of friends invited themselves at my place to throw one more pikkujoulu party. We listened to the greatest Christmas songs (like this or this) and tried the weirdest glögi ideas we could find. These are starting to get pretty far from any definition of glögi but what matters most, all turned out surprisingly delicious. Exceptionally, I'll write just one long post about them.

Carrot Glögi ‒ Porkkanaglögi

This one sounded like the most awful one so we started with it. But the drink came out quite yummy and didn't taste healthy at all.

- 1 l carrot juice
- half a lemon
- 1 tablespoon cloves
- 2 dl vodka (the bottle in the photo actually isn't vodka)

Wash and grind the lemon half (don't peel). Put the lemon and the cloves into a kettle together with the juice and let it simmer for a moment. Filter out the bits and pieces. Pour into mugs. Finalize with vodka.

Beer Glögi ‒ Olutglögi

I bought three bottles of Sinebrychoff's excellent porter for this and felt so bad in advance for having to ruin it. But no, this came out good as well though there was a bit too much ginger in relation to cinnamon.

- 1 l porter
- 2 dl water
- 1 piece of fresh ginger
- 5 cinnamon sticks

Peel the ginger piece. Let the ginger and the cinnamon sticks simmer in the water until you've caught their taste. Combine the liquid part with the beer and warm it up. Be careful not to boil the beer since it turns bitter quite easily. Beer glögi is best enjoyed while still hot.

Snowball Glögi ‒ Lumipalloglögi

The last one was the winner. There are quite many flavours in this drink but they all seemed to stand out. Sadly, the snowball itself melted all too fast.

- 1 l soy milk
- 2 dl water
- half vanilla pod
- green tea (I used a variety spiced with fruit pieces)
- spruce syrup
- 2 dl whipped oat cream
- cinnamon
(- brandy to taste)

Let the vanilla and the tea simmer in the water. Add the syrup and the milk and warm up the whole thing. Filter into mugs. Pour in some brandy if you wish. Let your guests crown the drink with a cream snowball and cinnamon.

Cranberry Glögi with Chili ‒ Chilinen karpaloglögi

Remember when I said there are probably hundreds of glögi variants? Well, now I have this urge to try if not hundreds then at least a dozen of them. Cranberry version is still quite a standard one so I also experimented with the spices.

For once, I admit I may have exaggerated with chili ‒ maybe that challenge I talked about in the last post was still haunting in my mind. It covered most of the other flavours and started to hurt my stomach. (A note to self: remember you shouldn't use chili nearly as much for liquids as you would for the same amount of solid food.) Otherwise however, this seemed to work rather well. The structure came out surprisingly thick so if you prefer your glögi transparent use less berries.

- 200 g frozen cranberries
- 0.5 dl spruce syrup
- 1 dl water
- 1 dl dried cranberries
- dried chili
- aniseed
- cardamom

Cook the cranberries in the water so long they get mashed. Filter out most of the pieces (and use on your breakfast porridge in the next morning). Add the syrup and the spices. Let the glögi simmer for about ten minutes. Pour in the serving glasses and give the final touch with a few dry berries.

Nutritional values / 1 l:
energy 264 g
fat 1 g
protein 1 g
carbohydrates 64 g
fiber 1 g

Glögi

Glögi is a hot drink known all around Scandinavia. Today it's mostly associated to this dark time preceding Joulu. The spices used in it sound rather exotic since the present form originates from the homes of Swedish-speaking upper class that the rest of Finland of course started to copycat as soon as they could afford it. According to Finnish Wikipedia, glögi's predecessors were spiced spirits which were used to warm up mailmen traveling long distances during winter.

Glögi is often confused with mulled wines, especially German Glühwein, but my Germany experts assure me they taste quite different. Glögi is sometimes made of red wine instead of red juice but that's so much rarer that it's usually called wine glögi in those cases. (One reason for this may be the way how alcohol is still considered a big no-no in Finnish culture, something you have to drink in secret in order not to appear a drunkard and definitely not in the town square with your children.) The spices are pretty much the same as in gingerbread (I'll try to post the recipe next month). Glühwein on the other hand is always prepared from wine like the name says, and this may also mean fruit wine made of blueberries or cherries for example. It's typically spiced with cinnamon, vanilla, cloves and most notably, orange.

There are probably hundreds of glögi variants, the best known being white glögi. The spices are the same but it's made of apple juice or white wine.

- 7 dl water
- 1 dl black currant juice (unsweetened and unwatered)
- 0.5 dl dark sugar
- cinnamon
- cloves
- ginger
- 2 dl vodka (or brandy)
- 0.5 dl raisins
- 0.5 dl almond slices

Heat up the water together with the spices. Let them simmer for about ten minutes. Filter out the spices. Add the juice and the vodka. Portion in cups. Finalize by throwing in some raisins and almond slices or let your guests help themselves. Enjoy the hot cup between your frozen fingers.

Nutritional values / 1 l:
energy 962 kcal
fat 19 g
protein 10 g
carbohydrates 70 g
fiber 9 g

Bilberry Milk ‒ Mustikkamaito

Hello again! It's been a while since I've last cooked anything. This is a truly amazing time for that. Forests are full of berries and mushrooms only waiting for someone to pick them. Domestic vegetables are at their best and cheapest. Also, the weather is slowly starting to get chillier so I can concentrate on gaining more body fat under my thickest sweater to hibernate through winter.

While the bilberry season is still on however, I thought I'd restart blogging with a very simple yet very tasty drink. This is something that kids love since they can do it themselves all the way from picking the berries into a jug.

- 1 glass of bilberries (strawberries are another classic)
- about 1/2 glass of soy milk
- sugar to taste

Squash the bilberries into their glass. Sprinkle some sugar on them and then fill the glass with milk. Stir just a little so that the milk turns blue.

Nutritional values / 3 dl glass:
energy 99 kcal
fat 2 g
protein 4 g
carbohydrates 15 g
fiber 5 g

Sahti

If you don't know sahti, you don't know beers. This primordial Finnish top-fermented beer is among the oldest still brewed beer types in the world. If there hadn't been a prohibition law in Finland from 1919 to 1932 it would also be the longest brewed beer type for sale ‒ officially. That crown now belongs to another fine beer, Belgian lambic, which also happens to have the probably closest resemblance of sahti.

Sahti's taste is soft, sweet and thick, often described as banana-like. Instead of hops it's flavoured with juniper. It doesn't bubble much and stores only a month at most the fridge. The old poems describe mash bushel being lifted on the roof for the thunder (=ukkonen) god Ukko water it and then fermented with the drool of a horny boar. And as you probably understand from this description sahti has a special place in certain pagan feasts.

At the moment I'm making my very first round of sahti for the most important holiday of the year, midsummer, the nightless day. This feast originally known as Vakkajuhla (= bushel feast) used to be celebrated with a big punch of friends by a lake to ask Ukko send rain for the harvest to grow. Christian invaders turned pretty much all the Finnish feasts to have Christian meanings but the only thing they managed to change in this one was its name: it's nowadays known as Juhannus which refers to John the Baptist. It still involves gatherings by lakes, drinking and eating, bonfires and fertility rites. I'll update this post after I've seen how my sahti turns out but I thought I'd post this plan already in the hope of inspiring the rest of you to try as well.

To be a purist you should keep in mind that:
1. Sahti doesn't contain hops. Instead it's usually flavoured with juniper (though I've heard some other herbs like heather or wild rosemary have been used as well).
2. Sahti is always made of barley malts. Some people also use rye or caramel malts but only small amounts for flavouring.
3. Don't use added sugar. All the sugar should come from the malts and sahti isn't supposed to sparkle either. You won't need sugar even in the bottling stage since it can't be stored long anyways. Besides, well cooked wort should already produce 10-11 % beer which in most beer types is more than enough to make it taste like alcohol and thus ruin its own taste.
4. Never let the mash temperature rise over 70°C or you'll get porridge. The wort shouldn't be cooked at all, only quickly sterilized at most.
5. The most common yeast used today is common baking yeast, not normal ale yeast. This gives sahti a distinct flavour. (Of course in the old times people just saved some yeast from every round for the next one. I wouldn't want to annoy an angry boar.)
6. Approximately, 1 kg of malts makes about 2 l of sahti. Yes, it's thick.
7. Sahti is served unfiltered. Actually the leftover yeast helps it last better.
8. Three most important things to remember are cleanliness, cleanliness and cleanliness. Sterilize all the tools you use, including your hands.

Of course, rules only exists to be broken. But if you do make exceptions to please your own taste then please don't call your beer sahti. You may feel it doesn't change that much if you use hops but names used very broadly cease to really mean anything. Here's what I did:

- 3 l sahti malts
- 3 dl rye malts
- 20 g juniper berries
- 7 l water
- 50 g baking yeast

Sterilize all your equipments. Put 3 l of water in a big pot and let it come to a boil. Add the malts. Keep stirring until you've got a porridge. Heat up until the temperature has reached 70°C and make sure it doesn't rise further. Simmer for an hour. Crush the juniper berries and throw them in. Simmer another three hours. Taste to make sure it's sweet enough. It's also desirable to measure the gravity at this point so it'll be easier to trace what went wrong.

Filter and pour into an air tight fermentation vessel (with airlock). Boil the rest of the water and pour in. When the temperature has dropped to about 20°C add the yeast, dissolved in a mug of lukewarm water. Let your sahti-to-be ferment in room temperature as long as it wants to. This should take about 3-5 days. Check the gravity again and bottle your sahti and store in cold for a week. Apparently, the bigger the barrel the longer the taste lasts. Don't leave room for oxygen. If you see a foam your sahti hasn't finished yet and shouldn't be drunk (unless you want stains in your underpants).

Ask your friends over to drink your sahti fresh! Here's a suggested drinking song as well.

Rhubarb Sima ‒ Raparperisima

It may be a bit too late for this recipe but at least it's now here for the next May Day. Besides, I imagine this would taste great in the summer when rhubarbs actually grow here. And I've heard that garden angelica also makes a good mead.

Different varieties of mead are probably known everywhere in the world. A part of Finnish May Day celebration is nowadays a sweet but zesty mead called sima (usually very mild in alcohol for the reasons I've ranted about before). In the 18th century it was only enjoyed by wealthy people but when the ingredients grew more wildly available it became an appropriate symbol for May Day that has a strong working class echo in Finland. Sima is usually sweetened with muscovado (fariinisokeri) and bittered with lemon but since I don't find lemon an especially typical Finnish fruit I thought I'd try a recipe I found from Härkäpapua sarvista (Irina Somersalo & al., Multikustannus 2007). I scaled down the amounts and it still seemed to work so here you go!

- 1 rhubarb stalk
- 1.5 l water
- 1.5 dl muscovado (or a combination of normal sugar and dark syrup)
- ginger
- a yeast crumble

Chop the rhubarb in small pieces. Put it in a jug together with muscovado and ginger. Boil the water and pour it on them. Stir. When the water has cooled down a bit add the yeast. (Do yourself a favour and don't exaggerate with the yeast. More yeast won't bring more alcohol, more sugar does.) Let the jug stand in a warm place for the next day.

Filter the sima and bottle it. Add a teaspoon of sugar to every bottle to get sparkling sima. Loosen up the tops a bit every day so the bottles won't break. The sima should be ready in about 3-5 days. A common trick is to put some raisins in the bottle so when they float, you know the sima is ready.

Nutritional values / 1.5 litres (counted from the ingredients):
energy 510 kcal
fat 0 g
protein 1 g
carbohydrates 124 g
fiber 2 g

Mämmi Drink ‒ Mämmijuoma

I hope you understood to hoard lots of mämmi when it was at its cheapest right after Easter cause I'm planning to post my experiments on ways to use it. If you didn't, here's a recipe.

This is a slightly tuned version of Mämmijuoma in a cook book called Härkäpapua Sarvista (Irina Somersalo & al., Multikustannus 2007). This is anything but light but it does work as a great recovery drink after sports because of the high amoount of carbohydrates.

- 2 dl mämmi
- 5 dl cold oat milk
- 2 dl frozen bilberries (or fresh bilberries plus additional ice crush)
- 2 tbsp Vana Tallinn (An Estonian liqueur with a distinctive taste. If you can't find any, try cloudberry liqueur or coffee liqueur instead.)

Blend everything smooth. Decorate with bilberries. Enjoy with sunshine.

Nutritional values / 1 serving: (Without the Vana Tallinn)
energy 531 kcal
fat 7 g
protein 11 g
carbohydrates 104 g
fiber 20 g

Good Morning Smoothie ‒ Hyvän aamun pirtelö

I'm not really sure if it's right to call this a recipe cause it's so simple anyone can make it up. Still, I thought I'd share with you one of my favourite treats from my teens.

I call it good morning smoothie since if I was the morning person I dream to be this would be my ideal breakfast after jogging. Actually I'm not so I rather enjoy this in the evening under a blanket with the company of a good book.

Must have:
- 200 g frozen berries (in my case typically a mix of black currant, strawberries and raspberries but bilberries are great too)
- 1 blender

Optional additions:
- 200 g silken tofu (If you use tofu but not milk this actually becomes more of a silken sorbet.)
- 1 dl soy yogurt or oat milk
- 2 tbsp hemp seeds or almonds
- 0.5 dl soy flour
- 0.5 oat meals
- 1 fruit, for example a banana or a kiwi
- 1 tsp vanilla sugar

If you're using hemp seeds or almonds blend them first with a small amount of water. Then pour everything else in too and blend until mostly smooth. Enjoy right away.