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

Viili

The most discussed cook book over the last few years has most certainly been Natural Harvest - quite an interesting phenomena to anyone even slightly interested in cultural taboos. Semen and this viili I just made have at least two things in common. The oblivious one is the way they look. The second one is that strictly speaking, neither one is a vegan ingredient. But as I found out, viili could be.

Viili is a fermented milk product popular around Scandinavia and probably my personal favourite. Compared to yogurt it's rather sour and has a structure much more ropy (here's a demonstration). It can be eaten as such or with jam, talkkuna or ryecrisp pieces. I've never seen it sold vegan but it turned out just as easy to prepare with vegetable milks as it is with cow milk. Micro organisms usually aren't too picky.

You need couple of spoonfuls from an older viili batch to get the bacteria. This is most easily done by buying a jar of non-vegan viili, unless you have a chance to come and get some straight from me. Then you just need to fill the cup with milk, mix it a bit and leave uncovered on some warm place overnight. Next day you can refrigerate the cup. It takes a few more days for the taste to evolve right. Check now and then to find your preferred intensity.

The front cup in the photo with the velvety fungus surface is made out of soy milk. I used a sweetened brand but the basic taste was quickly run over by the characteristic taste of viili. The oat version didn't look as adorable but I actually preferred its taste. Oat milk is usually much thinner, forms some watery spots and takes longer to mature so I used a dollop of oat cream in it as well. The result can be seen in the background.

Yogurt ‒ Jukurtti

Soy yogurt is sold in every food store I use. It's a nicely multifunctional thing in cooking but sometimes you want some extra flavour. Luckily, making different yogurt varieties yourself couldn't get any easier.

All you need is some nuts, oatmeal or seeds. First soak them overnight and in the case of nuts and seeds, drain and rinse. You can even sprout the seeds a little. Then you just have to purée the ingredients with some water. (The idea is basically to get unfiltered vegetable milk or cream so it's more complicated process when making soy yogurt. Like this.) Pour the cream into a non-metal container and let it go sour on the kitchen table for couple of days (taste every now and then to decide the best length for you) and refrigerate if you're not using it right away. Don't bother to cover the bowl or glass unless you have pets or an insect problem. Just check there's enough water for the yogurt to swallow. Some people like to add some of their own bacteria starters (usually the remains of the previous yogurt) before the fermenting to get more health benefits or speed up the process.

I thought I'd compare different sorts of yogurts a bit which is why there are as many as four of them in the photo. The ingredients from left to right are rye flakes, oatmeal and sprouted buckwheat, pine nuts and finally hazel nuts. The structure depends on the initial amount of water but generally nuts make creamier yogurts than flakes since they contain more fat. For the same reason, you can clearly see how water separates from the nut cream during the process. Think the oat version has the most pleasing sourness of these. On the other hand, the hazel version has the most recognizable original flavour left.

Besides sauces and other cooking, these yogurts can of course be eaten on their own or crowned with berries and talkkuna.

Sauerkraut ‒ Hapankaali

Last Sunday I got to see a Unesco world heritage site called Sammallahdenmäki. It's a Bronze age burial site that was used for a thousand years. Nowadays it's a beautiful granite hill covered by colourful lichen species and a few dwarfy pines but in the beginning of the construction it must have looked completely different. The place used to lie on a seashore and the climate was subboreal, meaning the temperatures were much like those that Central Europe now enjoys. Pine hadn't arrived yet and nut trees were fairly common. Weirdly, we know more about the religious views and language of those people than such tangible things like what they ate. Judging from what was available it might have been much closer to what dietitians recommend than a typical nutrition of today, at least during the good years.

One food preparation method that was very likely used intensively was fermenting. And as a food enthusiast I of course want to learn how to do that myself. After all, fermented dishes are still something that everybody should eat on a daily basis and the commercially produced ones tend to be spoiled by pasteurizing. The classic to start with is naturally sauerkraut.

This doesn't really require a recipe but I'm going to tell you how I made it anyway. There are varying instructions out there and my chemistry knowledge is scarce so I can't really tell which ones are based on actual evidence and which are more like folklore. That's why I try to explain just the guidelines and leave the experimenting for you.

(That miserable greyness in the photo is by the way the view from my kitchen window at noon. That's the brightest it gets right before winter solstice.)

- 1 cabbage head
- 2 carrots (or other veggies)
- 1 tablespoon caraway (or other spices)
- 1 tablespoon salt

Grind or shred the cabbage and the carrots. Add the caraway and the salt. When the cabbage starts to sweat (because of the salt) start beating it with any mallet or jar available. The idea is to get so much juice out it covers the cabbage. If the cabbage has already seen it's best days it may be so dry that this never happens. In that case dissolve some salt into boiling water, cool down and pour over the cabbage.

Put the cabbage with its juices into a clean and airtight vessel (I just use glass jars with a weight on top). Press the cabbage below the juice level so it won't touch the air and rotten instead of lacto-fermenting anaerobically. Let your forthcoming sauerkraut sit in room temperature from 3 days to 6 weeks depending on how strong you want it to be. The reason for moving it into a colder storage place after couple of days in some recipes is to slow down the process. Notice the vessel will flood over unless there's a lot of empty space left. Sometimes mold appears on top but this isn't dangerous ‒ just peel it off.

When sauerkraut has stopped bubbling it should taste pleasantly tart. Don't eat if it has turned soft. The taste matures for about six months if stored well in cool temperature (like fridge). If you think it tastes too sore rinse with cold water before eating. Sauerkraut can be used as a salad, in green smoothies or even in hot dishes (though heating of course destroys the largest health benefits). It's a good habit to always add a spoonful on your dinner.

Nutritional values / 1730 g (counted from the ingredients, also see Fineli):
energy 534 kcal
fat 3 g
protein 19 g
carbohydrates 102 g
fiber 37 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

Kalja

Kalja or kotikalja or vaarinkalja is a typical Finnish table beer you see in any canteen or formal feast. It's dark and often sweet but low in alcohol which is why the bizarre Finnish alcohol laws or strict attitude towards alcohol drinks don't apply to it. (I often hear people say we've got a liberal attitude towards alcohol. That's simply not true. Even a glass of wine is generally considered as getting pissed.) My mum always has some in the fridge. As a kid I used to drop sugar cubes in my glass just to see kalja foam.

I have a 1.5 litre jug where I wanted to make kalja but could only find recipes for big portions. So I compared a few of them and adapted a smallish version myself. It worked well so I'll post it for you too.

- 1.5 l water
- 1 dl rye malt
- 3/4 dl sugar
- 1/4 tsp yeast

Boil the water for about ten minutes and pour it on the malt and sugar. Let it cool down for couple of hours and then add the yeast crumb. Place in a warm place for a day. Filter the liquid and move it in a cool place. This is at its best after couple of days.

Like another Finnish beer sahti, kalja too would ideally be spiced with juniper berries. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any lately.

Sour Rye Loaf in a Tavastian Manner ‒ Hapan ruisleipä hämäläiseen tapaan

My very first rye bread is here! Oh my, is it delicious.

Here in Western Finland bread was baked only once or twice a year and then dried in the rafter of the house. That's the origin of those famous round breads with a hole in the middle. This kind of soft loaf or limppu was only eaten as a festive meal.

I've seen this same recipe in several forums (here, here and here for example) but none of the posters seem to mention any earlier source. Well, here it comes anyways.

The sponge (or raski):

- 300 - 500 g levain (about a fist sized glop)
- 1 l lukewarm water
- 0.6 kg rye flour

Mix the ingredients loosely. Let it leaven at least half a day. You know the bouillie is sour enough if it bubbles.

The dough:

- The sponge
- 2 tbsp salt dissolved in 0.5 l lukewarm water
- 1.2 - 1.4 kg rye flour

Mix the ingredients and knead the dough well. Cover with a towel and let it rise for at least half a day.

Save a piece of the dough for the next time you bake. If that's not going to be anytime soon, put it in the freezer so your small friends won't die. Form four loaves and put them on an oven shelf. (I only made two big ones. That wasn't too wise. They nearly climbed out from the shelf.) Let them rise a couple of hours under a towel and then stick holes in them with a fork. Bake first in 225°C for half an hour and then an hour in 175°C. Cover the warm loaves with a towel.

Unless you have a big crowd eating these you better freeze three of the four loaves to prevent them from hardening. A bred kept in a fridge quickly turns stale.

I find these already have a nice malty flavour, but next time I might try what happens if I add malts as well as some berries. Or a hint of dark syrup and caraway which by a rule of thumb always fit together with rye.

Nutritional values / one bread / 875 g:
energy 1525 kcal
fat 10 g
protein 48.5 g
carbohydrates 305 g
fiber 75 g

Levain ‒ Hapanjuuri

Since I decided to make more of my own breads, the next logical step was to start my own sourdough. After all, 50 g piece of baker's yeast costs as much as 20 cents. Many people also find levain bread friendlier to their stomachs than more aggressive commercial yeast.

There's a strong consensus saying nothing's more Finnish than rye bread. However, it didn't become widespread before the middle ages, when Finns learned the leavening from Germans. Rye bread of today is always sour, since it doesn't digest all too well without the process. Also, it wasn't until the 18th or 19th century before rye gained barley in the popularity contest.

Actually I find it odd that rye bread is basically only known in Scandinavia, Russia and Baltia, even in our global era when new healthy groceries are ceaselessly seeked for. Every time I make a visit elsewhere in Europe and have to eat those white buns they call bread, I start to feel ill. I mean it's OK to enjoy one occasionally with a nice cup of coffee but how can anyone live with something that has no nutrients or fiber?

Today the levains are kept as family or bakery jewels from generation to generation and each of them make bread of a distinct taste. I have no idea what constitutes the best possible levain if you start it out fresh, so I just relied on a recipe from my favourite cook book, but replaced the cow milk. I wasn't sure if that was going to work, since the idea is to grow both lactobacilli and wild yeasts, but it did start to bubble in couple of days. Then I read more about the organisms for example from here and here and added a couple of more ingredients in the hope they would also produce some interesting life forms. I'll document here how I made it, but I recommend you to read about the process yourself, compare different recipes and try forming one out yourself.

- 1 l rye flour
- 1/2 l water
- 2 tbsp probiotic oat or soy yogurt
- piece of your favourite organic yeastless rye bread
(Only the first two are truly essential.)

Boil the water for about ten minutes. Let it cool down to lukewarm. Tear the bread in pieces and dissolve them in the water. Mix in the yogurt and finally the flours. Cover with a towel and leave it in a warm room. (Wonder how Englishmen do this part?) Feed the levain with 1 dl flour a day for about a week. In this time it should start to develop air and smell sour. Freeze the parts you won't need immediately or keep feeding it. In the future, every time you make a dough, put a fist sized piece aside. Apparently the taste of the bread you leaven with this is just plain sour at first, but it should get more distinctive the more you use it.

I'll be reporting more about how I succeeded with this. If I'm happy with it I may really get really carried away and start experimenting with other kitchen pets as well.