Aronia and Rye Foam ‒ Aronia-ruisvaahto

Oh crap,  seems I've caught myself a cold. Not exactly the thing I'd need at the end of pregnancy, which already itself makes me feel tired. I wouldn't want to use medication either unless it's necessary. Just hope this goes away before the actual labour takes place. And I'll try to eat a lot of berries to tank up with vitamin C and antioxidants. You know that annoying word "superfood"? It gets flashed around a lot when talking about aronia.

Flipping throgh a book about regional Finnish dishes I realized you can make vispipuuro or lingonberry foam with rye flour too. Another recipe I found used bilberries which always pair nicely with rye. I thought I'd try aronia instead. Just like rose, it's a very common decoration bush, but the big, yielding berries rarely get used. People don't seem to realize they're edible, though they make excellent juices, wines and jellies. Perhaps because the taste is so much on the sour side they're not really a nice thing to eat straight from the bush.

The consistency isn't quite as fluffy as in the semolina version, but still surprisingly so. If you want to add the effect, you can whip some vanilla foam into the result too. The ingredient proportions in different versions seem to vary quite a lot, so feel free to experiment with them as well.

- 3 dl water
- 3 dl aronia berries
- 1.5 dl rye flour
- 1 dl sugar

Bring the water to a boil. Add the sugar and the berries. Let simmer until the sugar has dissolved. Whisk in the flour as well. Remove from heat and start to beat with an electric mixer. Continue at least 15 minutes for a fluffy structure.

Nutritional values / 670 g:

energy 745 kcal
fat 3 g
protein 13 g
carbohydrates 166 g
fiber 25 g

Pearl Gruel ‒ Helmiryynivelli

Free school lunches have shaped Finnish food culture since 1948. It tends to give whole generations equal experiences and helps especially the lifes of the poorest families. The cooks actually spend a lot of time planning the menus so for many kids this is the healthiest and most nutritionally sound meal they'll eat all day ‒ something that isn't always as self-evident as you'd like to think.

Every generation also seems to have strong favourites and anti favourites.School food is generally criticised as lacking of taste, in the same way as say, hospital food, but the environment of hurry and lack of aesthetics also gathers critique. Sometimes I've thought you could put together an interesting cook book just by collecting together most hated school foods from different times. I grew up during the depression of the 90's in the Finnish version of Bible Belt, Ostrobothnia, and was one of the only three vegetarian students, so I still have a hard time eating square-shaped dry bread, grated root vegetables or raw cabbage ‒ what an excellent salad projet for the next winter. (Then again, I loved pea soup and spinach pancakes.)

For the generation of my parents, pearl porridge and pearl soup were definitely among the most hard-to-swallow items. And can't blame them, I mean gosh, those things are slimy. They're just potato starch pressed together, something I imagine didn't exist before second world war.

I, on the other hand, came to like pearl soup since it was something my grandmom used to make. Come to think of it, it doesn't actually differ much from the macaroni soup my dad made, so if you have a hard time finding "pearls", try macaronis instead. It might prove difficult since I haven't heard they would be used anywhere else in the world (although this might help). This version gets a bit more taste from fennel seeds and that medieval treat, almond milk, which is usually sold lightly sweetened so I omitted sugar altogether though in my records this is definitely a dish on the more sweet side.

- 1 l almond milk (you can choose any milk you like, I just thought this would give a nice aroma)
- 1.5 dl potato starch pearls
- 1 tbsp fennel seeds
- 1 tbsp margarine
- salt
- sugar to serve

Heat up the milk. (Don't leave it alone as it might come out from the pot if it misses you.) When you start to see bubbles appearing, add the pearls and the fennel seeds. Let them cook for about 8 minutes. Add a pinch of salt and if you wish, a spoonful of margarine. Let the eaters decide if they want to sprinkle sugar on top.

Nutritional values / 1090 g:
energy 611 kcal
fat 22 g
protein 5 g
carbohydrates 306 g
fiber 16 g

Raw Buckwheat Porridge ‒ Raaka tattaripuuro

A typical Finnish breakfast to date is still porridge. According to this survey, that's what 40% of Finns eat, while 11% uses cereals. I've always been more on the bread league myself, but sometimes it's nice to get variation.

Raw porridge as an idea sounded like something only a very dedicated hippie would eat but once I managed to ovecome my prejudices this turned out quite yummy indeed. You could use any other grain you wish here, besides buckwheat at least millet, barley and oatmeal seem popular. If you add some dried fruits and berries it becomes surprisingly sweet as well.

- 2 dl barley
- dried berries and/or fruits, rosehips in this case
- nuts and/or seeds, sunflower seeds in this case
- enough water to cover it all

In the evening, put everything in a bowl to soak for the night and cover up with water. In the morning, blend smooth. Serve with berries or jam. (The ones you see in the picture are gooseberries, by the way.)

Nutritional values / 1152 g:
energy 2503 kcal
fat 124 g
protein 68 g
carbohydrates 276 g
fiber 89 g

Lingonberry Foam ‒ Vispipuuro

One of my mom's bravuras is vispipuuro, literally "whipped porridge". It's one of those traditional dishes which are sold in every basic supermarket but of course something that's been standing in a plastic jar for a month can never have that fluffy structure it's supposed to so recently I thought I'd try to make it myself for the first time. Turned out much simpler than I had thought. And oh my, it felt like I had little crispy clouds in my mouth.

I took the basic amounts from the recipe of Kamomillan konditoria since it used more lingonberries and less sugar than most. (Actually, I could do with even less sugar.) This basic recipe is easy to pimp to any occasion, for example with glögi spices.

- 5 dl lingonberries (currants are also sometimes used)
- 1 l vettä
- 1,5 dl semolina (white kind of course makes the structure even fluffier but I couldn't find anything to complain about the dark semolina I used)
- 1 dl sugar
- 0.5 teaspoon salt

Let the berries simmer in the water as long as they become mashed or take a shortcut by mashing them with a blender. Some people like to filter out the skins in which case I think it would be easier to use juice instead of whole berries. Add the semolina and let the porridge simmer for about ten minutes. Keep stirring from time to time. Add the sugar and the salt.

Now you have to keep patient. Let the porridge cool down. Here in the north, this time of the year, this is done rather quickly by forgetting the kettle outside for a moment. When it's chilled down (and hopefully not frozen) you can start whipping. The porridge should turn light pink in colour and the volume should approximately double itself.

Scoop the pink cloud into serving bowls. If you wish, add some sugar and oat cream on top.

Nutritional values / 1505 g:
energy 828 kcal
fat 4 g
protein 16 g
carbohydrates 181 g
fiber 15 g

Tokero

Talkkuna (or kama in Estonian) means a finely milled mixture of roasted grains or pea flour. The combination varies a lot according to the province, as well as the right way to eat it. Today it's mostly used in desserts but a hundred years ago it was combined practically with anything to form a quick snack. In Tavastia talkkuna was normally mixed with sour milk products but in South Ostrobothnia it was coped together with berries and in Savo it was used with pork lard. My home town even has a street named Tokerotie since during the building in the great hunger years the workers got talkkuna porridge for salary.

Talkkuna's taste is hard to describe. As a kid I hated it, now I've come to love the bizarre combination of chocolaty and malty flavours. I've often envied the way today's Estonian kitchen seems to use talkkuna much more creatively than Finns do. Even though our test group recently decided that an Estonian chocolate bar spiced with kama tasted like old stockings, I did notice that kama and coffee used in that bar might actually make a great combination. So here's a coffee-spiked simple talkkuna snack or dessert.

- 1 dl talkkuna
- 1 dl coffee (or to be a purist, water or oat milk)
- black currants
- raspberries
(- sugar)

Mix the talkkuna and the coffee. Top with berries. Sprinkle sugar on top if you wish.

Nutritional values / 200 g (without sugar):
energy 192 kcal
fat 2 g
protein 5 g
carbohydrates 36 g
fiber 7 g