The Bread & Soup Project #61 - Finland

In which we take a kitchen trip back to Scandinavia for our next entry in this global venture.

Ahh, the Finnish flag. Blue for its documented 187,888 lakes(!), plus over 15,000 miles of rivers, white for the snow covered lands. And, the Nordic Cross, a reminder of the four Scandinavian countries’ more or less joint conversion to Christianity in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. But the cross on all four is rotated 90⁰, no? There is some historical evidence that the flags of the four countries were originally displayed “portrait” rather than “landscape”, until much later when global convention intervened and the flags were rotated.

But let’s get to Finland itself. Bordered by Sweden, Norway, and Russia, it is roughly the size of New Mexico, around 10% of which is covered with those previously mentioned lakes and rivers. The population is a bit over double that of New Mexico, though that still doesn’t make it very densely populated, coming in at about 5-1/2 million people. Almost 90% of them are ethnic Finns, another 6% Swedes. Roughly two-thirds are Christian, virtually all Lutheran, the remaining third, for the most part, have either declared themselves not affiliated, or declined to answer, with less than 1% actually declaring a different religion.

In the gastronomic arena, potatoes, meat, and fish play the dominant role. Whole grains, particularly oats, rye, and barley are the most used in breadstuffs. Dairy is used in a lot of dishes, with Finnish consumption of milk being one of the highest in the world. Finns also love their coffee, and have the second highest per capita consumption of any country (Netherlands comes first, Sweden and Norway come third and fourth, followed by Canada in fifth - correlation to cold, icy places perhaps?).

On to this entry in the Bread & Soup Project. For our bread (for those new to this, I originally started out with this as an empanada, or other filled breads, stance, though that’s changed over time), it came down to two - Lörtsy or Lihapiirakka (literally “meat pie”). The former is a thin, half moon pastry from Eastern Finland that can be filled with a thin layer of either a savory meat filling or sweet jam. The later is more national, it seems, and contains a meat and rice filling. Now, bizarrely, as I look at it, officially these are supposed to be deep-fried, but all half-dozen recipes I looked at to finally make these, were baked. I now feel like either I cheated, or was cheated.

On the soup front, three options presented themselves - Mykyrokka (“rock dumpling"), Kesäkeitto (“summer soup”), and Lohikeitto (“salmon soup”). The first is a blood dumpling soup, which sounded intriguing and different, but I also knew it would mean I’d be the only one eating it. The third is a salmon based soup, and as my other half hates salmon…. So, I went with the national spring vegetable soup, which is perfect for the timing of us going into spring here anyway. Plus, it sounded delicious.

The dough for our Lihapiirakka is a yeasted, rather sweet dough. We have about 2-1/4 cups of all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup of sugar, instant yeast, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, an egg, about 7/8 cup of warm milk, and 1/4 cup of butter (to be melted).

Mix the yeast with the warm milk, let it sit for about 10-15 minutes until bubbly. Then add the rest of the ingredients (almost… lightly beat the egg, and only blend in half of it to the dough - reserve the other half to eggwash the outsides - this is what happens when you make half of the full recipe) together to form a dough. Melting the butter gives a very different texture to the dough than “cutting it in”, which is what you’d normally do to make a flakier style crust. Clearly that’s not the sort we’re going for. Leave the dough in a warm place to rise for about 45 minutes until more or less doubled.

A pound of ground beef, a quarter of a medium onion, 1/4 cup of pre-cooked rice, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/4 teaspoon each of black pepper and caraway seeds, and a handful of parsley (chop).

Brown the meat and onions in a little bit of oil.

Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Set aside to cool.

Divide the dough in six equal parts and roll out to about 5-6” rounds. These will be thicker than, say, empanada or tortilla dough, about 1/4”. Divide the filling between them. Slightly wet the dough slightly around half the rim to help seal these, fold them over and seal well.

Place on a baking sheet, preferably with a non-stick mat, and brush with the reserved beaten egg. Chill for about 15 minutes to firm up the dough a bit.

And, bake in a medium hot oven for about 20 minutes until golden brown.

On to our soup….

For our Kesäkeitto, the vegetables are left up to whomever is cooking it. Basically the various recipes give suggestions but sort of come down to “whatever is fresh in the market”. Here we have cauliflower, potatoes, carrots, radishes, peapods, and spinach. We also have just shy of a cup of milk, plus about 1-1/2 liters of water, 2 tablespoons of sugar (they seem to like things sweet), 1 tablespoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of butter, and 3 tablespoons of flour.

Start with the “hard vegetables”. Slice, cube, quarter, whatever suits your fancy, and put in the pot with the water, sugar, and salt. Bring to a simmer and cook for about five minutes.

Add the potatoes and cook another five. I was sort of doing this on the fly, just adding things to the pot as I finished cutting them up.

Add the peapods (remove the strings), and the spinach (remove the stems and tear into smaller pieces). Continue cooking another ten minutes.

Warm the milk and melt the butter. Whisk together with the flour. Pour into the bubbling soup and stir rapidly so it doesn’t form clumps.

Cook for just long enough to bring the soup back to a bubble, and a minute more to cook out the raw taste of the flour and thicken the soup. This gets very thick, very fast, almost like a porridge.

Now, these two probably aren’t often served together. The Lihapiirakka seems very much like a hearty snack in cold weather, and is generally served with a side of pickles of one or another sort. The Kesäkeitto, while rich and thick, is considered a spring/summer dish. Then again, I don’t know what springs and summers are like in Finland - you might need that to warm up for all I know.

We enjoyed both. The soup has a surprisingly complex flavor coming from the essences of the vegetables, given that there’s no seasoning other than sugar and salt, and that’s so simple to prepare. We did find both it, and the dough for the meat pies, a bit sweeter than we’d normally like, but still delicious. If we were to make them again, I’d cut back on both sugar and flour in the soup - less sweet and not quite as thickened. The caraway gives a very intriguing flavor to the meat and rice filling, and I wouldn’t change that, though might use half the amount of sugar in the dough. And, I’d like to try frying them to see how different that would be.

Off to France for the next entry. How the heck am I going to figure out a nationally representative bread and soup for France?! Baguettes and soupe l’oignon?