A Hole of Deliciousness

It has been a while since I’ve been this delighted to praise a restaurant. Unfortunately often the experience of eating out in my city leaves me lukewarm. Boy do I hate to say “I could’ve done that so much better myself” after having eaten a mediocre meal and paid a fortune for it.

This time though, I wanted to French kiss the chef! The restaurant called Kolo is a relatively new addition to the current, ever so vibrant restaurant scene in Helsinki. Literally, “The Hole” is worthy of its name. It’s a tiny joint with only five tables or so and ‘cosy’ just wouldn’t be enough to describe the lovely atmosphere. It’s well planned to be unorganized and spontaneous; nothing in the décor really matches but still the idea it seems so natural and perfect. From old school cotton napkins all in different styles, to delicate vintage porcelain coffee cups sets… The only thing that rubbed my circles was the African style masques that stared at me the whole time.

On a Friday, at lunchtime only one table was free – we got lucky. “It’s a slow day today”, said the waiter. I could only imagine. Hyped small places like Kolo are usually always packed and you end up asking yourself how it’s possible, where do all the people come from? And it doesn’t matter what day of the week or at which hour it is… Personally, I think it’s a big turn off, as waiting and breathing in other diners’ necks, sighing of discomfort is not my idea of a nice start to a delicious meal.

Like I said, this time my Mother and I got lucky. As the purpose of the treat was to celebrate me handing in the draft of the final version of my thesis, it would’ve been a bummer to be rejected with a “Sorry, we’re full”.  Since I had done four months worth of research on Finnish culinary culture, I was particularly excited to try the food in Kolo. I must admit that there were notable expectations and a certain intuition guiding my judgement. I was about to be reassured regarding the conclusion I made for the purpose of my thesis of Helsinki being the hot spot for new exiting culinary experiences, I just didn’t know it yet.

Helsinki, being a small capital on a European scale, can’t seem to keep secrets when it comes to new bars, cafés, restaurants and other trendy hangouts. Even though many businesses pop up in total silence without any fuss around them, people talk. And when people talk, people like. It’s just a matter of seconds before the hype is unleashed. The funniest thing is that many people simply go on repeating what they hear from a friend of a friend without making sure the rumours have a solid basis. That’s Helsinki for you. When it’s hot, it’s hot, even if it’s not.

Kolo is one of these places. I don’t even remember how many people assured me: “I’ve heard it’s awesome”. I happen to be very critical when it comes to such claims, especially when they’re about new restaurants and food related happenings.  Also, I’m not the easiest person to impress when it comes to restaurant food, even though I love all kind of food and tastes. I consider myself extremely lucky to be surrounded by so many amazing kitchen-talents that most often the best food is made in a group of food loving friends sipping on some nice wine. It’s just not worth it to pay for mediocrity. When it comes to food, I hate to be disappointed. What I hate even more is ending up paying for it. So in order to avoid bad mood, I usually play it safe and cook at home. Then again, I do love to be catered for and do nothing else than relish in flavours brought to me by a lovely waiter. What is more heavenly than taking the first bite of a dish prepared with care, love, know-how and good judgement all in accordance to your choice?!

Kolo’s lunch menu was simple but luring, at least to my taste: Three choices among which I found the one that tingled my taste buds the most – a risotto verde and  blue mussels. Actually, I took a risk. I think I’ve never had such perfect risotto as I had during my three month stay in Italy a while ago. So let’s say that the stakes were high. I wanted to see if the claims about Kolo were true. If the kitchen was to wow me with a risotto, I’d be extremely enchanted. You got to bet high to win high.

The thing about a risotto is that it’s a relatively simple dish. It’s pretty easy to make a decent risotto. The problem is that too many ignorant chefs rely on the simplicity and end up ruining the whole thing thinking who could possibly mess up a risotto. Well, most performances are poor. It’s always either too solid or too liquid, either tasteless or tasting only wine. And don’t even get me started on the right meaning of “risotto all’onda”! (When talking about risotto, one shouldn’t say ‘al dente’ but ‘all’onda’. The first one is reserved for arguments over cooking pasta  )

Any way… to my surprise the risotto verde at Kolo was close to perfection! I’m pretty sure I heard angels singing as I was licking the fork after the first mouth full. Simply delicious! And the foodgasm just got better when I tasted the blue mussels… I wanted to bathe in the plate. When I washed it all down with a sip of white wine from the culinary region of Langhe, I found myself in the most divine state of mind.

I rest my case. Helsinki indeed is blooming when it comes to culinary experiences. You just have to know what you want and be lucky enough to find a free table. I can certainly recommend Kolo with a clean consciousness when saying I KNOW it’s good. And you know what, it's even totally affordable!

Back to Basics

 – the missing link

I made pea soup and Karelian pies. Delicious!

After four months of writing a Master thesis on my native country’s culinary culture, I think I’ve finally found the source of the culinary “problem” in Finland. Ironically, the “problem” is the problem, as most people don’t even consider it a problem. So is there a problem?

Yes and no. Let me break it down to you.

Heard over and over again at home and abroad: “But there is no food culture in Finland!”. Of some reason, however, some of the best chefs from the Nordic region come from Finland and shine even internationally with their savoir-faire, their cutting-edge cuisine techniques and highly developed culinary philosophy. Hold on, aren’t we talking about Denmark here? By no means. I haven’t been away for that long to make the common mistake of mixing up the different Nordic countries or maybe even worse, labelling them all under the rather convenient “Nordic” label.

So if the problem doesn’t lie in the professional culinary expertise or the Finnish culinary culture, where then? After an amazingly inspiring chat with one of my country’s finest chefs following the “New Finnish Cuisine” philosophy as he calls it, I think I’m seeing it clearer than ever. Even though a rapidly growing amount of “average people” have already started opening their eyes to the exquisite abundance of our domestic and natural raw materials embracing them in a rightful way, top chefs, food critics and gastronomic elites still have a vast majority of people to convert and convince in favour of the newest trend in Finnish food culture. How can it be so hard? The recipe is easy: Back to basics. And it’s not like the Finns don’t get it. I mean if you ask a Finn about his/her most delicious Finnish food memory, the person will most certainly start praising his/her grand mother’s home cooking, the so called comfort food – the most basic Finnish food there is. Bingo!

But somehow the link between our grandparents’ food mentality and the contemporary culinary reality is missing. Born in the mid 80s, I can remember “home food” being unworthy of serving even to the kid next door. What to cook that would be special, tasty and interesting enough was my Mum’s biggest problem, as the normal and average, basic home food was problematic to serve. But why, for Heaven’s sake?

I must admit that for long I wasn’t any better myself. It took some radical auto-convincing even for me to be able to proudly serve an honest, rather rustic traditional Finnish dish to my food loving French friends for example. And when I finally got over the fear of it not being a “good enough”, I really had to put grand restraints on myself to not ruin the delicate flavours with “unnatural” and/or foreign flavour elements. I can tell you that it takes great courage to add nothing but salt (and maybe, only maybe, in some cases, some ground black pepper). Respect to those who do it all the time!

Okay, I have to let you all in on a secret, the secret of the “New Finnish Cuisine” in fact. It’s also very simple in the end. It's about turning so-called problem to your advantage. Look at it this way: Instead of spending loads of money on rare and costly foreign ingredients, then using hours and hours on trying to find special, new recipes that you’re hardly able to understand, you should invest in high quality, super fresh, locally produced raw materials and call your granny for inspiration. There. Now you know it.

To sum it up for you, the problem is two-fold. One: The lack of balls and self-confidence in our own Finnish culinary simplicity and raw material capacity. Two: The misunderstanding for “good quality” and “bon goût”. Whether you like to call it “beautification”, “a culinary revolution”, “an elitist project” or “culinary fascism” at its harshest, we need to go back to basics. Don’t get me wrong though, we shouldn’t toss contemporary evolution, technical know-how and avant-garde culinary ethics out the window. We just have to take a step back without taking a step back.

"Mangiare e Fare l’Amore"

Photo by egle

Yesterday I had the immense honor to listen to a great man. The founder and president of the Slow Food movement Carlo Petrini addressed a full house in Helsinki last night. Being the overly emotional person that I am, I found myself applauding this charming and charismatic man from the town of Bra, Italy with tears of joy in my eyes. Dear readers, if you still haven’t heard about Slow Food you should correct that with the speed of lightening! In a nutshell, Slow Food is all about preserving and fighting for good quality food worldwide. The ingredients of good quality food according to Slow Food are good/tasty food, clean food and fair food. “If one of these criteria is missing, there’s no quality at all”, Signor Petrini explained with a determined face.

Food has people talking and the masses are (Thank God) opening their eyes more and more. But why do we need all this fuss around food? Isn’t it just a trend? Well, the answer to that question will certainly divide people’s opinions, but if you ask me, or Signor Petrini for that matter, we need to talk about food now more than ever before. And trends have nothing to do with it.

In the past, food didn’t travel the four corners of the world to get on our plats. Seasonality was embraced, respected and followed. It created natural diversity in accordance with Mother Earth. Then came the wave of capitalism and with it also the contemporary plague – consumerism. On top of that, people started traveling long distances for leisure. Soon it wasn’t enough to savor a beautifully ripe mango somewhere in in Africa or South-East Asia, no, the mango had to come to us to any cost. Neither was it enough that the poor little mango travelled halfway across the world to make us happy, no, it had to be of perfect shape and size, the prettiest mango of all. Paying customers started having improbable demands on availability and accessibility. And that’s when it all turned upside down.

Signor Petrini pointed out that at a first glance it seems that food today is all about recipes, sharing them, comparing them, getting ahold of the best ones… But brace yourselves; recipes make up for only 10–15% of gastronomy! Gastronomy – the practice of choosing, eating and cooking good quality food – is a multidisciplinary domain. It’s equally about history and anthropology as it is about economy and medicine for example, and the list goes on and on. This is precisely the reason why I get so disappointed when I hear someone saying they write a food blog and when I check it out it’s overloaded with recipes, one after the other. Why don’t we talk about food like we talk about the next presidential elections or the economical crisis? Without food there wouldn’t even be a next president to talk about, let alone an economy for us to fuck up.

Signor Petrini revealed himself to be a non-believer, “but if I believed in God”, he said, “I’d thank Him for making the two most vital acts of human kind – eating and making love – so immensely pleasant and enjoyable”. In my country, if you ask me, a frighteningly big amount of the people have forgotten both how to relish in food and take ecstatic pleasure of two bodies becoming one. All that matters is safety and whether it’s healthy or not. Everything is restricted and socioculturally controlled. Limits, limits and more limits. I really hope the people listening yesterday went home hungry and lusting… I sure wouldn’t have minded getting acquainted with one of the many Italian chefs present at the lecture ;)

We have come such a long way from Nature. Nature has become so unnatural that we need to add the word ‘nature’ or ‘natural’ everywhere, especially when talking about food (or making love love for that matte). But it should all be natural – NATURALLY! Unfortunately, it is no longer so and that makes my very sad indeed. Signor Petrini said something that really shocked me. He rattled the crowd by actually thanking McDonald’s! At first it was like he had pronounced the name of the Devil, but then he explained to the audience that without McDonald’s and fast food there might not be Slow Food either. And he’s right. The human kind always seems to only learn the hard way…

As a conclusion I’d like you to ponder over something Signor Petrini said. He said that what is absolutely insane in today’s world is that people spend more money on loosing weight than on they do on eating! At first I gasped for air, that’s how astonished I was. But come to think about it, it might actually be true. I have to admit that even I felt a bit guilty. When I first started studying and moved away from home, the content of my fridge was most of the time composed of nothing more than the little lamp and some dry old potatoes. Somehow I still managed to purchase a gym card with a membership fee too expensive to even say out loud, shame on me! But I was vain, young and foolish, what can I say. Nowadays, I’m proud to inform you that it’s quite the opposite and I can't even see the little lamp. A good friend of mine came to my place a few days ago and got very surprised when opening my fridge: “It’s full, you’ve got so much food!”. Yes indeed! I don’t know about the other vital act of human kind, but I surely eat good every single day!

The value of food is so much more than its price. Next time you have to choose between some magic diet pills and good quality food according to Slow Food standards, do yourself and your environment a favor and go for the latter. Be aware of the pleasure good quality food gives you.

Grazie dal cuore Signor Petrini!

Special Delivery

Almost all people appreciate a special home made gift. If it’s something edible, it’s even better. I love preparing something special for someone special. But for me it’s not quite enough to cook or bake a dish that tastes goods in general. Pleasing someone with food can be rather challenging if the aim is to satisfy that one particular person’s taste to the point. How awfully embarrassing isn’t to be invited for dinner and to discover that what’s on the menu is something you simply can’t bear?! Or even worse, something you’re horribly allergic to! What a disaster. I think that a well-chosen and well-prepared dish is the perfect way to prove that you really know and care about a person dear to you. Who wouldn’t be flattered of a custom-made meal?

Not long ago I certainly outdid myself in customizing food. A dear friend of mine who has a minor fetish with Hello Kitty decided to throw a party at his place. Well of course it wasn’t just any party, it was a Hello Kitty party. Fearing that he would ask all invited guests to come dressed up as big headed pink kitty-cats, I discretely asked him for more details. I must say he had me for a second and I started inventing ways to get out of the situation. But I guess he judged by my face that I was slightly horrified so he was kind enough to correct himself. Finally all he wanted was for all guests to bring something Hello Kitty related with them to the party. I was relieved. I really couldn’t see myself dressed up as a Japanese cartoon figure.

For me it meant just another culinary challenge and I was game! Obviously the end result had to look like Kitty. That was certain. The twist was to make her taste perfectly exquisite in my friend’s mouth. After structuring a list of five main ingredients that would both fit together in general and do the trick considering my friend’s taste, I had it nailed

Making a culinary profile of someone you think you in depth is probably harder than you might think. Sweet or savory, creamy or fruity, light or heavy, simple or complex, warm or cold…are just the first criteria that come in mind. If the person in question follows a specific diet, has fully excluding dislikes or suffers of an allergy or an intolerance, the recipe search immediately turns into a much more demanding mission.

The way I see it is that choosing to make the most suitable dish according to someone’s particular taste and to serve a specific purpose is like choosing the right dress-code/outfit for a given occasion. Since one usually doesn’t wear a pyjama to the opera, why should one serve convenience food to someone only eating organic food? It seems ridiculously straightforward and simply, but it’s a very common gaffe I must say. If you don’t know whom you’re really cooking for you better get to know the essential dos and don’ts. If it’s impossible than don’t go for something too special or too complicated. I know, easier said than done. Most of the time I can’t even take my own advice to be honest. Like tonight, I decided to bake something that I could bring to an important appointment I have tomorrow morning. I told myself a thousand times to keep it simple and do it good. Try guessing whether I follow my own advice?

No, I didn’t. Anyway, my creation is now done and waiting to be eaten. One special delivery coming your way! I hope it won’t be a complete flop. Fingers crossed!

Something's Cooking All Right

Looking from the outside in there are fascinating things going on foodwise in Europe all the time and as we speak. It's especially in the Nordic countries (commonly but slightly incorrectly also know as Scandinavia) where something new and fresh is definitely cooking! The New Nordic Cuisine Movement – an innovative and rather new movement for Europe, but certainly so for the rest if the world – is blooming and the "Nordic taste" is turning into a widely recognized and appreciated concept, challenging for example the reputed and renowned, prestigious and flavour-rich Mediterranean cuisine that European food most often is known for outside our continent.

Not a 2010s movement per se as the New Nordic Cuisine Movement has been on people lips and in the making for quite a while already, but it's now that even the mainstream public is starting to get to know this new trend. Why now? It's not so far fetched since noma – Danish chef and food guru Clause Meyer's restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark won the British trade magazine Restaurant's price of World’s Best Restaurant in 2011. noma with Claus Meyer as head captain is giving rise to a whole new movement in the Nordic culinary culture. As they describe it themselves, noma represents a “Nordic gourmet cuisine with an innovative gastronomic take on traditional cooking methods, fine Nordic produce and the legacy of our shared food heritage […] a revival of Nordic cuisine and let its distinctive flavours” (noma's official website).

But there's much more to this movement than noma since it is all about putting back in place the natural limits and conditions that once fully determining human accessibility to food. What's naturally (biologically) and geographically own to our culture and our taste is being uplifted, and stopped regarded upon as constraints and/or culinary handicaps. It's something 100% positive to us and our environment. It's certainly also about elevating the Nordic taste and Nordic culinary culture to the same pedestal as its most refined French and Italian rivals. What Nordic cuisine has to offer has been stipulated in the Manifesto for the New Nordic Kitchen adopted by the Nordic council of ministers. In ten points the manifesto states the fundamentals for the New Nordic Cuisine Movement. The message and main aim are rather honest and straightforward. The indisputable main criteria widely agreed upon in the Nordic Region are that of seasonality, purity, essential simplicity, respecting a certain moral and ethics and finally, beliefs of significant health benefits for humans and the nature we live off.

In Finland, Finnish food is going through similar revival. Finland, known familiarly as the little brother of Sweden might come one step behind the more known Nordic countries, but Finnish input and distinctiveness, nevertheless, shouldn't be underestimated or simply labelled under 'Scandinavia'. I really disapprove of that I must say! Obviously and undeniably, Finnish cultural heritage and also food culture both have their origins in Scandinavian or better Swedish culinary traditions and sometimes it might be hard to wholly separate one from the other. However, the Russian influence on Finnish food culture and taste is not to be dismissed. Herein lies the uniqueness of Finnish cuisine today. Not fully Scandinavian, a touch Slavic and Russian, rather Nordic but still fully Finnish.

I'm very happy to see this development and it has made me think even more about what my own personal taste is, what it represent and where it comes from. I wanted to share this with you, dear readers, now as I'm writing my Master thesis on this exact phenomenon/issue. Thesis writing is darn lonesome by the way and I feel like I'm loosing it several times a day. I guess I simply wanted to share this with all of you and inform you that I'm still here as hungry as ever for new information, new vibes and above all new tastes! If this post gave birth to same awesome and intriguing ideas that might be useful for me ( ;) vink vink), hit me (hard enough) with an email: edithsalminen[at]gmail[dot]com and share your mind with me.

Until then, wish me luck, long nerves and good sprit. Pretty please.

Accepting No Excuses

Needless to say, I'm really no big fan of this dreadful commercial festivity of love. For someone like me who doesn’t consume anything sweet, this day is just filled with big no-nos in all possible ways. Food-wise it's ridiculous: Heart shaped cupcakes, kitsch wrapped chocolates, creamy and puffy pastries; I've even encountered a heart shaped steak once! What a waste of perfectly fine meat I’d say…

However, there’s something about love and food that naturally goes hand in hand. I mean only the act of eating together in many cultures is the number one sign of intimacy and bonding and it is often a mutual slipper slope to other more sexual activities. C’mon, passion and lust (and love) are embedded in good food! But really, why go and make a mockery of your loved one by letting him/her cut in to a heart shaped Tournedos?! It’s just plain stupid if you ask me. A real sign of devotion and love is to cook for your loved one yourself. Now I’m sure there a bunch of lazy-asses or people calling themselves horrible cooks who would oppose, but I have to say in my defense that love really does make you do things you would never do otherwise! That is what I call Valentine’s Day spirit.

And of course I’ve got a personal story for you, otherwise it would be too easy to sit here and speak for almost anything hypothetical. A couple of years back, no, six years back I think it was, I was already a huge gourmade and on top of that I was IN LOVE big time. Back then, Valentine’s Day still meant something to me. It was a special day where any act of love however absurd, overwhelming or cheesy, was fully legitimate and welcome. I had all kinds of romantic images in my head of a five-course meal in a classy restaurant, but considering our age and our economic misery, we wouldn’t even have been able to order a decent glass of red. Let’s say that fantasy had to be postponed to the remote future back then. But I certainly wasn’t ready to give up the thought of being served a romantic meal though, and I damn sure didn’t want to be covered in food stains when I for once had planned on wearing a little sexy dress and be all girly and pretty to please my boyfriend. Solution: I decided that he would be the chef for the night. See that’s the great thing about teenage love. You were actually able to command our loved one and he would do what ever you asked for. ­Good old time…

My ex, poor fellow, was everything but a cook – seriously. I remember his Dad even pealing the oranges for him (maybe that was simply because he was too lazy…anyway)! But to my astonishment he fully accepted the challenge. I was ecstatic! Maybe now he finally would realize how much work and effort a home cooked meal actually takes and he would finally appreciate all my works of art that he had gobbled up in matter of seconds without even recognizing whether it was chicken or beef he was eating.

He started stressing a week ahead it seemed and when D-day arrived he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I felt bad. Maybe it would be best if I took over after all. He was somewhat of a sore looser so there was no way he would admit defeat before even having attempted the task. Three hour before dinnertime he asked me to leave the house. I delightedly followed his orders. As I kissed his goodbye and wished him good luck, I couldn’t help but feeling warm inside when I noticed the stack of recipes he had ripped out from magazines and printed out from the internet. I felt special and loved, what more could I have asked for.

Three hours later I was welcomed back to the house. It smelled amazing! Of course there were some bubbly wine, roses and a heart shaped card, but that was not the point. The point was that he had done it! A three-course meal was about to be served and all I had to do is sit and look pretty. Everything tasted divine! Plus he really hadn’t taken the easy way out. And this was a young man who honestly couldn’t cook for the love of God! 

So there you go, I won’t accept any more excuses – ever. If you haven’t made reservation in a restaurant that doesn’t serve lame-ass Valentine’s Day specials, cancel your reservation and google a few yummy recipes on your lunch break and on your way home drop by the nearest well equipped grocery store. I bet my head on it that you will get lucky!

Reveal Yourself

Have you ever thought about what happens to food and the raw materials when they're being cooked? Have you ever pondered what a specific  way of preparation means and signals? Have you ever realized that when food is cooked and prepared it gets a label and it carries a marker of something? Known for his famous work Physiologie du goût (Physiology of Taste) published in 1825, epicure and gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brilliat-Savarin said "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are". Do you think the food you cook tells the others the truth about you?

I've many times thought about what kind of image and idea I convey of myself through my cooking, my food preferences and my eating habits. I've always considered myself as a very incoherent eater, but maybe I do, after all, follow certain patterns.

It's fascinating to see the variety of dishes the exact same ingredients and raw materials can result in when they're being cooked by different people with different culinary backgrounds. We turn food into cuisine with our hands. I for sure would love to base my understanding of another person solely on his/her eating and cooking! I wonder what I could find out only based on a cooked dish. Food habits and preferences matter and what a person decides to eat and how he cooks his food could definitely give off some interesting secrets.

I wonder how close to reality a judgement made through food could be. Could I tell whether it's a man or a woman, a Swede or an Englishman, whether the person is young or old, fit or unhealthy…Some elements are certainly more obvious than others. Anyone who has worked as a waiter in a restaurant knows this. At some point you just know who ordered what. But not everything is as clear. And I'm sure each and everyone of us has some very contradictory and incoherent vices.

I have a feeling that naming a person's cultural background based on his cooking and food preferences might be a bit trickier. It's not like food stays within any cultural boundaries nowadays. Besides, how much do we know about foreign countries' cuisines except for the common stereotypes? A year and half ago, I was jumping up and down of joy when I first found out that I'd be living with a Greek when moving to Sweden. I had always wanted to learn how to make an authentic Moussaka. Turned out the only thing that Greek ate was hamburgers and other junk food! I think this proves my point.

But if we stick to cultural markers only, not only do we eat foods from many different countries, but our eating habits can have multi- and/or transcultural origins. Until recently, I was sure that the Finns could boast with being the only people to make smoked cheese. A while ago a friend of mine living in Vigo, in Spain made me try a Galician speciality, smoked cheese – Another one bites the dust.

So if it's no longer what you eat that reflects your cultural origins, I'd like to suggest that it's the way you cook and prepare food that still can reveal your cultural identity. I'm saying this because a few days ago as I was watching a cooking program on TV, I realized that it's enough that you add one crucial ingredient or do something that no one else would do and you're busted. The chef on TV was showing how to make fajitas. I was surprised, a Finnish TV chef preparing fajitas in February, ok, why not. The ingredients he would use all seemed to respect the authentic recipe. And then as he had almost convinced me, he blew it.  I quote "in order to make it easier and faster" (to two 'musts' in Finnish everyday cooking) he empties a plastic bag of deep-frozen mixed "Mexican" veggies on the frying pan together with the ready sliced and ready marinated "Taco & Fajitas" chicken slices. Sigh.

In some strange way you just got to love it though. I mean it's simply a means to make an otherwise pretty foreign dish seem more familiar. In the best of cases, the Finn eating the Finnish fajitas à la Finnish TV chef might one day have the will to try the real thing because he got a "smooth landing" to a whole new world of tastes through the version suitable for Finnish taste. One sure can hope for the best.