Karjalanpaisti, Karelian Hot Pot A National Dish from Refugees.

Karelian Hot Pot (or Stew) is considered the national dish of Finland but its popularity throughout Finland is a recent occurrence. 75 years ago Finland was plunged into a war that it didn't want, the Soviet Union invaded with over 750,000 troops and all that Finland could do was send 250,000 young men, with antiqued equipment to stand against the Red Bear. After a valiant defence which saw the Soviet Union stalled on every front, peace negotiations managed to end the war. However, despite all that Finland did, it lost 11% of its territory and 30% of its economy. The territory was mainly the eastern region of Karelia and given the choice, the Finnish citizens decided to pack up and move away from the Russia areas leaving a ghost region. This caused the biggest refugee crisis that Finland has seen. With the move, the Karelians brought with them many things, like food, music and history.

One such dish, and the most recognised alongside Karelian Pastries, is the Karelian Hot Pot. This dish arose as a festive meal due to the scarceness of meat. It is another dish that exemplifies the simpleness but wholesome tastiness of Finnish foods. It traditionally uses bits of beef and pork cooked in water, black peppercorns and salt. However, nowadays, it is usually seen with added ingredients like allspice, carrots and onion. It is so quick to prepare and is just braised in a iron pot in the oven.

This is a great dish for those with little time, like on Sundays.

So for a nice feeding of 4/5 people you will want to have:-

250g stewing beef, cut into 1" pieces
250g stewing pork, cut into 1" pieces (alternatively you can use just 500g of beef or pork)
1 large onion, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
1tsp salt
1tsp black peppercorns
1tsp allspice
2 bay leaves
250ml beef stock
500ml water

Preheat your oven to 150C. Brown your meat in the iron pot over a medium heat, take out the meat and set aside. Now add a little bit of oil to the pot and add the onions, cook for 30 seconds, add the carrots and meat, salt, peppercorns, all spice and bay leaves. Stir until all mixed and add the stock and water. Cover with a lid and place in oven for 3 and a half hours.

You can also turn it down to 125C and cook for 5 and a half hours.

It is normally served with mash potato and lingonberry jam.

So go on, give it a try, this is a perfect dish for Sundays as you can make it all up the day before and just pop in oven before you head out to church.

Finnish Cabbage Casserole

Cabbage Casserole (Kaalilaatikko in Finnish) is a traditional Finnish dish that is fairly simple to make and can be done in large quantities and frozen for future meals. Like many Traditional Finnish dishes, every family has their own version and way of making and serving it. My take on it comes from making it at work and also from Tanja's version. It is highly nutritional and very filling, a great winter dish. Also it can be made the night before (most Finns say it tastes better left overnight in the fridge). It is normally served with Lingonberry Jam, but you can serve it with cranberry or, as my wife likes to, with cottage cheese

So to make a portion that will serve 8 people (or do 4 meals for a couple), you will need to have:-

1.25 kilos Cabbage
500g mince (I used beef-pork mince)
300g rice (Easy cook is best in my opinion for this dish)
1 onion, diced
2 medium carrots, grated
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 litre of beef stock
3 tbsp Dark Syrup (Treacle)
salt and pepper¨
Lingonberry (or other savoury jam) or Cottage Cheese to serve

Firstly heat you oven to 180oC. Then in a pan, add a tiny bit of oil and fry your onion and cabbage, you want to cook it until the cabbage is al dente (has a bite but still edible), then put it in a large bowl. Return the pan to the heat and add the mince and garlic, brown the mince then add to the bowl. Add seasoning, carrots, rice and the syrup, mixing it thoroughly. Add to a large casserole dish, add half the beef stock and put into the oven.

Cook for 20 minutes and then stir, adding the other half of the stock. It is very important not to let the stock run out as it will turn your cabbage bitter. Cook for a future 20 minutes. The rice will have soaked up all the stock and other juices and become edible. Serve straight away, goes great with fresh bread and butter, or allow to cool down and put in fridge.

If you are going to leave it overnight, do as above then when you want to reheat, add about 200ml of water and put in a preheated 180oC oven for 10/15 minutes.

I hope you will love this Finnish one-pot, I know I do. The syrup gives it a nice sweet under current, mixing well with the savouries.

Uunimakkara

Uunimakkara (translates to Oven Sauage) is a traditional Finnish dish and really shows what Finnish food is all about, Simple, Filling and Tasty. This dish takes minutes to make up and so can be done on those nights when you are just too busy to make a more complex meal. There is literally hundreds of versions of this dish, however this is one of my takes upon this classic, warming food.

For it you will need:-

Some lenkkimakkara or for those outside of Finland and have no access to this kind of sausage, you can use Bratwurst/Frankfurter style sausages. One per person.
Good, floury potatoes (Duchess are good) about 150g per person.
Onion, roughly sliced, about 1/2 a medium one per person.
Cheese, any will do, Finland has lots of Edam so that is what I used but a nice mature cheddar will give it a beautiful flavour.
some butter
2 tbsp cream per 150g potatoes
1/2 tbsp of sugar per 1/2 onion
seasoning and some water

First preheat your oven to 200oC. Slice your sausage lengthways, about 3/3 of the way through. Then stuff it with your cheese, I find slicing it is better but grating will suffice. Then put on an oven tray ready for the oven.

Then peel your spuds and put into a pan of lightly salted water. Boil till soft, about 10-15 minutes. Drain out and put back into the original pot. While your are boiling the spuds put your sausages in, they will take about 10-15 minutes too, you will know when they are ready when they start going a nice golden brown colour.

While this is going on, in another frying pan put some butter in it and heat up. Add your onions and sweat until soft, then add the sugar and cook until starting to turn brown. Then add some water, about 2 tablespoon per 1/2 onion and cook until all the water is gone. This will make beautiful caramelised onions, just like from the burger van.

Mash your potatoes, add the cream, some butter and seasoning in there to taste.

Put your mash on the plate, put the sausage on top and the onions topping that. You can serve with some tomato sauce or mustard.

Runeberg's Torte

Today (5th February), is the birthday of Johan Ludvig Runeberg who is the national poet of Finland. He was born in Pietarsaari which is a predominately Swedish speaking city (known as Jakobstad in Swedish) in 1804. His poems mainly focused upon the typical, tough, rural lifestyle of the common Finnish man. is most famous work is Fänrik Ståls sägner which is Swedish for The Tales of Ensign Stål. It was written between 1848 and 1860 and it is about the Finnish War which was a war between the Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian Empire. The result was 'Finland' was surrendered to Russia, this was the start of the so called Grand Duchy of Finland. The first poem within the work Vårt Land (Maamme in Finnish, Our Land in English), has become the National Anthem of Finland by overall convention (as there is no law in Finland establishing it as the National Anthem).

On this day it is traditional to eat Runebergin Torttu (Runeberg's Torte). Legend has it Runeberg's wife, Fredrika, invented the pastry when her husband asked for something sweet but she had nothing in. So in typical good wife style she made up something using what she had, wheat flour, breadcrumbs, almonds, rum, apple jam and sugar. He loved it so much that he had one every morning for breakfast with Punsch (a traditional Swedish Liqueur) from that moment on. The recipe is found in her recipe book but it is now believed that it is a personal version of an earlier recipe created by confectioner Lars Astenius of Porvoo.

A 'traditional' commercially available Runebergin Torttu 

So there is a wee bit behind it, I thought i'd give it a try. The ones you buy from the store look like the above picture. However I have no idea how to make it like that and no home cookery book or website says to make it like that. My Wife told me that Finns make it in muffin trays and so that is exactly what I did. So for you to make you own culturally tasty treat you will need to have:-

250g Baking Margarine or Butter
200g Caster Sugar
2 Eggs
100g Ground Almonds
100g Plain Flour
15 grammes of Gingernut biscuits
1 Thin Crisp (those crunchy flat cracker bread things that healthy people eat)
120g Breadcrumbs
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Rum essence

For the topping:-

Rasberry Jam (You can really use any kind of Jam)
200g icing suagr
1 tbsp water or juice

First turn your oven on to 200oc. In a bowl beat together the Marg and Sugar until fluffy. Then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing it in thoroughly.  In another bowl add the almonds, plain flour, breadcrumbs and baking powder, then crush the biscuits and thin crisp (you can use a food processor or beat it in a bag) and add to the bowl too. Then mix all together than pour into the Marg/Egg mix, combined thoroughly and add the rum.

Then put muffin cases into a muffin tray and put about a tablespoon of the mixture into each case. Place into the middle of the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Take out of oven and leave to cool down.

In a small bowl or cup mix the icing sugar and water together and form an icing. You can either spoon in on the top or pipe it on. In the middle put some Jam and then serve.