ruokaa

My first shopping trip, on the day I arrived, was disappointing. The only store I found was the S-Market in Siltasaari, where just about everything is prepackaged and of mediocre quality. Here's what I bought, clockwise from 12:00: rye bread, mixed berry jam, viili, blueberry juice drink, piimä, rye crackers, karjalanpiirakkaa, salmiakki, voi (butter), reindeer sausage, mämmi, kananmunia (chicken eggs, quite fresh), juustoleipä, Auran (not Turun!) mustard, and Karjala beer.

Regarding the dairy products: viili is like yogurt, but with the stringy consistency of fondue, while piimä is like buttermilk but thicker and smoother, and surprisingly tasty. I'll be able to make my delicious-if-I-do-say-so-myself buttermilk pancakes, and maple syrup ("Maple Joe," from Canada, a little thin but unadulterated) is for some reason readily available here. Juustoleipä is a baked cheese; the one I got had the taste and consistency of paneer, and was fine, but perhaps there are better examples.

The karjalanpiirakkaa weren't good, but what can you expect from prepackaged ones? I had a delicious example of this Karelian pastry at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, so I know they can be great.

Salmiakki is a marvelous salty licorish candy, but my heart rate goes up 10 bpm when I eat it, so I'm not going to be indulging.

Mämmi is a traditional Easter rye pudding. Much as I love the regional and the authentic, I have to say that this is coarse, heavy, and the third-worst thing I can remember putting into my mouth. (Second was my misguided improvisation, red cabbage braised in Campari. Bitter x bitter = horrible. First was creamed cabbage.) I was pleased when my friend Rebecca sent me this apocryphal story, showing that many Finns agree with me.

Subsequent to this trip, another friend, Liesl, told me about some other stores to try. The Alepa, underground near the train station, was a bit better than S-Market. There I got some wonderful new potatoes from Lapland, decent pickled herring, a blackcurrant-flavored cider from Sweden, a dull Finnish cheese called Pohjanpoika ("northern boy"), vispipuuro (lingonberries whipped with farina), two crunchy fried donuts called tippaleipää ("drip bread" - presumably it's made like a funnel cake), and some Finnish cloudberry jam. There are some products that come in "pure Finnish" and "not pure Finnish" varieties; the former are marked with a blue swan logo, cost slightly more, and are presumably tastier. The vispipuuro was the big disappointment here; again, I'd had a great home-made example in Seattle, and this factory-produced version wasn't anywhere near as good.

Better still was the S-Market under the Sokos department store just southeast of the train station. This place has real cheese! I'd been good about eating Finnish foods, but I relapsed when I saw the Morbier and Appenzeller. I also found some beautiful Finnish-grown lettuce, Tibetan tea, which I've never had before, and this unusual candy, chocolate-covered licorish. Unfortunately neither the chocolate nor the licorish is very good. Valrhona-coated salmiakki might be worth a try...

On a similarly ridiculous note, I listened for the first time to "Hard Rock Hallelujah." The Finnish band Lordi won the Eurovision music competition last year with this song, so they're the reason the contest will be held in Helsinki this May. (They're also playing two shows in Washington this July.)