Begins with L, ends in U

« Does every office party come equipped with a portable disco ball and ABBA tunes at the ready? I was drunk on 2 ciders by 7pm and I'm surprised I could hold the Leica steady, especially since I was a bit too amused at the choice of music. A modern adaptation/interpretation of the Kalevala could be pretty entertaining in the hands of the right satirist. Väinämöinen in a polyester leisure suit out on the dancefloor.... »

It's Lönnrotin/Kalevalan Päivä again and this year, aside from promising myself that I will read the Kalevala straight through, I will finally learn how to say Lönnrotinkatu without writing it down for the taxi driver who invariably gives me the "where in the fuck?" look or explaining that I'm talking about the street between Bulevardi and Kalevankatu, the one that begins with 'L' and ends in 'u'. I think it is the only street downtown that has L or Lö as the first letter[s]. My life is full of small, insignificant, yet daunting ambitions.

permalink Ω 28 February 2005, Helsinki

Cake with your Chocolate

« Best chocolate cake ever.... »

I have a puppy who doesn't often let me relax on the couch in the evening but somehow sleeps contentedly on the kitchen floor if I am baking something, so I have been baking a bit more than usual lately. I was looking for a cooking pan one evening and rediscovered the gothic cathedral Bundt pan I've had for a few years that I'd forgotten about and thought about making a Bundt cake that would appeal to the Finnish dessert palate. I figured I could make the cake for some friends we were having over but I would subject my coworkers to a test cake to see if they liked it as much as I guessed they might. It's funny how so many products in Finland claim 'Authentic American Taste' but how few of them are anywhere near the actual taste and, when given something that really does taste like it does back home, how few Finns really enjoy it. I have learned through trial and error that it is a rare American dessert that appeals to the Finnish palate. The cake is very chocolatey, not overly sweet and the whipped cream and raspberries are a near constant feature in Finnish desserts.

As a disclaimer, I'm not all that crazy about chocolate cakes, but if I had tasted the batter before I poured it all into the pan and shoved it into the oven, I could have easily decided to eat the entire bowl of batter myself instead of having only the spatula to lick the remainder from. I think a couple of people at work went back for a second piece so it's safe to say that it was well received. I made the first cake with kermaviili because I didn't think that Finland really had a true sour cream and kermaviili was reasonably close to the mark. The second cake I made with smetana, which I was told was more like sour cream than kermaviili. Kermaviili is about 10% fat, smetana is about 47% fat and American sour cream is somewhere around 21% fat. Of the two cakes, the kermaviili cake was far better because it was more moist and less rich than the smetana cake. I think this is one of the few occasions where less fat is better than more.

Don't overdo the mixing as it will introduce too much air into the batter and cause the cake to rise more than it should. I used my standing mixer for the first cake and noticed that I really didn't need it save for the creaming of the butter and sugar. The cake release should be used on any pan you use, even if it is the most stick-free teflon on the market. Wrap cake in foil or plastic wrap after cooling for an hour or two if you don't plan to eat it right away to help keep the cake moist.

The Best Chocolate Bundt Cake

Serves: 12 to 14
Special equipment: Bundt or tube pan
Time: about 90 minutes
Source: Cook's Illustrated

Cake Release

• 1 tablespoon butter, melted
• 1 tablespoon cocoa

Cake

• 3/4 cup (2.25 oz) or 1,75dl cocoa, natural (not Dutch-processed)
• 6 oz or 170g bittersweet chocolate (2 100g bars of Fazer baking chocolate which leaves a few bits for eating.)
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder (optional)
• 3/4 or 1.75dl cup water (boiling)
• 1 cup (8.75 oz) or 2,5dl sour cream (kermaviili not smetana if in Finland), room temperature
• 1.75 cups or 4,25dl unbleached all-purpose flour 
• 1 teaspoon table salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda 
• 12 tablespoons(1.5 sticks) or 170g unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 cups (14 oz) or 4,75dl light brown sugar 
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 
• 5 large eggs, room temperature
• confectioners' sugar for dusting

FOR THE PAN:

1. Stir together butter and cocoa in small bowl until paste forms; using a pastry brush, coat all interior surfaces of standard 12-cup Bundt pan. (If mixture becomes too thick to brush on, microwave it for 10 to 20 seconds, or until warm and softened.)
2. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position; heat oven to 350F/175C degrees.

FOR THE CAKE:

1. Combine cocoa, chocolate, and espresso powder (if using) in medium heatproof bowl; pour boiling water over and whisk until smooth. Cool to room temperature; then whisk in sour cream.
2. Whisk flour, salt, and baking soda in second bowl to combine.
3. In standing mixer fitted with flat beater, beat butter, sugar, and vanilla on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
4. Reduce speed to medium and add eggs one at a time, mixing about 30 seconds after each addition and scraping down bowl with rubber spatula after first 2 additions.
5. Reduce to medium-low speed (batter may appear separated); add about one third of flour mixture and half of chocolate/sour cream mixture and mix until just incorporated, about 20 seconds.
6. Scrape bowl and repeat using half of remaining flour mixture and all of remaining chocolate mixture; add remaining flour mixture and beat until just incorporated, about 10 seconds.
7. Scrape bowl and mix on medium-low until batter is thoroughly combined, about 30 seconds.
8. Pour batter into prepared Bundt pan, being careful not to pour batter on sides of pan.
9. Bake until wooden skewer inserted into center comes out with few crumbs attached, 45 to 50 minutes.
10. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then invert cake onto parchment-lined wire rack; cool to room temperature, about 3 hours.
11. Dust with confectioners' sugar, transfer to serving platter, and cut into wedges; serve with Tangy Whipped Cream and raspberries, if desired.

Tangy Whipped Cream

• 1 cup or 2,50dl heavy cream (cold)
• 1/4 cup or ~.60dl sour cream 
• 1/4 cup or ~.60dl packed light brown sugar 
• 1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract 

With electric mixer, beat all ingredients, gradually increasing speed from low to high, until cream forms soft peaks, 1.5 to 2 minutes.

Lightly Sweetened Raspberries

• 3 cups or 7dl fresh raspberries gently rinsed and dried
• 1 - 2 tablespoons granulated sugar 

Gently toss raspberries with sugar, then let stand until berries have released some juice and sugar has dissolved, about 15 minutes.

permalink Ω 27 February 2005, Helsinki

Tenacious Memory

« "Hey, pass me the remote and get me a beer wouldya?" »

I don't know who came up with the idea that dogs don't have a memory, but whomever it was never owned a dog or at least not a bright one. Otava has a mental catalogue of each and every tasty bit of puke, poop, discarded hesburger wrappers, sticks, dead birds, etc. within a 1km radius. I even think that sometimes he plots our walks and consciously takes me to these spots so that he can make one more attempt at eating whatever it is that I've kept him from. I have a hard time remembering what day it is or what I ate for lunch so his memory seems to be far more tenacious than mine. We are also pretty convinced that he actually watches TV when he's up on the couch next to me since his eyes appear to follow the motion and he perks up if a dog barks on the screen. Any day now he's going to be watching porn and ordering take-away while we're at work. :)

permalink Ω 26 February 2005, Helsinki

M is for Malmi

« The red and green neon Malmintori Saloon directly across from the Foreigner's police station. If you don't need a drink when you enter, you most certainly will by the time you leave. The station used to be downtown, but last year they moved it to Malmi which has to be in the top 10 list of most depressing places in Helsinki. »

I bought a copy of Suomesta, rakkaudella a week or two ago when I was cruising through Akateeminen looking for another book. I was surprised to see that both the English and the Finnish versions are included in the same book. The 24 euro cover price was a bit steep, but I was curious and thought I'd give it a try since Herr Schatz isn't much older than I am and moved here almost 20 years ago so I figured he'd have a whole host of amusing vignettes for those of us who are still rather new to Finland. I must admit that I was disappointed by the book mostly because it's a fairly brief collection of essays on well trodden topics without much depth, the opposite of what I was expecting to find. I also must have been reading too much Tom Wolfe, Neal Stephenson and Joe Queenan recently as I found the English a bit too straightforward and plain.

I'm not sure who the audience for the book is as it likely will only be sold in Finland and I don't think too many Finns are going to be so curious about what a foreigner thinks of Finland to pay 24 euro for a small paperback book that covers the usual topics and can be read in about 20 minutes while hanging around the stacks. Some of the new arrivals to Finland may be tempted, but the sarcasm in much of the writing is really only appreciated after they have been here for a year or more. And those of us who have been here long enough to appreciate the humour have already been there, done that.

I suppose that I was hoping for a personal narrative or collection of stories about the author's own experiences from being an expat in Finland for two decades instead of something more closely resembling a travel brochure for the long-term tourist. After the meltdown of the expat bulletin board which I dubbed the wailing wall, where commiseration in our collective alien condition was very rare, I had optimistically anticipated something different that might mix much of the personal struggle of being a foreigner in this country with a bit of humourous observations and anecdotes to lend a genuine and intimate picture of what it is to actually live here rather than cover the usual tedious bits about sisu, sauna and santa. Leaving the land you once called home for another, no matter what the reason, is rarely just a 'change of scenery' and far more than just moving house, finding out where they sell the peanut butter and learning the local clichés. Vera has been here nearly 10 years and I enjoy her frank and honest tales about the Finnish condition. It's easy to be isolated here well beyond what you might expect when moving to a strange land and a book full of breezy humour is not quite up to the task of bridging that chasm.

In spite of my disappointment, the author has some very good advice, primarily that if foreigners intend to stay in Finland they should learn the language or be forever a tourist in their own home. Sadly, I don't think those who need that particular clue the most will be reading his book. The book also has a talented illustrator, Maarika Autio, whose stylized pen and ink drawings add a bit of comic relief to the text. There is one essay where Schatz lists ten bits of survival advice to the new arrivals and one bit piqued my curiosity enough to go around asking people to count to five on a hand.

Learn to eat ice-cream in winter. Learn to speak while breathing in. When counting with your fingers, start with the little one [pinky].

Not one of my victims started with the pinky, except Jarkko, so I'm wondering if this is a trait of the over-30-something set as most of the people at work are a bit younger than Jarkko. Perhaps it was taught only in schools in the late 60s in some parts of the country? It's weird and obscure oddities like this that I find interesting.

There is one thing I will not forgive Herr Schatz for and that is contained in the description of how to make Carelian Pies:

Wrinkle the edges of each pie to make it look like an aging Carelian vagina.

Jarkko wondered if he had heard of some colourful Finnish joke that also makes this association and after 20 years I suspect he has even though the Finnish half of the book doesn't mention it. You know, I used to love those little warm pies, but now all I can think about when I see them in the bakery is a gunky vagina in desperate need of some Vagisil™. Erk.

permalink Ω 24 February 2005, Helsinki

Get the Beergoggles

« Viking Line: March is Mediterranean month. Start drinking now and maybe by April this woman will look good. »

Viking Cruise Line has put up pole banners around town with this 'Mediterranean' woman to advertise that March on their cruise ships will feature Mediterranean wines and food. I would guess that they used the ugliest stock photo they could find to make the ad memorable as I can't figure that the picture was used to attract guys thinking about hot, sexy Italian chicks. It's an ad that really deserves a good tagline....

• Beer! Making ugly people look good for as long as we can remember!
• Stop drinking when this woman starts to look good.
• This is your hangover on Greek wine.
• Mamma Mia!
• We brought back all the good wine and food, but left Mamma in Italy.
• Did we take a left turn at Germany?!
• Is that a moustache...?

I'm too cold to be amusing today as the price of seeing the glowing orb low in the sky is clear skies which radiate off all the heat leaving us with -16C. An hour or more of Otava taking me for a walk to the park is a bit cold. He doesn't seem to notice the frigid temperatures or my teeth chittering away at all. *brrrrr* I'd wish for warm weather but since it's at least four months away, I'll just wish for hot rum drinks instead.

permalink Ω 22 February 2005, Helsinki

Winter Apples

« Omenanyytti or Omenamunkki or Baked Apple Dumpling or Inside Out Apple Pie »

I noticed a recipe for omenamunkit in Kotiliesi [2005, no. 4, pg. 59] and it reminded me of the baked apples my mother used to make every autumn after we would return from picking apples in a nearby orchard. The filling was different as my mother would always include brown sugar, walnuts and butter and the idea of baking it with a dough crust like a dumpling sounded tasty, sort of like an inside out apple pie. I consulted Cook's Illustrated to see their recipe for baked apples and they had the brilliant idea of using a melon baller to core the apple which I can attest does an absolutely perfect job of removing the seeds without punching through the bottom of the apple. They also found the Golden Delicious apple to be the best apple for this recipe.

I found that the skin should be removed from the apple if baking with the dough crust since it remains tough after baking and makes the end result difficult to eat. The skin should be left intact, save for a strip around the stem end of the apple, if baked without the crust. I pre-baked one batch of apples and added the dough crust after 30 minutes of baking since I thought that the dough would bake far more quickly than the apple would, but the apple came out mushy, the skin was tough and the dough was undercooked.

The frozen/ready-made pastry dough [voitaikina] was rubbery, difficult to work with and not very tasty so I cannot recommend using it at all. I made a fresh batch of dough and will note that refrigerating the dough before rolling it out is necessary. A silicone mat to roll the dough on is useful, too, since the dough is difficult to work with and the mat allows you to maneuver the apple and the dough together. The recipe describes applying the dough to the apple 'as if making a snowball' and it is an accurate description. Once you drape the dough over the apple you can then pack it around to enclose the apple and smooth it out by rolling it over the mat or another flat surface.

Select apples carefully as bigger isn't better and the apple should be able to stand erect on a flat surface. If baking without the crust, you should choose apples with unblemished skins as well.

Baked Apple Dumplings/Omenamunkit/Omenanyytit

Serves 6
Time: about 90 minutes
Special tools: mellon baller

• 6 medium Golden Delicious apples (about 2 pounds/1 kg)

Filling:

• 1 dl or 1/2 cup dark raisins 
• 3/4 dl or 1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
• 1dl or 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 4 teaspoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon or more to taste
• 2 teaspoons freshly shredded or powdered ginger

Basting:

• 1 cup pure apple juice/cider (preferably unfiltered) or enough to come up 1/2 inch up side of pan

1. Prepare dough and place in refrigerator to chill. Heat oven to 350F/175C degrees.
2. Core apples using a melon baller taking care not to puncture the bottom of the apple. If you are planning to eat the apples without the dough crust, remove one strip of the peel from the stem end otherwise remove the entire peel.
3. Place apples in 9-inch pie pan or 8-inch-square baking pan. Mix raisins, walnuts, cinnamon, brown sugar, ginger and butter together and divide the mixture among the apples, stuffing their cores. Skip to the dough section if baking apples with the crust.
4. Sprinkle cinnamon over the apples. Pour cider into pan.
5. Bake apples, basting every 15 minutes, until tender when pierced with thin, sharp knife or cake tester, 35 to 45 minutes. Be careful not to overbake, or skins will split, causing apples to lose their shape. Serve warm. (Can be cooled to room temperature, covered, and refrigerated for 2 days. Reheat before serving.)

Dough:

• 120g or 1 stick butter
• 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 Tablespoons freshly shredded ginger (optional)
• 3 dl or 1 1/3 cup wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Topping:

• confectioners sugar

1. Cream butter and sugar together. Add egg and mix well.
2. Add ginger.
3. Combine baking powder and wheat flour and mix into dough. Mix until smooth and place into refrigerator to chill while you are preparing the apples.
4. After you have prepared and filled the apples, briefly knead the dough and divide the dough into six parts. Roll each portion out into an oval large enough, wrap around each apple and pat as if making a snowball until the dough encloses the apple.
5. Bake at 175C/350F for about 40 minutes or until crust is golden brown.
6. Top with sifted confectioners sugar and serve warm with a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream.

permalink Ω 21 February 2005, Helsinki

Sweaty. Naked. Drunk.

« One of the less animated creatures at the zoo. »

Sitting the bus yesterday morning, I was trying to get 10 more minutes of sleep before work when the bus came to a stop and I could hear the driver's radio playing Sade's Your Love is King which then segued into a Boy George song. It's strange how music from the early 80s, when I was in university, remains so vivid and how it evokes not just the memory of what I was doing back then, but the feeling as well. I had a terrifying rush of nostalgia and that heady feeling of a life filled with possibilities ahead of me. And then grim reality crushed the reverie and I realised I was on a noisy bus in the middle of cold, dark winter in a strange country heading to work at an hour well before I would have ever gone to classes and thought that not even in my most hallucinogenic moments would I have ever imagined that I would find myself here. Life is always full of unexpected surprises.

Penkkarit was yesterday and had I not been feeling so tired and crappy from the flu I would have gone down to Kaivopuisto with a 12-pack of Karhu and my camera and taken photos of the kids having a great time. My colleagues at work wondered if I would actually be able to get a ride on one of the trucks, but with a bunch of beer I'd probably have my choice of trucks to hitch a ride on. Next year. :)

We also had a 'drink all the booze so we don't have to move it to the new building' party yesterday evening in an underground entertainment suite at the office which closely resembled a very well equipped Finnish apocalyptic bunker - lots of beer, sauna and disco. I contemplated the option of going to the sauna with my female colleagues, as it was part of the festivities, but I thought that if getting totally drunk with coworkers is best avoided [something I've learned the hard way a few times :)], then getting drunk and naked is totally off the charts. Of course, getting blasted, naked and sweaty with colleagues is a cherished tradition in Finland. It may be a few years before I acculturate that particular bit.

Deep thought for the day - if corporations can outsource labour then why not outsource meetings as well? And buddhabrot is one of the coolest mandelbrot applications ever.

permalink Ω 18 February 2005, Helsinki

Killing Klaus

« The Dipoli pinecone at HUT. »

This week has been a haze of still feeling crappy from the flu, tired from not getting enough sleep, and frustration with computers that still haven't made me and my kind obsolete yet. Where is my Star Trek future? Who the hell cares about teleportation when we're still using metal tape.

For those who have been wanting to come visit Otava, my apologies for not being more organized. I'll plan something this weekend for date in the near future.

And, since the story about the Estonian TV ads from the 80s the Sanomat ran the Sunday before last has made the rounds on the net this week...someone at work posted a German safety film parody done by a film student that I have dubbed, They killed Klaus! [~9mins/5mb]. It helps if you understand German, but I was laughing so hard I couldn't hear most of the dialogue anyway.

permalink Ω 17 February 2005, Helsinki

Caring and Sharing

« A red heart lamp with a mirror reflects a heart-shaped pool of light through the window and out onto the sidewalk. »

Love is: Giving your loved ones your cold/flu/plague so that you can be miserable together all weekend long. Even Otava seems a bit under the weather.

permalink Ω 14 February 2005, Helsinki

Green Cuisine

« There is a point where comic book frames and life merge. :) »

How is it that the puppy who turns up his nose at his bowl of gourmet kibble is the same puppy who finds a frozen green turd in the park absolutely irresistible? Is it the equivalent to a big sack of candy to kids? Mmmm....crunchy green turds.

permalink Ω 13 February 2005, Helsinki

Nasal Leakage

« An empty coatrack at the end of the evening. The chewing gum stuck to one leg is a nice touch. »

How do you explain to a puppy that you are not personally responsible for the snow melting into a hard and icy substance that he can no longer dive into and it refuses to give when he somersaults himself to the ground and rolls trying to get it to submit? It's awfully adorable as he wriggles around and yaps at the hard snow that denies him fluffy satisfaction. Gale-force winds deposited very wet, fresh snow that he was ecstatic to run around in last night only to find it gone this morning. He seemed quite pouty about the snow being replaced by the grit soup on the sidewalk that we should normally be spared from until April when everything thaws. He was momentarily cheered when he discovered that the pigeons will fly if he runs towards them which he then repeated several times, each time watching them swirl around and land.

We have lost the battle for Mt. Largess as I was too tired to tell him "no" and gently push him away from the sofa for the 50th time Thursday night when he got onto the sofa and came to snuggle up to me. I was in a bit of a mood which vanished as soon as he flopped his head down on my lap and sighed. Of course, this won't be so cute when he's 80 kilos, but he likely won't fit on the sofa when he's that size. Saints don't make very good lap dogs unless you've got a leviathan lap. After a while he got too hot, rolled over and began grunting and trying to make himself comfortable which was awfully adorable as well. Hurrah for sofas with durable, removable and washable coverings. We'll likely go buy him some sort of bed for him and a throw for the sofa.

I stayed at home sick today as I have been fighting a cold for a week or two and finally succumbed. I really do find it tremendously irritating that you can't buy OTC remedies for colds and flu at the local grocery and instead have to find the not-so-nearby pharmacy which makes it terribly unlikely that you're going tromp down there just for some advil. I was sleeping soundly until a certain wet nose was shoved into my face about 1pm to remind me that there was a walk outdoors in my near future. Fortunately, there were puppies in the dog park to wear him out as I didn't have the energy.

It was Fat Tuesday this week and I forgot that I had wanted to explain how English is used to describe the foods that glisten and taste good as I flinch each and every time someone uses the world 'grease' to describe most of the good stuff in food. I don't know if it is a result of the US demonizing foods high in fat or just that grease makes me think of motor oil, but someone asking me if I'd like more grease on my bread remains something of a jolt. English has a lot of different words to describe oleaginous foods but grease is not one of them as it's horribly unappetizing.

English doesn't have any rules that I'm aware of that demand, suggest or even hint at the use of the various words used to describe the oily substances found in food. Grease is never used to describe an ingredient in food, no matter how accurate it might be. Foods can be greasy, "That pizza is really greasy.", or grease can be a by-product of the cooking of meats [a.k.a. rendered] usually in the form of a layer on top of the food that needs to be skimmed off but 'fat' is often preferred even in this context, "Skim the layer of fat off of the soup and simmer for 40 minutes." You can also grease the baking pans with butter before baking. Grease conjures the image of motor oil, lubricants, grease monkeys and lardy french fries. And Olestra. If you aren't familiar with Olestra, it's a fake fat that carries the warning "May cause anal leakage" on the bags of potato chips that are fried in it which means that you can eat them, but just don't sneeze or cough for a day or two afterwards. I once tried isolating Olestra by grinding up some chips at home and adding water. The substance I found was similar to 90W oil that is used for packing wheel bearings and it took quite a bit of acetone to clean the mortar and pestle. That's grease. I have noticed that many recipes in Finland use 'rasva' instead of 'voi' or 'magariini' or other fats so this might account for the strong preference for grease in English.

Butter, margarine, and various oils, such as olive oil, collectively fall into the fats and oils group on the FDA Food Pyramid. All fats and oils are comprised of fatty acids, not greasy acids, which determine the behaviour of the fats. The more saturated the fat, the more solid it is at room temperature, like butter and lard. These are very greasy substances and yet we refer to them as butter, lard, oils or fats. Margarine is a hydrogenated unsaturated vegetable oil which makes it a saturated fat, a.k.a. trans fatty acid, and as bad for you as butter is only without the taste. In the US there are plenty of marketing slogans that extol the benefits of polyunsaturated fats or, my favourite, Omega-3 fatty acids as though any but a very small percentage of the population knows what they are. Even the DINKs who drink Evian, eat only organic foods and forget that Linda McCartney was a health nut vegetarian who died young, rarely have any idea what these fatty acids are and why they're supposed to be so good for you. Hell, even dog food claims to contain the Omega-3 fatty acids anymore when good old lard or canola oil used to be just fine. I love how bags of candy boast, "A 100% Fat-free treat for the whole family!", as though they had been exorcised of all things bad for you just by leaving out the fat. So, the more I think about why grease is such a taboo, unsavoury word in a food context, the more I think it may be a product of decades of marketing effecting the language and public perception rather than any real reason.

permalink Ω 12 February 2005, Helsinki

Fat Buns

« Laskiaispulla, the traditional pastry during Shrovetide. If you don't have fat buns before you eat one of these, you will. »

Try the 'new and improved' version of this entry.

No, I'm not becoming the Martha Stewart of the North, but after inflicting my coworkers with the runeberg cakes last week, one of them mentioned the laskiaispulla and I thought I'd give them a try since I've not made bread in a while. There is the bonus of having people at work to give the bulk of the treats to since they're native taste testers and fattening them up makes me look thinner. :) Also, Laskiainen/Shrovetide is a Finnish holiday a recovering Catholic can love since the Finns wisely rid themselves of the papal plague but kept the foods and parties. What's not to love? I saw a bunch of skaters and people careening down the very icy hills today when I took Otava to the park. The kids are just warming up for Penkkarit. :)

Working in the kitchen also seems to make Otava happy as he will lie on my feet as I'm working instead of being the petulant ball of fur he usually is when I try to sit on the couch for five minutes in the evening. I've not answered email that requires more than one or two sentences in a week or two since I am usually too worn out, if I get the time. I have conversations I can't remember an hour later or lose my train of thought in mid-sentence when talking. I've been meaning to send out invites for a puppy party, but find myself staring at a blank email trying to remember what I was going to write and who I was going to write it to. I am the wakeful dead.

Baking doesn't really require much in the way of deep thoughts so it is a perfect activity. So, again, I returned to my copy of Kotiruoka and, rather insanely, decided to try making the buns around 11pm on Sunday after we had spent the afternoon taking Otava to Suomenlinna and riding the tram around town where a group of people offered us, and Otava, some pulla. Otava declined.

The recipe for pulla in Kotiruoka reads much like something your grandmother might have written down at some point, if she ever bothered to use a recipe for making it, so it assumes a lot and leaves out a lot. There was one word, kermamaito (creammilk) that no one I asked seemed to have an authoritative translation for so I settled on whole milk [it is actually a mixture of half whole milk and half cream, a.k.a. Half&Half in the US]. I had one batch of buns that tasted good but didn't rise because I read the recipe, but forgot how fussy yeast bread doughs can be and how they will not be rushed. The dough is easy to make but requires time and patience as well as some precision.

I've reworded many parts of the recipe as well as made some parts more clear and moved the addition of the butter from the kneading stage to melting it with the milk soup for the yeast. I also halved the recipe since the laskiaispulla recipe asked for half of the dough from the recipe and the original made enough pulla for a small regiment. If you have fifty friends you need to feed, use the measures in the ()'s. Also, the amount of flour is a little on the low side and is closer to about 5 cups before the dough comes together. I was a bit worried that so much more flour than the recipe called for might make them chewy but I sifted the flour a little at a time into the dough so it wasn't likely that I had overdone it. Everyone seemed to eat them and, I think, they were better received than my runeberg experiment. :)

One caveat is that the almond paste filling is 2000 times more almondy than marzipan and is not for the almond averse. It's like a 200 pound almond infusing your entire body with its taste and smell. The jam variety is popular, if not traditional, for those who aren't all that keen on the almond paste.

Arkivehnänen (pulla) Everyday bread

Makes: 12 to 24 buns (24 to 50 buns)
Preparation time: approximately 3 hours
Source: Kotiruoka

• 2.5dl or 1 cup (5dl or 2c) whole milk
• 75g or 3/4 stick (1.5 sticks or 3/4 cup) butter
• 25g yeast cake, .88oz or 1 packet of instant yeast (50g | 1.75 oz)
• 1 (2) eggs
• .75dl-1dl or 1/3-1/2 cup (1.5-2 dl | 3/4-1 cup) sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons (1 tablespoon) cardamom
• 3/4-1 teaspoon (1.5-2) teaspoons salt
• about .5kg [7.5-8dl] or 3.25-3.5 cups (1kg [15-16dl] or 6.5-7cups) wheat flour

1. Take the ingredients needed for the dough and bring them to room temperature before starting so that they will not chill the yeast.
2. Heat milk and butter in a saucepan on a warm, but not hot, burner. Whisk until butter has melted and the mixture is brought to 100F/38C. Crumble the yeast into the milk. Stir with a whisk until the yeast has fully dissolved.
3. Add egg[s], sugar, salt and cardamom, mixing well.

4. Add flour after first whisking the mixture, then knead by hand. Leave some of the flour unused at this point and add only if needed after the dough has risen. You will know the right amount of flour by feel. Add flour slowly, with a sifter if you have one, as the dough will go from sticky to smooth very quickly when the right amount of flour has been reached. Resist the urge to add too much flour as this will result in a dry, dense bun.

   **If you want to prepare the dough with a mixer, use less flour than when doing it manually. Knead to dough only for 2 to 3 minutes so that the elasticity stays.

5. Cover the dough with plastic wrap or tin foil and place in a warm, draft-free spot to allow the dough to double in volume. This will take about 1 hour. Warm oven to 85F/35C to use as a proofing box or use the microwave by placing the covered dough inside with a cup of boiling water.
6. When the dough has doubled, remove from the proofing box, and knead for a few minutes. Roll the dough into small buns, about the size of an egg. The dough makes about 15-24 small buns or two braids.
7. Place the small buns onto lightly greased pans, cover with a towel and place in the oven/microwave and allow them to rise again for another 20 minutes or so. Remove from the oven, and place them on the counter while they are still covered. Pre-heat the oven to 225C/425F.
8. Brush the whole top side of the raised buns [for even browning] with a whisked egg white and sprinkle with sliced almonds, powdered almonds, or pearl sugar. You may leave them plain and dust with confectioners sugar after baking or filling with cream.
9. Bake small buns in the middle rack of the oven at 225C/425F for ten minutes and braids at the bottom of the oven in 200/395C for 20 to 25 minutes. The buns go from light brown to very brown in a flash so keep a close watch on them while they are baking.
10. Place buns on a cooling rack and cover with a towel.

Laskiaispullat or Lenten/Shrovetide Buns

Filling:

• 150g | 3/4 cup almond paste (not marzipan) (or 1dl ground almonds and 1dl confectioners sugar)
• about 1dl | 1/2 cup whole milk or half&half

or

• raspberry [or another berry] jam

and

• 2.5dl | 2 cups whipping cream
• vanilla or vanilla sugar

Decoration:

• confectioners sugar if not baked with sliced almonds or pearl sugar

1. Place cream [container] into a bowl filled with ice and put into the fridge to chill while making the almond filling. It's also a good idea to chill the mixing bowl as well.
2. Using a sharp knife, slice a "lid" from the buns. Gently scoop a little bit of the bun from inside with a spoon and crumble into a bowl. Mix in either the crushed almond and sugar or the almond paste. Add whole milk and mix into a smooth paste. Chill the paste to make it easier to work with and spoon the paste into the buns. You may also fill the buns with raspberry jam.
3. Pour the chilled cream into the mixing bowl, add a few drops of vanilla or vanilla sugar to taste, and mix on high for about one minute until you have a firm peaks. Do not beat too long unless you want to fill the buns with butter. :) Using a pastry bag or spoon, fill the buns with cream and replace the 'lid'.
4. Sift a bit of confectioners sugar on top if you like. Serve in a bowl with hot milk and a spoon or with coffee.

permalink Ω 9 February 2005, Helsinki

Big Foot

« On the first night we had Otava, we were walking down the street and saw that someone had drawn a giant paw in the snow on a manhole cover. Perhaps it was a warning to small dog owners that a sasquatch, a.k.a. bigfoot, lives nearby. :) »

You know you've become a neighbourhood legend of sorts when kids you've never seen before come by the dog park on the way home and ask if the adorable furball is named Otava. He's something of a curiosity since there are so few Saints in Finland which is odd when there are so many Bernese [closely related to Saints] and Pulivari, the Saint in Aku Ankka. Some of the older kids, and adults, remember HB and start to ask if I'm the one with the other Saint and realise mid-sentence that they've not seen him for many months. He loves kids and trots up to them almost without exception and licks at their hands. Loud noises, especially the snow trucks and plows, still frighten him but I don't blame him as I'm not very fond of them myself. He has adjusted well enough now that I think it's time to have friends over to meet him finally as everyone wants to see how adorable he is at four months.

His personality is starting to manifest itself already. He's a climber. He cannot get enough of going up and down the hills in the park or diving into the big drifts of snow. The sofa has presented itself as his own personal Mt. Everest which he attempts to conquer each and every evening. Yesterday afternoon, I hid behind the door to the living room, to let him try it just once as he appeared to be looking for something in the cushions whenever he tried to scale Mt. Largesse. Through the crack between the door and the wall, I watched him wriggle his way up to the top, sniff a little, survey his domain and flop down into the cushions while letting out this loud, satisfied sigh. I suppressed the urge to laugh and walked into the room and pulled him off of the sofa. I fully expect that someday, when he's older and has full run of the house, I'll come home to find him on the sofa drinking beer, eating pizza, and surfing for porn on my laptop.

We are also convinced that he was a woodchuck in a former life since his lust for wood and paper of any kind continues; Books, paper towels, tissues, newspapers, trees/saplings and anything else containing trace amounts of wood pulp. He has not as yet figured out that the furniture is loaded with this magical tasty substance. He's housetrained, he knows how to sit, he knows how to come when called, but the cunning doesn't extend to getting the clue that all the furniture is made of wood. Of course, as soon as I utter these words he'll devour the entire dining room table in an afternoon. Well, I've always thought furniture was rather bourgeois anyway.

He is, perhaps, one of the most affectionate and well behaved puppies I've ever known. Aside from the occasional excited barking before meals, his fixation with the sofa and being reluctant to leave the house and/or the park [though he is improving], he's very attentive and happy. I happened to see a beef kidney at the market yesterday when I was out shopping and bought it since it was only a euro. I chopped it up, cooked it with some carrots and rice and gave him a bit of it with his dinner. I don't know that I've seen such a happy and contented puppy give such a look of utter love and devotion before. I think that he has decided to keep us. :)

permalink Ω 6 February 2005, Helsinki

Bullets of Butter

« Runebergintortut / Runeberg cakes »

( See also the 2006 Runeberg Cake update where I try again and manage to make some pretty decent cakes.)

February 5th is Runebergin Päivä and every year little bullet cakes topped with jam and rings of icing start appearing a few weeks after the Christmas holidays are over to commemorate the the national poet [who wrote in Swedish] J.L. Runeberg [Lovely website. Requires Flash]. I had never tried the cakes because I'm not particularly fond of cavity inducing sweets and Jarkko had warned me off of them. On a whim I bought a package of them at the grocery one evening and tried one for the hell of it and found it to be not too horribly sweet and rather tasty in spite of the handicap of being mass produced and subsequently a bit on the dry side.

So, I consulted my copy of Kotiruoka and was intrigued by the use of bread and cookie crumbs in the recipe. I looked at other recipes for the cakes and found them suspect by comparison due to many of them using margarine instead of butter. Unless you have serious dietary requirements which bar you from enjoying butter occasionally, any recipe for a confection that calls for synthetic fats [exception for pie crust and pastry dough] should be held suspect since they are not the same as butter and, given I'm a chemist, I consider them to be far worse for you than butter when used in moderation. Many of the recipes also omitted the gingerbread cookie and bread crumbs or tried to tart up the recipe with various other ingredients. The Kotiruoka recipes are decidedly not fancy, very traditional and trustworthy recipes. Considering just how far off the English versions are from the original Finnish recipes, it's a pity there isn't an English translation for the bible of Finnish cooking. I made four different variations, including the original and had a few willing victims taste them and pick the one they liked the best.

The Problem: Runeberg cakes are a traditional confection for Runberg's Day on 5 February in Finland. They are generally regarded to be either too dry or too sweet when rum or liqueurs are added to moisten them.

The Goal: To make a traditional Runeberg cake that is not quite so dry without resorting to adding liqueurs for moisture.

The Solution: Part of the dryness problem stems from the fact that most people rely on bakeries to provide the cakes and, especially if they are purchased in the grocery, they dry out fairly quickly in the winter air if not sealed well. The combination of bread crumbs and gingerbread cookie crumbs also soak up much of the available moisture. I went back to the classic recipe in Kotiruoka and found that it calls for jam topping before and after baking which most of the other recipes and the bakeries don't do. The jam supplies a bit of extra moisture during baking. I also added a bit of fruit juice to complement the jam of choice and to add a bit more moisture without making them soggy.

Runebergintortut - Runeberg Cakes

Makes: 12 regular or 8 large bullet-shaped cakes
Preparation time: approximately 1 hour
Special Equipment: Runeberg forms or straight-edged muffin pan [ dimensions: 5.7cm/2.3in wide and 5.5cm/2in deep ]
Source: Kotiruoka, pg. 411

Ingredients

• 150g | 1.5 sticks butter
• 1.5 dl | 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 dl | 1/2 cup ground or finely chopped almonds
• 1.5 dl | 3/4 cup wheat flour
• 1.5 dl | 3/4 cup bread crumbs [korppujauhetta] (optional: substitute 1/4 cup gingerbread cookie crumbs)
• 1 tl | 1 teaspoon baking powder
• .5 dl | 1/4 cup cream
• 2 tablespoons orange juice (optional)

Decoration

• raspberry jam or marmalade
• 1 dl | 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
• about 1/2 tablespoon water

Apple-walnut variation

Substitute full fruit apple jam [chunky] in place of the raspberry, apple juice for the orange juice and use finely chopped walnuts instead of almonds.

1. Mix dry ingredients [ flour, bread crumbs, gingerbread crumbs (if used), baking powder ] together and set aside. Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well. Add cream and dry ingredients. Stir vigorously until smooth and thick. Fold in nuts.
2. Pour the batter into muffin cups or greased popover/straight-edged baking pans. Fill the cups 2/3 full [about 1/3 cup]. Press floured fingers into the batter to create a divot in the top and fill with raspberry or apple jam.
3. Bake in an oven pre-heated to 395F/200C for about 15 minutes. Remove the forms/remove from the pan and decorate the cakes when cool. Add more raspberry jam to the top of the cake. Mix the confectioner's sugar with water until it becomes a thick paste. Pour or pipe the icing into rings around the jam.
4. If gingerbread crumbs are used in the batter, you can spice it up with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of cloves.

The classic shape of the cakes are squat and bullet-like from the straight-edged forms [5.7cm/2.3in wide and 5.5cm/2in deep] but those less fussy about how they look may use a muffin pan with paper cups, bake-proof ceramic coffee cups/small souffle cups or even small tomato paste cans [they're smooth] with the bottom removed. Finding these special forms locally in the country where they are traditional at this time of year is surprisingly difficult. I did eventually find them at Stockmann for 2.50 euro/ea. Apparently few bother with making their own or making them with the forms. Outside of Finland/the Nordic region, the closest ready-made pan is the Nordic Ware Crown Muffin Pan. The advantage the forms have over the muffin/popover pan is that they lift off of the cakes instead of having to tease them out of the muffin pan, 6 at a time, without mangling them. If using the muffin pan, allow extra time to cool since they are a bit more fragile when they are warm.

Creaming the butter and sugar together and then adding in the eggs is, perhaps, the most important step in this recipe. I reluctantly purchased one of those Braun hand held mixers last year and have rarely used my standing mixer since. It's perfect for this job as the purpose of creaming the butter and sugar together is to get a bit of air into the mixture. The original recipe doesn't state how much of the gingerbread cookie crumbs to use but I found a 1:3 ratio of cookie to bread crumbs to be the best. After adding in the dry ingredients you will have a thick, porridge-like batter that won't ooze out from beneath the cake forms. Add the fruit juice last.

Grease the pan and forms well and pour about 1/3 cup of batter into each form. Press the batter into the form with a moist spatula and smooth the top and edges since the batter retains much of the shape after baking and it will look ragged if not smoothed out before. Place a small blob of jam on top of the batter in each cup. The directions in the original recipe call for using floured fingers to make a depression for the jam, but I didn't find that this worked very well and used a wet spoon with some success or just shoved the spoon with jam into the batter without bothering to make a divot first. I found the latter to work better since the jam didn't bubble up quite as much during baking. Once they're done baking and have cooled, decorate and eat. The cakes do travel well if packed properly and I will note that the square clear plastic boxes that some of the butter cookies are sold in [in Finland] will hold 9 cakes perfectly.

My attentive assistant and discriminating taste-tester seemed to prefer the cakes where I used the gingerbread cookie crumbs from the original recipe version although claimed that the batch I made without gingerbread but with added orange peel and orange juice tasted 'more like the Fazer' version of the cakes. I subjected 8 test subjects at work to a blind tasting with 4 samples; 3 of mine and one from a Fazer control. Again, the gingerbread cookie crumb variety was popular as was the apple variation. Interestingly, several picked the Fazer control which may be due to baseline normal for this annual traditional cake as they liked the variations very much as well. The apple variety could also be good to make all year as it's not so closely associated with Runeberg's day.

permalink Ω 4 February 2005, Helsinki

Ultra-wide

« Jarkko and Otava survey the snowy park vista. A gallery filled with 15mm of puppy and crane porn. »

After about a year of reading reviews and trying to find one locally, I succumbed to my lust for a Voigtlander 15mm/f4.5 Aspherical Super-Wide Heliar lens and ordered one day when I was feeling particularly weak. I ordered it from a shop in California since the only one I could find here was twice the price, used, and came with a camera I didn't really need or want. The only downside is that it's not coupled to the rangefinder so you have to guesstimate the focal distance, but the depth of field makes up for a lack of distance precision. It has a 110° field of view, weighs a mere 4oz, a 30.7mm profile and can focus as close as .3m. The lens arrived a few weeks ago but I hadn't had time to try it out. Saturday, I thought it would be nice to take a few pictures of Otava to see what it could do. The lack of distortion and only mild vignetting is pretty impressive for such a wide and inexpensive lens. [as an aside, anyone who has a Leica and wants a $300 lens from a company who knows how to ship to the EU *wink*wink* drop me a line.]

As a followup to the aging population of Helsinki there is a story about the population explosion of weiner dogs in Finland. They are definitely popular in my neighbourhood with little old ladies in fur hats where the weiner dog quantum number is two, sometimes even three. There are quite a few puppies between 6 and 12 months in the park these days, many of them aren't very well behaved regardless of size. More than a few owners have mentioned that their older puppies still aren't housebroken which seems totally abnormal. Otava has been a week already without an accident. Maybe there needs to be an rise in puppy training classes.

The Sanomat had a wacky article about an archive of 1980s Estonian TV commercials. The "Kanahakkliha" spot is clearly the predecessor of the "Syökää Kana!" commercials from last year. It will take another year to get the freaky chant from that out of my head. HAKK HAKK HAKK LIHA LIHA LIHA.....

permalink Ω 2 February 2005, Helsinki