Warm cowpies

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It's Easter weekend and the weather has been fabulously warm and living up to the holiday's origin of being a celebration of spring before it was appropriated by the various organised religions [I remain ever puzzled why the faithful rarely wonder why all the major holidays coincide with equinoxes or solstices]. I've not been out to enjoy it as much as I might have liked as I've been busy cleaning the house, doing laundry and making kulitsa and pasha which are traditional Easter artery clogging delicacies from Eastern Finland. The kulitsa was dense and the pasha was a soft blob instead of the firm cone that I was aiming for. They tasted good, but I think I'll still be digesting them a week from now. If I live that long. *thunk*

I've been wanting to make mämmi, an Easter food from Southwestern Finland, for the past two years but haven't gotten around to it yet. The HS had an article this past week about a Tunisian guy who founded the Suomen Mämmiseura. I've definitely got to go see the mämmi eating championships next year.

Naturally the founder of Suomen Mämmiseura was also the jury chairman at the World Mämmi-Eating Championships held last weekend in a shopping mall in Toijala, a town between Hämeenlinna and Tampere.

Toijala is also incidentally home to "the world's largest mämmi factory", as you may learn if you see the product in the Finnish shops this week. Annual consumption runs to about 2 million kilos and the Toijala plant turns out around 3.5 million packets of the dessert to stores and kitchens.   

There were two competition categories: the "Camping" series and the "Salon" series. In each case the competitors had to eat two decilitres of mämmi in a manner that appealed to the panel of judges.

"In a civilised fashion!" stresses Ladarsi.

And if there is a book only about salmiakki, surely there is room for a book about mämmi. I'd certainly buy a copy or two. :) The HS also had an article about a mämmi making course along with a recipe that doesn't include molassas since it is considered 'cheating' to sweeten it that way. I'll try it next year....maybe. :)

This becomes mämmi

Ancient traditional delicacy was made in steaming pots helped by oven brooms

by Anna Paljakka of the Helsingin Sanomat

Greetings from a mämmi course!

The ten litre cast iron pot has never, as far as it is known, been used for anything else than cooking mämmi.

As soon as a dash of boiling water has been poured to the (bottom of the) pot which is then sprinkled with rye flour and malt, the sweet and heady smell of mämmi spreads into the room. However, several hours of work, spread over two days, awaits. The women of old didn't let themselves off easily, not in mämmi making.

We are in a traditional house at the Karjaa Folklore Society, called Antkärrgården. The participants of the mämmi course are from Swedish speaking areas and "memma" has belonged to their lives since childhood.

A wood-burning oven and two pots are being used. Two baking ovens are being preheated for the next day's bake.

Over the past weekend, birch bark pans [tuohiropponen] were made with bark that was removed from birches felled last June. It would have been wise to twist the bark into pans at that time for reasons that will become obvious later.

Can it be true that so little is needed for mämmi? Water, flour, malt, a little bit of salt, dried Seville orange peel, maybe a little bit of fresh orange peel.

"Yes, but it requires work. There is no rushing in mämmi making.", reminds the instructor of the mämmi course, a domestic science teacher, Hagar Johnsson.

The pots are stirred vigorously. "It may simmer but not boil, not even bubble," Johnsson keeps reminding us. Hot water is added carefully and once in a while a small amount of malt and flour is added, which gets swallowed by the brown, hot goo.

After three hours cooking it is time to cover the pots and leave to sweeten overnight. "Only a cheater uses syrup for mämmi.", Johnsson reminds us.

The next morning the pots are still hot, as they should be. Sweetening requires a temperature of about 50 degrees Celsisus, in which the carbohydrates are refined into sugars, Johnsson teaches us.

And stirring continues again. Now the mämmi has to boil properly to thicken.

Then the pots are lifted with iron hooks out to the stairs to cool. Now begins the insane whipping of the mämmi mass, as if exorcizing evil spirits. The idea is to get as much air as possible into the mämmi.

When the pots stop steaming, they are lifted into the snow and the whipping in high strokes goes on and on.

Inside the kitchen it looks like a witch's kitchen. The ovens are swept with a broom which has a tuft of coniferous branches at the end of a stick, much like the brooms of the Easter witches.

The best oven temperature for the success of mämmi is 180 degrees Celsius. Then one can still put one's hand into the oven and the bark pans do not burn.

They do not burn, and the bark that has been drying since the last summer is severely tested, even though the pans have been moistened. Some of the pans break, and the precious mämmi falls to the bottom of the oven. The slightly too hot oven is partly to blame.

After a couple hours of slow baking the mämmi pans are covered with foil. The afterbake is important.

Mämmi is easy to freeze. When fresh it keeps like bread.

The Norwegian Ann Lise Lövli Nilsen has also arrived at the Karjaa mämmi course. She is interested in seeing how the famous mämmi that looks like dung, but apparently tastes delicious, is made.

Lövli Nilsen is told one of the innumerable mämmi jokes, the one where a Finnish Swede named Varma Koskitar received a packet from home. The customs needed only to peek at the box and read the name of the recipient. Everything was fine: the packet said "varma koskitar" ("warm cowpats" in Swedish).

There have been attempts to make mämmi more enticing for strangers by comparing it with dark beer. The ingredients and the taste are the same.

Did you know?

Hefty traditional food

• Mämmi is thought of as western Finland invention, but a sweetened grain porridge already existed in Persia.
• The ancient mämmi porridge has all the properties of a catholic fasting food. It is a nutritious, tasty morsel, and is eaten especially on Good Friday, when even firemaking was forbidden at one time.
• From western Finland the sweet and sour mämmi spread eastwards. The oldest literary mentions of mämmi have been found in the doctoral thesis of Daniel Juslenius, the professor from the Academy of Turku, "Aboa Vetus et nova", during the early 1700s. The Finnish-Latin-Swedish dictionary of Juslenius from 1745 mentions a Finnish delicacy, the mämmi porridge, made out of rye.
• A biblical connection has also been found: the children of Israel left the slavery in Egyt so quickly that they had to grab unleavened bread dough. The Jews celebrate Passover to remember that but, in the far north, the place of unleavened bread has been replaced by a traditional food, the nutritious mämmi.

Basic Mämmi

Makes: about 6 pans

• 5 liters (1.3 gallons) water
• 500g (1.1 pound) malt
• 1.5kg (3.3 pounds) rye flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons powdered Seville orange peel
• (zest of 2 orange peels)

1. Add to 1 liter of boiling water, 1 dl (1/2 cup) rye flour and 1 dl (1/2 cup) of malt. Stir well and be careful not to boil the mixture. Add flour and malt only once an hour. Stir again. Repeat until flour and malt are gone.
2. Cover the pot and leave on the stove or in a warm place for about 12 hours to allow the mixture to sweeten.
3. Add salt, Seville orange zest and, if you like, the zest of 2 orange peels. Bring to a boil and allow it to thicken.
4. Take the pot from the stove and, while cooling the mixture, whip the mämmi.
5. Fill the mämmi boxes half-full.
6. Bake at 180C/355F (electric oven works well) for 1.5-2 hours.
7. Cover the boxes well with baking paper or foil for the afterbake.
8. Serve mämmi with milk or half&half. Taste and add sugar on top if it needs it.