Order a Bannugaggu Today!

« Otava on the rocks of the southernmost island of Suomenlinna. »

I finally got around to developing, scanning and putting together a small gallery of the "Hanoi Rocks, Stocmann Shakes!" photos and, since Arabella gave me a bonus flickr pro account and made me promise to use it, I'm going to try to put a few completely random photos on my flickr photostream and see if I get bored with it or not.

And the treat of the day was picking up the April issue of Living which had a feature on pancakes that included a mention about pannukakku which is quoted below. What I didn't expect was the last sentence which made me giggle for about 20 minutes as I imagined throngs of American housewives visiting Helsinki on a Baltic cruise and ordering a 'bannugaggu' while trying to impress their friends with their grasp of Finnish food imparted to them by Martha. Walking home I kept trying to say it and figure out how they came to the conclusion that this was the way it was supposed to be pronounced. It's fun to say bannugaggu, but it sounds like a baby talk or someone with a severe head cold. I suppose there are benefits to being so easily entertained. Perhaps someone was just slipping a joke by the unwitting editors. The recipe looked reasonable, though I'm not sure how the pannukakku in the picture achieved the puff without any leavening agents at all.

Pannukakku - From Finland

Unlike most pancakes, this cardamom-scented version (above) hailing from Finland is baked rather than fried or grilled, giving it a soft, puffed-up interior and a delicately crisp crust. It's particularly versatile: For breakfast, it's delectable with lingonberry jam (or cloudberry, if you can find it); for a more savory, late-day meal, try it with the traditional accompaniment of yellow-split-pea soup. By the way, if you happen to be in Finland and want to order this pancake, the name is pronounced "bannugaggu."

Since one gentle reader wrote to me and, much to my amazement, thought that pannukakku could be easily heard as bannugaggu, I had Jarkko pronounce both pannukakku and bannugaggu to perhaps help illustrate the distinct difference. The p and the b are possible to mistake, but the double-g and the double-k are unmistakably distinct.