You Can't Take it With You

« A bench on a quiet wayside on Lehtisaari ominously bears the word "CANNOT." »

I stayed at home on Monday with the back-to-school cold that is running around the office lately. I assumed my position on the sofa as I wanted to watch CNN for news of the impending monster cat5 hurricane Katrina. You didn't need to be a meteorologist to look at the satellite photos of the storm to notice that it was one hell of a storm since it was the size of the Gulf of Mexico and the eye was very small which is what distinguishes a strong, well organized storm from a weaker one. Even in my cold-induced fatigue, I couldn't keep from gaping at CNN reporters grasping for news before the storm made landfall and even afterwards when they had yet to realise the full amount of damage. I pondered whether there might be anything that would make me want to stay behind with a big bottle of whisky and wait out the storm as so many seemed to be doing. If I had to evacuate, what would I take with me besides Jarkko and Otava? Well, after thinking about it between commercial breaks and the crazy/stupid CNN dude out on the beach assuming that after getting killed by the hurricane his career will blossom like Wolf Blitzer's after the first Gulf War; the box of important papers and receipts, my backpack with laptop, camera and a few books and maybe a few clothes. Everything else, well, I'm just not that sentimental. You can't take it with you, any way you look at it.

Watching this all unfold on TV is so strange since it is impossible to comprehend the reality of it, even after just barely escaping Hugo (cat4) on St. Croix and seeing the denuded nob of an island left in its wake, as the amount of damage goes well beyond flooded homes and demolished bridges. What I don't understand is why a city that shares much with such places as Amsterdam, Venice and St. Petersburg, and that has expected such a catastrophe, put those too poor to escape in the Superdome which sits down in the bowl of downtown. I realise that humans cling dearly to the idea that the technology in levees, pumps and other modern machinery that make life easier is stronger than the forces of nature but you'd think we would learn after being mocked so many times in the past. Maybe it's because I watched the "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature" Chiffon Margarine commercials in the 1970s too many times since I have a very healthy dose of understanding that I, and the rest of humankind, are pretty insignificant when compared to the rage of Mother Nature.

The current estimates of time to repair the damage and overall cost are, I suspect, very, very low. The flood waters are bringing in loads of toxic chemicals, petrochemicals, gasoline, oil, and name just about any other kind of home or commercial solutions not to mention all the inert substances. And sewage. Once the water recedes, the EPA will possibly have a giant superfund site on their hands. Every inch of levee will need to be inspected and possibly even rebuilt. The damage to the economy and to those who lost everything, though they hadn't much to lose to begin with, will be quite high. New Orleans will be rebuilt, even though we bitch about people who live in the floodplains of the Mississippi, those whose houses get rebuilt every few years with federal relief money, but it seems like maybe it's a good time to reconsider moving to higher ground. It's not like the sea level is getting lower anytime soon with Greenland and Antarctica beginning to thaw.

And, let's not forget that hurricane season is only just getting warmed up.

The folks living away from the coasts thinking they live in a disaster-free paradise might consider looking up "1812" and "New Madrid" with google sometime and then asking their local and state officials just how well they are prepared for an earthquake that will likely turn southern Missouri into a lake and liquefy St. Louis, Memphis, Little Rock and possibly Lexington, too. I know most of the people living there haven't even heard of it much less prepared for it.

Technology only goes so far. Most of Finland is barely above sea level and I sometimes wonder what the plan is when the waters begin to rise significantly.

permalink Ω 31 August 2005, Helsinki

Landscape of the Mundane

« The Jaskan grilli - giving drunks garlic breath for the past few decades. »

Thursday night was Taiteiden yö, a.k.a. Night of the Arts, which is something like First Night on New Year's Eve in the US only you don't have to freeze your ass off to enjoy the variety of events around town. I mustered the energy to participate in the Fotomaraton again this year which was more of a challenge since it was shortened by two hours with the same number of clues. They mete out 12 clues, four every two hours which you have to return to the office to collect, that you then think of something to take a photo of that might represent the clue and you must take the photos in the order that the clues are given. It's a lot more difficult than it appears since six hours of running around town racking your brain for ideas of what to take pictures of requires a lot of stamina to finish. I was at a loss for inspiration for a number of clues so it's unlikely any of my photos will be selected, but it was a fun game nonetheless.

One of the students in the office who was handing out the clues fondled the Leica and mentioned that he he has an upcoming show in Lasipalatsi of his street photography. I'll have to go and check it out since it seems like the vast majority of Finns are either nature photographers or prefer nature photography in the extreme. I enjoy nature photography in small doses, but after a while the entire genre becomes a cliche of itself since you see the same subjects over and over only with different seasons and light. Finland has a lot of nature, true, but it also has a lot of blight from humans just like everywhere else. The EU has cited Finland for abandoned cars on the sides of the roadways, which I can confirm from my limited driving through the Finnish countryside that there are a curiously high number of derelict cars, but I've yet to see a series of photos of these cars challenging the Finnish vision of a bucolic pastoral. In the mundane lie many uncomfortable truths. Finland could use more photojournalists with a critical eye and a willingness to expose the things we all like to pretend don't exist.

It has been a long summer of not so many great new books, but as September approaches there are a few to be excited about.

• Anansi Boys ≈ Neil Gaiman's new novel, in the same vein as the last, about ancient gods living as ordinary mortals in modern times. I'm not sure why, but I find this strangely apocalyptic.
• The Diviners ≈ Rick Moody turns his sharp observation of people to the media and the navel-gazing society that goes with it. He's one of the few authors that can pull off social commentary cloaked in the humourously absurd.
• Oh Pure and Radiant Heart ≈ I collect most books on the history of the bomb and a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, but this is an interesting twist by merging the two.
• Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy ≈ Depressing reading from Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's, the best US magazine that doesn't make it this far East. It's even more deeply distressing now that the stupid debate over scientific evidence vs. divine magic as the origin of life has returned.
• Landscape And Images ≈ John Stilgoe makes me regret not taking a course of his at Harvard while I lived in Boston as he challenges those who don't observe and reflect, those who have been consumed by modern hustle and bustle. I once wrote to him, he doesn't do email which I find very praiseworthy, inviting him to talk at a Boston perl monger meeting since programmers could learn a lot from him. Photographers, too.
• The Clumsiest People in Europe: Or, Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World ≈ I thought this book was a parody until I read the introduction which mentioned how the author was popularly read and, though she had a fixation for describing the poor and non-protestant countries as vile, didn't even travel as far as Ireland. The sentences are short and simple suggesting she wrote for children or the not terribly literate who likely would never travel and dispute her outlandish writings. Funny, yet sad in a Victorian-with-a-poker-up-her-arse kind of way.
• Field Guide To Meat and Field Guide to Produce ≈ Both books look like they're full of random bits of knowledge and trivia about produce and meat in handy rounded-corner volumes.
• The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century ≈ Food fads and classics likely tell more about a culture than all the usual history books combined.
• Rare Bits: Unusual Origins Of Popular Recipes ≈ This is an interesting book filled with some very unusual recipes and the stories behind them.
• The Good Cookie: Over 250 Delicious Recipes from Simple to Sublime ≈ Since the Cookie Sutra was a massive disappointment due to it being nothing more than a few tame illustrations of cookies fucking with only one recipe, I need another book for cookies. The ginger fortune cookies in particular sound great. We don't get fortune cookies with chinese food in Helsinki which is a bit of a letdown so I'll just have to make my own. :)
• Another Day In Paradise: Postcards ≈ Hilarious postcards in a continuing series from Anne Taintor.
• Acts of Charity ≈ A photographer goes into the NY charity scene and highlights the ludicrous and the ghoulish aspects of the people therein. Been there, seen that. He is disturbingly spot-on and almost cruel. A few sample images from the book.
• Fuck This Book ≈ An entire photobook containing only images of public signage that has been embellished with the word 'fuck'. :)
• Expletive Deleted : A Good Look at Bad Language ≈ One can never have too many books discussing 'bad' words.
• Doggy Days Journal: The Story of My Puppy ≈ Finally, someone has published a nice looking, non-cutesy, non-cloying puppy scrap book.

permalink Ω 28 August 2005, Helsinki

Suburbia

« Welcome my children, smile for the camera. Jesus gets tough on crime. »

There's nothing like starting your week by watching the DVD of Team America with drunk friends, where puppets get away with a few sexcapades that I'm not sure would even make it into hardcore porn (I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in the censor's initial viewing.), and then riding the bus out into the suburban wasteland of apartment houses and graffiti that is Espoo for two days of class on the new features of Solaris 10. The class was given in Finnish though, thankfully, all of the class materials were in English. One bit of comic relief came when I was surfing the net in the back of the class and asked a colleague next to me how to say/spell mölkky and I heard 'mulkku' instead. :) Hilarity ensued when suddenly a number of pop-up windows started clogging my workstation and he told everyone else in the class how the funny foreigner can't hear ö/u/y properly and got porn instead of a lawn game from google. :)

Jarkko has gotten the 'let's move to the burbs' itch after seeing one too many friends' homes lately. I'm not altogether enthused by the idea as I disliked suburbia intensely in the US and it's even less appealing in Finland since the city centre is alive and well. I'm trying to remain open to the idea since there are certain possibilities, like a proper darkroom/studio, that come with a bigger home with a yard, so I'm waiting to see what comes up on the block that might convince me to move. When looking at real estate in Helsinki it blows my mind that 100sqm apartments in Vuosaari are selling for about 700k euro when a similarly sized apartment in a Jugend building in Katajanokka sells for only a little more money. What could possibly make an apartment on the edge of town worth that kind of cash? Suburbia is about getting a house and a yard, not an apartment in an inconveniently located remote location. You also hear quite a bit of crowing in the newspapers and the fashion rags about Finnish/Nordic design, etc. but looking through the interior photos of the homes for sale I'm getting the distinct impression that such design exists only in magazine photos and possibly homes of the young with wads of disposable cash.

I'm dead tired lately and haven't answered most of the email that requires something more than a simple one-sentence reply. When I'm tired, the ability to write or communicate well is the first to go. I only just noticed the page on Flickr that allows you to see the 'recent activity' on your photos which is how you can see who is commenting and adding tags and such. It only took, what, five months? I need a holiday now that everyone I work with has returned from five or more consecutive weeks away from the office. *yaaaawwwwnnn*

I'm so tired that last night when I went out for a smoke at about 1am I didn't notice that Jarkko had removed my house key from my keyring to replace the key I keep on Otava's leash as the old one had gone missing a while back. So, when I went to open the door I had no key. Joy. I rang the bell. Nothing. I rang it again, nothing. Jarkko is upstairs playing World of Warcraft so I figure maybe he doesn't hear the buzzer that could wake the dead...in Kaivopuisto. Finally, I notice that the tiny red power light isn't on. More joy. So I walk into the street and gaze up at the windows and think about what I could throw at the window to get Jarkko's attention. It must have been amusing for the taxi drivers passing by to see someone trying to throw a packet of cigs at an apartment window...and missing by a mile. They make this shit look so easy in the movies. I didn't want to throw the keyring at the window as with my luck I'd likely break the glass. Finally, after 10 minutes in which I had begun to contemplate my options of sleeping out on the front steps, Jarkko came to the window and noticed that I was locked out. :) The door intercom was back on this morning so I'm still wondering if it was broken or if the silence obsessed old farts in the building have decided that there will be no door buzzer service in the building after 11pm or something.

permalink Ω 24 August 2005, Helsinki

Trees With Occasional Trailside Attractions

« Erja Laakkonen's "At Home in the Forest", part of the Skutsi environmental art exhibit in the Ruskeasuo section of Helsinki's Central Park. A small gallery from Skutsi 2005. »

Every weekend we take Otava out to the one of the various parks, nature walks or green recreational areas in Helsinki to give him some exercise as well as to make sure that we don't sit at home in front of our computers, especially on days like today when the weather is warm and sunny. Otava is quite the attention magnet as people often comment on him, want to pet him or, like today on the bus back from the wilds of northern Helsinki, two drunk guys tried to kiss him and ask him along to the pubs in Kallio. I suppose beer has the power to make a big, stinky, drooly dog appear to be their ideal hairy woman, but he was coy and they headed for the bars without a slobbery kiss and alone.

On a recent outing to the woods, we took a couple of friends along for a walk in Ruskeasuo to check out the artwork that is part of the Skutsi environmental art exhibit. I had printed out the map of the artwork [pdf at the bottom of the page] and the thumbnail pics before heading for the forest which proved to be very handy for finding and identifying the various displays. We spent the entire afternoon wandering around the impressive urban forest hunting for all the sights indicated on the map. It became a treasure hunt of sorts since they are difficult to find sometimes as they are well camouflaged in their surroundings.

Some of the art is interesting, some of it is underwhelming and some of it is missing in action. Overall, it's a fun walk through the woods with occasional trailside attractions. Print out the Central Park map and take either tram 10 north to the stop near the Rock & Roll McDonald's or any commuter train to Pasila and wander around for a few hours. There will also be a guided tour this Thursday from 4-6pm as part of the Night of the Arts for the less adventurous. Take the dog and enjoy the weather while you can.

permalink Ω 20 August 2005, Helsinki

Blue Foods

« Blueberry pie with a pulla dough crust. »

Continuing with the blue foods month theme from the blue moomin princess cake there is the blueberry pie. The Finnish blueberry/bilberry is a bit different from the North American blueberry, though from what I gather from reading around the net, there has been some successful cross breeding of the two varieties to get a sweet blueberry that grows on taller bushes and in more easily harvested bunches. The blueberries are smaller and have serious staining power. Marianna's Finnish Berries reference has a good comparison between the two, though it describes the North American blueberry as sweeter but I always remember blueberries tasting icky when picking them as a kid for my mother's jam making projects. If you use the non-Finnish blueberries, adjust the amount of sugar accordingly to 1/4 cup or so.

I love pie, but I never have enjoyed making the pie crust since American pie crusts are a butter dough that is a pain in the ass to work with given that it's mostly butter with a bit of flour to hold it together. More modern pie crust dough recipes use something called Crisco which, if you ever want to get the mystery glare from a Finnish grocer, ask for it or hydrogenated vegetable oil and enjoy. The idea with Crisco is that it has a higher melting point and thus makes it easier to work with when rolling the dough and makes for a flakier crust. It used to be touted as a healthier alternative to butter but a solid fat is a saturated fat so, all things being equal, the natural product is likely a better way to go. I have found a brick of something called 'Kulta-munkki' which is a solid vegetable fat even at room temperature that is a looks to be a promising candidate for a Finnish Crisco, though I've not tried it yet.

So when I saw the recipe for a pulla dough crust instead of a floury butter crust, I couldn't wait to try it. I find making a yeast dough much more enjoyable and easier than a pie dough. A colleague of mine gave me a big bowl of blueberries so I thought a pie would be perfect. I pulled down my jadeware pie plate/form and proceeded to fill it. Bad move. Finnish pie is not American Pie as I had to bake that sucker far too long to get the filling up to temperature. I keep forgetting that in Finland, pie is something more like the thickness of a brownie than a heaping round pie plate like I'm used to. I could probably manage a pie of American dimensions with this recipe, but I'd cook the filling a bit first and cover the top crust with foil until the last 10 minutes. In spite of the volume error, the pie was excellent even though the crust was a bit crispy. :)

Mummin Mustikkapiirakka / Grandma's Blueberry Pie

Makes: 1 pie
Source: Ruoka & Viini, Nro 30, 5/2005

Pulla dough crust:

• 3 dl or 1.25 cups milk
• 100g or 7 tablespoons butter
• 25g cake yeast or dry yeast equivalent
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 dl or 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons finely ground cardamom (optional)
• 7,5-8,5 dl or 3.24-3.75 cups flour

Filling:

• 6 dl or 2.5 cups blueberries
• 1-1,25 dl or about 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice

Topping:

• 1 egg
• pearl sugar

1. Filling: Mix blueberries, sugar and flour together in a bowl and allow to macerate while making the crust. Set aside.
2. Dough: Warm the milk and butter over a low heat until it is warm to the touch (approx 35C/95F). (You can also leave the butter until the very end and knead it in if you prefer) Stir in yeast until dissolved. If using dry yeast, mix it first with a little flour and only then add it to the milk which should be a bit warmer, about 42C/107F. Add salt, sugar and cardamom. Add in about half the flour. Stir the mixture until it begins to thicken.
3. Add remaining flour about 1 dl (1/2 cup) at a time and knead in by hand or with a mixer fitted with a dough hook. The dough will become soft, elastic and form a ball when the right amount of flour has been added. (If you add too much flour, the dough will be dry and chewy when baked so it's better if you add the flour by hand since you have a better feel for when the right point has been reached. I tend to sift in the flour, too.)
4. Place a towel or plastic wrap over the bowl with the dough and place it in a warm, draft-free place, such as the oven set on warm. Allow to double in size (about 30 minutes).
5. Crust: (use 2/3 of the dough and make pulla or another small pie with the remainder.) Take half of the dough, place on a sheet of baking paper and roll out to a size to fit your pie form. Moisten the counter first before placing the paper on top to make it easier when rolling the dough.
6. Roll to about 1cm thickness and transfer to the pie form. Work the dough into the pan and place in the oven/proofing box to rise again for about 15 min while you make the top crust.
7. Roll the remaining dough out and, with a pizza cutter or a knife, make about 14 strips of dough. Remove pie dough from the oven/proofing box and add blueberry filling. Make lattice with strips (see PDF illustration). Finish edges of the pie by trimming the lattice strips and smoothing/crimping the dough around the edge of the pie form. Brush dough with egg white and sprinkle with pearl sugar.
8. Bake in pre-heated oven at 225C/425F for about 15 minutes. Allow to cool and thicken before serving.

permalink Ω 17 August 2005, Helsinki

Citius, Altius, Tedious.

« Citius, Altius, Tedious. Faster, Higher, Boringer. »

One of the features of city living is being near everything and not needing to drive. Conversely, one of the drawbacks of city living is being near everything the tourists want to come gawk at. This weekend, the city put up aluminum crowd fencing all through the city for the marathons that would snake through the heart of the city. As a bonus, drivers didn't try to run pedestrians over or park on the sidewalks for a few days while the barriers were up which made me fond of them in spite of the claustrophobic effect they tended to give you on the more narrow sidewalks.

We just managed to escape our neighbourhood before the barriers were sealed and as we walked towards the train station we looked in wonder at countless frustrated drivers who either didn't get the memo regarding the marathons or thought that they would drive into the center anyway. Plenty of people were waiting for trams and busses at stops that were clearly marked as being closed for the marathons until 6pm, too. Even on a sunny, pleasant day watching people in sweaty, tight, brightly coloured spandex run through the streets is a pretty dull experience. On a rainy day the appeal is substantially reduced. Track and Field events make me think of the 70s when it was so wildly popular and all the guys wanted to be Bruce Jenner when they grew up. Little did they know he'd turn into a leathery motivational speaker for all those people who attempted and failed to be someone that they weren't ever meant to be but who still haven't given up trying. Perhaps this is the appeal; the idea of being able to run 26 miles or so without being chased by a very hungry predator instead of working in a dead-end managerial/desk job with every day the same as the last stretching out before you to eternity.

The IAAF games are over now and I'll miss the daily amusement from the Metro paper's English section with goofy headlines. I read in the paper this morning that the games, of course, lost money due to the bad weather but that there is talk of building a newer, bigger stadium in the euphoric wake of the one medal, a bronze for the long jump, that Finland took away from the event. Sports and nationalism always seem to be inseparable and the amounts of money spent on sports and athletes, especially in the US, make the education budget look like pocket change. Somewhere, between the doping scandals and the dozing fans, one hopes that there are some redeeming features for paying millions of euros to host a giant sporting event with the ambitions of a large country, but the budget of a small one. The arts and education need to figure out how to turn their pursuits into jingoistic sports and they'd never have funding problems ever again. ( An esteemed member of our local Fourth Estate reminded me that today's English edition of the Helsingin Sanomat had an analysis of the end of the games and reminded me that Finland did save IAAF's arse on the venue. My grumping largely is about the seemingly limitless funding and showbusiness spectacle that modern sports events have become.)

I'm not sure if Walken 2008 is a joke or not, but I figure if Jeb is running in '08 that I'd consider just about anyone else. I keep thinking of the Saturday Night Live episode he hosted where he did a few screen tests for Han Solo and a skittles commercial which were brilliant. Well, and the Fatboy Slim music video. If nothing else, the campaign TV spots will be entertaining. I think Walken could even make a marathon worth watching.

Students frustrated with the current state of Finnish for Foreigners texts might want to look at Sounds Good - Kuulostaa hyvältä recently published by the Finnish Literature Society. There's a reader/workbook by the same title but it's tough to tell them apart which is tragic book design since stores will only stock one title thinking that both are the same book. There's a VHS tape, too, but no sign of a DVD which is odd since students or transplants are usually young and have moved past VHS.

What makes this book really attractive is that it's in English for the beginner, it covers a lot of grammar in a compact text with nicely done tables for the pronouns and vocabulary for each of the chapters in the workbook complete with inflected forms and usage. The less attractive features are that they still have conversational dialogues that gradeschool kids would find ridiculous, there's no mention of the colloquial, a.k.a. spoken, language and the workbook is separate from the text so that you have to switch back and forth between them.

I often wonder if teachers who design these books have ever bothered trying to learn a language from a book like their own or are just following the templates from others before them. I mean, do the teachers really expect students to have a conversation about the Finnish tango?! Someone, someday, might just do a book listing some real, everyday kinds of conversation in the language as it is spoken for people who are learning but don't know how to phrase things...like me. I'd speak Finnish more often if I didn't have the terror that I'd sound like an ass or a pretentious tourist most of the time. And I have no interest in discussing the Finnish tango. :)

permalink Ω 15 August 2005, Helsinki

An ice cube's chance in HEL

« Selling 60,000 euro of ice in the summertime to Finns must be good business. It lasted one day. It was called Kesämonumentti (Summer monument) and was designed by the Finnish born American academic architect, Stuart Wrede. »

As improbable as selling snow to Eskimos, someone sold Helsinki 60,000 euro worth of ice in the summertime as 'art' that would last 2-4 weeks. Now, I'm a chemist, not a physicist, but the math ain't so different; that sucker is gonna melt at a far faster rate than advertised unless it is sheltered from the sun and rain or contained in a climate-controlled environment. It's straight out of Chem101. Surely, an architect should be familiar with such natural phenomenon. Given that Finland is frequently cited as the most and best educated country around, one has to wonder how it happened that folks spending 60k euro of public money on a giant ice cube in the summer didn't do the math or find someone who could. While I am sure that all governments waste money, my own being a prime example, I'd think there would be an angry mob demanding the head of the bureaucrat who blew 60k on ice promised to last up to a month in the summertime as there'd likely be a family or personal connection for the expenditure. In spite of the reports that Finland has little government corruption, the reports do not say that it does not exist. What bothers me most is the quote from the Helsingin Sanomat article:

The opening audience was impressed by the beauty of the ice sculpture, and if the residents of Helsinki like the artwork, it is likely that a similar ice carving will be seen in the park also in coming summers.

I love the arts and admire the fact that the city spends a good deal of money on culture and the works of freaky starving artists who likely wouldn't get paid otherwise as it's important to have a wide variety of arts, but ice in the summertime that doesn't last more than a day or two and becomes a public hazard? Fuck that. People should be angry since 60k could foster a lot of struggling artists or surely something that has more artistic and lasting value than an ice cube. How about next august, everyone saunter over to the annex park with a cooler filled with ice cubes and we can make a mountain of cubes for free.

After reading the depressing climate tipping point article in the Guardian yesterday, I thought about the Finnish weather over the past two years and figured that in 50 years this may just be a sunny vacation spot. Perhaps I'm being a bit overly optimistic when the report mentions the thawing of western Siberia, which is what I call Helsinki in -30C weather. I wish reporters of this important issue would stop with the dramatic language and the dire picture of destruction since it's an important issue, and those of us who get it and who don't need the news to tell us dramatic global climate change is upon us aren't the ones who need to read the articles and understand. I was drinking tea and eating soup, something I reserve for cold weather, for two days this week. That ain't right, even if every Finn chirps, 'that's Finnish summer!' Bollocks, it's fucking early AUGUST. Unless this is the new ice age, November has no business in August.

permalink Ω 12 August 2005, Helsinki

Flash flood

« Waterfowl smorgasboard in Stockholm. »

People from the midwest like to talk about weather, but that's mostly because we actually get weather worth talking about aside from it being an important concern for farmers in the flat, fertile expanse that is flyover country. You grow up with severe thunderstorms, green skies, baseball-sized hail, twisters, flash flooding and a distrust of the TV weathermen who try in vain to make computers predict weather that changes every 5 minutes. Finns don't do much small talk and don't, in general, chit chat about the weather since you can't really do much about it. I mean, it's raining, so what? Weather is something anyone can talk about. In fact, it may be the only topic of conversation in the US these days that won't get you sent to Gitmo or berated by fundy freaks.

The weather lately has been odd as it hasn't been very warm but the humidity has been so high that it has taken clothes at least a week to dry when they would normally dry in less than 24 hours. Today the wind was blowing in strong, sustained gusts all day long and it made me uneasy since strong winds always mean trouble, especially storms. The clouds started coming in on my way home and I had just made it in the door when it started raining fairly hard, so I fed Otava and decided to wait until the rain subsided. The sky was dark enough to fool the sensors on most of the street lights and, after about 15 minutes, the rain let up and we ventured out the door to do what dogs do outdoors. The wind was still blowing which should have told me to stay inside as we didn't make it more than 100 meters down the street before the sky opened and began pouring buckets of water. We ducked into a driveway which, unfortunately had a yard higher than the street so that we had about 3 inches of water rushing past our feet while we watched downspouts become geysers, the street transform into a river and a few soaked kids resignedly pedalling home on their bicycles. Gale force winds blew sheets of water in every direction while idiot drivers hydroplaning down the street chucked curtains of water onto the sidewalk. It was an electrical storm as well, the likes of which I've not seen outside of the midwest and certainly not here before. Otava kept trying to bury his head between my legs with every flash and boom. The lightning took out a few trees and a flagpole in front of the Hotel Marski, too. It was an impressive storm, even by midwestern standards. Who says that radical global climate change isn't good for anything?

It's still warm, humid and the winds remain strong so I'd bet this storm isn't done yet.

And the blue moomin princess cake is coming soon since a colleague of mine brought me a bowl of freshly picked blueberries from home. It's blue food season. :)

permalink Ω 9 August 2005, Helsinki

Brane Royale

« Charlotte Royale, a.k.a. Brain Cake. »

It was a busy weekend of not staying indoors and scanning photos so it'll be a few more days before I catch up with the pile of photos that need scanning. A week or so ago I saw a cake in the Finnish food pool on Flickr that I had seen pictures of before but didn't know what it was called which prompted an almost pathologically obsessive search for what the cake's name was. Many cookbooks and web searches with google later I came to realize that, rather curiously, what Finns call this cake is not what the rest of the world calls this cake. The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef defines charlottes rather succinctly:

The two types of charlotte (hot and cold) share two characteristics: the bottom and sides of the charlotte molds are always lined before the filling is added and, once the filling has set, the desserts are removed from the mold before they are served. In the case of the well-known Charlotte Royale and Charlotte Russe, the molds are lined with jellyrolls and ladyfingers, respectively. In other recipes, the molds are lined with sponge cake, meringue products, buttered bread, or thinly sliced fruit. Charlottes are made in individual servings or in forms that serve up to ten people. The first recognized chilled charlotte was the Charlotte Russe, which was invented by Antonin Carême at the beginning of the nineteenth century and was derived from the original classic, warm apple charlotte. (Carême originally named his creations charlotte á la parisienne, but this name was changed during the Second Empire, when Russian dishes became very fashionable.)

Another book, Rare Bits, by Patricia Bunning Stevens discusses the history behind Carême's cold charlottes.

Chance led the child to a humble cookshop, and by the time he was fifteen Carême had entered the service of Bailly, a celebrated pâtissier. Here he came to the attention of Talleyrand, a noted gourmet as well as one of Napoleon's chief ministers. Soon he was working in Talleyrand's own kitchens and then was made head chef. Carême taught himself to read and write; eventually he would write and illustrate seven books, five on cooking and two on architecture.

Carême was a restless man, and all of Europe vied for his services. Before retiring to complete his writings, he would supervise the huge kitchens of the Prince Regent of Great Britain (later George IV), Tsar Alexander I of Russia, the court of Vienna, the British embassy at Paris, and the Baron de Rothschild at his country estate. Yet few of Carême's dishes remain in the repertory today. Styles change, and his was a very elaborate, complicated cuisine. One exception is the Charlotte Russe.

Carême began by experimenting with English Charlottes, seeing ways, as he did with so many dishes, to make them more appealing. First he turned the Charlotte into a cold dish, a pastry shell filled with pureed applesauce; then he went on to create a totally new dessert, which he called Charlotte á la parisienne. The pastry shell had been replaced by sponge fingers, and the filling was now a rich Bavarian cream, a mixture of egg custard, gelatin, and whipped cream with varied flavorings. Carême served his new marvel to Louis XVIII, the reinstated Bourbon king, at a banquet for twelve hundred at the Louvre in 1815; for reasons now unclear the name was changed to Charlotte Russe during the Second Empire.

So my confusion began when I looked for a recipe for Charlotte Russe in a number of cookbooks, there was a picture of a real Charlotte Russe with ladyfingers instead of the rather strange looking jelly roll dome. In the few Finnish cookbooks that had a recipe for Charlotte Russe, none of them had a picture but the recipes called for a jelly roll and something other than a bavarian cream filling. After digging around with google for a while it became rather evident that the only Charlotte Russe recipes with the spiral jelly roll outer layer were Finnish. Now, pedantry aside, the point of having a name for an object is communicating an idea or a concept effectively as simply making up some nonsense words would otherwise serve about as well if there wasn't some continuity in our collective use of vocabulary. I find Finland's use of Charlotte Russe for what is a Charlotte Royale elsewhere on the planet very curious and would love to know how it came to be so. My theory is that the Charlotte Russe entered Finland from Russia and changed rather quickly from the ladyfingers to the jelly roll slices since ladyfingers likely weren't a familiar food and the jelly roll was, and remains still, very popular as well as changing the bavarian or moscovite custard to jellied cream with a bit of sugar (in older Finnish recipes). In spite of the crust and filling substitutions, the name remains unchanged and thus the curious anomaly of only the Nordic countries, as far as I can tell, calling this cake by the wrong name.

The cake, no matter which name you use, is not terribly challenging to make and has the added appeal of closely resembling a brain with the spirals on the outside and the gelatinous mass on the inside. Admittedly, I've never tasted brain, human or otherwise, but I suspect that this is as tasty as it gets. I made two of them since I wasn't happy with the first cake as I let the sponge cake get a bit too brown which didn't harm the taste of the cake but I didn't quite like the look of it. I made the second cake's sponge with a jelly roll sponge recipe and baked it only until it became slightly brown on top. This sponge was far easier to roll, was lighter tasting and it looked more attractive on the finished cake. I used a whipped rahka and cranberry purée for the filling which tasted terrific, but if you want nice, perfectly round spirals of sponge cake, then leave off the cream filling and just use a thin layer of jam. If you choose to use just the jam, you may also need to make two jam rolls depending on how large your mold is and/or how thinly you slice it.

The bavarian cream filling leaves a bit of room for being creative as well. I added a bit of cranberry purée to 1/3 of the mixture to create a stripe in the middle of the cake for a bit of colour and variation. Apricot jam in the jelly roll and fruit in the bavarian cream seem to be traditional, but you can use any fruit you like as the brain cake nazis won't be waiting outside your door if you don't use apricots. I think a lakka/cloudberry variation would be terrific and have the same range of colour as apricots. Bavarian creams are a lot easier to make than most are led to believe, but you must give it your full attention while it is cooking which is why the jelly roll[s] and the mold are prepared first since once the cream is chilled, it needs to be poured into the mold and allowed to set overnight in the refrigerator. I don't even much like bavarian cream and I love the Charlotte Royale, so give it a try.

Charlotte Russe / Charlotte Royale / Aivokakku / Brain Cake

makes: 1 cake with ~10-12 servings
time: about 90 mins prep but needs to set overnight
special tools: 2,5-3 L round bowl or springform pan, jelly roll pan (a cookie sheet with sides), fine sieve

Steps:

1. Make sponge cake
2. Make jelly roll and chill
3. Prepare bowl or springform with butter and jelly roll slices
4. Make custard and chill
5. Prepare whipped cream
6. Fold custard and cream together and pour into bowl
7. Top with jelly roll slices
8. Chill overnight

Jelly roll

• 1/3 cup (33 grams) sifted cake flour
• 3 tablespoons (23 grams) unsifted cornstarch (corn flour)
• 4 large eggs
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1/2 cup (100 grams) plus 1 tablespoon (13 grams) granulated white sugar
• 1 teaspoon (4 grams) pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• fruit jam of your choice for filling

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C) and place oven rack in the middle of the oven. Grease a 17 inch (43 cm) x 12 inch (30 cm) jelly roll pan, line with parchment, and then grease the parchment paper. Set aside.
2. While eggs are still cold separate two of the eggs, placing the yolks in one large mixing bowl and the whites in another bowl. To the two yolks, add the additional yolk, and the two remaining eggs. Cover the two bowls with plastic wrap and allow the eggs to come to room temperature before using (about 30 minutes).
3. Meanwhile, in a small bowl whisk together the sifted cake flour and cornstarch. Set aside.
4. Once the eggs are at room temperature, place the egg yolks, along with 1/2 cup (100 grams) of granulated white sugar, in your electric mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on high speed for five minutes, or until thick, pale, and fluffy. (When you slowly raise the beaters the batter will fall back into the bowl in slow ribbons.) At this point beat in the vanilla extract.
5. Sift half the flour mixture over the egg yolk mixture and fold in gently with a rubber spatula, just until the flour is incorporated. Sift the remaining flour mixture into the batter and fold in.
6. In a clean mixing bowl, with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and continue beating until soft peaks form. Sprinkle in the remaining one tablespoon (13 grams) granulated white sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Gently fold a little of the whites into the batter to lighten it, and then add the rest of the whites folding just until incorporated. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, evenly spreading the cake batter with an offset spatula.
7. Bake for 7 minutes or until golden brown. A toothpick inserted in the center will come out clean and the cake, when lightly pressed, will spring back.
8. Immediately upon removing the cake from the oven invert the sponge cake onto a clean dish towel that has been sprinkled with confectioners sugar. Carefully remove the parchment paper, sprinkle lightly with confectioners sugar, and roll up the sponge, with the towel, while it is still hot and pliable. Place on a wire rack to cool. (If the parchment paper sticks to the cake, lightly brush the back of the paper with a little warm water, allow to stand for a few moments, then peel the paper from the cake.) When ready to fill, unroll the sponge, spread with the filling, and re-roll. Transfer to a serving platter, cover, and chill in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight. (You can serve this cake immediately but chilling it for a few hours first sets the filling and makes it easier to slice.) Just before serving, dust with confectioners sugar. Cut the cake into slices using a serrated knife.
9. Butter bowl, mold or springform pan and place ~2cm slices of jelly roll around the sides, fitting them tightly together so that there are no spaces for the custard to seep through. Reserve some slices for placing on top of the bavarian cream which will be the bottom of the cake when removed from the mold. Refrigerate until you are ready to fill the mold.

Bavarian Cream:

makes: about 2 L
source: Larousse Gastronomique

custard

• 15-20g, 8 sheets or 2-3 envelopes gelatine
• 6 dl or 2.5 cups whole milk
• 1 vanilla pod or 2 tablespoons real vanilla sugar
• 8 egg yolks
• 100g or 1/2 cup superfine sugar
• pinch of salt

whipped cream

• 3,5 dl or 1.5 cups whipping cream, very cold
• 0,75 dl or 1/3 cup whole milk, very cold
• 50g or 1/4 cup superfine sugar
• fresh berries or purée (optional)
• 2 tablespoons liqueur (optional)

1. Soak gelatine in 3 tablespoons cold water (or a shallow bowl of water if using sheets).
2. Whisk together egg yolks, superfine sugar and salt until smooth. Heat milk with vanilla over a medium heat. Pour yolk mixture into a fine mesh sieve and strain it into the milk while stirring constantly. When the mixture is hot to the touch, stir in gelatin (squeeze water from sheets).
3. Stir continuously with whisk over a gentle heat until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. The mixture must NOT boil. Pour into a bowl and allow to cool, then refrigerate until the custard is cold and just beginning to thicken. (Note: some recipes suggest pouring the hot mixture into a bowl resting on ice to hurry the cooling process.)
4. While the custard is cooling, whip together the cream and milk until it just starts to thicken and add superfine sugar. Continue whipping to soft peaks. Fold in fruit, purée and/or liqueur if using. (You could substitute rahka or a firm yogurt in place of the cream, but with 8 egg yolks in the custard it's really well beyond the point of trying to cut fat or cholesterol. :)
5. Fold cream together with the cooled, but not set, custard. (If the custard has cooled and set a bit too fast, use your mixer to make it creamy before blending it with the whipped cream.)
6. Pour into the prepared dish, top with slices of jelly roll and chill overnight.
7. To unmold, place bowl/mold into warm water briefly, cover with serving plate and invert. Tap gently and ease the bowl/mold off of the cake. Add whipped cream and fruit as garnish if you like. A fruit purée makes for a nice companion as well.

permalink Ω 8 August 2005, Helsinki

Team America

« Linnanmäki's resident frylock. »

Every morning and every evening I sit on the bus in the quiet pall that is commuting, but in the last few days there are suddenly quite a few chatty people on the bus who have invaded our mute gloom; Team America. The IAFF World Championships begin next week and the athlete village is nearby so they catch the bus into the city in the futile quest for hot wings and thick, juicy steaks. What bothers me though is that I have now had several days of resisting the urge to summon my loud booming voice and start singing America, FUCK YEAH. I mean, I'm not a patriot, I'm pretty pissed off at the US in general at the moment to be sure and, yet, hearing a guy speaking English in a dialect not too far from where I'm from was inexplicably familiar in a nice way. I'm thinking that the US team won't have many people here to cheer for them and have this thought of rounding up my Yankee friends to make a banner bearing the Team America lyrics and cheer them on after having enough beer to get past the fear of getting our asses kicked by local skinheads or anyone else who takes offense to our momentary lapse in pessimism directed at our homeland. Perhaps I'll just dip into the whisky tonight and the feeling will pass and I'll instead feel the urge to dress up as a viking, get drunk and cheer for the home team.

The Helsinki Marathon is tomorrow afternoon and promises to snarl traffic for hours at rush hour on a Friday evening [see map]. At work we have been advised to leave early to avoid being stranded in the office until after 6 so I might walk home and catch a bit of people running sans predator.

And...Bridget Jones has returned but it's a real disappointment as Fielding has chosen not to go the way of boring domesticity leaving Bridget without Mr. Darcy and, instead, shagging Daniel on the first column in 8 years.

"Listen, Bridge," snarled Shazzer, "You've got to get over both of your fuckwitted exes. Mark Darcy is an emotional withholder to a degree which verges on the sadistic and Daniel is just a straightforward man-whore."

"Anyway, as they're both in their forties now, they're about to go through what we went through when we hit our thirties, and start panicking about losing their sexual power. Fuckwittage becomes a luxury you can't afford when your hair's falling out, your stomach's hanging over your trousers - and if you try it on with your 19-year-old secretary she tells you you're a dirty old man."

At least Shazzer is still in touch with reality. :) Which reminds me....My Dog is Tom Cruise.

permalink Ω 4 August 2005, Helsinki

Oat Power

« The Koff beer wagon. [picture from the brochure] »

I see these horses fairly frequently as the dog park is right next to the stables in Sinebrychoff Park and Otava gazes at them wondering if they're big dogs to play with or not. One of my first impressions of Finland on the first time I visited was seeing the equine beer delivery system and thinking it was quaint and civilised, especially since I grew up with the Budweiser Clydesdales who are only for trotting out at sports and civic events anymore. I've seen them regularly since moving to Helsinki and it never ceases to catch my attention and think that modern deliveries have far less style or cachet.

A few weeks ago I ran across a glossy booklet and postcards on the Koff wagon and thought it was nicely done with a bit a goofy humour and more detail than I ever would have tracked down on my own. Did you know that the 13th of October is "Finnish Beer Day"? I thought not. Be sure to mark your calendar to find out just how this beer day is distinctive from any other.

Where did they find a brewery for the horses?

On 13 October 1819, the Imperial Reconstruction Committee, which was appointed to create a new capital city for the Grand Duchy of Finland, deemed it expedient and beneficial to grant merchant Nikolai Sinebrychoff an undeveloped block of land in the Hietalahti district of Helsinki on which to build "a great beer factory" to meet the needs of the city. Almost the very first job was carried out by two horses, who pulled logs on a sledge over the frozen sea to Hietalahti from a house that had been taken apart on Suomenlinna, just off the coast of Helsinki. The logs were used to rebuild the house, which, to this day, still stands in the corner of Sinebrychoff park next to the Bavaria ice cellar and the stables, adjacent to the Sinebrychoff Art Museum.

From modest beginnings of just a few horses, the new brewery and distillery operating in conjunction with it grew, expanded and became so prosperous that in 1848 the brewery's moveables included 9 horses and one horse-driven two-stone malting mill. Their was neigh holding back in 1890, when new stables were built for 60 draught horses. Horsepower peaked in the early 1900s and thereafter gradually declined with economic recession, World War I, the Prohibition Act (1919-32) and internal crises in the early years of Finnish independence (1917). In addition to many other good things, engineers on the continent had also invented the combustion engine and horseless carriages. Consequently the large stables were converted into garages in the 1930s. During the Winter War (1939-40) and Continuation War (1941-44), the brewery's draught horses distinguished themselves in pulling artillery and provision carriages alike. The horses remained in action in the brewery until the late 1940s, but had to retire for a while until they returned permanently to delivery work in the streets of Helsinki in the early 1960s.

The beautiful brick stables still stand and add character to the park in spite of the encroachment of aseptic glass apartment houses on all sides. Koff beer isn't all that bad, either, which begs the question why or how Lapin Kulta got the "Official Beer" vendorship for the IAAF games instead of a decent beer with the cachet of a horse-drawn carriage and whose inception date is "Finnish Beer Day". The word "Kulta" is a near guarantee that whatever product bears a name with kulta will be far from golden; coffee, beer, etc. In fact, I think that Budweiser beer was called "Guld Brau" before changing to the current name...but I digress. There are four horses; Kalle, Roki, Pintti, and Sigge.

Equine Technical Information

• Type: Heavy, cold-blooded horse from Jutland.
• Temperament: calm and docile, good memory, dependable
• Length: approximately 300 cm from nose to tail
• Stands: 15.5-16.3 hands
• Weight: 800-1500kg
• Power: 5-10hp, four-hoofed drive
• Acceleration: adequate
• Average speed: about 20-30 km per day
• Fuel: 15kg hay, 10kg oats, some buns and 50-60 liters water per day
• Shoes: size 9, two pairs per month
• Transport capacity: 500-1,000 liters beer per day

The booklet also claims that the horses have mastered Finnish. Shit, not only do I get smoked daily by 5 year olds speaking turbo Finnish, now I'm getting my ass kicked by hoofed beasts who enjoy classical music, drink beer and come from Denmark. When MTV3 starts airing a show called Herra Eetu with a talking Finnish horse, it'll be time to take a more realistic assessment of my chances of learning Finnish when the equines are good enough to have their own show and I'm still trying to order pulla and a coffee without the dreaded "--TÄ?!" I should try practising my Finnish on the horses and order a beer. :)

permalink Ω 2 August 2005, Helsinki