The calling to go to Finland originated from a documentary I viewed while I was struck down with pneumonia. I watched many video shows during that period, including a series titled “Chef’s Table.” The series documents talented chefs from around the world who are noted, among other practices, to offer local ingredients on their menu.
None of the chefs I viewed in this extensive series was from Finland, but one was in nearby Norway, who included spruce ice cream among his creative offerings. Therefore, I was not surprised to find this and other “wild” delicacies on the hotel menu. The first dinner I ordered was a gourmet treat: wild mushroom crepes — not so much out of the ordinary per se (you will see what I mean). The garnish used included a sprig of spruce, a selection of wild berries: lignon berries, cloudberries and bilberries.
Spruce ice cream — there it is again, as in the Norway chef. I had thought spruce was toxic, but not so! I was probably thinking of the yew tree, which is poisonous, but spruce is good for you — loaded with vitamin C. In Finland, in addition to spruce, I saw birch leaf and nettle as ingredients. I finished off the meal with, you guessed it, spruce ice cream. It was an interesting taste, rather subtle actually, as compared to an overpowering turpentine flavor I had anticipated.
The Finns are wild about berries. Lignon berries, which are compared to our cranberries, grow in the wild throughout Scandinavia. As with cranberries, they are used to make juice, jelly and syrup, but they are also eaten plain, despite their being rather tart.
Bilberries, also referred to as blueberries, to which they are closely related, were just what you would expect, and hot blueberry juice is a favorite beverage. Every campfire I attended began with cups of steaming blueberry juice, and it definitely hit the spot. Bilberries are darker than our blueberries, have a purplish, black color and are not easily cultivated.
Cloudberries were novel to me — a deep, golden color and a transparent, gelid texture. Cloudberries contain indigestible seeds, something which I have always been finicky about — these were hard and crunchy.
This was only the first of a week of dinners in the hotel restaurant, which was highly rated, and I quickly ran into trouble. I felt compelled to try reindeer meat, which as a staple, composed much of the remaining menu; I chose what would be comparable to sirloin tips as my first venture. It wasn’t all that impressive as a substitute for beef — I found it flat tasting and somewhat rubbery in texture.
Two menu entrees were freshly caught fish. Ice fishing is a local obsession, and the waitress couldn’t wait for her day off to get out on the ice. One of the items was a “cerviche” style or raw fish cured in acidic juices; that scared me off, this time not because I was being choosey, but for health reasons.
Other choices on the menu included a ramen noodle soup, flavored with reindeer heart and mushrooms. Yet another offering was “lightly smoked” reindeer tongue. Upon arrival home, my first grocery store purchase was a roasted chicken!
Needless to say, reindeer herding is a tradition among the Sami (Laplanders), and one of my excursions was “A Reindeer Herder’s Day,” a visit with a reindeer herding family. The reindeer are ear marked with the brand of the owner, then allowed to roam free; each member of the family has their own reindeer with a unique brand. Women keep their reindeer after marriage, and both daughters and sons are allotted reindeer by their parents. Just as it would be rude for us to ask somebody how much money they make, it would be rude to ask a reindeer herder how many reindeer they own; however, our host volunteered that he owned 300 reindeer.
The reindeer herder and his father patrolled the woods by snowmobile, repeatedly calling the herd to be fed, “Yoho-o-o.” The reindeer emerged from the forest in droves, hungrily crowding our snowmobile, and fighting — locking antlers — to get to the food. Though I admired the reindeer for the beauty and variety of their fur coats — ranging from almost pure white to dark brown and black — I was uneasy about being so closely “mobbed” by hundreds of them. This greatly eased my mind about eating them, but did not increase my appreciation for this Nordic delicacy.
