Finnish creamy vegetable soup, the "Summer Soup" or Kesäkeitto

This is a must for every Finn, as the first fresh potatoes and vegetables reach the market places all around the country. Basically you can put in everything you wish, but this is pretty close to the original, except for the lack of milk. To my taste the soup becomes too watery if you use a lot of milk. Therefore I use only butter and cream and water. For a kettle of the soup, you´ll need:

5-6 fresh potatoes (preferably the famous "siikli")
1 bunch of fresh carrots ( 5-6 pieces)
1 cauliflower
1-2 dl of fresh green peas (picked from the "palko")
2 fresh onions with the green stalks
wheat flour
salt & pepper
3 dl whiping cream
4-5 dl water
a pinch of sugar
a great deal of butter

Start by washing and scrubbing the vegetables and potatoes very clean. Cut the cauliflower, carrots, onions and potatoes into smaller pieces. Put them all into a big kettle together with 50 g butter and let the vegetables stir a while. Add the flour and stir again. Add more butter if needed. After a while, add the water in small portions while stirring all the time. The liquid should almost cover the veggies, but not completely. Let them cook until almost done.

Add the salt and pepper and sugar and also the cream and the green little peas. Let simmer for a while, check the taste and serve.

It should look like this in the kettle:

Easy to make blinis with buckwheat, whitefish roe, salted mushrooms, onion, pickled cucumber and sour cream

I decided to convert this delicious traditional dish into a little quicker one to prepare. Normally you´d need to mix the batter the evening before and let it rest overnight. That way you´ll make the blinis fluffy and nice. In my version you´ll get it done in just a couple of hours.

The batter:

4 dl milk
20 g yeast
3 1/2 dl buckwheat flour
2 dl wheat flour
some rapeseed oil or melted butter
3 egg yolks (save the whites for later use)
1 1/2 dl beer ( a lager will do)
2 dl sour cream
1 tsp salt

Warm the milk into 38 C. Add the yeast and mix well. Add the other ingredients and mix with a whisk into a nice batter.

Make a warm water bath to speed the process up and put your bowl on it. This will speed up the process dramatically!

The condiments:

While you wait, just prepare the salted whitefish fish roe (or caviar), chop the onion, salted mushrooms and the pickled cucumber. Capers do also very well with this dish. Mix also some sour cream to top the portions with.

Whip the egg whites into a fluffy mixture and mix it carefully into the batter just before frying.

My batter looked like this after two hours:

Fry the blinis in a blini pan, with quite some butter like this:

The final portion might look like this or even better. This picture is taken with a mobile phone camera.

Traditional pickled baltic herring

1 kg of baltic herring will be needed for this dish. The fish can be eaten as it is or on a buttered rye bread or together with the best possible newly picked, cooked spring potatoes. And butter naturally.

You´ll need to marinate the herring fillets in two phases. Firstly you´ll have to loosen the flesh from the skin so that you get two whole fillets per fish. This is very easily done just by hand. Before you start, make this liquid:

3 dl water
1 dl vinegar
2 tbs salt

Mix it all together and star working with the herring fillets.

Mix the fillets into the first salt liquid and let them marinate for 4 to 5 hours.

Meanwhile, Mix the second liquid consisting of:

2 dl water
1 dl vinegar
1 dl sugar
1 tbs salt
4 bay leaves
15 whole white peppers
1-2 onions
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 sliced carrot
dill
crushed white and black pepper

Cook the liquid without the onions and garlic and let it cool down. There´s no hurry, since the other ones will take the 5 hours anyway.

While you wait, cut the onions, garlic and the dill into a glass jar. Just to wait for more to come.

After the 4-5 hours, drain the herring fillets. Mix them with the onion, garlic, dill pepper and carrots in the glass jar. Pour over the second liquid. The fish is at it´s best after two days.

ENJOY!

Our family´s Mayday herring

This is our family`s traditional herring dish for May 1st for decades. It is usually made in such a portion, that it will serve several persons or several days for a some less people. Visually, it´s not particularly  exciting, but the taste beats it all. The key is the choice of the fish. Basically one might thing any matjes herring would do, but it is so, so wrong. We have been lucky enough to find a perfec Swedish variety that has not met its match. It is Nordvågs-herring in spiced sauce. Not sweet as a matjes, nor too salty or too spicy, just perfect.

Even though the can contains 500 g of fish dw, we can ingest this on two lunches just two of us together with my wife. Just drain the fish and cut it into some smaller pieces with scissors. And the other ingredients are:

3 - 4 diced onions

6 well cooked eggs

4 dl whipping cream

260 g of small capers dw

Vinegar or liquid from the capers

pinch of sugar

A nice size of a serving dish

Put the ingredient in layers into the dish:

Start with the chopped onions and follow with the cut herring pieces. If you dislike the sharp taste of raw onion, you can keep them a while in warm water and drain well. The taste becomes softer. You can also use shalottes or red onion.

If you like you can follow with the drained capers, but you can also save them into the topping of the whole dish. It does not affect the taste, but the looks. 

The next step would be the diced cooked eggs. The dicing is very easily done with an egg slicer. Slice the eggs twice lengthwise and once across on the width. You can also do it the rough way. Just put the peeled eggs into a bowl and be harsh with a fork...

Then whip the cream. This phase might be a tough one, because you´d have to have a whipped cream also after adding the vinegar. Do not whisk the cream too much before adding the vinegar. Add some sugar and salt until the taste is perfect. Spread out the cream on top of the whole dish and enjoy with fresh cooked potatoes and some sparkling wine or shampagne. The great experience of saltyness, some fat and sweetness. Just great!

Ordinary Finnish Salmon Soup

The ordinary Finnish fish soup - no matter what kind of fish - always includes milk in the broth. In my version it is replaced with cream and butter. I wonder why... Unfortunately the picture of the fantastic dish did not succeed very well. I´m deeply sorry for this.



600 g potatoes, firm that do not flake apart as they are cooked
700 g salmon fillet, without bones and visible fat
300g root fruits and onion (carrot, leek, turnip, celeriac)
1 big onion
1 bunch of dill
2 dl whipping cream
100 g salted butter
2 bayleaves
10 allspice peppers
1 slice of sour dough rye bread
Water

Peel the potatoes and cut then into big pieces. Dice the root fruits and the onion. Heat up a big kettle and put in the butter. Put in all the veggies and let them fry in the butter for a while. Add the bay leaves and the peppers.

As the veggies start to look nice, add some water to cover the veggies. Let cook for 20 minutes.

Dice the salmon and remove it from the skin. Chop the dill. Put the salmon dices into the slowly cooking soup and add also the dill after a while. Add the cream and give it all a stir. Spread some butter on the rye bread and put the bread upside down on top of the soup and let it spread out the flavors of the bread and butter.

Check the taste and complete with salt and pepper.

Build some nice portions on soup plates and enjoy with rye bread and the drink of your choice. White wine is nice. Many Finns prefer to drink milk to this perfect dish. (I don´t).

Butter fried pikeperch, parsnip and creamed leek

This time they had some beautiful wild pike perch from the sea, which I could not resist. Despite the price , I had to take it. I´ve bee bothered by the traditional side dishes for a while and therefore I decided to give a try to some new tastes.

250 g fillets of pikeperch per person. (consider that when you cut the trouser cut to take all the bones off, you´ll loose some 40-50 g per fillet!) This time we were only two persons so we had two fillets each.

1 pretty upsized parsnip

1 iddle sized leek

Juice of one lemon

2 dl dry white wine

2 dl whipping cream

Salt and pepper from the mill

Make the trouser cut to get the bones out. Easy as a game. salt on both sides and give it a rest..

Peel the parsnip and dice it to rather big dices. Cut the lee into some 4 cm pieces, halve them and rinnse and let drip off.

Take two frying pans to do the job. The vegetables on the first one with full effect and the otherone to warm up for the fish with some butter. 

Start with the veges and let them fry for a while. Add some white wine and a twist of lemon. Keep on frying. Add the cream an let simmer for about 20 minutes. Move the stuff around every once in a while and season with salt and pepper. Check the parsnip with a toohpick or a needle to make sure the right tenderness.

Heat the fish frying pan to the maximum. Sprikle some bread crumbs on the fish fillets and fry them on both sides until crisp and nice. This does not take long. Spoon the parsnip-leek-combo on the plates and place the fish fillets on top. Nice and easy. A nice dry white wine will the honour fot this dish. 

Pan roasted salmon trout, cream stewed savoy cabbage and a basic mash

A part of the portion was already eaten, before it occured to me to take a pic. This is a really simple dish, which is really freshened up by the side dish. The cabbage really works.

Boneless rainbow trout. 200 g per head.
milled salt and pepper
Savoy cabbage
1/2 onion
juice of 1 lemon
2 dl cream
Potatoes
Butter
Milk

Cut the salmon into portion size pieces. Should there be a small bit over, salt it into a sandwich topin for the nest morning. Great on a rye bread. Salt and pepper the fish and leave in the fridge for a while.

Do the mash.

Slice the cabbage and the onion into thin slices. Take a kettle and treat it with a thorough amount of butter. As the butter starts ti simmer, throw in the cabbage and the onion. Let simmer for a while. Add the juice of the lemon, the cream and some salt and pepper. Lower the temp and move around for a whie. Put the lid on and let the whole thing to cook slowly for about 10 minutes.

Heat the frying pan. If you choose to roast, just spread some salt into the pan and put the fish with the skin down into the pan. If you choose to fry, add some butter and fry starting from the skin side as well.It is a matter of taste if you want to roast or fry the fish only from the skin side to a perfect medium. If not, turn the bits in the middle and steak from both sides.

Complete the mash and portion on the plates. Place steh fish nicely on the plates and put aside the creamy and lemonly cabbage. This could well work without the mash too.

My recommendation for the wine is a nice riesing.