Eat&Joy Maatilatori is a fantastic place that should exist in every urban space – it’s essentially a farmer’s market in a shop that sources local foods from all over Finland to bring to city consumers.  Offerings range from the very fresh (cheese and yogurt from nearby dairy farms, just-baked rye bread, fruits and vegetables) to the canned, jarred, and otherwise long-lasting (jams, jellies, chocolates, mustards, and more) as well as lots of baskets. Apparently Finland is big on baskets.

Chatting with the man at the counter, I learned that Eat&Joy opened for a trial period beginning in June and after a successful three month stint,  would be opening as a permanent location just the next day.  The shop owners are dedicated to showcasing the best of small Finnish producers – some who might not otherwise reach a large consumer base – and apparently the public has responded with enthusiasm. Who wouldn’t be enthusiastic about Finnish riispiirakka, a palm-sized rye pastry filled with just-barely- sweet rice pudding?

Especially when they’re place on beautifully designed Finnish tea towels.  As a brief segue…the graphic and textile design in Finland is, unsurprisingly, spectacular. I covet every single item in the Marimekko store and hope that someday my kitchen will be decked out in extremely expensive but oh-so-gorgeous tea towels and oven mitts and cloth napkins and tablecloths and I will be an enviable domestic goddess with pastries in the oven, decked out in a spotless Marimekko apron. Well, actually that’s not true.  I want to have a real, bustling, happy, full-of-life-and-love-and-food-probably-a-little-(lot)-of-mess kitchen. I don’t really want to live in the polished and gleaming perfection of the Marimekko store….

…or maybe I do.

Besides the rice pudding-pastry-pie thingamajig with multiple double vowels that I had to ask the very patient blond lady at the counter to repeat several times and then finally write down on the corner of my paper bag to even get a bare understanding of what she was saying, I also bought a large container of some  incredible Finnish yogurt. The nice blond lady said it was ‘very unique and very Finnish,’ which clearly she could have said about any item in the store and I would have no idea. But I totally bought it (figuratively and literally) and I’m so happy I did. The cloudberry flavor in the apricot colored container was light and fruity, cold and creamy, with a pureness of taste that so many yogurts fail to achieve. Or rather, a pureness that most yogurts never even attempt, having been created with a whole boatload of chemicals designed to make them sugar-free or fat-free and generally taste-free and enjoyment-free.  This yogurt tasted like what yogurt in its essence should taste like. And I am the cloudberry’s biggest new fan.

Eat&Joy featured several cases of fresh baked breads, apparently from the bakery of some American guy who has been perfecting his recipes for over 20 years. The shop also features massive coolers of plastic wrapped meats, from sausages to cured meats to steaks of all kinds. There’s a huge wall of specialty flours and grains, a shelf of bags of granolas to mix and match, and a stack of farm-fresh eggs for the taking. I spent a lot of time perusing the sweets section as well – adorable individual portions of toffee, local Finnish chocolate, and this delightfully colored array of what I assume to be a form of caramel, unless karamelli means something totally different (with Finnish you never know!)

I also found myself drawn to the large refrigerator full of Finnish alcohol. Eat&Joy also has an excellent selection of locally produced beers, wines, and ciders. To top off my purchase of completely foreign items, I also bought a bottle of lingonberry cider – tart, sweet, and as I found out later, surprisingly alcoholic.

But I didn’t notice one of my favorite little touches about Eat&Joy until my third visit (yes, I went back three times in four days and yes, it was just as exciting each time).  Standing in front of the cheese cooler and telling myself that it did not make sense to buy a large brick of Finnish cheese or a tube of Finnish butter the length of my arm right before getting on a plane, I noticed a photo album hanging from the refrigerator door.  I picked it up and paged through what looked to be a family photo album – if your family included a number of smiling blond children, a herd of goats, several immensely large cows, and a smattering of assorted poultry. The photo below, under previously mentioned butter tube and cheese brick, might be the most joyful and bizarre family+cow portrait ever taken.

Although I couldn’t read a word written in the album, the cheese labels placed next to various photos of animals suggested that this idyllic rural farm was the location of the cheese and butter production.  Judging by the lush green pastures, the expansive countryside, and the relaxed and contented expressions of both the children and the animals, this farm looks to be a happy place. It looks like a real farm, not a production facility or factory where the animals are shoved into pens and made to eat disgusting feed and treated like expendable cogs in an industrial meat-processing machine.  Of course it’s not all sunshine and rainbows on farms – the animals are killed and then eaten and I’m sure it’s not a pleasant sight (having never seen the process before but hoping to at some point)- but I do believe that the lives of these animals up until their death for our benefit should be as content and natural and painless as possible.   It may be an advertising creation of the cheese industry, but I agree that happy cows make better cheese. And I don’t have any scientific evidence for this, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that unhappy cows do not pose for family portraits.

Alas, I decided that a two-foot long cylinder of Finnish butter would not be coming home with me on the plane. All the more reason to return to Helsinki…

Eat&Joy Maatilatori
Lasipalatsi
Mannerheimintie 22–24
00100 Helsinki

But I’ve just discovered the most exciting new movement in mobile food, coming to you straight from the South Harbor of Helsinki, Finland: BOAT FOOD.

The smiling Finnish lady on the boat may not promote her whereabouts on Twitter, but she does a brisk business selling an array of smoked and fried fish off her quaint little craft. Despite a bit of a language barrier, she managed to convey her selection with broken English, pointing, and a bit of guesswork on my part: whole smoked whitefish, perch, and trout; burnished fillets of salmon;  and palm-sized morsels of fried herring.  I purchased a small piece of the herring with a very thin layer of crunchiness and a generous sprinkling of dill sprigs for the solid price of 1 euro.  It was the perfect street food snack: delicious, slightly greasy, very local, and ridiculously cheap.

Oops. Did I say street food snack? I’m still wrestling with the correct terminology for food sold from watercraft.  If we’re going for parallels, I suppose I should refer to the area about which these mobile food vendors hawk their snacks-on-the-go.  Food trucks move around the street. Food boats move around the water. But Water Food just doesn’t sound right. Sea Food? Ocean Food? Harbor or canal or river food? Bodies-of-water food? Although the exact nomenclature may leave something to be desired, I can’t get over the brilliance of this mobile fish snack vendor. Yes, I realize I have a somewhat overzealous love for boats.

But I’m certainly not the only one who likes boats  (T-Pain does too!). Boats make people happy and so does mobile food and more people should put the two together.  And there would be plenty of opportunities to sell…come to think of it, all of my favorite markets are located by bodies of water. The Ferry Building Farmer’s Market in San Francisco is on the Bay. Pike Place in Seattle is on Puget Sound. Here in London, Borough Market is on the Thames and Broadway Market is on Regent’s Canal.  Clearly, it’s time for all these markets to get with the program and adopt the newest market and mobile food innovation of the future.

Anyone else know of any boat food vendors? Or want to donate me a boat to kickstart this new movement?  I am accepting all generous offers and in return you can come snack on my boat.

Bodies-Of-Water-Food, your time in the spotlight has come.

I absolutely adore markets. I love farmers markets with overflowing stalls of freshly dug, dirt-spattered vegetables and sun-ripened fruits.  I love prepared food markets with sizzling grills and enticing smells and people shoveling food into their mouths on the street corner.  I love talking to producers and sellers and seeing what people have made and grown and created and trucked all the way in from the countryside in the middle of the night to sell to people as the sun rises.   I love how the identity of the location, the culture of the area and the possibilities of the landscape all come together in the items sold for consumption and enjoyment.

Unsurprisingly, I loved Helsinki’s Market Square.  Bags still in hand, I serendipitously stumbled upon this maze of bright orange tarpaulined stalls on my way from the central train station to my hotel.  Entranced by the brand new and exciting foods and the absolutely incomprehensible Finnish signage, I had to tear myself away to go check into my room and get some work done, my heavy suitcase bounce-bounce-bouncing forlornly against the cobblestoned streets as a reminder of all the tasks at hand.

But not to fear – over my three days in Helsinki, I returned multiple times daily to conquer the as-yet-undiscovered foods of my edible explorations. Next to the old world of blueberries lay the uncharted territories of mistletoe-red lingonberries and mango-bright cloudberries…

I also stared in awe at the overwhelming abundance of chanterelles, just begging to be whisked away from the market and cooked into a risotto. Alas, traveling and kitchen-less, I had to be content with merely fantasizing about luscious mushroom dishes.

There were numerous stalls selling prepared food, including expectedly Finnish items like reindeer sausage with potatoes and salmon soup, and unexpectedly, paella. After purchasing their plates, people huddle in tents against the sometimes-biting Finnish wind, clutching cups of steaming kahvi and shielding their food from thieving seagulls on the hunt for snacks. Can’t say I blame them (the seagulls, that is).

Another reason I love markets? Flowers!And enormous Russian churches in the background…

As if the Old Market Hall in Helsinki weren’t amazing enough on its own, it can also boast of a beautiful location just on the water overlooking the South Harbor. Enormous cruise ships loom as tall as skyscrapers and as large as city blocks, dwarfing the little local tugboats and ferry boats that zip through the harbor and around the coast and islands. In the helpful visitor’s centre just by the Market Square I bought a 24 hour travel card that included unlimited travel on the trams, buses, and most excitingly, the ferry to the islands of Suomenlinna. Let’s be quite frank -  I will never, ever, fail to be highly entertained by being on a boat…

Of course when setting off on an island adventure, one must always think ahead to provide sustenance for the daring and dangerous trip ahead. Unlike most other stranded islanders foraging for coconuts and dead bugs,  I had the luxury of departing from a ferry stop a mere four minutes walk from the Old Market Hall so I stocked up on Finnish treats for the voyage.

I started with a mini loaf of classic Scandinavian rye bread (100% ruis!)  and bought some strong Finnish cheese that I can’t even begin to pronounce but is spelled viinitarhurin.  Brushed with wine and aged for six months, the cheese reminded me a bit of a comte or gruyere with its smooth slices crumbling into nutty shards.  Add a bit of  deep burgundy colored and intensely flavorful Rudolph the delicious cold-smoked reindeer and it’s a ridiculously adorable little Finnish sandwich of love.

Snacks in hand, I boarded the ferry for the 15 minute ride across the harbor to Suomenlinna…

Suomenlinna, the  ‘Castle of Finland’, is a sea fortress spread across  six islands off the coast of Helsinki in the Gulf of Finland.  It’s  a UNESCO World heritage site currently home to 900 permanent residents and several museums, schools, restaurants, a library, arts centre, theatre, and even a minimum security labor colony. The fortress was constructed by the Swedish crown back in 1748 to protect Finland from Russian expansionism, which unfortunately did not keep Russian forces from seizing control of Helsinki and the fortress during the Finnish War in 1808.  With so much history and a beautiful landscape of old stone fortifications amidst cobblestoned pathways,  overhanging trees and gently rolling hills, Suomenlinna was the perfect place for a brief afternoon visit. Unbeknownst to me, it’s apparently an extremely popular picnic spot for the people of Helsinki, although most of them are smart enough to go during the summer when it’s just a little less chilly.  Step away from the ferry dock and through a cobblestoned tunnel and suddenly it’s almost a small town in New England…

right down to the beautiful autumn foliage. If I can’t be back in Massachusetts for the fall, I’ll take the southern Finnish islands instead. I also appreciated the colorful bottle arrangement below which was just the start to a whimsical and fantastical series of window displays. Unsurprisingly, Suomenlinna is home to multiple artist studios and theatres:

Unlike New England, Suomenlinna is also home to a combination church and lighthouse. In fact, this is unlike anywhere else in the world, as apparently only the Finns are inventive enough to combine a house of worship with a useful nautical navigational device. The church was actually built during the Russian era as an orthodox church and originally had 5 traditional onion-shaped domes, which were removed upon Finnish independence in the 1920s.

The layout of the fortifications over six different islands results in beautiful waterways cutting through the fortress with charming bridges and paths. It’s so pretty and pristine at times that it almost feels like a storybook illustration.

But then you see reminders that in fact, almost 900 people live on Suomenlinna and despite living in a world class maritime monument/tourist attraction, they still must do their laundry…

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/10/05/food-in-finland-part-two-a-market-picnic-on-the-islands-of-suomenlinna-the-sea-fortress/feed/ 7 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/10/03/food-in-finland-part-one-the-old-market-hall-in-helsinki/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/10/03/food-in-finland-part-one-the-old-market-hall-in-helsinki/#comments Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:28:47 +0000 mei http://familystyles.wordpress.com/?p=2219

Thanks to the Old Market Hall in Helsinki, I started Thursday morning with a stunningly good Americano and an open-faced sandwich of whitefish, rose peppercorns, and fresh sprigs of dill on rye bread that looked like Christmas and tasted like the ocean.  Thanks to the Old Market Hall,  I purchased a variety of traditional Finnish delicacies and ate them on an island with a historical sea fortress and the only combination lighthouse/church in the world. Thanks to The Go Game,  I’m in Helsinki staying just a few cobblestoned streets from the Old Market Hall. Sometimes I have the best job in the world.

Of course, it’s not all fun and games and market-hopping as I’m just coming off  some intense work weeks with no time even for blogging!  And running on startup funds means a lack of finances to take advantage of the Michelin-starred gastronomic temples to Nordic cuisine sprinkled around the Finnish capital. As several locals mentioned to me, food is pretty expensive in Helsinki. But I most enjoy simple (and delicious) pleasures and am soul-satisfyingly happy buying a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese and sitting on a bench overlooking the ocean and the Helsinki skyline. I don’t need  long-stemmed wine glasses and 80 euro tasting menus to experience Finnish food…not that I’d turn it down if someone offered. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Let’s  get back (figuratively) to the Old Market Hall, which I went back to (literally) every day I was in Helsinki. Our client fortuitously selected a starting and ending location across the street from the Market (also known as the Vanha Kauppahalli) and I was on my way to check out the venue when I walked by the Hall, idly glanced in a window, and noticed an abundance of hanging sausages. Unquestionably a detour was in order…

The hall consists of two long parallel aisles of stalls ranging from cheesemongers to butchers to bakers to candy vendors to fruit and vegetable sellers as well as a wine shop, and an Italian deli.   Interspersed amongst these stands offering take-home purchases are tiny sit-down restaurants just a few meters wide, including several Finnish cafes, a sushi restaurant, a coffee shop, and a Soppakeittiö (soup kitchen).

I couldn’t help but gaze longingly at all the soup eaters, wedged in shoulder to shoulder and hunched over steaming white ceramic bowls and baskets overflowing with slices of bread.  I longed to join their ranks and try all three items on the menu – a bouillabaisse, a lamb cabbage stew, and a pumpkin soup drizzled with a spiral of cream. Yes, I was looking over people’s shoulders at their bowls.  Soup is one of my favorite things. But alas, work beckoned.

However, I made sure to check out all the Finnish delicacies. The market features several particularly Nordic foods such as extensive glass cases of immaculately sliced and arrayed smoked salmon with various garnishes and flavorings such as the popular rose peppercorn:

Salmon was certainly not the only fish on display. I can’t read any of these signs for the life of me, but another fishmonger I spoke to pointed out trout, herring, perch, and whitefish at her stand and I’m sure some of them are looking enticing in the photo below.

Another particularly Finnish stand featured wild northern game of all animals – everything from reindeer to bear, black grouse to hare – and in all forms – smoked, tinned, sliced into sirloin, shaped into salami and sausages, made into soups and pates and more.  Although sorely tempted, I couldn’t bring myself to spend over $30 on a large can of bear soup, but I did enjoy ogling all the weird items on offer.

Other never-seen-before take-home treats of the Nordic tradition included jars of cloudberry and sea buckthorn jam and tall bottles of spruce shoot syrup.

Outside in the Market Square (posts coming soon), you can buy boxes of the poetically named cloudberries; round, apricot-colored, and about the size of blueberries.  I had an vaguely bizarre dish of long wedges of fresh Lapland cheese topped with a scoop of cloudberry jam, unexpected in both flavor pairing and consistency. The cheese was white and mildly rubbery with a lightly mottled brown outside and a texture slightly denser than fresh mozzarella. A bit odd, but surprisingly good with a scoop of the sugary sweet jam which reminds me a bit of a less tangy passionfruit with its similar color and small seeds.

We’ll get to all my purchases in a later post, since I did return to the market one or tw0 or six times.  Thanks to its location smack in the center of our game zone and on the way to the city centre from my hotel, it wasn’t hard to justify  multiple daily trips.  Especially when all the fascinating elements of theVanha Kauppahalli turn out to be ideal fodder for writing Go Game missions. Where else in the world can you find the notorius reindeer killer of Lappland?

Only in the Old Market Hall of Helsinki….