The 60s hit is back!

It's my partner's birthday this week and I thought a cake was in order. I usually ask him what kind of cake he wants and have baked cheese cakes and carrot cakes in the past. This year, in the spirit of the project, I decided to conquer a food trauma I've been carrying around since the early nineties.

If you ever get invited to a graduation party, someone's 50^th birthday or, alas, a funeral in Finland, you'll be introduced to sandwich cake (voileipäkakku), the layer cake's savoury cousin. Wikipedia claims it is of Swedish origin but provides no source so I'm naturally sceptical. Well, whether it came on a boat or was concocted here, it is something every Finn is sure to have, if not eaten, been offered at one time or another. It's basically layers of bread and various types of fillings and garnishes. The bread is usually slices of a tin-baked loaf, so that they are more or less rectangular, sliced either vertically or horizontally. When using vertical slices, you put three or four side by side for every layer to create a rectangular cuboid (look at me using big words!). When using horizontal slices, you just layer them and sort of recreate the sliced loaf. The filling is usually fish or cold meat mixed with something creamy like cream cheese, crème fraîche, mayonnaise or the like and spices, herbs and/or finely chopped vegetables. The bread is moistened with stock, milk or lemon juice. The cake is topped again with something creamy and garnish which often reflects the main ingredient of the filling (fish or seafood for fish filling, ham or other cold cuts for meat filling, etc.).

The sandwich cake is said to have had its first peak of success in the 1960s which probably explains why my mum's generation usually considers it a must-have at any gathering. It's now sort of a retro thing (am I the only one who feels the word ”retro” has a slightly negative nuance to it when used to describe food?) and can be seen in various shapes and made with less-conventional types of breads and fillings. I've even seen a sushi cake with rice replacing the bread. Excellent idea, especially if you want it to be gluten free. I am, however, making a more traditional kind of sandwich cake because that's where it all began. Also, it's useful to have as a sort of starting point if any of my three readers wants to have a go at it.

But before I go to the recipe I'll go back to the trauma I mentioned. I was about 12 or 13, I think, when my maternal grandfather passed away. The memorial service was very traditional with an abundant cold buffet of layer cake, biscuits, ”pulla” (sweet wheat bun with cardamom - I'll come back to this later in the project), Karelian pastries with eggy butter (these will star in the project later too), salads, cured fish and, of course, the sandwich cake. I can't remember whether there was only one cake or two, both fish and meat, but they often come in pairs. Anyway, lots of food was left over so my grandmother packed a bunch of it for us to take home. My sister had been left behind because she was suffering from stomach flu and soon after the funeral I caught it. So I lay on the sofa in the living room when the rest of the family was enjoying all the food in the kitchen and all I can remember is that the smell of the sandwich cake (and it's not a smelly dish at all so it must be all in my head) made me nauseous. So whenever I saw a sandwich cake after that I'd remember the smell (which I probably imagined) combined with the memory of the nausea and was unable to have a bite. Only once when my brother made one with dark rye bread, smoked fish and eggs I tasted a bit and survived. I think a big part of the aversion was that mayonnaise used to be the filling of choice and I've never been a fan of shop-bought mayonnaise that just seems very greasy and unappetizing to me. Nowadays, mayonnaise is often substituted with fresher options or at least mixed with crème fraîche.

My partner, whose only food trauma is huge lumps of onion in grandma's summer vegetable soup (edit: fish soup - I remembered wrong!), is a fan of the sandwich cake so I decided it's time for me to get over my issues. He chose fish over meat and I decided to use cold-smoked rainbow trout and pair it with crème fraîche, dill and lemon – a classic combination I know he'll love. I prefer cold-smoked fish in this but you could use any fish that has a relatively strong flavour. Smoked mackerel would be excellent, I think. Instead of crème fraîche you could use cream cheese or a mix of one of the two and mayonnaise, if you prefer. The mustard is not a must but I think it brings a nice balance. Finns love mustard and the different varieties range from sweet to hot and everything in between. So any ”ordinary” mustard would do just as well, but I'd steer clear of the grainy kind in this case. Lemon pepper is quite common here but I remember it was not available in all supermarkets in England. If unable to find it you can substitute it with salt and pepper as there's already quite a bit of lemon in the recipe. Yes, I'm using a lot of lemon because the birthday boy is the kind who loves it so much he'll eat it like orange and then rub the peel and what's left of the pulp and juice in his hands so he can enjoy the smell for the rest of the day. If you're not quite as obsessed with it you could substitute the lemon & water moistening mix with vegetable stock, for example. I have not added salt as there's salt in the lemon pepper mix and in the fish but you should taste the filling and season if necessary.

The garnish can be whatever you fancy – your imagination is the limit. I chose cucumber rolls and little trout rosettes with finely chopped yellow bell pepper, chives and pea shoots.

Important note: you need to rest the filled cake in the fridge overnight (or 12 hours) so start preparing the day before. You can also freeze the cake: just fill it, wrap it carefully and then defrost in the fridge for 24 hours before decorating.

SANDWICH CAKE WITH FISH (KALAVOILEIPÄKAKKU)

Ingredients

Loaf of bread or a bag of sliced toast (either five long, horizontal slices of loaf or 15 ”normal” slices)

¼ dl of lemon juice + ¾ dl of water for moistening the bread

Filling

400 g cold-smoked fish

200 g crème fraîche

3 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

1.5 dl finely chopped dill

2 tsp lemon pepper

Topping

200 g cream cheese (flavoured or natural)

75-100 g cold-smoked fish

cucumber

chives

yellow bell pepper

pea shoots

First, make the filling. Chop the fish finely. You can use a food processor if you like but as I only have a blender that can barely manage a smoothie I like to use a knife – I enjoy knife work. Plus, with a food processor you run the risk of almost puréeing the fish and I prefer it to retain some texture. Mix all the ingredients for the filling in a bowl and set aside.

Cut the crust off the bread. This is hard for me as the crust is often the best part of bread but for this recipe the bread needs to be uniform without harder or chewier bits. Don't waste it, though. Make breadcrumbs!

Lay two sheets of baking parchment or greaseproof paper on the work surface so that they overlap by a few centimetres. You'll need a layer of paper of about 40 x 50 cm. Place three slices of bread side by side (or one horizontal slice). Mix the lemon juice and water and moisten the bread lightly with a pastry brush. Don't soak the bread!

Here's one I made earlier.

Spread ¼ of the filling on top of the layer of bread. Try to cover the entire surface without going over the edge and make it as smooth as you can to ensure a level cake. Then add another layer of bread, moisten and cover with ¼ of the filling. Continue until you have used all of the filling and all of the bread. At the end, you should have five layers of bread and four layers of filling.

Wrap the cake tightly in the baking parchment or greaseproof paper and either put in a plastic bag or wrap in cling film and let it sit in the fridge for 12 hours or overnight. At this point you can also pop the thing in the freezer to be used later. Just defrost in the fridge for 24 hours before decorating. Easy peasy.

When ready to decorate, unwrap the cake and place on a platter or board. Soften the cream cheese a bit in a bowl. At this point you can add chopped herbs or spices in the cheese. I'm using cream cheese with chives. Spread the cheese all over the cake, sides and top. You can smooth it with a spatula or a palette knife or leave it more uneven, if you prefer. Then release your inner artist – go symmetrical or haphazard, be decadent and generous or sparing and minimalist, whatever strikes your fancy. I used finely chopped yellow bell pepper and chives to create a striped top and decorated it with little rosettes made from slices of cold-smoked trout and rolls of cucumber (sliced with a cheese slicer – a vegetable peeler should work too) with lovely twirly pea shoots garnishing the sides. Enjoy on its own, as a part of a buffet, or with a side salad and a glass of dry white wine.

Top tip: I had a little filling left over and it was delicious with some rye crackers!

Happy birthday, luv. <3

Food Project 2.0

In 2012, when I was living in England, I saw the film Julie & Julia and decided to start a similar cooking project to shake up my kitchen repertoire. However, instead of cooking through a cookery book one recipe per day like Amy Adams's character Julie Powell did, I made a slightly less ambitious pledge to cook something new at least once a week. I did have a day job after all. And to make sure I kept at it, I blogged everything (here, in Finnish). The project was what I hoped it would be: it made me think outside my usual veg box, so to speak, try new ingredients, methods and pairings. This was made slightly easier by the fact that I was living in a country that offered different produce and meat options from my native Finland.

Some experiments were disasters, of course, like empanadas that became one giant empanada & strudel hybrid, or prune marmalade that turned out so foul it ended up filling the bin rather than the traditional Finnish Christmas pastries (joulutorttu) it was intended for. Then again some instantly became firm favourites and are now some of my go-to recipes, like baked lemon cheesecake and roasted vegetable & harissa couscous. I also came to appreciate British food a lot more and am now eager to serve game pie, braised pig's cheeks and Guinness bread to anyone who visits. I mastered new skills like making my own pasta and boning a rabbit. But, this is going to sound so cheesy, what's more important, I learnt a lot about myself. There, I said it, cheesy or not. It's true, though.

As many of my friends know, I can be a tad impatient, and that's not a good thing in the kitchen. (I can just hear my partner saying: ”If by 'a tad' you mean 'so frickin'' you're right.”) I have now had to admit that having all your ingredients prepared and measured, the pots, pans and utensils ready and table tops tidied is going to make the whole experience of cooking so much easier, more stress-free and enjoyable. I have also learnt that the old adage ”Good things come to those who wait” holds true in the kitchen: how much better is a soffritto you've been patiently shifting in a pan over a gentle heat for 30 minutes than the acrid, slightly burnt mush you get if you rush it over high heat in 10 minutes or less. I just hope I can apply some of the newly-learnt patience in other areas of my life, too.

As the project was such a personal success, I thought I'd start Project 2.0 but I needed a guiding principle, something to narrow down the search for recipes. I thought about concentrating on things I struggle with like classic sauces (you know, béarnaise, beurre blanc, etc.), desserts or offal, but that that could end up with both me and my partner A. eating dry food, B. becoming really fat or C. having a serious iron-surplus (offal other than liver is difficult to come by in Finland). I also considered focusing on food of a particular geographical area, perhaps Southeast Asia or Africa but that would be a bit impractical as it would necessitate a trip to an ethnic food store nearly every time I cooked ”a project meal”.

Then it hit me: why not cook Finnish food? It always saddens me when I see or hear Finns dissing their own culinary heritage. Sure, it may not be as colourful as Italian kitchen, as abundant in fresh produce year round as... well, in any other country that's even a bit further south than Finland, or as exotic as Asian or African. Although, ”exotic” is relevant, which many of us forget sometimes. What's mundane to us can be exotic to someone from, say, India. I also suspect many Finns who consider Finnish food boring and tasteless think of bland school lunches* or the endless potatoes and gravy they had as kids. I believe – actually, I know – there's a lot more to it. Taste-wise, I think the key is to invest in good-quality ingredients, to buy seasonal produce (don't make a strawberry layer cake in January or mashed potatoes in June) and make sure you're preparing it right (don't expect a cheaper cut of meat to be ready in a flash). In terms of making it look appealing, well, as we live in a cold climate a lot of our traditional food is the kind that's meant to stick to your ribs: one-pot stews or just meat and potatoes in one form or another. Also, due to the short growing season, we tend to eat a lot of root vegetables because they keep well. But it can be presented in a nice way, I think. That's what I aim to prove, anyway.

Internationally, I don't think Finnish food has a bad rep, because it barely has a rep. Our PR department should be sacked, actually. I suspect (and I can't produce any studies or statistics right off the bat) that we have been curing salmon, baking cinnamon buns and making crispy bread as long as the Swedes have but our dear neighbour has been better at selling it to the outside world. There are exceptions, of course, and things do change, slowly. Our domestic restaurant scene has seen some great restaurants emerging in the last couple of years focusing on Finnish food, for example. One truly inspiring story is that of Satokausikalenteri (”Harvest calendar”). It started when this one guy got frustrated over the fact that supermarkets made it so difficult to shop seasonally. They focused on competing with a wide variety of fruit and vegetables but ignored their natural seasons. Customers ended up with tough and tasteless fruit and innutritious vegetables. He started collecting data on the natural growing and harvest seasons of fruit and vegetables, both domestic and international, for his and his family's use. The idea spread like wildfire among their friends and acquaintances and when they made the calendar public in 2013, it became an instant success. Now available in both hardcopy and smartphone app, it is used by thousands of Finns who have suddenly noticed that certain fruits are more delicious and easier to peel when you buy them at their peak. Even the biggest grocery store chains have taken notice and are now creating produce sections where the seasonal stuff can be more easily identified and purchased.

Thus I begin my ambitious journey through my own culinary heritage, aided by local shops, butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers, my own humble balcony herb garden (yet to be created, of course: there's still snow on the ground) and the recipes from my family and other countrymen and with an aim to prove that Finnish food can be both delicious and attractive.

I'll start with a firm favourite the recipe of which I copied from my mum's recipe book when I moved away from home back in the late 90's. The great thing about this delicious pie is that you can use the base with the seasonal fruit of your choice. I've topped it with bilberries and quark, a classic Finnish combination, but you could use apple slices and cinnamon in the autumn or rhubarb in the spring, for example. Nothing grows in Finland at the moment but bilberries are picked in late summer and autumn and they freeze beautifully. I didn't pick mine, I'm ashamed to admit, but bought a big box at the market in the autumn, bagged them and popped them in the freezer. An important note: bilberries are not the same as blueberries although you can substitute them with blueberries. The two are closely related but bilberry, which grows wild in shrubs in Finland, is more acidic and the flesh is gorgeous dark purple, black almost, and it stains everything it touches. Marvelous stuff. Anyways, here goes.

BILBERRY & QUARK PIE (MUSTIKKARAHKAPIIRAKKA)

Ingredients

Pie mix:

3 dl piimä (substitute with kefir or natural yogurt)

2 dl sugar

100 g melted butter (In Finland, we usually use salted butter)

4 dl wheat flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon vanilla sugar (may be substituted with vanilla extract)

Berries:

2-3 dl bilberries or blueberries (frozen or fresh; if using frozen, don't defrost them first)

1 tablespoon of potato starch (corn starch should work too) You need this to absorb excess moisture from the berries, otherwise the crust will be soggy.

Quark:

250 g quark

1 tablespoon of sugar

1 egg

+ 1 tablespoon butter & some breadcrumbs to line the dish

1. In a bowl, mix together the kefir (or yogurt, if using that) and sugar with a spoon or a plastic/silicone spatula.

2. Add the melted but slightly cooled butter and mix.

3. If you are using a liquid vanilla extract, add that now and mix.

4. Combine the flour and bicarb and mix in the kefir & sugar mix in batches. If you were using a powdered vanilla product like vanilla sugar, add that to the flour before mixing with the kefir & sugar. Set aside.

5. Add the potato starch into the berries and mix. Set aside.

6. Soften the quark in a bowl with a spoon and then add the sugar and the egg and mix until smooth. Set aside.

7. Grease the pie dish (at least 27 cm in diameter) and line with breadcrumbs to avoid sticking.

8. Pour the pie mix in the dish and spread it so it covers the bottom of the dish. No need to be very precise: it will even out in the oven.

9. Pour the blueberries on top in an even layer.

10. Spoon dollops of quark mix on the blueberries. No need to spread as it will melt and even out in the oven. It won't cover the entire surface but the mottled finish is what you want.

11. Bake in 175-200 degrees Celsius, mid-height, for about 20-30 minutes. The baking time depends on the oven so keep monitoring the pie. For bilberry pie, slower baking is better as it will ensure that despite the juicy berries the bottom will be cooked through and yet the surface won't burn. Keep baking until the bits of pie crust showing around the edges are golden brown. The quark will still be a bit jiggly when you take it out but it will set as it cools. Leave to cool completely. I prefer it fridge temperature, but room temperature is fine, too.