Strawberry Fields Written by Kari Tuomi
What do Finns eat during high summer and early autumn? Besides the usual,
new potatoes, cauliflower, French beans,
broccoli, salads and smoked fish, there are
many hugely popular local sweet delicacies. Colourful berries are always a favourite,
especially the different varieties of open
field strawberries and small blue bilberries from the forests. They are sweet yet healthy and highly tongue staining.
T
he strawberries are available everywhere from Midsummer to late July. The season is not very long and it ends as suddenly as it began. Finnish Strawberries are sweeter and smaller than the varieties you might know, so it’s really worth tasting them. Unless you are reading this in August, when they have gone. Or become too expensive to buy. New potatoes and their popularity in Finland is somewhat of a puzzle. The French would hardly describe them as the ”delicacy worthy of best asparagus”, but that’s exactly what they say of new potatoes in Finland. The traditional diet of millions of Finns from 1960’s through 1980’s was potatoes with a simple meat sauce. I belong to a generation extremely bored of the tuber during rest of the year, but the appearance of those small beautiful potatoes at Midsummer is still a miracle. It’s all about how long you cook them and what you eat them with. Start with a dab of fresh butter and lots of fragrant local dill in the cooking water. Plain ordinary fresh peas are a popular vegetable, which is eaten in an unordinary way. Finns enjoy them uncooked, straight from the pod. We are one of the few nations in the world that enjoy sweet peas without cooking. Remember to pay attention to the technique! You can do everything with your lips, teeth, thumbs, using one hand or two hands. Advanced pea-eaters can casually eat hundreds of peas in a minute, without even looking at the vegetable. An art in itself.
ADVANCED
PEA-EATERS
CAN CASUALLY EAT
HUNDREDS OF PEAS IN A MINUTE, WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING AT
All photos: Envato
THE VEGETABLE.
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