Finnish cuisine

The cuisine of Finland is notable for generally combining traditional country fare and haute cuisine with contemporary continental style cooking. Fish and meat play a prominent role in traditional Finnish dishes from the western part of the country, while the dishes from the eastern part have traditionally included various vegetables and mushrooms. Refugees from Karelia contributed to foods in eastern Finland.

Finnish foods often use wholemeal products (rye, barley, oats) and berries (such as blueberries, lingonberries, cloudberries, and sea buckthorn). Milk and its derivatives like buttermilk are commonly used as food, drink or in various recipes. Various turnips were common in traditional cooking, but were substituted by the potato after its introduction in the 18th century.  WIKIPEDIA

Laskiaispulla

A semla / fastlagsbulle (Swedish), laskiaispulla (Finnish) or fastelavnsbolle (Danish and Norwegian) is a traditional pastry made in various forms in Finland, Sweden,^[1] Latvia, Norway, Denmark and Estonia, associated with Lent and especially Shrove Monday or Shrove Tuesday.

The name semla (plural, semlor) is a loan word from German Semmel, originally deriving from the Latin semilia, which was the name used for the finest quality wheat flour or semolina. In the southernmost part of Sweden (Scania) and by the Swedish-speaking population in Finland, the pastries are known as fastlagsbulle, in Denmark and Norway they are known as fastelavnsbolle (fastlagen and fastelavn being the equivalent of Shrovetide). In Scanian, originally an Eastern Danish dialect, the feast is also called fastelann. In Finnish the pastry is known as laskiaispulla, in Latvian as debeskūka, and in Estonian as vastlakukkel.

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Semla (Mehrzahl: semlor), fastlagsbulle, fettisdagsbulle oder hetvägg ist in Schweden, Finnland und Estland ein traditionelles Gebäck mit Füllung zur Fastenzeit (siehe auch Laskiainen). Ursprünglich handelte es sich dabei um eine Heißwecke.

Die Bezeichnung semla ist mit dem deutschen Wort Semmel verwandt, da dieses Gebäck anfänglich ohne Füllung angeboten wurde.

Traditionell wurden semlor in einem tiefen Teller mit heißer Milch serviert, welche manchmal mit einer Prise Salz gewürzt war, um dem süßen Grundgeschmack entgegenzuwirken. In manchen Teilen Schwedens wurde auch Zimt über das Gebäck gestreut. In der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts wurde die semla im

mer mehr als gewöhnliches Gebäck betrachtet und ohne Milch gegessen. Heute gehen einige Cafés in den größeren Städten wieder dazu über, die semla auf ursprüngliche Weise zu servieren.

Karelian pasties or Karelian pies (South Karelian dialect of Finnish: karjalanpiirakat, singular karjalanpiirakka; North Karelian dialect of Finnish: karjalanpiiraat, singular karjalanpiiras; Karelian: kalitt, singular kalittoa; Olonets Karelian: šipainiekku) are traditional pasties from the region of Karelia. Today they are eaten throughout Finland.

The oldest traditional pasties usually had a rye crust, but the North Karelian and Ladoga Karelian variants also had wheat alongside of rye to improve the baking characteristics of the available rye breads. The common fillings of this era were barley and talkkuna. The 19th century first introduced potato and buckwheat as new fillings, and later due to trade, also rice and millet.

Nowadays in the most familiar and common recipe the pasties are made from a thin rye crust with a filling of rice. Butter, often mixed with boiled egg (egg butter or munavoi), is spread over the hot pasties before eating.

Karjalanpiirakka have Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) status in Europe.

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