a house called nut

Berry indulgence

Now that Christmas has come and gone, I can finally tell you what we did with all those berries. We picked gooseberries, redcurrants, and raspberries from the garden, over 25 pounds of strawberries from a local farm, and buckets of bilberries from the surrounding forest. After my first canning adventure with bilberries, and quickly realized that 1. I'd caught the canning bug and much of our summer bounty was destined for jam jars and 2. We should give the jam away as xmas presents and not spoil the surprise on the internet.

Presto chango. Berries into jam. (Special thanks to my friend Helen for jam art!)

Other plans are in place for the raspberries and redcurrants, so all that added up to: bilberries preserved in lemon syrup, gooseberry jam, gooseberry-elderflower jam, and, my favorite, strawberry jam. This was my first taste of homemade strawberry jam, and ohh it is so good. Heaven in a jar.

All recipes are from The River Cottage Preserves Handbook, which proved a very good introduction to canning. Also from the book was strawberry vinegar, which I've greedily saved for myself. It's wonderful in salads and can also be added to fizzy drinks for an extra kick. I dread the day I use my last drop, but hopefully that won't happen before strawberry season rolls around next year. It's pretty too:

Janne and I have become partial to food gifts in recent years and I hope to keep up the tradition in the future. In addition to this year's preserves, we've given Christmas presents such as flavored olive oil, bottled balsamic reduction, and dried wild mushrooms. It's really fun to make these things together, and we don't get stressed out with all the spending and materialism. Since they're edible, we know everyone can actually use them. It's disturbing to think of all the pretty things wrapped in pretty paper and condemned to a dusty shelf.

I think we've saved just enough berry loot to keep us going for the year, and in the meantime treats like this have been appearing on the dining room table:

A little reminder of summer in the cold, cold winter.

Little drops of gold

Unsure if our summer visitors would take to foraging, I was prepared to miss the beginning of the mushroom season, to pass by chanterelles, and look at something other than the ground during forest strolls. But those first, happy spots of yellow cast their spell on our guests as well and many an hour was spent crouching in underbrush, shaking off spiders, and thinking up new mushroom dishes. Our friend Anna said chanterelle picking is like discovering little drops of gold. What a perfect description.

If you haven’t picked mushrooms before, chanterelles are a great variety to start with. They’re a cinch to recognize and their bright color and tendency to grow near paths make them easy to find. Unlike most wild mushrooms, chanterelles will keep fresh for days in the fridge. They’re also rich in protein, vitamins B and C, and iron. Winners!

We haven’t had the chance to do any serious picking yet this season, but after one walk that involved bundling fungi into a jacket, I’ve started bringing along the mushroom basket. Now, at summer’s end, many other mushroom varieties are just emerging, which means that mixed into the gathered flushes of chanterelles are assorted porcinis, hedgehog mushrooms, and many more. Chanterelles greatly diminish in quality when preserved, so we tend to eat them fresh and store the others.

These are all destined for the “mushroom medley jar” which houses all the odds and ends that we dry. Just the thing for soups and sauces.

Are you picking mushrooms this year?

Bilberry picking

Can you tell what he's eating? Here’s another look.



After three years of accompanying us on berry picking expeditions, Väinö the dog has finally worked out that he can pick berries too. Sitting next to him while gathering bilberries led me back into the world of one of my favorite childhood picture books, Blueberries for Sal. But instead of a wandering bear cub, I met a greedy Pomeranian.



It’s a good thing that this year we were armed with one of those extremely clever berry-scooping thingamabobs from the cottage’s endless supply of gadgets. We came home with more berries than ever in just a fraction of the time it usually takes—even the dog-cum-vacuum-cleaner was no competition.



The cottage also came with this handy berry sieve that weeds out all the non-berry material that finds its way into the buckets. Such a breeze. I can’t believe we used to do this all by hand.

We encountered a surprising number of fellow berry pickers this year, which possibly has something to do with our new neighborhood, but might also be due to recession belt-tightening. According to newspaper reports, there really are more people out there foraging. It’s unfortunate that the motivation is economic hardship, but I’m still happy to see a revival of the practice. Free, delicious food and time spent connecting with our natural surroundings—only a few pleasant hours in the forest can yield enough fruit to last the entire year.

So far we have five liters of bilberries in the freezer, three liters canned, and a bunch more drying in the oven. And since we’re still using up last year’s bounty, the house is filled with everything from fresh berries to berry soup and pie. Lucky we have more guests on the way!



My very first preserves: bilberries in a light lemon syrup. Half the jars contain a bay leaf, as recommended by The River Cottage. I was afraid to try canning for many years, but it turns out it’s not so difficult after all. The hardest part was putting those pretty blue jars on the shelf without even the tiniest taste. Now that’s self-discipline.

Summer bounty

On Sunday, a dear friend from London in tow, we rowed across the lake to the rocky, forested scene that greets us every day. We wanted to enjoy the sunshine, get some exercise, and admire the view from atop the hill. But just a few steps from the boat we found the season's first chanterelles and our leisurely hike turned into a mini foraging expedition. Our friend had never picked mushrooms before, but the bug bit her fast--soon she was collecting bilberries and wild strawberries too.



We came home with a modest handful of cheery, yellow chanterelles. They were later sauteed in olive oil, garlic, and thyme and added to a salad with pine nuts and just a touch of balsamic vinegar, but by then we were too hungry to pause for photographs. You'll just have to trust me that it was delicious.



Strawberries have been on the menu for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and, of course, dessert. Apparently only decades ago there were bountiful wild strawberries in the forest, but these days purchasing them is the only way to get a good supply. On this week's agenda: strawberry picking at the farm down the road.

It's time to start preserving the summer bounty. In the past I've frozen and dried mushrooms, berries, and the odd squash, but this year I'm armed with a steam juicer and a preserves cookbook. More on that soon! Do you make preserves? What are your favorites? Links and recipes very welcome!

Spruce shoot syrup recipe

Spruce shoots straight from the tree are one of my favorite spring camping and hiking snacks. They’re a great wilderness digestif and breath freshener, an excellent source of vitamin C, and they taste good too. Tart, crisp, and clean. Young, tender shoots can also be infused or boiled in hot water for a refreshing tea. Mmm. I’ve heard of ales and cordials flavored with spruce and the other day I even came across a sparkling spruce beverage in a champagne-style bottle.

This year, I decided to make something a little more refined out of all that green growth and whipped up a batch of spruce shoot syrup. In Finland, spruce shoot syrup is used much like honey to flavor desserts or tea. The addition of sugar removes the sharpness, and the resulting syrup boasts a rich, sweet flavor with a fresh aftertaste. Delicious! Spruce shoot syrup is also traditionally used as a cold and flu remedy and cough syrup. I suppose all that vitamin C can’t hurt.



Spruce shoot syrup (kuusenkerkkäsiirappi)

1 quart/liter spruce shoots
1 quart/liter water
2 ¼ cups/ 460 grams sugar

Rinse and pick over the spruce shoots. Combine the shoots and the water in a pot and soak overnight. Lightly simmer the shoot/water mixture for three hours with the cover on. Then strain out the shoots and return the infused water to the hob. Mix in the sugar and continue to simmer very lightly. After about 2-2 ½ hours, the mixture will darken to a reddish-brown and consistency will become thicker, and syrupy. Pour the hot syrup into sterilized bottles. The syrup will thicken as it cools. Serve with tea, over ice cream or pancakes, or as a cough remedy. Yields around 500ml or 2 cups.

Nettle soup

People say that nettle tastes like spinach….and people are right! I was suspicious at first, but stinging nettle really is tasty, not to mention free and abundant (at least in Northern Europe).

I have been meaning to cook with nettles for a very long time, but again and again the season has passed me by and I’ve instead resolved to make nettle something or other the following year. This is the year that I finally kept my resolution and whipped up a batch of nettle soup. I put on some sturdy gardening gloves, grabbed a pair of scissors and got ready to raid the neighborhood, but in the end all the stinging nettles I needed were growing in the backyard. Now that’s local eating.



The recipe I followed is from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's The River Cottage Cookbook. It was herby and fresh and so delicious. If you don’t have the book, the recipe is available online here. I also followed Fearnley-Whittingstall’s advice on picking nettles from The River Cottage Year:

The tiniest young nettles have tender stalks, and can be snipped just above the ground and used whole. As the plants become more vigorous, just the crown of leaves at the top should be harvested. As spring turns to summer, the nettles soon become coarse, flowerheads begin to form and they quickly run to seed. These specimens are not good eating. But where nettles have been strimmed or mown, fresh young growth will appear within a few weeks, and this can be treated like the early spring plants.
 
Well, that’s good news—we can keep the harvest coming and limit stings at the same time.

Are you foraging anything? Do you have any good, wild recipes to share?

Forest fires and false morels

Yesterday, Väinö the dog and I went exploring in the forest along the lake and came across the site of a small forest fire. It was a somber moment. In the middle of all this verdant growth is a patch of land that looks incongruously charred, black, dead. I wonder how and when it happened, if there were witnesses, if anything other than plant life was harmed.





I paced the perimeter of the destruction noticing which trees had survived (several large pines and firs) and which hadn’t (everything else), but it wasn’t long before this revelry was interrupted by an urgent realization: false morels! I suspect that most mushroom hobbyists are cursed with the inability to observe a landscape without calculating its suitability for various fungi. When I see a field in early summer, I don’t think of picnics or butterflies, I think: shaggy ink caps!

False morels thrive in areas that have suffered fire— a gem of folk wisdom that my father-in-law, Otto, told me years ago, and that I’d squirreled away for safe keeping. Our walk became a mushroom hunt, but I didn’t have to look for long.



Here’s the rub: false morels are considered a delicacy in Finland, but inedible in many other countries, including neighboring Sweden. They are lethal if eaten without proper preparation, but even after this there is evidence that the fungi can cause long-term toxic build-up. So although probably the single most delicious mushroom dish I’ve ever eaten was made of false morels that Otto had gathered and cooked himself, I decided to exclude myself from this particular circle of life. Still, finding the morels was a reassuring reminder of the persistence of nature. Instead of taking a walk and finding some sort of sylvan necropolis, I took a walk and found new life thriving among the remains of what once was.

Finnish berry soup

Every year Janne and I take to the forest to stockpile berries for the year ahead. And even though we invariably eat our way through liters of berries each summer, the bounty usually keeps us well supplied until the next picking season rolls around.

Last weekend I dug into the freezer, pulled out a precious container of bilberries from our dwindling supply, and made one of my favorite Finnish recipes—berry soup. Mmmm. It’s a little taste of summer at any time of the year. In fact, unless I accidentally end up with mounds of overripe berries (and berry soup is just the thing for that situation), I usually make this recipe with frozen berries in other seasons. Why cook a berry when you can eat it ripe and raw?

This week we had berry soup all on its own (dessert), over porridge (breakfast), over creamy rice pudding baked in our wood oven (dessert, my favorite!), and mixed into a bowl of plain yogurt (snack). Berry soup is also delicious with a touch of cream or big scoop of ice cream. But this is a versatile dish just begging for experimentation, and I suspect it would also be scrumptious as a layer in an unbaked pie or as a glaze on a cheesecake. It’s worth trying out your favorite juice and berry/fruit combinations too. I tried a strawberry-rhubarb version once and, yeees, it was yum.

Finnish berry soup (kiisseli) recipe

1 liter/4 cups water
½ liter/2 cups berries or other chopped fruit
125 ml/ ½ cup black currant or lingonberry concentrate (or other fruit juice or concentrate of your choice)
3 to 5 tablespoons potato starch (arrowroot, kuzu, and cornstarch are all fine substitutes)
sugar to taste

Add all the ingredients except the starch to a pot. Bring to a gentle simmer on medium-low heat and cook, stirring now and then, for about 15 minutes. Dissolve 3 Tbs of the starch in a little cold water and add it slowly to the pot, stirring constantly to avoid lumps. Stir for another five minutes, or until any lingering starchy flavor has cooked out. Check the consistency and add more starch if you would like your berry soup thicker. Give it a taste and add more sugar if necessary. Enjoy your berry soup hot off the stove or chill and serve later. Berry soup will stay good in the fridge for at least one week.