The different casseroles are super-old countryside foods, they all go back to when most of Finland was not industrialized or urban at all. Potatoes, carrots and turnips were grown on almost every farm so they were cheap and always at hand. And these kind of dishes were cooked in wood-burning ovens and/or saunas sometimes. When cooked overnight root vegetables get very mushy and sweet too. And even if they all look the same, the recipes have some different twists in them. The potato casserole/perunalaatikko is actually left out to slightly ferment/sweeten after the cooked potatoes are mashed. And the carrot casserole has porridge rice in it for a different texture.
Indeed! And back in the day, getting any kind of sweetness in food must have felt like a luxury, since most folks coudn't afford sugar or honey very often, so of course the most festive foods would be the sweetest things you could make, especially in winter when there were no fresh fruit or anything like that.
Finnish christmas foods are from the times of food being scarce. So all the foods are pretty much as they are being advertised, carrot, potato, liver, fish, ham, turnips etc :D These traditions have stuck with us but also some dishes have different variations. These are pretty much all the ''depression'' foods we used to have in Finland.
It's a lot of veggie mush because they're traditional root crops and veg that have been grown here - kept in good condition traditionally in root cellars, (because nothing edible grows in winter here, we had to eat a lot of preserved foods) then picked up and prepared differently to celebrate. They do taste different when compared to what they are simply boiled, stir fried or raw, so it works. I love all veggie laatikkos myself, some dislike some of them but I don't know anyone that dislikes all of them.
Don't knock it till you've tried it, blue cheese with christmas cookies. Granted, if you absolutely hate blue cheese, that blue cheese taste will be there, but there's also a new flavor in where they mix, and that flavor is sooo tasty. This coming from a guy who's not all that keen on blue cheese either.
Christmas casseroles may look mushy, but they belong to Christmas. I personally look forward to eating my first bite of potato casserole, mustard ham and canned peas on the same fork. That's my Christmas flavor. We also have Karelian roast, Rosolli (cooked, diced root vegetables, especially beetroot, carrot and potato, often combined with one or more of pickled cucumber (of either the vinegar or brine type), raw onion and apple) and meat pate.
My Norwegian bf said malted potate casserole is one of the best ways to have potatoes. I agree. That and swede casserole are my favourites. You mush up veggies, add cream and butte rand alt and put that in the oven - deeelicious! Lipeäkala is fine. It tastes like fish but the texture is different - mushy :D Gingerbread with blue cheese, absolutely! Yum! But the blue cheese has to be Finnish Aura blue cheese. Ask anyone. It is rather mild :)
Lutfisk (Lyefish) is dry fish in lye. It's almost completely tasteless in itself. That's why the sauce is a must to give the dish a taste. If you love gingerbread, Germany is the country for you. There are so many different types in Germany, all being specialities from different parts of the country.
The best way to describe traditional Finnish food I've heard is it's peasant food. That's why it's all mushy. Everything is preserved or soaked or salted and many dishes are stewed for a long time.
They all taste nice. They have been well tested and refined over quite a few years, after all. Well cooked mushy foods are easy to digest and help in digesting other foods when you're eating a lot of it. Pigs tend to grow larger than turkeys. Not that long ago people kept pigs behind their saunas. Speaking of fish, the oldest known fishing net, The Antrea Net, was found from Karelian isthmus in Antrea, in Korpilahti village in 1913. It is dated to 8540 BCE. So there has been time to give some thought to those fish dishes. Here are couple fish food videos and one about pigs going to sauna: "Finnish fish delicacies on an open fire", "Plank Smoked SALMON | How to smoke SALMON? | Bart's Fish Tales" and "Smoking hams in a Finnish smoke sauna". Also: "Declaration of Christmas Sauna Peace 2017". Merry Christmas.
You are right to wonder about the textures of christmas casseroles! The main reason is, Christmas was a big event, you wanted to eat the best you could have. Now the noble ones didnt have to chew their bread or stringy meat, so the softer and creamyer dish was, the more fancy for the common farmer 😊
There is also other popular way to prepare Christmas ham. Instead of making it in the owen, you can take it to palvaamo, that is a kind of sauna, and there with smoke and low warm temperature you get beautiful smoky ham in a couple of days. Just got our ham to the nearest place 😊 Still going to bake some gingerbread cookies, buy some fish and other stuff, but before Christmas days I am actually going to visit Tallinn with my doughter. We go with Viking XPRS and going to enjoy that Christmas buffet when arriving back to Finland. Merry Christmas to you all 😊
All of that is included in our christmas table except for the lipeäkala. What he did not taste on the video are my personal christmas favourites: rosolli salad, rou with smetana&raw onion, carlic pickles and kotijuusto (homemade cheese) . Mushier food is more comfortable. It also makes you feel full earlier so that might be why the xmas food has been mushed for ages as in aim to save in resources during harsh winter times.
Finns love Aura cheese with gingerbread. It is a beginner level blue cheese, not very strong at all. I did not learn to really eat other blue cheeses before getting dairy protein allergy, but Aura cheese was amazing alone, in beetrootcasarole and with gingerbread.
Our Finnish Christmas dinner has the Christmas ham obviously, different kind of herrings, cured salmon, cured whitefish, salmon, potatoes, rosolli, beetroot, Karelian stew, pickled cucumber with sour cream and honey, Vorschmack, different casseroles (rutabaga, carrot, potato and liver) and different kind of breads. And as dessert cinnamon buns, gingerbread, different kind of cheeses (blue cheese, brie and some more milder cheeses) and coffee of course. Probably forgot something from the list...
Lutfisk is delicous. It's a little bit smelly, but the flavour is very strong and it also have a very interesting texture, it is usually made from ling and was originally made as a preserved food. Even in Sweden, lutfisk is the dish that is always debated whether it should be on the christmas table or not. I personally love it, and you eat it with egg sauce and bacon bits and of course potatoes. This combination creates an amazing contrast in flavours :) And gingerbread and blue cheese... Sounds super weird, I even remember that I was afraid to eat it when I was little... But DON'T knock it till you tried it! :D
To understand the combination of ginger and blue cheese you could compare with the British tradition of Stilton and Port vine. One very sweet taste to break another very salty taste. The combination creates new fantastic flavors.
When I was child we ate mushy Christmas food. It was not my favourite food, but I could eat it. Later when I was living by myself I ate some of those foods (not all), but stoped eating mushy Christmas food about 30 years ago.
so in Finland they don't have hot dishes on the Christmas table. meatballs, small fried sausages, Christmas sausages, thick ribs, boiled potatoes, Jansson's temptation, omelette with stew etc.
Dwayne & Dave: NO, we don't want gingerbread cookies with blue cheese. We want blue cheese with gingerbread cookies. See the diffrence. We can have only cingerbread cookies with coffee and no-one forces you to have blue cheese with that. But if you want to try blue cheese we might suggest that you put it on gingerbread cookie because that taste combination is out of this world.
There are several companies that operate cruise ships between Finland (Helsinki) and Tallinn. Cheaper (probably being Eckerö Line) offers a round day trip and Christmas buffet for €60 to €70 euros / person (if you book at the right time i.e. when there is an offer on) so it's not that expensive.
After December 24th ham sandwiches are my breakfast, lunch, dinner... Especially carrot casserole depends about who make's it. I only eat my mum's casserole cause all the others have been way worse. But yeah, ham carrot casserole and potato casserole, that's all you need 😀
I love carrot casserole and my sis makes the best one to my taste.. this christmas im making from my family request home made honey chili mustard, meatballs and cognac rose pepper cured salmon..
"Lanttulaatikko" is not turnip casserole. Its made of rutabaga. Turnip is nauris in finnish. Of course you can make casseroles from turnips too or any kinds of root veggies but the traditional christmas casseroles are carrot, potato and rutabaga. And what comes to mushy foods, to me its boring to have too many of them so I choose my favorite which is the rutabaga casserole. As grown up in Sweden I have also adopted some of the swedish christmas foods to my christmas meals. I have some meatballs, prinskorvar (small sausages) and ribs.
In our family yes all of those foods. We stopped with the lye fish because no one really liked it except my dad 😅 it’s edible though when combined with enough white sauce, ground pepper and potato
You had me in stitches with your reaction to the gingerbread/blue cheese combo 😆 I do prefer gingerbread dipped in milk but it's good with blue cheese too. Mind you, I'm also a huge fan of salmiakki, as long as it's salty enough (who am I kidding, it's never salty enough) so... 😉 The mushy potato casserole with the ham is heavenly. You can't go wrong with the salmon of course. As for the rubbery yet slimy fish, count me out 😃
The casseroles are a bit mushy... but they taste FINE. :D It's just mashed stuff mixed with spices and rice porridge in some cases, baked in the oven. Try them before you giggle so much ;) Our 'turkey for a week' is 'ham for a week', ham sammiches FTW. Addition: Gingerbread cookie and blue cheese is DIVINE. It's a really lovely mix of savoury and sweet, a little bit pungent, creamy, amazing. If you can, try it. ONCE. Then you can be considered brave! 😂
This is what I'll be eating soon, except for the lute fish. The casseroles are not my favorites but I'll have some. Ham I eat with boiled potatoes, Italian salad (kind of a mayo-ham-pea-carrot salad, I don't know what to call it, maybe insalata russa?) and carelian pies but not with rice porridge filling but potato filling with egg-butter on top.
In France people have pate with cherry jam. And people do eat different types of fruit or jams with cheese. It is normal. Ginger biscuits are not strong in taste and blue cheese is very good with crispy sweet biscuits.
Nordic blue cheeses are the best, though. The Finnish Aura and Danish Blue Castello, they're a lot better than any other blue cheese I've tasted. Many blue cheese indeed do taste foul - especially if they're close to expired. But these two? Heaven on Earth 😍
That Christmasham looks very like cruiseship food, not at all the ham my mother makes. Long time in the oven, all nighter. It's tender and nice, falls apart once you take it to your fork. But yes, our casseroles look very mushy. But I personally wouldn't feed those to patients who cannot swallow. The potato casserole, at least the one's I've bought, are kind of on the stickier side. The turnip one could go down but the carrot one has rice in it so might be trouble also. But they're all tasty.
Finnish Aura blue cheese is mild compared to others and oh, so delicious! maybe even some raspberry jam on top 😋 Dont be afraid to try some of you ever come to Finland with or without the gingerbread or jam. All are recommended 😁
Just finished cooking turnip casserole for this chrismas. I don't like gingerbread cookies but they are ok with some blue cheese. Just don't get it how you can be so amazed of people who eat salmiakki freewillingly to like a strong combo like that :)
One of the facts is that we do not have any type of gravy with the yule ham. So mushy caserolles act as gravy eg. moistens the food when you eat it. The starters was missing hard boiled egg. This is traditionally eaten with pickled herrings. And that buffet was clearly missing other traditional Yule food. So I suggest to Dwayne to try to find some othe Yele dinner video that might show other food items also.
In old days everything was mushed pretty much :D Nowadays we have that carrot casserole ( carrots and rice ) , lanttulaatikko ( turnip casserole is always mushed ) usually that potato casserole is kinda like sweet potato casserole, not normal cos then it's mashed potatoes lol, my family always had these; Karjalanpaisti ( karelian hot pot, usually contains pork and beef meat pieces or just one another, carrots, onions, black peppers etc and it's in oven several hours which makes the meat really nice and tender, melts in your mouth ) boiled potatoes usually we had instead casserole or we had sliced potato casserole ( sometimes normal ones, cream ones or garlic ones ) liver casserole, christmas ham ofc ( in oven so long that it's also tender and melts in your mouth yum! ) joulu limppu ( which is kinda just christmas bread ) turnip casserole, carrot casserole, different sort of herrings like Dave had there, we have many flavours, joulu olut / koti kalja ( christmas beer / not sure how to say that other one lol ), beetroot salad, rosolli ( has usually herring, carrots, beatroot, onions etc ) and potato salad, glögi ofc as hot drink, in mornings we had rice porridge with fruit soup, i think that's all maybe :D Dave and Kat is at cruise so everythings is buffet there so it might be completely different than normal home meals, and also ofc we have gingerbreads, christmas star pastries etc,
In finland after christmas we eat ham on breakfest dinner lunch night time and all the other times we are hungry for a snack. Ham sandwich is good if u wake up middle of night hungry 😄
I'm kinda wondering if it's a case if fish being seen as like a commoner food and when having red meat became more available people gravitated toward that as a formerly more available to the wealthier thing. Just a theory. Fish & chips is a big thing of course, but it's basically like a street food, a very much everyman thing, not some kind of treat.
Tbh, gingerbread and blue cheese are very good together and even if you don't like blue cheese I think gingerbread works well with pretty much any cheese or then in Finland we also have Aura-juusto which is like a mild blue cheese which many prefer.
I'm sure that people of all ages, with teeth or without, can eat those casseroles.🤣 I'm a Finn, and I've grown up with these baby foods, so I really like these on the Christmas table.😂 I'm also vegan, and these vegetable casseroles are easy to make into a vegan version. Turnip casserole is my favourite, and carrot casserole is a strong second.😂
Finnish Christmas foods certainly do not look good. They look like mush, but of my God are they so good. They are pure heaven with each bite. Especially the ham with some really nice mustard. When Christmas in over and there is left over ham. My absolute favorite is to put a slice of that ham on a rye bread with generous mustard on top. Oh. My. God! That is so good. Pure heaven. Orgasmic cuisine. The best meat you can ever put on a sandwich.
the lipeäkala or as we in Sweden call it lutefisk its cod that's been soaked in a lay water solution and then in just water the process takes about 14 days so if you want it for Christmas you traditionally had to start on the 10 of December to make it ready for Christmas. Because it is a lay solution it's a rare instance of a food that have a basic hp and not acidic so it supposedly good for your stomach to eat but i really dislike it.
Laatikkot look much better when *religiously* served in the aluminum boxes you buy them in from the supermarket. 😂 Originally people made them all, but it's much cheaper and convenient to buy them ready to heat and serve. This I have no problem with. The problem I have is that no-one makes an effort presenting them at one of the most celebrated meals of the year. 🙄 Dwayne, don't forget that the Christmas meal is not just the laatikkot (casseroles). There are a whole array of other things too. And you can't criticise a food combo not working when you hate one of the elements, so would never try it. 😉
I think one reason UK's diet isn't so fishy anymore is because of the long influence from cultures all over the world. UK has had way more influence globally than Finland, hence you've been exposed to more "exotic" foods than, for example, us Finns. Also, UK is heavily farmed and there are islands with more sheep than people, maybe that's another reason the UK doesn't rely so heavily on fish anymore.
First time I went to UK I wanted to try kippers. We do not have kippers in Finland. It's smoked herring. Herring lives in North Sea. It's very delicate fish so it does not travel fresh thour the Danish straights to Finland. So the pickle them on the boat before transporting to the Baltic Sea. UK is close to North Sea so they easily get fresh herring and as it's a oily fish you're first idea is to smoke it. So smoked herring aka kippers is an UK (also Dutch) thing. But no they'd stopped eating it and the only version I could find was vacuum packed version that was not good at all. I didn't buy it and try as all my English friends told me that it was horrendous. I've still not eaten kippers.
I don´t usually eat casseroles or christmas ham at christmas. I eat mostly reindeer and raw salmon/white fish (siika), herring and some air dried ham, mushroom-salad, fish roe, marinated shrimps, marinated red onion and cheeses with Karelian pies. That has been my menu for the last 5-6 years.
You first have a cold buffet with all kinds of fish - smoked, marinated etc and some salads (mushroom, beetroot etc). Then you have ham / turkey with casseroles and red cabbage. Desert is plum pudding or plum and rice pudding. Then coffee with cakes and ginger biscuits. How about shepherds pie! It is mushy. How about the Scottish mushy foods? Mince pie is not to my taste - mushy filling with swollen wet raisins - very sweet, fat dough UH!!!!!!
mix sauce, potatoes, peas and carrot casserole all With the ham at the same time,, best that way imo, i mean thats like you wouldnt like a cake, cause you ate just flour
Kannattaa kokeilla piparkakku ja sinihomejuustoa edes kerran !!! Kaikki ruoat löytyvät meidän joulupöydästä - paitsi puolukkakakku - sen täytyy olla joku paikallinen erikoisuus.
You should contact Viking Line and at least try to get something out of it. I think the food is mushy just so you don't have to chew and save energy to eat more and drink. I don't like bluecheese but i have tried that combination and it was actually decent and with red wine it was good.
The potato casseroles is my favorite. Agree it don't look so nice. but it taste so good! especially with meat. And its the only time i like mushy food 😂 But i say no to ginger bread with blue cheese
Yeah, I thought it was weird when I first heard of Blue Cheese on Ginger bread cookies in the mid 90ies, but it really works. And I'm not a fan of Blue Cheese.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
The different casseroles are super-old countryside foods, they all go back to when most of Finland was not industrialized or urban at all. Potatoes, carrots and turnips were grown on almost every farm so they were cheap and always at hand. And these kind of dishes were cooked in wood-burning ovens and/or saunas sometimes. When cooked overnight root vegetables get very mushy and sweet too. And even if they all look the same, the recipes have some different twists in them. The potato casserole/perunalaatikko is actually left out to slightly ferment/sweeten after the cooked potatoes are mashed. And the carrot casserole has porridge rice in it for a different texture.
I hope he siis this, fellow suomalainen :D
Indeed! And back in the day, getting any kind of sweetness in food must have felt like a luxury, since most folks coudn't afford sugar or honey very often, so of course the most festive foods would be the sweetest things you could make, especially in winter when there were no fresh fruit or anything like that.
Finnish christmas foods are from the times of food being scarce. So all the foods are pretty much as they are being advertised, carrot, potato, liver, fish, ham, turnips etc :D These traditions have stuck with us but also some dishes have different variations. These are pretty much all the ''depression'' foods we used to have in Finland.
This^^ all the way trough. A lot of people forget we haven't been the powerhouse we have been lately on tech especially.
You have to remember that all Finnish traditional foods come from the old times when food was scarce and simplicity was the key.
Always somebody say: "Weird Finnish Foods" But foods is normal if you ask Finns.
It's a lot of veggie mush because they're traditional root crops and veg that have been grown here - kept in good condition traditionally in root cellars, (because nothing edible grows in winter here, we had to eat a lot of preserved foods) then picked up and prepared differently to celebrate. They do taste different when compared to what they are simply boiled, stir fried or raw, so it works. I love all veggie laatikkos myself, some dislike some of them but I don't know anyone that dislikes all of them.
... says the man from the country of mushy peas! 😂
And beans 😂😂
Don't knock it till you've tried it, blue cheese with christmas cookies. Granted, if you absolutely hate blue cheese, that blue cheese taste will be there, but there's also a new flavor in where they mix, and that flavor is sooo tasty. This coming from a guy who's not all that keen on blue cheese either.
For extra twist, try adding a thin slice of pear or halved grapes
Blue cheese with Vihreät kuulat😋
I loooooove this combo. So. Much. Gingerbread + Aura cheese or Blå Castello.
molded cheese is not meant for human consumption :D
Christmas casseroles may look mushy, but they belong to Christmas. I personally look forward to eating my first bite of potato casserole, mustard ham and canned peas on the same fork. That's my Christmas flavor. We also have Karelian roast, Rosolli (cooked, diced root vegetables, especially beetroot, carrot and potato, often combined with one or more of pickled cucumber (of either the vinegar or brine type), raw onion and apple) and meat pate.
My Norwegian bf said malted potate casserole is one of the best ways to have potatoes. I agree. That and swede casserole are my favourites. You mush up veggies, add cream and butte rand alt and put that in the oven - deeelicious!
Lipeäkala is fine. It tastes like fish but the texture is different - mushy :D
Gingerbread with blue cheese, absolutely! Yum! But the blue cheese has to be Finnish Aura blue cheese. Ask anyone. It is rather mild :)
One addition that we've added in the past couple decades is salmon roe on toast with sour cream and onion.
the carrot casserole is something i have adopted to my Swedish xmas foods. It is not xmas without it.
potato and carrot and sweetpotato casseroles are only ones i can consume.
Blue cheese and ginger cookies in Sweden as well😊
Yeah! Awesome gombo!
Well some uses white cheese as well. I don´t like either way.
In 2020 survey, 8% tought lipeäkala is a christmas food. The other 92% knew that it is not food at all.
Lutfisk (Lyefish) is dry fish in lye. It's almost completely tasteless in itself. That's why the sauce is a must to give the dish a taste.
If you love gingerbread, Germany is the country for you. There are so many different types in Germany, all being specialities from different parts of the country.
The best way to describe traditional Finnish food I've heard is it's peasant food. That's why it's all mushy. Everything is preserved or soaked or salted and many dishes are stewed for a long time.
Absolutely! Swedes also eat Blue cheese on Gingerbread. It is sooooo gooood.
They all taste nice. They have been well tested and refined over quite a few years, after all. Well cooked mushy foods are easy to digest and help in digesting other foods when you're eating a lot of it. Pigs tend to grow larger than turkeys. Not that long ago people kept pigs behind their saunas. Speaking of fish, the oldest known fishing net, The Antrea Net, was found from Karelian isthmus in Antrea, in Korpilahti village in 1913. It is dated to 8540 BCE. So there has been time to give some thought to those fish dishes. Here are couple fish food videos and one about pigs going to sauna: "Finnish fish delicacies on an open fire", "Plank Smoked SALMON | How to smoke SALMON? | Bart's Fish Tales" and "Smoking hams in a Finnish smoke sauna". Also: "Declaration of Christmas Sauna Peace 2017". Merry Christmas.
You are right to wonder about the textures of christmas casseroles! The main reason is, Christmas was a big event, you wanted to eat the best you could have. Now the noble ones didnt have to chew their bread or stringy meat, so the softer and creamyer dish was, the more fancy for the common farmer 😊
There is also other popular way to prepare Christmas ham. Instead of making it in the owen, you can take it to palvaamo, that is a kind of sauna, and there with smoke and low warm temperature you get beautiful smoky ham in a couple of days. Just got our ham to the nearest place 😊 Still going to bake some gingerbread cookies, buy some fish and other stuff, but before Christmas days I am actually going to visit Tallinn with my doughter. We go with Viking XPRS and going to enjoy that Christmas buffet when arriving back to Finland. Merry Christmas to you all 😊
All of that is included in our christmas table except for the lipeäkala. What he did not taste on the video are my personal christmas favourites: rosolli salad, rou with smetana&raw onion, carlic pickles and kotijuusto (homemade cheese) .
Mushier food is more comfortable. It also makes you feel full earlier so that might be why the xmas food has been mushed for ages as in aim to save in resources during harsh winter times.
The finnish boxed food is more than how it looks. Its how its made. They are not mushed afterwards
+Karelian stew and pie here in east Finland
...ya know, really cooked down Karelian stew would make a great like british-style pie's filling. lol
Piparkakku/gingerbread doesn`t taste like ginger.
Yeah more like cardamom
Love the laatikot - all three but especially the potatoe-laatikko, missing are the potatoes, potato salad and the mustard, and yes - the dark bread. ❤
Finns love Aura cheese with gingerbread. It is a beginner level blue cheese, not very strong at all. I did not learn to really eat other blue cheeses before getting dairy protein allergy, but Aura cheese was amazing alone, in beetrootcasarole and with gingerbread.
Our Finnish Christmas dinner has the Christmas ham obviously, different kind of herrings, cured salmon, cured whitefish, salmon, potatoes, rosolli, beetroot, Karelian stew, pickled cucumber with sour cream and honey, Vorschmack, different casseroles (rutabaga, carrot, potato and liver) and different kind of breads. And as dessert cinnamon buns, gingerbread, different kind of cheeses (blue cheese, brie and some more milder cheeses) and coffee of course.
Probably forgot something from the list...
Sweetpotatoe&chili casserol and beetroot&blue cheese casserol are must nowadays 😋 in many 🇫🇮🇫🇮🇫🇮 christmas tables
Lutfisk is delicous. It's a little bit smelly, but the flavour is very strong and it also have a very interesting texture, it is usually made from ling and was originally made as a preserved food. Even in Sweden, lutfisk is the dish that is always debated whether it should be on the christmas table or not. I personally love it, and you eat it with egg sauce and bacon bits and of course potatoes. This combination creates an amazing contrast in flavours :) And gingerbread and blue cheese... Sounds super weird, I even remember that I was afraid to eat it when I was little... But DON'T knock it till you tried it! :D
To understand the combination of ginger and blue cheese you could compare with the British tradition of Stilton and Port vine. One very sweet taste to break another very salty taste. The combination creates new fantastic flavors.
When I was child we ate mushy Christmas food. It was not my favourite food, but I could eat it. Later when I was living by myself I ate some of those foods (not all), but stoped eating mushy Christmas food about 30 years ago.
so in Finland they don't have hot dishes on the Christmas table. meatballs, small fried sausages, Christmas sausages, thick ribs, boiled potatoes, Jansson's temptation, omelette with stew etc.
Dwayne & Dave: NO, we don't want gingerbread cookies with blue cheese. We want blue cheese with gingerbread cookies. See the diffrence. We can have only cingerbread cookies with coffee and no-one forces you to have blue cheese with that. But if you want to try blue cheese we might suggest that you put it on gingerbread cookie because that taste combination is out of this world.
There are several companies that operate cruise ships between Finland (Helsinki) and Tallinn. Cheaper (probably being Eckerö Line) offers a round day trip and Christmas buffet for €60 to €70 euros / person (if you book at the right time i.e. when there is an offer on) so it's not that expensive.
After December 24th ham sandwiches are my breakfast, lunch, dinner... Especially carrot casserole depends about who make's it. I only eat my mum's casserole cause all the others have been way worse. But yeah, ham carrot casserole and potato casserole, that's all you need 😀
I love carrot casserole and my sis makes the best one to my taste.. this christmas im making from my family request home made honey chili mustard, meatballs and cognac rose pepper cured salmon..
"Lanttulaatikko" is not turnip casserole. Its made of rutabaga. Turnip is nauris in finnish. Of course you can make casseroles from turnips too or any kinds of root veggies but the traditional christmas casseroles are carrot, potato and rutabaga.
And what comes to mushy foods, to me its boring to have too many of them so I choose my favorite which is the rutabaga casserole. As grown up in Sweden I have also adopted some of the swedish christmas foods to my christmas meals. I have some meatballs, prinskorvar (small sausages) and ribs.
Potato casserole, ham and finish the fork of with whiskey mustard and you will not get up from the table until plates are empty :D
In our family yes all of those foods. We stopped with the lye fish because no one really liked it except my dad 😅 it’s edible though when combined with enough white sauce, ground pepper and potato
Oh I love fresh smoked pepper mackerel! But i'ts hard to find in the middle of Finland. The one in the vacuum doesn't taste the same.😢
You had me in stitches with your reaction to the gingerbread/blue cheese combo 😆 I do prefer gingerbread dipped in milk but it's good with blue cheese too. Mind you, I'm also a huge fan of salmiakki, as long as it's salty enough (who am I kidding, it's never salty enough) so... 😉 The mushy potato casserole with the ham is heavenly. You can't go wrong with the salmon of course. As for the rubbery yet slimy fish, count me out 😃
Washed down with julmust!
It was only matter of time I see you two in same video.
There's two big companies doing cruises between Sweden and Finland / Estonia. Viking line and Silja line/Tallink. Just check their websites.
The casseroles are a bit mushy... but they taste FINE. :D It's just mashed stuff mixed with spices and rice porridge in some cases, baked in the oven. Try them before you giggle so much ;) Our 'turkey for a week' is 'ham for a week', ham sammiches FTW.
Addition: Gingerbread cookie and blue cheese is DIVINE. It's a really lovely mix of savoury and sweet, a little bit pungent, creamy, amazing. If you can, try it. ONCE. Then you can be considered brave! 😂
This is what I'll be eating soon, except for the lute fish. The casseroles are not my favorites but I'll have some. Ham I eat with boiled potatoes, Italian salad (kind of a mayo-ham-pea-carrot salad, I don't know what to call it, maybe insalata russa?) and carelian pies but not with rice porridge filling but potato filling with egg-butter on top.
The traditional side dishes are mush, but they really do taste very good. Especially with the ham.
In France people have pate with cherry jam. And people do eat different types of fruit or jams with cheese. It is normal. Ginger biscuits are not strong in taste and blue cheese is very good with crispy sweet biscuits.
Nordic blue cheeses are the best, though. The Finnish Aura and Danish Blue Castello, they're a lot better than any other blue cheese I've tasted. Many blue cheese indeed do taste foul - especially if they're close to expired. But these two? Heaven on Earth 😍
That Christmasham looks very like cruiseship food, not at all the ham my mother makes. Long time in the oven, all nighter. It's tender and nice, falls apart once you take it to your fork. But yes, our casseroles look very mushy. But I personally wouldn't feed those to patients who cannot swallow. The potato casserole, at least the one's I've bought, are kind of on the stickier side. The turnip one could go down but the carrot one has rice in it so might be trouble also. But they're all tasty.
Finnish Aura blue cheese is mild compared to others and oh, so delicious! maybe even some raspberry jam on top 😋 Dont be afraid to try some of you ever come to Finland with or without the gingerbread or jam. All are recommended 😁
They are easy to cook in the oven at the same time as the ham.
Just finished cooking turnip casserole for this chrismas. I don't like gingerbread cookies but they are ok with some blue cheese. Just don't get it how you can be so amazed of people who eat salmiakki freewillingly to like a strong combo like that :)
Turnip casserole with turkey, mustard, karelian pie and eggbutter 🙏🏼 and forestmushroomsalad
One of the facts is that we do not have any type of gravy with the yule ham. So mushy caserolles act as gravy eg. moistens the food when you eat it.
The starters was missing hard boiled egg. This is traditionally eaten with pickled herrings.
And that buffet was clearly missing other traditional Yule food. So I suggest to Dwayne to try to find some othe Yele dinner video that might show other food items also.
In old days everything was mushed pretty much :D Nowadays we have that carrot casserole ( carrots and rice ) , lanttulaatikko ( turnip casserole is always mushed ) usually that potato casserole is kinda like sweet potato casserole, not normal cos then it's mashed potatoes lol, my family always had these; Karjalanpaisti ( karelian hot pot, usually contains pork and beef meat pieces or just one another, carrots, onions, black peppers etc and it's in oven several hours which makes the meat really nice and tender, melts in your mouth ) boiled potatoes usually we had instead casserole or we had sliced potato casserole ( sometimes normal ones, cream ones or garlic ones ) liver casserole, christmas ham ofc ( in oven so long that it's also tender and melts in your mouth yum! ) joulu limppu ( which is kinda just christmas bread ) turnip casserole, carrot casserole, different sort of herrings like Dave had there, we have many flavours, joulu olut / koti kalja ( christmas beer / not sure how to say that other one lol ), beetroot salad, rosolli ( has usually herring, carrots, beatroot, onions etc ) and potato salad, glögi ofc as hot drink, in mornings we had rice porridge with fruit soup, i think that's all maybe :D Dave and Kat is at cruise so everythings is buffet there so it might be completely different than normal home meals, and also ofc we have gingerbreads, christmas star pastries etc,
In finland after christmas we eat ham on breakfest dinner lunch night time and all the other times we are hungry for a snack. Ham sandwich is good if u wake up middle of night hungry 😄
I'm kinda wondering if it's a case if fish being seen as like a commoner food and when having red meat became more available people gravitated toward that as a formerly more available to the wealthier thing. Just a theory. Fish & chips is a big thing of course, but it's basically like a street food, a very much everyman thing, not some kind of treat.
Tbh, gingerbread and blue cheese are very good together and even if you don't like blue cheese I think gingerbread works well with pretty much any cheese or then in Finland we also have Aura-juusto which is like a mild blue cheese which many prefer.
Well people love mashed potatoes and these casseroles are pretty much the same kind, just different ingredients 😄
when I worked in a nursing home I once had for lunch Christmas leftover laatikko, and........ I did not eat it lmao
In my local grocery store here in Sweden they sell green cheese in tube next to the gingerbreads.
I'm sure that people of all ages, with teeth or without, can eat those casseroles.🤣 I'm a Finn, and I've grown up with these baby foods, so I really like these on the Christmas table.😂 I'm also vegan, and these vegetable casseroles are easy to make into a vegan version. Turnip casserole is my favourite, and carrot casserole is a strong second.😂
Me watching this while baking carrot casserole. Turnip one is the Best. And pickeled herrings.
Blue cheese on gingerbread is actually good
Finnish Christmas foods certainly do not look good. They look like mush, but of my God are they so good. They are pure heaven with each bite. Especially the ham with some really nice mustard. When Christmas in over and there is left over ham. My absolute favorite is to put a slice of that ham on a rye bread with generous mustard on top. Oh. My. God! That is so good. Pure heaven. Orgasmic cuisine. The best meat you can ever put on a sandwich.
the lipeäkala or as we in Sweden call it lutefisk its cod that's been soaked in a lay water solution and then in just water the process takes about 14 days so if you want it for Christmas you traditionally had to start on the 10 of December to make it ready for Christmas. Because it is a lay solution it's a rare instance of a food that have a basic hp and not acidic so it supposedly good for your stomach to eat but i really dislike it.
We Finns just love fish, also at the winter, fish gives us the vitamins sun would give us, but there ain't much of it ere that time...
Laatikkot look much better when *religiously* served in the aluminum boxes you buy them in from the supermarket. 😂 Originally people made them all, but it's much cheaper and convenient to buy them ready to heat and serve. This I have no problem with. The problem I have is that no-one makes an effort presenting them at one of the most celebrated meals of the year. 🙄
Dwayne, don't forget that the Christmas meal is not just the laatikkot (casseroles). There are a whole array of other things too.
And you can't criticise a food combo not working when you hate one of the elements, so would never try it. 😉
How have i lived this long without knowing im supposed to have gingerbread with blue cheese?
I think one reason UK's diet isn't so fishy anymore is because of the long influence from cultures all over the world. UK has had way more influence globally than Finland, hence you've been exposed to more "exotic" foods than, for example, us Finns. Also, UK is heavily farmed and there are islands with more sheep than people, maybe that's another reason the UK doesn't rely so heavily on fish anymore.
Dont suppose I could ask for a video about traditional British holiday quisine?
In Finland they go heavy on the veggie mush. It all tastes great!
Lye fish/Lutefisk... Rubbery and slimey? Sounds correct.
Should be eaten with a white sauce, but honestly, it doesn't make it better.
First time I went to UK I wanted to try kippers. We do not have kippers in Finland. It's smoked herring. Herring lives in North Sea. It's very delicate fish so it does not travel fresh thour the Danish straights to Finland. So the pickle them on the boat before transporting to the Baltic Sea. UK is close to North Sea so they easily get fresh herring and as it's a oily fish you're first idea is to smoke it. So smoked herring aka kippers is an UK (also Dutch) thing. But no they'd stopped eating it and the only version I could find was vacuum packed version that was not good at all. I didn't buy it and try as all my English friends told me that it was horrendous. I've still not eaten kippers.
I don´t usually eat casseroles or christmas ham at christmas. I eat mostly reindeer and raw salmon/white fish (siika), herring and some air dried ham, mushroom-salad, fish roe, marinated shrimps, marinated red onion and cheeses with Karelian pies. That has been my menu for the last 5-6 years.
Yeah... It's pretty weird there isn't so much fish dish in Brexit🤔 I have be there like 5 times and it's realy missing on street view
As a Finn, I would choose Silja line instead of Viking, because its the more posh of the two. 😉❗
You should definetly contact Dave Cad!
Gingerbread cookies and strong blue cheese is jusr match msdr in the heavens! omnomnomnom!
In Finland we take hat Off, when eating!!!
You first have a cold buffet with all kinds of fish - smoked, marinated etc and some salads (mushroom, beetroot etc). Then you have ham / turkey with casseroles and red cabbage. Desert is plum pudding or plum and rice pudding. Then coffee with cakes and ginger biscuits.
How about shepherds pie! It is mushy. How about the Scottish mushy foods? Mince pie is not to my taste - mushy filling with swollen wet raisins - very sweet, fat dough UH!!!!!!
Carrot casserole is my favourite. I don't put blue cheese on gingerbread cookies.
mix sauce, potatoes, peas and carrot casserole all With the ham at the same time,, best that way imo,
i mean thats like you wouldnt like a cake, cause you ate just flour
Kannattaa kokeilla piparkakku ja sinihomejuustoa edes kerran !!! Kaikki ruoat löytyvät meidän joulupöydästä - paitsi puolukkakakku - sen täytyy olla joku paikallinen erikoisuus.
I don't like blue cheese, but good brie cheese on gingerbread is great! 😊
I have never eaten fish and chips, or any fried fish if fish fingers are not counted.
I love christmas food
Our most common blue cheese is very mild, btw. [:
That stuff is defenetly not on my christmas table. Only the potato caserole wich needs to be prepared in a certain way or I don't like it at all.
I mean they have seasonings, it nor just a carrot/rice smoothie.
You should contact Viking Line and at least try to get something out of it. I think the food is mushy just so you don't have to chew and save energy to eat more and drink. I don't like bluecheese but i have tried that combination and it was actually decent and with red wine it was good.
Mushy... Sure it is. But so are the pies and mash 😉
13:45 I would never eat that 😰
Greetings from Finland
The potato casseroles is my favorite. Agree it don't look so nice. but it taste so good! especially with meat. And its the only time i like mushy food 😂 But i say no to ginger bread with blue cheese
I dont usually like blue cheese... But Aurajuusto!!
Yeah, I thought it was weird when I first heard of Blue Cheese on Ginger bread cookies in the mid 90ies, but it really works. And I'm not a fan of Blue Cheese.
Blue cheese is like some people love it and some people "hate" it. I think it smells like toesweat 🤮
Well...this is jus t a bisnes. Couple of days ago this is just the same agend in Sweden. We eat very much same like food. Fish, potatoes, pork etc.
Used to have a serious phobia of swallowing, still didn't touch that mushy shit lol.
Get your ass in finland, i take you to the cruise my man 💪🏼 make it fan meet for fin and thous damn nedflanders (swe) fans 🤣
Pig foot in gello MMMM❤