Dining-In: A Culinary tour of the World-Finland

The Country: Finland

Continent: Europe, North

Capital: Helsinki

Current Head of State: Prime Minister Juha Sipila, President Sauli Niinisto

Form of Government: Unitary Parliamentary Constitutional Republic

Official Language: Finnish, Swedish

Ethnic Groups: Finns, Swedes, Sami, Roma, Russian

Formation Date: 15th century, though first known inhabitants date back to 5200 BCE.

Population: As of March 2016: 5,488,543

Currency: Euro

Independence Date: December 6, 1917-From Russia

Main Religion: Christianity-Luthern, Eastern Orthodox

Famous Finnish Americans: Jean Auel, Pamela Anderson, Matt Damon, George Gaynes, Jessica Lange, Vanessa Williams

National Anthem:

The Food: Lohikeitto and Pannukakku
Translated into English, this is salmon chowder and a giant oven pancake. The two items aren't necessarily related, but they were recipes I could make that didn't require me to special order any ingredients and actually sounded like things I would eat. It's not easy to get my hands on lingon berries or reindeer meat in Seattle. Both recipes come from the internet and I will post the original links in the sources section.

Lohikeitto-Finnish Salmon Chowder

3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 leek, chopped (white and light green part only)
3 cups plus 1 Tbsp. water, divided
1 bay leaf
3/4 lb. potatoes, cubed and peeled
3/4 lb. salmon filet, skinned, boned and cut into small chunks

3/4 cup cream (I used coconut milk since I can’t eat cream of any kind)
1 Tbsp. cornstarch (up to 1 1/2 Tablespoons if you'd like the broth thick)

1 Tbsp. butter
Salt and pepper
Fresh parsley or dill for topping
Lemon wedge (optional)

Heat the olive in a large saucepan and saute the leek until softened. Add 3 cups of the water and the bay leaf and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and carefully add the potatoes. Cover and simmer until the potatoes are tender.

Add the salmon and simmer for five minutes. Add the coconut milk and stir to mix. Make a cornstarch slurry with the cornstarch and 1 Tablespoon of water, stirring to dissolve the cornstarch. Add to the soup and simmer until the soup has thickened.

Add the butter and remove from heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Top with plenty of fresh parsley or dill. Serve with a squeeze of lemon, if desired.

This soup is really light for a chowder. One thing I have noticed with Scandinavian cooking is a minimalist style. The ingredient list is usually pretty small and the dish is prepared in such a way that each ingredient shines for what it is. In this one, the potatoes were very potatoey and the salmon was very salmony but not fishy. I used dill and lemon to drizzle over the top and both helped enhance the flavor. I highly recommend using both.

Even though the soup is light, it was filling as well. It's a chowder for warm weather. Using the coconut milk helps it from being too heavy and don't worry, all the other flavors mask any coconut flavor, so it doesn't taste odd with the chowder. I recommend using the kind of coconut milk in the cardboard containers, not the kind in cans. The canned kind is "real" coconut milk and very strongly flavored. The kind you find in the baking aisle is not what I consider "true" coconut milk, and works better for things you don't want to taste like coconut. Also, be careful when you stir this soup. The salmon and potatoes are both very delicate and you want to keep them in pieces, not broken up to bits.

Next up was the Pannukakku, or the oven pancake. This shows up in other cultures. It's called a Dutch Baby or German Oven Pancake, but this is the Finnish version. I found this to be a very easy and fun recipe and it made me want to try other versions.

Pannukakku

6 eggs

1 1/2 cups milk

1/4 cup sugar (optional)(I cut it down to 2 Tbsp. and it was a very light sweetness. If you like sweeter foods, I would use the full amount.)

1 Tbsp. vanilla sugar (or 1 tsp. vanilla extract) (I used the extract)

1/8 tsp. grated lemon zest(I didn’t measure this exactly, but used the zest of one whole lemon. You could also use orange zest if you want. That would be amazing too.)

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1/3 cup butter(I found this to be a bit too much. I blotted out some of the butter, so you might cut out one or two Tablespoons of it.)

1 cup cream, whipped until stiff peaks form(I sprinkled powdered sugar on mine instead of this)

Fresh fruit, fruit compote, or sautéed apples(I used fresh blueberries and they were amazing with this)

Whisk together the eggs, milk, sugar, and vanilla sugar (or vanilla) until creamy. Stir in grated lemon zest. Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder and stir into egg mixture. Allow batter to rest for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 450º. When pancake batter has rested, place butter in an oven-proof frying pan. Place pan in oven and allow butter to melt without browning. Once your butter has melted, remove pan from oven and use pastry brush to coat surface and side of pan evenly with the melted butter.

Pour pancake batter into the hot, buttered pan and return to oven. Bake for 15 minutes, or until puffed and golden.(Resist the urge to open the door to look at it. Like a soufflé, you don’t want to let the heat out for this one.)

Serve with whipped cream and fresh fruit, fruit compote, or lightly sautéed apples.

Yield: 5-6 servings.

This pancake was fun! It's all puffy when you take it out of the oven, but it deflates after a minute. It's really dense and eggy. I'm not sure it was supposed to be that dense, but it was still delicious. I really liked it with the powdered sugar and blueberries. Raspberries and blackberries would be great too. Strawberries too, obviously!
I really enjoyed making and eating both of these recipes. Neither of them takes too much time to make and were not difficult at all. I highly recommend both of them! Finland always seems to be forgotten, but their food is really tasty. Give it a try!

Sources: 
Salmon Chowder Recipe

Pannukakku Recipe

National Anthem

Flag Link

Map Link

Dining-In: A Culinary Tour of the World-Botswana

 

 The Country: Botswana

Continent: Africa, south
Capital: Gaborone
Current Head of State: President Ian Khama
Form of Government: Parliamentary Republic
Official Language: Setswana, English
Ethnic Groups: Tswana, Kgalagadi, Bajarwa, Kalanga, white
Population: As of 2014-2,155,784
Currency: Pula
Independence Date: September 30, 1966-From the UK
Main Religion: Christianity
National Anthem:

The Food: Phaphatha and Botswanan Chicken Groundnut Stew
This is my first stop in Africa for this project and it turns out it was a delicious stop! Both of my items were amazing. A lot of Botswanan recipes were for beef, and since I don't eat that, I had to look around for something that worked. I managed to find one I really liked. For my other recipe, I chose Phaphatha. Though a difficult word to pronounce, phaphatha is actually a delicious bread. It is essentially an English muffin, but with elements of biscuits and pancakes added. It's baked on the stove top which really intrigued me. It doesn't rise nearly as long as a traditional yeast bread, like biscuits. And the way it cooks on the stove, is like pancakes. I ate mine with butter but you could add jam if you wanted. The original recipe says it makes a good breakfast sandwich too, if you are so inclined. The recipe used metric measurements, which I had to translate. I will provide the translated amount, as well as my own notes.

Phaphatha:

17.6oz flour, plus extra for rolling and kneading

½ pkg. yeast

1-1 ½ cups lukewarm water

2 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

Sift the flour and yeast into a bowl. Add the sugar and salt. Gradually add water and combine with your hands to form a dough. Only add enough water to form the dough.

Knead the dough for about 5 minutes till it’s soft and pliable.

Put aside in a bowl covered with a damp cloth and leave to rise for 30 minutes.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough to about half an inch thickness. Using a round object like a plastic cup or cookie cutter, cut the dough into circles. 

Dust the phaphathas liberally on both sides and place in a flat pan on medium heat with enough space between them to allow for rising. The phaphatha will continue to rise while cooking. When it is very puffed on the top, turn over to cook on the other side.

Remove from heat when cooked through and enjoy with tea (or coffee) while warm. Alternatively, stuff with whatever you like to make a sandwich.

My first batch got a little too done on one side and the part that touched the pan got too hard to eat. It was easy enough to eat around that part though. The second batch I had turned down the heat and they ended up being less overdone on top. These were delicious and I loved the texture. I'm curious to see if these would freeze well to eat at a later date. I think they would, if I planned on toasting them. I can see how they would make an awesome breakfast sandwich too. Maybe I'll freeze one and test it out next weekend!

For my entree, I decided to try the chicken and groundnut stew. Groundnut is basically peanut butter. I have heard of savory items with peanut butter in them. It's used a lot in certain Asian cuisines like Thai food, but I haven't had a lot of experience with it myself. I vaguely remember using it one time in last year's project, but it evades me at the moment what I did with it. This was a very good use of peanut butter, and if you aren't used to it in savory preparations, I highly recommend this one. Again, I translated the metric amounts and will provide them here.

Botswanan Chicken Groundnut Stew:   

1 chicken, cut into serving pieces
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 med. onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
8.5 oz. water
4.5 oz peanut butter(I used freshly ground peanut butter with no sugar added.)
4.5 oz. tomato paste
1 tsp. grated ginger
2 Tbsp. brown sugar(I completely forgot this and left it out. I didn’t even notice until typing this out. Feel free to leave it out if you want it to be less sweet)
1/2 tsp chili pepper flakes

Prepare the sauce by combining the sugar, chili flakes, ginger, peanut butter and tomato paste in a bowl. Slowly stir-in the water a little at a time until the sauce is smooth. Add the oil to a large pan and fry the chopped onion until translucent. Add the chicken and continue frying until the chicken has begun to brown before adding the bell pepper. 

Continue cooking until the chicken is nicely browned all over. Pour in the peanut sauce and stir well.

Cover and reduce the heat to low simmer. Cook for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Serve over rice or rice balls. (I served mine with cooked whole wheat berries and bulgur wheat that I had left over from some salads I had a couple weeks ago.) 

I ended up doing this for Sunday lunch instead of Saturday dinner and it was a great Sunday lunch! The peanut butter isn't very peanutty, it's just very rich and savory. Because I left out the sugar and used fresh peanut butter, there was no real sweetness to it. It blended with the tomato paste really well. I found that this had a lot of oil on the top. Probably from the chicken and the peanut butter, as well as the small amount of oil in the pan to start with. I recommend pouring this off or using a spoon to skim it off because you don't need that much fat in it.

I liked how both of these items cooked on the stove top. It's good for times when you don't want to use your oven, like hot summer days. Of course, the chicken is a bit heavy for a really hot day, so you might want to wait for colder weather. It's great comfort food! If you have never had African food, and are curious about it, this is a great place to start. I highly recommend both of these recipes!

Sources: 

Bread Recipe

Chicken Recipe(scroll through to find it)

Map Link

Flag Link

National Anthem