A couple of days ago we visited Restaurant Piha, an Italian style place situated “behind” the shopping center Forum (Eerikinkatu 2) and next to the reliably good Spanish place Parrilla Espanola. It was a Monday evening and our reservation was thoroughly unwarranted with the restaurant less than one quarter full.

First, a couple of words about the physical appearance of the place. The overall impression is a nice & clean environment with some quite interesting wooden door-decor and a big courtyard-style center with a glass ceiling. The setting worked nicely enough without being intrusive, so that was good. Looking more closely at the setup, the first snag that one hits is the cleanliness of the utensils and the glasses - the washing and polishing certainly could’ve been done better with clear watermarks on each.

What about the service? As is unfortunately quite common in Finnish restaurants, the table is served by multiple waitresses in seemingly random order. Often this creates more confusion than warranted, but here the service was mostly smooth; there was no excessive waiting as the old dishes were taken away and the next courses brought in in a timely manner. The services was friendly and worked well, but there was not even a hint that the waitresses would top up wine or water glasses - that was obviously left to the diners themselves to do. Of the menu, I liked the fact that it wasn’t overly long while it still offered plenty of choices. Also the wine list emphasized, quite appropriately, Italian wines with only a few selections from elsewhere. Nothing too fancy made it to either list but I consider that a good thing.

Then to the food. For starters, I went with the Fruity chicken salad Tandor with Yoghurt sauce with curry and honey (€9,50). The salad looked rather big for a starter salad, but it was very good so it didn’t really matter :) The presentation was quite good, but a bit impractical as it was very vertically-oriented. The yoghurt-based sauce went well with the salad and gave it a nice, rather neutral, taste which helped cleanse the palate with the appetizer (blueberry-flavored grappa with sparkling wine).

The main course selection was difficult, with Sarita’s choice of Scampi on a skewer with Parmesan white wine risotto & chili-lime oil (€20,40) sounding very enticing. I ended up trying the Saltimbocca with marsala sauce; Veal schnitzel filled with parma ham and sage, potato wedges (€23,80). From the little I got to taste of the Scampi skewer and the risotto, they were excellent. The veal snitchel was also very good - although the real thing wasn’t filled with parma ham but rather wrapped in parma ham. The dish could’ve used some more color, there might’ve been a bit too many potatoes and the few vegetables looked liked they had been overcooked a little, but the schnitzel itself was done nicely and went along well with the parma ham. The presentation of the scampi skewer was nevertheless better.

The dessert was nothing short of mouthwatering - my Creme Caramelle alla Amaretto (€6,20) was baked perfectly and the sauce was very nice. I also heard nothing but praise about Sarita’s fresh and brisk Lemon sorbet in sparkling wine (€4,80), a different kind of refreshing dessert. The presentation of both desserts was simple but flawless.

As the mentioned price points would indicate, I consider Piha to be in the middle/upper middle class of Helsinki restaurants - by no means cheap, but definately not what one would consider expensive either. As the food was mostly good and the service wasn’t bad either, it was a thoroughly pleasant experience even with some of the details being a bit off. With the decent price level, I would recommend Ravintola Piha at 4- out of 5.

Long time, no post. I’ve been busy with work, and had a broken arm for some time, plus my apartment was under renovation, so apologies for long posting intervals :) I’m on a short business trip to Mariehamn, Åland, and having some extra time before my flight departs back home, so I figured this is as good time to blog as I’ll ever get :)

I’ve been using my trusty chinese bamboo steamer on weekly basis to cook salmon, as with steam the texture and taste gets close to perfection. My new salmon staple has become a soy sauce - wasabi marinated butterflied fillet, and I really, really love the sharpness of wasabi with warm, fatty fish. After months of raving I managed to get Anna try this dish, and albeit she liked it, apparently her steamed teriyaki salmon was even better ;) Sucker to new recipes, I tried hers, and surely it was super yummylicious!

This posting is not about steaming or fish. Enough of those already :) Since teriyaki salmon was so good, and the teriyaki sauce sooo easy to make from scratch, I decided to play around and make someting else. First I thought making chicken teriyaki, but I didn’t have chicken, but instead a pound of fat free super high grade ground beef left over from a steak tartar I made the day before.

S loves meatballs, so making them instead of some potentially fancier dish was an easy decision. Since teriyaki sauce can be done in a flash, the whole dish will be ready in 45 minutes, from fridge to the table. Basically teriyaki sauce is just mirin (japanese cooking wine), soy sauce and sugar mixed together. Simply dilute one table spoon of granulated sugar to 1/2 dl of mirin and soy sauce each and you’re done. 30 seconds in a microwave oven does the trick. I strongly suggest using low sodium soy sauce unless you have a serious death wish :D In this recipe I used 1 dl of regular soy sauce, and after all that salt I still feel the bloat :P

Teriyaki Meatballs

2-4 Servings (950 cal total)

Teriyaki Sauce

1 dl low sodium soy sauce
1 dl mirin
2 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tbsp Brown Maizena or similar corn starch
Meatballs

400 g (1 lb) fat free ground beef
2-3 shallots
3 small potatoes
2 cloves of garlic
black pepper to taste
Mix soy sauce, mirin and sugar, and quickly warm in the microwave oven. Stir until sugar has dissolved.

Mix shallots, raw potatoes, garlic and black pepper in a food processor until fine. Knead the mix together with the ground beef and 1/4 or slightly more of the teriyaki sauce. Make small meatballs, and place them onto a pan.

Cook the rest of the teriyaki sauce with corn starch until quite thick, and pour over the meatballs. Bake for 30 minutes in 200 degrees celcius until nice and brown.

Just back from a weeklong drive around Finland. Maitohorsma is in full bloom all over Finland, and the scenery is incredibly pretty, although a bit repetitive. Trees, trees and a whole lot more trees, dotted with lakes and more lakes.

One of the biggest challenges to traveling in Nordic countries is that in most smaller places, food options are really limited, ranging from dreary to dismal. On many previous car trips, a cheap portable grill in the trunk has been the perfect solution and the provider of some really memorable meals. This time, however, my husband was pretty fussy about his new car: ashes and bits of coal floating anywhere near it was a definite no-no. So before we started out, I had pretty low expectations foodwise - I wondered whether it is possible to travel in Finland for a week without resorting to either one of our recently adopted national dishes, pizza or kebab.

Considering that we didn’t really plan our trip in advance, we managed to eat surprisingly well throughout the trip. We relied on a few Google searches, local newspapers, and asking around. Although my main impression is that the most decent options in smaller places involves seeking out the skillful women who provide mass catering for schools and workplaces, we managed to have a few decent (if not stellar) meals in more gourmet oriented restaurants in larger cities like Kuopio. In general, the average price of a meal in a Finnish restaurant is slightly higher than what I got used to in New York: the quality of food is often a bit lower, as most Finnish customers are not particularly demanding. High quality produce and fresh fish were surprisingly hard to find (nigiri in Oulu - buyer beware). And too many places with chichi aspirations still resort to bizarre finishing touches - what’s with the pea shoots?

Anyhow, it’s good to be back home. The strawberry season is almost over, and I should make a few pretty jars of jam before it is too late. Before that, however, a recipe I have repeated countless times this summer -

The Ultimate Strawberry Daiquiri

serves 2 to 4, depending on the size of the glasses

5 dl ice
125-200 g frozen strawberries (softened for about 15-30 minutes before starting)
0.5 dl sugar
the juice of 1/2 lime
the juice of 1/2 lemon
1 dl dark rum

In a sturdy blender, combine ice, sugar and strawberries. Pour in lime juice, lemon juice and rum. Blend until smooth, the consistency of slush.

Rub the rim of a glass with the peel of the squeezed lime, dip in salt or sugar to create a frosty rim. Pour the daiquiri into glasses and serve.

As you prepare daiquiris a few times, you become more confident with the proportions and can start pouring without measuring. Adaptations are also fun: my current favorite involves equal amounts of ice and frozen strawberries, 2 tbsp of sugar and the juice of 1/2 lime and 1/2 to 1 dl of Bacardi Coco. (I know coconut liqueur sounds incredibly tacky, but I ran out of dark rum and the tequila I bought in Tijuana tastes of pizza herbs. The combination of strawberry and coconut works nicely as a dessert drink).

If you are pregnant or still waiting for the liver transplant, virgin daiquiris will work, too: you can substitute lemon-lime soda (Sprite or 7Up) for the rum. And yes, this is one of the really few recipes where frozen strawberries will work much better than fresh ones.

For many people asparagus season is the culinary high point of spring, but I couldn’t care less. But come the new season potatoes, and you got my undivided attention!

The spring is very late in Finland, so we have to wait still for domestic new season potatoes, which naturally are the best in the world (that means second to none, Pille) ;) Luckily countries such as Israel, Morocco and Cyprus provide us with very early potatoes. However, those are much larger and not nearly as sweet as their tiny, almost skinless Finnish cousins. To cook a domestic new season potato, it’s enough to rinse them under a running water, and the skin will fall of with a slightest rub of a hand.

Yesterday I got a big craving for new season potatoes with marinated herring, so I had to settle for Moroccoan imports. I could have bought Finnish, but at €35/kg ($20/lb) didn’t think so…

New season potatoes taste absolutely fantastic with nothing but some butter with them, but add some marinated herring and onions, and you’ve got a meal fit for kings. I especially like herrings made by a Swedish company Abba - The band ABBA actually asked their permission to use the same name. Abba Seafood was founded in 1838, ABBA the band in 1972 :) Abba has a large selection of herring in different marinades, by favorite being a French Onion marinade. IKEA sells some Abba herring products and other Swedish delicasies in all of their stores worldwide.

New Season Potatoes With Marinated Herring

serves two

1 jar of Abba marinated herrings
1/2 kg (1 lb) new season potatoes
2 shallot onions
pickles (cucumber)
butter
fresh dill

Boil the potatoes. Slice the onions and the pickles. Serve the potatoes with fresh butter on top and herrings straight from the jar. Garnish with some fresh dill.

In the picture above I also had some wild mushroom salad.

Thanks to Antti for the short introduction yesterday; a while back he asked whether I was interested in doing some selective cross-posting style syndication with some food-stuff I write for my personal blog, Only Slightly Bent. There was a clear danger in saying “yes” to this, as I found out already last summer that some people actually identify me as “the guy who photographs his food”. Right. Perhaps not the kind of thing you want to be associated with in the minds of strangers..

But then again, things could be worse. I do photograph my food occasionally, so the heck with it. So I said yes.

I don’t know about superbly written stories, but I’ll write stories - probably mostly restaurant reviews. And despite the theme of the site, I can’t promise there wouldn’t be occasionally some drama. Btw, a word of reading advice is likely in order; whenever I mention “we”, the other person involved is, unless otherwise indicated, my wife Sarita.

But enough with the introductions.

Henri’x BBQ House in Kamppi

One evening a couple weeks back, we decided to give another Kamppi newcomer a try: Henri’x BBQ House. I was hoping they’d fare better than their neighbor Minos (review of which is coming up later) and, being one of the few truly BBQ/steak-oriented restaurants in the city, expectations were actually quite high.

The surroundings suffer a bit from the restaurant being essentially in a mall; however, Henri’x also has a nice all-glass semi-terrace from where you could observe the life around the Kamppi center. As was expected with all the concrete and tiles, this life consisted almost purely of skaters who had the open space completely under their control. And they weren’t great either. So not much in terms of a view (yet).

Once inside, we were shown to our table after some initial confusion as to where it is that we were supposed to be seated in the first place. There is not much internal decoration to speak of and the tables and chairs are, while comfortable, also very basic. The neon bull at the bar was quite nice, but that was about the extent of the interior décor.

At the tables, things seemed to be in order: nice cloth napkins and a clean set of glasses. No tableclothes, but that is perfectly understandable for a BBQ place. The physical menu itself, however, was flimsy - a piece of more or less crumpled paper, some haphazardly glued to a piece of cardboard.

From reading the menu, it’s immediately clear that this is not a place for vegetarians: in fact, the main courses are all steaks. The wine was interestingly classified on the menu with selections of only “decent - good - superb”. It turned out that there is a separate wine menu, too, something that wasn’t curiously brought to us before we asked for it. Our selection of wine, Ca’del Solo Big House Red, turned out to be a bit too weak to accompany the heavy food. Of course, this was purely our mistake and I’m sure the list would’ve offered better options.

But on with the real essence of the evening, the food. The starters sounded quite delicious with choices like coconut green curry-soup, but we felt like going straight for the meat, with the hopes that the portions are big enough. Sarita went with a chateaubriand (€22) with chilli butter. I was looking forward to testing the much-advertised BBQ sauce, so I chose the porterhouse steak (€38, though see note at the end) with that. Neither of us was asked how we wanted the steaks - this could either be a good or a bad sign.. After taking a little long to arrive, I was a bit disappointed to find out that my porterhouse steak was served pre-sliced and not as whole. But as soon as it came to the table, doubts about it being big enough vanished. There was lots of it. I mean lots, the photo does not do justice to it.

And, as it turns out, it was really quite good and tender. When bringing the portion, the waitress immediately offered to bring more BBQ sauce and taking her up on the offer was the right thing to do - the BBQ sauce was delicious. Doubts about the level of doneness were luckily unfounded: everything was cooked just right. Sarita’s chateaubriand also turned out just perfect, though the chilli butter could’ve used some chilli in it - a common problem in Finland. In any case, in terms of quality of food, the expectations were met or even partly exceeded.

There was a choice of three side dish selections; Basic, Classic and Modern. At least the Basic with potato wedges, simmered red cabbage and an onion-haricot bake was a good selection.

Then came the shocker, however: my portion was so big that I just could not down it all. This caused more mental anxiety than actual physical trauma - am I going to have to leave delicious meat on the plate? In the end, I had to condescend to admitting defeat: there was just no room for it all.

The dessert menu also sounded delicious, but anything more to eat was out of the question at this stage. When we got the check, I realized why I had trouble with the size of my portion. They had inadvertently brought me the porterhouse for two (€64, IIRC), which our waitress said is a whole kilogram of meat. What a relief. Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about not being able to eat it all. The mistake was swiftly sorted out on the check. But of course, now I can’t be sure whether the porterhouse for one would’ve been big enough… Perhaps it’d still be safe to say that it would.

All in all, the service was quite good, and the occasional glitches (like not refilling our tiny water pitcher without asking, offering the table next to us food they didn’t order etc.) were something that I could live with. With the food also very good, it’s likely we’ll be back here - must try the starters and desserts next time, too.