Tag: expat cooking
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Lapskoussi Vindication
The last time I tried to make lapskoussi, the carrots won. The town I live in claims the dish, so redemption was non-negotiable.
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Freezer Scrap Redemption
Everything failed eventually becomes bread pudding. The Hawaiian bread disasters, the Stealth Bread ends, the four-year-old carrot oat buns — they all lead here.
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Kermaviili | Cultured Sour Cream
Kermaviili is a cultured cream product sitting quietly at the center of Finnish home cooking without getting nearly enough credit for it. Nobody has ever been nervous about kermaviili. It’s the approachable member of the viili family.
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Mummo Goes to Kozy Shack
Finnish riisipuuro meets American pudding cup, mediated by British custard powder, in a slow cooker made in the USA. Multiple countries in one dessert.
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Piimä | Cultured Buttermilk
Piimä is a fermented milk drink — tangy, pourable, and thinner than yogurt. If you’ve had buttermilk in the US, you’ve had its distant American cousin. They’re not wrong, exactly. But they’re not entirely right, either.
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Chicken + Scissors = Dinner
I cut my chicken with scissors. Into the pan. From frozen. No cutting board, no knife, no thawing overnight. It’s heritage cooking knowledge from my mother’s kitchen and the dim sum ladies she learned from — and it happens to be the fastest way to get dinner on the table when nobody planned ahead.
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Mannapuuro in a Cocktail Dress
Mannapuuro is Finnish semolina porridge — simple, austere, the kind of thing your mummo made. My version uses cooking cream, vanilla sugar, and a tempered egg, which technically makes it a custard. Add strawberry jam and it tastes like strawberry ice cream. I didn’t plan this. The Year of Custards keeps claiming victims.
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Blue Raspberry Gelatin
Last time I made jello, the French syrup turned it into an accidental dinner party dessert. My son was unimpressed. He wanted BLUE. So I reverse-engineered radioactive blue raspberry gelatin from Finnish soda syrup, citric acid, and enough food coloring to stain the spoon permanently. Formula locked.
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Citron Vert Gelée
I wanted nuclear green, wobbly, trashy lime jello. Finland doesn’t sell it. So I built it from French lime syrup and powdered gelatin — and got a champagne-chartreuse gelée so accidentally sophisticated I could have served it at a dinner party. I ate the whole bowl standing at the counter. The French syrup said non.
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Notes to My Past Self | 25th March 2026
My mother made sandwiches with the cheerful logic of someone who saw no reason why ingredients in the same refrigerator shouldn’t share the same bread. Ham, cheese, butter, jam — all of it, together. I spent decades thinking she was doing it wrong. Turns out the sandwich wasn’t wrong. The cafeteria was just too small.