Yesterday went to the nearby forest in search of boletus mushrooms. Although I didn’t have luck with those, I didn’t have to come home with empty hands. Luckily there were many russula mushrooms to harvest.
This red beauty in the picture is Russula paludosa (‘isohapero’). In Finnish the name means big, and indeed this mushroom is of good size. The cap is the size of palm so it’s easy to differentiate from the bitter tasting red russulas. This one is of exquisite taste and perfect for a soup.
You can recognize this mushroom by it’s beautiful red color that shifts a bit towards yellow and it’s stem which has a dash of red colour. It’s gills are dense and the color starts to shift from white towards yellow when the mushroom gets older.
Another good russula for a soup is Russula vesca (‘palterohapero’). It resembles Russula paludosa, but the stem is much harder and thicker.
Russula aeruginea (‘koivuhapero’) tastes good too. The color of the cap varies from olive greem to grayish green.
The mild and delicious tasting russulas make a heavenly mushroom soup. Here’s how I made mine today:
Mushroom soup: Clean and chop about 5dl of mushrooms. Heat the mushrooms in a kettle with some butter and onions. When the mushrooms start to soften, add 5dl of boiling water or vegetable broth and let boil for a couple of minutes. Thicken the soup with some melted cheese (50-250g depending how thick you want it to be), the Valio koskenlaskija savuporo cheese is my favorite for mushroom soups. You can also leave out the cheese and add some cream and flour instead. If you want a smooth soup, you can mix the soup in a blender before serving. Garnish with pepper and herbs. The red colored russulas give the soup elegant rose color (just like in rose champagne). Enjoy!
When living in a country with four distinctive seasons, every year has some events that are like milestones for the season changes.. And no, I’m not talking about the ice hockey championships! While rest of Finland has been glued to the TV to watch will Finland bring home the gold medal this year like in 1995 and 2011, I’ve been gardening. My milestone from spring to beginning of summer is the first harvest of rhubarb.
This year summer seems to have started really yearly. It’s not even June and the lilacs are blooming.. Usually that is just before mid-Summer!
As my rhubarbs had survived the winter and started giving harvest, I decided to bake a pie. Rubarb is also great for kisel and compote.
Turned out I was a little bit overly positive regarding the amount of my rhubarb harvest (as I wanted to make a full baking tray) , but I added on some strawberries. Those unfortunately weren’t yet from my own garden, but hopefully by July I’ll have strawberries growing too. And if not, the markets will offer the sweet Finnish strawberries for sure.
Here’s the recipe if you want to try:
Rhubarb pie
1 litre of soured milk (‘piimä’)
5,5 dl of organic sugar
11 dl of flour (I used gluten free)
3 tea spoons of baking soda
2 – 3 dl of melted butter
3- 6 dl of rhubarb
Mix all ingredients in the above order, pour on a baking tray and add the rhubarb on top. And if you want, season with cinnamon and sugar. Bake in the oven in 175 degrees celsius for 40 – 60 minutes. The same recipe works with berries and apples etc.
Milk caps, as the name describes, are mushrooms with milk in their caps. Easy name, easy to identify! These are one of the safest mushrooms to begin with, as the milk-like fluid (‘maitiaisneste’) makes them easy to differentiate from other mushrooms. Finland offers plenty of different milk caps, learn a few and you’ll get your basket full in no time. Some of the best milk caps are Lactarius trivialis (‘haaparousku’), Lactarius torminosus (‘karvarousku’) and Lactarius rufus (‘kangasrousku’).
Lactiarius trivialis – Haaparousku and Lactarius utilis – Kalvashaaparousku
Lactarius trivialis has beautiful round cap, and its gray color shifts to purple or lilac. Its stem is always hollow, like a telescope. It also has very peculiar scent, it’s a mushroom that smells like..well, mushroom! Find it in the forest and smell, and you’ll know what I mean by that. It has very earthly and fresh scent. I’ts one of the most popular commercially sold mushroom in Finland.
Lactarius utilis – Kalvashaaparousku
Lactarius utilis is a relative to Lactarius trivialis, but it’s color is more pale and it’s often more slimy, making it less attractive to pick as the needles and leaves stick to the cap as if they were glued to it. If you don’t mind a bit of extra work, this is still a good mushroom to pick as well.
There are plenty of different gray color milk caps, but they all have their own unique identifiers, such as color to which the milk slowly turns when mushroom is cut (green, gray, lilac) or the scent the mushroom has (fresh, coconat, chicory) and of couse the size and the shape of the cap. It can take you some time to learn them, but Lactarius trivialis is easy mushroom to start with as the hollow stem is easy identifier that most of the gray colored milk caps don’t have. Lactarius trivialis milk turns slowly towards grayish green. Especially when you boil the mushroom, you will see the green color appear. If the color turns to lilac, you have picked Lactarius uvidus (‘korpirousku’) instead, probably you have forgotten to check that the stem is hollow when you picked the mushroom. No harm done as that one is also edible, just different tasting milk cap. Just make sure that you always check that the mushroom you pick as a milk cap really does contains the white milk-like fluid. Lactarius helvus (‘lakritsirousku’) is the only poisonous look-a-like for the edible milk caps. Including this into the milk cap ‘lactarius’ family is a bit misleading, as this one doesn’t lactate at all. Instead the fluid is clear like water and the scent recembels liquorice (what’s what the Finnish name lakritsi actually means).
Lactarius torminosus (‘karvarousku’) is a pretty pink and hairy milk-cap. Especially the young mushrooms are very cute. It’s also called woolly milk-cap or bearded milk-cap. The Finnish name ‘karva’ actually literally means ‘hair’. Don’t bother to peel of the woolly cover from the cap, it’s exactly the same edible substance as the rest of the mushroom. These mushrooms you’ll find nearby birch trees, as they live in symbiosis with birch. This is one of the early milk-caps to appear, season starts from July and continues to late September-October. I think it’s one of the prettiest mushrooms we have in Finland! And it certainly wants to be found, as the pink color is not exactly a great disguise in Finnish nature…
Lactarius rufus – Kangasrousku, growing by the lake house
Lactarius rufus (‘kangasrousku’) has a stronger, more bitter taste than the above two. You can recognize it from the pointy tip in the middle of the cap, and the gingerbread color. It’s quite modest when it comes to living habitat, so it’s easier to find even in dry places. The cap turns beautifully dark brown when boiled, so it’s also visually pleasant mushroom to use in cooking.
All of these milk-caps need to be boiled in plenty of water for 5 -10 minutes to remove the bitterness (for best result boil for 5 min and then change the water and boil for another 5 min). In Finnish this type of boiling is called ‘ryöppäys’. Boiling is not only for the taste, but to remove the ingredients that may cause stomach ache or nausea. After boiling these are excellent mushrooms to use. Lift the mushrooms out of the water with a spoon (‘reikäkauha‘) into a collander (‘siivilä‘). This way the dirt and needles that may have been hiding in the gills will stay on the bottom of the kettle and you get clean mushrooms for cooking. Rinse the mushrooms with cold water until they are cool and the squize the water off with your hands. You can use the water from the kettle as organic fertilizer in your garden.
My favorite way to conserve milk-caps is to use the traditional Finnish way of salting the mushrooms. Some prefer to ferment (‘hapattaa’) them to preserve more of the taste and the nutrients. Another popular traditional way is to conserve them in vinegar. Mushroom salad made out of milk caps is something we always had at the Christmas dinner in my childhood. The salad is made out of the salted milk caps.
Try out this easy mushroom salad recipe:
2 dl of milk caps chopped into small pieces (boiled, rinced and squized as described above – if you are using salt conserved milk caps remember to soak them in plenty of water to get the salt to tolerable level)
1 onion or leek chopped into small pieces
(1 green apple chopped into small pieces)
2dl of sour cream (‘kermaviili’) or 2dl of cream whipped into thick foam
1 tea spoon of vinegar (try apple vinegar or white wine vinegar)
0,5 tea spoon of salt
white pepper or black pepper
Mix the ingredients together and season with salt and pepper. Serve cold. The taste of the salad gets only better if you let it rest over night in the fridge. The salad goes great with the Christmas ham or turkey and on top of a slice of rye bread.
Lactarius rufus – kangasrousku (with some tiny tiny white mushrooms growing next to them)
There are very few things in life that bring as much immediate pleasure as picking fresh apples from the apple trees. The beautiful shades of red and green and the fresh scent and taste of cinnamon apples is what I remember from my childhood Autumns. Although apple trees don’t usually grow wild in Finland, there are many households who have organic apple trees growing in their garden. At the moment the grocery stores have good variety of domestic, organic apples.
In my childhood my Mom used to make juice out of apples that we got from our garden. She would use a juicer called ‘mehumaija‘, a kettle like equipment that steams the juice out of apples and berries. After the juice was steam ready, the remaining flesh of the apples were squashed into pulp and stored in a freezer. I used the pulp with breakfast cereals or porridge and also for baking apple cakes for Christmas. Nowadays the new type of juicers allow to make fresh apple juice on daily basis if you like. I recently learned, that it’s possible to buy a share of an apple tree from an apple tree farm. I have not tried this myself, but it sounds like an interesting idea, if you don’t have an own garden. Organic apples are the best, because then you don’t lose any of the great vitamins as you don’t need to peel the apples before eating them.
A typical dessert in Finland is a baking made out of oat flakes, brown sugar, butter, cinnamon and apples. The ingredients are mixed and baked in the oven until apples are soft and oat flakes and sugar are crispy. This tasty treat is then served with whipped cream, vanilla custard or ice cream. A very nice comfort food indeed (and upgrades easily many ordinary cafeteria lunches).
As I’m a big fan of pies (which you have probably figured out if you have read my previous blog posts 🙂 ) my specialty of course is an apple pie. This below recipe has sealed many friendships when I’ve lived abroad. Nothing brings people together like fresh pastry, especially when you’re a student with limited budged. Probably the best compliment came from an Italian friend, who said the pie was just like what his Mom would have baked 🙂
Mix the dry ingredients together, pinch the butter to the flours with your hands and last add the ‘kermaviili’. Butter the pie tin and spread the dough evenly. Press the apple slices into the dough, sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top and bake in the middle of the oven for 30-45 min at 175-200 degrees Celsius. Enjoy with vanilla custard or ice cream!
This Autumn nature has really pampered us in Finland with berries.. First a great harvest of blueberries and raspberries, and now lingonberries.
Lingonberries are firm red berries with quite strong acid taste. Some decades ago children in the country side would pick these berries for their school in the Autumn, so that the school cook could prepare food for them. Although my generation didn’t have to do this any more, I still remember the lingonberry mash that was served with the liver cassarole at school lunch.
A great snack or dessert is whipped porridge, ‘vispipuuro‘. That is a dish made traditionally from lingonberries, but you can also use cranberries or red currants, even strawberries. This is something every Finn has tasted for sure! You can try this easy recipe at home so you can leave the prepared convenience food to the stores:
Cook 7dl of water with 4dl of lingonberries for 5-15min. Season with 1dl of organic sugar and 1/4 tea spoon of salt. You can then either filter the lingonberry peel off with a collander, or puree it with a blender. Add 1,25 dl of semolina and let boil for 5-10min. Let the porridge cool down for a while and then whip it fluffy with mixer. Keep it in the fridge and serve as a snack or a dessert with milk.
If you are not a fan of porridge (which I bet you will become if you try the above recipe), why not try an arctic drink? This takes more preparation time, but it’s worth the wait and you can impress your friends with a home made liqueur. Layer of 3dl organic sugar and 1l of lingonberries into a bottle, and pour 5dl of vodka on top of them. Close the bottle, shake it and then store it in a dark place for a month. Shake the bottle every now and then. Filter the berries out before serving as a drink (you can use the lingonberries e.g. with caramel ice cream as a dessert).
So as you can see, lingonberries are a great berry for healthy morning smoothies and porridges to not so healthy desserts and drinks. The berries contains plenty of vitamin C, so your body will thank you for eating lingonberries!
Last weekend we decided to head for the lake house, also known as summer cottage (kesämökki), as the Finns call it. Of course the idea was not only to relax by the lake, but to also explore the nearby forests for mushrooms.
I packed my basket and grabbed a kitchen bowl from the cottage, just in case I would find berries along the way. It turned out, that I never quite made it to the forest.. As the sides of the cottage road were filled with raspberry bushes, with the branches bent from the amount of berries.
I was freaking out a bit to push myself through the raspberry bushes and accross the ditch between the road and the forest, as I forgot to pack rubber boots along. It’s better to wear rubber boots as there may be vipers enjoying the warmth of sun, on the rocks and tree stupms. While in nature, it’s good to be humble and keep in mind that you are entering the food chain, and not always the top of it. However, I soon forgot my worries, as I got mesmerized by the sea of ripe raspberries all around me, like being surrounded by precious rubies. (And no, there were no snakes in sight anywhere).
I also found some wild red currants, growing among the raspberries. Most likely blackbids or other common “berry thiefs” have been enjoying the currants from someone’s back yard, and then spread the seeds into the neighbouring forest. For me this was of course lucky discovery, as the red currants have plenty of vitamin c and they are excellent for a Finnish dessert called ‘vispipuuro’, a whipped porridge which is made out of semolina and berries such as currants, lingonberries or crandberries.
In the end, I never made it to search for mushrooms but I got more than I expected. My bowl run out of space before running out of berries.. I put some of the berries into freezer to enjoy them during winter, and some we enjoyed fresh, while relaxing by the lake 🙂
Chanterelles (kantarelli) are probably one of the most popular mushrooms to pick in Finland. Sometimes when you think you’ve found a chanterelle, you may notice that there are spikes – or in other words, teeth – under the mushroom cap. If this happens, don’t make the mistake what many beginners do and throw the mushroom away. What you’ve found is not chanterelle (as chanterelles have ridges), but a Hydnum repandum (Vaaleaorakas) or Hydnum rufescens coll. (Rusko-orakas). Both are just as good mushrooms as chanterelle.
From left to right: Chanterelle (kantarelli), hydnum rufescens (rusko-orakas) and hydnum repandum (vaaleaorakas)
Especially Hydnum rufescens (rusko-orakas) resembles chanterelle, with its orange-brown color. In the picture on the left, the cantarelle’s cap is extraordinarily pale due to the dry weather. From below the cap the color is the usual beautiful orange, which is easy to spot from the ground.
Same mushrooms from the other side. Notice the difference between ridges and teeth below the cap.
Hydnum repandum has a good firm structure, and some say that the taste resembles that of chicken meat. So you may want to try this mushroom as a replacement of meat 🙂 It goes well in omelets and you can also cut it in pieces and roll in raw egg and flour to make mushroom nuggets by frying them on a frying pan. Hydnum rufescens has more fragile structure, so it doesn’t work as well for nuggest, but otherwise you can use it for pies, omelettes, sauces etc. Both hudnum repandum and rufescens give harvest from July to late Autumn, and you can cook them for example with with canterelles or russulas.
One easy way to enjoy mushrooms is to bake a mushroom pie. If you have not tried this before, I guarantee you’ll be surprised just how good a mushroom pie tastes!
You can use several type of mushrooms for the pie, for example chantarelles, russulas and trumpet shaped chanterelles go really well.
Uncooked mushrooms with some spring onion and zucchini.
First prepare the cleaned mushrooms by frying them on a frying pan. Cook the mushrooms on the frying pan without oil or butter, until fluids from the mushroom have evaporated. If you have a lot of mushrooms to cook, don’t cheat by pouring off some fluids from the frying pan, but let it all evaporate. This way you do not lose any of the great mushroom flavors. If you have plenty of mushrooms fried, you can split the fried mushrooms for different dishes.
Same ingredients cooked.
When preparing a pie, you can cook onions and zucchini together with the mushrooms, and season with black or white pepper.
I usually favor organic ingredients when cooking, but for mushroom pies I often use the ready raw dough that you can find in the supermarket freezer. This is for simplicity and practicality: After wondering around in the forest I’m usually tired and hungry and want to enjoy food quickly. If you want to bake the pie dough yourself, it will of course be the best choice and you can use any recipe for a salty pie dough. You could do the pie dough before going to the forest and leave it to fridge to wait for your return.
Pie before cooking in the oven.
If you use the ready-made pie dough, let it melt while you prepare the mushrooms. Once you have fried the mushrooms, let them cool down for a moment, so that when you add eggs they don’t start to cook immediately (unless you want a pie filled with mushroom scrambled eggs 🙂 ).
For the filling, I usually use 1 dl organic cream, 50 g of Finnish cold smoked reindeer meat, 2 organic eggs and 150 g of grated cheese (e.g. Finnish Polar cheese tastes good). I mix these with the mushrooms & zucchini & onions, and spread evenly on the pie dough. Bake about half an hour in the middle level of oven, in 200 degrees Celsius.
Yes you got it right, this is no diet pie recipe, this is for indulging and enjoying the harvest from the forest!
The bliss of enjoying a cup of tea and a slice of mushroom pie after hiking in the forest!
Mushroom picking is a good hobby in a sense, that it doesn’t require much gear or expensive investments. In Finland we have a thing called ‘jokamiehenoikeus’ – everyman’s right – which allows you to pick mushroom and berries from public forests for free.
List of useful things to have:
– mushroom knife
– basket
– walking shoes
– guidebook
– water /snack
What you need with you, is first of all a mushroom knife. You can buy a good mushroom knife from any well equiped supermarket, price starting from 2-3€ . There are different styles of mushroom knives; some bend and some have a shead. I personally prefer the very basic one. Important is that the blade is sharp and thin, and that it has a brush on the other side. If you don’t own yet a mushroom knife, take a small and sharp kitchen knife and for example baking brush (even the silicon brushes will do).
Woodchip basket
Another thing what you need, is something where to store and carry the mushrooms in. Woodchip basket is good, because it’s very light to carry and suitable for the mushrooms. Some fancy baskets have compartements for the mushrooms, but you can also put bowls inside the basket for different mushrooms (as you don’t want the slimy mushrooms to blend with the dry ones – or big ones to crush the fragile ones).
In case you don’t have wooden basket, you can as well use an old shopping basket, or build a basket from a carbon box with some wire, or take a paper bag. Try to avoid plastic bags, as the mushrooms rotten very fast in those.
Besides mushroom knife and a basket, another important thing is good walking shoes. Preferably water resistant. You don’t normally have to step much off the trail, as the mushrooms often grow besides the paths. So you can even go with sneakers, if you don’t mind your shoes and socks getting wet in case the ground is moist (which it often is). If you intend to stay for a while and enjoy yourself while walking, then I definitely recommend rubber boots or hiking shoes.
You’ll also want to take a bottle of water with you, because hiking in the forest will guaranteed to make you thirsty. And some small snack is also a good idea, to give you energy when you start to get tired from hiking. Usually it’s the dehydration that makes you tired more, so make sure to drink water.
Nowadays with all the great technology available, I recommend that you make sure your mobile phone battery is fully charged and download some terrain map application to it (e.g. ‘Maastokartat‘ By Mika Suonpää). It will be very helpful, in case you lose your sense of orientation and what to make sure you are heading to the right direction.
And last but not least, a guidebook to help you to identify the mushrooms that you are picking. There are plenty of Finnish mushroom guidebooks available. Even mushroom guidebook applications for your phone. Two important things:
1) When picking mushrooms in Finland, make sure your guidebook is for Finland too! There are different mushrooms in different countries, and you need to make sure you positively identify the mushrooms specific to the country where you are in. There are differences in the mushrooms even between the neighbouring countries.
2) Make sure you use an up to date guidebook! Don’t use an old one, because the information available regarding mushrooms develops over time. Some mushrooms that our grandparents or parents may have picked, may nowadays be considered as poisonous or otherwise not recommended. For example Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca (Valevahvero) is shown as edible mushroom in older guidebooks, but poisonous in new ones. Also Lactarius turpis (Mustarousku) is not recommended anymore because of the necatorin it contains.
The first question about mushrooms that I often get, is “Where to go to find the mushrooms?” My answer is always the same: Go to a forest. And I mean, any forest. I have not yet found a Finnish forest without mushrooms!
But if you are looking for a certain specific mushroom, then it’s good to know in which type of forest that mushroom likes to grow, and how do they get their nutrition. Mushrooms get their nutrition mainly in 3 different ways:
Some live in symbiosis with a tree.
1. Russula claroflava (Keltahapero) lives in symbiosis with birch tree.
Some are parasites that live from a live tree, eventually killing it.
2. Armillaria borealis(Pohjanmesisieni) is a parasite mushroom.
Some are wood rotting mushrooms.
3. Tylopilus felleus (Sappitatti) is a wood rottening mushroom.
Boletus edulis (Herkkutatti) has a white net on the top of the stem.
For example, the delicious Boletus edulis (herkkutatti) lives in symbiosis with a tree, but its lookalike, the bad tasting Tylopilus felleus (sappitatti) is wood rotting. So if you see from a distance boletus mushroom on top of on warren, don’t bother to run to it.. It’ll be the bitter tasting Tylopilus felleus (sappitatti), rotting the fir needles in the warren.
Tylopilus felleus (Sappitatti) has dark net on the stem and pink shade in the pores.
A great mnemonic for Tylopilus felleus (sappitatti) is a ”blushing lady in black fishnet stocking”. The delicious Boletus edulis (herkkutatti) has a white net pattern on its stem, where as Tylopilus felleus (sappitatti) has a dark net pattern. Boletus edulis (herkkutatti) pores are first white and then they change to yellow or yellow-green, whereas Tylopilus felleus (sappitatti) pores change to pink. Therefore the blushing lady image will help you to remember which boletus to leave untouched.
The Finnish name for Boletus edulis, ’herkkutatti’, means delicious, and the Finnish name for Tylopilus felleus, ’sappitatti’, means bile, which is very descriptive of the bad taste of the mushroom.
Lactarius trivialis (Haaparousku)
If you learn the Finnish names for the mushrooms, many of them will also help you to identify which type of trees to look for. For example ’männynherkkutatti’, the word ’mänty’ means ’pine’. So it’s a clear hint that this mushroom can be found nearby pine trees. There are some trick names though, one of them being ’leppärousku’. The word ’leppä’ refers to ’alder’. But for that mushroom it’s not referring to the habitat of the mushroom, but the color of the flesh of the stem and cap, which resembles the orange color of the fresh cut alder wood. Therefore ’leppärousku’ has actually 2 longer names: ‘männynleppärousku’ which literally means pine alder, and ‘kuusenleppärousku’ which means spruce alder. Also another trick name is ’haaparousku’, where ‘haapa’ refers to ’aspen’. Here too, the name refers to the grayish color of the mushroom’s cap which resembles color of aspen’s trunk, rather than the habitat, because ’haaparousku’ actually lives in spruce forests.
Here are some examples of mushrooms based on their habitat:
Pine Forest
Boletus pinophilus (Männynherkkutatti)
Suillus variegatus (Kangastatti)
Suillus luteus (Voitatti)
Suillus bovinus (Nummitatti)
Leccinum vulpinum (Männynpunikkitatti)
Russula decolorans (Kangashapero)
Russula paludosa (Isohapero)
Lactarius rufus (Kangasrousku)
Lactarius deliciosus (Männynleppärousku)
Cortinarius caperatus (Kehnäsieni)
Lactarius rufus (Kangasrousku)
Spruce forest
Boletus edulis (Herkkutatti)
Xerocomus badius (Ruskotatti)
Russula vinosa (Viinihapero)
Russula vesca (Palterohapero)
Lactarius trivialis (Haaparousku)
Lactarius deterrimus (Kuusenleppärousku)
Gomphidius glutinosus (Limanuljaska)
Cantharellus tubaeformis (Suppilovahvero)
Albatrellus ovinus (Lampaankääpä)
Boletus edulis (Herkkutatti)
Birch and alder forests
Leccinum versipelle (Koivunpunikkitatti)
Leccinum scabrum coll. (Lehmäntatti)
Leccinum variicolor (Nokitatti)
Russula claroflava (Keltahapero)
Lactarius torminosus (Karvarousku)
Cantharellus cibarius (Keltavahvero, kantarelli)
Leccinum variicolor (Nokitatti)
The good thing about learning mushrooms is, that the more different mushrooms you learn to identify, the more mushrooms you will also find!
Yesterday went to the nearby forest in search of boletus mushrooms. Although I didn’t have luck with those, I didn’t have to come home with empty hands. Luckily there were many russula mushrooms to harvest.
Lumottu Metsä 