A few weeks ago - when the summer was approaching its end, I joined my friends with great fun for running around forests and picking up mushrooms. It was fun indeed, picking and collecting mushrooms, but the work that followed turned out to be a disaster. Apparently, you can't just pick whatever looks edible to you, but you'd better sort out which kinds of mushrooms you are going to use for cooking and pick those specific kinds only. In the end, mushroom is not salad and nobody eats it raw. Also, sticking to one or two kinds eases the work of cleansing and preserving mushrooms, which can be painfully tedious.
Mine didn't last well. In the end, I had to throw all of them away, with deep sighs and disappointment.
But my Finnish folks, who have picked and processed their mushrooms in a perfect Finnish manner like good Finns, still have plenty of hand-picked mushrooms in their fridges and storage, as they have been doing since old days. Of course they can share some with me.
And even teach me how to make use of the wild Finnish mushrooms.
As I do every Tuesdays and Thursdays, I head to T's house. Today, we're going to study Finnish not sitting at the desk but standing in the kitchen. T warns me that it is going to be the same demanding, but immediately rewarding.
Here are the steps.
1. Cook the clean mushrooms in a pot or pan so that fluids come out of mushrooms.
2. Add chopped onions to the pot.
Also add salt, pepper, and vegetable stock.
3. Whiz the thing with a blender until it becomes smooth.
4. Add cream or oat cream and boil the soup until you can't stand waiting anymore.
A bowl of Finnish mushroom soup with a fragrant piece of rye bread!
If every lesson is as immediately rewarding as this, I think I can be the master of the Finnish language in a year.
The meal tastes like forest, and it's filling and warm. Now my body is telling me that it's more or less prepared for the Finnish winter.