SARDINIA SUOMESSA - Culurgiones ingredients, a journey in Finland

 

As a Sardinian every place I go to live, I feel the necessity to make traditional ravioli during the first week and periodically. 

It's a way to get close to my childhood and to my memory, to create a strong sense of home collaborating with my senses.

But it is also like a very effective map.

That helps me to understand the new land! 

Sardinian ravioli from mountains tradition (in the lowlands the tradition is different) are made up of a few simple ingredients. 

Their presence or absence, the use that the native populations make of the same ingredients, tells me a lot about their culture and their history. 

Flour, milk, herbs, garlic, oil. 

They are the roots of nutrition in a developed civilization, able to cultivate the land and raise animals (and not always raise animals means that they eat the meat..! Also a vegetarian organic diet could fit this sentence - better with biodynamic farming). Yet only their transformation allows you to acquire information on the culture of the place (as well as knowing the cultivation techniques but it is not a field familiar to me yet). 

Milk for me, for my Sardinian tradition from the  mountains region, means goats. I come from Gennargentu tradition that doesn't have Culurgiones. But I studied with some masters of Culurgiones from Ogliastra that use goat cheese. (The other Ogliastra tradition is with sheep cheese. The reason is in the particular geographical aspect of the region: mountains that overlook the coast and thin out in some gulfs and laterally. On the higher mountainous areas the goat prevails. As well as on the high areas of Gennargentu where I come from (Desulo).

I discovered that also in a flat country like Finland the tradition of raising goats it's present, they are imported of course but Finnish people learned to raise them and to make cheese, ice cream and even butter! And mostly is about family farmers, lot of women involved, also from foreign countries.

And fresh goat cheese here it's of course different from Sardinian viscidu but really close. It's less salty, definitely. 

This is a little journey in Finland through Finnish ingredients for CULURGIONES. 

Disclaimer: at this point, no one is paying me for creating this post, I am just curious and I developed a performative project on my own that brought me to this path.

This is the list for the culurgiones recipe ingredients for 15 participants and where to find them.

All ingredients are Finnish, to develop the recipe with the same criteria with which culurgiones are created, in a dialogue with Finnish food culture. 

The ingredients needs to be organic, especially the olive oil, the flour and manna, because the taste has a big difference from the not organic products. 

The goat cheese is not organic but at the farms I found, the goats are raised very healthy and the taste is perfect.

Fresh pasta

1) SPELTTMANNA 2800 gr (2 kilos and 800 gr)

Where to find it: 

https://m.facebook.com/people/Majvik-Biodynaaminen-maatila/100064852778316/

You can ask if they still have it (in the winter it ends..!) This is a biodynamic farm in Sipoo. The biodynamic taste of the manna is the best, I used it and it's really really good for culurgiones pasta. Majvik products are sold also at Hakaniemi Market! (They have also fresh mint! See below)

Another choice:

https://riihipuoti.fi/tuote/luomu-speltmanna-06-kg/

This is also really good organic spelttmanna 

2) WHEAT FLOUR 1200 gr (1 kilo and 200 gr)

Where to find it:

As for manna, ask Majvjk Maatila 

https://m.facebook.com/people/Majvik-Biodynaaminen-maatila/100064852778316/

Or this is really good too

https://riihipuoti.fi/tuote/luomu-vehnajauho-2-kg/

3) SEA SALT

4) ORGANIC EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL

The taste of the oil is something really important, please don't buy anything with addictive!

One bottle of 500 ml is enough for pasta and culurgiones filling (see below)

Filling

1) 4 kg POTATOES

I am pretty sure that Majvik could provide them, or maybe some of you know/are organic producers! 

2) VUOHENJUUSTOKIMPALE TUORE fresh goat cheese 

300 gr x potatoes kilo = 1200 gr

six packs of 200 g

Where to find it:

I bought often this amazing fresh goat cheese from a wonderful Finnish farm: 

https://www.voihanvuohi.fi/juustot (on the webpage, the cheese needed is the one on the right, with blue and green label)

I found it sometimes in K-Market but lately I can't find it: you can order it directly from the website!

3) GOAT HARD CHEESE 

150 gr x potatoes kilo = 600 gr

five packs of 130 gr

Where to find it:

This one (it has to be specifically this one, I haven't tried the others) from Juustoportti is simply perfect.

https://www.k-ruoka.fi/kauppa/tuote/juustoportti-vuohen-grand-reserve-130g-6408655602039

I find it always at K-Market.

A little note: there is a Finnish shop of international cheese in Hakaniemi, very well known. One of them told me once... That there is no hard goat cheese in Finland, it doesn't exist..! ...don't tell me... 

 

4) 1 glass and half of extra virgin olive oil

5) One head of garlic  

6) Fresh mint, at least 30 leaves. 

In Hakaniemi Market you can find organic mint plants and organic garlic. Also, these are two popular cultivation also in familiar farming so it could be possible that your neighbors could have some of them from their country side! 

©SARDINIA SUOMESSA

This is a project by MIXAFORTUNA.

Photos: Wikipedia