Year: 2014

Eat This: Spaghetti Bolognese in Mare Chiaro

  Update on 18.11.2018: This restaurant no longer exists. About 2 weeks ago on Friday I was at school when it suddenly started snowing. Everything happened so quickly, within an hour all Arabia was covered with snow and it didn’t look like it would stop anytime soon! But we had already made plans with friends and no matter how snowy it was, we went out anyway. And our choice was Mare Chiaro on Hämeentie, in Kallio – my new neighbourhood.

Tsoureki – Greek Easter Bread / Pastry

  This bread reminds me of my childhood in Istanbul, when we did not think of anyone’s religion, ethnicity or how “different” s/he was; my childhood in Istanbul when we lived together with our neighbours of Greek, Armenian, Kurdish, Turkish, Circassian, Georgian, whichever else ethnic background without questioning them and just caring about who they were, not “what” they were. The bread itself was named as “Easter Pastry” and I never really knew what Easter meant actually. Still, living in Helsinki where there is a public holiday each year for it, I forget the existence of “Easter” until the holiday comes. But I never forget the taste and smell of this bread freshly both from a bakery in Istanbul…

Eating Stockholm – A Weekend’s Culinary Trip

  I’ve been living in Helsinki for 4.5 years and I never travelled to Stockholm, which is almost next door, until recently. My good friends, Utku & Nisan – a lovely Turkish couple, who moved to Stockholm from Helsinki at the end of last summer so finally this gave me an inspiration for a weekend trip. Now I want to go again.. and again.. and again.. and also to learn Swedish..

Mustikkakukko, Blueberry Rye Pie (100th Blog Post!)

  It was around last January when I started to think about ways to learn more traditional Finnish recipes. My language skills were not good enough to test if the online recipes I found were good or not. Plus, I had already realised that learning a recipe from a friend by cooking together was a lot fun and the best way. So I decided to apply this method in a context further than Helsinki, and I started my little trips around Finland in search for recipes.