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| My grandma Irja and my grandpa Mikko right after they were married. |
Recipe
As long as I
remember, I have either cooked or helped my mom cook. It is the way of life
back home: everyone has to learn it, at least the basics. My grandma was good
at this. Her bread was better than from a bakery. Her cinnamon rolls were
heavenly. I could have eaten nothing but her mashed potatoes and gravy. But the
best thing she ever made was what she called ‘mokko’. It is sort of a potato casserole.
It is sweet, but doesn’t have sugar in it. It takes all day to make it. But it
is worth every hour you have to wait.
When I was
about seven, she taught me how to make it. It was just after Christmas, and we
were over there for a visit. I would ask her about the recipe. “You don’t
need one”, she would say, “You just need to know the right feel to it.” Over
the years I followed her making it several times. Every time I would try to get
her to give me the recipe. “There isn’t one", she would reply, "this is how we’ve always made it.”
After some asking around, my great-grandma told me that her grandmother had
taught her how to make it, and that it had been in the family longer than that.
By now, the recipe is more than 200
years old.
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| My great- grandmother Anna on the left. Her sisters Helena (middle) and Hilja (right) at Anna's 80th birthday party in 1981. These ladies cooked so well that you could have eaten until you burst. They all lived well into their 90s and 100s, probably because their food made them so happy. |
After a few
years, my mom and I wrote down how to make it. You take about 7 kg yellow
potatoes. Don’t use new potatoes, it just won’t work at all. You boil them with
peel on until fork tender. You peel them while they are hot, and mash them,
preferably with an electric mixer. Put a couple of tablespoons of wheat flour
into it, and mix well. Cover with towels to keep warm. Put somewhere out of
drafts and cold so that it will stay as warm as possible without cooking more, usually between 50 and 75 degrees Celsius. Let
it sit for at least four hours. Up to six may be needed if you didn’t get the
potatoes peeled when they were hot enough. Add whole milk until it is like
pureed but still thick soup. Add salt to taste. At this point, if for some
reason you weren’t skilled enough, and the concoction doesn’t taste sweet, you
can add a little bit of molasses to make it sweeter. Put it into casserole dishes,
but only fill them half full. Put small dabs of butter on top, bake in about
125 degrees Celsius until it is bubbly and dark golden brown, usually two to
four hours. Eat with a pork butt roast, gravy made from drippings, and whatever
else your heart desires.
This is my
soul food. This is who I am.
