A recipe for "kalakeitto" (Finnish fish soup)

Elegy for the last summer sun

Watch my new video to find out more

I found myself confused recently and staring at the trees outside my apartment building. This was some weeks ago now. Though it could as well be a lifetime. I couldn’t decide whether it was the golden, late summer sun reflecting off the leaves that made them seem so yellow, or the leaves themselves starting to die.

Now there is no such confusion. Autumn is here and, in Finland, that means winter is as good as here also.

My life for the past few months has been defined by light and earth and fresh coastal water. Such is the joy of summer in this part of the world. A joy I’ve tried to share in my videos for you lately. And, it being so fresh in my mind, it’s almost impossible to believe the darkness is just weeks away now. A time during which the long night is broken less by the shallow, greying sun than by the brilliance of its reflection off the endlessly snow-covered earth.

---

I’m sharing a recipe with you today that commiserates this movement from warmth into darkness quite well. It is a fish soup both fresh and vibrant yet rich and comforting. It is a simple recipe, and traditional. Though I know it as Finnish, I’m sure soups like it are eaten around the world. All achieving those same things: comfort, safety, a moment of peace.

What I enjoy about this soup is how accessible it is without undermining flavour. There is no need for a time-consuming stock, or the artifice of a stock cube here. All the flavour you need comes from the vegetables, a little spice and herb, and the fish itself. It is very easy, can be very cheap, and is certainly very delicious.

And, so, before we get to the written recipe below, I invite you, perhaps for the last time this year, to our summer cottage here in Finland. Click below to watch a short film called Fish Soup. It tells the story of a recipe, a cook, and his coming to terms with the changing seasons.

Finnish Fish Soup

Ingredients

500ml water
400ml milk
200ml cream
3 medium carrots
5 small to medium potatoes (waxy or all-round are best here so they don’t disintegrate)
2 medium onions
large bunch of dill
10 all spice berries
10 peppercorns
2 pieces of buttered rye bread (if you can get Finnish, thats great, otherwise, nothing too sweet)
400g fish (I find salmon or trout works well over very flaky fish like cod or haddock. In the video I used a freshwater fish called whitefish which is related to salmon and popular in Finland.)

Method

First, the prep work. I’ll list this out so it’s easy to read:

1. Remove the dill fronds from the stems.

2. Put the stems into a pot with your water and spices.

3. Chop the dill fronds finely and put in the fridge for later.

4. Skin the fish fillets if not already done so and cut into largish chunks.

5. Peel the potatoes and carrots and chop them into small pieces. (If you’re the type of person that prefers larger pieces of veg in their soup, then you go right ahead and satisfy yourself in that regard here. Just be sure they cook for longer. Nothing worse than crunchy soup.)

Heat the water with the dill stems, all spice and peppercorns. Cover with a lid and let this simmer for 15 minutes or so on a very low heat until you can taste that their flavour has been extracted a little bit. Then sieve to remove everything. Return this sieved “stock” back to the heat and add your onions, carrots and potatoes. Bring this to a gentle simmer, add the buttered bread, and cook with the lid on until the vegetables are very nearly cooked through.

While the carrots and potatoes are still a little undercooked (you don’t want the potatoes to be falling apart), add the milk and cream and bring back to a simmer. Then add the fish to gently simmer until cooked through. This will take perhaps 10 minutes depending on the fish you’ve chosen and how large you cut the pieces. By now the bread will have melted away, thickening the soup a little and leaving a gesture of nuttiness to the final flavour. Let it bubble away without the lid if it needs to thicken a little more though.

To finish, season generously with salt and add all of the dill (a lot of dill is a good idea here, don’t be shy) and stir through. This is best served with a slice of Finnish “archipelago bread” spread with an offensive amount of salted butter. This quantity of soup served my (extended) family of five adults and two small children (who both ended up eating sausages and rice anyway).

Finnish fish soup with “archipelago” bread