Finland’s rising capital of food

I got my first taste of why Turku – the oldest city in Finland – has become a new Nordic food hotspot as I sampled my way through its 19th-Century Market Hall. The handsome red-brick building is set a block back from the River Aura, which flows through town and out into the Turku Archipelago – the world’s largest archipelago, where around 40,000 islands stretch across the Gulf of Bothnia towards Sweden.

At fish merchant Herkkunuotta, owner Johann Helsted proffered a plate of pike roe whipped into a sour cream mousse. “When the pike roe is raw it’s not so good – people throw it to the seagulls,” he told me. “But this has been cold smoked for three days in a traditional smoker made by fishermen. It gets an excellent flavour. And so, we change something from not so good to really good!”

The pike roe sat atop dark Archipelago bread (island bread), a local culinary icon flavoured with malt and syrup and prized both for delicious taste and long-life – ideal in past times to tide island residents through the winter. Next to it on the plate, a little heap of herring was paired perfectly with slightly sour, early-season local strawberries.

A couple of stalls along, Turku cheeses formed nose-tingling piles, from which I tried a red mottled local version of brie, plus a Nordic take on halloumi called bread cheese that the lady at the counter assured me is delicious fried. Down another aisle, a stall holder held out a hunk of pork sausage studded with raisins (rusinamakkara). When I asked how non-traditional Nordic ingredients like raisins came to be inside a traditional Turku sausage, my guide Annamari Laine offered a lesson in commodities history. “As an important port, Turku was a very international city since medieval times. So, they would have had raisins coming here,” she said.