No-nonsense Finn checks his sources

HELSINKI (Reuters Life!) - Finnish chef Antto Melasniemi scrutinizes the entire food chain from top to bottom in the search for the organically sourced raw material to create simple dishes at his tiny restaurant in Helsinki: Kuurna.

Book two weeks in advance to be sure of a table at this popular spot, which Melasniemi runs along with partner Heikki Purhonen in the heart of the capital's Kruununhaka area.

Kuurna's dishes are produced from sustainably sourced food, locally caught fish, artichokes grown in Melasniemi's own field and hand-picked mushrooms and berries.

Nearly everyone at Kuurna will be eating the same dish, as the menu -- while changing weekly -- is simple with one fixed price and just three choices for a starter and a main course.

Melasniemi has worked as a chef in France and Britain but used to earn his living playing keyboards in famed Finnish hard rock band HIM.

He spoke to Reuters about his aspirations:

Q: Where did your cooking begin?

A: "I have been fascinated with eating since I was little. I spent long summers with my family in the Turku archipelago in southwest Finland, diving and fishing, harpoon catching fish and cooking meals for the family."

Q: What is the difference between good and fantastic food?

A: "I prefer not to emphasize the technical and highly detailed cooking as such, but rather try to work the bottom end, making sure the raw material is perfect from overseeing how the cattle are grown, the meat is cut and where the raw material comes from."

Q: Does that make up the taste?

A: "Leaving out a fancy sauce or spice mix, one can concentrate on preparing a much better-tasting steak or fish."

"In Finland everything is processed to a great extent -- one tends to focus on designing complicated dishes as the food comes nearly done and from a package. Tracing it back is laborious but more rewarding."

Q: Some of the time you keep your restaurant closed. Why?

A: "Particularly in the autumn and spring I take the time to visit meat producers, learn the trade of cutting meat and cultivate the fields we own ourselves, although it is still quite small-scale. Large-scale would still be utopian. We have also used the time to pick cloudberries and mushrooms."

Q: Describe some typical Finnish ingredients you use?

A: We use a lot of Finnish deer and reindeer, mostly dried. Baltic herring, pike-perch, burbot and vendace are good fish. We do make paté out of moose's muzzle, and we bake our own "nakkileipa", a hard rye bread. Finnish duck is great, it competes well with the French."

Q: What would you recommend to the home chef?

A: Be brave and visit the marketplaces, ask for instructions from the butcher or fishmonger. It is quite difficult to make food inedible."

To get a taste of Kuurna, Melasniemi suggested a salmon head soup.

RECIPE

500 grams of salmon heads

1 tablespoon of oil

1/2 onion

2 garlic cloves

30 g of leek

30 g of celery

10 g of fresh ginger

pinch of cayenne pepper

1/2 fennel

pinch of white pepper

1 bay leaf

1 branch of thyme

1 branch of rosemary

1 tablespoon of salt

200 ml of white wine

water

Remove gills from the salmon heads and wash the heads in cold water. Chop the heads into four pieces.

Pour a drop of oil into a saucepan and add the spices.

Simmer the spice mix in light heat for about 5 minutes.

Add the salmon heads, white wine and water until the heads are covered. Let it boil for 30 minutes.

Grind the soup in a blender, and pour through a sieve.

Add salt to taste and lemon juice at serving.