At any point in life prior to marrying Mimmu, if you’d have told me some day I’d be extolling the wonders of rye bread, I’d have called you a flat out liar. Yet, hear I am, doing just that.
I have always hated rye bread. In fact I still do. It’s kind of sweet but not really; saw-dusty going down the gullet. With rye bread cut from a loaf, you need be careful to chase it with water or something liquid or risk snorting those loose pieces up into the rear nasal cavity above your palate with just the wrong kind of inhale that might come with eating a too-dry piece of rye bread. Or talking before you’ve gotten it down your throat, which you can imagine is an ongoing hazard with yours truly. But you know what I’m talking about. Happens when you’re not careful with carrots too. Then you have to keep snorting until the air gets it out of there and back down your gullet where it was supposed to go in the first place. I can’t think of any culinary issue more annoying and more likely to make you hate a food more than that snorting hazard.
And it’s not just that. Rye bread from a loaf almost pretends to be a desert, but doesn’t get off the tarmac. Texture is bad. Even though it seems moist, when you try to swallow it, it still feels crumbly; dry. It feels like eating sand. It’s exactly the kind of thing you brag about eating because it sounds good for you, and it’s a chore to eat so you feel like the struggle makes you a good and healthy person. Compared to most wheat bread, it probably is. A quick google search on health benefits of rye bread is that it helps regulate blood sugar. I think we could all use that.
All my shorts that I loved two months ago in the US are falling off my ass with the weight of a wallet with two continents of payment methods crammed into it and the two cell phones an expat like me has to carry around with them all the time (the "good" iPhone for internet and pictures, and the crappy old Nokia phone with sim card Euro number), and the ones that were just snug enough to never put on are now my new faves.
Don’t get excited. I’m not really getting THAT fit. But a steady diet of ruis leipä and lots of daily biking is probably leaning me out below the waist line at least. I’ll take it!
So, what exactly is ruis leipä? Hold on to you undies…RYE BREAD!!! And it is awesome.
While essentially what I’m talking about is bread, the ruis leipä I’m devouring by the bag full is actually technically, Ruispalat—translated, that’s “rye pieces.” In this case, I’m eating the even more expensive, thinner and chewier “Ohut Herkku” Ruispalat, or in other words, “thin delicacy pieces of rye.”
It is NOT the same as rye bread, which has been a staple food in Finland for eons. And if that’s what Finns were putting in front of me at any table, I’d still be having none of it. Still, these Ruispalat, APPARENTLY still have the same HEALTH BENEFITS of rye bread (!!!). Can you imagine?!
Finland may have cracked the code on homelessness. Bravo. Their schools are among the best in the world in educational outcomes and they have 4 recesses every day and average 4 hours less of class time every week compared to the US. Kudos. Free healthcare for all. Commie, but good job. But when you make a healthy, horrible food THE BEST THING TO EAT, EVER, you’ve really cracked the code. And they HAVE!!!
Because I’m not homeless, not in school, and really don’t see the doctor much (ok, I have a health condition that is a big one but I’m living really well, and I AM super impressed with the healthcare system here, but I’m saving that for later blog to drive any Trumpsters absolutely bonkers…and I want to make this rye bread thing a big deal here), I think Ruispalat might be the greatest Finnish invention. It’s too bad nobody else in the world knows about it. It’s only really popular Finland, and I’m sorry Sweden, Germany, and Norway. Compared to Ruispalat, all your rye bread sucks. I’ve had all of it. You’re not even close.
Lucky for you, Mimmu and the kids are in Säynätsalo at Mummo’s (grandma’s) eating cabbage hot dish (kaalilaatikko), so poor me has to make dinner in the toaster as I wait for a zoom athlete meeting in the US. I’m throwing one in the toaster for dinner right now.
I always make fun of eating shows, like DDD or Bourdain. We watch moving pictures of food being prepared their secret ways, and ultimately watch Guy Fieri stuff it in his mouth and dude-speak a “OH! That’s AWESOME,” or some other such superlative that gets equally old as it is cliche. What’s he going to say? Oh, this is terrible?! Not live TV. Hello!
So I realize my hypocrisy with what I’m about to do. I’m going to walk you through the modern thin delicacy Ruispalat experience, because I’ve got the pictures, and I’m an expert. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.
First, you have to buy the right one, so let’s start there. Vaasan (Vaasa’s) was the first company to make the Ruispalat popular, and I have to admit they are still the best. Oululainnen makes the round Reissumies, which actually might predate the Vaasan product, but it certainly isn’t better nor has it buoyed the business like Vaasan has. Regardless, Reissumies are still a little thick and I think trying for old-time’s sake to resemble crappy old school rye bread. So, they’re not for me unless that’s all that’s available. The whole Oululainen aura even beyond the bread feels a little asleep at the wheel, if I'm being both candid and frank.
There was a period when I liked, or at least I thought I liked Fazer Ruis Puikula the best, because if you know anything about anything in Finland, almost everything with the name Fazer on it that you can buy and put in your mouth, is the Mercedes Benz of mass-produced whatever-it-is. I am easily marketed to on quality lifestyle items, I’ll admit that, and that’s probably where Fazer got me on the Ruis Puikula kick. You wouldn’t be disappointed if your first ruis leipä experience was a Fazer one, but they simply aren’t as good as Vaasan. Which is fine, because now you’re on the downlow on Fazer anyway. Their milk chocolate sininen (blue) bars are the filet mignon of milk chocolate. Bar none. Prove me wrong. I dare you.
About a year or two ago, Vaasan took it up a notch with the Ohut Herkku. And that, is where it stands. To Tina Turner it, they're simply the best.
All of these items are small, thin, flattened-hamburger-bun-like pieces of rye bread. They are precut in the center so they stay soft in the middle but are easily separated to expose the chewy inner belly. How they actually eat depends on how you prepare them.
You can pull one of these gems right out of the bag, split them open and eat them, and they’re still pretty good. But you put butter on them in that state and they move much closer to sublime. Mimmu goes that way. She thinks the butter melting while she's chewing is really satisfying, which I have to agree with.
You can toast each half and get a crispier experience, but you’ll want butter again. Come to think of it, to stop repetition, you’re pretty much going to want butter, so just assume it’s on there. The butter seeps into the rugged, tough chewy texture and almost turns it into another thing that melts in your mouth, nearly but you still need to chew it. The texture is simply amazing. The butter brings out the heavy rear-of-the-mouth, slightly sour, richness that regular rye breads simply fail to do. So much so that the fact they are technically the same thing seems like a miracle.
And with that sentence, out comes the disclaimer. I should say I don’t know for a fact they are technically nearly the same thing. Like most American packaged foods, I can’t decipher most of the ingredients, but in defense of the bread, I’ll point out that to a foreigner, anything written in Finnish at all, regardless of how healthy or chemically enhanced it actually is, looks like word soup. So partially hydrogenated clorophenylacetate might look as complicated and scary as organically-grown ground rye grain and water in Finnish. I’m going on faith that Ruispalat are good for me.
My favorite way to prep a Ruispalat is to pop it in the toaster intact. When it comes out, you’ll nearly burn yourself from the heat inside that bugger, so watch yourself as you pull them apart. A venerable Old Faithful of steam comes shooting out from between the two halves.
Have your butter ready and hit those soft, steamy inside halves and watch the butter turn liquid and seep into the chewy hot rye. If you want to stop there and enjoy, go for it. That’s plenty satisfying. But a slice of Oltermanni chesse (brown label, not green!) while the butter is still melting is a good choice. So is a thin slice of turkey or salami over that. So is a line or two of Turun sharp mustard over that. And if you’ve gone through that much trouble, a couple of slices of cucumber is a nice finish. If you’ve got sliced hard boiled eggs lying around, that’s a great breakfast choice too.
Regardless of the ingredients, Ruispalat, especially the Ohut Herkku ones, are the best thing in the Finnish food chain. I miss them the most of any food I miss when I’m in the United States. I never get tired of them and I eat them daily because they are so versatile. America put a man on the moon. Finland made a healthy food staple the best thing in the country to eat. That’s worth pointing out, I think.