Whipped berry porridge and other stuff from New Nordic Food conference

Food court

The annual New Nordic Food program's conference was held in Helsinki 11-12 October, 2011. Those two days involved more than 220 interested participants from eleven countries, almost 50 fantastic speakers and over 30 organisations and companies in the food court. Our participants seemed to be happy with the content, overall atmosphere and arrangements, so were we organisers as well. It's always a huge effort to make these kind of big happenings, and especially difficult it is when organising stuff from four different countries...

So, what was left on the mind after the conference?

First, it was fruitful to combine all three issues: children, food for many (public foodscapes) and oats. The difficulty was, that at the same time there were too many good lectures going on, so it was not possible to join all interesting parts! Luckily, the presentations are now on the project's website http://www.nynordiskmad.org/.

The main issue, the food (lunches and the spectacular dinner), were very memorable. We have put special interest in food during the Finnish chairmanship of the Nordic Counsel of Ministries. The dinner was something to remember... Sigurveig from Iceland already wrote about the dinner and put some pictures also.

I have never seen a dinner like that, we really sat in the middle of a forest, lake and field of oats. The welcoming drink "Helsinki bunch" was planned by world's best bar (2009) A21. The drink contained berries and really tasted like a Finnish forest!

Chef Matti Jämsen and coordinator
Magnus Gröntoft

The dinner was planned by Chef Matti Jämsen, who was fifth in this year's Bocuse d`Or. Beside fantastic food (white fish, moose, lingonberry) and unbelievable decoration, the dinner was served with theatre. Liisa Ruuskanen from Finnish Gourmet Theatre Entree played exhilarating shorts form her repertoire, for the first time in English. What a success!

The dinner dessert was the very traditional Finnish course of whipped berry porridge. Every grandmother (and some modern mothers) in Finland can do it. Some guests (especially Danes) were so excited about it, that they wanted the recipe. It is below:)

We put special emphasis on communication during the conference. Conference was send via Internet, we used Twitter and Facebook and also "traditional" media was well present at the conference.


- The children and food part: is this generation the first who teaches their parents to cook? Food making by itself is a key to the appreciation of food, and the key to understanding the right nutrition and eating habits. Enjoying the food and the pleasure is number one, it's no point doing food that doesn't taste good: children don't eat it.

- Food in public institutions part: for the first time some hospitals have begun to use food as " a medicine", i.e. food can prevent diseases, it can heal diseases and maintain good physical and mental condition. What "a new" invention! The fact is, that food has not been in any value in hospitals until now.

- Oats part: Oat is like a well kept secret, it has so many good properties and it suits perfectly for climate friendly, very healthy and suitable special diets. Oats belong to our traditional Nordic food culture, but the innovations made from oats are the future.

I would like to give my warmest thanks to the organising group, especially to Magnus and Bettina, you did a splendid job with the conference. And all you who jointed us via Internet or in person, thank you for being active. Let's continue the work with NNM.

Whipped berry porridge


1 litre strong diluted lingonberry juice
1,5 dl semolina
1,5 dl sugar
1/4 tsp salt

Take a pan and heat the juice to boiling point, whisk in the semolina and cook slowly for about 20 minutes, stir now and then. Let the porridge cool down in a cold water bath. Porridge's colour is now quite dark red. Then whip the porridge strongly, it will come light and fluffy pink. Serve with cold milk or cream.