CULINARY BIOGRAPHY: INHOTTAMINEN (LAPLAND)

           The hearty cuisine of Upper Lapland is little known outside the Arctic Circle. However, without delving into the details, I was able to spend three enchanted weeks there, thanks to a failed compass, a random wind, and a slab of driftwood hurled my way by the woman I came to know as Noni.

            Noni was of Irish descent, though one would never know it by her leathery complexion, taciturn demeanor, and unsociability. But her isolation had allowed her to become an expert in the preparation and presentation of the region’s exotic fare.

As we struggled toward her makeshift shelter, her greeting provided a hint of how she felt about this remote area. “Welcome to paradise,” she croaked.

For decades, Noni had lived alone in what to me seemed like utter desolation: a rocky spit of land, dotted with meager outcroppings of grass and nettles, surrounded by the endless and frigid sea. To Noni, though, it was paradise, because after marrying in her teens she had settled there with her sea captain husband.

            Lapland was supposed to be just “a stopping point,” she said wistfully. “A way station.” Instead, it had become her lovers Xanadu. “He told me we would settle in Dublin,” she chuckled, gazing toward the slate gray sea. “This is as close to Dublin as I'll ever see!” The statement amused me. This rugged, unforgiving wasteland was thousands of miles from the vibrant Irish capital.

            Where was her intrepid husband, I asked? 

             “Just missed him,” she said, sneering with disappointment. “He’s so busy with his important maritime career, don’t you know.” Terror and dread played across her face when she spoke of him. “Do you suppose it’s rough out there today?” she wondered aloud. “Do you suppose the waves are crashing over the bow even now? Smashing into the wheelhouse?”

            In Noni’s imagination, the sea was a frightful and perilous place; her thoughts always turned to the worst when considering her husband’s noble toils. She seemed to think if him constantly. During the brief summer, when the ice had receded, she spent her days traipsing along the rugged coast, waving excitedly to passing ships, hoping, perhaps, that one of them would be captained by her dear husband, in for a surprise visit. “Hello! Hello!” she would call over the icy water. “Do you see me? Please! Anyone?”

            I was there as winter approached, however, and was privileged to see how she came alive in that season, as her homemaking skills came to the fore. I see her now, sawing through the already thick sheets of ice with a dull handsaw, her sinewy muscles rippling, sweat pouring from her brow. Hefting the unwieldy ice blocks up the hill to the building site was a study in grace, strength, and balance. Turning to me, she joked, “What? Are you crippled or something? Lying there like a beached whale?”

No, I was not crippled, but enjoying the last few rays of sunshine. Occasionally as she trudged up the hill she would gaze bitterly out to the relentless sea, as though expecting her husband’s ship to appear over the horizon. Grumbling with disappointment, she would invariably turn back to the task at hand. There was work to be done, she knew, and romance would have to wait just a while longer.

            The abode she created would probably be called an igloo, but unlike the quaint structures popular in Western lore, round and even, like breasts, hers was a whimsical affair; all angles and mismatched seams, with gaps in the walls that she would fill with scraps of skin, fur, or dog droppings—which provided excellent insulation, she told me when pressed.

            To look at the structure she had built, all misshapen in the permafrost, one would think that it had been erected in great haste by someone who had absolutely no interest or aptitude for construction, but was desperate to escape the advancing hundred-degree-below zero winter, and had no help whatsoever.

            How wrong they would be! The design was of a theme: oblique angles, incongruence, and asymmetry composing their own lyric harmony. Inside, the fanciful chaos continued. Seal and walrus pelts were pegged “haphazardly” to the jagged walls. Weather-beaten scraps of lumber supported “collapsing” walls. The wind howled outside, but other than the occasional roaring blast of air and stinging ice-shards that would gust through one fissure or another, we were safe and cozy inside.

            Noni and I slept jammed into a corner, always keeping one eye open for her rambunctious mutts, who I still remember snarling in the dark, their yellow eyes glowing warmly as they leaped forward to tussle with the sharp stick that Noni always kept at her side.

            Their playful shenanigans occupied many hours of the day, but eventually her canines companions fell into exhausted slumber and Noni would turn to her most treasured pastime: preparing the traditional regional dishes that she loved so well.

            In the center of the igloo sat the whale blubber stove, fashioned of heavy-gage steel pocked with rust. When I told her it resembled a boat rudder, Noni smiled. “Took from me husband’s ship meself,” she recalled wistfully. “Four hours with a cold chisel the night before he left!”

            Perhaps more by coincidence than design, the treasured keepsake proved to be an ideal cooking surface, distributing heat evenly and holding it long into the night—providing heat in the frigid dwelling.

But its most important use was for cooking, of course, and in Noni’s eclectic repertoire no dish was more memorable than the one she referred to as Inhottaminen.

I still remember savoring its pungent—some would say cadaverous—redolence, and marveling at the planning required in its preparation. For weeks prior to my arrival, Noni had gathered the ingredients and set them aside, as some needed time to ripen.

            Now, as she stoked the fire, the powerful aroma of rancid whale blubber—the fuel source--wafted through the hut. Crouching over the smoky flames, her gaunt face glowed under her crude sealskin hood, and her single gold tooth sparkled in the flickering light. “Winter’s coming,” she rasped, “and hunger is cruel.”

“You mean hunger is the best sauce,” I corrected her.

“Suit yourself,” she said.

               She explained that Inhottaminen took hours, and sometimes days to prepare. Even at that, results were unpredictable.

         “Like a soufflé!” I said.

          “Like a shipwreck,” she responded cryptically. As she began to cook, she advised me not to watch.

          “Because a watched pot never boils,” I said.

           “Funny you’d mention boils,” she said, rubbing her skin for warmth. She gestured to the corner. “Just sit over there,” she said, handing the sharp stick to me and advising me to tend the pups. Then, she began to cook in earnest.

You will need:

• 1-galvanized bucket walrus blubber
• 2-kilos polar aged bear meat
• 1-length seal intestine, dried and shredded.
• 2-handfuls Malamute fur-to taste (preferably from the shoulder area).
• 1-harp seal, quartered.
• 1-pine bough.
• 1-quart kerosene or Type A Jet fuel (depending on what's washed ashore previous summer)
• 1-cup reindeer urine
• 3 dried lemmings, minced.

Mix kerosene and reindeer urine together, and soak shredded seal intestines while simmering.

Pound polar bear meat with stone until thicker fibers are broken down.

Remove bone fragments, spear tips, or shrapnel.

In large chafing dish or split fuel tank, evenly spread pounded polar bear meat over quartered harp seal carcass.

Melt the walrus blubber, then froth with pine bough until it reaches the consistency of frothed walrus blubber.

Add minced lemmings. Let sit until plump.

Pour frothed walrus blubber-lemming mixture over harp seal-polar bear meat mélange.

Wrap chafing dish in old unlined wool overcoat or canvas sail.

Cover with heavy rocks or section of fuselage from crashed airplane, and bury in snow for 48 hours, or until polar bears catch the scent.

Remove from snow, uncover. Garnish with shredded seal intestines.

Sprinkle with malamute fur, careful to remove fleas or other parasites.           

Serve on driftwood slab or airplane tray, whichever has washed up on shore previous summer.

            To the western palate, Inhottaminen, with a lumpy, gelatinous consistency, and laced with the stringy sinews of both polar bear and seal, is at once bland and repugnant. For me, its rich play of flavors overwhelms the senses. It's a filling dish, too. I was unable to eat more than a few bites.

            I would have been delighted to learn more about the cuisine of Upper Lapland, and Noni would have eagerly been my instructor, I know. But when I awoke the following morning—our sumptuous feast of the evening before like a fever dream--she had apparently gone off in search of ingredients for what I’m sure would have been a memorable breakfast.

A storm was rising, and I thought I must be hallucinating when I saw the men, attired in bright orange survival gear, alight from a launch that had pulled up on the rocky shore. “Let’s get you out of here!” one of them shouted against the rising gale.

Without time to say farewell, I was bundled aboard the boat and we were off. As we crashed across the waves, I was wrapped in a blanket, a steaming cup of coffee in my hand when Noni appeared over a barren hillock, waving gleefully.

“Come ba-a-a-ck!” she cried, her voice barely audible over the surf. “Come b-a-ack!”

Ah, with pleasure, of course I would. If only I knew the way.