you know what makes or breaks the impression i have of a country? the food! it may be silly, but if a country has tasty, uncomplicated food, i’m sure i’ll like it. china had a ginourmous array of cheap, exotic, fresh fruit available. singapore had the fluffier stuffed “pancakes” i ever tasted aaaaaand ice-cream sandwiches.

and then came finland and i was totally unprepared for the berries explosion! strawberries, cloudberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries… they had them all in their open air markets, box after box of juicy colorful berries. they had them in an array of mouthwatering desserts too, like the one that inspired this post: vadelma munkki. we had just arrived from a trip to suomenlinna and were starving, so these strange looking treats in the harbour market were a delicious surprise.


sugary and fluffy and light, with sweet raspberry jam peeking from the inside…

…nobody could resist them! :D

last time i went to portugal, my parents proudly showed me the progress of their “tiny clementina’s tree”. it’s a cute little tree that they purchased way before i came to china, but to which i never paid much attention. and it turns out that it wasn’t clementines that tree was growing – it was kumquats!! lots of them! i was in shock, and incredibly happy to be putting my new asian knowledge to work! :)

but this, i think, is something we don’t see in portugal (or europe) so often. they’re called pomelo, or youzi (柚子) in mandarin.

in china they’re on display on every supermarket (both fresh and candied) or street fruit stand and they look like green-yellowish oversized lemons (hence their latin name, citrus maxima). inside, there’s a really thick rind that you need to remove completely to reach the juicy pulp.

they taste not as tart as lemon, and not as sweet as an orange, but with hints of both… it’s probably closer to grapefruit, now that i think about it, only sweeter. and oh-so-adictive!!
give it a try if you find it around!

on the next episode of china fruit series, the mini-mango! stay tuned! :P