Customers at a traditional country pub in Northumberland can now enjoy a taste of Finland thanks to manager Anne Ebdy, who is adding flavours of her homeland to the menu. The likes of creamy rice-filled Karelian pies and traditional cured salmon dishes are being introduced to The Boatside Inn near Hexham, where one of Anne's children, daughter Sofia, also works.
These Nordic favourites, on offer alongside the award-winning pub's regular menu, are providing Anne with a chance to capture memories of home.
A move prompted by growing tensions
Originally from eastern Finland, the former teacher lived closer to the Russian border than she did her corner shop, and it was growing tensions in the area that eventually prompted her to leave. As well as working in a junior school, Anne had run a business offering horse-riding holidays to visitors and would lead nature-immersed guided rides through the surrounding forest.
But her business was then hit by the pandemic, which brought tourism to a halt, and then affected by growing military activity in the nearby woodland. There were unwelcome changes at her school too, where thoughts turned to preparations for bomb shelters and evacuation of children in case military tensions escalated to war.
It was a hugely unsettling time, and it was concerns for the future that made up Anne's mind to move away with her family and start afresh. The North East was familiar to her as they had lived here for a short time 15 years previously, and this was where Sofia was born.
Starting afresh in Northumberland
Their move meant selling most of the horses, although Anne kept two, and so — arranging for the horses' travel over here — she, along with her two teenagers plus two dogs, made the trip, with their belongings packed into a horse trailer. She says it was "pretty mad now that I think about it" and adds: "But I had a strong belief that I would do fine."
After their arrival, she did some supply teaching before moving into hospitality, working at Ramside Hall in County Durham, then in pub and restaurant management roles around Sunderland, before heading north to The Wheatsheaf in Corbridge.
"I fell in love with Northumberland, the scenery and the nature here," she says. Now in her role as manager at The Boatside Inn, with Sofia working alongside her as a supervisor, she feels thoroughly settled and, being able to work with the kitchen team to add dishes from her homeland to the menu, this connection with home is proving a comfort.
Traditional Nordic cooking
"The Boatside Inn is definitely the most beautiful place I've ever lived in, and our horses are just around the corner, so we feel at home here," she says. "We do feel homesick now and then but we love it here. Cooking and baking traditional Nordic dishes brings Finland to us in flavours and, of course, memories."
The kitchen team follow traditional Finnish practices, in smoking the salmon themselves, curing gravadlax and pickling vegetables for the dishes. With Nordic cooking being immersed in seasonal traditions of foraging and preserving, there will be a changing selection on offer, but diners can expect the likes of pickled mackerel; gravadlax on home-made rye bread with pickled cucumber; and pork and beef meatballs with mash and gräddsås — a rich cream sauce — as well as those Karelian pies.
This Finnish speciality has a distinctive look, with hand-crimped rye crusts around the pies' creamy savoury rice filling. They will be brushed with butter and served with flakes of hot-smoked salmon or gravadlax. And, set to feature among desserts, will be a blueberry bake — one of Anne's grandma's recipes, to add a further homely touch.
