I have been twice to the Sello Palace Hotel in Espoo, Finland in the last 10 days. It is not a bad hotel and is walking distance from our office.

The first time I was there I was surprised to see bear on the menu. I do not recall the details and did not try it that time either. My Finnish colleague explained that some Finnish restaurants buy one bear per year to make their menus a bit more exotic.

The hotel has rebranded their restaurant with a Californian theme - Paul's Bistro - with a larger variety of meals especially burgers.

 

The choice on the menu is larger but they have an especially expanded burger section to their menu.

 

At the bottom left you will see that they offer bear burger with some other things which I cannot translate. Since the menu was hard to scan I show a more detailed view below.

 

I must admit I was a bore and went for a chateaubriand steak. That was well-prepared, but both Finnish and British colleagues have recommended the bear burger...something for another trip!

A few days ago Ranfuchs made a posting "The problem with chicken" raising concerns about how egg-laying chickens were treated and the fact the eggs fron intensively reared birds went into many foods. I must admit that, while I was always aware that battery hens were reared in cruel conditions and that "value" chicken meat often looks an odd colour, I do not know a lot about the subject.

I rarely watch TV but when I got back from Finland my wife said that I would have be interested in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Chicken Run series. I did not see the series of 3 programmes, but basically it records how our supermarkets have driven down the price of chicken so much that farmers have little choice but to offer cheap intensively-reared chicken otherwise it will be purchased abroad. He set up two similar chicken sheds: the first raised 2,500 chickens in intensive conditions and the other 1,500 chickens in more humane conditions. There was an inevitable contrast in both the way in which the chickens grew and the quality of the meat after slaughtering. He then went on to try to convince Axminster, Devon to be the first 'free range town' in Britain. However today's Independent in an article entitled Crying Fowl suggests that his way of working and filming with a local chicken farm was less than fair.

Last night Jamie Oliver presented a complementary programme called "Fowl Dinners" which challenged a studio audience about the chicken they ate. A few farms were visited (both egg and meat) and some industry figures were interviewed. While the intensive rearing conditions shown - with a high mortality rate - were shocking, what shocked me most is that intensively reared chickens are sold for 3p per bird at the farm gate! I have previously heard of how lamb prices were incredibly low but this blew me away. So for a £2.50 supermarket bird the farmer just gets 1.2% of the sale price - that is obscene!There are obviously transport, slaughtering, packing and retailing costs but I suspect that the supermarket takes the lion's share of that.

A few years ago I saw a programme showing that a huge number of chicken breasts were imported from Thailand via the Netherlands. In the Netherlands they were injected with protein and water (to max up the weight) then imported here. The commencial threat to British farmers if their goods are not cheap enough that they will lose out to imports is real enough.

I think that our supermarkets and their desire to make huge profits on cheap food are the main driver behind the intensive farming methods used for meat and eggs. However another contributor has been the big change in our cooking habits. Chicken consumption has gone up massively in my lifetime. In my childhood a whole chicken was a typical Sunday lunch choice - like a joint of prime beef or a leg of lamb - a luxury meal that was an infrequent treat. Today chicken consumption is far greater driven by a dramatic reduction in costs in real terms plus a move from red to white meat for health reasons.

From what I recall of the 1970s you could buy whole chickens fresh or frozen and there was little alternative. A typical British family then would probably roast the chicken whole and stuff it. When the chicken was carved you were asked if you preferred the light (breast) or dark (meat) and everybody had their preferences. From what I recall the dark meat was generally regarded as superior. The carcase might then be put into a pressure cooker to make a soup or stock rather than being dumped in the bin.

When I got to university I realised that my Asian fellow-students approached the chicken differently. They would take a whole chicken, chop it up with a meat cleaver into bite size pieces and either put the pieces in a stir fry (Chinese) or in a curry (Indian). The pieces of meat would usually be served on the bone apart from the breast. Since I got to like cooking Chinese and Indian things I too purchased a meat cleaver from the Chinese supermarket.

Around 1980, I became aware of supermarkets selling chicken breasts. I was surprised when a friend's wife served a meal that was just chicken breasts. To be fair, drumsticks and chicken wings were also offered in the supermarkets but this was a big change from whole chickens. However, a huge number of people now only eat chicken breast. This of course leads to problems - if people eat mainly chicken breasts what happens to the rest? Well of course there is machine recovered meat that goes into junk food and horrifyingly some non-breast meat has been sold at a dumping price in West Africa putting local farmers out of business (sorry I cannot find the reference).

Not only do we need to worry about chicken welfare, but we should relearn how to use whole chickens. A well-reared whole chicken ought to supply a family with a few meals without costing a fortune. It is perhaps just at the cost of a little more time - time is precious but many of us waste enough of it in front of a TV or game console!

Hugh's Chicken Run will be repeated (don't know which of the 3 programmes) on Channel 4 tonight at 17:35

I have been a grumpy bloke today! I took the last flight out from London to Helsinki last night in order to maximise time with the family. The flight was very late so I barely made the connecting flight to Tampere. Surprise, surprise... my baggage missed the connection. By the time I filled out the baggage claims forms, all the taxis were gone so had to call one out from the city....checked in to my hotel at 02:00 this morning.

I went to the office today without the benefit of my sponge bag or clean clothes...yuck! It was a long day in the office....hope I did not smell too bad.

I am staying (now reunited with my bag :-) )a few blocks away from Salud restaurant which is where colleagues have taken me several times. There is a very good salad bar (quite typical for Finland since their healthy eating campaign a few decades back) and pretty decent steaks. This was founded by a Finn who loved Spanish food and the story is recorded here. While a good place to eat, the "Spanish" theme is a little loose extending into Texmex and some exotic things like 'Rocky mountain oysters'. Well... I fancied a decent pepper steak tonight and trudged out into the snow only to find out that Bodega Salud was shut.

I couldn't be bothered trudging a kilometre to a really good restaurant on the north side of the river so retreated to the boring but warm choice of the Scandic City hotel restaurant. The setting seemed odd. It was in an atrium, with a pergola with mock vines, yet I could see the door to the street and snow beyond. Sitting on your own in a strange city makes you observe and want to blog the observations...no matter how inane.

For a Finnish hotel, the menu was predictably a combination of steaks, salads & texmex with a little Thai. This seems to be a pretty successful combination as you find it everywhere regardless of whether you are in a Sokos, Scandic or other hotel chain. Finnish home cooking is very N. European and fairly bland. I wonder if Finns need something more exotic and spicy if they want to feel good about eating out. Dunno if it is true but they seem to go for Spanish or Texmex rather than say Indian spicy food. However a fair number of Finns (like Brits and Germans) go to Spain for the Sun.

There are one or two quite classy Finnish restaurants in Tampere but I do not recall the names - and they were on the other side of the river - if I find them again on a future trip I will post the details. There is also junk food - Hesburger is the local burger business that has kept McDonalds at bay and various kebab houses.

Burgers have the reputation of being junk food; probably reasonably so if you buy at a multinational chain or from the supermarket freezer. However they do not have to be unhealthy if you make your own. There is no reason why you cannot control what goes in just as with home-made bolognese sauce or a cottage pie.

Other things:
- You do not need to use an unhealthy tasteless 'burger bun'
- You do not need lashings of mayonaise
- They do not need to be 1/4 pound in weight

Serves 4-6

500 g of good quality beef mince
a small onion or half a medium onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp soya sauce
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp black pepper
a little flour

Method

1. Finely chop onion and garlic
2. If you have a food processor put all ingredients together and using a blade pulse the mixture until well blended. Alternatively mix thoroughly in a bowl.
3. Put a dusting of flour on a chopping board
4. Depending on your guests' appetite divide mixture into 4, 5 or 6 equal sized balls (roughly 125, 100 or 85 grams respectively).
5. Dust with flour and flatten to the degree you like.
6. Grill or griddle the burgers

Serving

Try serving with a salad
Or if you want the bread serve in a wholemeal bap or in toasted ciabbata using fresh leaves e.g. rocket
Use your favourite sauce or pickle or chutney
If you insist on chips then make and fry your own with real potatoes

Today there are far more children seem to suffer from hyperactivity than in the past. Obviously the problem has always been there but I can't help thinking that the increased consumption of junk food and sugary fizzy drinks plays a role. Preservatives, food colouring and other additives have been much more widely used in the UK than in neighbouring countries in Europe. Also the UK's consumption of junk food (mainly from US-based multinationals) is much higher than in the rest of Europe.

When we moved from Germany to the UK one of my sons developed a severe allergic reaction in his skin. He suffered with an allergy to pollen every summer but this was something new. After consulting the doctor we concluded that he was exposed to far more additives in the food we were buying than previously. Just as an example UK jams use far more additives than those in Germany; the additives mean that you can store the jam at room temperature but are probably not good for you. From that time on we tried to be more careful with additives.

I have always assumed that burger multinationals use a lot of additives. A burger need not be unhealthy or no more so than other things like meatballs that use minced beef. However I have always been suspicious of the amounts of mayo, the plastic-looking processed cheese and insipid salad leaves used by the big chains. In yesterday's Independent there was an interesting report on McDonalds and additives.

The whole report is worth reading but the following quote covers the key findings.

Analysis by The Independent reveals that Britain's biggest burger company pumps a total of 78 different artificial additives into its food on 578 separate occasions, an average of seven E-numbers per product. Although McDonald's emphasises its burgers are 100 per cent beef, the buns, cheese and sauces that go with them are high in E-numbers.

The Big Mac has 18 separate additives and a cheeseburger 17 separate additives, while a chocolate milkshake has eight different chemicals.

Additives are present in almost everything on the menu, including the grilled chicken and salads.

I am certainly not an expert on additives and know that not all E-numbers are harmful. However some are definitely linked with behavioural side effects in children see Action on Additives website. Junk food is typically high in fat, salt and sugars but additives alone make it worth avoiding - for kids especially!