Beloved community: herbalist and cook Edith Keto
Edith Keto is a Helsinki based herbalist, cook, writer and yogi. She is specialized in wild foods and loves learning about how to bring nature into the kitchen in a nourishing, healing and spiritual way. She has previously cooked with wild herb pioneer and chef Sami Tallberg, at stellar Helsinki restaurant Palace, and currently, at wild food restaurant Nokka. Her writing revolves around philosophy and connection to nature — both as a literary scholar and raising awareness of the traditional and health-enhancing uses of plants.
We had the honour to talk to Edith about wild herbs, cooking and her guides that has lead her to where she is today.
Edith will be hosting her annual ‘Learn to forage’ course at the Healing Arts Center Sundays May 21st and June 4th — welcome to join!
Hej Edith! How are you and who are you?
Hi! I’m good. I feel excited and energetic after a stable and restful winter. I’m a 31-year old cook living in Helsinki, though born and raised in Vaasa. I’m also a big fan of Helsinki Healing Arts Center and a yogi since I was 15.
What is your relationship with food and nourishment like — and what was it that led you to want to work in the kitchen?
I was particularly attracted to food since as long as I can remember. Always thinking and asking about the next meal. Very well nourished by my health-conscious mothers elegant home cooking. Mesmerised by displays of twenty identical pastries. Making friends with the eldest people with the nicest breakfast table on vacation, at one years old. Having decadent fantasies about working in restaurants in my teenage years, such as crying daily being purged and refined as a waitress in Paris.
Doing well in reading matters and being interested in many things quite evenly distracted me from pursuing more practical desires until I was 26 years old. By then I had gone on a outwardly successful journey from studying marketing, that didn’t satisfy me at all, to literature, which felt essential for a classic education in arts and philosophy, and discovering I was a very good writer when I could be bothered to. Still, I really wanted to do something more creative, challenge my ego and get to interact in a community of various kinds of people, beyond the intellectual bubble. I went to culinary school, started working in restaurants and have kept on doing so, despite the pandemic disrupting everything and halting initial development. The optimist in me sees getting a slow start as a cook during these times as a balanced metamorphosis from the head to the hands.
I love and appreciate the academic world, but staying in my head while seated all day was not a recipe to fulfil me. Now literature is a dear pastime outside the kitchen, which is great: reading for the interest and pleasure in seeking knowledge and understanding, like a bookish child.
How much does intuition play a part in your cooking?
If intuition is the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning, then I would say as a young cook that plays a rather small part in cooking professionally. In professional cooking your decisions and precisions materialise in a multiplied, even absurd way. You learn by being an apprentice, helping to realize processes designed by ones with way more understanding of the million little things that amount to good cooking. All while the precision of your hands and tongue are developing.
Being able to cook volumes without unnecessary waste, feeding each diner an even quality dish, is a matter of planning, calculating, and the skill of your hands, which comes through numerous repetitions. There’s both logic and intuition in there I guess; putting yourself in service to the material you are using and the people you are feeding, using both your logical mind, all your senses, and your emotional intelligence the best you can.
As a young cook you could make more intuitive decisions in the details. What to cook for staff meal, how to approach a guest that you are pouring a sauce and explaining a dish for. Intuition also plays a role in what kind of restaurant, or other food service, you want to become a part of.
In which ways do you feel feel called by wild plants and herbs?
I feel like I was handed them through relationships. I foraged ground elder with my mother for the first time as a teenager perhaps. She is a biologist, and her love for nature, plants, scents and flavors seems to have rubbed off on me. In culinary school my teacher thought of connecting me with foraging pioneer Sami Tallberg, probably seeing similar bohemian spirits in us. Sami’s cooking is among the most soulful, stylish and delicious I know of, and his passion for all that foraging brings about in our lives is infectious. During the pandemic when I couldn’t work as a cook, a friend connected me to write about plants for Frantsila, that has been doing wonderful work with sustainable farming and medicinal plants since the seventies.
I’ve kept following these things every year, learning more plants and discovering more and more contexts to work in. My current workplace community is so great because we all share an eagerness for delicious things from our close environment, and can geek out together on essential things like mushroom hunting.
Meadowsweet shoots (left) and flowers (right).
What do you love the most about foraging?
The cycle of the seasons that it connects me to. They come and go, providing material and beauty and food. I just follow them and enjoy the process. Foraging, say, wild rose in each new cycle reminds me of all the previous wild rose moments, like a kaleidoscope. The experience of spring, summer, fall and winter is really highlighted and amplified by this lifestyle.
What have you learnt from the plants — everything from healing properties to how they like to be treated in the kitchen.
To name a few…
Foraging makes your eyes notice different textures and shades of green, as all senses develop with training.
Packing wild herbs in little boxes with damp napkins underneath, misted slightly with a little spray water bottle, keeps them really fresh and vibrant.
Enjoying bitter herbs (like dandelion and wall lettuce) for their detoxifying properties, balancing them with a good vinaigrette.
Preserving a spectrum of edible flowers (such as red clover, pineapple weed and yarrow) in organic honey, that is kept in the fridge, for very aromatherapeutic sweetening in the middle of the winter.
Oysters accompanied by wild rose
Edith’s herbal tea blends
In which ways can cooking and foraging support having a deeper connection to the land?
In every way. Putting yourself in the process of bringing material on the plate that’s in front of you has a natural consequence of appreciation. The variety of ingredients, conditions and people bringing them forth all have their inherent logic and beauty. No cook is ever done with learning to understand more about organic matter, that is always in some kind of motion.
Foraging is making use of the nutrients that your surrounding ecosystem grows for you. In a sense foraging is an extended form of yoga. Yogic practice is sitting with your breath and body as they are, and foraging is engaging with what our local environment naturally provides for us by literally digesting it.
Picking your own food obviously stimulates something quite primal. Humans get some very rewarding hormones going from making bargains, and that feeling is probably more sustainable when it’s not happening in a shopping mall but in nature. Teaching respect for nature, then, is an essential part of teaching foraging. Everyman’s Law lays down the basics for this. If you want to go even deeper, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass has some very interesting thoughts on foraging, indigenous lands and intersections with colonialism. Interesting debates about the spiritual practice of asking plants for permission to pick them can be heard on Miles Irving’s World Wild Podcast.
What is a favourite wild herb and a recipe that you use it in?
It’s hard to pick favorites, but today, let’s say ground elder. It’s very easy to find. If you pick some, more will grow in its place. It's really nutritious. Its flavour is reminiscent of both parsley and carrot. You could substitute buying parsley with foraging ground elder all summer. It’s always a good idea to marinate some grilled vegetables or local fish boquerones in garlic, ground elder and olive oil, the Mediterranean way.
What do you wish everyone would learn / know about wild herbs?
To learn to recognise a couple, to take those into their daily lives, to learn some more every year and be happily taken by the eternal cycle of engaging with our natural environment, while creating beautiful and interesting meals.
Join Edith for a wild herb course and guided tour in Ullanlinna
— I’m in!
Edith Keto is a cook, writer and yogi. She has previously cooked with wild herb pioneer and chef Sami Tallberg, at stellar Helsinki restaurant Palace, and currently, at wild food restaurant Nokka. Her writing revolves around philosophy and connection to nature - both as a literary scholar and raising awareness of the traditional and health-enhancing uses of plants.
In the ‘Learn to Forage’ course we will discover wild plants that are available to everyone for free, provide exceptional nutrition and impressive flavors. We will learn about some medicinal properties of the plants we discover, and integrating them into our everyday lives: herbal infusions, preserving methods, easy dishes to cook for yourself and your family. We will finish with a traditional food meditation centering around a couple of the wild herbs that we have gathered. The course includes a booklet with some simple recipes and tips to integrate what you have learned into everyday cooking and more.
Foraging is a profound way of connecting with our natural environment, especially in urban environments where many nutritious, delicious and beautiful ‘weeds’ thrive. Welcome to explore the many things the the local nature has to offer!
The Learn to forage course is held at two occations:
Sunday 21.5 or Sunday 4.6 at 12-14:30
