Is Berlusconi right?

Are Finland and England home to some fine traditional cuisines? Despite what Mr. Silvio Berlusconi may say, both countries have dishes that a mother can whip up on a school night and satisfy the hunger of a demanding family. There are also specialities that make an appearance at special times of the year or are held in reserve to dazzle friends over for dinner. What Berlusconi must have experienced was something from the love it or hate it category.

Some foods should expect to have a rocky relationship with the taste buds just from their list of quirky ingredients. Blood in mustamakkara and black pudding, the Scottish haggis is made from sheep's organs, which are then boiled in the animal's stomach, and then there is the English pub snack called pork scratchings, which is deep-fried pigskin served cold - sometimes you can still see the hair.

There are Finnish traditional dishes that are haute cuisine and prove why the European Food Authority should have been here; nakit ja muusi (sausage and mashed potato), hernekeitto (pea soup) and pyttipannu (cubed sausage, onion and potato) are but a few delicious examples. Okay, perhaps these may portray a brighter culinary picture, karjalanpaisti (a stew), savulohi (smoked salmon) or poron filee (reindeer filet). On a visit to Lapland, I ordered a reindeer and pineapple pizza that was served with a single cherry tomato in the dead centre; my veggie friend ruined the experience by suggesting I was snacking on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

To remain unbiased I'll highlight a few curious aspects of the English dining experience. Choose from entertaining names such as Toad In the Hole, Spotted Dick and Roly Poly Pudding, enjoy chocolate-flavoured carrots or go for the gut busting full-English cooked breakfast, starring fried eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, bacon, sausage, baked beans, hash brown, black pudding and toast - and no, we don't eat this every morning.

At Easter, Finns eat a traditional dish called Mämmi, a dish that looks as though a heavy-smoker has coughed it up, but I held my nerve and sampled it. After drowning a tiny portion in cream and sprinkling on a liberal dose of sugar, I was left with a delicious sugary cream, while the remainder tasted like badly made homemade beer. During my wife's first English Christmas, she entered into the gastronomic festivities by trying a mince pie. She was prepared for a treat filled with minced beef but the joy upon discovering dried fruit was heart-warming.

Although the UK sounds like an unhealthy place with fat, grease and about  8 billion spent on chocolate each year, we do consume many boiled vegetables and sometimes order diet coke with a double bacon cheeseburger. Despite what culinary delights our respective country's serve up, some of us will shovel it down faster than an intercity train and some will poke it curiously with a fork.

My guess is that during a visit to Finland, somebody made Berlusconi a dry hard rye bread topped with cheese, lettuce and tomato and his opinion of Finnish cuisine changed forever. As for Britain, well, I can only assume my Dad made him one of his banana and strawberry jam sandwiches.