SQUEAKY CHEESE & SAUNAS IN THE MIDWEST’S “FINNISH TRIANGLE”

I’m in the middle of the area known locally as “the Finnish Triangle,” sampling a highly unusual yogurt whose active culture arrived here 100-some years ago on a sun-dried rag.

Every surface in Miriam Yliniemi’s bright kitchen is covered with a bowl or platter wearing a crinkled beret of aluminum foil. The bluish February sunshine shoots low through the large plate glass window, jumping from foil top to foil top and lighting up her kitchen like a disco.

Even though I’d asked Miriam to just make the karjalan piiraka, traditional rye hand pies, she’s chosen to override me and instead make a feast that charts a day in the life of a Minnesota Finn, from morning to midnight snack. There’s a pile of flour-dusted ruis, Finnish rye bread; joulutorttu, flaky cream-rich star-shaped pastries with prune jam centers; a towering whipped cream cake topped with a mosaic of fresh fruit; and in the center of her stove, a large disk of “squeaky cheese,” fresh curds broiled to a speckled brown, still warm and weeping whey at the edges.

Before I can wedge off my winter boots, she peels a soft plastic lid from a skyblue Tupperware container and hands me the traditional Finnish breakfast: a cup of homemade yogurt dusted with a flurry of cinnamon sugar. “This is villi. Our yogurt. It sets at room temperature.”

In snowy northern Minnesota, Miriam Yliniemi perfects her karjalan piiraka, ruffled rye pies with a rice pudding filling.

The has the consistency of custard but falls from my spoon in a long slithering cord. Stretchy like mastic, it has a disarmingly glutinous quality—a muscularity to it that suggests it might just keep on moving on its own. But that tension-hold breaks in the mouth, where it dissolves in a sweet puddle, its tartness soft like background noise.