Have You Met Pounti and Kalakukko?

I was intrigued when I discovered this recipe in the January 1975 issue of Gourmet.  I wondered if it, by chance, had anything to do with the Montreal dish, poutine.  It doesn't.  The popular Canadian dish is of fairly recent vintage (I never once saw it when I was in school in Montreal in the sixties), while the Auvergnat dish goes back many centuries.  The name, apparently, comes from an Occitan word, pountare, which means to grind.

This Gourmet recipe is, it turns out, a fancy version of what is basically a terrine, or meatloaf, made of leftovers.  Of all the recipes I found, most do not use yeast (although I did find one that did).  The beet greens are odd too; most recipes call for some kind of  chard.  I'm planning to make this using ground pork and chard.  As for the prunes - which are essential - modern pitted prunes are so soft you don't need to bother to soak them.

If you're interested, I found a couple of recipes online that might be helpful.  The first is from a local cook.  The other is from the wonderful blog, chocolateandzucchini.

And here, from the same old issue of Gourmet, is another intriguing recipe: a Finish classic called Kalakukko. It's name alone is reason to love it.