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Here are 10 fish dishes cooked by the Saami in summer:

1) boiled fish (ketech kul`),

2) fish-soup (kul` lim),

3) fried fish (pasht kul`),

4) fish porridge with cloudberries (luem neut),

5) salted fish (sul` kul`),

6) dried fish (vyalka),

7) salted caviar ( kul` mejn),

8) fish-soup with flour and black berries (murjyav),

9) fish cake (kul` kornih),

10) fried entrails (chuel`).

Boiled fish was the most frequent dish on the Saami`s table. This method doesn`t demand any specific preparations and it makes it possible to use not only fish but also the broth in which it was cooked (fish-soup).

Having returned from day fishing, fish is being skinned off - that is cleaned from internal organs and washed for salting. A part of big and the fattest fish (3-4 big whitefish) and the rest of medium size was put in a bucket or a half-bucket cauldron and hung over a hearth. Only salt was added to the fish-soup. While fish was boiled a Saami woman was scraping a flat wooden spit (nipches), then she put whitefish and perch on it and stuck it slopingly into the ground in front of the hearth so that the fish wouldn`t be overcooked. When fish-soup was ready fish was put out with a wooden spoon (kapest`) on a wooden board with edges turned up (kar`) and then the fish-sop was eaten with broth poured in gouged wooden cups (murnahp`). The fish fried on a spit was put on a board and eaten without bread for the second course. The fish taken from a cauldron was cleaned from bones and then mixed with cloudberries gathered during the day and pounded thus making a porridge (luem naut). In the morning before fishing the Saami ate salted fish or cold fresh fish left from supper. The Saami didn`t have a perfect method of salting, that was why even the best lake fish like whitefish, salmon trout and grayling were decomposed and lost its fine taste. Dried fish was more often eaten in autumn as having less weight and being easy to carry: reindeer-breeders took it when they were searching for herds, hunters took it when they spent a lot of time in the wood. Salted caviar of lake fish wasn`t stored: it was eaten on the second-third day after salting for breakfast or lunch.

Fish-soup with flour and black berries was cooked with a purpose of saving bread, and berries in fish dishes substituted vegetables.

Fish cake is the oldest exquisite dish of fishermen, it was cooked together with bread. The Saami ate fish cakes when they set off for long crossings of lakes and tundra, but in cases when means of transport allowed taking heavy and perishable food. Fried or boiled entrails were favorite food of the Saami. While cleaning fish a Saami woman put aside entrails of burbot and whitefish, suet entrails of pike, liver, soft roes and other internal fish organs; the washed plucks were boiled or fried in fat and cooked cracklings were eaten by adults and children.

In winter the main food was venison and salted or dried fish. Poor Saami who had fewer reindeer or even none, ate substitutes of bread and salted fish on their tables in winter meant comparative well-being.

The Saami`s meat dishes were also simply cooked:

1) boiled meat (vynch-ver),

2) meat soup with flour (kor`n` lim),

3) fried meat (pashtnich vynch).

Rare meat dishes include:

1) legs marrow (kehtys ettam),

2) fried liver (pasht vyjvas),

3) tongue (njuhchem).

Legs marrow, a liver and a tongue or at least best pieces of that were eaten by the head of the family or by guests.

The consumption of bread and other products, brought to the Saami by monks and then merchants, was uneven depending on the Saami`s purchase abilities, prices of products and trade activity of merchants. Poor Saami living in west settlements had to eat dried pine bark, mixed with flour, or pine porridge, flavoured with cod-liver oil, instead of bread. The Saami got pine bark using the following method: it was cut down with the help of a bone instrument called "chuet`kem"; then women cut off an inside (white) layer of the bark with the help of the second instrument called "kolom" or "kolym", which looked like a flat bone with sharp edges a little bit larger than a tea spoon. The white mass was hung over a spit, then dried and pounded. Pine "flour" was used in the way mentioned above.

The majority of the Saami used a substitute of tea, gathering black birch scum (tout) and brewing it in a teapot. In summer and autumn periods the Saami preferred berries.

The Saami`s cooking utensils were simple and not numerous in quantity: a cast-iron cauldron (kimne), a copper kettle, a dough-trough, a stone stove for cooking (ket`ks lejp), wooden big and small cups gouged out of excrescence (nahp`), a wooden spoon (kapest`), wooden boards for fish and meat taken out from a cauldron (kar`).

Food was mainly cooked by women, seldom by men.

The Saami bought grocery products from the Kola and Ponoi merchants, except dishes cooked from local products: flour from which they cooked "rezka" - tasteless flat cakes and noodles, as they didn`t have ovens and leaven.

In settlements where there were Russian ovens or something of that kind made of stones the Saami cooked sour bread. Sugar and tea were eaten with great pleasure if they could be afforded. The Saami also bought bagels, vegetable oil, cereals, vodka, etc. Both women and men drank vodka in large quantities. Merchants sold it to the Saami and got much profit from it.