This is a common problem. The challenging part is the combination of excellent and Finnish, not that Finnish food would not be excellent, what even Berlusconi admitted, but it is not THAT excellent.
There is a trivial solution to this type of a problem: make two dishes, one excellent and one Finnish. The solution is technically wrong because what is asked is one dish, but nobody cares if the excellent is really tasty.
I know only one American food that is really tasty. It is sweet potatoes in brandy. This recipe is quite simple. Buy 5 or so on big sweet potatoes (bataatti), cook them about 30-40 min until they are almost ready, i.e. a fork goes easily. They peel just like beet roots, cut with a knife and slip the peel to the side with the knife. Butter an oven casserole, cut the sweet potatoes to about 1 cm thick slices and pile them to the casserole. Mix ½ dl of brown sugar, ½ teaspoon of salt, ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and spread this over the sweet potatoes. Break 100-50 g of butter into small pieces and spread them over the potatoes and finally sprinkle 1 dl of brandy over everything. Bake in 225 Celsius for 30 min, or until ready. (I learned this cook/bake/fry until ready form recipes apparently made by women, why indeed should one not make it until ready?)
So, that is excellently tasty.
Now the Finnish part, a very traditional Christmas food: carrot casserole, porkkanalaatikko. It is better when made with bread crumps instead of rice. Cook 1 kg of carrots in salted water (1 ts of salt). When soft pour out water. Some cook them unpeeled and peel later, I peel them before cooking. Smash them with a mixer stick. Add 3 dl of cold milk and 1 dl of bread crumps. Add 1 teaspoon of nutmeg, 1.5 food spoon of sugar or xylitol and 2 eggs. Mix well. Pour into a buttered casserole. Spread bread crumps and small pieces of butter (like 25 g) on top and bake until ready. (It is like 30 min in 225 Celcius, but try).
I tried from the corner, it was ready. There remains a small unsolved problem: how to cover up that the cook tried the food.
