This is a very simple and very tasty rhubarb pie – the creamy filling complements the tartness of rhubarb very nicely, and using melted butter in the crust makes it especially crumbly. If you use thin and youngish rhubarb, you don’t need to peel them first, but that would be wise with older and thicker rhubarbs. I actually prefer to use unpeeled rhubarb, as the pie gets a lovely pink hue then. And the scent of cinnamon and cardamom makes your kitchen smell divine..A creamy rhubarb pie(Kreemjas rabarbripirukas)A recipe adapted from June 2003 issue of PereköökThe crumbly crust:250 ml of plain flour0.5 tsp baking powder2 Tbsp brown sugar100 g butterSieve the flour and baking powder, mix with sugar and melted butter. Press the mixture into Ø 26 cm loose-bottomed cake tin and put into...
I hope you're not tired of my rhubarb posts just yet? I know you've had juicy rhubarb muffins, rhubarb & ginger jam and a creamy rhubarb pie already, but as there is still quite a lot of rhubarb left - no wonder, if you look at these pictures - then I've got a few more rhubarb recipes up my sleeve. Here's a crumble to you. You can add grated ginger, finely chopped rosemary, any other nuts (hazelnuts, pistachios, maybe even grated coconuts), a dash of orange juice to the crumble - you name it. Sometimes I add some grated nutmeg to the filling. And over the years I've realised that there's no need to crumble the crumble topping either. You just mix the oats, sugar and almonds, sprinkle on rhubarb and top with butter slices.This crumble is especially delicious with softly whipped cream, but...
We are still enjoying the rhubarb bounty. Here's a recipe for really moist rhubarb muffins that I made twice last week. Firstly, they were served at a 'girly' housewarming/birthday party last Thursday, attended by all my aunties (that's three maternal and one paternal), my parents (my dad was unable to attend the 'real' birthday party on a previous weekend), as well as some of my first cousins (not all 11 though:). Instead of birthday cake, I made lots of these rhubarb muffins that day, served as a pyramid on a cake stand. Very pretty!! But in the midst of all the buzz and excitement, we forgot to take a picture. Not that it mattered much, as it gave me a good excuse to make these very same muffins again on Sunday.These muffins, let me tell you, are the moistest muffins you'll make....
Same recipe - mocca cake with toasted almonds - just this time down-sized to feed 7 hungry adults and 2 ravenous kids. Oh, I did mix some milk curd cream into the filling, so it'd be healthier, sorry,...
It's customary in Estonia to treat your colleagues for something special on your birthday. In return you get lots of beautiful flowers, so it's actually a pretty fair deal :-) My birthday is on the same day as the birthday of one of my dear senior colleagues, who's well known at the Institute for her excellent culinary skills. I remember having met her about a decade ago, fresh out of university (me, that is), and falling in love with her eggplant-filled spicy pastries that were served at one of the informal meetings at the Institute (I was only loosely attached to the Institute back then). In any case, Klara and I share birthdays, our love for cooking, and even our specific research focus (national identities and multiculturalism). It made only sense to combine our skills and efforts for...
Pretty, isn't it? It's the traditional Greek Easter bread tsoureki, using the little known spices mastic and mehlepe (you can see them both here) and usually garnished with red eggs. I've made tsoureki before (twice, actually), to a great acclaim from a number of Greeks, and it has become a regular feature at my Easter table.The recipe I've used on the previous occasions was an adapted from Paul Hollywood's book 100 Great Breads, and it (the adapted version, that is) worked just well. But as a kind friend had sent me a copy of Theodore Kyriakou's widely acclaimed book, The Real Greek at Home: Dishes from the Heart of the Greek Kitchen, then I decided to use another recipe for tsoureki instead. After all, Kyriakou is the Chef of the The Real Greek restaurant in London and hailed as the...
Andrew of SpittoonExtra is hosting this month's edition of Waiter there is something in my ..., and the theme is bread. In ideal circumstances, I would have wanted to make a proper Estonian leavened rye bread. However, as I only just returned from London on the wee hours of Monday morning, and was busy celebrating my birthday yesterday, I didn't have time to start the rye bread. Yet as I was still keen to make something local, I decided to adapt an old recipe for a simple local loaf bread, karask.Karask is a type of bread in Estonia and Finland that doesn't use yeast nor require leavening; instead, baking powder is used to raise the bread. Usually karask is made with barley flour (mine uses plain wheat flour), and a popular local version uses curd cheese to flavour and moisten the bread...
I'm back from London. Arriving from truly summer-like London (sunny, 20 Celsius) to much colder and almost wintry Tallinn (rainy, ca 4 Celsius) last night was a bit of a shock, but as K. had baked a batch of canelés* to welcome me back home, I quickly warmed to the idea again :-)I'll be back with a new post tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with a molten chocolate cake/chocolate fondant pudding that was much better than the earlier attempt:Same recipe, just shorter baking time and darker chocolate (Lindt 82%). Yum...* See here, or here or...
Last night I got a bad craving for chocolate. Although K. kindly offered to whip up and bake some chocolate souffle for me, I declined, as I remembered the number of dirty dishes in the kitchen after his last attempt. Instead I went to my del.icio.us bookmarks and printed out Food Migration's recipe for molten chocolate cake. I gave the recipe to K., together with Nigella's recipe for molten chocolate babycakes and asked him to choose between the two. He went for the first one, as the idea of using 350 grams of chocolate for 6 small cakes (as requested by Nigella's recipe) seemed a bit excessive on a weekday night.Only then did we realise that we don't have any bitter chocolate left in the house, so we used Manjari 64% Madagascar Plantation ("Rich, dark chocolate with a raspberry finish")...
The third round of Waiter, there is something in my... is hosted by my dear friend Johanna, and the theme is Easter basket. Johanna wants us to share"with us and the wider food blogging community anything that yells "Easter!" at you, be it that honey-glazed ham or herb-crusted spring lamb that is traditionally made in your neck of the woods, a gorgeous chocolate torte that you've tucked into every year since you can remember, your granny's famous hot cross buns or a brioche loaf sprinkled with rock sugar..."So, what will be in our Easter basket here in Tallinn, Estonia? Of course there will be the Estonian Easter pudding pashka, a pressed milk curd dessert with raisins, which I prefer to make with dried cranberries (or 'craisins') instead, as these make the pashka look like it's studded...
I guess I shouldn't really post a recipe for apple muffins this time of the year. After all, there's no more apples from my mum's garden left, and I cannot bring myself to buy those imported expensive, tasteless, waxy-shiny apples in the supermarket. However, as my uncle brought us a bag full of organic apples last week, you'll get yet another delicious recipe for an apple cake and a recipe for simple apple muffins this week. Hope you don't mind..In terms of texture and taste, these muffins remind me of my Canadian apple cake. The recipe below yields 12 European-sized muffins. (I don't really know if there's such a thing as a 'European sized muffin pan', but whenever I use an American recipe that states that it'll make 6 muffins, I actually get 12 muffins with my muffin pan. If you've got...
I've never met Rosmariini (= Rosemary = she) & Pippurimylly (= Pepper Mill = he), the couple behind the Finnish-language Pastanjauhantaa blog, but I think we'd like each other, if we did. We've got a pretty similar taste in food, you see, and keep recreating recipes from one another's blogs. Pippurimylly was inspired by my posts for the slowly braised Dutch beef dish, draadjesvlees (see here) ; the small feta and spinach omelettes (see here); and most recently my savoury blue cheese and beetroot muffins (see here). And vice versa - it works the other way around, too. I've knicked many recipe ideas from the neighbouring Finns (for example, roasted asparagus with Parmesan and numerous other weekday dinners that I haven't blogged about) . But that's what good neighbours are for, isn't...
My 85-year old paternal grandmother refuses to accept Christmas gifts. Or if she does, you can be pretty sure to find the given item - be it a book, a lovely shawl or a pair of woollen socks - in your next birthday or Christmas parcel, which is both cute and embarrassing. So years ago we decided to give her presents she cannot pass on - a newspaper subscription, a bottle of medicinal brandy or something similar. This year I gave her a gift-wrapped bag of home-made pistachio and lemon shortbread to devour with her daily cup of tea infusion.I think she liked them:)Pistachio and lemon shortbread(Muredad pistaatsia-sidruniküpsised)Recipe adapted from Epicurious (Bon Appétit, May 2004)Yields 24 pieces350 ml plain flour125 ml sugar125 ml semolina/cream of wheat100 grams butter2 tsp grated...
Burns Supper 2007 left me not only with lots of leftover leeks that I had bought for the cock a leekie soup and ended up using in a savoury leek souffle. I also had some neeps & tatties left over (that's boiled and mashed turnips and potatoes for those of you who don't speak Scots; neeps and tatties are the traditional accompaniments for haggis:) The best way to use up those vegetable mashes, obviously, is to make karelian pasties or karelian pies. Yep, you've seen these Finnish goodies on this blog before - here, served with eggy butter. Karelian pasties are small rye-crusted pastries (usually)with rice porridge or potato mash filling, although carrot, carrot & potato, turnip & potato, carrot & rice, barley porridge, etc fillings are available, too. I usually simply buy them from a...
For the first round of Waiter, there is something in my ... ! I made Anthony Bourdain's boeuf bourgoingnon. For the second round of this new foodblogging event - in February focusing on pies and hosted by CookSister's Jeanne - I made something from the Russian cuisine: kulebyaka. Kulebyaka should have been on my 2007 list of foodie resolutions, as I had been thinking about making it for months, but somehow it slipped my mind when I wrote the post. But better late than never, and now was my chance to make that festive Russian pie. Kulebyaka is a high and oblong closed pie with different types of fillings. When looking for the perfect recipe, I came across kulebyakas stuffed with fish, mushrooms, meat, cabbage, even apples. I realised that it is the shape of the pie (enclosed, high, long)...
Here’s how to get hold of that very special bottle of wine that you see at your friends’ place.A fortnight ago K. and I were invited to have dinner with some good old friends of his, Peter & Kristel. We had a lovely meal, drank some good wine (and pomegranate juice) and watched holiday pictures from South Africa, where the couple had spent the New Year’s Eve. It was my first visit to their place, so I was shown around the house (lots of lovely art, a captivating fish tank). Before we continued with biltong and fig compote, we stood for a while next to the couple’s wine collection.It was then that K. spotted a precious bottle of Burgundy: Clos de la Roche, Patriarche Père et Fils (Beaune, 1992). K. is into wine, big time, so he came up with a cunning idea.So it happened that last...
For some time now already, I have been longingly glancing at pictures and recipes of macaroons at various foodblogs. The equisite creations at The Traveler's Lunchbox, Kuidaore and Anne's Food have left me drooling in front of my computer screen. Whispering names like Pierre Hermé and Ladurée in the same sentece as macaroons did nothing to convince me that I could muster these delicate sweets myself. I was convinced I am doomed to wait for my maiden trip to Paris to get a taste of my first ever macaroon.Until yesterday. I had - finally - bought a hand held electric mixer cum mini food processor. I had some leftover egg whites in my fridge. I had picked up a packet of green pistachios last weekend. And Nigella's How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking had once...
Valentine's Day hasn't really caught off in Estonia, unless you count the piles of red boxes of chocolate in supermarkets. I'm with Molly here - I prefer romance in small quantities, on a daily basis, if possible :) However, I'm also a chocoholic, so any excuse for eating chocolate is good for me. The imminent arrival of Valentine's day was a good excuse to bake a chocolate cake last weekend. I chose a recipe for chocolate brownies from an Australian booklet, Sweet & Simple: Chocolate (Australian Women's Weekly). I had to bake mine in a round cake tin, as I hadn't got a square one at the time (does that mean I cannot call these 'brownies' any more??). And as I wanted my coconut brownies to be really coconutty, I doubled the amount of coconut. A good idea, if I may say so myself - the...
The bright green Japanese matcha tea powder has been intriguing me for a while now. The slightly bitter taste had been haunting me since eating the Mont Fuji cake at Mariage Frères last May. The vivid green colour had captivated my visual tastebuds even earlier, when browsing Bea's and Keiko's blogs. I've now bookmarked numerous recipes using matcha. Last November I made dark chocolate & matcha truffles, but I've decided that more - many more - dishes incorporating matcha should be making an appearance in my kitchen. I'm thinking of making matcha panna cotta soon, as well as matcha ice cream. But to start things off, I made a simple green loaf during the weekend.My green matcha loaf(Rohelise tee keeks)Serves 84 medium eggs150 ml sugar200 ml plain flour1 Tbsp matcha tea powder*a pinch of...
My dear boyfriend K. has stolen my recipe. Really. For umpteen years I used to make sweet cardamom scented and cinnamon filled rolls based on a recipe in a small treasured book I've had for ages: Cakes, Cookies and Bread from Sweden. The recipe never failed to produce satisfied smiles and happy tummies, be it at Christmas or during various birthday parties. Depending on the occasion, I either made one large round 'pidusai' (for birthdays) or individual rolls (for Christmas). To make 'pidusai', you roll the dough, fill with something yummy, roll up, cut into chunks and place the rolls into a round baking tin, where they bake into one large round bread that can be easily teared into separate rolls later. I believe it's known as 'Boston' elsewhere?This was my cinnamon rolls/boston recipe.Few...
