I cooked another dinner for the Estonian gang last week here in Edinburgh. Introducing them to the local cuisine, we feasted upon brinjal masala, chicken korma, gobi matar, strawberry shrikhard, and masala chai . Indian food is extremely popular in Scotland, and here's my version of a home-cooked Indian feast. All cooked from scratch, not a ready made curry paste or sauce on sight, although I did use a shop bought curry powder for the korma. And it was all on the table within an hour. Not bad, I think, for my first full Indian feast..Brinjal Masala or deep fried aubergines/eggplants.(Praetud pommuviilud)The recipe for deep fried aubergines is from the October 2000 issue of Waitrose Food Illustrated, and I modified it only slightly. Instead of 2 large aubergines I used 6 baby aubergines...
Kedgeree is an Anglo-Indian dish that was a popular breakfast item during the Victorian era. It's a rice dish with smoked fish and soft boiled eggs, seasoned with curry and herbs. I had seen various kedgeree recipes during my years in Edinburgh, yet I hadn't had a chance to try, yet alone make it myself. The opportunity finally knocked at my door during Easter, as I had all those colourful Easter eggs needing to be used up.I cannot really tell you the origin of this recipe any more. I wasn't sure I will be able to find smoked haddock here, so I decided to go with salmon - the post popular and common smoked fish in Estonia. I searched the web and my bookshelf and printed out several recipes for a smoked salmon kedgeree. Eventually, I did find smoked haddock after all, and after some...
Remember my New Year's Resolutions? Well, one of the resolutions was to make rullepølse or the Danish cooked rolled pork belly. And I'm happy to tell you that as of Easter Sunday this can be ticked off, too. You can see a glimpse of the rullepølse below, and I'll blog about it soon. Meanwhile, let me tell you a little about what I served it with. As I used a rather fatty piece of pork to make my first ever rullepølse, I needed something sharp to cut through the grease :-)My solution? A sharp salad of dandelion leaves.On Saturday we did the annual egg-swapping/seeing-the-relatives trip. We paid a visit to K's mum, my Granny No 1 and my Granny No 2, followed by a joyous lunch at my parents' house together with my sister, nephews and my favourite auntie. At each place, we 1) ate eggs; 2)...
This recipe started off as a copy of Alanna's perfect hard-boiled ruby eggs*. However, as I couldn't figure out how to get hold of beetroot juice, I decided to use finely grated boiled beetroot instead (yep, vacuum-packed ready-made stuff). And just before gently pressing the eggs into the beetroot mush, I decided to add a bit of caraway seeds and a clove of garlic as well. And a little dill. And just a tiny pinch of salt...The resulting ruby eggs are utterly pretty, especially with this well-travelled Easter chick (whom you all surely remember from this photo taken in Edinburgh a year ago) keeping an eye on them. And the beet-caraway-garlic combination yields just enough flavour to the eggs to make them special and interesting.Beetroot-dyed Easter Eggs(Peedimunad)8-10 freshly boiled...
I’ve been cooking a lot with carrots recently. To be more precise, I’ve been eating loads of carrots recently – most of them end up on my table as juicy carrot sticks for nibbling. But since discovering that carrots are yummy with orange and rosemary, and that they pair well with ginger, feta and mustard seeds, I’m keen to try even more new ways with them.Here is a tasty recipe for a Moroccan carrot salad with cumin and garlic, Jazar Bil Kamoun Wal Toum, from Claudia Roden’s beautiful last book, Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon. I only bought the book a fortnight ago, and it's full of really temtping and tasty sounding recipes. This was the first recipe I tried from the book, cooked in a flash for a light lunch on Sunday.As I used smallish young organic carrots...
To be really honest, this probably does not really pass for an Estonian national dish. It’s probably more typical of Russian kitchens. But buckwheat is quite a common ingredient in Estonia, as are mushrooms. And as it’s unlikely that any of you have come across something like this earlier (am I right?), and as it is introduced by an Estonian blogger, let's call it an Estonian dish:)
I had some...
You're all familiar with rice, and many of you have used pearl barley, cous cous, bulghur wheat and quinoa in your kitchen. But what about buckwheat? Buckwheat flour makes an appearance in Japanese soba noodles, in French galettes de sarrasin, and in Russian blini pancakes. Yet I suspect that buckwheat groats are less common even amongst well-informed food bloggers. Yes, there is Clotilde with her recipe for Buckwheat Salad with Honey Spice Cake, and Gerda with a recipe for exotic Buckwheat Curry. But other than that, Elise's fabulous recipe search across foodblogs only yields recipes using buckwheat flour.Yet buckwheat groats definitely deserve a place at your kitchen table, at least occasionally. Buckwheat is naturally gluten-free, the groats have a lovely nutty flavour and tender...
If someone has slightly 'aromatic' feet, then we call these 'juustud' or cheese(s) in Estonian (as in 'take your cheese away from me!'). Imagine my delight then when I spotted cheesy feet biscuits on page 253 in Nigella’s Feast: Food That Celebrates Life. As I like cheese – and cheese biscuits - a lot, I spent few frustrating hours in the web looking for such feet-shaped cookie cutters. It wasn't easy – even the US websites were either out of stock or had only odd-looking and odd-shaped feet cutters available. I eventually managed to find the ones I liked from The Professional Cookware Company and in return for £6.95 plus £4.95 P&P (ouch!) I was sent a delightful ‘Feet Cookie Cutters 3 Piece Set’:Last night I tried and tested my new cheesy feet cookie cutters, using a recipe...
My dad celebrated his birthday on Saturday, and my mum had asked us to bring a cake (K. made a rather wonderful tiramisu to feed 16 guests), and a salad. Any self-respecting Estonian birthday party has a large bowl of kartulisalat or potato salad (known as Russian salad in many places, which is a version of the famous Salad Olivier), so I didn't bother to do that, as my mum would make one anyway. Instead I offered to make something more exotic - a mayonnaise and sour cream based salad of rice and curried chicken. The offer was kindly accepted (and the salad quickly eaten, I'm happy to report).In order to make that salad, however, I needed half of a curry-roasted chicken. That's why we had roasted chicken with curry rub for dinner on Friday night. Easy-peasy..Roasted chicken with curry...
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...
Cabbage rolls are a winter-time staple in Estonian kitchens. Usually stuffed with a mixture of rice and mince, these are simmered in broth either on the stove or in the hot oven, and served with boiled potatoes and sour cream. That's indeed what I did - but inspired by an inspirational fellow foodblogger, I used a red cabbage for dramatic colour effect this time. They tasted just like the real thing, just looked blue:)Estonian Cabbage Rolls with Rice and MinceServes 4a head of cabbage, about 700-900 gramswater and saltFilling:75 grams of rice (uncooked weight)300 grams minced pork or beef or a mixture of bothsaltfreshly ground black pepper1 (red) onion, finely chopped1 garlic clove, finely chopped1 eggfresh parsley and/or dill, choppedabout 300 ml boiling water or stock25 grams butterTo...
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...
As I mentioned in my previous post, I had another Estonian friend visiting and I treated Margit, her colleague and another MacEstonian to a Scottish meal. The Estonian visitors had heard rumours of haggis, the Scottish national dish of lamb bits and other things, so I decided to make some exactly a week ago. My choice of haggis is MacSween of Edinburgh, and I bought both a vegetarian and traditional version. These were served with neeps (alias mashed turnip, seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg) and tatties (potato mash, seasoned with salt, pepper, milk and butter).We drank my current favourite whisky and Whisky Mac cocktails. For the latter you mix 1.5 oz Scotch whisky and 1 oz green ginger wine. I suspect my ginger wine (not easy to find!) wasn't the green one, as the cocktail...
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)...
When I first wrote about a sandwich cake on this blog, it was an elaborate multi-layered affair with fancy toppings. This one is so much simpler, but no less prettier or festive. I made it few weeks ago for K's mother's birthday (yep, the same party where K. contributed a lovely cinnamon boston). I can still think of ways of developing this recipe, but it is also good enough as it is, so I'm sharing it with you now and here. It's loosely adapted from this Finnish recipe from Pirkka - the base is directly from them, whereas the topping is all mine:)A great addition to a buffet table or coffee table - it can be eaten with a small dessert fork.A simple salmon sandwich cake(Lõhetort)Serves 16Rye bread base:400 grams full-grain rye bread75 grams melted butterFilling:350 grams cottage...
I realised last week that 'thick leeks' in Scotland must be much smaller than 'thick leeks' in Estonia. Otherwise I wouldn't have ended up with so many leeks after making the cock-a-leekie soup for Burns Supper. Sue Lawrence's recipe prescribed 6 'long, thick leeks', which I dutifully bought. However, after halving and rinsing and slicing just three of these monster leeks, I realised I already had more than enough. As I didn't use all the leeks I had bought for the soup course, then I had lots of leftover leeks after the party. Suddenly I remembered a recipe for a leek souffle on the Danish Arla site, which I had bookmarked a while ago. I adapted a little, resulting in a savoury souffle made of a simple bechamel sauce and sliced leeks - easy and different.A savoury leek souffleServes 625...
I'm sitting in my office at work with a large mug of hot tea to keep me warm. It is -17 Celsius outside (1 Fahreinheit, I believe) and I'm trying not to think that I'm supposed to step outside in half an hour to meet a friend and check out a new creperie that has opened its doors near our university. It's freezing cold. But it's also incredibly beautiful - everything is covered with a thick, pure white snow blanket, and the sun is shining amazingly brightly - if briefly. Quite appropriately for such a chilly time of the year then, the Nordic food magazines provide recipes for filling and heart-warming casserole dishes and stews. The recipe for a creamy salmon and potato gratin is adapted from the Finnish Ruokamaailma. We had it on Monday night, together with some salad leaves and cucumber...
At the dinner party almost a fortnight ago, the smoked salmon and dill tartlets were followed by a plate of creamy red risotto. The inspiration for this dish came from Anne's beet risotto with garlic, fava beans and goat cheese. However, as I had realised during a recent beetroot and cheese experiment, I knew I wanted to use a blue cheese in my beetroot risotto. Furthermore, the dish had to be vegetarian. Some recipe twisting and tweaking later, I served the following dish to my guests. .Beetroot & blue cheese risotto(Peedi- ja sinihallitusjuusturisoto)Serves 62 Tbsp olive oil1 Tbsp butter4 medium red onions, peeled, halved and finely chopped2 garlic cloves, finely chopped3 large raw beets (about 600 grams), peeled and cut into small cubes350 grams risoto rice (I used carnaoli)2 litres...
Some ten days ago I had invited a friend of some friends and a young American colleague over for dinner. I wanted the dinner to be slightly Nordic in honour of our overseas guest, who was also a fish-eating vegetarian. The main dish was a beetroot and blue cheese risotto (beetroot qualifying as the 'Nordic' element there:), and we started the meal with small smoked salmon and dill tartlets. Dill is one of the most-loved and most-used herbs in Estonia, and as the country is surrounded by water on three sides, then fish is a suitably suitable main ingredient, too.A note on smoked salmon. Here in Estonia, you can buy either hot-smoked salmon or cold-smoked salmon. When I moved to Scotland, I found it confusing when recipes just asked for 'smoked salmon' and didn't specify which type of...
