Copycat: Johanna's wasabi and caviar potatoes

Last June, i.e. almost a year ago, I attended a blog birthday bash in London thrown by Johanna and Jeanne. We were treated to a line-up of wonderful fingerfood, and one of these was mini-potatoes topped with caviar & wasabi-cream. Johanna used small new season's potatoes, but as I'm now living much further up North, we cannot buy any new potatoes just yet. So instead I used something sold as 'Parisian potatoes' here - small, perfect potato balls.

We had some of our respective families over for a light late brunch on Saturday afternoon, and these were on offer. Went down a treat, may I say.

Johanna's wasabi and caviar potatoes (well, almost)
(Kartuliampsud wasabi ja kalamarjaga)



small potatoes
thick sour cream
wasabi paste
caviar or fish roe*
frehs chives, chopped

Boil the potatoes until almost tender, drain thoroughly and cool.
Mix sour cream and wasabi paste (about 0.5 tsp of wasabi to 2 Tbsp sour cream).
When potatoes are cooled, cut of a thin slice from the bottom (so they'd stand upright on your plate) and from the top (so that the topping would stay on the potato).
Top with a small dollop of wasabi cream and garnish with 'caviar'.
Serve on a bed of chopped chives.

* I actually used a vegetarian 'caviar', called meremari ('sea roe') in Estonian. It's made from nori/sea lettuce extract, salt and some other stuff, and makes a pretty decent-looking and so much cheaper garnish...

PS Thanks, YumSugar, for featuring this post at YumSugar and TasteSpotting. Much appreciated!

My first ever ... kedgeree

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 further inspiration from Jamie's Dinners: The Essential Family Cookbook (aitäh, Merilin, mulluse sünnipäevakingi eest!) I came up with a following recipe. Whereas kedgeree is usually made with pre-cooked rice, a bit like egg-fried rice, then I cooked it from scratch to be served straight away.

I enjoyed it, and I hope you'll do as well. It was a light and unusual brunch dish, and the pretty yellow colour made it especially suitable for a sunny spring day.. One day I will give the smoked salmon kedgeree a try, however, too..

My kedgeree
(Suitsutursakedgeree)
Serves 6-8



250 grams basmati rice
400 ml water or vegetable stock
200 grams hot smoked haddock, flaked (cleaned weight)
25 grams butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 Tbsp mild Indian curry powder
half a lemon
salt and black pepper
fresh coriander or parsley, chopped
2-3 boiled eggs, peeled and halved lengthwise

Rinse the rice in a running cold water, drain.
Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat. Add the onion, garlic and curry powder and fry gently for about 5 minutes.
Add the rice and the boiling water/stock (all at once). Simmer gently, covered, for 10 minutes, until rice is 'al dente'.
Add the flaked fish and lemon juice, heat through.
Season, sprinkle with chopped herbs.
Garnish with thinly sliced lemon and top with halved boiled eggs.

OTHER BLOGGERS BLOGGING ABOUT KEDGEREE:
Sam and her Kedgeree (including a link to some further background information on this dish)
Mae and her beautiful Smoked Haddock Kedgeree
Freya & Paul and their Kedgeree a la Lindsay Bareham
Sher and her Salmon Kedgeree a la Nigella Lawson
Liz and her Smoked almon Kedgeree with Shrimps

Orange Oil Madeleines

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 the small lunch-time gathering at the Institute then on Wednesday.

When negotianting the details, Klara told me that she'd be bringing her traditional onion pie (which was mouthwateringly delicious!), and I could bring something sweet to accompany a cup of coffee. I decided to make a batch of Chocolate Cherry Muffins, and something else that can be eaten without a cake fork. As I had - finally - acquired a silicone madeleine form in London, I wanted to make these dainty French pastries. They have been popping on many of my favourite foodblogs (just see my del.icio.us tags), and my first plan was to make matcha madeleines. But as I had bought a bottle of decadent-sounding orange oil in London, then K. suggested I'd do something with orange oil instead of matcha.

Oh - and my chocolate cherry muffins and orange oil madeleines were just as popular and equally quickly consumed as Klara's traditional onion pie. We're quite a team :-)

Orange Oil Madeleines
(Madeleines-koogikesed apelsiniõliga)
Adapted from here and here.
Makes ca 100 mini madeleines (a 5 ml)



4 medium eggs
150 grams sugar
a pinch of salt
150 grams plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp orange oil (I used Boyajian Pure Orange Oil)
50 ml butter, melted

Pre-heat the oven to 190 Celsius. Brush the pans with some melted butter.
Beat together the eggs, sugar and salt in an electric mixer on medium-high speed, until you've got a thick pale foam. Add the Orange Oil.
Mix flour and baking powder, sift twice and gently mix into the eggs.
Fold in the melted butter until well combined.
Using a small teaspoon, spoon the batter into the greased madeleine pans (NB! there is no need to re-grease the madeleine pan between each batch later), so they'd be about 3/4 full.
Place in the pre-heated oven and bake for about 7 minutes, until the madeleines have raised and their edges turn lightly golden brown.
Remove the madeleines from the pan as soon as they come out of the oven (flip the silicone form over a parchment paper and if necessary, push them gently out). Cool.
Madeleines are best on the day they're baked, but you can store them in an airtight container for a day.

The Greek Easter Bread Tsoureki, 2007

Pretty, isn't it? It's the traditional Greek Easter bread tsoureki, using the little known spices mastic and mechlebe/mahlepi (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 test another recipe for tsoureki instead this year. After all, Kyriakou is the Chef of the The Real Greek restaurant in London and hailed as the Greek chef and expert on the Hellenic cuisine in the UK. So his recipe should definitely please, no?

Well, it failed to do that. I should have got suspicious about the amount of spices. Whereas Hollywood used two pieces of mastic and a pinch of mahlepi per half a kilogram of flour, then Kyriakou used 3 pieces of mastic (that's fine), but a whopping 1.5 tsp of mahlepi - that's quite a difference from a pinch! This meant that these spices (plus the addition of star anise infusion) didn't just give a hint of musky spiciness to the bread, but utterly and totally hijacked the flavour, especially mahlepi. And whereas I love the subtle hint of mastic and mahlepi, then too much is simply too much. Also, Kyriakou's version asked for the inclusion of six whole eggs in the pastry, which may have explained the toughness of the resulting bread. Ok, I may have slightly over-kneaded the pastry, which explains why the bread looks a bit stretched on the photo above, but believe me, this was the least of the problems. It was just, blah, as some foodbloggers would say..

The moral of the story? Well, when something doesn't need fixing, then leave it alone. As simple as that.. Next year I'll try my old and trusted (that is, tested) recipe again :-)

The read egg on the photo was provided by the 5-year old Gretel. See here for more details.

Waiter, there's something in my ... bread: seenekarask or a mushroom loaf

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 or baking soda is used to raise the bread (so it is a bit like the Irish soda bread then). 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've also got recipes using leftover potato mash to give bulk to the bread). I made mine with mushrooms - one of my favourite ingredients, as most of my loyal readers would know by now (just see here), and added a generous handful of fresh herbs..

The texture of the bread is quite heavy, so if you're into light and fluffy breads, then this karask is not for you. However, it will be perfect for those of you who like mushrooms (and there are many fungiphiles or mushroom lovers out there, believe me!) It's at its best when served warm, straight out of the oven, sliced thickly and buttered with a slightly salted butter. Yet it is also delicious cold on the following day, and would make a lovely picnic dish, as it cuts into neat cubes or slices when cold.

Enjoy!

Seenekarask or Estonian quick mushroom bread
Serves 6



250 fresh mushrooms (I used a mixture of brown and white champignon mushrooms), quartered
1 large onion (ca 100 grams), finely chopped
1 Tbsp oil

150 grams plain flour
60 grams porridge oats
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
200 ml milk
100 grams butter, melted
5 grams flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

30 grams cheese, grated

Heat the oil in a heavy frying pan, add mushrooms and onions and fry on a moderate heat for about 5 minutes, until mushrooms have browned a little and onions have began to soften. Remove from the heat and cool.
In a large mixing bowl, mix the flour, oats, baking powder, salt and herbs. Stir in the milk and melted butter.
Pour into a buttered (and/or lined) loat tin and sprinkle grated cheese on top.
Bake at 200 C for 35-40 minutes, until the loaf is cooked (due to high mushroom content, the loaf remains moist).
Slice and serve.
As I said, the loaf is at its best when still warm, but remains delicious and flavoursome until the next day.

Here are links to my previous Waiter there is something in my ... entries:
March 2007 (EASTER BASKET, hosted by Johanna): a selection of various Easter delights.
February 2007 (PIE, hosted by Jeanne): a great Russian puff pastry and fish pie, Salmon Kulebyaka.
January 2007 (STEW, hosted by Andrew): my version (in collaboration with Anthony Bourdain:) of the French classic Boeuf Bourguignon.

UPDATE 26.4.2007: Read Andrew's round-up of sweet and savoury bread recipes