food

After Jewish Purist's Bagels , a fancy Strawberry Mirror Cake and delicious Milk Chocolate & Caramel Tart a la Eric Kayser , it's time for daring comfort baking. Pip in the City's Marce chose a recipe for Sticky Buns/Cinnamon Rolls from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice . I've been really busy all September, so I didn't have a chance to make these buns/rolls until today, which was a bit nerve-wrecking. What if the dough won't rise/burn in the oven/collapse in the tin? Luckily, they turned out just well. I'm not intimidated of using fresh yeast in the kitchen, and I've made cinnamon rolls for years (remember this ?) Remember, the task of any daring baker is to use a recipe without changes. However, Marce had given us some allowances. I made one portion of dough, and used half of it to make a batch of sticky buns and used the other half for making fondant-glazed cinnamon rolls. As orange extract was allowed in the glazing, I chea...

It's already the 9th installment of WTISIM foodblogging event, also known as Waiter, there is something in my ... My friend Johanna is hosting this round, and has chosen savoury preserves as the theme. She's put forward a rather delicious-looking Italian concoction, Pecorino sott'olio herself. My contribution for this month's WTISIM is a tangy little chutney made of gooseberries. Excellent with roasted chicken and pork - as you can see from the photo below. [ Update 2.10.2007 : You can read Johanna's round-up here ] The original recipe used raisins, which I like in very few and carefully selected dishes. Also, as I wanted to keep the beautiful colour of the gooseberries (remember this oh-so-pretty-in-pink gooseberry sorbet ?), I replaced the turmeric-laden curry powder with whole spices in my chutney. Gooseberry Chutney ( Tikritšatni ) 600 grams red gooseberries, topped & tailed 2 medium sized red onions, finely chopped 1 garlic clove, finely chopped 2 Tbsp ...

I've got quite a few Estonian recipes lined up for you during the next few weeks - so much so that I thought it might be a good idea to post something exotic for a change. Although while I certainly do want you to come here whenever you want to read about and cook something Estonian, I don't want to be typecast as 'that Estonian blogger who only posts about Estonian salted broad beans , nettle soup , beef liver gravy , and desserts made of kama . I can do more than that :) Here's a recipe for a Coconut Chicken Curry adapted from Globetrekker TV I made last weekend. We both enjoyed this mellow and fragrant curry, and will be making it again when we fancy something more exotic. Coconut Chicken Curry, Trinidad style ( Trinidadi kana-kookoskarri ) Serves 4 500 grams chicken breast or thigh fillets (I used the latter) 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped 3 lemongrass stalks, inner parts finely chopped 2 Tbsp rum* 2 Tbsp oil 2 medium onions, finely chopped 1 Tbsp curry powder*...

Did you know that cherry tomatoes can be easily grown in a container on your windowsill? We do. Now :)

Yes, I'm amazed what a difference a spice makes. Of course I knew that dusting some cinnamon on my apple pie or cumin on my carrot mash makes a huge difference. Yet it still took me by surprise when I took the usual ingredients - spinach and feta cheese and a good puff pastry (as I often do for my spanakopita ) - but instead of dried Greek oregano used some freshly grated nutmeg, and got something utterly, totally different. Yes, still a delicious feta and spinach pie, but with a very distinct and different character. I made this just days after the Cheesy Feta & Spinach Pie , and not once did I think that one is too similar to the other.. Go on, try it yourself! Feta, Spinach and Onion Quiche with Nutmeg ( Feta-spinatipirukas muskaadiga ) Serves 8 Adapted from a recipe on the Finnish Pirkka site 300 grams puff pastry* 150 grams spinach, leaves only 200 grams finely chopped onions 2 Tbsp oil 200 grams feta cheese, cubed 200 ml single cream 3 medium eggs a pinch of salt 0.25 t...

The eGullet Society for Culinary Arts and Letters, or eGullet for short, as some of you may know, is a huge online food forum with thousands of members. I've been a member since February 2006, and although my main food-related online presence is certainly here on Nami-nami, I do use eGullet quite frequently. It's a great source of food-related information and inspiration, though the style and format are very different from foodblogging as we know. Every now and then the hosts of the forum ask one of their members to do a week-long foodblog, where an eGulleteer keeps a picture diary about shopping for food, preparing food, and eating food, with various tidbits about life and food in general thrown in. Well, I had a chance to do one of those eG foodblogs last week, which was fun, if a bit exhausting (I hardly had time to spend with this foodblog!) On the first day, one of the readers asked me if I could cook any exotic meat a la caribou and such like. I jokingly replied that we...

Most of you are familiar with quinces ( Cydonia oblonga ), the ancient fruit used to make the Spanish membrillo paste that's wonderful with cheese (for fantastic quince posts see here , here , and again here ). But how many of you know that the flowering quince ( Chaenomeles Lindl ) - related, but by no means the same fruit - is also edible? Not many, I suspect. Known as the Nordic lemon because of their high Vitamin C content, they also contain a lot of pectin as well as citric and malic acid, which makes them excellent for jam-making or canning. Above you can see fruit still attached - and picked - from my mum's very beautiful flowering quince bush. They're popular in Estonia, as flowering quinces are very ornamental - and they yield some useful fruit as well! The seeds - and there's up to 100 per fruit! - of flowering quince should not be eaten as they're high on amygdalin that some people react to. However, as there's twice as much vitamin C in the peel as t...

That's exactly how I saw haggis, neeps & tatties served at Peckhams on Nicholson Street in Edinburgh earlier this month (see photo here ). I dined there with my friend Melinda on my first night in town, and I simply had to try this at home. Not bad, not bad at all :) My sauce is a bit different, however - although unconventional, I want my haggis with a caramelised onion gravy. MacSween of Edinburgh haggis is one food-related thing I miss from Scotland every now and then...

Here is one of my very favourite soups of all time. It's a vegetarian version of the famous Russian-Ukrainian beet soup, borscht. My version is delicious and heartwarming - brilliant for winter. Yet it's light and refreshing enough, so it would also be good during summer. I tend to use sauerkraut during winter and plain white cabbage during summer.  Depending how good your knife-skills are, but it could be on your table in about 40 minutes or even less. Vegetarian Borsch ( Lihata borš ) Serves 4 as a main course 500 gr beets/beetroot 150 gr onions (about 2 medium) 300 gr carrots (about 2 large) 400 gr white cabbage or finely grated mild sauerkraut 2 Tbsp olive oil 1,2 litres vegetable stock (I used Marigold Bouillon ) about 1/3 of a lemon salt coarsely ground black pepper sour cream, to serve finely chopped parsley, to garnish Peel the beets, onions and carrots (put a small piece - about 50 grams - of beetroot aside for later). Cut all vegetables into thick matchsticks, shred t...

Plums and apples seem to the cornerstone of our diet at the moment, as whenever we leave my parents place, our car is ladden with various containers full of autumn's bounty. We're not complaining, of course, as it makes for a happier and more versatile cooking. It's slowly getting darker and cooler here, so on Monday night we bot felt that an apple cake would hit the spot. It was only then that I remembered we had run out of all-purpose flour on the previous day (we bake a lot in the house - plum cakes and cheesy spinach tarts most recently - so it was not surprising), and neither one of us volunteered to pop to the nearest grocery store to replenish the stocks. Luckily, we had some curd cheese in the fridge, and some 'manna' (cream of wheat/semolina farina) in the cupboard that we use for making breakfast porridge occasionally, so I ended up making a real Estonian comfort dish for us. The dish is called kohupiimavorm alias curd cheese souffle, to which I adde...

"Everybody eats. At Culinate, we invite people to reconsider the table: not just what goes on it, but what goes on around it. Food, after all, is the stuff of life." Culinate is an American food site, launched in 2007. Few weeks ago I received an email from Liz Crain, one of Culinate columnists , who wondered if I'd be willing to be interviewed for her column. I knew that some of my virtual blog friends and heros had been interviewed already - Matt , Lara , Joey and Stephen . Joining their ranks would be an utmost honour, so of course I said yes . It took a few emails back and forth between Oregon and Estonia (and Scotland ), and as of today you can read the little interview, Food for the taking: An Estonian blogger forages the forests and the fields , here . And my little blog was also mentioned on the mother of all food sites, Epicurious , this week. Epicurious launched EpiLog earlier this year, where staff contributors share the latest "food news and views fro...

Feta cheese and spinach are a match made in heaven. I'm yet to get tired of this combination, and I hope that neither have you, as I've got two feta & spinach pie recipes in store for you (that's in addition to my Spanakopita á la Pille that I wrote about almost two years ago). They're all very different, so I hope you won't be too bored, and will stick around :) The first recipe is for a cheesy (no, not in that sense!) tart, adapted from a Finnish Apu-magazine, where a recipe for juustoinen pinaattipiiras was published on 20 July 2001. It's rather rich and cheese-laden, so not a pie for those trying to lose a dress size. I found that this tasted even better on the following day, so I've added it to my savoury pies and tarts folder with a note 'best made day before' - quite useful for picnics, that is... A cheesy feta & spinach pie ( Juustune spinati-fetapirukas ) Serves 6-8 Cheesy crust: 100 grams butter 50 grams grated cheese (Cheddar is...

Broad beans, Estonian style. Simple, humble, rustic. All you need is fresh broad beans ( Vicia faba L , still in pods) - in season just now, some large dill sprigs, water and salt. A perfect late summer dish again.. Beans and peas have been two of the staple ingredients in Estonian peasant diet, and considered almost as important as our other staple, rye bread. Whereas rye bread was usually accompaning every meal, then pea and bean dishes were served on their own. Beans were considered especially nutritious, and in their fresh form were cooked and eaten in pods. That's my preferred way of eating fresh broad beans, too. Broad beans, by the way, formed an important part of European diet until the 17th century, when they was pushed aside by the more elegant green beans ( Phaseolus vulgaris L ), newly introduced potatoes and corn. So consider this dish as 'back to your roots' style of eating... For a much more elegant version for eating broad beans, see Haalo's WHB entry . ...