food

Ooops. Not only was I late with this month's Daring Bakers submission , I am also late with my WTISIM entry. Jeanne has - naughtily - chosen Topless Tarts as the theme. I made something similar to my toffee apple tart with cranberries from January. Remember the sea-buckthorn sorbet and sea-buckthorn jelly ? Well, we have got lots of frozen sea-buckthorn berries in the freezer (courtesy of my grandma), so I decided to try the same toffee apple tart recipe, but replacing cranberries with sea-buckthorn berries. Furthermore, I was keen to try out the dried sea-buckthorn powder* I bought recently.. The resulting tart was scrumptious - sweet toffee apples with tart sea-buckthorn berries nicely complementing each other, plus the berries giving some extra colour to the cake. Try it! Sea-buckthorn and Apple Tart (topless, of course) ( Õunapirukas astelpajumarjade ja astelpajujahuga ) Serves 8 Crust: 100 g butter 150 g plain/all-purpose flour 1 Tbsp sugar 2 Tbsp cold water Filling: 4-5 ...

I am late with this month's Daring Baker project, but that's not because I haven't been daring. I've spent quite a lot of time being daring in a kitchen last weekend, which wasn't mine (I'll tell you more one day), and I simply couldn't muster up enough energy to bake tender potato bread before the deadline. Today I stayed home, relaxed, and finally completed the challenge. This month, Tanna of the My Kitchen in Half Cups blog decided we should have something baked and savoury , for a change. Since joining the ranks of Daring Bakers earlier this year I've made Jewish Purist's Bagels , a fancy Strawberry Mirror Cake , a delicious Milk Chocolate & Caramel Tart a la Eric Kayser , very comforting Sticky Buns & Cinnamon Buns , and elegant Bostini Cream Pies . This month we baked bread. And not any bread, but tender potato bread. The recipe is from Home Baking: Sweet and Savory Traditions from Around the World , a book by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi ...

This is a story of a price-winning and very popular recipe. Lovescool 's Kelli came up with a recipe for Green Tea Shortcakes , which won a Golden Scoop Award earlier this year. Then Fanny made them in France. Edith in Singapore. And then Mae and Inne in England. And Maddy in the sunny Los Angeles, and Lisa in sunny Sydney. Valentina on far-away Mauritius enjoyed them. Veronica made them. Carlos in Spain made them. Maribel liked them, and Mandy liked them. And now they've been made in Estonia by yours truly. I changed the recipe ever so slightly, using fine caster sugar instead of confectioner's sugar (I simply didn't feel like powdering my own at the moment, especially as the sugar I had was very fine indeed). I also listened to Mae's advice and reduced the temperature a little to make sure my cookies wouldn't brown too quickly. Here's my version - check out Kelli's post for the beautiful original recipe. These are really lovely with a cup o...

Roasted sliced beetroot, crumbled Finnish Aura blue cheese, (a drizzle of good olive oil, perhaps) and some thyme. Mmmmm... ( Peedi-sinihallitusjuustu salat )

Last Sunday K. and I headed to a small village called Pedaspea in the beautiful nature reserve Lahemaa in Northern Estonia, to spend a day with his friends cooking, eating, walking, playing Scrabble and generally catching up. We were supposed to bring along the main course, and thus we spent hours last week trying to decide what to make. Eventually we packed along our trusty old 5-quart cast-iron cooking pot (Dutch oven?), my sharp cook's knife, and picked up some nice beef from our local butcher and some potatoes, a bottle of beer and a pot of thyme from the grocery store. After an hour's drive we arrived in the beautiful location on the seaside, regretting that the weather wasn't good enough for a quick swim, as the house is about 20 metres from the sea:) We then unpacked our groceries, sliced and fried and layered and seasoned the meat and veg, carefully placed our cast iron pot into the oven full of hot coals, and ventured out for an hour to explore the surroundings. W...

My mum sends us a basket full of delicious home-grown non-sprayed apples every week, and I'm therefore constantly looking for new and delicious apple cake, apple pie and apple dessert recipes. Over the years I've baked many, and hence I've got plenty of excellent apple cake and pie recipes in my 'regular' apple repertoir - Quark Cake with Grated Apples , Toffee Apple Cake with Cranberries , a simple Apple Tray Cake , not to mention my famous (Non-)Canadian Apple Cake that I've been baking for two decades. But recently another baked apple dessert found a way to this repertoire and we made it actually twice last week alone. I found the recipe from DanSukker (a Danish sugar producer) website, and only tweaked it a little. It takes almost no time whatsoever to put together, and the dessert needs just under half an hour in the oven, so it's a real quickie. And the fact that we made it twice in a row should indicate that it's also a delicious one :) Maarja S...

One of the first posts on Nami-nami back in July 2005 was about feet-shaped cheesy cookies , sprinkled with caraway , poppy or sesame seeds . The idea was derived from gorgeous Nigella 's beautiful book Feast: Food That Celebrates Life . Back then I nicked Nigella's idea, traced down feet-shaped cookie cutters, but used one of my favourite cheese cookie recipes instead of Nigella's recipe. I thought it's time to use my feet-shaped cookie cutters again, and finally test Nigella's original cheesy feet, sorry, cheese cookie recipe. I must admit I prefer my old and trusty cheese cookie recipe , especially the caraway-sprinkled version. But Nigella's recipe yields lovely, crumbly cheese cookies that would be a great nibble, whether feet-shaped or not. Cheesy Feet ( Nigella Lawsoni juustuküpsised ) Yields: 20 cookies 100 g Cheddar cheese, grated 25 g soft butter (salted is fine) 50 g plain/all-purpose flour 0.25 tsp baking powder Preheat the oven to gas mark 6/200C. ...

With Halloween just a fortnight behind us, there may still be an odd wedge of pumpkin in your fridge. I made a pumpkin risotto recently, and had had a lone half of a orange-fleshed pumpkin waiting in the fridge ever since then. I thought of re-making Johanna's roasted pumpkin and blue cheese quiche again. Or the simple pumpkin soup with vegetable stock . But eventually I decided to make something very unusual (to my international readers), yet typically Estonian. Milk soups - either with various grains (rice, semolina, pearl barley), pasta (macaroni or vermichelli noodles), or even vegetables (just like this beautiful summer soup by Deinin) are all common in Estonia. Granted, with the general increase of living standards and international influences, these humble soups do not enjoy the popularity they once did, but they're still very much part of the culinary heritage. This milk soup with pumpkin and semolina can be eaten for breakfast, as a dessert or just as a light meal....

I needed to attend a meeting last Friday in Budapest, so I flew over on Thursday morning to do some sightseeing. I stayed in a very conveniently located Starlight Suiten Hotel on Merleq utca , unpacked and headed to town. I had been to Budapest before, but that was dozen years earlier, so it was nice to wander the streets again - it's a rather grand city. And just like Vienna, Budapest is famed for its cafe culture, so I headed to one of the heavy-weights, Café Gerbeaud in Inner Pest. The place is indeed opulent, as Rick Rogers states in his Kaffeehaus - all golden wall decorations, heavy curtains and fancy chandeliers. There were four large salons, some smoking, some non-smoking, each packed with locals and tourists alike (Gerbeaud can sit up to 330 guests in its salons, and another 300 on its open-air terraces, so we're talking about a huge café here!). As it was 4pm by that time, I decided to have both coffee and my dinner, so I ordered a home-made goose liver terrine with...

Last night we celebrated K's birthday by inviting my parents and his mum and auntie over for a dinner. We started with this bright and nourishing beetroot soup , followed with a filling boeuf bourgoignon to please my dad (he did enjoy the beetroot & ginger cake he was served last time he visited, but he was still disappointed that there was no 'proper food' last time). We then entertained our dear guests with Piña Colada Espuma (second helpings for all the ladies, and if my dad hadn't been the designated driver, he would have probably helped himself to the seconds, too), and finished with a cup of coffee and a fancy peach souffle made by the birthday boy himself. A very enjoyable evening indeed.. I wrote about a beetroot soup only recently ( Vegetarian Borscht , September 2007), but this is totally different, and just as nice. The recipe is straight off the Finnish Ruokala.tv site - Punajuuri-vuohenjuustokeitto * - the only difference is that I weighed the p...

Heidi started it all in September. I made a mental note of the recipe. Then Joe praised them in early November. I printed out the recipe. And when Anne made them last week, I finally took out that glass of honey from the cupboard. Excellent chewy-soft-coffee-honey-caramels. I sprinkled some extra Maldon sea salt flakes on top, but otherwise it's Heidi's recipe. Thank you, Heidi (and Joe and Anne!) Honey-Espresso Caramels ( Pehmed mee-kohvi karamellid ) 250 ml (1 cup) heavy cream (35-40% fat) 250 ml (1 cup) honey 1 Tbsp ground espresso coffee (I used Lavazza) 1 tsp Maldon sea salt, plus extra to sprinkle Mix cream, coffee and salt in a small heavy-bottomed saucepan. Warm until almost boiling, then add the honey, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat a little, and boil until you can do a firm ball test (a drop of the caramel in cold water should be a fairly firm ball). Keep an eye on the mixture, as you may need to stir occasionally to 'calm it'. Use a candy thermomet...

In one of my regular lunch joints, Bestseller Cafe in Viru Keskus (Tallinn), they sometimes serve soup with large chunks of fennel seed bread. Although I'm in somewhat uneasy terms with things aniseedy and liquoricey, I do like that spicy bread a lot. And therefore I couldn't help but try the fennel seed bread recipe that Clivia posted last month. Granted, I changed the recipe - originally from a Swedish baking guru Anna Bergenström - a little (omitting sunflower seeds, making two loaves instead of one, adding salt later in the process, etc), but it's still thanks to Clivia that I've discovered another keeper-recipe. Tack, Kristina !!! Fennel Seeds ( Foeniculum vulgare Mill., apteegitilliseemned ehk ristköömned ) are a great spice to use in baking, bread, compotes, pickles and liqueurs, but can also be used to season fish dishes, salads and sauces. If you're interested in fennel seeds' medicinal properties, then you should remember that the seeds are also go...

[Pille is off to Budapest for a few days, so K. is using the opportunity to guest-blog again..] Few years ago I took some French language courses in the city of Bordeaux, and opted for accommodation with a local family. I ended up staying with an excellent old-school French hosts: a retired couple Marie-Lucie and her husband Jean-Pierre, who had accommodated over hundred language students over the years. Just before my arrival, the family had accommodated a student from Saudi Arabia, for whom it was the first trip outside his home country. Coming from deeply religious surroundings he couldn’t eat pork or drink wine. Seeing students from all over the world, always joyful Marie-Lucie was used to different cultures. But she also adored cooking and eating traditional and delicious French food, including some Clairet wine and hearty pork dishes... Sitting together at a dinner table was a sacred tradition for Marie-Lucie and Jean-Pierre. You can imagine how relieved they were to welcome a hu...

We don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in Estonia, obviously, but as so many foodbloggers are currently posting their favourite pumpkin recipes, I decided to join the bandwagon as well. So here's a recipe for a beautifully coloured pumpkin risotto - a handy way to use up that pound of pumpkin flesh that pumpkin-carvers across the world would have these days. As for the leftover risotto , I've nicked Shaun's recipe for beautiful beetroot arancini and made pumpkin arancini instead. Pumpkin Risotto ( Kõrvitsarisoto ) Based on Angeelika Kang's recipe for pumpkin risotto in the October 2007 issue of Oma Maitse Serves 4 50 g butter 2 finely chopped medium onions 2 finely chopped garlic cloves 300 g Carnaoli risotto rice 400 g finely cubed pumpkin flesh 150 ml dry white wine 1 litre hot vegetable stock a generous handful of finely chopped flat-leaf parsley 100 g grated Parmesan cheese salt coarsely ground black pepper In a small saucepan, bring the vegetable stock to a ...

Two years ago in October everyone's favourite Parisian-American foodblogger, David Lebovitz , hosted a one-off Prune Blogging Thursday that resulted in a number of recipes using the humble wrinkled prune , aka dried plum. I submitted a recipe for healthy prune cake , which tasted much better than it looked. However, this time I've got a dried plum dessert recipe that both tastes good and looks good . The recipe is adapted from an Estonian cookbook " Kohupiima- ja kodujuusturaamat " (100 Rooga) and yields 6 small portions. I've garnished mine with sweet pomegranate seeds , but you can use lavender or lemon balm or simply dust the dessert with icing sugar. If you cannot find curd cheese (a popular ingredient here in Estonia), then ricotta or even cottage cheese (press through the sieve) would probably work as well. This would make a nice Christmas dessert - just in case you're already imagining the Christmas menu in your head :) Dried Plum and Curd Cheese Desse...

I know, I know - it's not even a month since I wrote about sea-buckthorn berries and yet I'm weekend-herb-blogging about this bright orange berry again. But you see - we recently got two large bags of sea buckthorn berries from my grandma's garden, and we need to find ways to use all those berries. One of the readers had recommended I try a sea buckthorn sorbet, and as we had really enjoyed the taste and colour of our orange 'Fanta' sorbet ( NB! I've updated the post with interesting information about the amount of orange juice in Estonian and Greek Fanta Orange! ), we decided to make a sorbet again. This one is just as delicious as the orange sorbet, with an attractive deep orange-yellow colour. A perfect palate-cleanser between courses, or an excellent dessert. But to make it worthy for a Weekend Herb Blogging submission, I give you a good tip for cleaning sea-buckthorn berries . You see, sea-buckthorn branches are prickly shrubs, and the berries are quite s...

I imagine most of my readers come to Nami-nami for uncomplex comfort food recipes. This is how we eat - most of the cooking taking place at our house is what could be described 'rustic', 'down to earth', 'simple', 'quick'. I'd like to think this is visible on the blog as well - comforting cakes and muffins , earthy soups , quick-to-assemble pies and quiches and so on. However, we have recently acquired one kitchen gadget that almost falls into the field of 'molecular gastronomy' - iSi Gourmet Whip . A product by Swiss isi Group , the cream whipper has been popularised by Ferran Adrià who uses this to make his (in)famous espumas. There is a whole section written by Ferran Adrià and dedicated to foams and espumas in The Cook's Book (a book I recently wrote about here ), and that got me curious. There are some supercool and stylish bloggers who have been writing about espumas on their blogs - Hungry in Hogtown made an Americano cocktail f...