food

Last night our friends Liina, Hille, Anu, Margit, Liis & Kristjan & Matilda, Erika & Mait & Siim Oskar came over to send off 2007 in style, with Peter & Kristel joining us after midnight. We watched some must-see programmes on the TV (Kreisiraadio and the President's New Year's Eve Speech), played Scrabble and the Estonian equivalent of Trivial Pursuit, competed against each other in a quiz (consisting of a literary round, a culinary round and a general knowledge round), watched the fireworks (twice, actually, as about half of Tallinn's population seems to live in a different time zone:), chatted and enjoyed ourselves. And of course, we ate lots of good food. Here's a list of dishes and drinks we enjoyed last night with appropriate English and Estonian language links (so I'd remember next year what to serve and what not to serve:) Happy New Year, everyone!!! Head uut aastat!!! Some eye-catching salmon roe and onion mouthfuls ( sibulapaadid kalam...

K. playing around with gingerbread. See another example of his food styling here . The cookie cutter (do you recognise the Moomin character?) is a gift from Dagmar . I baked a lot of cookies this Christmas - gingerbread cookies , matcha madeleines , sweet mayonnaise cookies , coconut macaroons , and these lovely pale cardamom cookies - to give away as gifts. The recipe is from a Finnish site, and they were called white gingebread cookies, if I remember correctly. The naughty bit is that they don't look like gingerbread cookies - which are supposed to be, of course, dark brown (see the colour contrast on the top photo?) - but they contain a generous doze of cardamom, which gives them a very Christmassy feel. Sneaky, eh? Oh, if you don't have ground cardamom, then seeds from about 20 pods give you about 1 tsp of ground spice at the end. And be careful not to overbake them - you want white gingerbread after all! White Gingerbread aka Cardamom Cookies ( Valged piparkoogid e. kard...

We've just finished doing all the dishes after yet another Christmas party. For the second year already, K. and I have invited our respective families over for a festive Christmas meal. And instead of the traditional black pudding and sauerkraut (we've already had three traditional Christmas meals this week), we served something different this year: roast goose (sourcing and roasting courtesy of restaurant Stenhus , Tallinn *) and braised red cabbage, alongside with some lovely Estonian potatoes , creamy goose giblet gravy , and pickled pumpkin salad . (And The recipe is from the Christmas 1998 issue of BBC Good Food magazine, but I've fiddled with it a little. You cannot really see the prunes on the photo below, but they were an excellent addition to the braised cabbage, adding a much-needed sweetness. Hope you've all had a lovely holiday so far. Braised Red Cabbage with Prunes ( Hautatud punane kapsas ploomidega ) Serves 10 2 Tbsp olive oil 2 red onions, halved ...

Häid jõule from me and K!!! Piparkoogid actually translate as pepper cakes, but as spicy Christmas cookies tend to go under the name 'Gingerbread' across the world, I'm sticking to this English name instead. They're a must-have in Estonia. Various newspaper articles and TV programmes compile their "best gingerbread dough in 2007" lists. Mums and dads across the country are rolling and cutting and baking gingerbread cookies with their delighted offsprings. Coffee shops replace the traditional chocolate-with-your-cuppa with piparkook-with-your-cuppa. And those of us with extra time in our hands even make the gingerbread cookie dough. Previously on Nami-nami, I've shown you pictures of stained-glass gingerbread and shared a recipe for gingerbread cookies with almonds . This year I used a different recipe, and liked the result a lot, so you'll get another gingebread recipe from me. Whereas the previous one used honey and almonds, this time I used Dansu...

In every household there comes a time when one has 100 grams of finely shredded sauerkraut left (like after making some boozy sauerkraut ) and needs to find a good home for that. Granted, one can just nibble the cabbage shreds (an excellent source of vitamin C). Or one can bake a chocolate cake. Yes, you understood me correctly.. When I finally received David's book a few months ago, his version of Maida Heatter's chocolate sauerkraut cake immediately caught my eye. Sauerkraut, you see, is very common in Estonia - there are quite a few sauerkraut recipes on my blog to prove that. However, I had never encountered a cake recipe using sauerkraut before. So when I did end up with some extra sauerkraut and extra time earlier this week (K. had popped over to Finland for the night), I decided to give David's recipe a go. I finely chopped up the cabbage , creamed and mixed and poured the batter (which looks - as you can see on this photo - like your 'normal' chocolat...

Sauerkraut is another must-have ingredient on our Christmas table - a lovely side-dish to all those fatty chunks of roast pork and crackling black sausages. Here's an adaptation of an earlier recipe of mine - more beer, fewer ingredients, less hassle. Still as wonderful, however, if not better - the porter beer (I use A Le Coq Christmas Porter) and brown sugar give such a lovely, slightly caramelised flavour to the cabbage. Traditional wisdom says that you need something fatty and greasy to give a proper flavour to sauerkraut (and many of our traditional dishes indeed combine sauerkraut with fatty pork cuts). I constantly - and very successfully - ignore that wisdom. I often replace fresh cabbage with sauerkraut in my meatless and virtually fat-free borscht , to no loss of flavour. And although this beer-braised sauerkraut contains just a hint of butter, my lighter and more modern version has received praises on my Christmas table for the last few years. I doubt anyone has missed ...

Vinaigrette is the oil-and-vinegar dressing so popular across the world for livening up salad leaves, right? Wrong, at least as far as the vast Russia is concerned. And Estonia, for that matter. Most deli counters in supermarkets here would sell something called ' vinegrett ' (that's vinaigrette in the local lingua), and it's not the dressing they're selling, but this bright Russian vegetable salad. My version is possibly a bit beetier (khm? is that a word?) than others, but I simply couldn't resist the colour. Note the Russian vinaigrette salad is lactose free/gluten free/vegetarian/vegan, so should suite a wide array of diets- in addition of being really bright and beautiful to look at. I served it on crisp dark rye bread triangles, but usually it is eaten just as a side salad. Russian Vinaigrette Salad ( Köögiviljavinegrett ) Serves 10 as a side dish 300 g boiled potatoes 200 g boiled beets 100 g boiled carrots 300 g sauerkraut 200 g pickled or salted cucumbe...

I've been making lots of Christmas tiramisu recently (post coming soon), and therefore end up with lots of eggwhites. I've already made meringues , but one can only eat so many airy-crispy egg white cookies. Here's another way to use up those egg whites - Danish coconut macaroons. I must admit that I don't really know what makes these so Danish - it's just I learnt to like these while exchange student in Denmark back in 1992, they're very popular among the Danes (especially during the festive season), and this particular recipe I've been using for years is from the Danish Karolines Køkken site. Note that the bases of these coconut cookies can be dipped into melted dark chocolate - I've never bothered, however. They're exquisite the way they are.. Kokosmakroner - Danish Coconut Macaroons ( Kookosmakroonid ) Yields about 4 dozens 50 g butter, cubed 4 egg whites 250 g caster sugar 250 g unsweetened desiccated coconut 1 tsp vanilla extract or seeds fro...

During Christmas all self-respecting Estonians feast on black pudding , roasted pork , sauerkraut and roasted potatoes . These are accompanied by lingonberry jam and pickled clove-scented pumpkin . At the end of the feast we nibble on piparkoogid (that's Estonian gingerbread cookies) and caramelised almonds and sip copious amounts of hõõgvein (mulled wine/glühwein/glögg). And then we're off to do some cross-country skiing in the midst of our beautiful pine forests to burn off all those calories. Well, some of us :) I must admit this was the first time I pickled my own pumpkin - usually we have my mum's or grandmother's pumpkin on the Christmas table. I'm not even particularly keen on pickled pumpkin per se , but couple of yellow chunks alongside another portion of black pudding is kind of semi-required. My university friend Piret dropped by the other day and brought me a small pumpkin from her parents' country home. When trying to think what to do with this...

Somebody somewhere commented that my blog is very nice, but a bit baking-heavy. Well, I cannot help it. I consider myself to be a much better baker than a cook. And with Christmas around the corner, I'll be baking and baking and baking. According to the traditions, one must have seven different types of cakes and cookies on the Christmas table, so I must obey - and keep up a certain reputation I've acquired among my family and friends:) But just to show I can cook as well, I'm going to post a non-baking recipe today and tomorrow. Tonight I start off with a very easy supper recipe for Sesame and Lemon Chicken . I discovered the recipe from a tiny cookbook by Tami Lehman-Wilzig & Miriam Blum, called " The Melting Pot: A Quick and Easy Blend of Israeli Cuisine " - a gift my friend Hille brought me back from her trip to Israel few years ago. I've made this dish couple of times, and can really recommend it. Again, I love the easiness of this dish, the subtle l...

I've just read over at Wellfed Network that Nami-nami is one of the five finalists in the RURAL category of the 2007 Food Blog Awards . How exciting and what an honour! I must admit that I was a wee bit baffled at first, as I consider myself a 100% city girl . But then I guess my frequent mushroom forageing trips (for saffron milkcaps , yellow morels and others), my proud and fruitful forest berry picking missions ( lingonberries , bog bilberries , wild strawberries , cranberries , cloudberries - all regulars in our kitchen in one form or another) and general exploratory-culinary use of wild plants (making meadowsweet cordial , enjoying nettle soup , experimenting with ground elder pie , dressing up dandelion leaves and adding chopped wild garlic leaves to salads, drinking freshly collected maple sap and sweetening my tea with either dandelion 'honey' made of dandelion blossoms or flowering quince extract ), not to forget my exciting encounter with these chicks ...

Two birthday parties, two concerts (Joe Cocker on Thursday and Jäääär & Bonzo on Sunday), our regular parental weekend visits - in addition to my job at the university and internship in a restaurant - mean that I've done almost no cooking at home during the last week. However, I did make these delicious and exceptionally easy cheese crisps/cookies one day. I used Eesti juust aka 'Estonian cheese' - a cheese similar to the Danish Havarti cheese which is available pretty much everywhere in the world, I believe. But I imagine most semi-hard cheese would work. Easy Cheese Crisps/Cheese Cookies ( Imelihtsad juustuküpsised ) cheese, coarsely grated caraway seeds, optional Take small heaps of grated cheese and place them on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Leave about 5 cm/2 inches between cookies, as they spread during baking. Sprinkle some caraway seeds on each 'crisp', if you wish. I really love the taste of caraway seeds and find the flavour mingles w...

Rosemary, you see, doesn't just complement hearty lamb dishes and fruity carrot and orange salads and tender potato focaccia . It's a versatile herb that can also be added to desserts, like this sweet rosemary loaf cake by the original domestic goddess. The recipe is from Nigella's book How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking . I've played with the amount of flour - we do not use self-raising flour here in Estonia, so I've had to add baking powder to the recipe. We really enjoyed the cake, even if the idea of rosemary in sweet baking did sound curious in the beginning. But be not afraid - as Nigella herself says, ' there is something muskily aromatic about [rosemary] against the sweet vanilla egginess of the cake '. Exactly. Nigella suggests you eat this with cold stewed apples. We spooned some softly whipped cream over sliced cake instead. Nigella Lawson's Rosemary Loaf Cake ( Nigella Lawsoni rosmariinikeeks ) Serves 10 25...

Great minds really think alike. You see, four weeks ago I made these lovely cottage cheese muffins for breakfast. Ideally, of course, I would have wanted to blog about these muffins earlier, but then I was in Budapest , spent a day on the seaside , took part in the Daring Bakers and WTISIM blog events, plus I've been spending time trying to learn how to cook from the real masters. Somehow the whole of November came and passed without blogging about these muffins.. Although I do follow Heidi's blog , it was only after making my cottage cheese muffins that I came across the recipe for Sun-dried Tomato Cottage Cheese Muffins over at Heidi's blog. Last night I decided that today is the day for my cottage cheese muffin post. Imagine my delight then when I spotted Kalyn's version of Heidi's muffins first thing this morning: Cottage Cheese and Egg Breakfast Muffins with Ham and Cheddar . You see what I'm telling about great minds thinking alike?? My version is simp...