food

Lavash crackers are such an easy snack to make - all you need is a thin lavash bread and some toppings. Grated cheese is a popular choice, but various "sprinklers" work as well. I used a mix of seeds - and as you can see from the photo, also with tiny pieces of sun-dried tomatoes. I've stopped using the latter, as they burn easily and don't stick have as easily. Lavash crackers ( Lavašikrõpsud ) Serves a small crowd thin lavash mayonnaise sea salt flakes white sesame seeds nigella seeds paprika powder Spread a thin layer of mayonnaise on the lavash, sprinkle with seeds, salt flakes and paprika powder. Using your kitchen scissors, cut the lavash into bite-sized pieces. Place on a large baking sheet and bake in a pre-heated 200 C/400 F oven until the lavash pieces are crisp and golden on edges. Keep an eye on the crackers, as they can burn easily!

Food courts. And supermarkets. Is it odd that these were my top two touristing highlights in Manila?JeepneyAdmittedly I'd wanted to ride on a jeepney, but with our hotel within walking distance of Greenhills Shopping Centre in San Juan, there was no need for a jeepney.SecurityI'd been pre-warned about the presence of armed security at shopping centres in Manila. At every public entrance, security

Soy marinated chickenFried chicken is my weakness.Is there anything more magical than crunching through a layer of golden batter and sinking your teeth into sweet and juicy chicken?Complimentary cabbage saladAn impromptu dinner is no excuse to contend with the tried and tested. I could barely type 'yes' fast enough when fried chicken was mentioned in the lazy tic-tac of group emails.We push open

Ham and cheese crossiantMan cannot live by bread alone, they say, but maybe they haven't yet been to Luxe. Bright, airy and ever popular, Luxe Bakery Cafe is not quite when you expect when you step through the doors of this former five bedroom cottage. Co-owners Jonathan Harvey, Simon Cancio and Tony Leibowitz gutted the building to create this buzzy cafe packed with loaves of fresh sourdough

Time for another beetroot recipe, don't you think? Here's a nifty way to make your everyday meatloaf slightly more interesting, colourful and flavourful - by adding some grated cooked beetroot. The resulting "beetloaf" doesn't just have an amazing colour, but it's also lovely and moist. I like to serve this with a cold tartar-style sauce, and some mashed potatoes. Meatloaf with beets ( Peedi-hakklihavorm ) Serves six to eight 500 g mince (I used a mixture of 70% beef and 30% pork) 400 g cooked beetroot, grated 2 finely chopped onions 100 ml (6-7 Tbsp) dried breadcrumbs 1 large egg some freshly grated nutmeg salt and black pepper Combine all ingredients in a bowl, mixing until you've got a uniform mince mixture. Take a large loaf pan and brush it with melted butter or oil. Transfer the mince mixture into the loaf tin, smooth the top. Bake in a pre-heated 200 C / 400 F oven until it's cooked through and lovely golden on top.

Forget about sightseeing - the only thing I want photograph when I travel is food.A trip to Manila for a wedding offered limited free time and we ended up spending much of it shopping. Even then, I found myself continually gravitating toward the sights and smells of the food court.Kusina ni GraciaFood courts. What's not to love?We ended up shopping at the SM Mall of Asia, the fourth largest

Good food should always be shared.This is the philosophy behind the group of friends I've been so lucky to have been a part of, over the years. We came up with the name Stomachs Eleven, for this is the focus of all our gatherings - an emphasis on good food which we share with each, rotating from one kitchen to the next as we each take turns to host a dinner.There is little doubt over whose house

Let there be pig.It was my birthday last week and I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate than with a whole porchetta.I'd spied this dish on my last visit to Signorelli Gastronomia and had vowed to return. The pig, I swore, would be mine someday.I can't think of a better way to celebrate a birthday than with dear friends and good food.Seared tuna with orangeWe started with an amuse bouche

Can you believe it's only five weeks til Christmas? Argh. Where did the year go?The key to maintaining your sanity during the mad countdown to Christmas? A cup of tea. And a cupcake. Yes, this week's Freebie Friday is a box of treats from Sparkle Cupcakery!THE PRIZE:Three lucky readers will win one half-dozen box of Christmas cupcakes containing:chocolate and peppermint cupcakes with crushed

Latvians , our southern neighbours, celebrate the 92nd anniversary of an independent Latvian Republic today. I thought it's a great opportunity to blog about one of the best-know Latvian dishes (at least here in Estonia) - a pork stroganoff that gets its name from historical Courland region . While boeuf stroganoff is a dark beef stew, then Kurzeme stroganoff is pale (colour-wise, not taste-wise) and just as delicious, if not as sophisticated. Excellent autumn and winter dish that's best served with fried or mashed potatoes. Kurzeme stroganoff ( Kurzeme strooganov ) Serves 4 to 5 400-500 g pork, cut into this strips (stir-fry pieces are excellent) 1 large onion, chopped 50 g smoked bacon, cut into small pieces 1 pickled cucumber 1 Tbsp plain flour a cup or a-cup-and-a-half of hot beef stock 100 g sour cream or creme fraiche salt and black pepper fresh parsley, chopped (optional) On a hot pan, fry the bacon until golden, then add the onion and pork and fry until the meat cha...

I'm back!Those of you following me on Twitter or Facebook will know that I was in the Philippines for the past week for a wedding.Recycling bins at Singapore Changi airportIt was a whirlwind trip of six days, and two of those days were chewed up by travelling. We flew to Manila via Singapore, a brief layover preventing us from checking out the giant slides at Changi Airport.The giant slide at

Join the queue.It's part of the ritual of eating at Chat Thai - joining the constant huddle of hungry people spilling out the doorway and onto the footpath, a torn strip of paper clutched tightly in one hand.Watching the chefs work in the front kitchen is like a pre-dinner theatre show - a ladle of coconut soup here, a sizzle of skewers there, and the dull thud of a pestle on mortar as a som tum

Here's a post that I've been mulling over for ages. I received the review copy of Trina Hahnemann's latest cookbook, The Scandinavian Cook Book – A Year in the Nordic Cuisine , early last summer (I'm talking 2009 here, folks!), and loved the book a lot. The choice of recipes was inspiring and the photography by Lars Ranek was utterly delicious! I've tried several of the recipes, but somehow never got around to writing up a review post. It's about time, as I really do think the book is worth buying if you're into Nordic/Scandinavian food. But first, a little detour. Living in Estonia, we think we're rather different from our two southern Baltic neighbours, Latvians and Lithuanians. We tend to look more up north for inspiration and identification, you see. But when you look from a distance - say, the USA - there are many more similarities between Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians (yes, also in culinary sense) that we often give credit to. I guess it...

I'll be posting some Estonian recipes during this week, and there's a good reason for that. I got an email from a reader on the other side of the world ( Down Under , actually) today, who is organising a surprise party to an Estonian friend this weekend. She'll be using various Estonian recipes I've posted here on Nami-Nami over the last five years, but I've promised to give her some more food tips and ideas, so she can choose. Here's a smoked fish and rye bread appetizer that I made couple of months ago. While it is not exclusively Estonian (any Finnish or Swedish foodblogger could claim it to be 'theirs', I imagine), it certainly tasted very Estonian to me :) I used smoked herring, but smoked mackerel would work as well. Smoked herring canapés ( Suitsuheeringasuupisted ) makes about 12 canapés 6 slices dark rye bread (seeded is fine) butter, for spreading 3-4 salad potatoes, boiled and peeled 2 smoked herring fillets 100 g thick sour cream (30%) fres...

It's like watching live theatre.The modest eat-in area at Single Origin Cafe is full when we stop by for lunch, and we are motioned to wait on the row of stools in the alley across from the cafe. We sit there patiently with menus, watching the bustle of locals drinking coffee, eating lunch and soaking up the sun - it almost seems a shame when we're summoned over with a friendly wave when a table

I made a large batch of the quince paste, Dulce de Membrillo , last week. I used the same same old recipe that I've used previously and really liked the result. Rather conveniently, one local speciality store had a 9-month old Manchego cheese on offer last week, so we got to sample plenty of Membrillo the way you're supposed to - a slice of salty and crumbly Manchego cheese with a slice of sweet and sticky Membrillo paste (aka Manchego con Membrillo ). Highly recommended. Eestikeelne küdooniamarmelaadi retsept on siin . Küdooniad ehk aivad on müügil suurematel turgudel (nt Tallinna Keskturg).

There is only one dish you need to order at Tan Viet: crispy chicken.At 11.45am on a Sunday, the queue outside this Cabramatta favourite is already forming. By the time 12.15pm rolls around, hungry diners have formed a line that would rival any yum cha queue.Today Richard and I are eating our way around this vibrant suburb with neighbourhood local, Phuoc. The dining room has the same energy of

(This recipe was originally posted on January 30, 2007. I've updated the recipe considerably; the photo above is from October 2010). I first served this kind of risotto at a dinner party in January 2007, right after the smoked salmon and dill tartlets . The inspiration for this dish back then came from Anne's beet risotto with garlic, fava beans and goat cheese and Angelika's beetroot risotto with orange and Gorgonzola (blog no longer available). As I had realised during a beetroot and cheese experiment , I knew I wanted to use a blue cheese in my beetroot risotto instead of goat's cheese. Furthermore, I was looking for a vegetarian risotto, so adding crispy bacon or other meaty garnish was out of the questions. I also wanted the recipe to have a slightly Nordic twist, however defined, so I ended up using a fabulous Finnish blue cheese, Aura. As far as I can recall, the beetroot and blue cheese risotto was a hit with my guests back in 1997, and it has appeared on our...

Signature stew of diced rabbit with cucumber $28You're eating what?!There's a cheeky smile in my voice when I tell a work colleague I'm off to have Spicy Panda for dinner. It's not literal of course - just the name of the restaurant, but its quirky name means it's easily remembered, a novelty when it comes to the usual roll call of Chinese restaurant names.Jelly fish with cucumber in garlic sauce

You won't eat a hot dog in a fancier restaurant.We arrive at Blue Plate Grill to find a dining room much fancier than its American menu would suggest, with curved booth seating along one wall, a Roman column in the middle, and a spectacular chandelier above the bar.We are a group of seven tonight, and immediately agree to share a mix of dishes for entree.Deep dish pizza $16 for halfThe deep dish

Oops, I did it again.I often say that I'm too old for buffets. Those university days of maximum value on student budgets are far behind me now, I say. And yet, still, the offer of the all-you-can-eat bounty will still draw me in at the weakest of moments.BuffetAdmittedly we'd been drawn to Yummy Chinese BBQ in search of the rotating skewer buffet I'd enjoyed at its sister restaurant in Ashfield.

First of all, thank you all for your kind feedback about the upcoming Nami-Nami Cookbook ! Your support means a lot to me... I'm trying to blog more often this month, as the amount of dishes that I'd love to share with you is actually rather impressive - and now, that the cookbook is out of my hands, so to say, I may have more time. We'll see. I'll start with something rather easy, yet super-yummy that we had for dinner last night. It was exceptionally well received both our little daughter (she's 1 year and 9 months already, and a very good eater!) as well as her 74-year-old grandmother who was visiting. So this dish appeals potentially to a very wide age group :) The recipe is from Jaden's Steamy Kitchen . I cannot even really say that I've adapted it in any particular way - apart from specifying the amount of bacon in the recipe (sold in 100-125 g packets around here) and changing the cooking times a little. I roast cauliflower quite often (usually just s...

It's a sardine tin!Words cannot describe my giddy excitement when I spot the sardine tin with "District Dining" printed on the sticker on its side. It's the kind of excitement reminiscent of your six-year-old self on Christmas morning, a sense of wonderment and joy that greets the arrival of each dish during our weekend lunch at District Dining.District Dining is the latest venture by Warren

Poh-lercoaster. Invention Test. Kiddie mafia. Bags of flavour.MasterChef Australia has generated more expressions than you can poke seven lucky skewers at.Now fans can revel in MasterChef Live, a premiere event that will see judges Gary Mehigan, George Calombaris and Matt Preston unite with celebrity chefs and former contestants in a three-day festival of cooking demonstrations at the Hordern

Some of you may have been wondering about the irregularity and lack of posts on Nami-nami over the last few months. Yes, I've finally returned back to work after a long maternity leave, and that's drastically reduced the time I have for cooking and taking photos and blogging. But that's not the reason behind the small number of blog posts. The reason is that gorgeous-looking cookbook above that's out later this month in Estonia. It's called " Nami-Nami kokaraamat " ("Nami-Nami cookbook" in English, but the book is published in Estonian, of course) and it has 218 beautiful recipes that could be grouped under the general title " food for casual entertaining ". All recipes are illustrated by lovely photos taken by myself and my dear K, and all the chapters - and the gorgeous cover - are done by the extremely talented and wonderful Ximena Maier (yes, Lobstersquad's Ximena ), whom I have the honour to call a dear friend. The book is pub...

There's a surreal moment when you first step inside La Paula. Its bare shopfront gives no indication of the colour and vibrance within. I headed here for this month's Time Out Sydney column, and as we sat on plastic chairs in a dining room filled with gaudy streamers and Chilean flags, sinking our teeth into warm empanadas and lomitos, I almost convinced myself I was somewhere in Santiago, and

Do you know lemonpi?I was always amazed by the incredibly crafted and exquisitely plated desserts by Y until eventually she revealed she was a qualified pastry chef, patient enough to invest time on her food blog even after early starts and long shifts in the kitchen.Unfortunately I never managed to make it to Sepia during her stint there, but we do catch her in her final week working at

After two years of construction, the $1.2 billion Westfield Sydney redevelopment is finally open. I joined the throng of crowds on its opening day last Thursday, but found most of the food court besieged by curious, hungry and patient office workers. Yesterday I was fortunate enough to see the new development in much more relaxed style, hosted by Westfield on a special tour for media.Charlie & Co