Onion Market: Zibelemärit in the Swiss capital

This was not the longest arrangement, a 2 m long one carried a lable "SOLD"

The last Monday in November is Zibelemärit (Onion market for the less eloquent in Swiss German) in Berne, the Swiss capital. This is a big event for the locals. We are even granted half a day public holiday and some schools let the children to mark and enjoy the event. The true fans of this day start off at four or five in the morning, the public transport starts an hour earlier than on other days. It is a good idea to come by public transport as many will be keeping themselves warm drinking Glühwein (mulled wine) or Punsch.

Stalls and people everywhere

The market really is about lots of stalls selling onion wreaths and garlic wreaths and all sorts of creative onion and garlic decorations. Funny enough, the market does not smell of onion at all. Occasionally the nose catches the inviting garlic bread aroma from some catering stalls.

Smiling onion ladies

There is lots of typical food to choose from on the onion market: onion pie, cheese pie, fondue, potato rösti, bratwurst, Lebkuchen. Specialties from other Kantons (Counties) can be bought as well.

Onion and cheese pies in all sizes

Speck from Kanton Glarus

 

If the Swiss food is not your favourite, burgers, hot dogs, roasted almonds, chinese fried specialties or even Dutch sweet poffertjes will not leave you hungry.

 

Roasted almonds and Lebkuchen

 

Even the Dutch are claiming a stand at the onion market

A portion of 5 poffertjes with sugar and butter go for 6 Francs

Over the years the market seems to have expanded and is now occupying most streets in the city center including the Parliament square.



Garlic, Onions and Lavender from Provence, France

A loooong salami that was

I mentioned that most of the children are free from school on this day. To fill their time adequately, they walk around throwing confetti at everyone and hitting the passers-by with plastic hammers. Confetti and hammers are probably the best sellers in the non-food segment items on this day. A day well spent.

Walking around the streets in the city center the scents and sensations of the brewing wine in huge kettles is inebriating the market visitors to the beat of the 80´s "Voyage, Voyage" or to Lenny Kravitz´s desire to get away and fly away. Listening to some of my non-Swiss friends they would join in with Lenny trying to escape the crowds and being hit on the head with a hammer.

The colourful confetti is cleaned fast in the evening and before the night falls the streets shine as a new pair of glasses.

A piece of cheese pie and that´s dinner sorted. If you´d like to learn a Swiss German word, try "Chäschueche", it means cheese pie.

 

Swiss chäschueche or cheese pie

Cake Auction: Passion Fruit / Maracuja Cake

The past two weeks have excited the enthusiastic patissiers at the office as much as the eager colleagues who have been generously bidding or buying lottery tickets in the hope to win a piece of self made cake.

We saw masterpieces of decoration ("An ambulance cake"!) and "Divine drops of paradise" that took the happy winners, drooling in the corners of their mouth, to heaven even if just for a brief moment.

Our Brazilian-Mexican-Estonian team Baked produced a maracuja cake. This involved creating a recipe based on some special Brazilian ingredients. The cake was layered and wrapped in two different fresh cream mixes and pushed over the finish with labor intensive (whew!) chocolate deco. Our cake proudly raised over 360 Swiss francs or 380 dollars.

Passion Fruit / Maracuja cake from the team Baked

The money that all these cakes raised is supporting a local school for children with special needs -Heilpedagogischer Tagesschule Biel.

The teachers, the headmaster and the children make the school a most kind and genuine place. Their school, as they say themselves, is a place for encounter, learning and celebration. They celebrate happy and sad moments every morning with a ceremony and they take time to say hello to everyone before the work in the classrooms starts. At this bi-lingual school the children learn new things, develop various skills and celebrate life. Respect.

This Vol.2 of our cake is a little thank you to the generous bidders. Their money is well spent.

Celebrate life. Learn. ....and eat cake!

A Thank You eddition of the Maracuja Cake for generous donators

Food waste statistics: reduce bread waste with Bread Pudding

Every year the 16th October is World Food Day.

In January 2012 shocking statistics were published by European Union about the millions of truck loads of food wasted every year. Foodwaste.ch statistics about Switzerland say that 2 million tons of food go to waste every year in Switzerland, a third of all food produced.

Statisctics about US: 33 million tons wasted in 2009. New York Yimes article  That Crooked Carrot is Also Food pointed out that the solution to cure the world hunger should be through reducing waste not (just) increasing agricultural yields per hectar.

In the UK 15 million tons are wasted every year according to Love food hate waste
The biggest loss happens in housholds and end consumer level - about 50% of all food waste.

Occasionally I have more bread at home than I can eat while it is still fresh. This is a sign that soon I will be eating my long time favourite bread pudding. I store the rests of old or surplus bread in the fridge to keep it from moulding.

Bread pudding with plum jam

Bread Pudding
I use this super easy recipe when I have a good handful of hard bread accumulated in my fridge.
It is difficult to give exact amounts of ingredients. The amounts depend on how much old bread you have.

Ingredients:
old bread (300g)
jam, any kind (150g)
egg(s) (2 whole eggs)
milk (1-2dl)
sugar (1 tbsp)
butter, optional (20g)

The basic instructions are:
Set the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
Cut the old bread into ca. 1.5-2cm cubes
Choose a baking dish to allow 2 layers of the bread cubes. If you have a lot of bread you can layer as many as fits in the form. 
Cover the bottom of the baking dish with one layer of bread cubes.
Spread jam on the bread cubes to more or less cover the bottom layer. It is impossible to cover exactly all cubes and this is not necessary. Depending on the consistency of the jam just dollop a few tablespoons of jam and spread it around a bit. It does not have to be perfect.
Arrange the rest of the cubes into the baking form. If you like a sweeter dish, fill some empty spaces between the cubes with more jam.
Whisk the egg(s) with a fork to combine the egg white and yolk, add the sugar and milk, mix and melt the sugar. Pour the egg-milk mixture on the bread cubes and lightly press the bread to absorb the liquid. The bottom layer should be covered with the liquid.
For extra touch of luxury place 3-4 small knobs (2 cm) of butter on top of everything.

Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes until the bread on the top turns crisp and slightly browned.

We used to eat this dessert with milk. I would place a portion of the bread pudding into a bowl and pour milk over it and eat. I still eat it with milk when the pudding has turned cold. It is totally OK to eat it warm. Anyway I can´t wait until it turns cold and I enjoy the crusty cubes from the top layer and the soft jammy ones from the bottom straight hot from the oven. Pairs well with a cup of coffee too.

Bread and Jam Pudding

Changes in the food world across two centuries and "kilupirukad" (small salty oily fish pastries)

There are fundamental changes happening in every area of life at a fast pace. The changes around the food and eating burst emotions left and right like a metronome. We find things that never existed before, that are genius and on the other hand see things that make perfect sense disappear or nonsense flourish. Here is a short list of observations that I have lived through or experience at this very moment.

End of the last century: Estonia
Few cookbooks
Every household had at least one handwritten recipe notebook
Simple food… still my favourite
Eaters were much closer to food production (neighbours helping neighbours at potato harvest, own food grown on allotments)
Less packaged food, often food was weighed in the shop according to your order, often packed in paper, very little plastic packaging
People carried a shopping bag, plastic bags were expensive and even not available

Less allergies
Less food regulatory laws (I used to walk by a bread factory that had its windows open to the street, the smell coming out was heaven. Loaves of bread used to be sold unpacked in shops. Nobody died of dysentery coming from the bread they had bought that wasn’t individually packed)
Less E-ingredients, the big money wasn´t in the food research
Shorter life expectancy
A lot of food was very local

Recycling of milk bottles, cream and mayo jars, other bottles (there wasn’t much other packaging to recycle)
Deficit of exotic fruit, coffee, other ingredients (eg to cook a Thai curry at home in 1990 was unthinkable)

Home made jams was a common way of preserving

Estonians loved “Tallinna kilu”, small oily fish spiced and preserved in cans (see photo)

Tallinna kilud have stood the test of time

21^st century: Estonia, Switzerland, Europe
More packaged foods
Fashionable to take a plastic bag each time – fortunately this trend is reversing
Less knowledge about where food is grown or how –  fewer children have seen, let alone touched, an animal whose produce they eat, TV programs showing children guessing how peas, cabbage, brussel sprouts etc grow… a tragic comedy
Better agriculture
New varieties of produce are higher yielding and stay fresh longer (sometimes at the expense of smell or taste)

Hydroponicly grown strawberries flown across Europe in March
More allergies
People live longer (combined with progress in medicine)
Long aisles of ready made meals

Food wasting increases massively

Smart mobile phones – internet saves the work of writing down the ingredient list
Food magazines have a booklet with shopping list for ingredients
Thousands of food blogs
El Bulli, Heston Blumenthal, molecular cuisine
Nordic chefs winning the French culinary competitions
Frozen food, big freezers at home allow storing fresh food, great to have fresh berries from your own garden in winter

Celebrities´cookbooks

Celebrity chefs acting on TV People talk about food miles, local, seasonal food
Estonians love “Tallinna kilu”, small oily fish spiced and preserved in cans. “Tallinna kilu” is awarded “Recognised Estonian Taste” Award in 2001, 2003, 2008.

The fillets of "kilu", little anchovies type oily fish, is canned with salt and spices

Go figure what will happen in the future. On one hand there are propelling new techniques, the unimaginable has become a reality, on the other hand the old common sense of eating what the nature provides with the farmers´ wisdom and the mothers´ common sense of eating a variety of foods is fighting for existence while the blasts of new diets of the month in the media feature one or the other “magic” ingredient or nutritional nebula.

For sure the changes and the extremes will continue. In one way or the other the world will keep a balance.

Future: the world
People live even longer
Genetically modified food will feed the billions
People will migrate for water, flee the famine
Better (=less) usage of water in agriculture
Better fertilisers
Globalisation - more imports of non-local ingredients, fruits and veg
More eating seasonal produce – the sustainability mentality will continue
Growing vegetables vertically, on small space (eg on roofs), on hydroponics
Food blogs will stay for a while
Recipes on Internet, printed books will become rare
Cooking lessons - part of survival education at schools
More people can afford a fridge

Households producing energy, connected to the grid, kitchen appliances using less energy
Asia going through the bad western diet fashion of more fat and sugar as more business is done in Asia and people demand/can afford new, more expensive ingredients

Fast food and slow food revolution

Estonians will love “Tallinna kilu”, small oily fish spiced and preserved in cans

Kilupirukad: small oily fish pastries or empanadas

These pastries or small pies are made with small oily fish that we Estonians call “kilu”. They resemble canned anchovies. Both are quite salty, however “kilu” are softer than the anchovies and mostly canned as whole fish. One can also buy fillets, if you don’t want to spend time cleaning the fish off the heads and backbones.

Ingredients:

Puff pastry (ca 25x 40 cm)

12 fillets of “kilu” or anchovies

12 leaves of parsley

4 boiled eggs, cut in quarters

1 egg, beaten

Fold "kilu" or anchovis fillets with egg in puff pastry. Add dill or parsley for taste.

Heat the oven to 200°C.

Take a sheet of puff pastry and cut it into squares of 10 x 10 cm. place a fillet of fish, a leaf of parsley or some chopped dill, a quarter of a boiled egg in the middle and fold the diagonal edges across. Brush each pie with some beaten egg.

Cook in the oven for 20 minutes until golden.

Golden fish pies: Estonian Kilupirukad

Food wasting: Shocking Statistics. Left-over breakfast recipe: Pumpkin pancakes

Jams in my fridge and honey

I was going through my thoughts and notes on what to blog about this time when the alarm bells hit my ears on the evening news program: the European Commission has recently published statistics that 89 million tons of usable food is annually wasted  across EU27. That food is wasted by households (42%), by production and processing (39%), by catering establishments (14%) and by retail (5%). If we continue this way there will be 126 million tons of food wasted per year by 2020. Outrageous statistics and bad behaviour!

“Best before” or “Consume by” are two different things.
Indeed consuming fresh dairy or meat products with a passed “Consume by” date can cause health problems and I wouldn’t advise anyone to do it, however “Best before” just denotes until when the quality of that product is best and not when it becomes unusable. It is easy to mix up these two, but picturing 3,5 million trailer trucks full of wasted food that is generated in European Union the distinction between the two can make a whole lot of difference. All these trucks standing behind each other are more than enough to make a trip around the Equator. On top of the issue of wasting food that people can eat, how does the environment cope with the mountain of waste?
If foods with a past best before date have been stored in good conditions, the food is likely to be good for some time.
In many countries there are organisations that collect and distribute the food close to “Consume by” and “Best Before” dates to people and organisations in need. In Switzerland a few of my colleagues and I worked with one of such -"Schweizer Tafel"- last year. In my home country there is a similar "Estonian Food Bank".

I hereby reach out to the readers and ask to please support in the ways small or big available to you to help reduce the food waste.

Tips on how to reduce waste and turn leftovers into tasty ingredients:

- Leftovers from the fridge (eg. slightly wilted vegetables) or dry goods cupboard (eg. lentils and beans past “Best before” date) make wonderful soups, stews or pancakes
- Pasta stores long after the best before date
- Dinner leftovers make a good lunch the next day
- It is worth checking the inside of canned foods past “Best before” date before just throwing them away
- Cut the old rye bread –very popular in Estonia – into small cubes, roast in the oven and eat as a healthy snack alternative, but DON´T eat the mouldy old bread.
-Make croutons or bread crumbs from the hardened white bread
-Check the freshness of the eggs by carefully dropping an egg into a glass filled with cold water. If the egg drops to the bottom it is good to eat, if it stays on the top it is not fresh.

Check eggs for freshness: The egg at the bottom is fresh

Pumpkin Pancakes
To use up an egg or two that has been in the fridge for some time and a piece of pumpkin try these pancakes for breakfast with a mug of freshly brewed coffee.

Ingredients

2 eggs
250g pumpkin of any type
120g flour (1 cup)
0.5tl baking soda if you wish to make small thick pancakes
1.5 dl butter milk or fresh milk
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon sugar
Rape seed oil or sunflower oil for frying

Grated pumpkin adds colour

Mix the eggs, salt and sugar with a fork, add some milk and mix again. Add the flour and baking soda, mix again. Leave a little milk for later or add some water if the dough becomes too thick. As last add the thinly grated pumpkin. Mix everything. Let rest for 10-15 minutes for the flour to expand.
Heat some oil in a shallow frying pan and fry either small pancakes or crepe-type over the pan pancakes.
Serve with honey or jam. There may be some jars of jam open in the fridge that are waiting to be eaten and not eventually thrown away.

Fluffy pumpkin/squash pancackes

Plastic Around Carrots: Are You Buying Carrots or Plastic?

 

Carrots are wonderful vegetables. I use a lot of carrots in soups or as vegetable side dishes. Since I don’t have a garden I get my carrots from the farmers or supermarket. I like to select carrots and buy the ones I like. Depending on the dish I may choose narrower or thicker ones. The narrower I find sweeter and crunchier for eating raw, the thicker ones are easier to grate or more convenient to chop for soups or good in stews.

Daucas Carota (Lat), Carrots (Eng), Möhre, Karotte (Ger), Rüebli (Swiss Ger), Porgand (Est)

In the supermarket the only option is to use the plastic bag offered. In order to reduce the amount of bags and consequently the costly garbage at home I use one bag for all the vegetables and fruits I buy instead of a separate bag for each. And I often reuse the bag at home for something else.

So yesterday in a supermarket I chose my carrots and wondered around the vegetable section for a while. I found there were 4 different possibilities to buy fresh carrots.

1. Select your own and weigh them yourself. Price per kg 1.60.
2. 1 kg packaged in a plastic bag. Price per kg 1.60.
3. A value line 2.5 kg packaged in a plastic bag. Price per kg 0.84.
4. 4 carrots packed on a plastic tray wrapped in plastic. Price per kg 1.90.

Carrots in the value pack on the left, packed in double plastic on the right

Voilà! Number 4 was not explicitly marked as a bio-organic product that would perhaps justify a higher price. Apparently there is demand for carrots packed on a plastic tray and people are willing to pay more for it. In fact, I would just be paying more, once for the tray and second time for creating more garbage. Every bag of garbage you generate costs in Switzerland.Personally, I find no use for that tray at home to give it “a second life” in some other use to justify its existence even if the price was the same as for the loose carrots. 

I use one bag for all the veg and fruit I buy and reuse the bag

Yes, I have considered the point of hygiene as well before writing this, but did not find a convincing point. I see people eating fruit and vegetable bought in supermarket without washing them first. So they are not really bothered about this at all. When I buy the carrots selecting them from a crate myself, yes, someone else may have touched them, but I will wash and typically peel the carrots at home, so no issue there.

Please help reduce meaningless plastic!

Experiment - 1: Chicken Breasts

The past couple of weekends I have been busy cooking some recipes from  my colleagues to make original pictures for a charity cookbook. Today I was making Stefan´s (Mom´s) chicken recipe. Buying the ingredients an idea hit me and I decided to test if there was any difference between cheap and expensive. I had a choice of three different types of chicken breasts: a budget or value line version (did not check the origin, but assume it was imported meat), a "Classic" version in the middle price range (import from Hungary and 41% more expensive than value line) and a local Swiss version which was the most expensive, 55% more expensive than the middle price option. The lable of the latter did mention that it was from a farmer X, but did not explicitly say that the meat was freerange or Bio. I did not see any Bio-product.
My experiment continued on a culinary level.
Appearance: Other than the fact that the medium price range breasts were a little smaller there was no significant difference. It can well be that I chose a smaller packet with smaller pieces. Therefore I don´t consider the size a deficiency in the raw meat.I consider it a draw, 1:1.
I continued with the recipe. I decided to cook both meats exactly in the same way.
Braised the chicken breasts, cut the vegetables and sauteed them in another pan, made the sauce with cream, seasoned with salt, pepper and spicy paprika, then everything into a gratin pan and into the oven.
After about 45 minutes all prep was done, the chicken was out of the oven and I was arranging the food for the picture. Finally it was time to sit and eat. I was very excited and to be perfectly honest I was expecting to taste no difference at all.
Texture: The first bite of the cheaper meat was full of flavour of the sauce and chicken...but it was a bit dry and the bite a bit hard to my disappointment. OK, let´s try the other more expensive one. And next I was eating a strong texture...but much more tender. 2:1 for the more expensive chicken.
Next up was taste: Both had a good chicken taste and an equally creamy and seasoned taste of the dish. 3:2.
In conclusion: The overall experience was better with the more expensive chicken, however one data point is not enough to have a convincing conclusion from the culinary side.
Of course if you add to the equasion the long haul and more diesel required to transport the imported meat to the consumer one could argue on the sustainability front as well and the score would rise to 4:2 for the more expensive breast.
I might just try out the budget version out of culinary interest, but I guess on the sustainability level that probably loses out.

More expensive local chicken on the left, mid price range import on the right

Food From the Forest - 2: Wild Mushrooms (Mushroom salad, Spinach-Chanterelles Soup, Mushroom "Burger")

September is mushroom holiday time. As minimum, I try to go pick mushrooms twice, preferably three times or more.It is great that a lot of the forest is state owned and everyone can walk freely and pick what the forest is offering. Depending on the season it can be blackberries or lingonberries in summer or mushrooms mainly in autumn. The location knowledge of the good places are passed on from generation to generation and between friends.

A selection of this year´s mushroom findings

There is something unexplainable about the wild mushrooms and Estonians. Every year masses of people want to go to the forest and when they get their baskets full of mushrooms they are filled with joy and happiness. Even just thinking about going to the forest and reminiscing about a previous successful trip brings a smile on their faces and creates lots of positive happy hormones. If you are looking for a conversation topic with often very reserved and quiet Estonians, wild mushrooms would be a good topic to engage in. Most people would talk enthusiastically about their trips, good and bad crops in different years and cooking-eating the mushrooms. Others would have an equally emotional view about why they don´t do it (afraid of insects, picking the poisonous ones, getting lost).

Wild mushrooms in Estonia

The most preferred activities in all the mushroom business is:
1. The trip to the forest and picking the mushrooms, definitely the most enjoyable activity
2. Eating the mushroom, very enjoyable too
3. Cooking for immediate eating, not bad
4. Cleaning mushrooms from the forest debris and sorting by type and size for cooking, must do
5. Preserving the mushrooms, more work
6. Writing the date of making and contents on the can, least enjoyable work

(Note: we are talking baskets full quantities here, not a handful or two) 

The 2011 South Estonia wild mushroom crop has been all right, but far from a bumper crop. In fact, it is even better so since a "bumper crop" means that the top enjoyable activity on my list of preference would be very brief and there would be no need to go for a second walk-around in the forest. In reality there is no real need to go anyway as it is a challenge to eat all the harvest.
Some mushrooms can be just sauteed and so to say eaten fresh, the others need to be boiled first. The latter are typically put into glass jars for winter and preserved in a highly salty water. Some smaller button size mushrooms are marinated in vinegar-salt-sugar-onion-carrot-spices (pepper corns, cloves)- mix and preserved.

Yellow Chanterelles /" Kukeseened " Estonia

A wild mushroom common for many countries is the yellow chanterelle or "kukeseen" in Estonian or "Eierschwämmli" in Swiss German or "Pfifferling" in German.

The following is a well known mushroom salad amongst many Estonians: (Makes 4 as a starter)

2 handfuls of boiled fleshy mushrooms or salted from 0.5 liter can in winter
Half or a whole small onion
2 boiled eggs
(optional: 1-2 medium fresh tomatoes)
3-4 tablespoons sour cream and/or mayonnaise
Black pepper
Fresh dill or parsley 

Wild Mushroom Salad / Estonia

If using the preserved mushrooms, soak them in cold water overnight in the fridge, changing the water a few times. If the mushrooms still taste salty you may boil them in plain water to get the salt out and cool down before proceeding.
Chop the mushrooms into small pieces. Chop the onion very thinly. If you wish to have a lighter version of the salad cut one or two medium size tomatoes into small pieces too.
Chop the boiled egg into approximately same size as mushrooms. Leave some egg yolk for garnish.
Mix everything with sour cream and/ or mayonnaise depending on your preference. Add some black pepper. Since the mushrooms have salt in them already there is usually no need to add more. Taste and garnish with some boiled egg yolk and dill or parsley.


A warm starter adapted from a soup I ate at Ratskeller restaurant in Munich, Germany:
Cream spinach soup with chanterelles (Makes 4):

Spinach soup with chanterelles

500g frozen spinach
250ml of light fresh cream (10% fat)
0.75 liter water
nutmeg, salt, black pepper
2 handfuls of fresh chanterelle mushrooms (Some other fresh mushrooms can be used too. Estonian: värsked kuuse- või porgandiriisikad sobivad ka)
a knob of butter

Drop the spinach into the boiling water, let it melt on medium-high heat and come back to boil. Using a mixer or a blender puree the spinach into a very smooth consistency. Add salt and a little grated nutmeg or black pepper. Add the cream and bring to boil again.

In the meanwhile cut the fresh mushrooms into small bite size pieces, smaller chanterelles do not require chopping. Put the mushrooms into a hot pan without the butter. Heat and cook them until water comes out and evaporates from the pan. Now add the knob of butter and a little salt to taste and sautee the mushrooms for 5-10 minutes.
Serve the soup hot with a couple of tablespoonfuls of sauteed mushrooms per portion.

For a main dish some seriously sizzling Mushroom-minced meat "Burgers" will fill the bellies. I struggled to find the appropriate word for these half meat - half mushroom burger resembling but smaller pieces of what the Estonians call "kotletid" or the Germans call "Frikadellen". In essence they also resemble the Swedish meatballs, but are bigger and flatter.

500g of ground beef and pork mix (German: Hackfleisch gemischt)
400-500g of ground cooked mushrooms
1 onion, ground in the mincer or chopped very thinly
1 clove of garlic, ground in the mincer or chopped very thinly
salt
pepper
2 eggs
3-4 tablespoons flour
cooking oil (neutral rapeseed or sunflower are better than strong tasting olive oil)

Grind the meat, mushrooms, onion and garlic in the mincer or food processor till quite smooth. Add salt and pepper. Taste, before adding the raw eggs (salmonella risk). Mix everything with the eggs. Then add the flour. Mix everything well. Leave to settle in the fridge for 20 minutes.
Make palm size balls and press them a little flatter.
You may need to wet the palms a bit to reduce the mixture sticking to the palms.
Heat some cooking oil in a pan. Fry the "burgers" in the oil for about 5 minutes on both sides on medium heat. Taste the first one that seems ready. Now is a good time to make any adjustments to the remaining "dough" on taste or add more flour if it breaks too easily or check the donness and adjust the time or temperature of cooking.
Eat with potatoes, salad, bread or just like that.

Mushroom "burgers" / Seenekotletid

Experiencing Cooking Class and Discovering Tagine

I discovered that one of my work associates in the UK is a passionate cook and visited a cookery class during one of his holidays. I was very curious, since I have been playing with the idea of doing it myself. I thought his week in the class passed with lots of laughter and lots of great cooking and was surprised to hear that the action in the kitchen was done in a very pleasant atmosphere and since people took the cooking very seriously it was almost reverential. Wow!
Read David's story...

Experiencing Cooking Class and Discovering Tagine
by David Skinner

Based on my attendance at two cookery schools* in England – one in the south and one in the north – I would really recommend the experience. 

Whether you want to learn new kitchen skills, try out new recipe ideas – or even just take a mental break from work the format of the one day courses offered seemed very well designed.  I was really surprised by how much the Chef instructors can teach you in a day – but it is quite tiring and I noticed that some people who were on a week’s course started to want a break by the time Thursday evening came.

Although it might seem obvious to more experienced cooks, in terms of general technique the big aha for me was the need to protect flavour – even when cooking dinner party style menus.  Some of the key practical insights about this were:

-        use of very good quality sea salts added to the main ingredient of a dish right at the start

-       an ‘only chop once’ approach to preparing soft green herbs which are then added to the dish just at the last minute before serving

-       blanching of vegetables in boiling water for one minute only before cooling them in ice water and then re-heating them in a few drops of water with added rapeseed oil just before serving

-       using rapeseed oil rather than olive oil whenever a recipe calls for heating the oil (olive oil takes on a less pleasant taste when heated over 70C) 

With regard to recipes the biggest discovery for me was the delight of tagines and in fact many of the flavours and textures of Moroccan cuisine in general.

The conical shape of the tagine lid is designed to act as a condenser for the steam generated by the cooking.  This means you can slowly casserole meat, poultry or fish with vegetables, spices and sumptuous fruits like figs, dates, lemons and apricots using very little added water.  The result is a flavoursome and spicy - but not too ‘chilli hot’ - fruity dish with a pleasantly dry texture.

I tried out a chicken tagine based menu that I learned on a group of friends and they reacted really positively (they took second helpings  which is always good feedback I think!)

A very important Moroccan flavour component is the Chermoula paste used as a marinade before cooking the chicken in the tagine.

Chermoula paste is made from the following ingredients using an electric blender:

2          Spanish onions

5          (yes, five!) cloves of garlic

1          lemon, juiced

1          bunch of flat-leaved parsley

1          bunch fresh coriander

Sea-salt to season

Cumin powder, coriander powder, chilli powder and turmeric powder – all added to taste

Half a cup of rapeseed oil

Chicken pieces should be marinaded in this paste for at least one hour (in the fridge)

When ready, sauté the chicken pieces to colour in a large frying pan, allowing space between piece so each has chance to brown rather than steam.

Place the chicken pieces in a tagine and then add the following ingredients:

A dash of rapeseed oil

Another Spanish onion roughly chopped in six pieces

2          carrots, roughly chopped

1          small sweet potato, roughly chopped

1          tablespoon honey

handful of (pitted) black olives

half lemon, finely chopped

handful of dates, stones removed

Add a little chicken stock, but not enough to bubble over during the cooking.  Remember that the tagine is designed to condense the steam from the cooking liquid and so it should not boil dry.  Keep a watch on it just in case though, especially if you leave it cooking for a long time. 

Cooking time is a minimum of one hour, but the tagine could be left on a low heat after that so there is no rush if you are serving it at a dinner party.

The menu I learned recommended serving well-flavoured cous cous with the tagine – and there are many recipes available for this to suit a wide variety of tastes.

The internet has many tagine recipes and indeed Moroccan starters and accompanying dishes.  They all seem quite straightforward, but, it takes a little experimentation with the many spices involved to get the flavour you want - so the key seems to be to add a little of each at a time.

Overall, I feel that my first experiences at cookery school were very pleasant as a holiday which I would thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in cookery – and – I have learned a lot that I can continue to use in cooking for family and friends.

*The two schools were:  Ashburton in the Dartmoor National Park in the south of England and LucyCooks in Staveley which is in the English Lake District.  Both schools are in beautiful parts of England and so would form a convenient part of a touring holiday.

The tagine recipe described above was from LucyCooks.

Travelling Emotional Food

People have always travelled for food. Just think of the Great Famine that happened in Ireland  when the country’s potato crop was destroyed by potato blight disease and many people left to make a new living in America between 1845-52. Nowadays, in the more developed world, people travel for food on purpose for pleasure, to find new experiences, new tastes, learn about foreign cuisines. Many food blogs are created by people travelling and reporting their food adventures, TV programs are produced every year in many languages about food and travel.

My writing today about the emotional food that travels was sparked when I was reflecting about what I have seen my international colleagues and friends living abroad bring back to Switzerland from their trips to their home countries. I can say that over the years of my observations the popular items that people miss and bring from their home country to give them comfort, provide a home feeling in a foreign surrounding are actually quite basic: bread, sweets, beans, tea, cheese, tortillas, rice, more special items include chorizo or blood sausage. The tea in Switzerland is very weak and people who like black tea with milk must bring it from home or find an Asian food shop locally to stock up if they don’t want to drink a vague almost transparent brownish liquid pretending to enjoy a cup of tea. On top of the list of the South American sweets is a local basic like dulce de leche (Spanish). Some exchange students from Uruguay had packed at least 3 or more liters of it for their stay in Estonia. The locally available sweet condensed milk when boiled becomes a similar caramel sort of thing is clearly not the same. My Brasilian colleagues bring doce de leite (Portuguese) from their trips home. Also peanut based sweets from Brasil are very popular items to which I would add my own halvaa from Estonia. 

Another group of products are spices and sauces. Chiles and spicy sauces from Mexico, my elementary item of a certain type of Mayonnaise that always has space in my suitcase, occasionally Estonian mustard, sometimes flavour mixes that one used to like at home. A certain Chinese spice mix that a friend could not find in Switzerland, he had to bring from the UK. I also bring jams made out of Estonian berries, I have even brought green onions as I can’t find such ones here. Plus Estonian bread, either my Mom’s or my sister’s self-made bread or something new from the huge choice of breads from the country’s many bread makers.

Of course there is plenty of bread, sweets, or other food for that matter, here in Switzerland. It is just that special connection one has built with some foods and ingredients since childhood or simply grown to like them so much that the more or less similar substitute products in the foreign country fill the stomach but are incapable of satisfying the real craving. That little piece of dark brown rye bread with some butter and at best times with the Tallinna kilu (sort of spicy anchovies filet, but not quite) creates an emotional connection and a feeling of happiness thousands of kilometres away even if for just 10 minutes.

Now, it may seem that there is more import than export. Not true.

I can say that there is equally heavy traffic of food going out of Switzerland. Every time I go to Estonia I get a shopping list of things to buy and pack. Again the foods are not always specialty foods, rather simple basics like a certain cream cheese, a red pesto, tortellini, Allgäuer cheese. Since I have been making the Brasilian pão de queijo in my household and introduced my family in Estonia to it, the sour manioc flour travels with me. Not available to buy locally.

There is another type of food traffic developing slowly as the world globalizes and global sourcing through friends or international colleagues becomes possible. For example, I have a great supply of goiabada, the guava marmalade from Brasil. I have already got to know some different types of it. Or Arbuequina olive oil from my colleagues in Spain. The recent additions are a tamarind sauce and red chiles from Mexico and romesco sauce from Cataluña. Even if I don’t travel to these countries, I can still get to know them through food.

I must confess that I have travelled just for food. I once took a holiday and travelled back to Luxemburg mostly just because to visit a rather small casual restaurant that had basically only king prawns cooked in oven with lots of garlic on the menu. The guests were happily breathing in an intoxicatingly strong garlic air and all tables were eating prawns and more prawns and more garlic. Unfortunately I know where the restaurant is (I hope it is still there), but I don’t remember the name. I guess I have to go back and look what it is called...

Here is a recipe of a substitute dish for the Estonian räim, a small fish that is bigger than anchovies, but smaller than sardine or perhaps the size of the small sardine. I can buy Italian sardines here and occasionally make the very traditional “Estonian” fried small fish.

Fried and marinated sardines as a substitute to Estonian räim

Remove the bones from the fish. Put some salt and black pepper on the filets, turn the fish in flour, then in the egg mixture. Fry in a pan with some oil for a few minutes. The fish is great just fried, so I eat if warm. Another way is to marinate the fried filets in a mixture of sliced onion, vinegar, sugar, salt, some tomato sauce or ketchup and a little water and eat the next day.