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

Fresh Tagliatelle with Chanterelle mushrooms

Christmas came early this year. I had wished the pasta machine from Santa but turns out he sent it 6 months early for my birthday. :-)
So I have made my first tagliatelle and cannelloni, even ravioli, once, trying out different thicknesses and levels of rolling lengthwise and across, the pasta dough with and without olive oil, with large eggs and medium eggs, ...much more still to try and master.
One thing is clear, making your own pasta is not so difficult at all and it tastes really great. I doubt that I will be buying fresh pasta from a shop any time soon.
Now is mushroom time and therefore a very simple but still delicate recipe with the lovely yellow chanterelles or Eierschwämmli as they are known in Switzerland. In Estonian they are called "kukeseened" - in direct translation "cock´s mushrooms".

Fresh Pasta Recipe
300g wheat flour, durum wheat, if possible
3 medium eggs
1 teaspoon of olive oil
a small pinch of salt

Put the flour on the working table and make a hole in the middle. Break the eggs into the hole, add the oil and a little salt. Now start working with a fork from the middle mixing the eggs with the flour into a dough. Knead for a few minutes with your hands. If the dough is sticky, slightly wet your palm(s) with cold water and pat the water from your palms into the dough. Cover with the plastic film and leave to rest in the fridge for 30-60 minutes.

Set up the pasta rolling machine and spread some flour around the workspace. Roll from the widest towards the thinner width. At the widest level roll a handful of dough once, then fold twice and roll again lengthwise or fold into three and roll across. Roll a couple of times in the next width as well. Then follow through the other widths. I find #2 or #3 a suitable width for my tagliatelle. #1 feels too thin with a sauce. On the other part of the machine cut the thin pasta sheets into tagliatelle, drop into some flour to keep them from sticking together and spread the tagliatelle on kitchen towels. They may dry there until it´s time to boil the pasta.
Before boiling the pasta, prepare the sauce as the pasta needs only a few minutes. Set a big pot with water to boil. Add a teaspoon of salt into the water before it starts to boil.

Chanterelle Mushroom Sauce
600g chanterelles
20-30g butter
500ml fresh cream
salt and pepper
chives or flat parlsey

In the meanwhile clean the chanterelles from any soil or other unnecessary parts and particles. If necessary cut the bigger mushrooms into smaller pieces.
Set a sautee pan to the heat and put the chanterelles into an empty pan. Stir a few rounds and cook the mushrooms until the water comes out and evaporates before adding the butter. Sautee for a few minutes until the mushrooms start to brown a little. Add the cream and season with salt and black pepper. Cook the sauce for 5 minutes, then take off the heat.

Now the water is simmering. Don´t let it bubble, otherwise the pasta will be too soft.Cook the pasta for 2-3 minutes, but be careful not to over cook them. Rinse the tagliatelle, sprinkle some olive oil on pasta to avoid sticking and immediately mix the pasta with the sauce.
Garnish with chopped chives or parsley.

Fresh pasta with fresh chanterelle mushrooms

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.

Cool as a cucumber in 30C degrees in shade: Cucumber soup and salads

It´s been a hot weekend here with the thermometer showing 30+ degrees or more Celsius. Too hot to even eat. Drink, drink, drink, but eventually the stomach is asking for more. Cucumber with its 90% water content is a great source of hydration for a thirsty body. Often eaten cold the cucumber is the main ingredient for refreshing salads and cold soups.

In Estonia typical hot summer food is boiled early potatoes with dill and butter and cucumber salad with dill and sour cream. If this is not enough, some BBQ from a huge choice of ready marinated meat or endless line of sausages on offer is made quickly.

Cucumber salad 1:

Cucumbers cut into thin slices, add salt, chopped dill and some sour cream. Mix and taste.

Cucumber salad 2 (my own favourite):

Cut one long salad cucumber into thin slices,

add 1-2 tablespoon of salad vinegar,

some salt to taste,

0.5 teaspoon of sugar,

1 -2 tablespoons olive or rapeseed oil,

some black pepper and thinly chopped dill.

Mix well and leave to marinate for min 30 minutes or overnight.

My alternative to gazpacho is 

Cucumber soup (2-3 portions):

3 long salad cucumbers, cold from the fridge

1 tablespoon salad vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

150ml unflavoured yoghurt

3 big leaves of peppermint, thinly chopped

or for a more northern taste instead of peppermint leaves add

a tablespoon of chopped fresh dill

Peel the cucumbers, cut out the seeds, cut into slices. Add the vinegar, salt, peppermint, yoghurt and purée with a mixer or blender. Taste for salt. Season more if necessary. Leave in the fridge to ensure the soup is refreshingly cold before serving.

Cool Cucumber Soup with Mint

A delicious cucumber soup was served at Neumarkt restaurant in Zurich, my current top favourite restaurant in the old town, with a great summer garden, very fast and professional service and most importantly very good local seasonal food.

Chicken and dumpling soup: Estonian “kana-klimbisupp”

Every now and then my friends in Estonia say they want some soup. The craving for some good healthy broth is strong, especially in colder days. On the other hand there are people who always prefer solid food to liquid. This one is a favourite of many Estonians. I like soups that have pieces of the ingredients in them. Puréed cream soups are great as well but every now and then I want to be able eat rather than just swallow my soup.

The dumpling soup is quite thick and serves as a full meal, especially at home with more than one helping. When I was growing up we never had to eat up what someone else put on your plate if we did not want to. Everyone took as much as they wanted and if on occasion what you had put on your plate was too much there was no obligation to eat up. Even if it meant that one mouthful was too many. I have always followed this principle. One’s stomach will tell when it is full, also a child’s. I guess for an adult the problem is not to want too much and recognise the moment of fullness. Soup is healthy, therefore two helpings are perfectly all right for a full meal. 

Chicken soup is well known for the healing properties against a cold. It certainly has helped me through some colds. Many cuisines make use of dumplings, German for example, being one of the closest influencers of the Estonian. The exact making varies, a mixture from old bread or flour, a combination with potato, gnocchis.

Ingredients for the chicken and dumpling soup:

Chicken Stock:

1 chicken

1 onion

Celery leaves or a good chunk of the root

1 carrot

1 teaspoon of salt

2 bay leaves

5 grains of black pepper

Soup vegetables:

2 bigger carrots

2 medium potatoes

Dumplings:

1 ladle full of stock or milk

1 egg

1.5 cups plain flour

Finely chopped dill or parsley

Put the chicken in one piece into the pot with cold water enough to cover the chicken. Bring to boil and wait till the foam starts to form. Cook for a few minutes and keep removing the foam. It is important to remove the foam to get a clear stock.

Throw away the water after the foam has been removed and start again with filling the pot with enough cold water to cover the chicken. Now add the cleaned onion, in one piece, as well as the carrot, celery leaves or root. Add 1 teaspoon of salt, the pepper and the bay leaves. Bring to boil at high temperature, then turn the heat down and simmer till the meat is totally soft and comes off the bones easily, 45-60 minutes. Turn the chicken once in a while and taste for salt. Some prefer to add the salt at the end, however I like the meat to take up some salt during cooking as later on it is difficult.

As the chicken is cooking prepare the carrots and potatoes. Peel and dice them into 1 cm cubes.

When the chicken is soft take it out on a plate and clean the meat off the bones discarding the skin. Remove the carrot, onion and celery from the stock.Put the shredded meat back into the pot.

Take a ladleful of broth into a bowl and let it cool a bit. Add half the flour into the lukewarm broth. Mix thoroughly. Beat an egg and add to the mixture. Add more flour till the dough is quite thick (feels heavy and drops from a spoon slowly). No need to add salt if your broth had enough already. If you make the dumpling dough with milk instead of the broth, add some salt to the dough.

Add the carrot and potato cubes into the stock and cook for 5-7 minutes.

Take two teaspoons and start dropping the dumplings into the soup by wetting the spoons in the broth, taking a small quantity of dough onto one spoon and turning it around on the other to push down into the boiling soup. When the dumplings have come up to the surface the soup is ready.

Garnish with chopped dill and/or parsley.

Serve with dark rye bread, white bread or without any bread.

Chicken -Dumpling Soup / Kana-klimbisupp

Food from the forest – 1: Wild blueberry-ricotta cake and blueberry-banana smoothie

50% of Estonia is covered by forest. For many Estonians going to the forest is as natural part of their life as surfing would be for people living close to the ocean like my Brazilian friends or skiing and mountain biking for the Swiss. A walk in the snowy forest on a sunny day is a bright relaxation, but a walk in summer or in autumn will fill your stomach in addition to having a good walk and an abundant breath of totally fresh air.



July-August is the time for blueberries (Ger.: Heidelbeeren, Est.: mustikad), August-September for lingonberries (Ger.: Preiselbeeren, Est.: pohlad), and September for wild mushrooms. The only thing to do before disappearing to fill your basket is to establish where is the exit. The position of the sun in relation to the point of entry (=exit or the place where the car is) is my best orienteering aid. Going with my Mom, the exit rules need to be established early on before reaching the forest as she has a habit to delve among the trees the moment the car stops and her foot touches the moss. It’s sweet but caution is better. Every year there is news about people getting lost in the forest. In my many years of being friends with the forest I have just about panicked once and thought I was lost for 10 minutes on a cloudy day as I could not detect the position of the Sun.



Wild blueberries in the forest







During my holidays in July I went to pick blueberries 5 times and got my oxygen dosis. I would add that the trip to the forest in our case is driven by the excitement and undertaken with a lot of enthusiasm, more so than the material benefit that may come with it. My Dad has so to say prohibited my Mom to make any more jam as there is enough already. In some years the crop is poor, but as long as you can eat some then and there the trip has paid off. That´s as fresh and natural a mouthful as it can get.In the past the berries were made into jams or other preserves. Blueberry jam is a must in the home medicine store – helps with any kind of indigestion, besides being just delicious. Nowadays there is an inversely proportional change from preserves to freezing the berries in the freezer. The shelves in the cellar become emptier while the freezers get bigger. I have friends who have found a new fashionable hobby in making all sorts of fruit and berry smoothies, cocktails and iced juices.Yummie! Well, three freezers of my close families were filled with the season’s blueberries from these trips to the forest. Ready for the winter.



Wild blueberries / mustikad

The forest blueberries make your tongue blue, the industrial blueberries don’t. In my town in Switzerland it is difficult to find forest blueberries in the supermarket frozen food department.  I was recently in Munich and saw the wild blueberries, lingonberries and the chanterelles mushrooms on the market – it felt so much like home, only at  about twice the price.



Blueberry-Ricotta Cake



Blueberry-ricotta cake recipe

24-26cm diameter cake form fitted with baking paper

120g butter

100g sugar

1 egg

250g wheat flour or a little more if sticky (for a healthier option use 50% whole grain wheat flour and 50% plain white wheat flour)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 pinch of salt

400g of ricotta
4 tablespoons sour cream (20% fat)

3-4 tablespoons of sugar

2 eggs

0.4l or 4 big one-palm fulls of (wild) blueberries (If you use frozen ones - totally fine too - mix the berries with 1 tablespoon of potato or corn starch to keep them separate)

50-100g of almond flakes

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Mix the butter with sugar using a mixer, add the egg and mix again. Add the flour and before mixing with the butter-egg slightly mix the dry flour with salt and baking powder. Mix all into a dough. Form it into a ball with your hands. If the dough is too sticky pat some flour on the dough. Cover the dough with the plastic foil and leave to settle in the fridge for ca 30 min.

The dough is quite soft and lets itself to be spread on the bottom of the form. Pre-cook the dough for 10 minutes until the dough seems cooked and not raw soft sticky any more.

Mix the ricotta with sour cream and sugar. Taste before adding the egg (salmonella risk!) and then mix in the eggs.

Set the oven to 190 degrees C.

Put 2/3 of your blueberries on the pre-cooked dough, then the ricotta mix, more blueberries on the ricotta mix and the almond flakes on the blueberries.

Bake in oven for 35-45 minutes. The almond flakes should take a slight brown colour and check the cake with a match (ricotta should not stick to the match).

Let the cake cool down before serving.

Cool blueberry and banana smoothie, even better with icecream

Blueberry-banana smoothie

In a blender mix per person

a handful of blueberries,

1/2  banana,

some apple juice,

ice cubes into a smoothie.

If you want to give yourself or your friends a special treat add some ice cream as well. (Thanks for treating me=))

Mix well until the ice cubes have been crushed and the drink takes a nice thick consistency.

Vegetable Soup of Love or Hate, the Estonian “piima-aedvilja supp”

There are some foods or ingredients that one can either love, adore even, or hate, such as marmite, liquorice, coriander/cilantro,…, you know the kinds. The end of June, but mostly July is the time when families in Estonia either unite in praise or split at one summer soup. This is the time when the young vegetables strive in their adolescence. The fresh adult vegetables in August or September make a good soup too, but the very best is the “sweet sixteen” in the middle of the northern summer. This July I had the opportunity to once again sing the ode to this very special soup with my family. Fortunately all of us belong to the adorer group. I have friends who hate it. If you belong to the lucky ones with a functional hobby garden and can add the picking of the vegetables yourself to the cooking process, congratulations! In our family this soup is usually cooked in a relatively big pot and all of it gets eaten in one meal by the people around the table. This usually means more than one already generous helping...

Ingredients:

A bunch of young carrots

A bowl of new peas

A good palm full of new potatoes

A medium new cabbage or cauliflower or broccoli

Water to cook the vegetables in

0.5 -1 l of milk

Salt

Chopped dill and/or spring onion

Cut the carrots and potatoes into small bite size cubes and cook in the boiling salted water for 5-10 minutes, add the chopped bite size cabbage, cauliflower or broccoli and peas and cook until everything is soft but still with a bit of bite left. Assess the quantity of the liquid you wish to have in the soup. The final liquid should be roughly half water, half milk. If there is already too much water in the pot, take some out before adding the milk. Bring the soup to boil. Taste for salt. Finally add the chopped dill and/or onion greens. Serve immediately.

Estonian vegetable soup / piima-köögiviljasupp

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.

Carrot Pie with Chunky Parmesan

It is weekend and more time again for kitchen experiments. I feel I need something without meat or even fish. The whole week I have wanted something in the lines of a cake, a pie or something else baked but have resisted the temptation. A veggi pie today perhaps? So I hit the market.

It is June and the counters at the Farmers Market have made space for piles of orange fresh new carrots. These thin sweet roots are “knackig” (Ger.), crisp and juicy and best enjoyed raw. Somehow I suspect that the bigger thicker carrots further away that are not sold in a bunch and don’t have the green leaves but are equally bright orange, hard and clean of soil are from the last harvest. I am really embarrassed that I am doubting this…I should know this. My logic of the agricultural calendar says they must be from last year’s harvest but as a consumer it can be confusing as they look the same all year round. Old or new crop today is carrot time.

I’ve grown up with carrots. Carrots grow in the northern latitudes and are a common vegetable, besides potatoes of course, in Estonia. My Mom used to make carrot pies and my aunt, who had a real stove with an oven that was heated by wood, used to make small carrot pies that were juicy soft and looked like small shiny golden brown pouches. We call them pies, picture them as empanadas filled with carrot and egg and sometimes some bacon.

I buy my carrots, Italian flat parsley – onions I have at home – for the pie and some strawberries for dessert. I see some big free range eggs and get half a dozen. Somehow I’ve always thought that the eggs at the market are more expensive, but no. So I’m thinking that from now on, I will take my egg business to the market.

I made the pie dough with my sister’s recipe:

100g hard butter from the fridge

2.5dl or 250ml flour (white or wholegrain)

Salt (two pinch)

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon cold water

Chop the cold butter in the flour and salt mix into small pieces. A two pinch salt = a pinch between two fingers. Add the egg yolk and 1tbl spoon water. Mix all into a dough, wrap into the plastic foil and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Carrot pie filling:

500-600g carrots

3 medium-small onions

3-4 tablespoons olive oil

150g parmesan

3 eggs + egg white left-over from the dough

75ml milk

Thyme

Curcuma

Flat parsley, a good handful, chopped

Salt and pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees Celcius.

Clean and chop the onion rather finely but the fineness and equal piece size is not important at all. Peel the carrots and grate with the rough side. Very thinly grated carrot will lose the bite.

Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion slightly. Add the grated carrots to the onion and cook for about 5 minutes till carrots are softer. Add some salt and pepper, chopped thyme, curcuma (about a three pinch) and as last the parsley. Taste for salt as the carrots have a natural sweet taste.

Chop the parmesan into small chunks. In this recipe I replaced the usually grated cheese with chunks of Parmesan to give the filling a crunchier texture.

Mix the eggs, add the milk and some salt.

Roll the dough into a thin layer and fit into a 24-26 cm diameter baking form that is fitted with baking paper to avoid sticking to the bottom and sides.

Layer on the dough half the carrot mix, half the chopped parmesan, then carrots again and on top parmesan chunks. Pour the egg-milk mixture on the carrots.

Cook in the oven for 30 minutes or until the filling is cooked and the cheese on top is turning golden brown.

Mouth-watering Carrot Pie with Parmesan Cheese

Enjoy warm or cold.

I was showing the pie on the Skype and the mouths were salivating on both sides of the camera in Estonia and in Switzerland. :-)