It's a wild thing: hortapita or a Greek pie with wild greens

On a gorgeous Sunday in early May K. and I walked along the paths of my - sorry, our - childhood summers. Literally. And during that walk, we packed a small linen bag with young ground elder leaves. You see, ever since buying the book on the culinary use of wild herbs & weeds few months ago, I've been discovering new edible wild plants galore. Eating dandelion greens is almost conservative now. I've turned dandelion blossoms into dark and sticky syrup, thrown milk thistle leaves into my salads, and yes, eaten enough wild garlic leaves to provide me with vitamins for months, and yes, even made a pie out of ground-elder. I can see that not everybody gets excited about stuff like that - even my 87-year old grandmother was a bit suspicious of me collecting these weeds for human consumption. But luckily K. is very supportive, and doesn't mind being fed one 'interesting' dish after another.

Ground-elder (Aegopodium podagraria, also known as bishop's weed and goutweed in English, naat in Estonian) has a long history of being used for medicinal purposes, but it was also cultivated as a food crop in the Middle Ages, especially in Russia (and in Siberia in particular - the Russian Saint Seraphim of Sarov is said to have survived three years on eating mainly ground-elder while on self-exposed exile in a deep forest), Scandinavia, in Central Europe. Old Finno-Ugric peoples were keen consumers of ground elder, too. According to some sources, old traders wrapped their vegetables into ground elder leaves to keep them fresh looking and smelling - the leaves are high in essential oils and helped to keep the other produce fresh and aromatic, too. Young and tender ground-elder leaves can be added to soups, omelettes and stews. Blanched leaves can be mixed with cottage cheese and curd cheese. The leaves are high on Vitamin E, as well as vitamin C, they're rich in antioxidants, minerals, flavonoids and fibre. Dishes containing ground elder are easily digestible, and have cleansing properties - so they're good for that spring-time detoxing :)


A hortapita in Portaria, June 2006

I decided to make hortapita with my ground elder leaves. The wise Greek village women, you see, have been using wild greens - horta - for culinary purposes forever. I enjoyed hortapita in a shady cafe in Portaria (see the photo above) during my 2006 trip to Greece. Its slightly more elegant and modern version - spanakopita - is one of my favourite pies. Using my ground elder bounty for a Greek hortapita seemed like the most logical thing to do. The Greek villagers would use lots of other wild and bitter leaves for making hortopita (and other dishes too, obviously, like salads etc). Amaranth (vlita in Greek, one of the most popular horta's - rebashein), sow thistle (tsochos / piimaohakas), stinging nettles (tsouknithes / kõrvenõges), mallow (molocha / kassinaeris), dandelion, purslane ( glistrida or andrakles / portulak), wild carrots, as well as more familiar chicory, sorrel, mustard greens, rocket, endives and others. Ground elder makes as good a pie filling as any of the others mentioned - just a little bit bitter, gutsy and earthy.

The pastry recipe is from my friend Virve, who uses it to make a fabulously easy apple pie. It's the easiest pastry to work with and it tastes wonderful - it's easy, soft and pliable dough that procudes a flaky and wonderful pastry. The filling is inspired by my spanakopita recipe.

Hortapita or a Greek-style pie with wild greens
(Naadipirukas)
Serves 8




Pastry:
200 grams butter
200 grams sour cream
350 grams plain flour
a pinch of salt

Filling:
3 Tbsp oil
200 grams young ground-elder leaves
100 grams onion, finely chopped
200 grams cottage cheese or feta cheese
1 egg
1 Tbsp dried oregano
salt and coarsely ground black pepper

First, prepare the pastry. Melt the butter on a medium heat, take off the heat and cool a little. Mix in sour cream, flour and salt. Knead until the pastry comes together - it'll be very soft and pliable, like plastiline. Wrap into cling film and put into the fridge for up to 30 minutes (leave it for much longer, and you'll have hard time rolling it!)
Meanwhile, prepare the filling. Wash the wild greens, dry thoroughly. Heat a non-stick frying pan and 'cook' the leaves until they 'wilt'. Then quickly rinse them under cold running water to stop them from cooking further. Press until dry, and chop the cooked leaves coarsely.
Heat the non-stick frying pan again, this time with oil on it. Add the onion and cook on a low heat for about 10 minutes, until onion starts to soften. Take off the heat.
Now add the other ingredients, mix thoroughly.
Roll the relaxed dough to a large rectangle about 4-5 mm thick, cut into 2 more or less equally sized rectangles. Place the smaller one on a medium-sized oven tray, spread the filling on top, and cover with the larger dough sheet. Pinch the edges firmly together, pierce with a fork couple of times and brush with whisked egg.
Bake at 200C for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown. Cool a little and cut into squares.

A vibrant cranberry juice; a vacation alert

Isn't it pretty? A refreshing cranberry drink, made from the cranberries we picked in October and kept in the freezer until now. Just cranberries (heated, pureed, strained), lots of boiled water and a spoonful of sugar.

I'm off to London for a ten days later today, so apologies if my blogging will be a bit erratic over the next week. I'm spending another delicious weekend with Johanna, will have a drink with London-based foodbloggers again, will be lunching here, and shopping there. It's my first time in the UK since moving back home, and although I won't be able to visit Scotland this time, I'm really excited.

Stay tuned!

Dandelion Leaves, All Dressed Up (võilillelehesalat)

Remember my New Year's Resolutions? Well, one of the resolutions was to make rullepølse or the Danish cooked rolled pork belly. And I'm happy to tell you that as of Easter Sunday this can be ticked off, too. You can see a glimpse of the rullepølse below, and I'll blog about it soon. Meanwhile, let me tell you a little about what I served it with. As I used a rather fatty piece of pork to make my first ever rullepølse, I needed something sharp to cut through the grease :-)

My solution? A sharp salad of dandelion leaves.

On Saturday we did the annual egg-swapping/seeing-the-relatives trip. We paid a visit to K's mum, my Granny No 1 and my Granny No 2, followed by a joyous lunch at my parents' house together with my sister, nephews and my favourite auntie. At each place, we 1) ate eggs; 2) exchanged eggs; and 3) jarped some eggs. For example, Granny No 1 got one of my eggs, whereas I got one in return (egg number 6 on this post). It was also at the said grandmother's place that I picked up a small bunch of young dandelion leaves. Definitely worth trying - their taste is not so dissimilar to wild rocket leaves, and cost nothing at all..

Dandelion leaves (Taraxacum), as my newly acquired Estonian book on the use of wild garden plants in the kitchen said, are 3-4 times more nutritious than salad leaves. The ancient Greeks believed that dandelion aided digestion, stimulated appetite and increased sexual potency, and worked as a diuretic and as a tonic, among many other properties. The leaves are high on protein (2.4%), carbohydrates (7-8%) and vitamins C (30-70mg%) and E (7-8mg%) and betacarotene (7-8mg%). The fat content is insignificant (0.5-0.6%). Dandelion is cultivated in many countries, notably in France (Chez Pim wrote about pissenlit only recently), Spain and Portugal, but here in Estonia it is definitely considered a weed. A beautiful one, both when in bloom and after it (as on the above photo taken by K. last summer), but definitely a bothersome weed that usually ends up in the compost pile rather than on a plate.

The salad below was called 'dandelion salad, Italian style' in the book.

Dandelion Leaves, all dressed up
(Võilillelehesalat)
Serves 4
Adapted from Umbrohud tüliks ja tuluks, by Toivo Niiberg & Enn Lauringson (Maalehe Raamat, 2007)



young dandelion leaves*, washed and roughly chopped
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
a generous squeeze of lemon juice
some fresh tarragon leaves
Maldon sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

Mix everything and serve. Goes well with something greasy.

* Soaking dandelion leaves in cold water for 30 minutes will get rid off the harshness of the leaves.

WHB: This is also my entry to the Weekend Herb Blogging, this time hosted by Haalo from Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once.

Fresh maple sap and pretty apples

No, it's not a picture of a glass of water and two random apples.

My mum's little brother Ants popped by on Tuesday night to discuss some business. I mention it here, because he brought us a large bag of perfect-looking apples from his farm in Paluküla (yep, the same place I go to look for honey-coloured cloudberries, tiny wild strawberries and enticing wild mushrooms). Some of the apples were promptly turned into tarte tatin, as we had some pastry left over after making red onion and feta tart, and we're still happily munching through the rest.

But even more exciting food gift was a large bottle of fresh maple sap my uncle had extracted from a maple tree in his farm. Although I tend to prefer birch sap over maple one, this was delicious and refreshing, and a sure reminder that spring has arrived. Just drink it instead of your usual glass of water or juice! In Estonian we indeed even call it 'vahtramahl' or 'maple juice'.

Note that it's not the same maple sap that is used for making maple syrup in Northern America. Only sugar maple (Acer saccharum) or black maple (Acer nigrum) produce suitably sweet sap for that purpose. The Estonian native maple tree is of the Norway maple (Acer platanoides) species, and although the sap is sweet (tastes like a mild sugar water we sometimes used to drink as kids), then it's not sweet enough for turning into a good-quality syrup.

Oops, I did it again: a sweet toffee apple cake with tart berries

There are at least three more apple cake recipes I want to share with you, which will bring the apple cake total on this blog to 6. Considering that I visit my parents every weekend and hardly ever manage to leave without yet another bag full of home-grown apples, I'll be baking apple cakes until ... well, until there's a new crop of apples next summer.

I might need to create a separate category for apple cakes on my blog recipe index:)

Anyway - here's another lovely apple cake. You can use shop-bought shortcrust pastry, or your favourite pate brisee recipe. The cake is filled with apples and cranberries and covered with a mixture of soft brown sugar, potato starch and butter, which melt into a delicious toffee-ish sauce. I've got a supply of cranberries in my freezer, picked by yours truly back in September alongside my latest mushroom gathering trip in September. If you haven't got any cranberries, then use lingonberries or just apples, although the tartness that the berries yield goes well with the toffee that miraculously appears on the cake.

Toffee apple cake with cranberries
(Karamelline õunakook jõhvikatega)
Serves 6


[In the oven, waiting to be baked. Click on the photo to enlarge.]

Pastry:
300 ml plain flour
100 grams cold butter
2 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp cold water

Filling:
3-4 large apples, sliced
a handful or two of small cranberries
100 ml soft dark brown sugar
1 Tbsp potato starch/potato flour
50 grams butter

Mix flour, sugar and butter in a bowl, and cut into small crumbs using a knife. Add the water and quickly bring together into a ball. Press the dough onto the bottom and sides of a cake tin, and put into fridge or freezer while you prepare the filling.
Wash, peel (unless you use home-grown apples) and core the apples, then cut into thick slices.
Mix soft brown sugar with potato starch.
Take the prepared cake crust out of the oven, cover with apple slices and scatter cranberries on top.
Sprinkle the sugar mixture on top and finally lie small slices of butter onto the cake filling (it's the mixture of melted butter and soft brown sugar that results in a toffee-ish sauce on the cake, so be generous with both).
Bake at 200C for 25-30 minutes, until the cake is lovely golden brown on top.
Sprinkle with icing sugar (optional) and serve.

Other apple cakes @ Nami-nami:
Grated apple cheesecake
Canadian apple cake
Simple apple traybake

UPDATE
22.1.2007: Gracianne of Un dimance a la Campagne tried this cake and liked it.
05.2.2007: Dagmar of A Cat in the Kitchen liked it too:)

Wild Mushroom Hunt: My mushroom bounty, vol 2

I enjoyed hunting for mushrooms so much in September, that I spent another three hours in a forest last Sunday looking for the last of season's wild mushrooms. We didn't get into the forest until 1pm, and for a moment I thought our trip will be fruitless (mushroomless?), as it was incredibly difficult to tell a mushroom amongst all those yellow and brown and pumpkin-coloured fallen leaves that thickly covered the ground. However, after some visual adjustment and careful and systematic observation, I began to see the mushrooms again (I lost the skill again after some 2,5 hours, but being a lazy urbanite, I eventually simply got tired and wanted to get back home. Or at least to my savoury muffins that were at the back of our car). Back in my new kitchen later that night, I brushed all the mushrooms clean, sorted them into categories (straight onto the frying pan / soak-cook-fry / soak-cook-pickle / soak-cook-brine). This is what K. and I had found:



Starting from the top left corner, clockwise (sorry for the slight redness of the colours): ugly milkcaps/Lactarius turpis/tõmmuriisikad (photo) ; various ceps/porcini/puravikud; Lactarius scrobiculatus/võiseened; the slightly greenish ones are saffron milk-caps/Lactarius deliciosus/kuuseriisikad - very delicious mushrooms that can be thrown straight onto your frying pan (photo); rufous milkcaps/Lactarius rufus/männiriisikad that must be blanched once or twice to rid them of their bitterness; wonderful (though rather unexpected this time of the year) chantarelles/Cantharellus cibarius/kukeseened; as well as three handsome Pied Bleu or Wood Blewits/Lepista nuda/lilla ebaheinik that I preserved in brine. And finally some light pink russulas/pilvikud (in the middle, next to that lonesome green russula on the left) that must be cooked in water before they can be fried or sauteed.

The yellow chantarelles and saffron milkcaps were each fried in butter and then used as a topping for simple bruschette.



The russula mushrooms were blanched twice and were used for mushroom sauce late last night (fry with some onions, top with cream, serve with mashed potatoes). The ugly milkcaps and Lactarius scrobiculatus mushrooms were first boiled twice, and then preserved in salty brine (after soaking, these can be used for sauces, quiche filling, salads), rufuous milkcaps were pickled in marinade (can be eaten as a snack or used for salads).

Again, I'm rather pleased with my bounty, and am looking forward to using all those mushrooms during the coming autumn and winter.

Oh, and did I mention the cranberries? I've got enough for at least 10 cakes now:)

My mushroom bounty

Click on the photo to enlarge.

Estonia seems to trigger the hunter-gatherer in me. In July I took pleasure in looking for wild strawberries and cloudberries. This time around I was fighting prickly fallen branches and annoying deer-flies, while trying to tell an edible mushroom from a non-edible or even poisonous one. This was harder than I thought. Although forageing for wild mushrooms was something I did often as a child, I've led a rather urban life for the last decade or so. So no wonder I greedily managed to gather a whole lot of non-edible brown roll-rim mushrooms (Paxillus involutus) in my basket, before I was told to discard them then and there. Ouch. Embarrassing. But then these fungi were probably too plentiful and suspiciously pretty and, well, simply too good to be true.

The summer in Estonia was very hot and very dry, seriously affecting the wild mushroom harvest this year. Althought the last few weeks have seen some rain, we weren't too optimistic when we drove to K.'s secret forest last Sunday. However, after just a few hours in the forest, I had nevertheless amassed a rather respectable pile of mushrooms. As you can see on the top picture, I collected some grogers (Lactarius deterrimus), woolly milk caps (Lactarius torminosus), ugly milk-caps (Lactarius turpis), tiny puffballs (Lycoperdon perlatum), orange-capped boletes (Leccinum aurantiacum), gypsy mushrooms (Rozites caperata), russula mushrooms, and many more. I, for certain, was pleased with my beautiful and colourful bounty.

Here's a picture of me picking up another rufuous milkcap (Lactarius rufus) - a delicious mushroom that is poisonous when eaten raw, edible when par-boiled couple of times and turned into a sauce, and very delicious when pickled. If you click on the picture to enlarge, you can try to see how many other mushrooms can you spot.

The gypsy mushrooms were simply fried in butter, seasoned with basil and eaten for lunch with mashed potatoes straight after getting home - such a fragrant mushroom, with a beautiful flavour and slightly meaty texture. The various boletes and puffballs were pan-fried, mixed with some cream cheese and garlic and used as a topping for a earthy and rustic mushroom quiche on the following day (I used the same rye flour crust that I use for salmon and cream cheese canapés). And the milkcaps and russulas were par-boiled and pickled, to be consumed as condiment and garnish during winter (like in this salad cocktail).

I'll be back in that very forest for some more mushrooms and cranberries next month. Cannot wait!

Disclaimer: All photos here were taken by my personal photographer, K. His pictures will be featuring regularly on my blog from now onwards, and copyright is all mine;)

Picking cloudberries in Estonia

After forageing for wild strawberries in Paluküla, we headed into the bog forest to look for cloudberries. Cloudberries are definitely one of my favourite berries - another berry strongly reminiscent of my childhood, and last August I breakfasted on delicious cloudberry & cream cheese yogurts, and I regularly stock up on cloudberry jam at my local IKEA store. Even if you're unfamiliar with the berry, you have probably heard of it. Tessa Kiros, the queen of nostalgic and sultry cookbooks, has a beautiful book called Falling Cloudberries - though I was somewhat puzzled by her choice of title - the cover image depicts cranberry sorbet and there isn't a single cloudberry recipe inside, just a brief mention on p. 69.

Cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus) is a member of the rose family. It is also known as baked-apple berry, especially in Canada, although I'm not sure about this name - I can't see the similarity between baked apple - another great yogurt flavour! - and cloudberries; it is one of the species of salmonberries (probably called so for its colour and not for its taste!). They're related to raspberries, but taste anything but, being much more exquisite in flavour, with a slight hint of honey. Cloudberries grow on mossy and boggy land in the cold northern climates of Scandinavia (apparently very abundant in the bogs of Lapland, though I cannot confirm this myself. Yet.), Finland (where it even decorates the back of the 2 EURO coin), Estonia and other Baltic countries, Siberia and Canada, as well as near the Arctic Circle. As there is just one berry per plant and the growing area is very limited, they are rather costly. Certainly, cloudberry jam in IKEA costs thrice as much as other jams! Indeed, cloudberries are so costly that they can trigger wars among the usually calm Scandinavians: cloudberries are
"so valued in northern Scandinavia where Finland, Sweden, and Norway meet; the cloudberry has long been the cause of "cloudberry wars". These otherwise peace-loving countries have been known to become quite territorial when it comes time to harvest this berry, causing the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs to develop a special section just for cloudberry diplomacy."
(Alan Davidson. 1999. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press)



Just like looking for wild strawberries requires a good and attentive eye, forageing for cloudberries needs patience and a sharp vision. Here's what you do. You arrive at your secret cloudberry spot and look around. Carefully. Look at the various green-yellow bumps of grass on the ground, trying to spot a golden-pink berry amongst the dark leaves. Voilà! After spotting a berry, you go, bend your knees and pick it up, twisting the berry off its stalk. Stand up. Repeat. Very good exercise, both for the body and the mind!

As it's been a particularly dry and hot summer in Estonia this year, with temperatures reaching mid 30s Celsius, the bog was rather dry. This wasn't all bad, as it meant I could look for cloudberries without getting my toes wet. But it also meant that cloudberries were rare, and the ones that did exist, tended to be on the small side.

This was one of the few cloudberries in the bog that was ready for eating then and there. A ripe cloudberry is orange-yellow in colour, and very juicy. Pop these straight into your mouth.

This is another close-up of the cloudberry. Pretty, isn't it? This one is slightly underripe though (hence the reddish hue). You would have to leave it at room temperature for a few days to ripen. However, it is in the perfect stage for jam-making.

Again, between three of us we managed to collect a small glass of cloudberries, so no jam-making followed. Instead, we ate the ripe ones then and there, and left the rest on the kitchen table to ripen for a few days.

I had couple of my girlfriends over for a drink and some nibbles on my new balcony at my parents' house few days before my trip to the strawberry fields and cloudberry bogs. One of the canapes I served was inspired by this recipe from the Swedish Arla website. Very Nordic, slightly unusual and oh-so-tasty. Even the only man in the company (Siim Oskar, aged 10 months) had a few.

Rye bread canapés with blue cheese and cloudberry jam
(Sinihallitusjuustu-murakaamps)



cloudberry jam (I used Meie Mari murakamoos, but IKEA sells a decent one)
blue cheese (I used Dolcelatte)
crisp bread or rye bread

Cut the rye bread into small squares (4x4 cm), or break into similarly-sized pieces, if using crisp bread.
Spread with blue cheese and top with a small spoonful of cloudberry jam.
Garnish with small basil leaves or blue borage flowers (above).

A perfect holiday & a nostalgic hunt for wild strawberries

Once again, I'm back in Edinburgh. I had a lovely weekend in Stockholm - starting with a very sweet surprise, and then spent some wonderful days back home in Estonia in the company of my family and friends. The only downside is that it will be at least another six weeks before I'll go to Estonia again!

I will tell you all about the delicious wedding lunch in Stockholm (and that unexpected surprise from a fellow food blogger) soon, as well as about my first dinner at Stenhus (a restaurant based in the cellar of a 13th century building; voted the Best Gourmet Restaurant in Estonia last year), some lovely dishes that were lovingly prepared for me, as well as about my hunt for cloudberries in Estonian bogs. But I start with some pictures from Paluküla, a sleepy village in Rapla parish in Estonia. My mum was born and raised in Paluküla, and I mentioned that place when sharing my childhood food memories with you almost a year ago. As kids, we (me and my numerous cousins) used to spend several weeks in Paluküla each summer with my grandparents, but I hadn't been back for almost a decade for various reasons (the main one being that the house that I remember from my childhood sadly burned down in early 1990s).

When meeting K. for a glass (or maybe two) of mulled wine in Kehrwieder café around Christmas last year, it emerged that his childhood summers were spent in a nearby village just 5 kilometres from Paluküla, in a farmhouse aquired by his great-grandparents. Quite a coincidence, eh:) In any case, I spent last weekend near Paluküla, re-visiting my old haunts and relatives, and picking wild strawberries in Paluküla once again. Paluküla is a rather tranquil place, yet many Estonians have heard of the place. It is the location of Paluküla Hiiemägi, or the Sacred Hill of Paluküla that is considered a sanctuary place for Estonian pagan/nature believers. The hill is 106 metres from sea level at its highest - not much on a global scale, I know, but it's the highest point of north-west Estonia:) And it is definitely noticeable on the photo:



Picking wild strawberries is a job demanding full attention - as you can see from the picture here. Strawberries are hidden under grass and leaves, so one needs to look hard for them. Yet, the berries are definitely worth it - popping some wild strawberries into your mouth results in the one of the loveliest and sweetest summery taste sensation imaginable!
(My bright red top is to make sure I won't get lost in my childhood forests and to make it more difficult for mosquitos, horse-flies and other annoying biting insects to reach my skin (it almost worked!), though I couldn't avoid being stung by stinging nettles over and over again!)

Between three of us we ended up with almost a litre of wild strawberries, which wasn't bad at all, considering that it had been scorchingly hot and dry in Estonia for weeks, and many of the wild strawberries were, well, dried up.. As for eating, well, then the best way to enjoy wild strawberries on a Sunday morning is obviously simply sprinkled with sugar on some crepe-style pancakes made with super-organic and fresh eggs from the farm across the road:



I also took a small glass of wild strawberries - metsmaasikad - to my mum and one of her sisters. Apparently they smelled exactly like strawberries from their childhood - literally:) - and were much appreciated. It is true - though you can buy wild strawberries from the market, they do taste so much nicer when picked by yourself in a good company in a place that used to play such an important role in your past..

I also managed to find some cloudberries on that very day in a nearby bog, but that is another story:)