SHF#25, for adults only: dark chocolate & matcha truffles

Indeed. Although most kids I've met love chocolate and anything with chocolate, then I doubt if they'd like these. The bitterness of powdered matcha tea would probably be too 'adult' for their tender tastebuds. But then, these are so lovely that I'm not sure I'd want to share them with any kids in the first place:)

These decadently dark and devilishly bitter truffles are my contribution for the latest edition of Sugar High Friday, hosted by wonderful Johanna of the Passionate Cook. She's chosen truffles as a theme. I wanted to use some of the matcha powder my dear Edinburgh friend Ryoko had given me, and inspired by the Mont Fuji cake I enjoyed in Paris in May, I decided to make dark chocolate and matcha ganache truffles, rolled in matcha powder. When you put one of those truffles into your mouth, then first the somewhat bitter, powdery matcha melts onto your tongue, giving way to a sweet and creamy chocolate. Deliciously adult delight indeed.

Dark chocolate & matcha truffles
(Matcha-trühvlid)
Adapted from Epicurious



100 ml double cream (I used 38%)
1 Tbsp good-quality butter (slightly salted is fine), chopped
2 tsp matcha powder, plus a lot more for rolling the truffles
100 grams dark chocolate (I used 72% chocolate from the Estonian company, Kalev)

First make the ganache. Heat the cream and butter until almost boiling. Take a spoonful or two of the mixture and stir into the matcha powder. Return this green paste into the hot cream, whisking vigorously, until combined. Remove from the heat.
Add chopped chocolate, and stir until it melts.
Cover and leave to cool in the fridge for 2-3 hours.
Take teaspoonfuls of the set ganache and form into round-ish shapes. Leave to cool in the fridge again for an hour.
Roll in matcha powder, place into small paper cups and keep in a cool place until serving.

These truffles keep up to a week, if kept in the fridge.

UPDATE 29.11.2006: Here is Johanna's round-up - check out all the mouthwatering truffles!

SHF#24: Little Bites of Delight

Petit four. A petit four is a small fancy cake, biscuit, or sweet - such as a piece of marzipan or a crystallized or chocolate covered fruit - typically severed nowadays with coffee at the end of a meal. The term is French in origin. It means literally 'small oven', and may have come from the practice of cooking tiny cakes and biscuits a petit four, that is in low oven, at low temperature'. It was adopted into English in the late nineteenth century.
An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 252)

The latest round of Sugar High Friday is hosted by Jeanne and she wanted us to make Little Bites of Delight. To be really honest, tiny fiddly sweet thingies aren't really my cup of tea. Don't get me wrong - I love eating them, I do. But to prepare them seems like too much fuss for too little. I'd rather bake a cake a la Nigella with oranges, cherries or cranberries or bake my apple cake. K, on the other hand, enjoys preparing fiddly food. He even made me look up a book that I hadn't looked at since I inherited it from a colleague some eight years ago (aitäh, Ave!). Whereas I hadn't bookmarked a single recipe in "The Book of Chocolates and Petit Fours" by Beverley Sutherland Smith (HP Books, 1986) , K. got all excited, like a small kid in a candy store, listing a recipe after recipe to try.



In any case we made four different little bites of delight last night. I had for a long time wanted to make Pierre Herme's chocolate dipped mint leaves that I've mentioned here. Now was my chance, but sadly I couldn't find fresh mint leaves in the supermarket. However, they did stock fresh lemon balm, a great favourite of mine. So I used that instead, resulting in a lovely alternative to after dinner mints - crisp and light and fragrant.

K. contributed the other three petit fours: candied orange peel dipped in dark chocolate, chocolate disks infused with chilli syrup and covered with candied red chillies, and finally some delightfully tiny cranberry and almond macarons.

Mmmm, I'm off to try some of those little bites of delight now. Again..

PS I've previously written about spicy sugared almonds, which would also make perfectly nice little bites of delight, especially as we're getting closer to the mulled wine season..

UPDATE 30.10.2006: Here's Jeanne's roundup!

Five Things to Eat Before You Die

Melissa of the wonderful The Traveler's Lunchbox recently called all foodbloggers to share their five things to eat before you die. I was tagged first by Jeanne of the Cook Sister and then by Johanna of The Passionate Chef (thank you, both), but as I was busy travelling to Belgium and Estonia in August and early September, I didn't get around to it until now. Apologies for the delay.

There are many food-related things I'd like to tick off before I die, many of them listed in Melissa's ever-increasing list (1400 responses so far!). I do expect to have a loooooooong time to do that. Meanwhile, I'll stick to what I know. Here's my list of suggestions:

Go and pick wild berries - either cloudberries (left), cranberries, wild blueberries, lingonberries, wild strawberries or anything you wouldn't easily find in your local supermarket or grocery store and grow in your area. There is something extremely liberating and exciting about picking tasty and luscious berries out in the wild and popping them into your mouth. Believe me, a cultivated blueberry is an immensely poor representative of the real thing.

The same goes for wild mushrooms. Go and forage your own, and enjoy the huge variety of flavours, textures, and looks. Although the 'exotic' enoki, shiitake and shimeji mushrooms available in upmarket grocery stores are more flavoursome and interesting than your average cultivated white or chestnut mushroom, there are still so many mushrooms worth discovering. Have you ever tried milkcaps, various ceps, grogers, puffballs, russulas? Yellow chantarelles? Black trumpet chantarelles? Cutely-named blueish pied bleu mushrooms? They're all worthy of your attention, believe me. Just make sure you handle them appropriately.

Greece - and its people - have been good to me, so I cannot not recommend a bowl of thick and creamy Greek yoghurt with fresh fruit and honey, and a cup of strong frappe. Preferably with a view of the Aegean sea.

Having lived in Scotland for the last seven years, I must promote their infamous national dish of haggis, neeps & tatties. If you use good-quality haggis (I'm partial to MacSween of Edinburgh), you're guaranteed to like it. If you're a bit squeemish, then at least give their vegetarian version a go. Oh, and obviously follow that with a wee dram of whisky.

And last, but not least, you must promise me that you try some delicious Estonian sourdough rye bread one day. It's the best rye bread out there. Take my word for it.

Food gifts from all over the world

I've been one lucky girl recently, as I've been a recipient of various culinary gifts from foodbloggers across the world. Here you are:

Food Gift Number One: from Stevi of Bread & Butter (Athens, Greece)

I met up with Stevi upon returning from the wedding on Santorini to Athens back in June. She was wonderful - as my ferry from Santorini was delayed (hmm? Delayed? In Greece?), I didn't arrive at her place until after 2am. Despite this ungodly hour, she welcomed me at her home with some delicious food served on the balcony and gave me this delightful goodie bag just before I rushed off to the airport next morning:



* some chewing gum with natural Chios Mastic from Sarantis Lifedrops company
* a packet of barley rusks, so I can make my own dakos salad
* a packet of poppy seed fettucini from Mylelia Water Mill , a 250-year old water mill on the Greek island of Lesvos. This pasta is made in small quantities from fresh durum wheat flour and is air-dried the traditional way on the island.
* a jar of home-made orange marmalade (not on the picture)

Efharisto, Stevi!

Food Gift Number Two: from Dagmar of A Cat in the Kitchen (Stockholm, Sweden)

I flew RyanAir from Glasgow Prestwick to Stockholm Skavsta to attend my friend Annika's wedding there in early July. Anyone familiar with this particular no-frills airline knows that their airports are located in the middle of nowhere (as I already realised when flying to a dinner party in Germany in October 2005) . Which means that when I finally arrived at my hotel just before midnight (Nordic Sea Hotel, the home for Absolute Icebar, which I sadly didn't manage to visit this time) , I was rather exhausted and sleepy. Rather hungry as well. Imagine my surprise and confusion then when the receptionist suddenly told me that there is a packet waiting for me and rushed off to his office behind the counter, leaving me totally baffled. A packet? For me? From whom? What? I wasn't expecting a packet. Yet, he brought me a beautiful paper bag filled with various goodies and my name written on it. This wondrous surprise packet turned out to be from Dagmar! I ate the chocolates as soon as I got into my room, and hid the rest of the goodies at home in Estonia. I will be enjoying them when I go back in early September - and I cannot wait!



* A bottle of Polish raspberry syrop
* handbaked crispbread
* some chocolate
* a can of preserved chantarelles
* a glass of dried mushrooms picked and dried by Dagmar's mom and dad
* a jar of hot mustard with whisky and saffron
* various Swedish chocolates that I finished then and there before collapsing on my hotel bed

Tack så mycket, Dagmar!

Also - note that when I finally made it to Stockholm and was looking forward to meeting up with the three bloggers writing in English based there, then Anne was in London, Kristina in Estonia and Dagmar on the Swedish islands. Did somebody warn them that I was coming and they decided to flee??? Oh well, better luck next time...

Food Gift Number Three: from Eden over at eGullet (Seattle, WA, USA)

This chocolate-filled parcel was waiting for me when I got back from my latest trip to Estonia.



* Liberty Orchards Aplets & Cotlets: Apple and Apricot Confections with Crunchy Walnuts - these reminded me of Turkish Delight and were indeed, rather delightful
* Fran's Chocolates, Ltd Smoked Salt Caramels: Soft butter caramels sprinkled with pure sea salt smoked over Welsh oak, handmade with 40% deep milk chocolate
* Fran's Coconut Gold Bar. I'm not a great fan of coconut bars - I'd only choose a Bounty from a sweet counter if NOTHING else is available and even Raffaellos leave me rather cold - but this "perfect combination of creamy white chocolate ganache, coconut, whole toasted almonds and Fran's custom blend of dark chocolate" was lovely.
* Chukar Cherry Company, Inc. Milk Chocolate Bing Cherry: premium dried Bing Cherries dipped in savoury milk chocolate with a topcoat of rich, burgundy colored chocolate - bliss!

All of them were nice, though I was especially blown away by those smoked salt caramels - so soft and chewy and flavoursome. I'm already looking forward to my next encounter with these divine creatues, thou sadly I don't know when that would be just yet. And note that I received all this in return for a bar of kama 'chocolate' and white chocolate with blueberry pieces, both from the Estonian company 'Kalev'. Lucky me! Anyone else out there keen to try these Estonian sweets?

Thanks again, Eden!!!

Bakewell Pudding & falling in love with Mr Darcy

Update 5.7.2006: Read Andrew's write-up of Blog Save Our Tart.

The Independent published an article on the last day of May about Britain's food under threat. Apparently Cromer crabs from East Anglia, Bakewell tart from Derbyshire, Kentish apples from South of England, Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs from Gloucestershire, Crimbsy cod from Humberside, blackcurrants from Herefordshire and Worcestershire, Scottish wild salmon from Scotland, Stilton from the Midlands, eels from Somerset and Norfolk black turkeys from East Anglia are all on the verge of duying out and slowly disappearing from the British tables. To rectify the situation, Andrew of Spittoon Extra decided to save the Bakewell tart by organising a one-off blog event, and this is my humble contribution.

Although I had heard of Bakewell tart and seen small cherry-topped versions at my local supermarket, I hadn't yet tried one during my seven years in Britain. Just days after the newspaper article, an opportunity to try one arrived. Together with three Estonian girls, I was checking out various Edinburgh establishment for an important visitor from our homeland (more about it next week), and we ended up at The Scotsman Hotel bar , where I had my first ever slice - and very good one at that - of Bakewell tart. The tart (above) was topped with sliced almonds and served with ice cream, vanilla custard and some fresh blueberries.

My recipe is adapted from Jane Grigson's book English Food. There is some confusion about the name - is it Blackwell tart of Blackwell pudding?; filling - should one use raspberry jam or strawberry jam?; and about the use of almonds in and on top of the cake. Derbyshire pastry makers insist on calling it Bakewell pudding; Jane Grigson uses raspberry jam; although the original Bakewell pudding had no almonds, most popular versions include some on the topping.

Oh, and Mr Darcy? Well, Jane Grigson kindly points out that in Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet (alias Emma Thompson) and her uncle and aunt had driven over from Bakewell on a way to Pemberley in Derbyshire, where Mr Darcy's (alias Colin Firth's) estate was situated. Upon reaching a top of the hill, she was very impressed with the view of Pemberley House across the valley. 'Elizabeth was delighted' and soon afterwards realised how much she loved Mr Darcy. Who knows, maybe it was Bakewell pudding and not the view that triggered that romantic realisation?

Bakewell Pudding
(Bakewelli kook)
The filling from Jane Grigson's English Food (quantities slightly reduced)
Serves 6-8



Sweet shortcrust pastry:
200 grams plain flour
100 grams butter
2 Tbsp caster sugar
4 Tbsp cold water

Filling:
good quality raspberry jam - I used Waitrose Organic soft set Raspberry Conserve

Topping:
100 grams butter, melted
3 large eggs
100 grams caster sugar
100 grams ground almonds

Roll out the pastry and line a 20 cm tart tin*. Pre-bake at 200˚C for about 15 minutes, until the pastry is slightly golden.
Spread raspberry jam over the base.
Beat eggs and sugar until you have a pale and fluffy thick cream. Pour in the cooled melted butter, stirring slowly. Fold in the ground almonds, pour into the tart tin.
Bake at 200-220˚C for about 30 minutes, until the filling is golden and looks set.

I served mine with some icing sugar, Greek yogurt and fresh raspberries. I liked the cake (as did my two Guinea pigs), though next time I might try with a layer of fresh raspberries and reduce the amount of butter in the frangipane topping.

* The traditional Bakewell tins are oval with sloping sides and about 7 cm deep.

Going OTT with Ginger (SHF#19): chocolate & ginger tartlets

The latest edition of Sugar High Friday is hosted by Toronto-based blogger Ruth of Once Upon A Feast. It's been a while since I took part at SHF, but this time I couldn't resist because of the theme: ginger. You see, couple of months ago I discovered dark chocolate coated candied ginger from the Edinburgh flagship department store, Jenners. Granted, I had seen them there and elsewhere before, but somehow the combination didn't really appeal to me. I love chocolate (but prefer milk chocolate to dark for nibbling) and I do like my ginger - in savoury dishes, that is. Yet, I couldn't really see how ginger pieces in dark chocolate could be nice. Until I tried them, that is. They are seriously addictive - the warm heat of the candied ginger balances the sweet bitterness of dark chocolate perfectly. The burst of flavours exploding on your tongue is so intense that it lingers there for a while, making you eat less chocolate in the first place.

The recipe below is a very slight modification of Clotilde's. I wanted to make these tartlets even more gingery by using the Organic Ginger chocolate from Green & Black - hence the OTT in the title of this post. I also used demerara sugar in the pastry, as this results in somewhat crunchier cases and I find that the slight caramel flavour of demerara complements ginger well. As Clotilde says, chocolate and ginger are a match made in heaven - and as an additional benefit, they are both acknowledged aphrodisiacs. What's not to like!?

Chocolate and Ginger Tartlets
(Ingveri-šokolaadikoogikesed)
Based on Clotilde's recipe for Tartelettes au Chocolat et Gingembre Confit
Yields 6



Shortcrust pastry:
50 grams salted butter, cubed
50 grams demerara sugar
100 grams plain flour, sifted
2-3 Tbsp of cold water

Ginger chocolate ganache filling:
150 ml double cream
100 grams Green&Black's bittersweet dark chocolate with crystallised ginger pieces (or equivalent)
50 grams butter, room temperature, diced
crystallised ginger pieces to decorate (I used Buderim Ginger Nibbles, available in the UK from Lakeland Ltd)

Mix sugar and flour in a bowl, add cold butter cubes and mix with a knife (and then pinching with your fingertips) until you have fine crumbs. Add couple of spoonfuls (one by one, as you may need less) of cold water to bring the dough together with your hands.
Roll out the dough thinly on a slightly floured worktop, then cut into 6 discs and use these to line 6 non-stick individual tartlet tins (about 8-10 cm in diametre). Put the lined pastry cases into a freezer for 20 minutes or so (this reduces the shrinkage during baking). Prick the bases with a fork and bake in the middle of 180-200C oven until golden brown.
Let them cool in the tins for about 15 minutes, then tap gently out of the tin and leave to cool on a metal rack (click on the photo on the right).

Now prepare the chocolate ganache. Break the chocolate into small pieces, cut the butter into cubes. Heat the double cream in a small saucepan until quiet simmer on a very low heat. Add chocolate and butter and stir gently (still on a very low heat!) until combined. Remove from the heat and let it cool slightly.

Spoon the ganache into cooled pastry cases*, decorate with a piece (or couple) of candied ginger and leave to cool in a cool place. If you are patient or organised These are even better on the following day, as the ginger flavour has infused better and the tiny candied ginger pieces in chocolate have regained their bite.

* If you have any ganache left over, then pour into small shot glasses and decorate with candied ginger for a simple, yet luscious, dessert.

Ruth's round-up of all the entries is available here.

UPDATE: Barrett has included this post in this week's Too Many Chefs Posts of the Week. This is the second time Barrett has done this - my Simple tart with tomatoes, courgettes and Roquefort was also also featured back in September 2005. Thank you;)

MEME: Around The World

I've been tagged by Finnish Anna and Swedish Anne for the latest meme. As I failed to participate in quite a few memes I was tagged for in early January, I better participate this time!

1. Please list three recipes you have recently bookmarked from food blogs to try:

This is a difficult one, as there are many delicious recipes that keep popping up all the time. I've bookmarked pretty much everything from Delicious Days, for example:) However, here are some of my recent finds:

This raspberry and pistachio cake @ Trembom looks utterly tempting.

These roasted chickpeas @ Anne's Food sound like a perfect party nibble.

For my next healthy & tasty meal, I'll be making roasted carrots & mushrooms @ Kalyn's Kitchen - I think they both look and sound yummy!

2. A food blog in your vicinity:

Melissa @ The Traveler's Lunchbox lives a walking distance from me, and before we both started blogging, we even lived in the same university halls of residence! That's pretty close, isn't it:)

Should I blog back home in Estonia, it would be a tie between the following two English-language blogs in Helsinki: Finnish siblings Antti & Anna @ Doughboy and American expat Elaine @ Axis of Ævil - both just a stone-throw or 20-minute flight/90-minute hydrojet trip/4-hour cruise trip away.

3. A food blog located far from you:

My geography is not very good, but I think Niki @ Esurientes down in Australia and J @ Kuidaore in Singapore are the two furthest foodblogs that I read regularly.

4. A foodblog (or several) you have discovered recently (and where did you find it?)

I'm pretty new to the wonderful La Tartine Gourmande - I think I found her through a comment left on my blog, but then I can't be sure. I occasionally check the blogrolls of blogs I like to see if they've spotted anything new & interesting, or use Technorati to see if someone has linked to me. That is how I came across my latest great find: Bread and Butter. Chloe lives in Athens, and blogs in English. She used to study and live in Edinburgh for a while, and writes about fantastic Greek dishes, so I was very pleased to come across her blog.

5. Any people or bloggers you want to tag with this meme?

I met couple of London-based foodbloggers in London recently, and it would be interesting to read their responses (Johanna, Jenni, Jeanne, Christina, Andrew). Plus anyone else (that's Bea, Melissa, Chloe, Kalyn, Valentina & Niki) mentioned in this post, of course!

Paper Chef #15: Limes, beetroot and pears?

The latest edition of Paper Chef - # 15 to be precise - is hosted by MagicTofu and the required ingredients are limes, beetroots, pears and aphrodisiac of your choice. My first beetrooty idea is either bortsch (no, not the noodles, but the delicious Eastern European soup) or then a simple beetroot salad. But however happily I'd cook that soup or salad, I'm not prepared to incorporate pears and limes into either of these dishes. Some dishes are best as they are.

As it happens, I'm preparing the dish on the über-sweet Valentine's Day, and thus a dessert would be more appropriate anyway. The aphrodisiac I chose was chocolate, or more precisely, white chocolate. After the ultimate chocolate blogger David Lebovitz himself praised this particular type of chocolate recently, I picked up a bar of Green & Black's white chocolate with Bourbon vanilla.

Here's my entry:

Mascarpone mousse with white chocolate and lime juice, topped with candied pear and beetroot



The mousse is a mixture of mascarpone, whipped double cream and melted white chocolate, seasoned with freshly squeezed lime juice. Topping - beetroot and pear slices that I first cooked in sugar syrup (separately, of course), and then dried in a very cool oven. The idea for candied beetroot slices came from here.

My previous Paper Chef #8 entry

MagicTofu's round-up of Paper Chef # 15

Tagged with: Paper Chef

Sugar (not) High Friday #15 (I tried...)

This time the Sugar High Friday is hosted by Becks&Posh, and they've decided to replace the 'high' with 'low'. The task:
is to make a delicious, mouthwatering dessert whilst being a lot more frugal than usual with the fat and the sugar. In fact, try not to use processed sugar at all.

Hmmm. Got that? No processed sugar whatsoever. However, more 'natural sugars', like honey, syrup, sugary fruit etc were allowed.

Inspiration struck me about a week ago on Glasgow-Edinburgh train when I was flipping through the pages of the January issue of Waitrose Food Illustrated. On page 11 it states that
The parsnip's season is November to January, so this is the last chance to get them at their best. Winter frosts will also have intensified their already marked sweetness; in days gone by, this root was used instead of sugar in cakes.

Voila! I like carrot cakes a lot, and if parsnip was used instead of sugar in the old days, I could try to make a parsnip cake which is like carrot cake, but without sugar. I also had a packet of sucrose free ginger (Buderim Ginger from Australia) in my cupboard, and I thought that ginger should work quite well with parsnip. I checked out some of my carrot cake recipes, and eventually decided to make parsnip, ginger and hazelnut tray bake.

Well. It wasn't bad. If I'd be served this, I'd happily finish the piece. But it wasn't blogging-worthily good either, verging on the bland, so I'll keep the recipe to myself this time. It was much nicer on the morning after, when the ginger had had time to depart some of its gingery goodness into the rest of the cake (that ginger was actually delicious on its own as well, I hadn't tried this particular type of ginger previously).

But, to be truly honest, I should have just made the sugar-free Luscious Apple Cake recipe from the very same Waitrose magazine..

Tagged with: SHF # 15 + Low Sugar

European Blogging By Mail 3: A tasty parcel from Greece

I really enjoyed participating in the first round of European Blogging By Mail back in August, when I got a wonderful parcel from Johanna of The Passionate Cook. This time I got a lovely parcel full of various culinary goodies from Shalimar of Wanderlust: for the love of food & travel. Sha - who is originally from the Philippines, but lives in Greece - has described the contents of the parcel on her blog in great detail, so I’ll be brief here.

On the left there are 3 bags of various flavoured teas – one of them with chocolate bits!!! I tried the green tea with cinnamon and orange and it was really fragrant and soothing.

On the top right there's a packet of instant beef-flavoured soup. I'm a bit wary of this one as it says "Spicy" on the packet. I'm a bit worried whether I can stand the heat. I'll let you know.

Also on the right is a bar of Nestle chocolate and a selection of various mini chocolates (the green ones with nuts were first to disappear!)

The Tupperware box contains some coconut macaroons and really tasty cookies – I will be scanning Sha's blog for the recipe!

A bag of walnuts and two plastic bags with flour-vanilla-baking powder that were to be used with Sha's recipe for crispy chocolate brownies. And that's what I did. The recipe was easy to follow and resulted in a yummy tray of gooey-nutty chocolate brownies. Sha says that it's one of her favourite comfort foods, and these were very comforting indeed on a chilly Scottish weekend.



Efharisto, dear Shalimar!

Check out Johanna's roundup of the EBBP3. My own comforting foodie parcel went to Fini of Cocinalia in Spain.

What I Had For Breakfast MeMe

A one-off meme started by Andrew of Spittoon, exploring the eating habits of food bloggers across the world.

My breakfasts are quite varied, depending on my appetite, day of the week, time of the day (it can be anything from 8am to noon, even on weekdays), time of going to bed night before etc etc. There is no fixed Sunday breakfast - apart from the fact that I tend to have it outside and it tends to be accompanied by newspapers. So instead of blogging only about what I had on Sunday, here are snapshots of some of my breakfasts this week...

Wednesday:
Breakfast (almost) in bed. Had a leisurely breakfast sitting on the floor next to my bed, basking in the winter sun and listening to BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour..

A big cup of wild strawberry flavoured black tea from Fortnum & Mason. A tub of Tesco Finest Swiss Black Cherry Yogurt. A clementine. A slice of cranberry orange loaf. A piece of yummy Turkish feta and spinach pie baked by my temporary flatmate. Mmmm...

Thursday:
Got up at 8am. I am teaching on Thursdays, so I need to get up far too early for my liking – too stressed to stay in bed anyway. A tub of above yogurt in the kitchen, followed by a cup of latte and chocolate croissant in Peckhams, my favourite deli that is conveniently on my way to work.

Saturday:
After a long night in (a Scottish meal of haggis, neeps & tatties, cranachan and wine and whiskymacs at my place, story to follow), I get up very late on Saturday. Head for a latte and blueberry muffin at BeanScene, where I am greeted with this gorgeous smiley face.

Sunday:
Have another Estonian visitor in Edinburgh, this time a friend studying in London. Head for a proper Scottish fry up at Native State on Bristo Square. Not really my kind of place in the evenings – lots of pre-club drinkers, huge TV screens showing sports and loud music. But years of testing and tasting have shown their fry up to be one of the best and I come here about once or twice a month. You get a huge meal, glass of juice and a cup of tea or coffee for £4.50 as long as you order before 11am. Good incentive to get out of bed early :)

I am not vegetarian, but I don’t really fancy loads of meat first thing in the morning. So I usually go for the vegetarian breakfast. And although I quite like haggis, both in its traditional and vegetarian form (especially McSweeney’s of Edinburgh haggis), the Native State own recipe haggis isn’t for me. So instead of haggis I usually ask for an extra sausage. Scrambled eggs, baked beans, tomato, mushrooms, hash brown, potato scone, toast and butter. Orange juice and cafetiere coffee.

Prune Blogging Thursday: ‘I am so good for you prune cake’

Mmm. Prunes. ‘Give us your best prune recipe or best idea for using prunes’ told David Lebovitz on his blog and do that by October 26th. My first thought is a frustration about the fact that I have not been able to locate plum juice – probably one of my favourite juices of all times - in the shops here in Edinburgh, whereas there is an abundance of ‘healthy’ prune juice. Which is nothing like its fresh cousin.

But after I calm down, I decide to go for it. For various reasons I’ve sadly had to opt out from a number of recent blogging events (the last few SHFs, for instance) – and I’m keen to take part. As David rightly says, ‘prunes are very good for your health; they’re high in iron, with no added sugar but lots of fiber… and yes, they keep you, um, ‘regular’’. And although I had no pruneux de Agen or d’Ente at hand, the own-brand stuff from Tesco has proved rather nice in the past, and I had half a kilogram bag in my cupboard.

As always, I turned first to my Estonian recipe site. You see, if I get to make a nice dish and take a picture of it, I get to blog about it here as well as update my recipe site. A quick search reveals 44 recipes with prunes, most of which are various stews and roasts. I spot two easy and tempting starters though. Firstly, grilled prunes rolled in smoked bacon rashers. Yummy. But instead of shopping for my favourite oak smoked bacon at the farmers market last Saturday morning, I stayed in bed until noon. So no grilled prunes & bacon then.. Secondly, prunes stuffed with liver pate and chopped chives – also nice, but as I’m not sure I want to nibble on prunes and liver pate for the rest of the day, I decide to make a mental note of that recipe for a party later this month.

Instead I go for a cake. A recipe for hapukoorekook kuivatatud ploomidega alias sour cream cake with prunes has been praised by several readers at my Estonian site, and I decide to check it out myself. It’s from the March 22, 1997 issue of Postimees (Postman), one of the main dailies back home. It is not just a healthy prune cake, it’s a super healthy prune cake. In addition to high-fibre prunes, it also contains wheat bran (yep, another super source of fibre) as well as high-fibre rye flour (asking for a barley flour in Edinburgh health food shops resulted in few raised eyebrows, so I opted for rye). Here’s my slightly modified version of the recipe.

‘I am so good for you prune cake’
(Ploomikook)



1 egg
2 tbsp sugar
200 grams plain yogurt or sour cream or crème fraiche
100 ml wheat bran (I used Jordan’s)
200 ml barley or rye flour (or even wholewheat)
2 tsp baking powder
200 grams chopped juicy prunes

Whisk the egg with sugar, add yogurt, wheat bran, baking powder and flour (mix the last two first). Finally add chopped prunes.
Transfer the batter into a buttered cake tray and bake at 200˚C for about 30-35 minutes.
Serve with a cup of tea.

Verdict: recommended. High in fibre, low in fat and surprisingly tasty indeed. Especially with a cup of tea.

EBBM1: Thank you, the passionate cook!

Well, well, well. Sometimes Royal Mail really excels. I posted my Europan Blogging By Mail on Monday afternoon (kindly hosted and coordinated by Andrew at Spittoon), and as I had a slight exchance of unpleasantries with my post office clerk I was thinking afterwards that I should have asked for a proof of postage, should the parcel mysteriously dissappear. But I was pleased to find out on Tuesday afternoon that my EBBM buddy Moira of beautiful Who Wants Seconds had received the parcel on that morning (click here for Moira's very kind write-up).

This was good news. And even better news was that I had been woken up by postman that morning, delivering a food parcel sent to me! Hurray! Excited like a small kid on Christmas eve (that's when we open our presents back home), I quickly took a snapshot of my parcel before tearing the wrapping apart.

My lovely-lovely parcel came from Johanna of the passionate cook and what a treat it was. All the three items in the parcel were delicious and I've already managed to taste everything! Johanna had also included a lovely note introducing the items in the parcel. Although an Austrian living in London, Johanna has an Italian grandfather, so the parcel was a nod to her Italian roots.



There was a jar of chilli & coriander pesto that I used to spice up my fresh (though not home made) mushroom tortellini - lovely. This shop-bought pesto was a last-minute replacement for the homemade cashew, rocket & chilli pesto. I'm looking forward to Johanna posting the recipe for the original pesto on her website soon, so that I could try that one as well:)

The other delicious item in the parcel was a bag of cantucci, the crunchy Italian biscuits. I nibbled on Johanna's really nice almond, ginger and pink peppercorn cantucci while drinking tea and watching a DVD with two friends. The cantucci were gorgeous - crunchy and sweet, with sneakily devillish pink peppercorns (see the pink dots on the picture?) giving some bite every now and then.

And finally, there was a lovely small jar of fragolaceto. I had never heard of that before, and it's was my loss, as it was gorgeous. Johanna describes it as 'strawberry jam with balsamico' and says that it is 'best consumed with (hard) cheese, like parmesan or old gouda. Some people even pour it over vanilla ice cream!'. I really enjoyed this preserve. You see, I had come across several recipes combining strawberries and balsamic vinegar before, but somehow they failed to entice and convince me. I am now so going to try that combination soon. Meanwhile, I ate a spoonful of fragolaceto with some sliced Estonian smoked cheese, suitsujuust. Lovely. And then I threw a spoonful to my Scottish strawberry + Italian mascarpone dessert (ehh - that's strawberries and mascarpone in a small bowl kind of dessert). Utterly lovely again. I really like the sweet-tangy flavour combination - no wonder it complements both savoury and sweet dishes.

PS The DVD I was re-watching while eating cantucci was Todd Solondz's utterly weird and disturbing Happiness from 1999. There must have been something in those yummy cantucci to spark my memory, as I actually rememembered what was going to happen every now and then despite of having seen it last time more than five years ago.. Or maybe it was the rosemary I had couple of weeks ago:)

Update 9 Aug 05: Johanna has kindly posted the recipes for fragolaceto and rocket & cashew pesto on her site, the passionate cook, now. Thank you!

Paper Chef # 8: Potato shortcrust cases with Cheddar cheese, topped with garlicky spinach and olive filling

This is my first ever blogging event, so I'm quite excited about it. Hosted by Tomatilla!, the ingredients included spinach, olives, cheddar cheese and choice of either potatoes or cream (read more about the requirements here). The judge is Sarah of the delicious life.
I like cheese. I love spinach. Olives are new in my kitchen, but I almost like them a lot already. Potatoes (together with rye bread) are the founding blocks of my native cuisine. How to combine these all?

Good question. I searched my Nami-nami retseptikogu for ideas (sorry, that's in Estonian!). I went through various Mediterranean cookbooks (spinach and olives automatically say 'Greece' to me, can't help it). I glanced at my pile of cookery magazines. Got several ideas, and after some tweaking of recipes came up with two canapes: Potato shortcrust cases with cheese, topped with spinach-olive stuffing and Cheesy shortcrust canapes with spinach and cream filling. My entry to the Paper Chef # 8 Holiday Edition is the first one. I really-really liked this one, though I hope to write about the other - also very tasty - mouthful in the near future.

Canapes with Spinach and Olive Stuffing

This one combines potatoes, spinach, olives and cheese - I've stuffed potato-shortcrust pastry cases with some cheese, and then topped with a garlicky spinach and olive filling.

I started by making a potato-shortcrust pastry - a recipe I've had for ages and which is lovely for making small savoury pastries:

(Kartuli-muretainas)



200 g potatoes (about a size of a not-too-large baking potato)
125 g butter
200 g plain flour
pinch of salt

Peel the potato and cut into chunks. Cook in a slightly salted water until soft, then drain and mash with a fork. (You could use cold leftover potatoes, in which case you should grate them).
Mix with flour, salt and butter, until you get a soft and malleable dough.
Put the fridge for half an hour, then roll out to about 3-4 mm thickness between two sheets of cling film.
Cut into small circles of about ø 5-6 cm and press them into small muffin tins (I used a 24-whole mini muffin tin).
Crumble small pieces of greaseproof paper into small balls and put into the muffin tins (this will keep the crusts from rising too much).
Bake in a 200-220˚C oven until the edges are golden brown. Then take out of the oven and remove the paper balls. Put back into the oven and bake for another 5 minutes or so, until the bases of potato shortcrust cases are baked as well.
This can be made up do a day before.

The garlicky spinach and olive filling is inspired by a recipe from Epicurious, which I changed only a little:

250 g fresh spinach
large dash of olive oil
2-3 garlic cloves
1 dl pitted Kalamata olives
0.5 dl toasted pine nuts
a squeeze or two of lemon juice
salt and pepper

Wash the spinach thoroughly (I found a ladybird in my Tesco-bought spinach!), remove stalks and drain. Put into a big wok or frying pan, and heat until spinach has just wilted. Rinse spinach under cold water, then squeeze out as much liquid as possible and chop coarsely.
Heat some olive oil in the pan, add the spinach, garlic (I used 2 bullets of Very Garlicky Company's easy garlic again) and olives (I used so-called Greek style black olives that I pitted beforehand). Fry gently for 2-3 minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon, until garlic is soft. Now add the toasted pinenuts, a squeeze of lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.
Put some grated cheddar cheese into pre-baked cases (you can reheat the cases gently in the oven, if you prefer). I used about 100 grams of Pilgrims Choice's Vintage Extra Mature Cheddar cheese, though any strong cheese would do and blue cheese should be nice as well.
Divide the hot garlicky spinach and olive filling between potato-shortcrust cases (the heat of the spinach filling melts the cheddar cheese nicely).

Voila! Start nibbling.



The Paper Chef entry/entree is on the left - glossy green and black:) The lighter green canape on the right is the cheesy shortcrust case with tapenade, creamy spinach and some more cheddar cheese.

UPDATE: My first ever Paper Chef entry was awarded a Golden Tomatilla for Best Performance by Potatoes in a Supporting Role. Thank you, Sarah!!!