Recipe for an ice-cold wild strawberry coulis with warm marzipan cheesecake

We've had better summers than the current one. It's been raining a lot, the temperatures are a few degrees below the usual over-20C, and the sunshine has been limited. Quite sad, actually, but apparently that's the case with most central and northern European countries this year.

However, on Saturday morning the rain had stopped, the skies had cleared and the sun was out, so we packed our little family into the car, picked up one of the grandmothers and drove out of town to forage for wild strawberries. Couple of hours and a healthy dose of fresh country air later we returned home with just about a kilogram (over 2 pounds) of the precious berries. (Note that I'm talking about the real wild berries, Fragaria vesca, not the oblong cultivated Alpine strawberries, Fragaria vesca var. semperflorens).

 
Wild strawberries, picked in June 2007 

Usually I make wild strawberry fridge jam, but I had done that on Friday night with 2,5 kilos of wild strawberries we had bought at a market. The next usual step would be to mix the berries with a sprinkling of sugar and some grass-fed milk, but I had done that already, too. We also had friends coming over for dinner on Saturday night, so I wanted to do something special and different this time.

Remembering that the Swedes love their smultron a lot as well, I turned to their popular Allt om Mat recipe site, and came across this wonderful recipe for an ice-cold/semi-frozen wild strawberry soup with warm marzipan cheesecake.

Warm marzipan cheesecake with cold wild strawberry coulis 
(Jäine metsmaasikasupp sooja martsipani-toorjuustukoogiga)
Serves 6


Cold strawberry coulis:
200 ml water
125 g caster sugar (150 ml)
500 ml wild strawberries (2 cups)
0.5 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Warm marzipan cheesecake:
100 g marzipan
200 g cream cheese (Philadelphia or such like)
2 free-range eggs
2 Tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

To serve:
wild strawberries 

First prepare the ice-cold wild strawberry soup/couilis. 
Bring water and sugar into a boil in a small saucepan. Boil for a minute, then remove from the heat and stir in the wild strawberries:

 

Using an immersion blender/hand-held blender, process the berries and the syrup until smooth (if you dislike tiny seeds, you can press the whole thing through a fine sieve, but I found it totally unnecessary).
Season to taste with vanilla and lemon juice, then place into the freezer for a few hours.
Give the mixture a stir every now and then.

About 45 minutes before you intend to serve the dessert, make the marzipan cheesecake. 
Preheat the oven to 175 C/350 F.
Grate the marzipan coarsely or simply use your fingers to divide it into small crumbs. Mix with the rest of the ingredients and process until smooth (again, I was using my immersion blender).
Divide the mixture between six buttered small ramekins or silicone muffin/friand tins.
Bake in the middle of the pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes, until the cheesecakes look cooked and are light golden brown.
Remove the marzipan cheesecakes from the oven and let cool for 10-15 minutes.

To plate and serve:
Remove the cheesecakes carefully from the tins and place on six dessert plates. Pour the ice-cold wild strawberry coulis around the warm cheesecakes.
Garnish with wild strawberries - ideally on straw, to bring back those innocent childhood memories :)

More posts about wild strawberries:
Wild strawberry fridge jam
Picking wild strawberries in 2006
Wild strawberries and cream
Fraises des bois  @ David Lebovitz
Wild strawberries from the garden @ Chocolate & Zucchini
Maapealne paradiis ehk seitse liitrit metsmaasikaid  @ Koopatibi küpsetab (in Estonian)

Announcement: Passion, Purpose and Pleasure Wellness Retreat in Estonia in mid-August

MarikaBlossfeldt’s  Passion, Purpose and Pleasure Wellness Retreat takes place August 12 – 18 at Polli Talu Arts Center in Western Estonia – a week of relaxation, awareness and awakening your taste buds – yoga, cooking classes, breath walks, massages, meditations and more … 

Find details here.

Kahvliahvi Kokakool aka Kitchen Monkey's Cookery School

Here's a children's poem in Estonian, written by Heljo Mänd in 1960s, describing small elephant's Bumbu's birthday party in the jungle, where monkeys were eating wafers ("vahvel" in Estonian) and the crocodiles were eating forks ("kahvel" in Estonian). If you combine the monkeys and the forks of this poem, you'll get kahvliahvid aka kitchen/fork monkeys.

Tingel-tangel-tungel,
kära täis on džungel.
Sünnipäev on Bumbul,
elevandijumbul.

Tangel-tungel-tingel,
pidulaual kringel.
Ahvid pistsid vahvleid,
krokodillid kahvleid.

Tungel-tingel-tangel,
limonaad on kange,
jookseb mööda lonti
justkui sada tonti.
 


Couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from a well-known journalist and party organiser, asking to give a cookery demo to a group of kids and their parents at a small music festival in a small Estonian town of Kilingi-Nõmme.  The workshop, called Kahviahvi Kokakool ("Fork Monkey's Cooking School", or probably better translated as "Kitchen Monkeys"), was to have four cookery sessions/demonstrations, and I was asked to give one of them. I agreed - it was a chance to get out of town and listen to some nice music in fresh air before and after the cooking demo. We were discussing the possible menu options, taking into consideration what the other sessions were focusing on, and finally agreed I'd teach the kids and their parents (26 in total) how to make cold soups. Not your usual gazpacho, mind you, but a kefir and a buttermilk soup, respectively - one savoury, one sweet.

It's summer, after all! As it turned out to be a really hot on Saturday (the music festival and the culinary workshops took place on Saturday, July 7th), cold soups seemed to have been a wise choice indeed :)


My cold summer soup workshop was at 5.30 pm, third one of the afternoon:


I tied the apron strings and was ready to begin. Note the sweet monkey-fork/fork-monkey design:


The kids were all anxiously waiting and ready to start chopping:


We began with the savoury kefir soup. Basically we made this chlodnik, but adding beets/beetroots and grated horseradish was optional, and everybody added some cooked mortadella-style sausages as well, to make the soup a bit more substantial. I must admit that about 3/4th of the kids asked for both the beets and the horseradish, which made me very happy indeed :)

Small (and some slightly bigger) kitchen monkeys in action. Note the high concentration of fathers - at least four - who were accompaning their children:




My role was to make sure everyone has understood the instructions and are progressing nicely:


Cutting the sausages into small dice for the soup requires some serious focusing and concentration:
 

Me, making sure that everyone got some vitamin-rich green onions:

Here's a close-up of the cold kefir soup with scallions/green onions, finely chopped sausages, beets and cucumbers (you can only guess there's beetroot at present at this point, as the stirring of the soup was a serious and time-consuming job as well):


Once everyone had finished making and eating their cold kefir soup, it was time to start making the dessert. I had chosen the wonderfully summery Danish buttermilk and strawberry soup koldskål - you'll find the recipe here on Nami-Nami. We did use kama cereal balls instead of crushed biscuits/cookies, however.

The main component - local Estonian strawberries, which are at their peak just now:


Mint, destined as garnish of the cold buttermilk-strawberry soup (lemon balm works just as well)

 Choosing the prettiest strawberries for the buttermilk-strawberry soup:



Here's our daughter (3 y 5 m) enjoying the buttermilk-strawberry soup she made all by herself:



Thank you, Merle Liivak, Kahvliahvi Kokakool & Schilling, for inviting me! I had a lovely day indeed :)

All photos by my food-blogging friend Liina Vahter .

Some pictures from Nami-Nami garden, May 2012

I'm off to my high-school reunion today (20 years?!?!? How did that happen??), so instead of writing about food I quickly share some photos of our beautiful garden taken during the last few weeks.
Whereas I'm bossing around the kitchen these days, my dear K. is in charge of the garden. We have a very young garden - only established in 2009-2010. Last year K. submitted the garden to a major gardening competition, organised by the biggest selling monthly, Kodu & Aed. And we won the coveted main title :) Mind you, K. submitted the garden to the "Young Garden" competition category - most of the planting was done just a year or two earlier, so it's nowhere near the fully established garden. However, the jury liked the design and the ideas, the neat vegetable garden and the cool Coolaroo sun-shade and the chicken in an urban backyard and the fact that everything was designed to be enjoyed by the family (especially the children) and/or used for cooking purposes. And decided to give us the main price :)

Anyway, here are some pictures from May 2012, starting with the most recent ones:

 
Decorative apple "Liset" (31 May 2012)

 
Lilac "Catherine Havemeyer" (31 May 2012)

 
A gorgeous flowering quince that bears wonderful edible fruits (see here and here; do not confuse with "regular" quince, which also grows in our garden; 31 May 2012).


Spiraea cinerea (31 May 2012)

 
(20 May 2012)

 
Cushion Spurge (20 May 2012)

 
(20 May 2012)

 
Umbrella plant aka Indian rhubarb (20 May 2012)

 
 
Bergenias (20 May 2012)

 
(14 May 2012)

 
 Forsythia (14 May 2012)

 
(2 May 2012)

Tapas, Estonian style

Starting from the left: hot-smoked Baltic herring (Clupea harengus membras) fillets, pan-fried Baltic herring with sesame seed crust, marinated sprats (Sprattus sprattus balticus) with herbs and onions, marinated Baltic herring with lemon and garlic.

Served with black rye bread (not pictured). An excellent Saturday lunch.

All fish was bought at my local farmers market (Viimsi taluturg), sourced from three different stalls. Viimsi taluturg is open on Saturdays from 10am till 2pm.

New Year's Eve 2011 @ Nami-Nami

Happy New Year to all my readers! I thought to start with an overview of our New Year's Eve feast. We stayed at home and entertained friends - we were 12 adults and 7 kids and as far as I could tell, everyone had great time. We ate and drank, competed in a quiz (a New Year's Eve tradition in our house), watched some shows at the TV (incl. the President's speech), and enjoyed fireworks outside just after midnight. Here's an overview of what we ate.

The menu scribbled on our blackboard wall:


Appetizers included crostini with cream cheese and lobster tails:


Rye bread buttons with spiced sprats cream:


Home-made rye crisps with chicken liver paté and red onion marmalade:


thinly sliced pain d'epices with Estonian goat cheese and ruby pomegranate seeds:



The salad board consisted of Waldorf salad (made by our dear friends Peter & Kristel):


Beetroot and pomegranate salad with parsley and Aleppo chilli vinaigrette:


Red cabbage, orange and Beluga lentil salad with parsley vinaigrette (as all Italians know, you must have lentils at the New Year's Eve, as this brings you wealth and money in the new year :))


More substantial dishes included home-made chicken nuggets (well, there were teens among the guests) with a adjika and sour cream dip:


A wonderful hot-smoked trout from Pepe Kala, served with a simple, yet luxurious trout roe and sour cream sauce:


Our friend Liina contributed a caramelised onion and Cheddar tart:


and a wonderful pork terrine:


I had also made two different crisp breads, one with fennel seeds and the other without:



For nibbling, there was fruit, gingebread cookies and sugared almonds:


For dessert, our friends had brought along a moist pumpkin cake, a lovely pink cherry and mascarpone cheesecake.

And to finish it all off, K. and I had made a croquembouche, complete with crème patisserie and spun sugar ribbons:



Again, may your 2012 be full of delicious and tasty bites and experiences!