A heartfriendly warm buckwheat and mushroom salad

You're all familiar with rice, and many of you have used pearl barley, cous cous, bulghur wheat and quinoa in your kitchen. But what about buckwheat? Buckwheat flour makes an appearance in Japanese soba noodles, in French galettes de sarrasin, and in Russian blini pancakes. Yet I suspect that buckwheat groats are less common even amongst well-informed food bloggers. Yes, there is Clotilde with her recipe for Buckwheat Salad with Honey Spice Cake, and Gerda with a recipe for exotic Buckwheat Curry. But other than that, Elise's fabulous recipe search across foodblogs only yields recipes using buckwheat flour.

Yet buckwheat groats definitely deserve a place at your kitchen table, at least occasionally. They're unusual and different, hence interesting. Buckwheat is naturally gluten-free, the groats have a lovely nutty flavour and tender texture - and they're good to your vascular system. What's not to like!? Buckwheat porridge is widely known here in Estonia - either as a dish on its own, or as a side dish instead of potatoes or rice. To make things easier, you can even buy pre-cooked buckwheat flakes these days, which make a lovely breakfast porridge.

Here, however, is a main dish I came up with last week. I wasn't sure what to call it in the beginning. It's not a stew, as although it's moist, there's no liquid to hold the components together and warrant the name. It's not a buckwheat 'risotto', as there's no element of creaminess. So I decided to go with a 'warm salad'. I served it with thin, long slices of crunchy carrot, but some spicy salad leaves would make a good accompaniment, too.

A warm buckwheat and mushroom salad
(Soe tatra-seenesalat)
Serves 4



1 Tbsp canola oil
200 ml buckwheat groats
2 carrots, coarsely grated
1 onion, finely chopped
0.5 tsp salt
0.5 tsp black pepper
500 ml water
a generous handful of fresh parsley, chopped
1 Tbsp canola oil
300 grams of mushrooms (a mixture of champignons, oyster mushrooms, chantarelles etc), coarsely chopped

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and add the buckwheat. Stir for a minute, until the groats are glistening with oil. Add the onion and carrots, reduce heat and fry gently for a few minutes, until onion has softened a little. Do not burn!
Season with salt and pepper, add the boiling water. Cover and let simmer for about 15 minutes, until the groats are al dente or tender, if you prefer.
Meanwhile, fry the chopped mushrooms in oil, until they're wilted and slightly browned.
Add the fried mushrooms to the buckwheat porridge, stir gently to combine. Sprinkle generously with parsley and serve.

Earlier @ Nami-nami:
Buckwheat and mushroom oven pie (September 2005)

WHB:
This is also my entry to the Weekend Herb Blogging, this time hosted by Anh from Food Lover's Journey.

Cooking with friends: a special bottle of burgundy wine, a chantarelle cappuccino, a boeuf bourgoingnon, and a matcha loaf

Here’s how to get hold of that very special bottle of wine that you see at your friends’ place.

A fortnight ago K. and I were invited to have dinner with some good old friends of his, Peter & Kristel. We had a lovely meal, drank some good wine (and pomegranate juice) and watched holiday pictures from South Africa, where the couple had spent the New Year’s Eve. It was my first visit to their place, so I was shown around the house (lots of lovely art, a captivating fish tank). Before we continued with biltong and fig compote, we stood for a while next to the couple’s wine collection.

It was then that K. spotted a precious bottle of Burgundy: Clos de la Roche, Patriarche Père et Fils (Beaune, 1992). K. adores Burgundy, so he came up with a cunning idea.

So it happened that last Sunday, Peter & Kristel turned up at our doorstep with that very bottle of Bourgogne, as K. had managed to convince them that it’s indeed a good idea to drink this wine together. As a good bottle of Burgundy needs a good Burgundy dish, then I made my Boeuf Bourguignon again. We invited another couple, Paavo & Kristina and their little daughter Gretel over, too (yep, the ones who almost ate all my apple cake few months ago:), who contributed a starter. And not just a starter, but a stunning wild chantarelle cappuccino.

Cooking the chantarelles with herbs and cream:



The soup is ready – it does look like a real thing, doesn’t it? We used our new (well, we bought them in November) iittala Origo bowls and Arabia plates:



The incredibly smooth chantarelle cappuccino was garnished with thyme and served with stuffed baked portabello mushrooms - being made on the photo below. As you can see, then little Gretel (aged 5) is a good hand in the kitchen, although only half of the blue cheese ended up on the mushrooms, as Gretel ate the rest of it. Note that we all need some moral support in the kitchen – hence the wine glass on the worktop (for the mother) and the teddy bear (for Gretel):



For the main course, I made Anthony Bourdain’s boeuf bourgoingnon again.

And for the dessert, we had my matcha loaf (third time in less than ten days), this time made by K. and supplemented with some finely chopped almonds. K. also candied some fresh kumquats and piped some Madagascar vanilla flavoured whipped cream on top:



And as for the wine? Well, it was definitely good enough excuse for a lovely night in with old (for K.) and new (for me) friends. It was full of character for sure, even if the other bottle, Bourgogne A. Rodet (Antonin Rodet, 1998) was more to my liking..

Seenepirukad or hundred tiny mushroom pies

There's a young man in Argentina who knows the perfect pronounciation for two Estonian words. One of them is 'sünnipäevakringel' and the other is 'seenepirukad'. The first is a large sweet yeast kringel served for birthdays, and the other means 'mushroom pies/pierogi'. He really liked both of them, so he made a special effort and learned these two words, enabling him to ask for them. That's quite an accomplishment, as it's not the easiest language to master, apparently..

This Argentine guy said that these remind him of empanadas. I don't know about that - these are as Estonian to me as you can get. You can make one large pie (in which case you call it 'seenepirukas', of course:) or medium-sized ones. I like to make them small (as you could figure from the title of this post), so you could finish them in two-three bites. That's a lot of extra work, as small dough circles are more fiddly to fill and pinch (and as you can see from the picture, I could still improve my pinch-the-edges-technique, even after all these years). The soft yeast dough encases a flavoursome and salty mushroom filling, which I simply adore..

The picture below is taken in early November (I mentioned making these during my apple cake season) . I've made them a few times since. Most recently I served them at a party last Thursday, when I used half of the dough for small Turkish lamb and pomegranate 'pizzas' - I'll write about these scrumptious things soon..

And yes, you need to knead this dough. I know that every self-respecting food blogger has recently been at least trying to make the new wonderbread that you don't have to knead. I haven't and as I find kneading dough rather relaxing, I doubt if I will..

Seenepirukad or wild mushroom pies, Estonian style
(Seenepirukad pärmitainast)
Adapted from Eesti rahvatoite by Silvia Kalvik (1981)



Dough:
500 ml lukewarm milk
25 grams fresh yeast
a generous pinch of sugar
1 tsp salt
2 to 3 Tbsp butter, softened
1.2 to 1.5 litres plain flour

Filling:
300-400 ml chopped mushrooms (if using salted mushrooms, then soak first)
1 Tbsp butter
1 small onion, minced
sour cream
salt
dill, either fresh or dried

First make the dough. Crumble the fresh yeast into a large warm bowl, add the sugar and let it stand for 5 minutes, stirring through, until the yeast 'melts'. Add milk, salt, most of the flour and stir until combined. Knead in the soft butter, adding more flour, if necessary. Knead for 5-10 minutes, depending on your patience. You should end up with a soft dough that doesn't stick too much onto your hands. Cover the bowl with a cling film and leave to double in size in a warm draught-free place. That should take about an hour. (If you're not ready to bake after an hour, then knock the dough back when it has rised and leave to rise again for a bit more).

For the filling, chop the mushrooms finely and fry in melted butter together with the chopped onions for about 5 minutes. Cool, add some sour cream to combine (a Tbsp or two is enough, you don't want the filling to be too wet). Season with salt - the amount depends on whether you're using fresh or salted mushrooms - and lots of dill.

When ready to bake, then take about a third of the dough at a time, and roll it out on a floured tabletop until about 3 mm thick. Cut out small circles (I use a 5 cm glass), put about a teaspoonful of filling in the middle*, and pinch the edges firmly together, so you have half-moon shaped pies.

Put onto a baking sheet, brush with egg and bake at 200C for 15 minutes, until the pies are lovely golden brown. Transfer to a metal rack to cool. If you prefer your pierogi really soft, then cover with a clean towel to keep the moisture in the pies.

* If you have some mushroom filling left over, then add some extra sour cream and use as a salad on crostini or vol-au-vents or on rye bread.

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;)

Mushrooms again, this time in stroganoff

This is another mushroom recipe in my evergrowing mushroom repertoire. It is a lovely quick dish to serve during the week or whenever I am peckish for mushrooms (this happens surprisingly often), but not in the mood of making mushroom quiches, salads, soups or roasting mushrooms with carrots. I found the recipe on the reverse of a paper bag provided by Tesco for packing their mushrooms in - it must have been when I first arrived in Edinburgh back in October 1998, and I've been making this dish regularly since then.

Mushroom stroganoff
(Seenestrooganov)
Serves 4, adapted from Tesco



~ 500 grams (chestnut) mushrooms
1 medium sized onion, finely chopped
1-2 Tbsp butter
15o ml vegetable stock
1 tsp strong & sharp mustard
1 tsp concentrated tomato puré
150 ml sour cream or crème fraîche
half a lemon
chopped fresh flatleaf parsley

Heat the butter in a large frying pan, add chopped mushrooms and finely chopped onions. Sauté on medium heat for about 10-15 minutes, until the onions have began to soften.
Add tomato puré, mustard and the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes.
Remove the pan from the heat, season with salt and pepper, and gently stir in sour cream. Heat through, but don't let it boil again (this is more important with sour cream than crème fraîche, because the first can curdle easily).
Season with lemon juice, sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with boiled (new) potatoes and some salad greens.

Kalyn's Roasted Carrots and Mushrooms Recipe

As promised in a recent Around-The-World meme, here is a dish I bookmarked from a fellow foodbloged. I first saw this great recipe at Kalyn's Kitchen, and then a slightly modified version over at A Veggie Venture.

Here is a slightly "Europeanised" recipe:) A very flavoursome and colourful side dish or a light meal on its own - definitely worth a try. As carrots play a star role in this dish, make sure to use good quality organic carrots.

Kalyn's Roasted Carrots and Mushrooms with Thyme and Parsley
(Ahjus küpsetatud šampinjonid ja porgandid)



400-500 grams organic carrots, cut into chunks
225 grams brown button mushrooms, cleaned and quartered
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp dried thyme
Maldon sea salt and black pepper
a generous handful of chopped parsley

Lay carrot chunks onto a medium size oven dish in one layer. Drizzle with olive oil, season with thyme, salt and pepper. Mix to coat evenly.
Roast in a pre-heated 225˚C oven for 15-20 minutes, until carrots start to soften a little.
Add the mushrooms, drizzle with some more olive oil and roast for another 15 minutes, until carrots are just tender and mushrooms softened.
Season and serve with some crusty bread as a light veggie meal, or as a side dish.

Other great carrot recipes to try:
Gingered carrots with feta cheese
Moroccan carrot salad with cumin & garlic
Carrots with rosemary and orange

A bit of colour: stuffed peppers

This is based on a recipe I saw for stuffed chilli peppers (poblanos probably) in one of these extra recipe booklets that occasionally come with BBC Good Food magazine. This was a while ago - which issue exactly, I can't tell, as I've long given up hope finding the magazine again.. Coming from a country where using sweet Hungarian paprika is considered adventurous, I am not used to eating spicy food for my weekday dinners. I have therefore replaced poblanos with romanos. Whereas any red pepper would do, I prefer to use Romanos or those longish sweet pointed peppers in this recipe instead. These are thinner than 'normal' bell peppers/capsicums, and do not need blanching before being stuffed.

The amount of mushrooms and spinach is approximate and depends on how large are your peppers and how stuffed you like your stuffed peppers:)

A very easy, healthy and tasty recipe - feel free to use more chilli for an extra kick.

Pointed red peppers stuffed with spinach & mushrooms
(Täidetud paprikad seentega)
Serves 2



2 large pointed red peppers (Romano peppers)
olive oil
1 garlic clove, chopped
a pinch of chilli flakes
100-200 grams mushrooms, sliced
100-200 grams fresh spinach, washed, drained and roughly chopped
150-200 ml single cream

Cut an indention into the peppers and remove the seeds carefully.
Heat the olive oil, add the garlic and chilli flakes and fry gently for a minute or two.
Add the mushrooms and fry for 2-3 minutes, until mushrooms get some colour.
Throw in the chopped spinach and heat until spinach wilts.
Stir in the cream.
Spoon the filling into the peppers.
Bake at 200˚C for 25-30 minutes, until the pepper is softened to your liking.
Serve with green salad and possibly also some crusty bread.

Stuff the onion: baked red onions with feta cheese & wild mushrooms

Encouraged by my delicious upside down red onion pie, seriously inspired by Nicky&Oliver's delectable braised red baby onions, loosely based on Paul Gayler's recipe for Greek stuffed onions in a feta cheese custard - here is a dish I came up with earlier this week, and will surely keep making in the future.

Paul Gayler is a chef known for his inspiring vegetarian dishes over at the Lanesborough Hotel in London. He has just published his third book on vegetarian food, Pure Vegetarian and some sample recipes were reprinted in Scotsman on Sunday in early March. I simplified the recipe considerably, skipping the feta cheese custard, using tomato puré instead of sunblush tomatoes, replacing dried porcini with some leftover black trumpet chantarelles and omitting the egg and cinnamon from the filling. Gayler introduces his recipe as 'a type of modern-day vegetarian moussaka', but due to the lack of custard my baked onions wouldn't fit this description. However, the result was delicious, savoury and strong-flavoured - lovely on its own with a slice of crusty bread. I can also imagine serving this as part of a buffet or as a side dish to some grilled or braised meat.

Baked red onions stuffed with feta cheese & wild mushrooms
(Fetajuustu ja metsaseentega täidetud punased sibulad)
Serves 4



500 grams red onions (about 9-10)
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
2-3 Tbsp water

Stuffing:
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
onion cuttings
1 fat garlic clove
150 grams wild mushrooms, chopped
2 Tbsp concentrated tomato puré
100 grams feta cheese
2 Tbsp pine nuts
1 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
salt
freshly ground black pepper

Remove the stringy outer layers of the onions, then cut off a very thin slice from the root end - just enough to enable onions to 'stand' upright. Cut a generous slice off the top of each onion, then place them in a baking tin. Drizzle with some water and olive oil, cover with foil and bake in a preheated 200˚C oven for about an hour, until onions are tender.

For the stuffing, heat the oil, add the chopped onion tops and fry for 5 minutes.
Add the garlic and fry gently for another 5 minutes.
Add the chopped wild mushrooms, fry for a couple of minutes.
Add the tomato puré, stir to combine.
Add the crumbled feta cheese and pinenuts, stir until combined, then season with parsley, salt and pepper.

Very carefully remove the centres of baked onions (I used the tiniest teaspoon for that). Make sure to keep the onion bases intact, but there is no need to despair if you fail - just use removed onion layers to cover the hole.

(If you wish, you can chop up the removed layers and add to the stuffing. If you manage to remove some nice intact layers, you can use these for stuffing as well. I started with 9 onions, but ended up with 13 stuffed ones:)

Fill onions with the stuffing, put into a baking dish, cover with foil and bake at 200˚C for about 30 minutes, removing the foil for the last 10 minutes or so to brown the onions nicely.

Allow to cool slighly and serve.

UPDATE: T. Carter @ Lifechanges ... Delayed tried this recipe as well.

A magic mushroom quiche

Let me make something clear. I've never smoked a cigarette in my life, nor tried any other substances that might be considered illegal in some countries (moderate consumption of alcohol is luckily legal in my part of the world). So obviously this is not a quiche of magic mushrooms. But last week one of my regular readers emailed me and said that s/he is feeling a bit low and a magic mushroom quiche might cheer him/her up. And a very dear friend of mine, T. refuses to eat mushrooms, unless they are of the abovementioned kind. So I thought that by calling my mushroom quiche a magic one might just cheer A. up and might have tricked T. to eat the quiche had he been around.

And, to be fair, I thought there was something harrypotteresque about those black trumpet chantarelle mushrooms I used anyway. Don't you think so? (Click on the photo to enlarge).

The recipe is loosely based on a mushroom and blue cheese quiche recipe from Valio that I've tried many times successfully. As I had some nice mushrooms* on hand this time, I didn't want to overshadow their earthy-musky flavour, so I omitted the blue cheese. I also incorporated the tarragon (usually in the filling) into the pie crust this time. Just like with pizza doughs, I find that seasoning the pie crust gives a small, but necessary lift to the whole dish.

A magic mushroom quiche
Serves 6-8



Pie crust:
100 grams butter
200 ml plain flour
1 tsp dried tarragon
0.25 tsp salt
2-3 Tbsp cold water

Filling:
200 grams fresh black trumpet chantarelles
1 medium onion (I used a large banana shallot)
2 Tbsp butter
a generous handful of fresh parsley
3 eggs, whisked
150 ml sour cream
salt
crushed black pepper

Mix the butter, tarragon, salt and flour with a knife until you get coarse crumbs, then add the cold water and mix the dough together. Let it cool in a fridge for about 20 minutes, then roll out and line a 22 cm pie dish with the pastry. Prick with a fork, then put into the freezer for 20 minutes (this reduces the need for blind baking, as the pastry will shrink only very little).
Pre-bake at 200°C for 15-20 minutes, until the pastry is light golden brown.

Meanwhile, make the filling. Clean the mushrooms thoroughly (if possible at all, avoid rinsing them and use a damp kitchen roll or brush), chop into smaller pieces.
Mince the onion. Heat the butter in a saucepan, add the onion and fry gently for about 10 minutes, until onion starts to soften.
Add the mushrooms and sauté until some of the liquid evaporates (trumpet chantarelles are very dry anyway, but this may be necessary for button mushrooms).
Cool the mushroom and onion mixture.
Add the eggs, sour cream, finely chopped parsley. Season with salt and pepper.

Pour the filling into the pre-baked pastry crust and bake for another 20-30 minutes, until the filling has set.

Cut into slices and serve with a salad.



* After complaining about the non-availability of wild mushrooms in Edinburgh, I've now discovered a small shop, Clarks Speciality Foods, in Bruntsfield, that sells various wild mushrooms at reasonable price. A new mushroom stock is brought in every Friday - straight from Paris markets apparently - and they try to vary the choice of mushrooms. So far I've bought pied bleu mushrooms and these black trumpet chantarelles. I'll be back for more soon.

Clarks Speciality Foods
202 Bruntsfield Place
Edinburgh EH10 4DF
Telephone: 0131 656 0500

How a luscious mushroom tart turned into a humble mushroom soup

My regular readers must by now know that I love mushrooms. A lot. So imagine my joy when I spotted a delicious looking mushroom tart recipe over at 80 breakfast last weekend. I printed out the recipe, studied it a bit, tweaked it a bit, deciding to use a mixture of cottage cheese and blue cheese instead of ricotta. On a way back from work on Monday, I diligently stocked up on mushrooms, three types of cheese (cottage and blue cheese for the filling, Cheddar cheese for the pastry), and butter. Little did I know that the constant sneezing I took for innocent cold at the time would turn into a feverish flu. On Tuesday I could only muster up enough energy to pop into the kitchen every now and then to boil the kettle, make two slices of garlicky cheese bread for lunch, and mix an avocado with some cottage cheese for my TV dinner session of 3 food programmes.

This was a bad idea. It started all well enough with the MasterChef Goes Large programme, which I quite enjoy watching (especially the contestants who decide to 'experiment' with an unfamiliar novelty dish in the final round!?!?) , and it ended with another enjoyable episode of The Hairy Bikers cooking in various parts of Romania. However, between the two programmes I saw Dr Gillian McKeith doing her miracles on another oversized victim. This was the end of my mushroom tart plan. Even though I admire her mission - and results, she somewhat terrifies me with her stern glare and strict dieting and exercise (sorry, lifestyle) regime.

Suddenly I got scared about the effects a triple-cheesed mushroom quiche will have on me before the quickly approaching beach season and on my health in general. Just thinking about the tart made me see my arteries clogging and cholesterol-levels rocketing. I quickly put the tart recipe aside (sorry, Joey) and reached for WeightWatchers' pure points 2 cookbook hidden in the far corner of my bookshelf. The book fits rather uneasily between the inspiring and mouthwatering tomes of Nigella, Nigel, Tessa, Claudia, Jamie and others, but I had picked it up at the local supermarket few years ago because it cost next to nothing, and now I badly needed it.

Flipping through pages and pages of various 0-point soups and stews, I decided to make a mushroom and thyme soup. I had all the ingredients on hand, and I prepared this soup to try to nurture myself back into life over the course of Wednesday (un-weightwatching it first).

Mushroom and thyme soup
(Seene-tüümianisupp)
Adapted from pure points 2 by Becky Johnson for WeightWatchers



olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
2 fat garlic cloves, crushed
250 grams fresh field mushrooms, sliced
a small glass of white wine
2 Tbsp of lemon thyme leaves
500 ml Marigold vegetable stock
salt
black pepper

Heat the oil in a large (non-stick) saucepan. Add the onion and garlic and fry gently on medium heat for 5-10 minutes, until onion has softened.
Increase the heat and add the mushrooms. Sauté for 5 minutes, stirring regularly to prevent sticking.
Add the wine and cook for few minutes, until the alcohol has evaporated.
Reduce the heat, add the thyme and vegetable stock. Season with salt & pepper, bring to the boil and simmer for 45 minutes.
Pureé with a hand-held blender or in a food processor.
Serve garnished with extra thyme leaves.

The soup was actually very nice and easy, with a strong earthy mushroom flavour. If you like, you can add some blue cheese to the soup for extra flavour, or a dollop of cream to make it smoother. Still being aware that Dr Gillian McKeith is watching (she is Scottish, so she might just lurk around the corner), I did none of that of course. Because you can never know...

An ode to wild mushrooms

I have posted quite a few recipes and stories about various mushrooms since I started this blog, so it's probably not surprising to anyone when I say that I'm quite fond of my mushrooms. I like the musky and earthy smell of proper mushrooms that evoke childhood forest adventures; their slightly meaty, yet smooth, texture that gives a nice bite under your teeth; the way how they happily absorb any flavours of the dish, if you're looking for something to bulk up your dish without lots of extra calories. Unfortunately it's a fondness that is quite difficult to satisfy here in Scotland. Yes, I've spotted chantarelles in some of the upmarket delis in Edinburgh, but until I remain working in academia, their price is prohibitive. And although dried porcini is a brilliant standby and meaty shiitake mushrooms irreplacable when I'm making my staple blue cheese and mushroom sauce to douse into my pasta, the choice here is generally meagre.

Back home the situation is luckily still a bit better. I've mentioned going forageing for mushrooms with my grandparents when I was younger, and although I sadly haven't done that for years now, my relatives still provide us with a choice of varied forest mushrooms. In late summer and early autumn you'd be able to pick up wild mushrooms from elderly - mostly Russian, whose love for mushrooms is quite wellknown - women at any of the marketplaces in Tallinn. And if you fail that, then you can just pick some pickled or salted mushrooms in most supermarkets. So you can leave those handy, but disappointingly bland cultivated mushrooms on the supermarket shelf instead..

I brought back 3 packets of mushrooms during my last trip home - pickled chantarelles (kukeseened), salted woolly milkcaps (kaseriisikad) and salted rufous milkcaps (männiriisikad). I've been lovingly looking at them in my fridge for weeks now, and last weekend devoured the wooly milkcaps. The didn't need any cooking - only soaking in water to get rid of the excess salt. I made a simplest of salads, where the earthy mushroom flavour could deservedly dominate.

Mushroom salad
(Soolaseene ja kodujuustu salat)



300-400 ml salted mushrooms, soaked, rinsed and chopped
2-3 salted cucumbers, chopped
1 red onion, minced
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
300 grams cottage cheese
fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
green onions, chopped
crushed black pepper

Just mix all the ingredients, season to taste. I had the salad with toasted rye bread, but you can use it as a filling for jacked potatoes.

I had a handful of mushrooms left over, which I pan-fried later with some boiled potatoes and sprinkled with herbs. Also delicious, with intense mushroom flavour..

That is if you can get hold of some flavoursome salted wild mushrooms then..

An autumnal meal x 2

I entertained two nights in a row last weekend and although I hadn't planned so, the menu was the same both nights. On Sunday night I had the pleasure of hosting my former supervisor and now colleague Michael and his girlfriend Emma. And as Emma is a vegetarian, I had to come up with an autumnal Nordic vegetarian meal plan.

On Monday, I was supposed to cook a casual pasta supper for 2 friends before going salsa dancing. But on Monday afternoon I got a phone call from a Brussels-based dear friend of mine, Helen, who happened to be in Edinburgh for the night. Rather than trying to find a time for a quick coffee during the day, I invited Helen along that night, which meant that my plan of a casual pasta supper was out of the window. As a celiac, Helen has been on a strictly gluten-free diet since her childhood. Until we met in Edinburgh in 1998, I had never even heard of that condition. Since then I've baked flourless chocolate whisky roly-polys on several occasions and have became much more aware about special diets. Luckily, I still had all the ingredients from the previous night, so I just recreated all the dishes once again (no, I was not serving leftovers, there were none on either night).

Here's the menu - slightly Nordic, slightly late autumnal/wintry.

Starter: Mushroom salad cocktail
(Seenekokteilsalat)



When the British hostesses served prawn cocktails in 1980s, the Estonian hostesses had to settle for the non-prawn versions. Various salad cocktails served in small glasses were very popular back home and I can still remember eating them as a kid. Flipping through various cookbooks from 1980s provide a range of recipes for salad cocktails, and here is one of them.

I returned from Estonia in August with a jar of mushrooms - rufous milkcaps - picked and pickled by my auntie Vaike. I layered these with some grated Norwegian Jarlsberg cheese (in terms of texture, this is closest to the type of cheese we eat back home), cubed English apples and topped with a dollop of sour cream seasoned with hot mustard and salt and sugar.

For the garnish, I used some dill and a tiny pickled milkcap. Isn't that tiny tiny mushroom just adorably cute?

Main course: garlicky and creamy potato gratin with various salads

The main course was a simple potato gratin: sliced peeled potatoes, onions, garlic, single cream, chopped chives.


This was baked (covered with a piece of foil) for almost an hour, then topped with grated cheese and grilled until golden brown. On Monday I served some grilled chicken mini fillets with the main dish (marinated in yogurt and Arabic Masala Mix brought by my friend Guro from Lebanon).

The potato gratin was accompanied by various 'raw salads':

Sliced organic cucumber, sprinkled with Maldon sea salt flakes, drained and mixed with chopped dill (both Sunday and Monday).


Grated raw carrots and apples, seasoned with sugar and garnished with parsley.


Boiled grated beetroot (vacuum packed, make sure it's not doused with vinegar by the producers!), seasoned with crushed garlic, salt and mayonnaise and garnished with chives. This was on the table on Sunday only and was the favourite with my guests that night:)

Dessert: banana and coffee concoction
(Banaani-kohvimagustoit)



Even the dessert was the same both nights. But you see, I was so pleased with it on Sunday, that I simply had to have it again on Monday. Just to make sure it really was tasty despite of being so deceptively easy and effortless to make.

I came across the recipe in a Estonian-language cookbook "100 puddings" (well, "100 magustoitu") and although I did change to ingredient amounts a little, it really didn't need to be improved at all..

Take some ripe bananas (1 medium sized banana per eater), mash with a fork. For 4 banananas, add about 100 ml strong coffee (season with some sugar).

Now layer the banana-coffee mixture with thick and creamy Greek yogurt (sprinkle each banana layer with some soft brown sugar). Garnish with some roasted almond slices. Serve at once.

Really really easy. And as one my guests on Monday said, this would make a delicious and show-off breakfast in bed (coffee, yogurt and a banana, anyone?) Just that you know..

Have a great weekend! Oh, and just in case you were wondering - the beautiful red maple leaves are from my trip to Göttingen in October.

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A fine meal of mushrooms and cabbage

An Estonian friend of a very good Estonian friend of mine is visiting, and as my Turkish flatmate already has some Turkish friends staying in our guest room, this Estonian friend is staying with another Estonian friend who lives just around the corner (got that?:) But I’m in charge of cooking the dinner for a few nights. Not that I mind obviously...

On Monday night the theme was ‘cooking Estonian but not only'. I picked up some mushrooms (sadly cultivated, as chantarelles or any other wild mushrooms are hard to come by in Edinburgh), organic beef mince, a cone shaped cabbage (‘sweetheart cabbage’ – a novelty for me) and some Dolcelatte cheese. And after pretty much minimal effort I ended up with three delicious dishes.

Stuffed Mushrooms
(Täidetud seenekübarad)

For starters, I peeled the mushrooms, removed the stalks (see the above banner), covered with a piece of blue cheese and grilled them in the oven. I served these with a sprinkling of fresh parsley. Putting them on top of some panfried German rye bread ('Mischbrot' that I bought in Göttingen) provided a nice contrast of textures. This was the non-Estonian bit.


Cabbage Roll
(Kapsa-hakkliharull)

Now to the Estonian bit. For the mains I cooked a cabbage roll. Cabbage rolls are beloved autumnal and winter dish back home, but I didn’t feel like stuffing individual cabbage leaves, so I cheated. Again. I mixed the mince, finely chopped onion, crushed Finn Crisp bread (I had no breadcrumbs in the house), an egg, chopped mushroom stalks (my addition), salt, and slightly simmered shredded Sweetheart cabbage. I formed this into a fat sausage and baked in the oven until dark golden brown.

Ingredients for the cabbage roll:
400 grams of mince (pork is traditional, though I used organic beef)
a small head of (sweetheart) cabbage
1 chopped onion
handful of breadcrumbs or 1-2 slices of soaked bread
1 egg
salt and pepper

This cheat’s cabbage roll was served with some boiled Charlotte potatoes, which I tossed in butter, sprinkled with Maldon salt and put into the oven for another 5 minutes.

And everyone could help themselves to some chopped cucumber, grated turnip and sour cream.

Again a lovely night 'eating and drinking (in) Estonian', with some nice food and wine (Torres Sangre de Toro 2003 and The Wolftrap 2004) and another very exciting episode of Without a Trace.

And finally: I had started a bread dough before the dinner, planning to make some delicious Estonian pastries with loads of butter. But somehow the yeast dough didn’t look like it’s gonna like being layered with butter and rolled over and over again like puff pastry. So I rolled it out rather thickly, crumbled the rest of Dolcelatte on top, added a sprinkling of parsley, rolled it up and baked at 230˚C until golden. Delicious as a late night nibble, and perfect as a take along lunch at the office (it was nicely soft and inviting on the following day as well)...

So I planned to make something sweet and Estonian, but ended up with something savoury and Italian-ish. Nevertheless, I was especially pleased with this bread, as I modified the recipe to a great degree and turned it into something nice and 'mine'. Quite an achievement, considering that I usually tend to follow recipes quite closely...

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Cooking Estonian: buckwheat and mushrooms

To be really honest, this probably does not really pass for an Estonian national dish. It’s probably more typical of Russian kitchens. But buckwheat is quite a common ingredient in Estonia, as are mushrooms. And as it’s unlikely that any of you have come across something like this earlier (am I right?), and as it is introduced by an Estonian blogger, let's call it an Estonian dish:)

I had some mushrooms left over from the other day, and as I'm on a budget at the moment, I decided to use something that I already had in my cupboard for cooking and spotted a box of buckwheat flakes. A quick look into my Estonian language recipe site inspired me to combine these two in an oven pie. That’s what I had for supper last night and I enjoyed it. My Estonian friend Maarika popped by on her way home later and had 2 portions for dinner and approved heartily as well. It’s comfort food and not something you’d serve at a dinner party, neither does it lend itself for a romantic meal with your sweetheart (for the latter occasion, you may want to look for inspiration in this book). But as a lovely weeknight meal, it’s perfect.

It’s also suitable for vegetarians and those on gluten-free diet.

Buckwheat and mushroom oven pie
(Tatra-seenevorm)

You need either buckwheat or buckwheat porridge flakes (on the right) for this. I used the latter – these are pre-cooked buckwheat flakes that only take about a minute or two on the hob when you make breakfast porridge. Buckwheat is a lovely versatile grain – it has a slightly unusual nutty flavour, and it’s full of all kind of nutrients. While buckwheat flour is probably widely available across the world so you could make Japanese soba noodles or Russian blinis, it’s unlikely you find buckwheat grain or flakes in your regular supermarket if you live outside Eastern or Central Europe. It took me a while to source some in Edinburgh, but most health food and ethnic shops would probably stock it.

That’s what you do:
Prepare a buckwheat (or buckwheat flake) porridge using a mushroom stock (I used a mushroom stock cube).
Fry a chopped onion or two and chopped mushrooms gently in oil.
Mix the buckwheat porridge, mushrooms and onions and put the lot into a greased oven dish (NB! Can be made in small ramekins for individual portions).
Cover with a layer of sour cream/crème fraiche/thick plain yogurt.
Sprinkle some grated cheese on top.
Put into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the dish is lightly golden brown on top.


Garnish with a dill sprig or two and serve.

Back in the kitchen

I've been back in Edinburgh for over a week now, but have hardly done any cooking. A Malta-based Estonian friend was visiting and as it was the last week my Greek sweetheart was in town, I had most of my meals out. Had a lovely & elegant breakfast at Centotre, a proper British fry-up at Native State, a leisurely Saturday morning breakfast and paper in Double Dutch, a Turkish meze-dinner at Nargile, another (sixth in 2005?) yummy meal at Jamaican Coyaba, a tasty, if slow, dinner at Peckham's Underground. I enjoyed them all, although I'm not really looking forward to receiving my next credit card statement at all..

The only 'cooking' I did at home during the week was smearing some Finnish herby or Estonian mushroomy cream cheese on some Estonian rye bread, covering it with Estonian smoked salami and Estonian cheese, sprinkling some Greek oregano on top and grilling these in the oven. An accompaniment: some flash-salted cucumber. And I did that not once, not twice, but thrice. But that's hardly cooking, at least in foodblogosphere..

Pasta with blue cheese
(Seene-sinihallitusjuustukaste makaronidele)

I did finally cook something on Sunday night. Before my friend Ingrid caught her flight back to Valletta, we had a quick pasta supper - gemelli pasta with Roquefort, and shiitake and oyster mushrooms. It was tasty, and it's one of my staple suppers nowadays, as I like both mushrooms and blue cheese a lot.

PS Remember the list of ten most useful cookbooks? Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and Other Stories is currently No 1 on the bestsellers' list at my local Blackwells. So if nothing else, these lists make a fortune for some of the authors:)

Two ways with a glorious pile of chantarelle mushrooms

I sneaked out of the post-symposium summer course one day, and my sister was kind enough to drive me (and mum and both nephews) out of town, to Lahemaa. Lahemaa is a beautiful nature reservoir on the North coast of Estonia. While taking a stroll towards the sea in Võsu, I spotted some chantarelle mushrooms at a small stall and was glad to realise they're about 25% cheaper than in Tallinn (that's about 3 quid instead of 4 per kilogram then - a bargain by any standard). I'll buy some on our way back, I said to myself. However, as we ended up really lingering over our 'ethnic' lunch, and then driving to one of the beautiful manor houses in search of a perfect carrot cake, we were too late for the mushrooms - the "market" would have been closed. As would have been the markets in Tallinn by the time we got back. My dream about a nice family dinner with new potatoes and mushroom sauce was about to remain just that, a dream. Sulk.

I comforted myself a little with buying couple of wooden spoons from the local handicraft shop just outside Sagadi manor house. While we were heading back to our car (quite time-consuming process, considering that the kids were determined to get touchy-feely with every single item on display in the shop), an elderly local woman approached us and asked quietly, if we'd like to buy some chantarelle mushrooms. As the last few days had seen too little rain, she had only managed to pick about a kilogram of mushrooms, and didn't think it would be worth to head to the local market in the following morning to sell them. And as she was keen to get rid of them, she offered them for just about 30 kroon (that's about £1.50 for a kg!). I couldn't believe my luck - especially as I had already given up hope of having mushrooms that evening!!!

We headed back to town, and enjoyed a very simple but oh so delicious meal of boiled new potatoes and thick-ish chantarelle mushroom sauce with loads of herbs from the garden (parsley and green onions on this occasion, although I had used dill couple of days earlier for - surprise, surprise - the very same dish when I had picked up some mushrooms from the market). That generously fed 4 adults and 2 kids, with plenty of mushrooms left for the following day.



Although chantarelle sauce is my favourite use for these particular funghi, I also really like a chantarelle quiche. And that's what I made the following night, to be eaten before another sauna session by my parents, my mum's youngest sister and her friend, and myself.



This was a very simple quiche - I used a potato shortcrust pastry again, although I replaced the potato with instant mash that was somehow hiding in the cupboard. But any shortcrust pastry would do, just remember to prebake it slightly.

For the filling, I chopped the mushrooms finely and dry-fried them on a non-stick pan. I added some minced onion, fried a little more, and then scattered the whole lot on the prebaked pastry case. I then topped with some cubed cheese (should have been grated, but couldn't locate a grater in my Mum's kitchen:). And then some single cream and eggs, seasoned with salt, pepper and some herbs again.

Baked the whole thing golden brown in the oven, and then served on the terrace with some white wine. Very-very nice and summery!!!

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