My first ever ... kedgeree

Photo by Juta Kübarsepp for the March 2013 issue of Kodu ja Aed magazine.

Kedgeree is an Anglo-Indian dish that was a popular breakfast item during the Victorian era. It's a rice dish with smoked fish and soft boiled eggs, seasoned with curry and herbs. I had seen various kedgeree recipes during my years in Edinburgh, yet I hadn't had a chance to try, yet alone make it myself. The opportunity finally knocked at my door during Easter, as I had all those colourful Easter eggs needing to be used up.

I cannot really tell you the origin of this recipe any more. I wasn't sure I will be able to find smoked haddock here, so I decided to go with salmon - the post popular and common smoked fish in Estonia. I searched the web and my bookshelf and printed out several recipes for a smoked salmon kedgeree. Eventually, I did find smoked haddock after all, and after some further inspiration from Jamie's Dinners: The Essential Family Cookbook (aitäh, Merilin, mulluse sünnipäevakingi eest!) I came up with a following recipe. Whereas kedgeree is usually made with pre-cooked rice, a bit like egg-fried rice, then I cooked it from scratch to be served straight away.

I enjoyed it, and I hope you'll do as well. It was a light and unusual brunch dish, and the pretty yellow colour made it especially suitable for a sunny spring day.. One day I will give the smoked salmon kedgeree a try, however, too..

My kedgeree
(Suitsutursakedgeree)
Serves 6-8



250 grams basmati rice
400 ml water or vegetable stock
200 grams hot smoked haddock, flaked (cleaned weight)
25 grams butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 Tbsp mild Indian curry powder
half a lemon
salt and black pepper
fresh coriander or parsley, chopped
2-3 boiled eggs, peeled and halved lengthwise

Rinse the rice in a running cold water, drain.
Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat. Add the onion, garlic and curry powder and fry gently for about 5 minutes.
Add the rice and the boiling water/stock (all at once). Simmer gently, covered, for 10 minutes, until rice is 'al dente'.
Add the flaked fish and lemon juice, heat through.
Season, sprinkle with chopped herbs.
Garnish with thinly sliced lemon and top with halved boiled eggs.

OTHER BLOGGERS BLOGGING ABOUT KEDGEREE:
Sam and her Kedgeree (including a link to some further background information on this dish)
Mae and her beautiful Smoked Haddock Kedgeree
Freya & Paul and their Kedgeree a la Lindsay Bareham
Sher and her Salmon Kedgeree a la Nigella Lawson
Liz and her Smoked almon Kedgeree with Shrimps

Orange Oil Madeleines

It's customary in Estonia to treat your colleagues for something special on your birthday. In return you get lots of beautiful flowers, so it's actually a pretty fair deal :-) My birthday is on the same day as the birthday of one of my dear senior colleagues, who's well known at the Institute for her excellent culinary skills. I remember having met her about a decade ago, fresh out of university (me, that is), and falling in love with her eggplant-filled spicy pastries that were served at one of the informal meetings at the Institute (I was only loosely attached to the Institute back then). In any case, Klara and I share birthdays, our love for cooking, and even our specific research focus (national identities and multiculturalism). It made only sense to combine our skills and efforts for the small lunch-time gathering at the Institute then on Wednesday.

When negotianting the details, Klara told me that she'd be bringing her traditional onion pie (which was mouthwateringly delicious!), and I could bring something sweet to accompany a cup of coffee. I decided to make a batch of Chocolate Cherry Muffins, and something else that can be eaten without a cake fork. As I had - finally - acquired a silicone madeleine form in London, I wanted to make these dainty French pastries. They have been popping on many of my favourite foodblogs (just see my del.icio.us tags), and my first plan was to make matcha madeleines. But as I had bought a bottle of decadent-sounding orange oil in London, then K. suggested I'd do something with orange oil instead of matcha.

Oh - and my chocolate cherry muffins and orange oil madeleines were just as popular and equally quickly consumed as Klara's traditional onion pie. We're quite a team :-)

Orange Oil Madeleines
(Madeleines-koogikesed apelsiniõliga)
Adapted from here and here.
Makes ca 100 mini madeleines (a 5 ml)



4 medium eggs
150 grams sugar
a pinch of salt
150 grams plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp orange oil (I used Boyajian Pure Orange Oil)
50 ml butter, melted

Pre-heat the oven to 190 Celsius. Brush the pans with some melted butter.
Beat together the eggs, sugar and salt in an electric mixer on medium-high speed, until you've got a thick pale foam. Add the Orange Oil.
Mix flour and baking powder, sift twice and gently mix into the eggs.
Fold in the melted butter until well combined.
Using a small teaspoon, spoon the batter into the greased madeleine pans (NB! there is no need to re-grease the madeleine pan between each batch later), so they'd be about 3/4 full.
Place in the pre-heated oven and bake for about 7 minutes, until the madeleines have raised and their edges turn lightly golden brown.
Remove the madeleines from the pan as soon as they come out of the oven (flip the silicone form over a parchment paper and if necessary, push them gently out). Cool.
Madeleines are best on the day they're baked, but you can store them in an airtight container for a day.

The Greek Easter Bread Tsoureki, 2007

Pretty, isn't it? It's the traditional Greek Easter bread tsoureki, using the little known spices mastic and mechlebe/mahlepi (you can see them both here) and usually garnished with red eggs*. I've made tsoureki before (twice, actually), to a great acclaim from a number of Greeks, and it has become a regular feature at my Easter table.

The recipe I've used on the previous occasions was an adapted from Paul Hollywood's book 100 Great Breads, and it (the adapted version, that is) worked just well. But as a kind friend had sent me a copy of Theodore Kyriakou's widely acclaimed book, The Real Greek at Home: Dishes from the Heart of the Greek Kitchen, then I decided to test another recipe for tsoureki instead this year. After all, Kyriakou is the Chef of the The Real Greek restaurant in London and hailed as the Greek chef and expert on the Hellenic cuisine in the UK. So his recipe should definitely please, no?

Well, it failed to do that. I should have got suspicious about the amount of spices. Whereas Hollywood used two pieces of mastic and a pinch of mahlepi per half a kilogram of flour, then Kyriakou used 3 pieces of mastic (that's fine), but a whopping 1.5 tsp of mahlepi - that's quite a difference from a pinch! This meant that these spices (plus the addition of star anise infusion) didn't just give a hint of musky spiciness to the bread, but utterly and totally hijacked the flavour, especially mahlepi. And whereas I love the subtle hint of mastic and mahlepi, then too much is simply too much. Also, Kyriakou's version asked for the inclusion of six whole eggs in the pastry, which may have explained the toughness of the resulting bread. Ok, I may have slightly over-kneaded the pastry, which explains why the bread looks a bit stretched on the photo above, but believe me, this was the least of the problems. It was just, blah, as some foodbloggers would say..

The moral of the story? Well, when something doesn't need fixing, then leave it alone. As simple as that.. Next year I'll try my old and trusted (that is, tested) recipe again :-)

The read egg on the photo was provided by the 5-year old Gretel. See here for more details.