Nami-Nami Easter Brunch 2011

(The post is actually written in January 2013, I just wanted to archive the menu for the traditional event)

This year the Easter Brunch coincided with my birthday, so I had a hard task of designing a menu that would celebrate Easter, spring and my birthday :) Here's what I served - something light, something green and something yellow - to go with my typical Easter menu.

Snow crab (surimi) salad:


Quail eggs dyed with beetroot:


Home-made wild garlic cheese and home-made caraway cheese (sõir)
 

Smoked salmon (ordered from MEKK restaurant), served with creamy horseradish cream


Wild garlic pesto with almonds:


Crostini with white cheese and onion marmalade


Puff pastry rolls with feta


Cannellini beans with tomatoes and onions:


Limoncello, coconut and white chocolate tart:


Paskha (sorry, no photo for some reason)

The guests brought along some Estonian rye bread, fresh strawberries (imported, of course) and the drinks (Prosecco, white wine, sea-buckthorn juice, freshly squeezed orange juice, water).

Culinary overview of 2010

Inspired by similar posts by Alanna and Anne.

JANUARY 2010



I blogged about many of my favourite dishes back in January - chicken with 40 gloves of garlic (photo above) and dulce de membrillo and coconut & beetroot soup, to name just a few. Our beautiful daughter Nora Adeele turned one, and we celebrated it with marzipan-topped Princess cake.

FEBRUARY 2010



Favourite recipes back in February were colorful quinoa salad with lobster tails and avocado, cream cheese spread with horseradish and beetroot (photo above), yummy chocolate muffins, decadent Lenten buns with raspberries, Hummingbird's raspberry cheesecake brownie. It was a loooong, cold and snowy month, hence the number of baked cakes :P

MARCH 2010



In March I loved the caramelised rye bread ice cream and ate lots of Georgian food (incl. fried Suluguni cheese and egg and walnut salad). Anticipating the Easter, the month ended with another lovely pashka recipe (photo above).



At the end of the month we spent a week in Davos, Switzerland. Unfortunately I was down with a nasty cold most of the time, so I missed many of the culinary delights on offer. I did manage to try some spätzle and raclette, of course, as well as some of the local cakes.

APRIL 2010



The highlight of the month was our traditional Easter brunch. As the cold and snow melted away, I fell in love with light salads again. I loved the quinoa salad with beetroot and fennel, Ottolenghi's cucumber salad with poppyseeds. I've made the Georgian spiced and creamy mushrooms on several occasions - and it's been a great hit with Estonian foodbloggers as well ;)

For my birthday at the end of the month I made three different birthday cakes, including my usual mocca cake and the popular Brita cake.

Last, but not least - in April we got four new pets, called Evita, Carol, Daisy and Madame Fifi. Here are the first three (a pure or mixed Araucanas):



and here's Madame Fifi (a French Marans) posing in front of their cool bright orange Eglu:



(And they do belong to the culinary overview of the year, as these lovely chicken have been providing us with free-range eggs that come with a dark yellow yolk and are hidden inside a beautiful pale blue or olive green egg shell :))

MAY 2010



In May I shared more lighter recipes - gnocchi Puttanesca, wild garlic tzatziki, chickpea and tuna salad. Oh, and I provided some ideas for Estonian snacks to help you host an Eurovision fan party - the idea came to me after several e-mail requests for such post :)

JUNE 2010



As the summer season began, I blogged about a new cool café in Pärnu, the "summer capital" of Estonia (one of their popular cakes is pictured above). We loved the cooked whole fish under a salt-crust, and Ottolenghi's roasted eggplant/aubergine with saffron yogurt. The Italian tonnato mayonnaise was a frequent dish on our table during the summer, and the Estonian pork shashlik was a must-try on our Midsummer table.

We also celebrated Nami-Nami's 5th birthday, asking you to name your favorite recipes on the blog. You gave fantastic feedback, thank you!

JULY 2010



July was hot! hot! hot! I almost stopped cooking during the month, as the temperatures were simply too high for a Northern girl like me :D I did blog about grilled chicken liver with sherry and honey marinade, and then moved on to pretty much uncooked dishes. Cottage cheese and egg salad, Danish sweet buttermilk soup with summer berries, watermelon salad, cold beetroot soup, harissa-spiked hummus.

And of course, as any other true Estonian, I ate lots of kama with local wild and cultivated berries (photo above) :)

We also took a daytrip to Helsinki, visiting Café Stringberg for a coffee (our little must-do in Helsinki) and having lunch at one of the hottest eateries in town, Juuri (they're famous for their Finnish tapas, sapas, but these weren't served during lunch-time, unfortunately):



AUGUST 2010



I August we really reaped the benefits of our vegetable garden. Just look at the beets we harvested (above), coming in all shapes and colours!!! Favourite recipes back in August were this tomato salad (we had LOADS of tomatoes as well), oven-baked zucchini/courgettes and tomatoes with feta cheese, cherry and plum compote (our orchard is too young to pick our own stone fruit just yet, but soon, hopefully). We had some friends over for the first ever Nami-Nami tomato tasting party (photo below; hopefully this will become an annual tradition):



It was an exceptionally good year for wild mushrooms in Estonia this year, and we ate lots of them, of course! If I get hold of some black trumpet mushrooms again next year, I'll be definitely making this black trumpet chantarelle salad again - loved the flavour and the bite! I also shared a recipe for lovely simple scones and Snickerdoodle cookies.

SEPTEMBER 2010

September was eventful. In the beginning of the month we spent over a week in Germany and France (with a short detour to Switzerland), attending our friend Margit's wedding in Köln. Of course we sampled lots of culinary delights on the trip, most memorable being maultaschen in Heidelberg:



a proper Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte in a Bizenberger family café in the Schwarzwald area of Germany:



The traditional and the more modern porcini & parmesan cheese flammeküche at L'auberge Saint-Martin in Kinzberg.



And last, but not least - a trip to the famous Bernard Antony, Eleveur de Fromages in Vieux-Ferrette was all worth it!



Back home, things were getting exciting, too. Our daughter began attending a small local nursery (luckily, she loves it!), I went back to work after a long maternity leave. We had another tasting party at home, this time getting to know the infamous Swedish "delicacy", surströmming (an event that's NOT going to be repeated any time soon).



The garden was still providing us with excellent vegetables - like these beautiful eggplants/aubergines. My favourite recipe back in September was definitely this super-easy but very flavourful cauliflower cheese with lots of mustard.

OCTOBER 2010



October was a good month for good recipes, if I may say so. The American apple pie, pumpkin scones, the Dutch apple cake and this coconut dhal (above) are all worth repeating again and again.

NOVEMBER 2010



As the nights got darker and days shorter, I began cooking more substantial meals again. I loved this roasted cauliflower with bacon and garlic (thank you, Jaden, for inspiration!), the beet and blue cheese risotto, the Danish brunsviger cake (photo above). I also posted a recipe for a Latvian dish, Kurzeme stroganoff, that hopefully many of you will try.

I took my dear K. for a special birthday dinner at Bordoo, the new restaurant of one my favourite chefs, Tõnis Siigur. The 6-course tasting menu was nothing less than spectacular and I'm looking forward to going again a.s.a.p.

DECEMBER 2010



The last month of the year just flew by. On December 1st, my first cookbook (photo above) hit the bookshelves here in Estonia, and we had a lovely book launch party that evening (the book has been doing pretty well, thank you for asking ;)). I spoke in several radio channels during December (KUKU, R2, Vikerraadio), and the Estonian print media (and bloggers!) have been very generously reviewing and covering the cookbook as well. I feel so honoured and blessed! (Again - a HUGE thank you to dear Ximena for making the book look so special and beautiful!).

Although December has been very much centered around the cookbook, I did manage to attend a special dinner at NEH and a foodbloggers' lunch at CHEDI (serving excellent modern Asian food), visited the brand new (and very cool!) Sadama turg (Harbour market) and even blog about some dishes (these cheese popovers and soft gingerbread cakei are especially recommended.

We hosted a Christmas Eve dinner to our families again (food was pretty traditional, too). And on the Christmas day we got home two new chickens - a blue and black Orpington (still nameless; these two are to keep Evita and Carol some company over the winter).

Nami-Nami Easter Brunch 2010

Hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend, wherever and however you celebrated it! We hosted our traditional Easter Sunday Brunch yesterday, with 11 adults, 6 children and 3 toddlers around the table. Last year I tried to follow a green/yellow colour scheme. This year I simply chose dishes that made me think of spring :)

Here are the dishes from yesterday:

We started with Mimosas again:


Baby spinach with hot-smoked salmon, quail eggs, green beans and asparagus spears:


Quinoa salad with beets, fennel and basil


Savoury cheesecake with chives and goat's cheese:


Ottolenghi's cucumber salad with chilli and poppy seeds


Bean salad with lemon and parsley:


Estonian national fish, Baltic herring, with cherry tomatoes and herbs (recipe from an Estonian foodblogger Mari-Liis):


Home-made Estonian cheese with curd cheese, eggs and caraway seeds, served with dark rye bread:


Choux puffs with ricotta, mint and green pea filling (recipe from the latest issue of the French Regal magazine; the only dish that didn't rock and won't be repeated)


As for the sweet dishes, our friends Paavo & Kristiina brought along a delicious paskha:


I made a traditional British Simnel cake, topped with 11 chocolate eggs that we bought from the gorgeous Péclard café in Zürich last weekend:


And last, but not least, a delicious cake with coconut, lemon curd, elderflower cream and lemon balm leaves (recipe from the Swedish BAKA magazine):

Mail order tsoureki: kaló páscha

I celebrated Easter last weekend with paskha, the typical festive dessert back home in Estonia. This weekend I helped a Greek friend in need to celebrate Orthodox Easter. On this occasion the Greeks eat a special sweet bread - tsoureki. I baked a rather nice one in Edinburgh last year, devoured in minutes by a bunch of Greek students, and consequently got a mail order request to make one again for this Easter. The large and beautifully aromatic tsoureki was flown to an undisclosed destination in mainland Europe. Thank you, C.D,. for acting as a courier on such a short notice!

The recipe is based on two Paul Hollywood's recipes - one from his book 100 Great Breads and another from UKTV Food. I keep having problems with Hollywood's recipes and I'm not sure they have been double-checked properly by the pastry chef himself. His recipe for mint & halloumi bread seemed also a bit awkward, though the bread I ended up baking was delicious. His two tsoureki recipes are even more confusing. The only constant seems to be the amount of flour (500 grams) - the amount and list of other ingredients vary rather wildly. Hollywood cannot really decide whether he wants 2 eggs in his tsoureki or none, whether to use 30 grams of dried yeast (!!!) or 15 grams of fresh (it should be other way around, surely!?). And adding 15 grams of salt to 500 grams of flour seems also a wee bit too generous. I want my guests to come back for more, so I've tweaked the recipes accordingly.

For example, I've omitted the raisins altogether, as according to my Greek sources there should be none in a tsoureki (raisins may be a Cypriot twist). I've reduced the amount of salt and butter. I didn't use the red eggs that are traditionally used to decorate tsoureki - although this is strictly necessary only if you eat the tsoureki on the Easter Sunday. This time I also managed to get hold of mastic and mechlebe - two new spices in my kitchen. Although I don't know how to describe them, they did give a very pleasant and unusual flavour to the end product. You should be able to find them from health food shops or shops specialising in Greek and Middle Eastern produce.

But definitely one beautiful sweet bread.

Greek Easter bread TSOUREKI
(Kreeka lihavõttesai "tsoureki")
Makes one large plaited loaf



500 grams strong white flour
75 grams golden caster sugar
50 grams softened butter
1 large orange, zested
0.5 tsp salt
a pinch of mechlebe (sour cherry pits - about 10), pounded finely
a pinch of gum mastic (ca 2 pieces), pounded finely
a generous pinch of ground cinnamon
1 egg
25 grams fresh yeast
150 ml lukewarm water
150 ml lukewarm milk

For brushing:
1 egg, beaten

Mix the flour, sugar, salt, orange zest, cinnamon, gum mastic and mechlepi and soft butter in a large bowl. Crumble the butter into the dry ingredients.
Mix the fresh yeast with a small amount of lukewarm water until combined, add to the dough.
Add the egg, lukewarm milk and water and mix everything together with your hands.
Dip the dough onto a floured surface and knead for 5 minutes, until the dough doesn't stick to your hands anymore (you may have to add some more flour).
Put the kneaded dough back into the bowl, sprinkle with some flour and cover with a clean kitchen towel.
Leave to rise for one hour in a warm place, until the dough has doubled in size.
[Or, if you insist, leave to rise at room temperature, go for a cocktail with friends at Dragonfly @ Grassmarket and then for a meal at Hanam's, a new Kurdish & Middle Eastern restaurant @ Tollcross. Return 4 hours later and continue].
Knock the dough down and dip onto a slightly floured surface again and divide into three. Roll each dough piece into a long strip and plait the strips together. Lift onto a large baking sheet and leave to rise for an hour, until doubled in size again.
Brush with beaten egg and bake in the middle of 200˚C oven for 25-30 minutes, until tsoureki is nice and golden brown.