Blue potatoes from Carroll’s Heritage Potatoes

Inspired by two fellow foodbloggers, I picked up a bag of blue potatoes at Edinburgh Farmers’ Market last Saturday. I remember my mum used to grow few plants of Congo Blue potatoes when I was younger, so I’m not totally new to these curiously coloured tubers. But after I saw the glorious pictures that Nicky & Oliver had posted on their delicious:days, and the spooky mash at Lex Culinaria, I couldn’t resist the urge to buy a bag of weirdly coloured potatoes myself.

Lucy & Anthony Carroll’s Heritage Potatoes specialise on pre-1950 potato varieties, and they sell 12 different heritage potatoes at their stall, including two blue potato varieties – Highland Burgundy (1936) and Salad Blue (early 1900s). I bought a bag of latter one and prepared 2 joyful dishes out of them.

One large potato ended up sliced and deep-fried in sunflower oil, sprinkled with Maldon sea salt and dipped into sour cream:


The rest the blue potatoes were first boiled (which, I'm embarrased to admit, was fun, as I really liked looking at the spotty peeled potatoes):


And then they were turned into a mash (with the help of my cute Spudnik), seasoned with Very Garlicky Company’s Mash Seasoning Mixture:


I served the blue mash with chopped cucumbers and spring onions:


I enjoyed eating this purple-blue mash – it had a lovely floury potato-ey taste, with the hint of garlic. I wasn’t the least bothered by the weird and unusual hue of the mash either.

I also imagine kids would enjoy eating this, so I’ll definitely make it again in a few years then:)

Carroll’s Heritage Potatoes
Tiptoe Farm
Northcumberland
www.heritage-potatoes.co.uk

Foodie postcards: The Male and Female Characters

Today is my parents' 32nd wedding anniversary. Here's a postcard I sent them on the occasion. It is another postcard by Annie Tempest, called The Male and Female Characters.

He makes coffee:


She makes coffee:


Yes, I know it's sexist and reproducing gender stereotypes. But my Mum for sure agrees with the message. My Dad, you see, does no 'female' housework. I remember him saying that as he has three women in the house, he doesn't need to contribute to the household chores!!! Aaaargh. (To be fair to him, taking the rubbish out, fixing lightbulbs, heating the house & our wood-fire oven, getting the sauna ready, feeding the dogs, cutting the grass/shovelling the snow etc classify as 'male' tasks in our household, so I guess they both work their fair share).

Most importantly, my Dad doesn't cook. Yes, he can make a strong filter coffee, he's quite good in grilling the meat during summer parties, and he can re-heat the food lovingly prepared by my Mum and left in the fridge for my Dad. But that's pretty much all. There are, however, couple of food memories related to my Dad that I maybe should have included in my childhood food memories MEME.

These involve feeding a baby, feeding 2 toddlers and feeding a family. Which I find hilarious. Here they are:

Feeding baby Pille
My sister Merle is one year, 3 months and 6 days younger than me. Which means that in the glorious hot July of 1975, my Dad was left alone with his first-born (alias me) for a while. When my Granny came to check on her son and first grandchild one afternoon, she found me naked, tied to a tree by foot and smeared with chocolate. My Dad, you see, is a car freak - he was a semi-professional rally driver until my early teens. And on that glorious summer day he felt like fiddling with his racing car. Which can be quite tricky when a one-year-old is demanding all your attention. In order to avoid changing nappies and me 'escaping' to neighbouring gardens, he tied me to the tree, strip naked. And kept me oh-so-content by feeding me chocolates (well, Fluff was unheard of in Soviet Estonia). And that's how my granny found me - a happy naked & extremely content baby playing on the grass under the sun. I still love my Dad dearly, so this unconventional babysitting method was fine, I guess:) Though maybe I should blame my chocoholism on him??

Feeding toddlers Pille & Merle
When we were kids, semolina porridge - mannapuder - was a staple breakfast for kids. My Mum wasn't around and Dad decided to cook porridge for us. The right way to make it: bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan, add some semolina, stir and cook for another 7-8 minutes, until semolina has expanded considerably. Season and serve. My Dad had seen my Mum do this, but he didn't know that semolina expands. So he kept pouring semolina into the milk until he was happy with the thickness and consistency. But only then semolina started expanding.
Let me say, it was not a nice fluffy porridge of my Mum, but an inedible stone hard concoction. I guess we ended up eating chocolate again:)

Feeding himself & the kids
Another food memory related to my Dad involves pasta, or makaronid as they're called in Estonian. My Dad likes pasta that has been boiled and then fried in oil or butter with an egg thrown in at the end. But again, he hadn't really focused on the exact process.
He took a box of dried pasta from the cupboard. Heated some oil and butter on the frying pan and threw in the pasta. .................... Yep, he threw the DRIED PASTA into the oil. Not the leftover cold cooked pasta from night before, like my Mum always did. You can guess the rest..

Anyway. My Dad is a lovely man but not exactly a skilled cook. And somehow the above card seemed very appropriate for today. I guess that's why I sent it to them in the first place:)

Palju õnne, kallid emme ja issi!

A present from a northern neighbour

When I started blogging back in June, I knew only of one other foodblogger and Melissa of the beautiful Traveler’s Lunchbox also happens to be my fellow resident of Edinburgh. Over the last few months some other Edinburgh-based bloggers have been popping by – Anita (originally from Finland) of the Madness of Space Cat, Shauna (originally from Australia) of What’s Wrong Pussycat, 'everyday chef' of, well, everyday chef. And it looks there are other bloggers in Edinburgh and elsewhere in Scotland who read my blog. Thanks!

When I returned from Estonia in August, I met up with Anita for a chat and cuppa and gave her a bar of Fazer chocolate. Fazer is a really delicious Finnish chocolaterier – and as Anita, herself Finnish, hadn’t been at home for a while, she had asked me to bring something. (Fazer is widely available in Estonia, as is the Swedish Marabou. You’d probably have to search for Cadbury like a needle in a haystack).

Well, Anita did go to Finland in October and kindly asked me if there’s anything she can bring me from Finland. There are two food items that I always think of as related to Finland. One is the squishy-squeeky cheese juustoleipä/leipäjuusto, and the other are Karjalanpiirakkat or Karelian pasties (above). Both are widely available in Estonia as well. And though it is possible to make both of them – frying cottage cheese results (apparently) in leipäjuusto, and here is a recipe for Karelian pastries, but making the latter can be quite time consuming (I can personally say, after having baked them once. All worth it though..)

When I met Anita for a coffee last Thursday, she gave me six beauties that she had brought from Finland.

The traditional filling for Karelian pastries is cooked rice porridge, but my favourite is the potato mash stuffed kind (above), and I’m also partial to the carrot mash version. You pop them under a grill, heat them through and then cover with egg butter (well, egg, butter, salt and some parsley for instance).

And then you have these delicious and very filling pastries. They are very popular for breakfast in Finland, but I had them for dinner. And then again for breakfast. And then for lunch. Two each time:)

Kiitos, Anita! And good luck with the new job!