The final wedding report from 2006: Helen's & Duncan's affair with medieval flair

My regular readers know that I went to zillion, well, four weddings last year. At the beginning of 2006, I received no less than six wedding invites. As I'm not working in the City, but in academia, I couldn't possibly afford to attend all of them. However, I did manage to witness my Scottish friend Annemieke marry her Greek beau Georgios on Santorini in June. In July, I attended a lovely wedding in Stockholm, where my Swedish friend Annika said 'Yes' to her British fiance Ben. (And consequently missed my friends Eve & Risto's wedding in Tallinn at the same weekend). In August, I feasted, gluten-free, in Brussels to celebrate Helen & David's long-awaited marriage (note the unusual 'cheesy' wedding cake) , and in September danced away in Tallinn, at Helen & Duncan's wedding.

As the 2007 wedding season starts tonight with the wedding of my one of my best friends, Erika, then I better finish writing about the weddings from 2006 before I open the chapter of 2007 weddings.

In early September, my Edinburgh-based Estonian friend Helen & and her Scottish man-of-her dreams, Duncan, said 'Yes' to each other during a beautiful bi-lingual ceremony at Holy Ghost Church (Pühavaimu kirik) in Tallinn. We then descended along the Holy Ghost Street/Pühavaimu tänav to a champagne reception at The Scottish Club, a restaurant dedicated to all things Scottish. Quite appropriate, considering that the groom, the best man and half of the guests had flown in from Scotland!



After the reception, some of us popped for a quick coffee at the enchanted little café, Chocolats de Pierre - probably one of my favourite gems in Tallinn (I hope Doughboy agrees, as I dragged him there in late December:)

The wedding dinner & dance took place at the House of the Brotherhood of Black Heads, just weeks before the Queen of England dined there (you can read more about this medieval guild of unmarried merchants and ship owners here). As we had moved from a medieval church to a medieval courtyard to a medieval guild house, then it's not surprising that the catering was provided by one of the medieval restaurants in town. After all, Tallinn is very proud of its well-preserved medieval old town.

Here's what the menu looked like:

The Wedding Menu
The Brotherhood of the Black Heads

Soup:
Cock-a-Leekie Soup (a traditional Scottish recipe)

Main Dish:
Oven roasted Norwegian Salmon fillet in the Bearnaise Sauce with favourite vegetable and rice casserole, fresh herbs - dainties of the honourable mayor of Rewal

or
Crispy pork fillet and mustard-green pepper reduction a la Grand Merchant Peppersack with favourite vegetable and fresh herb dainties of the honourable mayor Rewal

Selection of wholemeal bread and buns with Blackheads Brotherhood green cheese

Dessert:
Caledonian cream

Ave'c
Selection of fruits
Plateau de fromages
Coffee or tea

Celebration storied cake: cottage cheese cream, hazelnut and fresh fruits/with berry-Old Rewal reduction

Oops, I did it again: a sweet toffee apple cake with tart berries

There are at least three more apple cake recipes I want to share with you, which will bring the apple cake total on this blog to 6. Considering that I visit my parents every weekend and hardly ever manage to leave without yet another bag full of home-grown apples, I'll be baking apple cakes until ... well, until there's a new crop of apples next summer.

I might need to create a separate category for apple cakes on my blog recipe index:)

Anyway - here's another lovely apple cake. You can use shop-bought shortcrust pastry, or your favourite pate brisee recipe. The cake is filled with apples and cranberries and covered with a mixture of soft brown sugar, potato starch and butter, which melt into a delicious toffee-ish sauce. I've got a supply of cranberries in my freezer, picked by yours truly back in September alongside my latest mushroom gathering trip in September. If you haven't got any cranberries, then use lingonberries or just apples, although the tartness that the berries yield goes well with the toffee that miraculously appears on the cake.

Toffee apple cake with cranberries
(Karamelline õunakook jõhvikatega)
Serves 6


[In the oven, waiting to be baked. Click on the photo to enlarge.]

Pastry:
300 ml plain flour
100 grams cold butter
2 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp cold water

Filling:
3-4 large apples, sliced
a handful or two of small cranberries
100 ml soft dark brown sugar
1 Tbsp potato starch/potato flour
50 grams butter

Mix flour, sugar and butter in a bowl, and cut into small crumbs using a knife. Add the water and quickly bring together into a ball. Press the dough onto the bottom and sides of a cake tin, and put into fridge or freezer while you prepare the filling.
Wash, peel (unless you use home-grown apples) and core the apples, then cut into thick slices.
Mix soft brown sugar with potato starch.
Take the prepared cake crust out of the oven, cover with apple slices and scatter cranberries on top.
Sprinkle the sugar mixture on top and finally lie small slices of butter onto the cake filling (it's the mixture of melted butter and soft brown sugar that results in a toffee-ish sauce on the cake, so be generous with both).
Bake at 200C for 25-30 minutes, until the cake is lovely golden brown on top.
Sprinkle with icing sugar (optional) and serve.

Other apple cakes @ Nami-nami:
Grated apple cheesecake
Canadian apple cake
Simple apple traybake

UPDATE
22.1.2007: Gracianne of Un dimance a la Campagne tried this cake and liked it.
05.2.2007: Dagmar of A Cat in the Kitchen liked it too:)

This year I dare ... or my foodie resolutions for 2007

Ilva has done it. Again. Zarah Maria has done it. Anne has done it. So has Dagmar. And Sam.

Now it's my turn.

I'm not big on making new year's promises & resolutions, as I pretty much always fail to stick to them. I must have promised for the last 15 years to join a gym and go on a diet as soon as Christmas is over, but (irregular and occasional) weekly or fortnightly badminton session and some pilates classes are the most I can muster..

However, we're talking about my favourite pastime here - food. It must be so much easier to keep those promises, overcome those challenges and stick to the resolutions.

Here we go then..

1. I will try my hand at panna cotta. I've seen so many beautiful posts about this Italian pudding (see Ilva's panna cotta al caffe, Nicky's blueberry & buttermilk, Clotilde's strawberry ones for example) and I've been thinking of few interesting versions to make myself.

2. I will make a terrine/pâté or two, at least one using rabbit. (I know, cruel!) .

3. I will make gnocchi. I always ordered gnocchi at Italian restaurants in Edinburgh, as I loved them, was too lazy to make them myself, and the supermarket ones didn't really fit the bill. Time to make them myself!

4. I will make a rullepølse or the Danish cooked rolled pork belly. I've had a rullepolse press since 1993 - I got it as a gift from my host-brother Allan when leaving Denmark (he had made it at the crafts class at school). It had been lost in the depths of my parents' larder for way too many years. I rediscovered that Danish charcuterie item during my recent trip there, and then rummaged through my parents house until I found the wooden press. (Done in April 2007, but haven't yet blogged about it)

5. I will make osso bucco. I've seen some suitable cuts at my local supermarket, costing almost nothing. K. seems keen on the idea, too. (Done in June 2007)

6. I will make boeuf bourgoingnon. (Done in January 2007)

7. I will cook at least one new recipe from K's grandmother's and great-grandmother's handwritten cookbooks (written in 1934 and 1890, respectively) every fortnight.

8. I will eat more fish. And fruit & vegetables. And less, a lot less chocolate & pastries & cakes. (Cakes & pastries made of apples count, obviously, as fruit, as I do need my regular fix of various apple cakes).

9. The usual/typical foodblogger resolution for this year - I will try not to buy (too many) new cookbooks, as I've already got loads. Hey, K. had to buy a whole new bookshelf to accommodate my culinary-literary treasures (you can see it hidden behind the Christmas tree on the photo above)!

10. I will take steps to considerably improve my photography skills, focusing obviously on taking good food pictures. This will involve learning from the masters (you know who you are), acquiring a lightbox and possibly upgrading my camera..

That should do, don't you think?