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.

Waiter, there's something in my ... Easter basket!

The third round of Waiter, there is something in my... is hosted by my dear friend Johanna, and the theme is Easter basket. Johanna wants us to share

"with us and the wider food blogging community anything that yells "Easter!" at you, be it that honey-glazed ham or herb-crusted spring lamb that is traditionally made in your neck of the woods, a gorgeous chocolate torte that you've tucked into every year since you can remember, your granny's famous hot cross buns or a brioche loaf sprinkled with rock sugar..."

So, what will be in our Easter basket here in Tallinn, Estonia? Of course there will be the Estonian Easter pudding pashka, a pressed milk curd dessert with raisins, which I prefer to make with dried cranberries (or 'craisins') instead, as these make the pashka look like it's studded with red jewels:) Here's what I made a year ago in Edinburgh:



As I wrote last year, then Easter indeed means eggs in Estonia, but not necessarily of the chocolate kind. Indeed, it's barely over a week until Easter, and I haven't seen any prominently placed over-sized chocolate eggs in the supermarkets at all!! Still, there will definitely be lots of eggs on the table - mostly dyed lovely brown with the help of onion skins (see the photo above) - I much prefer those to the bright artificially coloured eggs. If you've got visitors during Easter, then you exchange coloured eggs with them - the prettier, the better, of course.

There's also a special game we play with those eggs - munakoksimine. First you make a wish - and keep it to yourself, of course. Then you hold an egg in your palm and tap the top of the egg against the top of the other person's eggs, trying to crack the opponent's egg. If you succeed, then you win the game and your secret wish comes true. It's essential, however, that your own egg stays intact and uncracked!!! There are lots of tricks how to enhance the changes of your egg not cracking (I've learned them from my dear dad), but I'm not sharing them here, as I've got plenty of secret wishes to make in the upcoming weeks :)

[PS Just read from Johanna's entry that this activity is called "egg dumping" or "egg jarping" in England (see Wikipedia). My Estonian-English dictionary was obviously outdated. Oh well... (30.3.2007)]

I may also have some soft-boiled quails' eggs, seated on a carpet of chopped dill and dopped with some lightly salted whitefish/bleak roe (on the left). The combination of runny egg yolk and popping fish roe in your mouth is quite outstanding, as we realised again when snacking on these on Monday night..


In addition to having eggs in every size and colour in my Easter basket, there are quite a few baked Easter goodies I can see myself making this year.

For the last two years, I've baked a Greek Easter bread, tsoureki, which is a heavenly scented plaited bread with the unusual gum mastic and crushed mechlebe. As I've still got some of those spices left, I'll be making it again:


I'm also hoping to make the high Russian Easter bread kulitch this year. My Nordic neighbour Antti made a tempting kulitch last year, and I need to catch up with him. (Antti, maybe we should have a kulitsa cook-off?? :)

I think that's all I'll be arranging into my Easter basket this year..

UPDATE 3.4.2007: Check out Johanna's round-up post.

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Here are links to my previous Waiter there is something in my ... entries:

February 2007 (PIE, hosted by Jeanne) : a great Russian puff pastry and fish pie, Salmon Kulebyaka - which would also look great on the Easter table.

January 2007 (STEW, hosted by Andrew): my version (in collaboration with Anthony Bourdain:) of the French lassic Boeuf Bourguignon - which is probably too hearty now that Spring is in the air, but I'll be definitely making it again, and again, when the days will start getting shorter and darker.

Apple muffins on a spring evening

I guess I shouldn't really post a recipe for apple muffins this time of the year. After all, there's no more apples from my mum's garden left, and I cannot bring myself to buy those imported expensive, tasteless, waxy-shiny apples in the supermarket. However, as my uncle brought us a bag full of organic apples last week, you'll get yet another delicious recipe for an apple cake and a recipe for simple apple muffins this week. Hope you don't mind..

In terms of texture and taste, these muffins remind me of my Canadian apple cake. The recipe below yields 12 European-sized muffins. (I don't really know if there's such a thing as a 'European sized muffin pan', but whenever I use an American recipe that states that it'll make 6 muffins, I actually get 12 muffins with my muffin pan. If you've got one of those American muffin pans that makes six huge muffins, then increase the baking time accordingly.)

I've made these two nights in a row now. Let me remind you that there are just two people in our household and I only eat 2 muffins for breakfast and 2 for the evening snack. You can do the math...

Apple muffins
(Õunamuffinid)



150 grams butter, softened
200 ml sugar
2 eggs
3 tsp vanilla sugar
400 ml plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp ground cinnamon
100 ml milk or water

a cup of chopped apples (cored, no need to peel)

Cream butter with sugar, then add eggs one by one.
Mix the dry ingredients, sift into the butter-sugar-egg mixture, fold gently until almost combined.
Add apple chunks and milk/water, mix slightly.
Divide into prepared muffin tins (i.e. either lined with paper forms or greased with butter). Sprinkle with demerara sugar and some cinnamon.
Bake at 225C for 15 minutes, until the muffins are golden brown and well-risen.

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

Other muffins @ Nami-nami:
Savoury muffins with beetrot and blue cheese
Savoury muffins with feta cheese and sun-dried tomatoes
Dark chocolate and cherry muffins
Dark chocolate and chilli muffins
Cocoa and raspberry muffins