Quail eggs with whitefish roe

Quail eggs, again :) As I've said on several occasions before, I love quail eggs in all their disguises - dipped into Pimentón de la Vera or Egyptian dukkah seed mixture, as a component in a "mushroom canapé", as topping on an Estonian wild mushroom crostini, as a filling inside salmon kulebyaka, or as a garnish on top of Estonian seven-layer salad or smoked salmon and spinach salad. This particular nibble has been briefly mentioned before (see here), but I've made them again and took a much better photo this time :)

Here's the "recipe":

Cut the top off boiled quail eggs, spoon some whitefish (or other fish) roe on top and seat the quail eggs on a bed of finely chopped dill. Serve.

(Vutimunad siiamarjaga)

Swedish 'jam kisses' or thumbprint cookies

New photo, March 2011

We hosted a pretty crazy culinary tasting party at our house last Friday - surströmming tasting party. K's colleague had brought us a selection of fermented Baltic herring, an (in)famous Swedish 'delicacy' from 2009 and 2010, both fillets and whole fish. We served these with boiled 'almond potatoes', flatbread (tunnbröd) and condiments. I prepared a selection of savoury and sweet dishes to go alongside and after the challenging fish degustation. One of the dishes on the table was a plate full of piopular Swedish cookies 'syltkyssar' - literally, jam kisses (hope my Swedish is correct here :)). These are pale round shortbread cookies, usually filled with thick raspberry jam. I didn't have any raspberry jam at home, so I used a good blackberry conserve instead.

Thumbprint cookies syltkyssar
(Moosimusid)
yields about 20-30 cookies, depending on the size



200 g unsalted butter, softened
100 ml icing sugar/confectioner's sugar
240 g plain flour/all-purpose flour (400 ml)
100 ml potato flour/potato starch
a pinch of salt

thick raspberry or blackberry jam

Cream the butter with sugar. Mix flour, salt and potato starch, sift into the butter mixture. Combine with a wooden spoon.
Using your hands, take small chunks of cookie dough and roll into small balls. Place on a cookie sheet and press a thumb print onto each cookie.
Place a tiny spoonful of jam into the indent.
Bake in a preheated 180 C oven for about 15 minutes, until the cookies are light golden.

Playing Russian roulette with Pimientos de Padrón or green Padrón chiles

I addition to all those lovely tomatoes, we've got a pretty good crop of Padrón peppers (Pimientos de Padrón) and various aubergines/eggplants from our greenhouse. Last weekend we met up with some friends and roasted some of the green chiles, then drizzled them with olive oil and sprinkled sea salt flakes on top. It's a popular tapas-dish in Spain, and the added excitement is that while most of this green chillies are rather mild, then about one in ten is fiery hot (hence the nick-name "Russian roulette peppers").

When I first had these at Johanna's place couple of years ago, I didn't encounter a single hot one. Now we didn't have any mild ones - they were all oh-so-hot! Not such a roulette after all :D This can be explained by the timing - we visited Johanna in April (early in the season), and now ate our own crop in August (late in the season) - young and new Padrońs are generally mild, and 'old' ones hot.

Padrón Chillies are originally from Mexico, but are named after a town in Galicia, Spain, where they first started to cultivate these chillies in Europe.