Pop-up café in Viimsi this Saturday!

Six Estonian foodbloggers - Aire, Britt, Liina, Marju, Silja and yours truly - are setting up a pop-up café at the Viimsi Farmers Market this Saturday. It's not the first time - in September 2011 and September 2012 we opened a pop-up apple cake café (õunakoogikohvik, you can see some photos here) at the same market, and the organisers - Museum of the Coastal Folk - asked us to come and serve our creations at their newest special event, Viimsi Fish Day (Kalapäev).

We were happy to oblige :)

Kalapäev focuses on fish in general, and on the culinary uses of a very invasive species, round goby (ümarmudil) in particular. There are several workshops and events throughout, and our pop-up café (or fish buffet, as we've called it this time) is open between 10-14. The menu is varied and rich - we have various quiches (cottage cheese and smoked sea bass, fresh salmon and broccoli, nettle and smoked fish), tuna-filled profiteroles, salmon muffins, Estonian-style fish and chips, Empanaditas Gallegas, miso-glazed cod, a selection of smörgås aka open sandwiches, jellied pike-perch (zander), smoked mackerel paté toasts, salmon fishcakes with a remoulade, a festive leek pie with cream cheese and smoked salmon topping, sprat pastries - to name just a few. Of course, there will be also some sweet cakes - rhubarb and chocolate and curd cheese and cinnamon and kama will feature in one way or another.

We offer a free cup of espresso to all visitors and homemade cloudy lemonade to the smaller ones!

Do come along and say hello if you are in Tallinn or Viimsi or nearby! Look for the lovely chalkboard poster and you'll find us easily. 

A huge thank you to Pepe Kala OÜ who supplied us with fresh and cured fish, and MEIRA who kindly lend us a Segafredo MyEspresso coffee pod machine for the duration of the event.

Here's the poster for the main event:

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If you love cheese and you're in Estonia this weekend ...

... then you should head to the Rotermanni Quarter this Friday and Saturday for Estonia's first cheese festival:

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Some links about Estonian food

I'll be compiling my annual "Where to eat out in Tallinn and elsewhere in Estonia" 2013 round-up soon (yep, even with three small kids I've been able to visit a café and restaurant or two, quite surprisingly :)), but until I do that, I leave you with some links about Estonian food and/or food in Estonia.

Based in Toronto? Then listen to David Sax and head over to The Estonian House for some lovely "pirukad": Pass the pirukas! At the Estonian House Café, meaty mains and deadly desserts bring the Baltic to Broadview (The Grid, March 20, 2013)

A first generation American of Estonian descent, Andres Simonson, explains the concept of Estonian smörgåsbord: Külmlaud - the guided tour (Estonian World, March 10, 2013)

London-based Swedish food writer Ana Maria Espsäter shares her impressions about the Estonian food and recommends places in Tallinn and outside the capital: Tallinn's mix of traditional and new (Just About Food, April 8, 2013)

Riina Kindlam's article in a January issue of Toronto-based online magazine Eesti Elu/Estonian Life cites yours truly and features one of my homemade cheese photos: Voulez-vous some SUIR or some SÕIR ce soir? (January 26, 2013)

If you read Finnish, then check out Sikke Sumari's overview about Tallinn restaurant scene: Jauhoton suklaakakku ja pari osoitetta Tallinnasta (Iltasanomat blog, April 12, 2013).

If you read Estonian, then Triin Paaver has been musing about the ethical aspects of foodblogging: Toidublogija rollist, vastutusest ja Tšiili hanemaltsast.

The photo above was taken in our garden in May 2012. Not sure our tulips will be in full bloom any time soon - it was still snowing yesterday! - but we're being hopeful. 

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Some pictures from Nami-Nami garden, October 2012

My dear K. took some pictures of our beautiful garden last weekend. The gardening season is more or less over for this year - we picked our last tomatoes and aubergines/eggplants a fortnight ago, this weekend we harvested the last of beets, carrots and potatoes, as well as Jerusalem artichokes (the latter could stay in the ground until the Spring, but we wanted them out from a certain raised bed).

Despite the cold nights and heavy rains, the garden still has some amazing colours on display.

Cornus alba "Sibirica" aka red bark dogwood or red twig dogwood:
 

Quercus rubra aka northern red oak or champion oak:

The bright red and ripe fruit of Podophyllum emodi aka Himalayan mayapple or Indian may apple:


Hydrangea paniculata 'Grandiflora' aka panicled hydrangea:


The autumn look of Ligularia stenocephala aka leopard plant:


Hylotelephium spectabile (Sedum spectabile) aka showy stonecrop or ice plant in its full glory, Echinacea purpurea aka Eastern purple coneflower or purple coneflowe is finally loosing its beautiful colour:


One of my favourite apples back in Scotland was Egremont Russet - perhaps because it's very dissimilar to all the popular apple varieties in Estonia. The russet apple is often described as having a sweet and dry "nutty" flavour, and I agree. When establishing our garden 4 years ago, we ordered two Egremont Russet plants from  England to complement some of our local varieties. Although we got 2 beautiful ripe apples last year, then this year we've been blessed with almost twenty large and perfect russet-coloured dessert apples:



Aster novae-angliae aka aster "New England" is still looking pretty:


Sambucus nigra or black elder (lace black elder), variety 'Dissectum', has really been thriving in our garden. Earlier this year I used the blossoms to flavour raspberry jam and make several bottles of cordial for the forthcoming winter. Now the berries are ripe and I hope to make some black elderberry jam next weekend:


And last, but not least - our beautiful Rosa rugosa aka rugosa rose "Ritausma" has began to blossom again, for the third time this season, if I'm not mistaken:


Here's the garden update from May 2012, and here's the garden update in Estonian.

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Sunday pancakes with crushed berries

If you're thinking that those are tiny green gooseberries and our famous cloudberries, you're wrong. The green berries are actually blackcurrants* (Ribes nigrum) - yes, you read it correctly - and perfectly ripe ones at that. The green blackcurrant variety is called "VERTTI", and it was released by MTT Agrifood Research Finland in 1986. The berries have the typical pleasant blackcurrant flavour, but are sweeter, a bit milder and less sour - perfect for eating straight off the bush! (On the upside - the birds don't seem to want them, as they're having hard time spotting them in the first place. More berries for us!).

The yellow berries are simply golden raspberries or yellow raspberries, an albino variety of your regular red raspberry (Rubus idaeus). It's a local variety called "HELKAL", developed at the Polli Horticultural Research Centre in Southern Estonia during the last century and officially registered in 2004.

Once you've filled your stomach with the fresh berries au naturel, you can get a wee bit more adventurous and mash some of the berries with some sugar:

 

And enjoy with your Sunday morning pancakes. Isn't it just a glorious and unusual colour?

Enjoy! Bon appetit! Head isu! :)

* I came across this interesting bit of information about blackcurrants in the US. Fascinating!

Blackcurrants were once popular in the United States as well, but became rare in the 20th century after currant farming was banned in the early 1900s, when blackcurrants, as a vector of white pine blister rust (männi-koorepõletik, mida põhjustab roosteseen, mille vaheperemeheks on sõstrapõõsas), were considered a threat to the U.S. logging industry. The federal ban on growing currants was shifted to jurisdiction of individual states in 1966, and was lifted in New York State in 2003 through the efforts of horticulturist Greg Quinn. As a result, currant growing is making a comeback in New York, Vermont, Connecticut and Oregon.  However, several statewide bans still exist including Maine and New Hampshire. 
Since the American federal ban curtailed currant production nationally for nearly a century, the fruit remains largely unknown in the United States, and has yet to regain its previous popularity to levels enjoyed in Europe or New Zealand. Owing to its unique flavour and richness in polyphenols, dietary fibre and essential nutrients, awareness and popularity of blackcurrant is once again growing, with a number of consumer products entering the market. 

Source: Wikipedia

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Average Betty was here!

Are you familiar with the American food blog called Average Betty? It's written by a lovely 30-something LA-based woman called Sara O'Donnell, who is even more known for her witty and catchy recipe channel Average Betty on YouTube. She was visiting Estonia last week and I had the chance to meet her and throw a party for her and her husband. It was supposed to be a garden party (my dear K. even managed to excuse himself from my aunt's husband's 65th birthday party as he had to mow the lawn and make sure the garden looks all nice and pretty when Sara and the guests arrive ;)), but alas, the weather wasn't on our side. Luckily we managed to fit all the 18 adults and numerous kids into our house as well.



While I regularly entertain rather big groups of people at our home, I decided to play it safe this time and organise a potluck party instead, asking each local guest to contribute a dish. We did agree beforehand that the dish has to be pretty Estonian and more or less summery, and we ended up with a rather lovely spread, if I may say so myself. I think Sara and Lee agree, and I saw them at least tasting each of the numerous dishes - quite an achievement considering that they came to the party straight from the meeting with a famous local chef Dmitri Demjanov, which included a full meal at one of his restaurants.

 
Sara and me checking out some of the delectable dishes available.

I had invited a group of local food bloggers to the party, as well as my favourite pastry chef and good friend Heidi Park (who just happens to be an American based in Tallinn) and another good Estonian friend who currently resides in Washington DC (but is visiting home for a few weeks). The local bloggers were a mix of good foodblogging friends and some rising local foodblogging stars, and based on the quality of the dishes they brought along, I just might invite them over again soon ;)

Here's the bi-lingual menu (ignore the bottom part of the blackboard. I told you the house was full of kids ;))

 

On the photo below you see a beetroot salad (thank you, Mann!), a salt pork and onion flatbread, specialty on our largest island, Saaremaa (baked by Kirsike). Fried Baltic herring and a sour cream dip was brought along by Vernanda, the barley soda bread by Tuuli (I've blogged about this delicious Estonian bread here). You can get a glimpse of various local charcuterie on the left and of local artisanal cheese at the bottom. Finally, there's a selection beautiful tomatoes from our greenhouse (various cherry tomatoes - mainly Suncherry and Sungold varieties - are in a beautiful white bowl designed by a young Israeli Tal Zur of Studio Trixie), large tomatoes are next to chopped green Siberian chives, all from our garden as well:


Here's Sara taking photos of our cute tomatoes (she's a foodblogger, after all):

See that pale blue enamel pot just behind the charcuterie selection on the photo below? The pot contains a huge pile of delicious breaded and fried turkey steaks in marinade. These were made and brought along by Ragne, and it's a lighter version of this popular Estonian pork dish.


Marinated saffron milkcaps, courtesy of my K's mum:

I baked one of my favourite chantarelle quiches, flavoured with tarragon and paprika (recipe in Estonian):


Other savoury dishes included a wonderful Estonian rye bread and herby home cheese (Tuuli) and a layered smoked ham, egg and cucumber salad (Kätrin).

Sara looks happy with a glass of Estonian bubbly (see note at the end of the post), and our son is helping himself to some of the dishes:


We obviously also had quite a few sweet dishes, though in the midst of the hustle and bustle we forgot to photograph them all :) Heidi, the Tallinn-based American pastry chef, brought along a  passionfruit cheesecake - a perfect balance of acidic fruit and sweet cheesecake. Kirsike made a batch of toffee-covered kama cereal balls (Estonian recipe here), and my friend Liis brought along a proper Estonian kringel (baked by her sweet diplomat husband Kristjan, who couldn't make it to the party himself), and Kätrin made a küpsisetort, a layered Estonian cookie cake (I've posted a recipe for my favourite version here).

Kaare, who drove to the party all the way from Tartu, brought along a very popular curd cheese cake - a shortcrust base, with a raisin and curd cheese topping:
 

Oh, and there was also a bowl of wonderful sweet-yet-tart yellow gooseberries that Triin brought along from Tartu.

Finally, I'd love to say a huge thank you to our drinks sponsors. Coffee was provided by Nami-Nami's long-time supporter Meira, who's also representing Segafredo Zanetti coffees in Estonia. Meira kindly gave us a Segafredo capsule coffee machine for the party (a huge thank you also to our barista Natalie :))

A le Coq sent us a selection of juices (plum nectar, banana-pear nectar and orange juice) and their Organic Beer (the first locally produced organic beer in Estonia)! By the way, the banana-pear nectar has two of Nami-Nami's recipes printed on each carton :):



There was another first-and-only at the party. We enjoyed chilled FEST - the first Estonian sparkling fruit wine, made from local apples. This semisweet apple wine is definitely very squaffable, if you ask me :) A huge thank goes to the producer, Põltsamaa FELIX. Another local drink company - Värska Vesi - had just re-introduced their mineral waters and still and sparkling drinking waters in beautiful glass bottles, and they kindly sent us a box of each.

 

All in all, I hope that Sara and her husband had great time in Estonia and that we managed to make them feel very welcome here.

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Recipe for an ice-cold wild strawberry coulis with warm marzipan cheesecake

We've had better summers than the current one. It's been raining a lot, the temperatures are a few degrees below the usual over-20C, and the sunshine has been limited. Quite sad, actually, but apparently that's the case with most central and northern European countries this year.

However, on Saturday morning the rain had stopped, the skies had cleared and the sun was out, so we packed our little family into the car, picked up one of the grandmothers and drove out of town to forage for wild strawberries. Couple of hours and a healthy dose of fresh country air later we returned home with just about a kilogram (over 2 pounds) of the precious berries. (Note that I'm talking about the real wild berries, Fragaria vesca, not the oblong cultivated Alpine strawberries, Fragaria vesca var. semperflorens).

 
Wild strawberries, picked in June 2007 

Usually I make wild strawberry fridge jam, but I had done that on Friday night with 2,5 kilos of wild strawberries we had bought at a market. The next usual step would be to mix the berries with a sprinkling of sugar and some grass-fed milk, but I had done that already, too. We also had friends coming over for dinner on Saturday night, so I wanted to do something special and different this time.

Remembering that the Swedes love their smultron a lot as well, I turned to their popular Allt om Mat recipe site, and came across this wonderful recipe for an ice-cold/semi-frozen wild strawberry soup with warm marzipan cheesecake.

Warm marzipan cheesecake with cold wild strawberry coulis 
(Jäine metsmaasikasupp sooja martsipani-toorjuustukoogiga)
Serves 6


Cold strawberry coulis:
200 ml water
125 g caster sugar (150 ml)
500 ml wild strawberries (2 cups)
0.5 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Warm marzipan cheesecake:
100 g marzipan
200 g cream cheese (Philadelphia or such like)
2 free-range eggs
2 Tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

To serve:
wild strawberries 

First prepare the ice-cold wild strawberry soup/couilis. 
Bring water and sugar into a boil in a small saucepan. Boil for a minute, then remove from the heat and stir in the wild strawberries:

 

Using an immersion blender/hand-held blender, process the berries and the syrup until smooth (if you dislike tiny seeds, you can press the whole thing through a fine sieve, but I found it totally unnecessary).
Season to taste with vanilla and lemon juice, then place into the freezer for a few hours.
Give the mixture a stir every now and then.

About 45 minutes before you intend to serve the dessert, make the marzipan cheesecake. 
Preheat the oven to 175 C/350 F.
Grate the marzipan coarsely or simply use your fingers to divide it into small crumbs. Mix with the rest of the ingredients and process until smooth (again, I was using my immersion blender).
Divide the mixture between six buttered small ramekins or silicone muffin/friand tins.
Bake in the middle of the pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes, until the cheesecakes look cooked and are light golden brown.
Remove the marzipan cheesecakes from the oven and let cool for 10-15 minutes.

To plate and serve:
Remove the cheesecakes carefully from the tins and place on six dessert plates. Pour the ice-cold wild strawberry coulis around the warm cheesecakes.
Garnish with wild strawberries - ideally on straw, to bring back those innocent childhood memories :)

More posts about wild strawberries:
Wild strawberry fridge jam
Picking wild strawberries in 2006
Wild strawberries and cream
Fraises des bois  @ David Lebovitz
Wild strawberries from the garden @ Chocolate & Zucchini
Maapealne paradiis ehk seitse liitrit metsmaasikaid  @ Koopatibi küpsetab (in Estonian)

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Announcement: Passion, Purpose and Pleasure Wellness Retreat in Estonia in mid-August

MarikaBlossfeldt’s  Passion, Purpose and Pleasure Wellness Retreat takes place August 12 – 18 at Polli Talu Arts Center in Western Estonia – a week of relaxation, awareness and awakening your taste buds – yoga, cooking classes, breath walks, massages, meditations and more … 

Find details here.

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Kahvliahvi Kokakool aka Kitchen Monkey's Cookery School

Here's a children's poem in Estonian, written by Heljo Mänd in 1960s, describing small elephant's Bumbu's birthday party in the jungle, where monkeys were eating wafers ("vahvel" in Estonian) and the crocodiles were eating forks ("kahvel" in Estonian). If you combine the monkeys and the forks of this poem, you'll get kahvliahvid aka kitchen/fork monkeys.

Tingel-tangel-tungel,
kära täis on džungel.
Sünnipäev on Bumbul,
elevandijumbul.

Tangel-tungel-tingel,
pidulaual kringel.
Ahvid pistsid vahvleid,
krokodillid kahvleid.

Tungel-tingel-tangel,
limonaad on kange,
jookseb mööda lonti
justkui sada tonti.
 


Couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from a well-known journalist and party organiser, asking to give a cookery demo to a group of kids and their parents at a small music festival in a small Estonian town of Kilingi-Nõmme.  The workshop, called Kahviahvi Kokakool ("Fork Monkey's Cooking School", or probably better translated as "Kitchen Monkeys"), was to have four cookery sessions/demonstrations, and I was asked to give one of them. I agreed - it was a chance to get out of town and listen to some nice music in fresh air before and after the cooking demo. We were discussing the possible menu options, taking into consideration what the other sessions were focusing on, and finally agreed I'd teach the kids and their parents (26 in total) how to make cold soups. Not your usual gazpacho, mind you, but a kefir and a buttermilk soup, respectively - one savoury, one sweet.

It's summer, after all! As it turned out to be a really hot on Saturday (the music festival and the culinary workshops took place on Saturday, July 7th), cold soups seemed to have been a wise choice indeed :)


My cold summer soup workshop was at 5.30 pm, third one of the afternoon:


I tied the apron strings and was ready to begin. Note the sweet monkey-fork/fork-monkey design:


The kids were all anxiously waiting and ready to start chopping:


We began with the savoury kefir soup. Basically we made this chlodnik, but adding beets/beetroots and grated horseradish was optional, and everybody added some cooked mortadella-style sausages as well, to make the soup a bit more substantial. I must admit that about 3/4th of the kids asked for both the beets and the horseradish, which made me very happy indeed :)

Small (and some slightly bigger) kitchen monkeys in action. Note the high concentration of fathers - at least four - who were accompaning their children:




My role was to make sure everyone has understood the instructions and are progressing nicely:


Cutting the sausages into small dice for the soup requires some serious focusing and concentration:
 

Me, making sure that everyone got some vitamin-rich green onions:

Here's a close-up of the cold kefir soup with scallions/green onions, finely chopped sausages, beets and cucumbers (you can only guess there's beetroot at present at this point, as the stirring of the soup was a serious and time-consuming job as well):


Once everyone had finished making and eating their cold kefir soup, it was time to start making the dessert. I had chosen the wonderfully summery Danish buttermilk and strawberry soup koldskål - you'll find the recipe here on Nami-Nami. We did use kama cereal balls instead of crushed biscuits/cookies, however.

The main component - local Estonian strawberries, which are at their peak just now:


Mint, destined as garnish of the cold buttermilk-strawberry soup (lemon balm works just as well)

 Choosing the prettiest strawberries for the buttermilk-strawberry soup:



Here's our daughter (3 y 5 m) enjoying the buttermilk-strawberry soup she made all by herself:



Thank you, Merle Liivak, Kahvliahvi Kokakool & Schilling, for inviting me! I had a lovely day indeed :)

All photos by my food-blogging friend Liina Vahter .

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