Beetroot borani recipe (borani chogondar)

Any regular reader of Nami-Nami has noticed the respectable number of beetroot recipes on this blog. My friend Alanna of A Veggie Venture blog even calls me "Beet Princess" (she reserved the title of Beet Queen to herself, and indeed, her list of beetroot recipes is pretty impressive, too :)

Here's my latest discovery among beetroot recipes. I was browsing Sam and Sam Clark's latest book, MORO EAST, and this Persian dish caught my eye. Borani is a general term for yogurt-based vegetable "salads" and dips in Persian cuisine. We really enjoyed this, eating it with simple oven-baked potato wedges on our sunny patio. It'd work well on a meze/mezze board with some toasted flatbread, or alongside some grilled or fried fish, oven-roasted lamb or even grilled chicken. It's extremely versatile, as you can imagine.

I will surely be making this borani chogondar again over the summer (I loved the colour!!!), perhaps alongside the spinach version (borani esfanaaj) and the aubergine/eggplant version (borani bademjan).

Make it at least a few hours in advance, so the flavours can develop.

If you're a fellow beet lover, you may want to check out the Beautiful Beet Recipes Pinterest board, where you'll find 100+ great pins leading you to some wonderful foodbloggers' recipes. If you'd love to contribute to that board, then just leave your Pinterest handle in the comments and I'll send you an invite!

Beet Borani
(Peedi-borani)
Serves 6 to 8 
Based on Sam & Sam Clark's recipe, with some modifications



500 g young beets
400 g thick/strained Greek/Turkish/Persian yoghurt
1 large garlic clove (crush to a paste with a generous pinch of salt)
a pinch of sugar
a small bunch of fresh dill, finely chopped
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
a splash of wine vinegar or lemon juice, to taste

To garnish:
100 g feta cheese, crumbled
a small handful of walnuts, chopped
a sprinkling of nigella seeds (also known as black Kalonji onion seeds)
a few dill fronds

Scrub the beets, but don't peel them. Place into a boiling water and simmer for 1-1,5 hours, until cooked. Drain and cool and peel, then cut into chunks and place into a food processor.
(Note that you can also roast the beets, or, in a hurry, use boiled un-vinegared beets).
Process the beets, then add the yogurt, crushed garlic and a pinch of sugar, process again until smooth.
Add  the chopped dill, then season to taste with salt, pepper and vinegar/lemon juice.
Transfer onto a serving bowl, cover with clingfilm and put into the fridge for a few hours so the flavours can mingle.
When ready to serve, garnish with crumbled feta, chopped walnuts and some dill fronds. Sprinkle black nigella seeds on top.

 

See other beetroot borani recipes: 
Smoke and Umami
Café Leilee
The Salty Pear
Liz Z  (Liz uses mint to flavour her borani)
Chef Yusuf

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Easy entertaining: whole hot-smoked trout or salmon with caviar dressing

Want something super-delicious, rather elegant and extremely simple for your next festive spread? Here's an excellent idea I got from my friend Annika. Annika is Estonian, but she works and lives in Sweden. She introduced me to this very popular Swedish and Finnish "sauce" that's traditionally served alongside smoked or grilled trout or salmon at a party she hosted at her Tallinn holiday flat at the end of last year.

Since then I've served this on several occasions and always to a great success. You need a good-quality smoked trout or salmon to start with - I've used a whole hot-smoked trout*, that we "carve" at the table, but you can also serve it alongside portion-sized pieces of smoked fish. Although salted trout or salmon roe is nowhere as prohibitively expensive as "proper" caviar, it's still very festive and elegant and makes people feel that they're really being pampered :)

If you're based in Tallinn or nearby, then I whole-heartedly recommend the whole hot-smoked trout from Pepe Kala OÜ. You'll find their stall at Tammsaare tee 89 during the week, or come and meet them at Viimsi Taluturg (Viimsi farmers' market) on Saturday mornings from 10 am till 2 pm. They also have excellent lightly salted trout roe.  




Creamy caviar dressing
(Kalamarjakaste)
Serves 6

200-250 g thick sour cream or creme fraiche
1 Tbsp finely chopped onion (shallot is fine)
150 g lightly salted trout or salmon roe (or slightly less, depending on your budget and taste)
2-3 Tbsp finely chopped fresh dill
freshly ground white or black pepper, to taste

Mix all ingredients together, spoon into a nice bowl and serve alongside the whole smoked fish. 
Ok, how easy and effortless was that? :)

Here's another excellent Swedish dressing recipe that goes well with smoked salmon: Dill and Mustard Sauce

What's your super-easy and quick entertainment dish? Feel free to leave a link to the recipe in the comments!

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Wild Garlic Hummus Recipe

The wild garlic season has began here in Estonia. For almost a fortnight I see people foraging for the pungent wild leaves in a nearby forest, and I've been picking a small brown paper bag full of leaves twice myself. The other day I was browsing on Pinterest for lovely wild garlic ideas, and came across this lovely recipe for wild garlic hummus on Shaheen's blog Allotment2Kitchen.

I used my regular hummus recipe and simply added a generous handful of wild garlic leaves. The result was a vibrant green dip/spread, that had a wonderful garlicky element, but its Lebanese/Israeli heritage was still there.

Note that wild garlic is also known as ramson (Allium ursinum). It's closely related to wild leeks or ramps (Allium tricoccum). Very generally speaking, the first is common in Europe and the latter in North America. You can easily substitute one for the other in this (and other Nami-Nami's wild garlic recipes).

Wild Garlic Hummus 
(Karulauguhummus)
Serves four

400 g canned chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 handful fresh wild garlic leaves, rinsed
couple of spoonfuls of water
4 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Drain the chickpeas and place to the food processor with the rest of the ingredients. Blend until you've got a smooth paste (or slightly coarse, if that's how you prefer your houmous). Taste for seasoning - if you wish, add some more lemon juice or salt.

Excellent with toasted pita bread, or on a slice of toast, or spread on crispy crostini or as a dipping sauce with some crudités. We enjoyed ours with some Georgian bread, pictured.

More Wild Garlic recipes:
Wild Garlic Pesto with Almonds @ Nami-Nami
Wild Garlic Pesto with Pinenuts @ Nami-Nami
Wild Garlic Tzatziki @ Nami-Nami
Mashed Potatoes with Wild Garlic @ Nami-Nami
Wild Garlic Butter @ Nami-Nami
Ramson-Almond-Pesto  @ Küchenlatein
Creamy Wild Garlic Soup @ Cinnamon and Thyme
Wild garlic, courgette and mint soup by Angela Hartnett

More hummus recipes:
Harissa-spiked hummus @ Nami-Nami
Beetroot Hummus @ Nami-Nami
Hommus with pomegranate syrup and tahini @ Anissa Helou
Basil hummus @ Simply Recipes
Hummus en fuego @ 101 Cookbooks
Roasted jalapeno and lime hummus  @ The Kitchn
Beet Hummus @ Chocolate & Zucchini

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Béarnaise sauce, grilled steak and home-made chunky potato chips

Playing around with food is all fine, but sometimes I want a good old classic dish. Take the Béarnaise sauce. I first encountered back in Denmark in 1992/1993 - my host mum would make it regularly and serve it with grilled steak. It came in a powdered form from a packet, but to my 18-year-old tastebuds it tasted just fine and I instantly fell for the tarragon-infused creamy sauce. A good steak and tarragon-enhanced sauce Béarnaise is truly a match made in heaven! I wouldn't touch the Béarnaise made from a powder anymore, but I still love the sauce.

Note that the sauce has nothing to do with the Swiss capital, Bern. It gets its name from the birth-place of d'Artagnan (the one in "The Three Musketeers"), Béarn province, in South-Western France :)

The recipe below is based on Paul Gayler's recipe in Jill Norman's excellent The Cook's Book. Paul Gayler suggests using clarified butter to make this sauce (as well as it's "mother sauce", Hollandaise), but I am happy enough with using just melted butter myself.

What's your relationship to Sauce Béarnaise? Love it or hate it?

Béarnaise Sauce
(Béarni kaste)
Serves 4 to 6 (makes about 600 ml)

2 Tbsp white vine vinegar
2 Tbsp water
1 tsp white peppercorns, lightly crushed
2 Tbsp roughly chopped fresh tarragon or 2 tsp dried tarragon
2 small shallots, chopped
4 large egg yolks
250 g unsalted butter, melted
1 Tbsp fresh tarragon, chopped
1 Tbsp fresh chervil, chopped
sea salt

Place the vinegar, water, peppercorns, tarragon and shallots in a small pan. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about 1-2 minutes, until reduced to about 2,5 Tbsp. Remove from the heat and leave to infuse and cool.
Strain the liquid into a heatproof bowl. Add the egg yolks and whisk until combined
Set the bowl over a pan of simmering water (bain-marie), the base of the bowl should not touch the hot water, but be just above it. Whisk the mixture for 5-6 minutes, until it thickens and is creamy and smooth in texture.
Remove the bowl and place onto a dampened kitchen towel (this helps to keep the bowl in place). Slowly pour in the melted butter in a thin stream, whisking vigorously all the time, until the sauce is thick and glossy.
Add the chopped tarragon and chervil, season to taste with sea salt and serve at once.

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Dill and mustard sauce - hovmästarsås - for smoked salmon or gravlax

This Swedish dill and mustard sauce - gravlaxsås/hovmästarsås/senapssås - was one of our favourite sauces this summer. We served this with smoked salmon and gravlax to our guests quite often, and never got tired of it. Although the season for al fresco lunches is sadly over, there's nothing that keeps us from enjoying thinly sliced smoked salmon indoors. Long and leisurely Sunday brunches, anyone?

The sauce keeps in the fridge for a few days, covered.

Swedish dill and mustard sauce
(Tilli-sinepikaste)
Makes about a cup



2 Tbsp sweet Swedish mustard (you can use Honey Dijon)
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp caster sugar
0.5 tsp salt
a pinch of freshly ground black pepper
1-1.5 Tbsp white wine vinegar
200 ml mild oil (rapeseed, grapeseed, canola)
a small bunch of fresh dill, finely chopped

To serve:
smoked salmon or gravlax

Put the mustards, sugar, salt, pepper and vinegar into a bowl, and mix until the sugar has dissolved.
Using a small whisk, whisk in the oil little by litte. Finally, mix in the chopped dill.

See similar recipes:
Anne's Food
Rosa's Yummy Yum

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Mayonnaise in 60 seconds (video recipe)

I first read about the incredibly simple immersion blender/hand-held blender mayonnaise over at Delicious Days almost two years ago (read here), but didn't try this method ourselves until a few months ago. We're certainly not looking back into the traditional "whisk until your arm hurts/add oil one drop at a time" method soon. Here's why:



The video has the recipe in Estonian, but here's all you need:



1 whole organic egg (M or L)
1 tsp (Dijon) mustard
1 Tbsp lemon juice or white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar (I used lemon juice)
salt and freshly ground black pepper
250 ml (a cup) of oil (NOT extra-virgin olive oil*; I used rapeseed oil)

ALL INGREDIENTS MUST BE AT ROOM TEMPERATURE; YOU NEED AN IMMERSION BLENDER/HAND-HELD BLENDER FOR THIS METHOD

Place all the ingredients in a high beaker (I used a glass jar, simply because it was more photogenic than my old battered plastic beaker :)) in the order given above. Place the top of the immersion blender over the egg, and hold the ON-button. Once you see the streaks of mayonnaise appearing at the bottom of the glass/beaker, slowly start moving the blender upwards, until you've got a beautiful mayonnaise.

Season to taste and serve at once.

Keeps in the fridge for a day or two, but best eaten on the day it's made. After all, it's all natural and fresh.

* Nicole uses sunflower oil, and she helpfully refers to Cook's Illustrated (March/April 2009) in her pesto blog post:
Extra-virgin olive oil contains bitter tasting polyphenols coated by fatty acids, which prevent them from dispersing. If the oil is emulsified in a food processor, these polyphenols get squeezed out and the liquid mix turns bitter.

SO, are you a convert yet? What's your favourite brand of shop-bought mayonnaise? If you make your own, what's your favourite method/recipe?

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Wild garlic pesto aka ramson pesto recipe

Wild garlic has arrived! Wild garlic, also known as ramson or bear's garlic (Allium ursinum, 'karulauk' in Estonian), is a very close relative to the wild leek aka ramp (Allium tricoccum, 'grislilauk' in Estonian). I've been eagerly waiting for this spring green, as I love both the flavour and the versatily of it, and it's a good health-booster at this time of the year. Well, if it's good enough for big brown bears, it's good enough for us :D

Although I've been happily making a wild garlic pesto with pinenuts for a few years now, this one is a new favourite. There's more flavour, and somehow it's much more gutsier than the 'regular' wild garlic pesto. The idea to use almonds instead of pinenuts in a wild garlic pesto is from a German food magazine. I've upped the amount of almonds and cheese, and used regular almonds instead of blanched.

Let me tell you - this was a huge hit at my recent birthday brunch, where the guests were spreading it on thin slices of ciabatta. I'm heading to my secret wild garlic field later today, just so I could make this one again :)

You could definitely try this with ramps or even with garlic scapes. If you love garlic, you'll love this, I promise!

Other recipes using wild garlic/ramson @ Nami-Nami:
Wild garlic tzatziki
Wild garlic and potato mash
Wild garlic butter
Wild garlic pesto (with pinenuts)
Stuffed tomatoes with wild garlic salad

Wild garlic pesto / Ramson pesto
(Karulaugupesto mandlitega)
Makes about 200 ml



a good bunch of wild garlic (about 125 g), rinsed and drained
50 g Parmesan cheese, roughly chopped
50 g whole almonds
75 ml (5 Tbsp) extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Place almonds and cheese into a food processor and blitz into fine crumbs. Add wild garlic, process again until you've got a coarse pesto. Now add the oil little by little, with the machine still running.
Season with salt and pepper.

If you want to keep your pesto for a few weeks, then place into cool sterilised jars and pour a layer of olive oil on top. Keep in the fridge.

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Tonnato, the versatile tuna mayonnaise

Vitello tonnato is a popular summer-time dish in Italy, originating in the 19th century Piedmont. Cold thin slices of cooked veal are topped with a creamy tuna and anchovy dressing. I love the classic version a lot, but the tuna mayonnaise is much more versatile. It's been a frequent visitor in our kitchen this spring, and I've given below the recipe I've come to love. I especially like it on top of crisp crostini slices, but it's also a good dressing for some left-over boiled eggs.

What's your favourite tonnato recipe and dish?

Crostini with tuna mayonnaise, garnished with caperberries (Suupisted tuunikalamajoneesiga):


Vitello tonnato aka cold veal slices with tuna mayonnaise (Vasikalihalõigud tuunikalamajoneesiga). That's the classic way of serving tonnato:



Uova tonnata or boiled eggs with tuna mayonnaise, garnished with some capers and lemon zest (Munad tuunikalamajoneesiga):


Tonnato aka Italian tuna mayonnaise
Serves 4

Note that I make my tonnato from scratch and not cheating by simply mixing mayonnaise with canned tuna :)



2 large egg yolks, at room temperature
2 anchovy fillets in oiled
juice of half or whole lemon
10 salted capers, rinsed and drained
1 shallot, finely chopped
freshly ground black pepper
150-200 ml mild olive oil
200 g good-quality tuna chunks in oil

Place egg yolks, capers, anchovy fillets, juice of half a lemon, chopped shallot and some black pepper into the bowl of a hand-held blender. Blend until you've got a thick paste of uniform consistency.
Add oil in a thin stream, still blending the mixture.
Finally add the tuna chunks and blitz a little bit more.
Taste for seasoning - add more pepper, lemon juice or perhaps salt.

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Avocado and Blue Cheese Dip Recipe

A super-quick last-minute dip idea that I make quite often. I love this one especially with nachos, though it also works well spread over crostini, especially those bite-sized onesd. However, I would only make it at the very last moment, as despite the addition of lime juice, this dip tends to turn from lovely green to not-so-lovely brown rather quickly.

Avocado and Blue Cheese Dip

(Avokaado-sinihallitusjuustudipp)
Serves 4-6

75 grams blue cheese (I like Valio Aura)
4 Tbsp sour cream/creme fraiche/yogurt
2 ripe avocados
3 Tbsp finely chopped fresh (flat-leaf) parsley
2 Tbsp lime juice
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt

Smash the blue cheese with a fork, mix with sour cream until combined.
Halve the avocados, remove the stones. Scoop out the avocado flesh and smash with a fork. Stir into the blue cheese mixture.
Add the chopped parsley, season with salt, pepper and lime juice.
Serve at once.

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