Bottomless Polenta Pie with Tomatoes

Well, I'm not sure I can even call this a pie (hence the 'bottomless' in the title), but I cannot think of a better name either. The recipe is slightly adapted from a Finnish women's magazine Talo & Koti ('house and home', 5/2010), where it was kindly shared by a Finnish chef in France, Jormi Törmanen (can you pronounce that name? ;)). I loved it, but it's pretty mild on its own. I think it's best served as a side dish to some grilled meat or with a green rucola salad drizzled with a gutsy vinaigrette dressing.

I might try shaving some Parmesan cheese (or perhaps shredding some Mozzarella?) on top next time, but it's definitely lovely as it is as well.

Polenta Pie with Tomatoes
(Polentapirukas)
Serves six to eight



1 litre of water
1 tsp salt
250 g quick-cook polenta
2 Tbsp butter (or olive oil) + extra for brushing
couple of ripe tomatoes (not too soft)
2 Tbsp fresh rosemary or oregano or thyme, finely chopped
extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling

Bring the water to the boil in a large saucepan, season with salt. Add the polenta, all at once, whisking vigorously to avoid any lumps forming. Stir in the butter or oil and simmer on a low heat, stirring regularly, until the polenta is cooked (it's hard to give exact timings here, as different products behave differently - look at the cooking times described on the packet).
Butter or oil an oven gratin dish (about 24x34 cm), pour the cooked polenta into the dish.
Cut the tomatoes into thick slices, press onto the polenta. Sprinkle with chopped herbs and drizzle with olive oil.
Bake in a pre-heated 250 C oven for about 20-25 minutes, until the polenta is lovely golden on top and tomatoes are ever so slightly charred on edges.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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Simple scones

I had no intentions to blog about scones today. Actually, I had a spinach and filo bake lined up. But then Peter G's lemon and date scones popped up on my blog reader and I got an urge to finally put up my scone post. I love a good scone with an afternoon tea - one of the few habits I picked up during my seven years in Scotland :) Although I love a spiced-up scone every now and then (will be so making those lemon and date scones, and also Johanna's raspberry scones soon), I actually prefer a good old-fashioned plain one. This gives me a chance to let one of our home-made jams shine, you see :)

Here's a recipe I love using for plain scones. If you've got a good plain or seasoned scone recipe, then please share the recipe or a link to it in the comments. That'd be much appreciated!

(The photos are from 2008)

Simple scones
(Scones-kakukesed)
Makes eight



225 g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
50 unsalted butter
2 Tbsp caster sugar
100 ml milk
1 large egg

To serve:
whipped double cream or clotted cream (if available)
thick raspberry or strawberry jam

Dip flour, baking powder, salt and cubed butter into a bowl. Stir to cover butter with flour, then pinch between your fingertips until you've got a crumbly mixture. Stir in the sugar.
Pour half of the milk into a measuring jug, whisk in the egg. Pour into the crumb mixture and give it a stir.
Now add the rest of the milk, a spoonful at the time and stirring very gently, until you've got a soft dough that's not sticky (it's possible that just 1 Tbsp is enough). Do not overwork!
Now dip the dough onto a floured surface and press and form into a circle. Using your hands or a rolling pin, roll the dough into a 2 cm (4/5 inch) thickness (that's about the width of your thumb :)).



Take a round cookie cutter (6 cm in diameter) and dip it first into the flour, then cut out 8 circles (you need to gather and re-roll the dough to make enough scones).



Place the scones onto a baking sheet that's either floured or covered with a baking parchment. If you like your scones shiny, then brush with a little milk. If you like your scones matte, then dust lightly with flour.



Bake in a preheated 220 C oven for 13-15 minutes, until the scones have risen and are golden brown (you can also test for doneness by tapping the base of a scone - it should sound hollow).

Transfer the scones to a metal rack to cool. If you prefer your scones slightly crispy, then leave them as they are. If you love yours softer, then cover the hot scones with a clean kitchen towel.



Serve warm with a spoonful or two of jam and whipped cream. A good scone can be split into two halves with a fork alone (and you can see that the recipe gives you exactly this type of scones :))

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Snickerdoodles - nutmeg cookies rolled in cinnamon sugar

I'm not the first blogger to write about Snickerdoodles (SmittenKitchen, EggBeater, Pinch My Salt, Andrea Meyers have all beat me to it), but I love the photo I made, so I want to blog about them as well :) Additionally, my recipe uses metric measures, making it more useful for a lot of Internet-users out there ;)

I don't know whom to credit for the recipe. All the cookbooks I consulted - be it Nigella Lawson, Rachel Allen or someone less famous - had almost exact recipe, almost verbatim, and mine is a combination of quite a few of them. The only changes I made was making my cookies a wee bit smaller. I also seems to me that the photos of Snickerdoodle cookies in the British food magazines and cookbooks depict cookies that are slightly rounder (as opposed to the very thin and flat ones in American foodblogs and cookbooks).

These cookies keep for a week in a air-tight cookie jar.

Snickerdoodles
(Snickerdoodles-muskaatküpsised)
Makes about 3 dozen cookies (2 cookie sheets)



250 g plain flour
0.5 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
125 g unsalted butter, softened
100 g caster sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cinnamon sugar:
2 Tbsp caster sugar
1 Tsbp ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 180 C/370 F.

Mix flour, nutmeg, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl.
Cream egg and sugar until pale and fluffy, whisk in the egg and vanilla extract. Fold in the dry ingredients and press into a neat dough ball.
Mix cinnamon sugar ingredients in a small shallow bowl.
Take small walnut-sized pieces of cookie down and roll them into small balls (I was diligent enough to weigh that each dough ball measured 12-14 grams :)). Roll each ball in cinnamon sugar until covered, then place onto a lined baking sheet, leaving about 3 cm between cookies.
Flatten the cookies lightly with the palm of your hand or by pressing with the fork.
Bake in the pre-heated 180 C oven for about 12-15 minutes, until cookies are light golden brown.
Remove from the oven, leave to cool for a couple of minutes, then transfer onto a wire rack to cool.

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Great ways with wild mushrooms: Horn of Plenty in a Mustard Vinaigrette

Horn of Plenty (also known as black chantarelle or black trompet; Craterellus cornucopioides in Latin) is a chanterelloid, or chanterelle-like, mushroom. It's very dark, almost black, making it a challenging mushroom to forage, as "it is like looking for black holes in the ground". Despite its rather unattractive appearance, it's a delicious and delicate mushroom that retains a good bite even after cooking.

I admit I didn't forage for these particular black trompet mushrooms (on the photo below) myself, but bought some at the Central Market in Tallinn. These shouldn't be too difficult to get hold of in other countries as well - I clearly remember buying some at a French deli in Edinburgh, and there are plenty of recipes using these mushrooms in both British and US food magazines (as compared to some other wild mushrooms I've mentioned over the years).

It's a quick recipe to throw together - but it needs to marinate overnight in the fridge. I loved the mustard flavour and the bite the mushrooms had. Great as a side dish to some meat, or on a slice of toasted light sourdough bread.

Black chantarelles in mustard vinaigrette
(Sinepimarinaadis torbikseened)
Source: Finnish magazine APU
Serves 4



a large punnet (about 400 g/1 litre) of fresh horn of plenty mushrooms

Mustard vinaigrette:
4 Tbsp vegetable or olive oil
3 Tbsp strong sweet mustard
1 Tbsp wine vinegar
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
0.5 tsp salt or 1 tsp sea salt flakes
0.5 tsp dried tarragon or 0.5 Tbsp fresh tarragon leaves
0.5 tsp fresh thyme leaves
freshly ground black pepper

Wipe the mushrooms clean. Place onto a hot dry frying pan and heat for about 3-5 minutes, until most of the mushroom 'juices' that emerges evaporates. Remove the mushrooms from the pan and let cool.
Combine the vinaigrette ingredients and spoon over the cool horn of plenty mushrooms. Give the mushrooms a good stir, then cover and leave to marinate overnight in the fridge.

Check out other mushroom recipes on Nami-Nami food blog.

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