Favourite ice tea smoothie

I'm quite a fan of tea. Not an expert, rather quite far from the worst expert ever there is. But I love my tea: sometimes with herbs or flowers we've picked ourselves, sometimes great quality black, usually green and always without sugar.

And I crave quite everything flavoured with tea (especially when it's this cake). This dessert however, breakfast or whatnot is as easy as it gets, but it's great when made with different teas. You know, something different each time!

Favourite ice tea smoothie
(serves 1)

2 dl yoghurt
1 dl strong tea (any kind), cooled
about 1 1/2 - 2 tbsp sugar
(vanilla)
(ice cubes)

1. Mix tea with yoghurt, adding as much sugar as you like. If desired, flavour with vanilla.
2. Enjoy with a straw or with white moustache!;) Add ice cubes, if desired.
   

The smoothie is only as good as you make it;) Good tea equals good smoothie, subtly sweet, thin enough to drink smoothly through a straw. I guess it's a good variation of iced tea for those hot hot days that are yet to arrive..

But it's also a contribution to the Spring Tea Party event held by Erin of The Skinny Gourmet. Now I want to see what people come up with when thinking 'tea'!

Ever smelt a garden full of roses? Ever tasted one?

I finally-finally got my hands on rosewater. Rosewater is a product that is basically made using rose petals and water. It was first produced in Persia and has been used in South Asian, West Asian and Middle Eastern cuisines for flavouring desserts. Its wonderfully floral scent is overcome only by the fact that eating or drinking something that's made with rosewater is like tasting a rose garden.

Imagine a warm summer day in a garden full of roses.
Now imagine you are tasting this day.
This is rosewater.


For my first attempt to use rosewater I chose a simple rosewater lassi - a sweet Indian yoghurt drink.

Rosewater lassi
(from the Estonian magazine Oma Maitse, serves 2-3)

5 dl unflavoured yoghurt
1 dl cold water
3 tbsp sugar
2 tsp rosewater
1/2 tsp crushed/ground cardamum
(ice and rose petals for serving)

1. Mix yoghurt, water, sugar, rosewater and cardamum well
2. If you wish, add ice cubes or crushed ice and rose petals for serving

I'd just call the recipe flowery breakfast, because that's what it is for me. It has quite a strong cardamum taste - if you like cardamum, you'll probably love it. I like using ground cardamum because then there's a splash of taste in every sip and no bits to get between your teeth. As for the ice - it's cold here in the North! No ice in my breakfast! I'll just have to wait for the summer for that...

Rosewater is not a very cheap treat, although only little portions are used at a time. If you grow your own roses, see these recipes for making your own rosewater.

And for breakfast? I'm craving oat flake scone.

Well, summer mornings cannot be escaped, so I'm returning to them once again. With the intention of throwing all bread out of the kitchen cupboard to eat scones every day. With some quality butter and slices of tomato or cucumber or cheese or lettuce... every day. I've fallen in love with this recipe, that uses my A-list ingredients curd cheese, oat flakes and barley flour. Fortunately there's a morning every day.

This recipe does allow variations. If you haven't got curd cheese, you might as well use thick sour cream or sour milk. Feel free to add herbs or spices - for example caraway seems like a good option.

Oat flake scone

200 g curd cheese
1 1/2 tbsp oil
1 1/2 dl oat flakes
1/2 dl barley flour
1/3 tsp salt
1 garlic clove, smashed
1/4 tsp soda

1. Mix together all the ingredients.
2. Spread the dough onto a baking tray that is greased or covered with parchment paper (better option) and form it so that it's about 1 1/2 cm thick.
3. Bake at 220C for about 30 minutes.
4. Serve warm.



The outside of the scone is crispy and golden brown, the inside is soft - the favour of curd cheese. One garlic clove gives quite much taste, but if you want it really garlicky, you may add another. The scone has the flavour of roasted oat flakes, barley flour gives an additional earthly flavour, again. Just get some good butter and it's actually all you need to enjoy the scone, but a ripe tomato or two are a healthy and welcomed bonus!

So is riding roller-blades instead of a bus, as I discovered yesternight.

Drink your carrots!

I simply love these summer mornings. First a run in the sun, then radio playing in the kitchen, watching people walking by in the street as I'm having a light breakfast... Really, what could be better? Sunbathing in the garden? Smelling grilled meat and fresh cut lawn while walking along streets in the evening?

As I have stated before, I love carrots. But it's true it's the first time I've actually drunk them. A milkshake is a perfect start for a day. More honey (or sugar instead) may be added for a sweeter drink, but how much sweetness does one need when there are birds singing, even shouting, outside and the sun touches the cheeks through the kitchen window during breakfast? Moderate sweetnees is very fine with me!


Carrot and orange milkshake
(serves 1)

50 g boiled carrots
1 dl milk
1 dl orange juice
1 tsp honey

1. Puree the carrots.
2. Add milk and puree until the mixture is smooth.
3. Add orange juice and honey.

The milkshake's texture is really silky. The flavour of orange juice is the one that strikes first, but the aftertaste of every sip is definitely the one of carrot's. The drink is just moderately sweet and really refreshing, a little bit foamy. It would go well as an evening 'snack' as it is healthy as well. A strawberry or an orange slice and some almond slices make a good presentation - for the milkshake to be as lovely as the weather outside.

A pinch of Estonia plus a pinch of onions

When I decided to bake something for the Waiter there's something in my...bread event hosted by Spittoon Extra, I immediately thought about onions. I've eaten some great onion bread (rye bread, of course - it's Estonia after all) while in South-Estonia and unfortunately they don't sell it here in the north (like the country was so big!)

But my rye bread adventures still lie ahead of me. Nevertheless I wanted to stay traditional and decided for barley flour and curd cheese. With a personal favourite of course - onions. Onions-onions-onions. What luck that someone had bought them, cause I remember eating them all:)


Onioned barley and curd cheese soda bread
(adapted from Estonian National Cuisine)

125 g curd cheese
2 1/2 dl milk
1 egg
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar/honey
2 tbsp butter
2 1/2 dl barley flour
1 1/2 dl wheat flour
1/2 tsp soda
200 g chopped onion

1. Melt butter in a saucepan or a skillet and cook onions at low heat until transparent. Then puree until smooth.
2. Grease a loaf pan with butter and add some flour or semolina, shaking to cover the bottom and sides evenly.
3. Beat the egg and add curd cheese, milk, salt, sugar.
4. Mix flour with soda and add.
5. Pour the batter into the mold and bake at 180C for 30-40 minutes.



My bread turned out nicely moist. It was pure pleasure eating it warm from the oven with only some butter on it. In fact it's almost the only thing I've eaten the whole day. The taste of onion is rather on the background, but it's there. Barley flour gives the bread a somehow rougher taste, it's also slightly sweet.

The orginal recipe had no onions, so I decided to add an additional 1/2 dl of wheat flour too (that might just be the mind of a beginner, but hey - it worked!). For more oniony taste I'd add more of them. Not pureed, but as tiny bits, so the taste would be in tthe foreground too. This time I decided not to add herbs to get a pure taste, but thyme or parsley would fit well. Pumpkin seeds are another idea - inside or on the top.
Anyway - a thank you to my ancestors.

'Leivasupp' or just sweet rye bread soup

At least this is what it's called in Estonia, although it's not really a soup. But what it is, is a childhood memory. My mother would never ever ever eat or even worse - make - leivasupp (one of the few things I don't understand about her), so you can imagine my immeasurable happiness when granny first taught me the trick. So HOLD ON - secret family recipe!
Oh who am I kidding, that's so easy anyone could make it!


I LOVE this dish. It's healthy, it's Estonian, it's really simple, it's fast, it's delicious. Yes, maybe I was very little myself, but I remember how granny used to have a HUGE bowl full of leivasupp when she made it and I mean HUGE. I usually make a small batch, it's a perfect way to use up rye bread. Sometimes I'm in the mood for fine-, sometimes for wholemeal rye bread. Seeds and nuts are quite compulsory ingredients for me, so I'll throw in a handful of them too if there's none in the bread already. This recipe should be taken as a guideline, as l always just throw the ingredients together.


Leivasupp - a sweet rye bread dessert
(3-4 servings)

150 g rye bread
3-4 dl water
1 tbsp semolina
3 tbsp sugar
nuts, seeds, raisins, dried fruit (optional)
milk, whipped cream or jam for serving

1. Let the bread soak in water for some time (It's very comfortable to soak it overnight and boil for breakfast) or start making the dessert right away. If you want to do it the fast way, just crumble the bread into water, add semolina and sugar (and raisins-seeds-nuts if you wish) and boil until almost smooth (it will take a little more than 10 minutes, but it will take even less time if you've soaked the bread)
2. Serve warm or cold, together with milk, jam or whipped cream.

The dessert will firm a bit when it's cooled down and that's the way I like it the most. Although the first serving for me is always warm, suppose I'm just lousy at waiting:) (as you can see from the picture too) .The pure taste of rye bread is what makes this dish so wonderful. I've tried adding cinnamon (which was nice) and I've tried adding vanilla (and I love vanilla in everything, but it ruined the taste for me in this dessert). I guess adding traditions to this dish is the component that really makes it work.

Kama overpowers breakfast scones

It's this funny thing that I don't have graham flour at home. So every time I need it, I look around in the kitchen and discover:
a) no way I'm making this without graham flour
b) OK, I'll manage without
c) oh I'll just use kama again
And so it happens that the Estonian national dish kama (I wrote about it here) unintentionally discoveres itself in all kinds of dishes. I replace some of the graham flour with regular wheat flour and some of it with kama. The results are always interesting. This weekend my breakfast scones turned really Estoniany.


These scones are equally good with some cheese or a sweet topping. Good quality butter or some jam on a warm slice is a breakfast classic - as simple and good as it can get. I ate a slice with some cheese and one with vanilla and chocolate sauce.

Breakfast scones with kama

1 3/4 dl wheat flour
1/2 dl kama
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
25 g butter at room temperature
1 dl milk

1. Mix together the flours, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add butter and mix carefully.Finally quickly blend in milk.
2. Heat a skillet and form an about 1 cm thick round. Make holes in it with a fork and bake it over medium heat for about 6 minutes on each side.
3. Serve warm or cooled, cut into slices.



The scones don't taste so good anymore later and should be eaten the same day. But as they're fast to make, this is not a problem, fresh scones are a lovely substitute to bread on weekend mornings or even on weekdays if you're not a person who loves to sleep until the very last minute.