A delicious way of killing your cold

Usually people catch a cold. But, no, not me. I have a cold. Be it summer, be it winter, I've almost always got a runny nose. So I especially should try and eat myself healthy.

On Tuesday I made another try. I found myself eating a whole head of garlic! Yes, a whole head!:) But before you judge me and run away, consider this - it was a delicious way of getting better!

Oven baked garlic, my friends, has a wonderful scent.

Oven baked garlic
(from "Küüslauguraamat", serves 4)

4 heads of garlic
olive oil
salt
(dried herbs to your liking)

1. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Without peeling them, cut the garlic heads into two and place on the baking sheet (the cut side up)
3. Drizzle the garlic with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Add any herbs you want.
4. Bake at 200C for 20 minutes

It's best to eat the garlic while it's still warm. This way the cloves are quite mushy and are easy to mash with a knife, but they get firmer as they cool. Just slip the cloves out of their peels and serve over crispy bread. Or go fancy and add them to a salad or serve beside a meat dish. I plan to make a cream cheese spread with them soon, I'm sure of that. So what your fingers get a bit oily - lick them clean! The oil's flavoured with the delicious deep flavour of the garlic. The taste is mainly 'roasted', but there's a 'healthy' moment in the mouth too. It's all mushy. It's good.

I'd already made the recipe when I discovered the event Think spice...garlic hosted by Sunita. What a timing! This is my contribution - as garlicky as it gets:)

Roasted spiced sweet potatoes

Now, read these comments from Epicurious.

'This recipe converted me from a lifelong dislike for sweet potatoes'
'I really liked the sweet potatoes and I usually don't like sweet potatoes'
'This recipe converted my sweet-potato hating husband'
'My husband, who doesn't particularly like sweet potatoes, thought it was delicious'
'I don't really like sweet potatoes, so this recipe was a pleasant surprise'
'My husband who really doesn't care for sweet potatoes enjoyed them'

And now, analyze. Is there something similar to them, maybe?
Hmmmm...
You got it! And though I didn't need any converting, I really liked the dish.

Roasted spiced sweet potatoes (adapted from Epicurious, serves 4-6) 1 tsp coriander seeds 1/2 tsp fennel seeds 1/2 tsp dried oregano 1/2 tsp dried hot red pepper flakes (less if you don't love the heat) 1 tsp salt 900 g sweet potatoes 3 tbsp vegetable oil Preheat oven to 220C Coarsely grind coriander, fennel, oregano and red pepper flakes in a coffee grinder/spice grinder or with a mortar and a pestle. Mix with salt. Peel the potatoes and cut lengthwise into wedges (depending on their shape, you may also first cut them into two, so that the wedges are not very long - that's what I did) Take a large roasting pan and add the potato wedges, spices and oil. Mix well. Roast in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes, then turn the wedges over and roast for another 15-20 or until they're tender and slightly golden. Serve alongside meat or with a yoghurt/sour cream dip.

The wedges were quite spicy for someone like me - I don't usually eat the spicy stuff. So next time I'd certainly add less pepper flakes.
When I finished preparing the spice mix, air around me was thick with fennel aroma, but in the end, the dish wasn't that much about fennel, the herbs and spices cooperated well - making the end result very good indeed and not specifically pointing out any of the flavourers. Under the spicy not-very-crispy crust, the insides of the wedges were like sweet potato mash - so soft and tender.

I prepared a quick yoghurt sauce for eating with the wedges, but I imagine they'd be wonderful with some meat, too. Still, I'd prefer for snow to fall down before trying that version out...

Broccoli pleasure for one

I spotted the recipe for Broccoli with hazelnut butter on Epicurious. Although it was love at first sight, the reviews made me want it even more - someone actually wrote it was the only way to get his/her children eat their veggies.

But...
...someone forgot to buy hazelnuts. Not a big deal! I had just the amount of salted pistachios and figured these could suite the dish even better.

Although I made this dish for one, I'm going to include the original quantities for 6 people. It's so fast that cooking this for one is not a problem, but rather a blessing. Instead of steaming I just blanched the broccoli - steaming is a technique I have yet to study... I can't help but add salt to the boiling water - come on, what's a veggie without taste?


Broccoli with pistachio butter
(adapted from Epicurious; serves 6 (1))

900 g (150 g) broccoli
80 g (15 g) butter at room temperature
115 g (20 g) salted pistachios (weighed after shelling)
black pepper

1. Cut broccoli stems into 1/2 cm slices and florets into 2 1/2 cm pieces
2. Boil the stems for 3 minutes, then add the florets and boil for 5 more minutes
3. Finely grind half of the pistachios and mix with butter, season with pepper (the pistachios have enough salt to them already)
4. Drain the broccoli and mix well with the butter mixture.
5. Chop pistachios that are left over and add.
6. Serve warm

This is one of the easiest and most delicious broccoli dishes I have had and made. I will definitely make this again - probably tomorrow already:) The broccoli is just tender enough and pistachios add a crunchy effect. Plus the dish has the nicest green colour! I'm sure it would make a great side dish for chicken as well.
Do make your kids eat this.

TGRWT#4: Cauliflower gratin that leaves the breath fresh. No kidding!

Another round of the event They Go Really Well Together has been announced and this time the host is Dennis of kookjegek.nl and the theme - mint an mustard. The event is about combining ingredients that have similar volatile aroma compounds and testing if they really do go together in real life.

While last round's strawberry and coriander combination seemed easy-peasy, my mind got quite stuck with this one. *** mint with *** mustard? Oh come on! But I managed to create a dish that I really liked and didn't sound like it originated from the Fear Factor TV show.
This dish can of course be prepared without peppermint - just drop cauliflower florets into boiling water without any additions. Or use broccoli instead of cauliflower. I must admit it was my attention at first, but due to the fact that there was no broccoli at the store where I went...well, cauliflower sounded nice and turned out to be successful in the dish.

I give you...

Peppermint flavoured cauliflower gratin with cheese and mustard

At least about 400 g cauliflower
100 g grated cheese
1/2 dl heavy cream
1 tbsp mild mustard
1 eggyolk
about 1 dl loosely packed dried peppermint leaves (or even better - use fresh ones, this is what I had at home)
salt
white pepper

1. Fill a saucepan with over one litre of water and add dried peppermint leaves. Boil from some minutes.
2. Cut cauliflower into florets and add to water, also add some salt. Boil for 5 minutes.
3. Meanwhile mix the eggyolk with mustard, then add heavy cream and grated cheese. Season the sauce with salt and white pepper.
4. Drain the cauliflower florets and discard peppermint leaves (or if you want to have a stronger peppermint flavour - you can chop some of them and mix into the sauce). Mix the florets with the sauce.
5. Grease a baking dish and fill it with the cauliflower and gratin sauce mixture. Bake at 200C for about 20 minutes.

I didn't actually recognise peppermint when I tasted a floret after boiling them and was a bit disappointed. But when it was time to try the finished dish, the taste was there! First the comfortable (and quite rich!) taste of cauliflower gratin with cheese, then came the taste of mustard trying to overwhelm the one of cheese and finally the taste of peppermint - somehow melting into the mustard taste and leaving a quite fresh feeling into my mouth.

I do feel I used the right amount of peppermint - it calmly reminded itself in the dish, without shouting I'm here! Mustards are of course different, I used Finnish mild mustard and the amount seemed okay. I even got a good comment from my mother - something like 'quite good' which means more than the usual Estonian 'normal' and should - I guess - be taken as a compliment.

Honeyed onion and apple soup with caraway

Potatoes and cabbage - that was everybody's opinion when they first saw this soup. But it's tricky with me. I'd rather suspect dishes obviously made of potatoes and cabbage and make sure those cabbage leaves aren't actually some sweetish and divine tasting onion strips. But the trick was accidental this time. As our unexpectedly warm weather started to turn, I felt an urge to eat a warming onion soup. Enough with those potatoes and cabbage now!


I have ate simple onion soup a few times, but I usually like to add a little something to it. We have a nice bowl on the kitchen counter that's always full of home-grown organic apples. When I need to peel some for a dish, I actually stick the peels into my mouth instead of throwing them away. So the vitamins beneath the skin (there are hell of a lot vitamins there as you know) don't get lost. And the caraway and honey...well, today feels organic.


Honeyed onion and apple soup with caraway
(serves 2)

150 g diced apple
150 g diced onion
1 tbsp butter
1/3 tsp ground caraway
1 tbsp honey
3 dl vegetable broth (or chicken broth)
1 1/2 dl milk
salt, pepper
1-2 tbsp grated cheese

1. Melt butter in a saucepan and add onion and apple. Cover and cook about ten minutes over medium heat until onion is transparent and golden.
2. Take the cover off and turn the heat up. Cook for additional five minutes.
3. Add caraway and honey, then milk and broth. Boil the soup for about five minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Serve it hot sprinkled with grated cheese and green onion tops.



The soup has quite much sweet taste - the word honeyed has hit the spot with its yum stickyness. Caraway is the ingredient that shows its character and makes the dish more earthly. The apple dices are really tender, but not yet losing their shape. Onion tops and cheese...well they're like cherries on top of a cake. Adding milk makes the broth hazy, but milder in taste, so I really like to use it in onion soups.
And of course, perfect accompaniments for this soup - a slice of bread and a hope for more sun.

Caramelised carrot dessert with yoghurt

I have actually survived a lunch of both savoury and sweet carrots. Well no biggy, that fact is just okay when we're talking about me. Just about fine. But carrot desserts tend to remember me about the ones we've had to eat at school and that is not just fine. This vegetable's reputation has to be re-ruined.

We always grate a larger amount of carrots at home in the food processor than we really need at the moment. Its main aim is of course that mom can make fresh salad fast - our family's traditional carrot salad with sour cream and sugar. But it also gives me an opportunity to fetch some into my so-called fast food. I have once mor dug out the bowl of grated carrots from the fridge and this time, ladys and gentlemen, we do have a dessert.


Caramelised carrot dessert with yoghurt
(serves 2)

3 tbsp sugar
1 tsp butter
3 dl grated carrot
3 dl plain yoghurt
1/2 dl cashew nuts, chopped a bit
cinnamon

1. Heat the sugar in a saucepan together with the nuts.
2. When the sugar starts to caramelise, add butter and grated carrot, stir so that the carrots blend well with the caramel and cook them for some minutes.
3. Remove the saucepan from heat and let it cool a bit, then add yoghurt to the mixture.
4. Serve sprinkled with cinnamon and some nuts.



The carrots caramelise nicely and the cashews have this praline taste to them. Sometimes there are larger bits of caramel that melt on the tongue like gems. No more sugar is added to the yoghurt so that the flavours of the caramel have more contrast with it, but that doesn't mean that the yoghurt is too sour. On the whole the dessert is moderately sweet. And not at all reminding me of those experimental school desserts with carrot - the vegetable has regained its reputation.

Have more pumpkin than you have time? Rye-bread it.

There I was, standing in front of the fridge with an empty stomach and quite an empty mind, too. An empty stomach couldn't wait for meat stew, an empty stomach couldn't even wait for a half an hour for a lovely soup. So this stomach of mine, together with the mind, produced the idea of breaded pumpkin. A nice one.


I used quite thick slices of pumpkin, but a bit thinner ones would have been better for the seasonings to have an influence on the insides of them too. Although I used quite fresh rye bread, it would be easier to use some that is a few days old or even dried.


Rye-breaded pumpkin

Some pumpkin slices
Shredded rye bread
Flour
1 egg
Salt, pepper

1. Season the flour with salt and pepper, beat the egg, heat butter or oil in a frying pan.
2. One by one, roll the pumpkin slices in flour, in the beaten egg and finally in shredded rye bread (try to press as much bread on them as you can), then fry them.
3. When you have removed the pumpkin slices from the frying pan, you can add some salt to the egg and cook an omelette to go with them.

I ate the whole thing with garlic cream cheese and sweet apple puree. The rye bread coating was nicely crispy and kind of made me feel Estonian. Don't worry about browning it too much, it won't happen that fast. Simple, yet...simple. Again, a glass of cold milk is a must-have.

Jolly brussels sprouts in pumpkin puree

Colourful food does lighten the mood and vegetables do lighten a meal. So a hoorah to this summer-coloured lighten-everything dish. Brussels sprouts are still quite a new discovery for me and seem fun to cook with. As I was popping them into pumpking puree, I couldn't help feeling glad it was really food in the saucepan. Well, because...it did look really good.


The recipe was adapted from a cookbook, I made it for two people as a side dish to go with grilled chicken breasts. I substituted heavy cream with milk and didn't add onion (or else I could have put...well, a lot of onion in there. I did want it to be about pumpkin).


Brussels sprouts in pumpkin puree

100 g pumpkin, minced
1 tbsp butter
1 garlic clove, minced
salt, pepper
a bit of sugar
turmeric
1 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp mild mustard
140 g brussels sprouts

1. Melt butter in a saucepan and cook the pumpkin in it, covered.
2. Add garlic, season with salt, pepper, sugar and turmeric. Then add milk and cook, covered, for about 10-15 minutes.
3. Puree the mixture, add mustard and pour back into the saucepan.
4. Make crosswise cuts into the stem ends of the brussels sprouts (so that they cook through better) and add them to the puree. Cook at low heat for about 15 minutes.

I didn't really imagine how the flavours of pumpkin and brussels sprouts would match together before making this dish, but they really completed each other. The puree with its sweetness surrounded the slightly bitter brussels sprouts and when bitten, these flavours melted together. The textures were really harmonious and when eaten together with meat, the creamy pumpkin also took the place of sauce.

All in all, a really nice and uplifting side dish. Although, when my mother tried to serve some three remaining brussels sprouts to my father (she had left them for him to try), the jolly vegetables were sadly left onto the plate with only some pumpkin puree eaten from around them. But that's just dad.

A sweet surprise of carrot truffles

Carrots do go with anything. Either slightly crunchy or attractively creamy, it's possible to smuggle them into most dishes. I smuggled them into chocolate. And no, I don't feel guilty.
I remember eating carrots in the garden when I was little. I pulled some out of the ground, threw the leaves just over my shoulder behind some bushes, rinsed the vegetables in some rainwater (gathered into an old bath) and champed them happily, possibly together with some soil. It's time for carrot eating to become elegant.


Carrot truffles

500 g carrots
200 g raisins
1 dl sugar
50 g butter
150 g sliced almonds
1/2 tsp ground cardamum
chocolate for coating

1. Shred the carrots and and put them together with the raisins into a pot, add water to only cover them.
2. Boil the mixture, uncovered, until the water has evaporated and remove from heat.
3. Add sugar, butter, almonds and cardamum to the mixture and puree it until almost smooth
4. Return to heat for some more time to reduce liquid content
5. Let the mixture cool, shape into balls and cover with chocolate


I actually wanted to use white chocolate but didn't have the chance, so I substituted it with a mixture of dark and milk chocolate. It worked as well, but I believe that the version with white chocolate could be much different. Some lime or orange peel could also be added for an extra twist. The original inspirational recipe actually called for figs instead of raisins (I do have a budget, you know).

No-one I offered the truffles to actually understood what was in them at the first place. Nifty, isn't it? The filling was soft and silky, the raisins somehow deepened the taste. Definitely a make-again.

Bitter onions into a sweetish marmalade

Onions are sly. I tend to mark down all onion recipes and if a found a book of onion recipes at the store, I'd probably begin searching for money without further hesitations. No, crunching raw onions doesn't appeal to me, as it doesn't to most of the people, but baking them gives the onions a mild, sweetish and enjoyable taste. I'd never waste time on peeling one and crying over it, just to use half of it for cooking, even if I cook only for myself. Yes, I tend to make dishes oniony, but that might not even be a problem.

I have a bunch of recipes for onion jams and -marmalades, today I tried one of them. I only used one fifth of the quantity this recipe demands for and nimbly made the marmalade of only three small onions. It wouldn't even have needed checking for a half an hour and by lunch the marmalade had cooled and was ready for using. So simple and yet so delicious. Adding a little thyme to this recipe would be nice, as well as spicing it up a bit with chili.


Onion marmalade with balsamico

500 g onions (advisably red ones)
2 dl brown sugar
2 tbsp balsamico
50 g butter

1. Peel and slice the onions
2. Put all the ingredients into a pot and heat, constantly stirring, until sugar dissolves, then reduce heat to low and cook the mixture, covered for 30 minutes (I removed it from heat after about 20 minutes and pureed it a bit, but so that there were still tiny bits in the mixture, then cooked on).
3. Put the marmalade into jars, close them and cool.

I served the marmalade over a simple curd and cheese omelette with smoked venison sausage, a glass of cold milk alongside. I'm sure it would also match with meat or a cheese sandwich. Yes, onions are sly.

Christmas menu

I'm finally home after travelling about Estonia during the last week. Before it's time to celebrate the next fiesta, I'd share my family's this year's Christmas menu. There weren't so many of us sitting round the table - seven grown-ups and two children (as I do the talking here, I naturally consider myself a grown-up). We even had a real Santa, so the only thing missing from Christmas spirit was this really slowly falling perfect white snow... But as Christmas (fortunately or unfortunately) is a feasting holiday here in Estonia, I'll better talk about that side of the holiday.

Christmas menu
Glazed pork fillet
Creamy winter vegetables
Boiled potatoes
Cottage cheese-yoghurt sauce with dill
Sour cabbage
Gooseberry chutney
Salted salmon
Ham, cheese

Desserts
English christmas pudding with creamy vanilla sauce
Toscabuns
Fruits
Gingerbreads
Almond and coconut candies

No, we didn't have traditional blood sausage this year (I can still remember the spooky process of making it when I was little), but we did eat classical home-made marinated pumpkin, meat jelly (we actually found a whole shelf full of it, made by grandma, of course) and oven roast only the next day at my grandmother's. Oh, mystical...grannies and their cookery (I'm afraid I'll repeat this forever).

I'll share the recipe of creamy winter vegetables. I believe it could go with fish as well as with pork, it could also be eaten as a meal by itself. Light cream can be substituted with heavy cream to make the vegetables turn more silky and enjoyable.


Creamy winter vegetables

1 kg (in all) carrot, swede and onion
2 dl light cream
2 tbsp honey
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
thyme

1. peel the vegetables. cut the carrots and swede into bigger pieces, onions into four sectors.
2. lay the vegetables into a baking dish, strew with thyme.
3. mix together cream, honey, salt and pepper, pour the mixture over the vegetables.
4. cover the dish with its lid or with foil and bake at 200 C for one and a half hours.