Fennel bites with liver pâté

I sometimes have this habit of eating while I'm reading. Or rather, reading while I'm eating. Or, well, I don't know. I often spend my mornings like that when I don't have time for both eating slowly and devouring the morning newspaper, two things that make a morning complete (add morning workout and I'm in heaven).

But this one day I was deep in a book when my stomach called for lunch, so I just prepared some easy bites for myself to enjoy while reading on. Non-fat for fingertips, full-fat delight for that stomach of mine.

And those bites now totally want to visit a party with snacks.

Fennel bites with liver pâté
Fennel bulb
Liver pâté
Fennel greens, dill or chives for decorating

1. Cut the fennel bulb in half and cut its layers into nice bite-size 'boats'.
2. Top the fennel bites with liver pâté. Use a pastry bag for this or make a nice heap with a teaspoon.
3. Place fennel greens, dill or chives on top for great taste and decoration.
   

It's amazing how the flavours suit together. The sweetness and freshness of the fennel is just what a bite of liver pâté needs in order to be reached for again and again. It balances the strong and rich pâté perfectly. That's why I was especially fond of the thick fennel slices - the pâté does want something fresh at its side (hence the usual company of cucumber).
I used dill on top of the bites and believe I'd enjoy it more than just fennel greens as it makes the flavour pattern wider.

Yep, I recommend.

This post will take part of the first round of the event Original Recipes, hosted by Lore of Culinarty.

Creamy broccoli soup with pesto oil and pumpkin seeds

I didn't even have the time to say 'broccoli is a supervegetable' to myself subconsciously while eating this soup on Saturday, because I was too busy enjoying.
Considering how super broccoli really is, that has to mean something.


Creamy broccoli soup with pesto oil and pumpkin seeds
(serves 4)

500 g broccoli
2 medium potatoes
chicken stock
100 g cream cheese
salt, white pepper, sugar

for serving:
basil pesto
olive oil
pumpkin seeds

1. Cut off broccoli florets, chop broccoli stems and potatoes. Put the potatoes, broccoli stems and 1/2 of the florets into a saucepan, cover barely with chicken stock. Boil, covered with a lid, for 20 minutes.
2. Puree the potful, add the cream cheese and flavour with salt, white pepper and a dash of sugar.
3. Pour the soup back into the pot, add the remaining florets and heat for 5 additional minutes.
4. Mix a bit of oil into the pesto. Serve the soup with pumpkin seeds and pesto oil drizzled on top.

The soup is very creamy indeed. If the florets are cut small, there's enough for almost every mouthful. They remain a bit crisp and are a good crunch together with the pumpkin seeds in the overall creamy-creamy soup. The potatoes give good body and the pesto attacks an otherwise mild soup with a strong taste, creating a great combination.

I suggest using light stock if you don't want overpower the delicate taste of the broccoli. The supervegetable needs its attention!:)

A tortilla that’s not a real tortilla and definitely not a tortilla that I’d call a tortilla

I love reading foreign food magazines. That I can read. But usually buying them aqcuires a thick wallet. When we went to Spain last autumn, I grabbed four food magazines when we were still at the airport. Well, I rushed a bit with that...as I acidentally grabbed one in Catalan...

But this year a friend gave me a three month subcription of the Spanish food magazine Comer Bien for birthday. Yay. That was sweet! Believe me, I’ve ticked a lot of recipes, but this far I’ve only got to making just one thing from all my Spanish magazines...

And in case you’re not fond of the word omelette in this context, well, you can call it a heated dessert or something:)

<Chocolate omelette
(adapted from Comer y Beber magazine, October/November 2006, serves 4)

4 eggs
100g sugar
100g dark chocolate
2 tsp cocoa powder

1. Break chocolate into squares.
2. Beat the eggs together with the sugar until slightly fluffy.
3. Sift in cocoa powder and add chocolate chunks.
4. Prepare an omelette from the mixture on a larger skillet (Do not overbake, or the chocolate inside won't be runny anymore). Cut into four.
5. Serve alone or with a sauce. I'd recommend vanilla sauce or some fruit sauce.

I used a small skillet for making the dessert for just two people and it was so easy to make. Warm chocolate desserts usually take time, but this one is ready in minutes. The flavour is eggy, yes, but it doesn't really taste like an omelette. Creme brulee tastes eggy too, remember?

It's definitely mainly a chocolate dessert, with the chocolate chunks inside pleasantly warm and slightly runny.

You hungry?

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.

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.

Back to when I was five years old ... a childhood dessert reconstructed

Waiting at the small kitchen table.
'Is it ready yet?'
-'Could you just wait a little more?'
And then, after some time, mom gives me a soup plate filled with white milk kissel with blasting vanilla flavour. The excitement! The sweet taste of a favourite dessert!

There was a time when milk kissel would have been my first (and last) choice for a dessert and this is the scene that come's to my mind whenever I'm remembered about it. But, unfortunately, my memories about the dessert end with that time. Milk kissel hasn't come around for - let me see - ages. It might be just that we've grown out of it, so I figured the dessert needed some reconstruction.


Here - renovated, all new, a modern milk kissel - here you go!

Coconut milk kissel
(adapted from '100 Magustoitu' by Lia Virkus and Pille Enden)
serves 4

1/2 l milk
1/2 l coconut milk
1 dl sugar
3/4 dl potato/corn starch
1 tsp vanilla sugar

1. Bring coconut milk and milk to a boil in a saucepan, add sugar
2. Dissolve starch in a bit of water and add to milk, stirring vigorously.
3. Let the kissel reach its boiling point, but don't let it boil, remove it from the heat
4. Flavour with vanilla
5. Let the kissel cool down, stirring occasionally to prevent the forming of 'kissel skin'
6. Serve with jam or with cinnamon sprinkled over the dessert.


To create the dish I just substituted half of the milk in the original recipe with coconut milk - the taste came through in perfect proportion with everything else. The dessert is silky, sweet and has a lovely scent of vanilla. I prefer eating it when it's still a bit warm, but it's also great when it has cooled down completely - especially on a hot day like this! And on a hot day like this it's essential to spend more time outside and enjoy quick meals - this dessert is one great example.

You know what? One day my kids are going to ask me for this milk kissel!:D

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.

Sweet double bread pudding

Made of leftovers.
And delicious.

Somehow, unexpectedly (I egoistically like to think it was because of my birthday), too much bread found its way to our house. What's worse - it found its way to our fridge. Now, bread in the fridge is not a nice sight for me, so I figured that the best way to get rid of it is just to go ahead and eat all of it.

What would usually happen? White bread would turn into sweet bread pudding saiavorm (read more here) and rye bread would turn into sweet rye bread 'soup' - leivasupp (my classical). But today I rebelled a bit and made an experimental bread pudding - which is going to be a keeper! Curd cheese can be replaced with sour cream, cream cheese or yoghurt (although I would never ever replace it!), light cream or even milk can be used instead of double cream. But...you do want double cream, you do.


Sweet rye bread and white bread pudding

150-200 g white bread
150-200 g rye bread
1 dl sweet apple puree/jam
2 eggs
2 dl double cream
1 dl curd cheese
3 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp - 1/2 tsp cinnamon
vanilla

1. Dice white bread and rye bread.
2. Grease a loaf pan and lay white bread onto the bottom of it.
3. Cover the bread with apple puree and top with rye bread pieces.
4. Beat eggs with curd cheese and double cream until smooth, add sugar, vanilla and cinnamon. Then pour the mixture onto rye bread (Try to make sure that all of it gets soaked).
5. If you wish then sprinkle some sugar onto the pudding, then bake it at 180C for about 30 minutes.
6. Serve warm with cold milk (poured over it or on the side), with ice cream or with some kissel poured over it.



The bottom part is so soft and sweet enough to fill my appetite, I love the texture curd cheese gives to bread puddings (or anything, actually!). The top part is nicely brown and crunchy under one's tooth. Although it might seem that rye bread tends to burn dangerously during those 30 minutes in the oven, it's not like that - it just takes time for it to become crunchy and all. I wish I'd added a bit more cinnamon, 1/4 tsp is a bit too little for us who we are used to eating heaps of cinnamon on saiavorm.

What about next time? I said the recipe was a keeper! I'd really really like to add berries or fruit - I can feel the dessert calling for fresh blackcurrants picked from the garden or sour morellos. Or on another day - for bananas and blueberries.


Ahh, how I love our cuisine.

A pie for the love of cheese

Now, everybody who loves cheese, raise your hands!

Just as I had thought - these hands are impossible to count. My hands were up high as well - and although I don't eat awfully lot of cheese, I sometimes have cravings for it. Today was one of thesa days. I knew what I was going to make - a perfect cheese pie, but unfortunately I didn't know how. After reading some instructions for cheese pies I understood I couldn't go to the store. That didn't sound as desperate as you might think! After opening my fridge I came up with my own pie. 'Is it that perfect one then?' you might ask. Quite. Quite-quite.

At least it's got the perfect pile of cheese in it.

The taste of the pie is quite strong so it's important to choose cheese that is very much to your liking (choose cheese - now say that for fifty times and fast!:)). You may also reduce the amount of salt - I have, after all, caught the flu and eat saltier food that I would normally...mom was a bit whiny about the salt. Dill can be replaced with any other herb you like - this is just what I had at home and what I felt like.


Cheese pie with dill

3 eggs
250 g sour cream
150g + 100 g grated cheese
1/4 tsp salt
up to 1/2 dl dill

1. Mix the eggs with sour cream, add flour, salt, dill and 150 g grated cheese.
2. Take a springform pan (I used 24 cm) and grease it with butter or line with baking paper.
3. Pour the mixture into the pan and cover with remaining cheese.
4. Bake at 200C for about half an hour.



I ate a slice of pie warm with some simple green salad (green leaf lettuce + yoghurt + sugar). It was just the right thing to accompany it, as the pie is rich enough already. Soft on the inside, with a pleasant crust on top. Very cheesy and with a quite strong taste of dill.
It could make a perfect snack, if cooled and cut into small squares. I imagine serving them with a coctail stick and with pieces of sweet red pepper.

I think that the next time I crave for cheese, I'll try adding something else to the pie. For example little pieces of ham and basil instead of dill. Or maybe smoked sausage and oregano. Or maybe, who knows - I might just as well add carrot.

An almost traditional green summer salad

There's rhubarb season all over food blogosphere and I've been able to miss it. Well, not really as my fridge still is packed with rhubarb stalks all the time and every weekend comes with a new pile of them, fresh from my grandmother's garden. No way we could eat them all fresh by just dipping them into sugar. Although on a second thought... still, no. Rhubarb is a gifted fruit, managing well in both sweet and savoury dishes. This time however this fruit is just an addition to a lovely summer salad, something almost traditional.

To speak of traditions, our family's most traditional summer salad is simple chopped green leaf lettuce with sour cream and sugar, often with radish. This is what my grandmother makes. This is what my other grandmother makes. This is what my mother makes. This is what we all love.

Everything was just fine until I came with the idea of adding yoghurt instead of sour cream or adding pineapple or walnuts or whatever. And from time to time, instead of the old and safe we eat the new and improved. For me the old and safe is very often the base for lunch in summer, for who'd like to eat heavily with this weather. This my today's try. Which I ate. Alone. Double the recipe, for heaven's sake!


Green summer salad
(serves one as a light meal or two as a side dish)

3 dl chopped green lettuce (we prefer 'chopping' with scissors)
1/2 dl chopped green onions
1/2 dl chopped rhubarb
1/2 dl chopped radish
1/2 dl yoghurt
1/2 dl cottage cheese
1-2 tsp sugar
pinch of salt

1. For the salad sauce mix together yoghurt, cottage cheese, sugar and salt.
2. Mix all ingredients together or set them in layers

Although setting the ingredients in layers looks really nice and really really nice, I prefer mixing the salad, because, you know, eating is not only about aesthetics. The salad is quite sweet and that is what I'm used to, but I suggest using only 1 tsp of sugar if you're not a sweettooth when it comes to lettuce. But the freshness, the everything - summer wouldn't be here without this salad. For me it is time for some sun and workout now!

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.

Sweet bread puddings with condensed milk, peanut butter and plums

Making the Estonian bread pudding Saiavorm has certain rules for me.
It's half soft. It's half crunchy. It's got something with sour taste in it. It has sugar sprinkled on it. It is flavoured with vanilla (is there something that ISN'T flavoured with vanilla at this house?). Its top is golden brown. It's eaten with cold milk poured over it. Its serving size is really big just big enough to fill the belly.

But who actually cares? I may add berries, pears or even salted fish into my bread pudding if I want to (the salted fish was a metaphor, really). I do love to add some curd cheese, cream cheese, sour cream or yoghurt to the egg and milk mixture to make the lower part of the pudding taste more than just...divine tasting soaked bread. This time the quantity of bread is much smaller than usually as I used a muffin pan, but at the same time the dessert has a gourmet-like twist in taste. I'd call it progress, wouldn't you?:)


Sweet bread puddings with condensed milk, peanut butter and plums

100 g white bread
100 g plums (fresh/frozen)
1 tbsp peanut butter
3-4 tbsp sweetened condensed milk
1 1/4 dl milks
1 egg
1 yolk
vanilla
sugar for sprinkling

1. Chop the plums and divide the pieces between muffin pan holes (there's no need to melt frozen plums - they'll do just fone on their own).
2. Dice the bread and add to the plums.
3. Mix the rest of the ingredients (except sugar) together and pour onto bread.
4. Sprinkle the puddings with some sugar and bake at 190C until baked from the inside and golden brown on the top, circa 25 minutes.
5. Serve warm with cold milk.



The sweetness of the puddings comes from the condensed milk, but as there's not much of it, you may add sugar to taste. Peanut butter mysteriously makes the taste better from the background, it can't be noticed right away, but makes its every effort to improve your eating experience. And yes - half soft, half crunchy. Easy, it is, but someone should explain that to the cooks of the school diner too - there's so much more to saiavorm than just soaked bread (and they should know that for heaven's sake!).

I'm only worried about one thing. The only peanut butter that is sold in every bigger store here in Tallinn was peculiarly runny this time. There's nothing written about it on the jar, but if they're adding more oil to it now...
Argh.

'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.

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.

More tosca, less cake

While eating tosca cake, haven't you ever wished for just more of that fabulous almond coating and less, well...cake? I certainly have. My favourite coating is from a recipe for tosca buns. This time I tried it with simple Digestive cookies. It was fast, simple and...know what? Had less cake!

Tosca cookies

50 g butter
1 dl sugar
2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp milk
100 g sliced almonds

a bunch of Digestive cookies
(or any graham crackers)

1. melt the butter in a saucepan.
2. add flour, sugar and milk, bring the mixture to a boil.
3. stir in the sliced almonds.
4. spread the mixture over cookies
5. bake in the oven at 200C for about 7 minutes or until the almonds are golden brown.
6. let the cookies cool a bit before transfering them away from the griddle.

I was afraid the cookies would brown too much, but they didn't! It was child's play, it was so easy. The cookies would be perfect for surprise guests when you discover you've got nothing special to serve them. And whenever you feel like tosca cake...there's nothing more simple.