Yumi Yumi

This was originally posted in 2011. You'll find all my Easter recipes here .  We don't really 'do' chocolate eggs for Easter here in Estonia, but real, chicken eggs. Dyeing eggs for Easter is very popular, and using onion skins is probably the most popular method. Using onion peels gives you most beautiful dyed eggs, each one unique and special. Here are some photos of the process that I took few years ago. Here's what you need to do: * Few weeks before Easter start collecting onion peels. Yellow ones are better than red onion skins, as they give a nice colour. * You need white eggs for doing this (this gives the shops a chance to sell specially packaged white eggs for a much higher price before the festivities). * Take an egg and neatly put few onion peels around it: * Take a piece of mesh/muslin/kitchen foil or even an old nylon stocking and wrap it around the egg to keep the onion peels on place. I used foil here: * Boil as usual. Cool, then unwrap and unpeel. He...

The photo is from January 2008   We love our curd cheese cakes in Estonia - and you'll find at least five curd cheese cake recipes here on my blog. This particular one is one of the most common curd cheese cakes out there. It uses a shop-bough yellow cake mix ("Juubeli tordipulber" or "Jubileum cake mix"), making it super-quick to assemble, and many Estonian cooks would have a packed somewhere in the kitchen drawer, just in cake. I'm an avid baker, love baking from scratch, and I do, just in cake :) I'm posting it here, as someone was looking for the English recipe and I realised I hadn't shared it yet. It's lovely when enjoyed lukewarm, with a glass of cold milk, but it's also really nice when completely cooled and accompanied with a cup of coffee or tea or cacao. Layered curd cheese cake ( Kihiline kohupiimakook ) Feeds 6 to 8 400 g creamy curd cheese 200 g sour cream (20% fat content is perfect) 4 eggs (L) 4 Tbsp caster sugar 1 yellow cak...

We love duck in our house. It's just as easy to cook as your regular Sunday chicken roast, but because it's less common, somewhat pricier and much bitter, it has a more festive feel to it. We don't cook duck for weeknight dinners, but for weekend roasts and entertaining at home, it's such a worthy bird. Here's a version I cooked a few times this autumn, trying to perfect it for a magazine photo shoot :) Serves around 6 Oven-roasted duck with plums and red onions ( Ahjupart ploomide ja sibulaga ) 1 whole duck (ca 3-3,5 kilograms; I prefer chilled to frozen) salt and freshly ground black pepper 300-400 ml of hot water 5-6 smallish red onions few decent garlic cloves 4 cloves  (the spice) 1 kilograms large red plums 3-4 fresh thyme sprigs Preheat the oven to 180  ° C/350  ° F. Season the duck with salt and pepper, both inside and out. Place into a good-sized oven dish (I used a lasagne dish on the photo, but a wide dutch oven would do as well). Pour  hot water into the...

From the recipe archives (originally posted in December 2012. Still my favourite Christmas roast). Photo by Juta Kübarsepp for the December issue of Kodu ja Aed magazine, 2012  What's your traditional Christmas roast (assuming you're eating meat)? Turkey? Goose? Duck? In Estonia it's definitely pork, though roast poultry has become more popular during recent years. I've been flirting with  roast goose  and actually served  duck leg confit  on Christmas Eve this year. It was delicious. However, for years I've been serving pork roast - a pork shoulder ( kaelakarbonaad in Estonian) in a mustard-honey-garlic-rosemary marinade, to be more precise. I love that it's a pretty fool-proof recipe, simple to make, with lots of flavour. And - as an added bonus - any leftovers are excellent on top of rye bread on the days after the party, or as part of a salad. So if you're not making it for a big family feast, you can still make the same amount and simply make sever...

Our little family of five spent three weeks exploring the beautiful Island of the Gods aka Bali earlier this year. We began our family vacation in Jimbaran , then stayed in the quaint artists' village of Penestanan just outside Ubud , then explored Northern Bali from Dencarik on  Lovina  beach and ended our holiday with a short stay in Canggu on the West coast again. Although the kids - then 3, 5 and 7 - were the one setting the pace and nature of our vacation, we did cram in quite a few food-related activities as well. Visiting the famous fish market in Jimbaran was one of them. We relied on local taxis to get around on Bali, as the local traffic was somewhat intimidating to a Northern European like me. So I'm unable to give you exact instructions re: how to get to the market - just ask your cab driver. But do get there early - the market opens around dawn at 6 am - for the best selection of fish and liveliest action, even if you are there just for window-shopping. Traditi...

How do you enjoy the persimmons, in season right now? Here in Estonia we can by mostly the heart-shaped hachiya variety, which is astringent when raw, but meltingly sweet when ripe. We usually just wash them and cut into wedges, but there's also this super-easy and lovely way of serving them, adapted from the Australian Persimmon Inc page  here . Remember, only try this with perfectly rip persimmons unless you want to be utterly disappointed. Persimmon with honeyed yoghurt ( Hurmaa mesise jogurtiga ) Serves 4 400 grams Greek yogurt 1 large hachiya persimmon 4 tsp of runny honey fresh thyme leaves Divide yoghurt between four small dessert bowls or glasses. Wash and dry the persimmon (no need to peel!), cut into thin wedges. Top the yoghurt with 2-3 persimmon slices. Drizzle some honey on top, garnish with fresh thyme leaves and serve. Previously on Nami-Nami: Persimmon and cottage cheese dessert  (December 2008)