Someone was looking for a "soft aubergine/eggplant spread with tomatoes" and I knew exactly what they were talking about. There's a dish in Russia, our Eastern neighbour, which is called IKRA or fake caviar. I got this recipe from Russian friend Galina back in Edinburgh sometimes around 2000. Still makes a regular appearance in our kitchen. It's lovely on a slice of toast, or as a condiment or spread on a mezze-table. Russian aubergine spread IKRA 1 large aubergine/eggplant 1 large onion 2 garlic cloves 2 tomatoes 1 Tbsp olive oil or vegetable oil 2 Tbsp white wine vinegar or lemon juice salt and freshly ground black pepper fresh parsley or dill Prick the aubergine with a fork here and there, then place into a preheated 200C/400F oven and bake for about 60 minutes, until fully cooked and slightly charred on the outside. Flip over once or twice during baking. Remove from the oven, let it cool. Then cul half lengthwise and scoop out the flesh. Place into a cutting b...
K. playing around with gingerbread. See another example of his food styling here. The cookie cutter (do you recognise the Moomin character?) is a gift from Dagmar.
I baked a lot of cookies this Christmas - gingerbread cookies, matcha madeleines, sweet mayonnaise cookies, coconut macaroons, and these lovely pale cardamom cookies - to give away as gifts. The recipe is from a Finnish site, and they were called white gingebread cookies, if I remember correctly. The naughty bit is that they don't look like gingerbread cookies - which are supposed to be, of course, dark brown (see the colour contrast on the top photo?) - but they contain a generous doze of cardamom, which gives them a very Christmassy feel. Sneaky, eh?
Oh, if you don't have ground cardamom, then seeds from about 20 pods give you about 1 tsp of ground spice at the end. And be careful not to overbake them - you want white gingerbread after all!
White Gingerbread aka Cardamom Cookies
(Valged piparkoogid e. kardemoniküpsised)
Recipe from the Finnish Pirkka-site
Makes about 4 dozen
125 g butter, at room temperature
100 g sugar
1 egg
50 ml double cream
150 g plain flour
100 g potato starch/potato flour
2 tsp vanilla sugar
1 tsp ground cardamom
0.5 tsp baking powder
Cream butter and sugar until light, then whisk in the egg.
Mix the dry ingredients (flour, potato starch, vanilla sugar, cardamom and baking powder), add to the butter mixture together with the double cream. Press into a dough ball and place into the fridge for about 3 hours (I left it overnight).
Roll the dough out on a slightly floured surface into 3-5 mm thickness. Cut out cookies and place onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper.
Bake at 200 C for 6-8 minutes, until the cookies are very slightly golden.
Cool and decorate with sugar glazing (recipe here).
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