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Affichage des articles du novembre, 2012

IKRA - Russian eggplant caviar/Russian aubergine caviar

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...

Oven-baked pork stroganoff with mayonnaise

Stroganoff, for most of you, is associated with the Russian dish boeuf stroganoff , a creamy sauce based on thin beef tenderloin strips and perhaps button mushrooms (interestingly, mushrooms aren't included in böfstrooganov over here). But stroganoff it's also used as a shorthand for various hot dishes using long and thin meat strips. Say, something you'd probably call pork or beef stir-fry strips in English-speaking countries, are called stroganoff pieces over here (you can also buy " maksastrooganov " or thin beef or pork liver strips over here). Here's a popular Estonian family dinner - oven-baked pork stroganoff that uses less than five ingredients (pork, onions, mushrooms, mayonnaise and seasonings). It tastes lovely with some mashed or simply boiled potatoes, and is a perfect for those cold winter nights. More stroganoff recipes here on Nami-Nami: Latvian pork stroganoff "Kurzeme stroganoff" Mushroom stroganoff Oven-baked pork stroganoff with ...

Orange salad with pomegranate seeds, perfect for the festive season

Citrus fruit and Christmas go hand in hand, no? Well, in my house they do. I like serving an orange salad during the festive season - either as a starter, like  this beetroot and orange salad with ginger yoghurt dressing  or this fennel and orange salad with a simple vinaigrette  or even this super-simple orange and red onion salad . Or as a dessert, in a form of a simple " Orange Ambrosia , for instance. When flipping through the pages of one of my current favourite food magazines, the Swedish-language Lantliv mat & vin , I was immediately drawn to a pretty orange and pomegranate salad. And although Christmas is still a few weeks away, we've had some snow in Estonia already - and it's snowing outside as I'm writing this post - so this salad has been sitting prettily on our table twice during the last week or so. And it'll be definitely making an appearance or two during December. It'd make a lovely light dessert, or simply one of the dishes on your festive...

My recipes in Home & Garden (Kodu & Aed), November 2012

Here's a short overview of the recipes I chose and cooked for the November 2012 issue of the Home and Garden (Kodu ja Aed) magazine, as the magazine's new editor of the food section . If you read Estonian and are based in Estonia, then you can get the magazine at all newsstands until the end of the month. The photos are by Juta Kübarsepp , who also helped with styling. The props are my own or from my friend Kristiina :) November is a dark and chilly time in Estonia. There's usually no snow yet, so nothing to reflect back the little light we have during this month (and trust me, there's not much light). However, there are still some things to light up the life during this month - Fathers' Day is celebrated during the second Sunday in November, and there are some folk calendar events as well. (And our little family gets to celebrate my dear K's birthday   and the birth of our  third child ). I was thinking of the Father's day lunch or dinner when planning th...

Oxtail ragout with celeriac mash

Oxtail - isn't it beautiful?  I admit that I blatantly nicked the idea for today's post from the wonderful Jeanne in London, who wrote about a  20-hour sous vide oxtail stew  in her award-winning blog,  Cook Sister!   Here's my oxtail story. Albarracín at night, March 2008 I still remember my first encounter with oxtail - on a plate, I mean. My dear K. and I were travelling in Spain in March 2008, visiting the lovely Ximena of the  Lobstersquad  fame in Madrid, and visiting some other off-the-beaten-track cities that Ximena and her also very lovely husband J. had suggested. One late afternoon we arrived in the picturesque Albarracín in Aragon (yep, on the lands of the medieval Kingdom of Aragón ). After checking into our hotel for the night, we wandered on the streets of Albaraccín, looking for a tiny restaurant called  Rincón del Chorro . Somebody somewhere had recommended it, you see. The night was already dark, but we were obviously too early...

Chinese Lemon Chicken Recipe

Now that I'm  a young mum with three kids , I am looking for and cooking more and more quick and universally appealing dishes. Luckily it doesn't just mean macaroni with fried pork or pasta with pesto - the "older" kids are happy to try different foods (like  mussels ), and I can still cook my old favourites from across the world. Last week (when I was still a mum to just two :)) I made this quick and easy Chinese chicken dish, which they all loved. It's a lighter and healthier version of the popular Cantonese dish. The recipe is adapted from Wynnie Chan's 2007 cookbook  "Fresh Chinese" . Wynnie Chan is a nutritional consultant for the  Chinese National Healty Living Centre  in the United Kingdom, so she's dedicated to adjusting popular Chinese dishes to modern healthy palates. That isn't always easy, but seems to work for this lemon chicken recipe. I usually serve it with rice, but egg noodles work just as well, especially if doused with a...

And last, but not least...

If you've been wondering why my posting has been somewhat erratic recently, then here's the reason:   Our third baby was born yesterday morning, on November 4th . She weighed 3710 grams and was 50 cm tall - our biggest baby yet :) Our oldest - a daughter born in January 2009 and our second child - a son born in January 2011 - are still quite small, 3 years 9 months and 1 year 9 months, respectively. So being heavily pregnant with two small kids needing the attention and trying to write a foodblog - the latter has often had to wait. But I'm still here, and hopefully you'll be patient enough to wait for my future posts - which will be about food, and not kids, I promise :)

Scottish shortbread, the way I like it

There's a personal reason to celebrate all things Scottish today - namely, it was exactly seven years ago that I met my dear partner K . at a reception at the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh (housed in the lovely building behind me on the photo above, though the picture is taken about 7 months later), which eventually led me to moving back home to Estonia , and living a very happy life with a wonderful partner and two gorgeous kids . Oh, and a lovely garden . The Scottish dish I'm celebrating today is the wonderful, melt-in-your-mouth, buttery Scottish shortbread. It's soft, yet crunchy - the crunchiness is enhanced by the use of fine semolina in the recipe. You cannot have a cup of tea without those, really. Here's the home-made Scottish all-butter shortbread - the recipe is from Delia Smith - and as it's a pretty classic one, there's been no reason to change it. I used a special shortbread tin, marked with the thistle, but you can just as well use a regular...