Yumi Yumi

We had a looong winter this year, and for a while it seemed that Spring has decided not to pay us a visit this year. It did, if a bit late. And then, suddenly, the summer arrived. Surprisingly, my vegetable garden seems to like this long winter/late spring/sudden summer a lot. My salad leaves and leafy greens (kale, Swiss chard/mangold, sprouting broccoli) are really thriving, the radishes gave us a bumper crop. The tomatoes, beets, carrots - you name it - all seem to be having a great time! And we'll surely be eating lots of Swiss chard this summer! Here's my latest Swiss chard crop: My first mangold dish of the season? This Swiss chard, ricotta and tomato bake , of course. However, then I was a bit lost again, as I couldn't decide which one to pick from those 20 recipes on my Estonian site . I turned my (well, Nami-Nami's) Facebook fans ( all 17 000 + of them! ) for their favourite Swiss chard/mangold recipes, and one of them, Nelli , recommended this salad recipe on...

Recipe originally posted in August 2006, fully revised and updated with a new photo in June 2013. The first time I cooked this delicious dish was in August 2006 in Edinburgh. I had some Estonian visitors from Cambridge. Trying to stay close to our Nordic roots, I had boiled some potatoes ( the staple back home) and scoured the Swedish Arla site for recipes. This recipe for klassisk sommarkyckling aka Classic Summer Chicken caught my eye and, with small adaptations, was served to my friends. They liked it, as did I. The creamy-mustardy sauce was especially delicious, and dill added a very summery touch indeed (the original recipe used chives, which also sounds lovely). That was seven years ago - and I still cook this to my family every now and then. I'm especially fond of the crispy bacon garnish, which complements the mild chicken and the creamy mustard sauce beautifully. Chicken with creamy mustard and dill sauce and crispy bacon ( Suvine kanaroog koore-sinepikastmega ) Serves ...

Some seven years ago, when my dear K. and I met for a long weekend date in Paris. One morning we had a late breakfast at  Bread & Roses , a lovely deli-cafe near the Luxemburg gardens. I cannot recall exactly what else we had, but we definitely had a really lovely smoked salmon and spinach quiche. I even wrote about it back in 2006 , after baking it in Edinburgh (yes, back then I was still living in the beautiful capital of Scotland , and K. and I were having a long-distance relationship. We had no idea what life had in store for us, and definitely didn't think we'd be happy parents to three little kids in 2013 :)) The quiche is still a favourite with us, always bringing back nice memories of those promising spring days in Paris. I've modified the recipe a little over the years, and here's the adapted recipe for you, my dear readers. Smoked salmon and spinach quiche ( Spinati-suitsulõhepirukas ) Serves six NOTE that an American cup is 240 ml, an ounce is about 28 g...

Photo by  Juta Kübarsepp  for the May 2013 issue of  Kodu ja Aed  ("Home and Garden", an Estonian monthly) Back in early April, when I was trying to decide what starter would suit my Mother's Day menu spread in the next magazine, a FB-friend mentioned Jamie Oliver's shrimp and cucumber salad in a totally different context. I'm not a huge fan of shrimps - although I'm getting there, slowly - and I never figured out which Jamie's recipe my FB-friend was talking about. However, I came across this shrimp and cucumber salad recipe  by Ellie Krieger, which sounded pretty good. After some minor tweaking I settled for this extremely light and healthy - and beautifully elegant, don't you think? - salad that works brilliantly as a starter. Highly recommended. And let me warn you - I've witnessed people with impecable table manners drinking the minty-cucumber-shrimp "juice"from the bottom of the glass - it's so good :) Shrimp salad with cucumbe...