Yumi Yumi

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas , dear friends and readers! We had the pleasure of cooking for and hosting our respective families on Christmas Eve (that's when we, Estonians, have the main Christmas meal and distribute gifts). I was in charge of the menu and cooking - and I thought it's a good idea to share the menu on my blog as well. I decided to have a rather light and minimalist first course. Here's what it looked like: Good black Estonian bread, some white toast and a selection of cured fish. Starting from the left, there are  spiced Baltic sprats that I wrote about in the previous post ( see here ), but this time served simply with sliced red onion: Then there's salt-cured whitefish from my favourite fishmonger, PepeKala OÜ . Whitefish slices are to be eaten with buttered toast: Finally, locally grown and jellied catfish (African sharptooth catfish, to be more precise, angersäga in Estonian, Clarias gariepinus in Latin). This one came out of the jar as ...

The Baltic sprat   ( Sprattus sprattus balticus ) is a subspecies of the European sprat ( Sprattus sprattus ), also known  as brisling or skipper. They are up to 12,5 cm long (about 5 inches), small, silvery and herring-like. The sprats are commonly marinated in a mixture of black pepper, allspice (aka Jamaican pepper), cloves, nutmeg, coriander seeds, bay leaves, salt and sugar etc.  The result: spiced Baltic sprats aka vürtsikilud , a famous Estonian delicacy. Vürtsikilud aka spiced Baltic sprats are used to make some delectable small sandwiches here in Estonia , known as kiluvõileivad (literally, sprat sandwiches). I knew they were popular, but didn't realise they're so popular. You see - I've been to four different Christmas parties during the last week, and kiluvõileivad were served at three of them. Each time these were the first to disappear off the table (yes, I did keep an eye of them to verify that). When I shared the realisation on Nami-Nami's Facebo...

Photo by Juta Kübarsepp for Nami-Nami Christmas is just around the corner and I'm busy coordinating various festive dinners and other occasions. Good times, and I always feel a bit sad when all the feasts are finally over. Well, there will be another Christmas in just a year, of course :) One of the staples on Estonian Christmas table is sauerkraut, and I've got a lovely version here on my blog,  sauerkraut braised in dark beer . However, not all people have access to Estonian-style sauerkraut (fresh and unpasteurised, containing just cabbage and salt and perhaps some caraway seeds), or perhaps they cannot stomach the fermented version. Here's where this recipe comes to rescue - a fresh cabbage that's been sautéed and browned in butter, dark syrup and some stock. This has a slightly milder flavour compared to the traditional sauerkraut, but it's just as lovely as a side dish alongside the traditional pork roast  that I always serve on Christmas eve. It also wor...

From the recipe archives! It's the time to bake various Christmas cookies again. While I'll certainly be making and baking and decorating a batch of these favourite Estonian piparkoogid ("pepper cakes") , then this year I have another recipe in mind as well. These sliced Christmas cookies with almonds found their way into my heart in the midst of the summer heatwave, as I was choosing and testing recipes for my Christmas cookbook . I had seen a recipe for "French gingebread cookies" in a Swedish food magazine that I liked, and that reminded me of Jules Destrooper 's wonderful almond thins that I used to love. After some tweaking here and there (less sugar and less cloves, more almonds), I ended up with this great recipe. I usually divide the dough into four equal portions and roll and wrap them individually. Then I bake one and place three in the freezer - I can then bake fresh and aromatic Christmas cookies whenever I feel like :) Almond Gingerbread Co...