Lamprey

 

Friends of mine came to visit me the other day with these guys. So we roasted them and ate them. Tasted quite good. A bit unusual, but good. The only thing… that fishy stench! Oh that didn’t leave my apartment for a week… yuck! :P

Salmon salad

I love salads! This one consists of iceberg lettuce, tomato, cucumber, salmon and pomegranate which is my latest discovery. I have absolutely each salad with it now. It gives such a nice slightly sour addition to it. The sauce consisted of honey, mustard, white wine vinegar, pepper, salt and olive oil. I also added some dill. YUM!

pancakes

pancakes with smoked salmon, cottage cheese and tomato-basil salad filling. yum!

a pie!

 

A pie with strawberries and rhubarb and condense milk from cookbook by Maru. It makes me feel beautiful when I read this beautiful cook book and it makes me feel beautiful when I cook from this beautiful book and it makes me feel especially beautiful when I eat what I cooked.

This time it is a modification – it was originally rhubarb and plum pie, but the marketplace is sooo full of strawberry scent, I couldn’t resist. And the pie is delicious! rhubarb makes it kind of sour which I really enjoy.

pet peeve

Nothing can be perfect, can it!? There just has to be an annoying side effect to all that is pleasant and enjoyable. Why on earth do the dishes have to get dirty!? The sink is constantly full of this mess. Really, this is the only thing I do NOT like about cooking, eating and food. Okey, peeling potatoes is annoying too : )

birthday menu

muffins with stone pine seeds (at least this is what google told me they’re called in English) and parmesan cheese and basil. Reminder: do not forget to add oil if it is in the recipe – its difficult to get the paper off : ) Otherwise it was a good recipe, with no butter, but bit of oil and yoghurt instead. Summer, time of minis is skirts is coming ;)

And cottage cheese blackberry cake. yum! recipe comes originally from this cook book, but i did not use raspberries.

beet root casserole

very easy-to-make and peasant-to-eat dish. grated and slightly fried carrots, sliced and fried onion, boiled and grated beetroot, fried minced meat. an egg and a bit of milk to pour it over. a bit of cheese to cover it all. salt, pepper and basil and a bit of my favourite – rosemary.

 

pie

the idea was to make a quiche, but i think it’s just a pie with improvised filling of ham, mushrooms, paprika, cottage cheese, onion, cheese and tomatoes. just a really thick pizza :) well, i don’t know what it is, but it was delicious and pretty!

toast

it is always to have an appetiser while the main course is in the oven baking. just not to die of hunger. toast with Brie is delicious! you have no toaster? me neither. but i have a frying pan. it works perfectly.

the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I know nothing about wines. having said that, let me tell you what i think of these three we had yesterday. starting from left, let me introduce the Strange, the Terrible and the Okey. Old Tbilisi was a bit a political choice – to support Georgia (just kiddin). But no, do not mix politics with alcohol! It was real bad. Perhaps it was cos it was semi-sweet (i.e. very sweet), but it really tasted rather lemonade than wine. So let me remember to avoid it in the future. (i have a tendency to remember wines that I have had, but in most of the cases I can’t remember whether it was good or bad. or ugly.)

inspiring

I found today a blog which makes me to run to the food store now – I JUST NEED TO COOK! bounteous-bites - full of great recipes and gorgeous photos. There’s also an Estonian version of it bounteous-bites-est

seeya! me gonna run now.

Something fishy

Sometimes my breakfasts are a weird combination of all kinds of things I find in a fridge and would like to have, all loaded on one big plate. and yes, vitamins too. just not to forget. My latest food-related obsession is ricotta.

chicken, brown rice and salad

chicken was covered with lemon, basil, pepper, salt and lots of garlic.

honey and mustard

 

Chicken is just delish (greetings to jamie oliver) if you pour it over with honey-mustard-lemon juice-olive oil-pepper-salt marinade and leave it there for few moments before frying. YUM!  Oh, and this fresh leek! It is growing on my window sill. One onion just decided, its springtime and time to grow. I didn’t mind. Gives colour and taste to my food.

Culinary gestures

What to do with a dessert if the main course is unexpectedly large and there is no way you can eat the dessert. Colleagues of mine divided this one made of semolina and eggs and I don’t know what else into about 10 small pieces, added some crunched biscuits, pieces of a candy and voila! There’s a luxurious tiny dessert for everybody! Thank you :)

pasta, second try

I was afraid that my first successful pasta making was just beginners luck. And it was. The second time I failed miserably. Perhaps it was because I used different flour, durum flour which behaved a bit differently. Perhaps it was because I didn’t bother to measure quantities flour and eggs. Perhaps it was because I left it for too long to the fridge. Perhaps it was all together, but the result was non-sticking and very not solid and ugly-looking mass which took only shapes it wanted, not what i wanted. and becoming noodles was not in its plan.

I was ready to toss it to garbage, but a friend who was visiting saved it – added more flour, more eggs, more rude words and it worked. sort of. It was very eggy and weird. but edible.

AND – if you add some red wine, some smashed canned tomatoes and a bit of sugar to minced beef meat, i think you can eat it with anything and it’ll taste just great. even strange noodles.

Choco, lots of choco

I’m glad there are recipes for moments I want to bake something so badly but I have nothing at home and I’m too lazy to go to shop. If I say I have nothing it means I have some eggs, sugar, flour, butter, baking powder and cocoa. Maybe some chocolate. This was the lucky day. I had chocolate!!

chop chop chop! oh what a splendid activity this was to make chocolate chips. then mix mix mix. then wait wait wait (i.e. bake bake bake) and then eat eat eat. with vanilla ice cream and a bit of strawberry jam on top. yum!

 

some leftovers which i didn’t have time to take a decent picture of. But I hope you get the picture :)

morning with porridge

A tip of a day: buckwheat porridge is best with a bit of fried onion and sundried tomatoes on top :)

Making of pasta

 

I bought myself a pasta maker! It was at first meant to be for mixing polymer clay to make my jewellery making simpler and more effective. But… my second passion, food got there first and as a result of the first try there was a plateful very tasty pasta instead of polymer clay beads and pendants. It seems I need to by another maker for mixing polymer clay :)

the recipe of pasta is very simple, it is basically only egg and flour I used.

  

Bon appetite!

cottage cheese and zucchini quiche

The original recipe that came from this Estonian cookbook had no meat in it, so some chicken had to be added. Also there’s a double quantity of zucchini because I had the most ridiculous accident – the cover of salt mill got loose and the pan was covered with thick layer of sea salt. I managed to remove most of it, but as it was hot, it melted fast. There’s also onion, sun dried tomatoes, basil and cheese. Even my cat ate it :)

honey mustard chicken

Chicken fillet when left overnight in the marinade of honey, mustard, garlic, bit of vinegar, pepper and salt is just heavenly! With steamed veggie of course. And I learned – paprika should be added later or it overcooks. and steamed onion is yucky

steamed vegetables

I love steamed vegetables! I have a pot more or less like this. On bread there’s a mixture of tuna fish, eggs and onion. simple and fast dinner. yum.

just a sandwich

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