Raspberry and Cottage Cheese Cake. Vaarika- kodujuustukook

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Estonian cottage cheese is a little bit salty accord. And this makes this cake very interesting.

Juicy sweet and sour raspberries, little bit salty squeaking curd combined with sweet fluffy cream and biscuit.

The addition of cottage cheese adds protein to your otherwise carb-filled cakes which can help you keep your weight under control and keep daily cravings at bay.

Interesting fact: In Estonia, cottage cheese began to be produced in order to meet the cheese production plan set by Moscow to the USSR. The National Planning Committee of the USSR almost doubled the cheese production of the Estonian SSR for the five-year plan, So, this is a reason why Estonia began to produce cottage cheese which was reported as cheese in the reports 🙂

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Simple Strawberry Summer dessert

Estonian fermented dairy dishes are sour milk, buttermilk and sour cream. From the east came Kefir. But yoghurt is quite new for Estonians.

During the soviet time, we saw yoghurt from Finnish television commercials. And it sounds good and delicious. And it was. I visited first time Finland in 1991, and I got and ate my two dream dishes: bananas and.. yoghurt 🙂
Now it sounds funny. But yes. I dreamt about bananas and yoghurt.

But still, we had strawberries. And we had cream. And simplest and most delicious dessert in the whole world. Mix together cream and strawberries 🙂

What to use? Sour cream or 35% double cream? Up to you. Because both desserts are so delicious but different. I like maybe just a little bit more with fresh cream.
I squeeze strawberries unevenly.  Add some 35% cream and mix until dessert is thick enough.
Maybe little bit sugar, as well.
But Estonian strawberries are sweet enough 🙂 Continue reading “Simple Strawberry Summer dessert” →

Traditional Seto Cold Summer Savoury broth. Seto Suulliim.

suulliim1 (7)Seto Suulliim means in direct translation suul= salt and liim= broth.  Savoury soup, salty broth, soup. So I used for translation this meaning.

I was born in Põlva. Põlva is the small town in Southeastern Estonia, in Setomaa. This region has become famous for her onions and cucumbers. Seto onions have a flat shape and a very strong flavour.
Until onions are not ready to spring onions are used for cold soup. Play and combine with ingredients, to get suitable flavours. This is Estonian, Seto version.

Setos (Seto: setokõsõq, setoq, Estonian: setud) are an indigenous ethnic and linguistic minority in south-eastern Estonia and north-western Russia. Setos are mostly Seto-speaking Orthodox Christians of Estonian nationality. The Seto language (like Finnish and Estonian) belongs to the Finnic group of the Uralic languages. The Setos seek greater recognition, rather than having their language considered a dialect of Estonian. Along with Orthodox Christianity, vernacular traditional folk religion is widely practised and supported by Setos.

Did you know there are dialects in different regions of Estonia? For example, the Setos in southern Estonia have their own dialect and their own kingdom, with about 12,000 speakers. Võru also has its own dialect with about 75,000 speakers. Both dialects are on the UNESCO list of threatened dialects.
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read more about Setos

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Simple and Healthy Spruce Tips Spread. Kuuse-toorjuustumääre

kuusetj1 (8)I like to watch cooking TV shows, and I am always amazed at people who afraid and avoid raw garlic. For me, garlic is medicine, natural inflammatory. And the reason I like garlic is strong intense taste, Without this garlic is pointless:)
Bitterish of garlic is complemented with tart spruce tips and you can just feel… how health will improve 🙂 🙂

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Estonian Bogs #visitestonia #estonia100 #ViruRaba #KakerdajaRaba #KõnnuSuursoo

jaladVisiting a bog is fun in every season.

I did my photos in June. It was a rainy day, so the quality of photos, not that excellence.

A peat bog is a mix of water and land. Bog water is low in salts, so it does not quench thirst, but because of acidity, this water is pure and drinkable.

Hiking in Estonia is always a good idea. Discover mysterious bogs. Find more information about hiking www.rmk.ee/eng

 

viru raba

Did you know?
Mire landscapes cover around 22% of Estonian surface, with 6% belonging to bogs. In the whole world, only the surface of Finland, our neighbour to the north, has more wetlands than Estonia, and Estonians take a lot of pride in that.

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Cloudberry Rubus chamaemorus L

Bogs cover a fifth of the mainland area in Estonia, of which bogs are the most ancient, stretching back to over 10,000 years. About a quarter of Estonia’s plants grow only in mires, among them many relict species from the Ice Age.

 

k6nnu suursoo3

Estonians have a saying ” vaga vesi, sügav põhi”- still waters run deep. Saying this, we are thinking about people who may seem quiet, but wait and see…:)

But this saying describing very well bogs.
It seems like grass, land, solid ground, but…. be careful, it is wet and soft. You could sink and drown.

Reindeer Moss in Chocolate

Yes, This is the food 🙂 And very easy to make.

Pick some reindeer Moss and dip into the chocolate 🙂

If it seems to you too complicate, you can order this dessert from Chocolala.

The 1st of June International Day for Protection of Children
I like books and reading.
Eno Raud’s children’s books ‘Naksitrallid‘ and ‘Jälle neid naksitrallid‘ are the most translated Estonian books. You can read about the adventures of Muhv, Sammalhabe, and Kingpool in Bulgarian, Georgian, English, Latvian, Lithuanian, Eastern and Western Mari, Romanian, Norwegian, Polish, German, Slovak, Finland, Danish, Czech, Ukrainian, Hungarian, and Russian.

This book has been written a lot of years ago but this talking about the very important topic: how to preserve and respect nature. That the balance is the most important and even rats are an important part of the total balance.

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Estonian Potato Flat Bread with topping. Kartulipletskid täidisega

As I wrote last year,pletskid1 (6)  Pletskid is food from difficult and complicated times. Because of a lack of eggs and everything, children invented ” bread”, to get something to eat. They mixed potatoes, flour and oil and baked this on to the wood burning stove iron.

Now are better times and we can add toppings.

What topping? This is depending on your imagination, but I suggest one option 🙂

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Rhubarb and Sour Cream Frozen Dessert. Rabarberi hapukooremagustoit

rabarberi kylm1(22)The perfect summer dessert. Cooling and bracing. Great rhubarb sour and sweet flavour combined with tender and light cream.
And.
Very easy to do.

Beginning of the 90s I worked a few months in Finland. One of my responsibilities was to cook, prepare dinner and breakfast. My host introduced to me house and equipment and everything I must to know.
Home appliances and equipment were a little bit fancier than we had at home. But the most interesting and weird thing was: a big freezer. This was full of different packs, as I had known later, prepared meat and fish and even cakes and pies. It was very strange. Yes. We used and had a freezer at home. But it was just a small shelf or drawer for ice cream.
It was summer. And as at home, we picked berries to preserve them for winter. It was a familiar and ordinary job for me. But the result, a juice was not preserved in an aseptic glass jar, as usual, but in the plastic box placed in the freezer.

The first refrigerator was introduced by Scottish professor William Cullen already in 1755, but freezers went into mass production until after Word War II.
The freezer is for me so important for two reasons. The first one is preserving fresh berries and mushrooms. By nowadays life has changed and you can buy fresh berries throughout the year. But still, strawberries in January are never as sweet and delicious as they are in July. Freezing helps preserve berries and mushroom as fresh as the day it was harvested, full of vitamins.
And the second reason. I am a picky person. I do not want the same food the next day and I do not like wasting the food.rabarberi kylm1(32)
Freezer helps me to preserve food and eat this when I want to.
I believe that most of the people around the world agree with me. Less wasting food, fewer food poisonings, more time for pleasures and less for everyday shopping or cooking are benefits of freezers and refrigerators. This invention made our lives easier.

Remind to take the dessert at the room temperature at least 0,5 hour before serving.

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Marinated chicken fillet rolled in fresh weeds. Roheline kana rabarberimarinaadis.

greenchicken (3)Great spring or summer recipe.

The Tart rhubarb marinate softens poultry.

Beautiful green cover from weed gives a final outstanding look and great taste and flavour.
Continue reading “Marinated chicken fillet rolled in fresh weeds. Roheline kana rabarberimarinaadis.” →