Content about Estonia
January 21, 2010
Some sandwiches don't need a top.
Personally, I didn't need any convincing, but after seeing the above picture, I can see why you might. It's the same reason Alton Brown went to great lengths on a recent episode of Good Eats to hide a central ingredient in his recipe. Something small, something oily, something canned, something with a rather poor reputation. This particular foodstuff was apart of a puzzling, yet intriguing little sandwich that was the centerpiece of...
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January 7, 2010
Last year I fell in love with blood sausage. Maybe that sounds strange. So let me explain.
In Estonia, around Christmastime, they begin to fill up the meat counters, black and smooth. Just piles of them. When Christmas comes, everyone roasts pork and potatoes, makes sauerkraut, and serves them with blood sausages. And it wasn't until I had them as apart of this ritual that I began to understand.
Blood...
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November 11, 2009
Check out a better way to make cinnamon rolls.
Every Christmas, we eat cinnamon rolls. That's just how it is. When I was little, someone would wake up early and drive over to the Cinnabon store and come back with a gooey dozen, and always make sure there was extra frosting. The things were so big and sweet that it would take most of Christmas morning to finish one, plus three or four glasses of milk. The cinnamon rolls tided us over until the Christmas ham.
At some point somebody...
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September 7, 2009
The best kind of wedding appetizers.
A pure expression of the pig: nothing extraneous, nothing wasted. Pork, salt, and a little bit of time: that's all you need to make rillettes. It was a beautiful idea which had led me to the kitchen, where I had 25 pounds of pork (a ball of lard, huge hunks of shoulder, and a bag of spare ribs larger than a medium-sized dog) and where I realized I was in over my head.
Confiture de cochon--"pig jam"--is what the...
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May 21, 2009
Blake finds hidden gems in France.
Our goal for eating in France, as our budget was limited, was to find simple and unpretentious food. And though we hit the ground running with a list of online recommendations culled from a number of sources--an article in Travel + Leisure, searches on Chowhound and eGullet, guidebooks galore--some of our best and most memorable meals came from eclectic little spots that nobody had written about. One was hidden on a side street...
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Blake visits a famed watermill in Estonia.
I knew next to nothing about watermills before heading down to see one in southern Estonia, so I had an open mind. The website promised a tour, a glass of milk and fresh warm bread. So when the offer of a ride down came up, I had little reason to turn it down.
When we arrived, we found an idle lake reflecting the brilliant blue sky, clouds tossing across the sky, and a brick building with what seemed to be about 15 front doors...
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April 14, 2009
Cooking Easter dinner with no oven.
Easter dinner has always been a giant-baked-ham affair for me. Glazed with a sticky concoction loaded to its saturation point with brown sugar and splashed with bourbon, studded with cloves, and baked until warm and tender--ah, it's hard to beat.
Living here in a country full of pork, I figured reproducing this wouldn't be too hard to pull off. But two problems presented themselves: one, it's quite hard to find any...
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April 6, 2009
Over the weekend, Elin and I moved into a new apartment in a different part of Tartu. Our previous digs belong to her relatives, who only live in Estonia for the better half of the year, when the sun shines and the days are long. Last week they came back to Estonia to claim their apartment, leaving us to find somewhere else to live for the remaining few months of our time here.
To say the least, we lucked out. Though it was an...
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March 25, 2009
Blake discovers South African dried beef.
By Blake Royer Here in Estonia there is a word,...
Here in Estonia there is a word, kevadväsimus, that translates as "spring fatigue." It's the expression that refers to a grim mood that seizes us all when the sun has come out and the days are growing longer yet all other signs still point to winter. We know the weather will improve, but it's that sliver of hope that makes it now harder to endure. For...
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March 6, 2009
The best bread to make for those that don't like to make bread.
If bread making scares you like it scares me, but the lure of authenticity is irresistible, then focaccia may be the place to begin.
The intoxicating smell of yeast; the wet stickiness between your fingers; the magical billowing quality of the dough when a warm spot trns it into a living thing. These are the pleasures of bread making. And these are the pleasures I am almost wholly unfamiliar with. Until now.
See, I've...
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February 6, 2009
It sounds like an easy question to answer, but sometimes even I have a hard time remembering where Blake is half the time (Don't even get me started on what time zone he lives in). I can only imagine what casual readers might think. In the past three years we've both lived in a combined total of 9 or so apartments, which doesn't include Blake's month of couch surfing, which might bring the total closer to 13. Of course, ...
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January 5, 2009
Lard is the secret to this Mexican classic.
By the time I fished the three pounds of pork hunks from the lard and stacked them on the cutting board,far more guests had arrived than I had originally planned. It was a New Year's Eve party, but I thought dinner would just be an intimate gathering of 5 or so, and then we'd meet up with more friends later in the night. But apparently my calls for meeting up later meant that they should come over right then and make me...
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October 20, 2008
I've moved to Tartu, Estonia with Elin, where she is doing research, and I'm now neck-deep in a deeply confusing language which has no prepositions, word for "he" or "she", no future tense, and three different Os -- o, õ, and ö (ask me to pronounce them in succession: it sounds like I'm trying to lift a piano). And of course, I'm learning to cook in this new place. Good food is frighteningly central...
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July 31, 2006
The PC guide to Estonian cuisine.
It’s fair that most Estonians wouldn’t claim their country is known for its food. My girlfriend won’t eat half of it, and I don’t blame her: blood sausage, a dish made from grains shoved into intestines and congealed with blood, is a Christmas specialty. The Irish call it Black Pudding and it’s a part of every traditional breakfast. It’s not half bad, but I can’t see it inspiring the masses any time...
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
