Recipe for an ice-cold wild strawberry coulis with warm marzipan cheesecake

We've had better summers than the current one. It's been raining a lot, the temperatures are a few degrees below the usual over-20C, and the sunshine has been limited. Quite sad, actually, but apparently that's the case with most central and northern European countries this year.

However, on Saturday morning the rain had stopped, the skies had cleared and the sun was out, so we packed our little family into the car, picked up one of the grandmothers and drove out of town to forage for wild strawberries. Couple of hours and a healthy dose of fresh country air later we returned home with just about a kilogram (over 2 pounds) of the precious berries. (Note that I'm talking about the real wild berries, Fragaria vesca, not the oblong cultivated Alpine strawberries, Fragaria vesca var. semperflorens).

 
Wild strawberries, picked in June 2007 

Usually I make wild strawberry fridge jam, but I had done that on Friday night with 2,5 kilos of wild strawberries we had bought at a market. The next usual step would be to mix the berries with a sprinkling of sugar and some grass-fed milk, but I had done that already, too. We also had friends coming over for dinner on Saturday night, so I wanted to do something special and different this time.

Remembering that the Swedes love their smultron a lot as well, I turned to their popular Allt om Mat recipe site, and came across this wonderful recipe for an ice-cold/semi-frozen wild strawberry soup with warm marzipan cheesecake.

Warm marzipan cheesecake with cold wild strawberry coulis 
(Jäine metsmaasikasupp sooja martsipani-toorjuustukoogiga)
Serves 6


Cold strawberry coulis:
200 ml water
125 g caster sugar (150 ml)
500 ml wild strawberries (2 cups)
0.5 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Warm marzipan cheesecake:
100 g marzipan
200 g cream cheese (Philadelphia or such like)
2 free-range eggs
2 Tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

To serve:
wild strawberries 

First prepare the ice-cold wild strawberry soup/couilis. 
Bring water and sugar into a boil in a small saucepan. Boil for a minute, then remove from the heat and stir in the wild strawberries:

 

Using an immersion blender/hand-held blender, process the berries and the syrup until smooth (if you dislike tiny seeds, you can press the whole thing through a fine sieve, but I found it totally unnecessary).
Season to taste with vanilla and lemon juice, then place into the freezer for a few hours.
Give the mixture a stir every now and then.

About 45 minutes before you intend to serve the dessert, make the marzipan cheesecake. 
Preheat the oven to 175 C/350 F.
Grate the marzipan coarsely or simply use your fingers to divide it into small crumbs. Mix with the rest of the ingredients and process until smooth (again, I was using my immersion blender).
Divide the mixture between six buttered small ramekins or silicone muffin/friand tins.
Bake in the middle of the pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes, until the cheesecakes look cooked and are light golden brown.
Remove the marzipan cheesecakes from the oven and let cool for 10-15 minutes.

To plate and serve:
Remove the cheesecakes carefully from the tins and place on six dessert plates. Pour the ice-cold wild strawberry coulis around the warm cheesecakes.
Garnish with wild strawberries - ideally on straw, to bring back those innocent childhood memories :)

More posts about wild strawberries:
Wild strawberry fridge jam
Picking wild strawberries in 2006
Wild strawberries and cream
Fraises des bois  @ David Lebovitz
Wild strawberries from the garden @ Chocolate & Zucchini
Maapealne paradiis ehk seitse liitrit metsmaasikaid  @ Koopatibi küpsetab (in Estonian)

Gardener's revenge: ground-elder and cottage cheese pie

Originally posted here.

A well-known (and much-hated) garden pest, ground-elder (Aegopodium podagraria, also known as bishop's weed and goutweed in English, naat in Estonian) has a long history of being used for medicinal purposes. However, it was also cultivated as a food crop in the Middle Ages, especially in Russia (and in Siberia in particular - the Russian Saint Seraphim of Sarov is said to have survived three years on eating mainly ground-elder while on self-exposed exile in a deep forest), Scandinavia, in Central Europe. Old Finno-Ugric peoples were keen consumers of ground-elder, too. According to some sources, old traders wrapped their vegetables into ground-elder leaves to keep them fresh looking and smelling - the leaves are high in essential oils and helped to keep the other produce fresh and aromatic, too. Young and tender ground-elder leaves can be added to soups, omelettes and stews. Blanched leaves can be mixed with cottage cheese and curd cheese. The leaves are high on Vitamin E, as well as vitamin C, they're rich in antioxidants, minerals, flavonoids and fibre. Dishes containing ground-elder are easily digestible, and have cleansing properties - so they're good for that spring-time detoxing :)



Make sure to use only very young ground-elder/goutweed leaves (like those on the photo above) - the big ones tend to be too bitter and rough. Pamela Michael, a well-known "herbal cook" and author of Edible wild plants and herbs, writes that "those of us who suffer from the weed in our gardens, should rejoice in the knowledge that we can eat the pest" :)

Intrigued? You can also use young ground-elder leaves to make delicious spring-time vanilla-scented muffins.

Ground-elder and cottage cheese pie
(Kevadine naadipirukas)
Serves 8 to 10



Pastry:
200 g butter
200 g sour cream
350 g all-purpose flour
a pinch of salt

Filling:
100 to 200 g young ground-elder leaves
1 Tbsp oil
one large onion (about 100 g)
300 to 400 g cottage cheese, drained
1 egg
1 tsp dried oregano
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Make the pastry: melt butter over moderate heat. Take the saucepan off the heat, stir in sour cream, flour and salt. Stir until well combined, then place into the fridge for about 30 minutes to rest.

Make the filling: wash the goutweed leaves carefully, drain lightly. Place onto a dry hot skillet and heat until wilted. Then rinse quickly under cold running water to stop the leaves from cooking further. Press to dry the leaves thoroughly, then chop roughly.
Heat oil on a heavy frying pan, add onion and sauté gently for about 10 minutes, until the onion softens. Add the chopped ground-elder leaves, cottage cheese, oregano, salt and pepper. Give it a stir, then add most of the egg and stir again.

Take the pastry out of the fridge, divide into two. On a flour-dusted table, roll out one of the pastry pieces into a large circle (approximately 40 cm in diameter or whatever the size that fits your oven sheet). Transfer onto a lined oven sheet, spoon the filling on top. Roll out the other pastry and cover. Press the edges tightly together, prick the top with a fork here and there.

Brush with an eggwash. Bake in a preheated 200 C oven for about 25-30 minutes, until the pie is lovely golden brown on top.

Spring has sprung!

“Spring has sprung!” said the bumble bee.

“How do you know?” said the old oak tree.

“I just saw a daffodil blooming on a windy hill!” – Anonymous

Forageing for cloudberries, pictures

Early last month I shared a picture of our cloudberry bounty. This weekend K's mum gave us some photos of that forageing trip, and I thought you might want to see how it works with a baby on your back.

Oh, did you spot our daughter on the first picture? :)

Here's a better view:



She's just over 6 months on the photos here, weighing 7.5 kilograms. But we managed, as she spent half of the time on my back, half of the time on her dad's back.



Photos are taken on August 2, 2009, in a bog in Rapla county, Estonia.

Yesterday

We spent couple of hours in our favourite forest and bog yesterday, taking home:

Two litres of beautiful cloudberries (1.2 kg of berries after cleaning!!). That's going to make plenty of delicious cloudberry jam:


Enough chantarelle mushrooms for 2, perhaps even three pies and quiches:


... and enough other wild mushrooms (edible Russula mushrooms) for today's mushroom sauce:


We're pleased :)

Potato Mash with Wild Garlic

The wild garlic - also known as bear's garlic - is in season here in Estonia. The season is short, so I'm trying to eat as much as possible of this delicious and health-boosting spring green. Here's a simple way to incorporate wild garlic into your regular mash. Looks bright and pretty, doesn't it?

More wild garlic recipes @ Nami-Nami:
Wild garlic butter
Wild garlic pesto
Tomatoes stuffed with wild garlic

Potato Mash with Wild Garlic
(Kartulipuder karulauguga)
Serves 6

1 kg floury potatoes
200 ml (just under a cup) of milk, heated
50 g (2 Tbsp) butter
100 g fresh wild garlic, rinsed and finely chopped
1 tsp salt
0.25 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Peel the potatoes and cut into large chunks. Cover with fresh water, season with salt and bring to a boil. Boil for 15-20 minutes, until soft, then drain.
Return the saucepan to the hob and mash using whatever way you usually do it (I love to use my 'Spudnik' for that, which results in a rather coarse mash). Pour over the hot milk, add the butter and finely chopped wild garlic, and continue mashing and stirring, until you've got a bright green and fluffy potato mash.
Season with salt and pepper, stir thoroughly and serve.

Ground-Elder and Vanilla Muffins

From the recipe archives, updated in May 2009, orignally posted in May 2008.

Ground-elder, you may wonder? Well, I wrote more about that healthy wild green a while ago (check out my It's a Wild Thing: Hortapita or Greek Pie with Wild Greens post). Here's a recipe for delicious and unusual ground-elder muffins, adapted from a recipe seen in a local food magazine in early 2008. I must admit I first thought 'ground-elder muffins' are savoury ones, so seeing sugar and vanilla in the list of ingredients suprised me a little. However, I did follow the list of ingredients, changing the proportions and instructions as I went along, and was extremely pleased with the end result. The muffins were sweet, very slightly green-tasting, and very pleasant indeed.

Should you come across young and bright green ground-elder leaves in your garden, you should really try this recipe.

Ground-Elder and Vanilla Muffins
(Kevadised naadimuffinid vaniljega)
Ready in 30 minutes
Makes 12


30 g young ground-elder leaves (just over a cup when lightly pressed)
3 large eggs
150 ml caster sugar
100 g unsalted butter, melted
50 g sour cream

300 ml plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

0.5 tsp salt

Pour some boiling water over ground elder leaves and leave to stand for a few minutes.
Whisk eggs with sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the cooled melted butter, vanilla. Mix flour, baking powder and salt, then fold into the batter.
Drain the ground-elder and squeeze dry. Chop finely, then stir into the batter.
Divide into prepared muffin cups* and bake in the middle of 220 C oven for 12-15 minutes, until muffins are lovely light golden brown.

* Either lined with paper muffin cases or generously buttered and dusted with flour. 

What we are drinking right now

Collecting fresh birch sap in our back yard.

For a few days now, we've been drinking lots of freshly collected birch sap instead of table water. It's very refreshing, and tastes like a mildly sweetened water. According to folk medicine, birch sap helps to combat 101 illnesses. It's detoxifying, contains C and PP vitamins, carotene, various sugars and malic acid.

But most importantly, it tastes good.

Things to do with wild strawberries: Wild Strawberries and Cream

In every person's life there comes a time when they've got almost 1,5 kilograms freshly picked wild strawberries (Fragaria vesca, see a gorgeous photo by a talented Estonian photographer here) at hand. I'm no different. It happened to me in 2006, in 2007, and again about a fortnight ago. K. and I spent just under 2 hours on our secret wild strawberry field, we barely covered a plot larger than a large kitchen, and we had a 3 litre jar of wild strawberries between us. What can you do??!

Well, one of the easiest things to do (and one of my favourite childhood memories) is following. I've given a 'recipe' below, but you really do not need one. It's healthy, summery, quick, and oh-so-very Estonian (unless you pick 'smultron' in Sweden, or 'ahomansikkoita' in Finland, or 'Walderdbeere' in Germany, or 'fraises des bois' in France, and so on, in which case this dessert would be very Swedish or Finnish or German or French, and so on, of course.)

PS It is especially nice when done with wild strawberries that you've picked yourself. But if that's tricky, then use the ones from a friendly market vendor instead..



Wild strawberries with milk or cream
(Metsmaasikad rõõsa koore või piimaga)
Serves 1

half a cup of wild strawberries
half a cup of single cream or whole milk
2 to 3 tsp sugar

Place the wild strawberries into a glass and sprinkle with sugar. Crush slightly with a wooden spoon.
Pour over milk or cream and eat with a small spoon, stirring as you go.

Wild Garlic Pesto Recipe

It's the brief season for wild garlic (aka ramsons or bear's garlic, Allium ursinum), and I'm excited. I only discovered wild garlic a year ago (see post here), and have been looking forward to them again.

There's a plentiful supply of wild garlic near our house, and early last week I picked some* to make some wild garlic recipes I had spotted elsewhere or 'created' myself. So far I've made the same cucumber and wild garlic salad mentioned last year; a delicious cold tzatziki sauce (wild garlic, cucumber, sour cream, salt); one cold sauce to accompany simple boiled potatoes (wild garlic, cornichons, kefir milk); and this delicious pesto recipe.

The idea behind the pesto is simple. If your usual Pesto Genovese is basil + garlic + parmesan cheese + pine nuts, then instead of basil and garlic I decided to use mild-tasting wild garlic instead. It was a very successful substitution indeed, and I'll be certainly making it again next year.

Have you tried wild garlic before? And what's your favourite use for this delicious wild food?

* Karulauk on Eestis III kategooria kaitsealune taim. Karulaugu korjamine isiklikuks kasutamiseks määral, mis ei ohusta liigi säilimist antud elupaigas, on lubatud; rangelt on keelatud looduslikust kasvukohast korjatud karulauguga kauplemine.

Wild Garlic Pesto
(Karulaugupesto)
Makes 200 ml



100 g wild garlic, rinsed, drained and chopped
50 g toasted pine nuts
150 ml extra virgin olive oil
50 g parmesan cheese, grated
Maldon sea salt, to taste

Place chopped wild garlic and toasted pine nuts into a blender, add about 1/3 of the olive oil and puree until smooth. Stir in the rest of the oil and the grated cheese, season to taste with salt.

Serve with pasta (see above) or stir into your risotto. Keeps covered in the fridge for about a week.

* Toasting pine nuts: heat pinenuts of a hot dry frying pan for a few minutes, shaking the pan regularly, until the nuts are golden brown and aromatic. Cool before use.

WHB: This is also my entry to the Weekend Herb Blogging, this time hosted by Anh of Food Lover's Journey. Click on the logo below for more information about this foodblogging event started by Kalyn.

Rye bread canapés with wild mushroom 'Caviar' and soft-boiled quail eggs

We went to one last mushroom forageing trip on Saturday, and got a large basket of mushrooms. Sadly, the season is now over - night frosts are here, and frost-bitten wild mushrooms aren't as nice. From the season's last saffron milkcaps, chantarelles and various porcini mushrooms I made these small rye bread canapés for a dinner with friends on Sunday night.

Delicious!!

Rye bread canapés with wild mushroom 'Caviar' and soft-boiled quail eggs
(Metsaseenesuupisted)



finely chopped wild mushrooms (preferably picked by yourself, then cleaned and sautéed with a little butter)
a small minced onion
some lemon juice
fresh dill
salt and pepper.
quails' eggs

Fry the rye bread slices in butter on both sides, cool a little.
Cover with mushroom 'caviar' and top with a soft-boiled (1 minute) quail egg.

Wild Mushroom Hunt: Saffron milkcaps (Lactarius deliciosus) & False Saffron Milkcaps (Lactarius deterrimus), plus a potato gratin recipe

Ten days ago we spent few hours in the forest forageing for mushrooms again. It had been raining on the previous days, yet the temperatures were nice and warm (17-18 C), so we knew there'd be lots of mushrooms. And we weren't disappointed. It was a two-stop forageing trip. After about 30 minutes in Our Secret Mushroom Forest Number One, I had barely covered the bottom of my new mushroom basket:


A mixture of Russula mushrooms on the left, one lone, but very pretty yellow Lactarius scrobiculatus amidst them, and a small pile of Saffron Milkcaps and False Saffron Milkcaps on the right.

Obviously it was time to move on. We quickly headed to Our Secret Mushroom Forest Number Two, where we played hide and seek with each other and the wild mushrooms for another 3 hours, to emerge with this beautiful bounty:



The basket contains a lot of saffron milkcaps and false saffron milkcaps, which are hidden under layers and layers of brown rufous milkcaps and white-and-pink Russula mushrooms, and a handful of gypsy mushrooms. We could have picked a lot more (there were A LOT of edible wild mushrooms), but it was starting to get darker, and the basket was already getting too heavy to carry, so we decided to head home.

Back home I had to sort through twice the amount of mushrooms on the photo - mine and K's - and do all the preparatory work for pickling, salting, freezing and so on. The saffron milkcaps and false saffron milkcaps, however, were simply fried in butter and used for this simple and delicious dish that is a perfect showcase for these beautifully orange-coloured fragrant mushrooms. I had 1.65 kg of cleaned saffron milkcaps/porgandriisikad and false saffron milkcaps/kuuseriisikad (both considered equally excellent eating mushrooms here in Estonia), so I had plenty for this vegetarian gratin, and also put some away in air-tight glass jars in the fridge, so I could make this dish again soon..

Wild Mushroom & Potato Gratin
(Kuuseriisika-kartulivorm)
Serves 6



1 kg boiled potatoes, thinly sliced
500-600 grams cleaned saffron milkcaps*
2-3 Tbsp butter
1 leek, thinly sliced
150 grated cheese
300 ml single cream
salt
black pepper
fresh herbs, finely chopped

Clean the mushrooms, cutting them into smaller pieces. Heat a heavy-bottomed frying pan on a low heat, add mushrooms and heat for a few minutes, until 'juices' evaporate. Then add butter, and fry, until mushrooms are glistening.
Butter a large oven dish, layer half of the potatoes at the bottom. Cover with fried mushrooms, then top with the rest of the potatoes. Season with salt and pepper, then sprinkle with grated cheese and finally pour the cream over.
Bake at 200 C for about 20 minutes, until the dish is hot and lovely golden brown on top.
Garnish with chopped hers and serve with some salad leaves.



* You can use other wild or cultivated mushrooms here, though they won't look and taste as delicious :)

For more mushroom ideas, check out these recipes.

Preserving lingonberries: an apple and lingonberry jam

A fortnight ago, Ximena and I and our respective partners J. and K., went to a bog where we picked various forest berries, including lots of lingonberries. The Latin name of lingonberries is Vaccinium viris-idaea, thus belonging to the same family with blueberries (Vaccinium Cyanococcus), bilberries (Vaccinium myrtillus) and bog bilberries (Vaccinium uliginosum). They're a great source of vitamin C, and have been appreciated by Northeners for that reason for a long time.

Lingonberries can be used to make apple pies and cheesecakes, rye bread and cream pudding, and a number of other desserts. Lingonberries are also great for making jam. Lingonberry jam - at least the version here - has many uses. It can be used as a typical jam on pancakes, toast, breakfast porridge. But it's not overly sweet, and lingonberries yield this am a rather tart quality. Therefore it can be also used as a chutney to accompany grilled sausages or black pudding during Christmas.

Apple and lingonberry jam
(Pohla-õunamoos)



1 kg lingonberries*
1 kg apples, peeled**, cored and cut into chunks
200 ml water
600-700 grams sugar

Pick through the berries to make sure they're clean. Bring water to the boil in a large saucepan, add lingonberries and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring, until softened.
Add apple chunks and cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
Add sugar and simmer for another 10 minutes.
Pour into hot sterilised jars and close immediately.

* If it's a poor lingonberry year, then you can take 2 parts apples and 1 part berries.
** If using apples from your own garden or a reputable organic source, then you don't have to peel them. I used underripe "Valge Klaar" apples from my mum's garden. They're one of the earliest apples available and very soft and juicy, so they're perfect for jam-making.

WHB: This is also my entry to the Weekend Herb Blogging, this time hosted by Zorra from Kochtopf (click through to read her round-up).

A group photo

Click on the photo to enlarge!

Here's a picture of some forest berries in their natural habitat. Starting from the top left corner: blue 'dusty' berries are bog bilberries (Vaccinium uliginosum). The blue shiny - and shy (see how it's hiding behind the green leaves?) - berry on the top right is a bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus). The red berries are lingonberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) , and the bright yellow one is a cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus), of course.

I'm sorry to report that wild strawberries (Fragaria vesca L) had already left the stage by the time we took the picture, and that cranberries (Vaccinium Oxycoccus) were yet to turn red, and in any case stubbornly grew few meters from the above spot, so they didn't fit into the picture..

* Before Ximena came to Estonia, I promised to take her to pick wild mushrooms and forest berries. The above photo is taken about 10 days ago on our joint forageing trip. I think she - and her hubby J. - were pleased.

Bog bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum), yummy muffins

Bog bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum, sinikas or 'blue' berry in Estonian) is a close relative of bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus L., mustikas or 'black' berry in Estonian) and high-bush blueberry (Vaccinium Cyanococcus or V. corymbosum, kännasmustikas e. kultuurmustikas in Estonian). The first two can be distinguished by looking at their stems (brown for bog bilberries and green for bilberries) or leaves (blue-green for bog bilberries, green for bilberries) and by biting into the fruit (bog bilberries have a pinkish flesh, bilberries are blackish-purple throughout, blueberries are whitish-green inside). Also, the bog bilberry fruit is slightly oblong in shape, whereas bilberries are round, and blueberries round, but much larger than the first two.

Just so you'd know..



I made bog bilberry muffins, and took them along to my sister's and my two nephews' joint birthday party last Sunday. You cannot really see that from the picture, but I baked the muffins in football-print muffin cases. They were quite a hit amongst the 20-something small boys (and few girls) aged between 4 and 8, believe me. I'd like to think it wasn't just the cunningly chosen muffin papers :)

Bog bilberry muffins
(Sinika- või mustikamuffinid)
Makes 12


2 medium eggs
150 ml sugar
250 ml plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla sugar
1 tsp cardamom seeds (from about 20 pods), ground
150 grams sour cream or plain yogurt
50 grams butter, melted & cooled
200-300 ml bog bilberries (or bilberries or blueberries)

Whisk eggs with sugar until pale and frothy.
Mix the dry ingredients. Add to the egg mixture together with sour cream and melted butter. Fold in the forest berries.
Fill 12 hole muffin tray and bake at 225 C for 13-15 minutes, until muffins have risen and turned golden brown.

For more muffin ideas, check out Muffin Monday Round-Up # 5 where Wonder Sophie is gathering recipes for for Les Muffins Régressifs alias Childhood Muffins.

WHB: This is also my entry to the Weekend Herb Blogging, this time hosted by Melissa from Cooking Diva. Click on the logo below for more information about this established foodblogging event!

Meadowsweet Cordial (Filipendula ulmaria)

A fortnight ago, K. and I spent a lovely weekend on Hiiumaa, Estonia's second-largest island, which you can reach in about an hour on a ferry. There were our friends Siobhan and Meelik and their newly restored country house, there was a folk music festival, a wild boar farm, lots of green strawberries (Fragaria viridis, which are close relatives of wild strawberries or Fragaria vesca L.), beautiful sandy beaches. There was also a lively country fair in Kärdla, the main town on the island, where we stocked up on local honey, bought some new lamb wool pillows, and a trio of different carrot marmelades.

Several stalls at the fair offered angervaksajook or a meadowsweet cordial, which reminded me of elderflower cordial that was a popular summer drink in Scotland. Neither one of us had ever had - or heard of - meadowsweet cordial before, so we were excited about discovering something new, and inquired one of the sellers about the drink. Meadowsweet, you see, grows wild everywhere on the island*. Or almost everywhere on the island, as after we had received the instructions from one of the drink sellers, we headed back to our guesthouse, keen to make meadowsweet cordial ourselves. The 25 kilometre journey back home went past a field after a field covered with flowering meadowsweets. Yet when we reached the place we were staying, we found ONE lone meadowsweet plant on a huge field behind the house!!! Luckily, we did manage to pick 50 blossoms from that single plant after all..

Meadowsweet**, as Wikipedia helpfully explains us, is a perennial herb that grows on damp meadows in Europe and Western Asia. It's also known as Queen of the Meadow, Pride of the Meadow, Meadow-Wort and Bridewort. Meadowsweet is known as Mädesüß in German, Reine-des-prés or fausse spirée in French, älggräs in Swedish, mesiangervo in Finnish. It's an excellent plant for attracting bees, as it's delicate and creamy-white flowers have a strong, sweet smell.

Meadowsweet has been used in herbal medicine - apparently it relieves headaches and reduces fever and cures acidic stomach. This being a foodblog, however, I should focus on the culinary uses of meadowsweet. My Estonian sources didn't describe any (apart from using it to make healing infusions). But Wikipedia says that meadowsweet can be used to flavour wine, beer and vinegars, the flowers can be added to jams and stewed fruit.

And last, but not least, meadowsweet is considered to be a sacred herb by Celtic Druids, who use meadowsweet to enhance their love spells!

Here's a meadowsweet cordial, prepared according to the recipe of a friendly stall-holder at Kärdla country fair. A lovely, fragrant and summery drink with a difference.

Meadowsweet Cordial
(Angervaksajook)
Makes 2 litres



50 meadowsweet blossoms***
2 l water
250 g sugar
2 lemons

Pour the water into a large saucepan and add meadowsweet flowers. Bring to the boil, then add sugar and stir, until sugar has dissolved. Turn off the heat, add the juice of one lemon and let the flavours infuse.
Drain through a fine sieve, season with more lemon juice (and sugar, if you wish).
Serve diluted by water (1 part cordial and 1-2 parts water, depending on your preference), adding ice cubes and garnishing with a lemon slice.

* And in our back yard, as we realised when we got home again :)
** Note that what is commonly known as meadowsweet/white meadowsweet in the US, broadleaf white spirea or Spiraea Alba, is a somewhat different plant (thought information on the web is somewhat confusing. They're both in Rosaceae family).
*** Make sure to collect your meadowsweet flowers from clean environment, avoiding the ones growing next to busy roads.

WHB: This is also my entry to the Weekend Herb Blogging, this time hosted by Kalyn herself. Click on the logo below for more information about this established foodblogging event! Kalyn's roundup for the 94th round of WHB is available here.

Wild strawberries, 2007

Have you ever had wild strawberries*, also known as woodland strawberries? No? Well, imagine the best-tasting, ripe and just-picked strawberry you've ever had, just in a very concentrated form. That's how wild strawberries taste like - like summer heaven :)

In July 2006, K. and I ate wild strawberries to our heart's content; this year we were determined to do the same and even more. In the few hours before St John's bonfire we made a quick trip to our wild strawberry fields. After just about an hour and a half we had about 1 kilogram of tiny wild strawberries between us - not bad at all, considering that we covered a very small patch of land. There were just so many strawberries around.

And here's a tip to any future wild strawberry foragers: make sure to look inside larger bunches of grass and nettles - we found the 'hidden' strawberries to be considerably larger than the ones growing in sunny open spots (I guess constant sunshine - which we've got plenty during the summer - dries them out a bit).


When you look hard enough, you'll see lots of wild strawberries (click on the photo to enlarge).

* I must admit that I'm a bit confused about the relationship between wild and Alpine strawberries. However, based on this Finnish source, I suspect that Alpine strawberries are a semi-cultivated 'close cousins' of wild strawberries (Fragaria vesca L). They're sweet and tasty, but the flavour is somewhat more diluted; they're slightly bigger and more oblong than your average wild strawberrys (see Clotilde's picture here and compare the oblong berries with this round berry here). In Estonia they're known as kuumaasikad alias 'moon strawberries' (Fragaria vesca var. semperflorens, c.f. kuukausimansikka in Finnish, Monatserdbeere in German). Another difference is that whereas wild strawberries only bear fruit in June-July, then you can harvest Alpine strawberries in your garden until early Autumn (hence the English synonyms 'everbearing strawberry' and 'perpetual fruiting strawberry', Spanish 'fresal de las cuatro estaciones'). But, as I said, there's lots of confusion on this matter, so I still need to do some research into this..

By the way - wild strawberries are high in carbohydrates and contain fibre, minerals (iron, magnesium, calcium, among other things) and vitamins (B, C, E vitamins, pholic acid and carotene). So they're not only tasty, they're also very good for you. I've even read that wild strawberry face masks help to reduce lines, but as I so don't have to worry about that any time soon, I just keep eating them for their taste :)

Wild strawberries are best eaten as they are picked, but they also make a lovely jam. BUT - don't try to make a traditional boiled jam with wild strawberries. The tiny seeds outside the berry may turn any cooked jam bitter, and basically spoil it. Therefore wild strawberries are preserved in uncooked, 'raw' jam.

Wild strawberry jam
(Metsmaasika toormoos)



750 grams freshly picked wild strawberries
750 grams caster sugar

Pick through the strawberries to make sure there are no tiny bugs or ants among them. This is best done by pouring a cupful of strawberries onto a large plate covered with a clean (paper) towel, sorting through and then spooning the strawberries into a large bowl.

Add sugar (take equal quantity - in terms of weight - of sugar to berries) and then stir with a wooden spoon, squashing berries every now and then, for about 20-30 minutes, until sugar has dissolved.
Ladle into small sterilised jam jars and close them immediately.
As this is an uncooked jam, then keep in the fridge or in a very cold larder.

We got exactly 1 litre of wild strawberry jam or metsmaasikamoos - 5 small jars a´ 150 ml and 1 larger jar a´ 250 ml. One of these jars will be waiting for a certain foodblogger who will be visiting in August, the others we'll enjoy with our traditional Sunday pancakes..



WHB: This is also my entry to the Weekend Herb Blogging, this time hosted by Kalyn herself.

Estonian soups: nettle soup with eggs & herbs (or more wild food)

My mum has obviously realised that her older daughter (that's me) is 'into such things' - wild food & edible weeds, I mean. So when she saw stinging nettles growing in her vegetable patch, she left them there for me instead of throwing into compost pile like they have done for the previous decades. When popping by for our weekly cup of coffee last Thursday (I was at my high school reunion this weekend, so we went to see her a bit earlier), she gave me a bunch of chives, some beautiful pink peonies, and a large handful of stinging (and very much so!) nettles.

Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is widely available in Estonia - though not in the shops. You'd find it growing in your back garden, on the meadows and fields, and alongside your fence. Contains plenty of vitamin C, carotine, vitamin K, and considerable amounts of E- and B-vitamins. Practicioners of herbal medicine know many uses for stinging nettles, but there's also a culinary aspect to this weed. There are 17 pages of recipes and tips for various culinary uses of stinging nettle in the book of wild weeds (see left). Another cookbook I've got, Soome-ugri kokaraamat alias a cookbook of Finno-Ugric people that includes recipes of Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Livonian, Karelian, Votic, Vepsian, Sami/Lappish, Mansi/Vogul, Udmurt, Komi, Mari/Cheremisic, Ingrian/Izhorian, Mordvinic, and Khanty/Ostyak culinary heritage, also contains a number of recipes using nettles. Nettle leaves can be added into soups, stews, salads, omelettes and meat dishes (add chopped nettle into the meatballs or meatloaf, for example); they can be used as a pie filling (like my ground elder hortapita) or even to make nettle wine. I opted for a simple green soup, which in one form or another appears in quite a few Estonian sources.

Eesti keeles võite nõgestest lugeda veel Thredahlia blogist.

Nettle soup with eggs & herbs
(Nõgesesupp)
Serves 2-3 as a starter



100 grams of stinging nettle leaves*
500 ml water
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
1 finely chopped onion
1 Tbsp plain flour
500 ml vegetable, chicken or beef stock, hot
salt & black pepper

To serve:
2 boiled eggs
finely chopped fresh dill & chives

Bring the water to the boil, add the nettle leaves and blanch for 2 minutes (THIS ELIMINATES THE STINGING PROPERTIES OF THE NETTLES, SO YOU CAN FREELY TOUCH THEM). Rinse quickly under cold water and drain lightly. Puree in a blender and put aside.
Heat olive oil in a saucepan, add onions and saute on a medium heat for 7-8 minutes to soften slightly. Add the flour, mix thoroughly and fry for 1 minute (do not brown!). Add hot stock, a little at a time and mixing thoroughly to incorporate the flour & onion mixture. Boil for about 3 minutes, then add the pureed nettle and heat through. Season with salt & pepper.
Ladle into small soup bowls, add a halved or chopped boiled egg and garnish with chopped herbs.

* Use a pair of rubber gloves to tear off the leaves from the stalks, as stinging nettles do really live up to their name at this stage.

WHB: This is also my entry to the Weekend Herb Blogging, this time hosted by Rachel of Rachel's Bite.

Wild mushroom Hunt: Morcella esculenta / Yellow morels

All my regular readers know by now that I love mushrooms, especially wild ones. And although you can easily buy various fresh wild mushrooms at the market or preserved wild mushrooms in supermarkets, I prefer forageing for my own wild mushrooms - see here and here, for example. There's something immensely gratifying and refreshing about those long and quiet walks in the forests, and the excitement about what and where and how much we'll find is fun.

In late April and early May, I came across few ladies selling morels at the Tallinn Central Market. There's nothing special about these mushrooms as such (they were on the menu in pretty much every restaurant in London back in April), although they tend to be somewhat unknown among urban fungiphiles here in Estonia. K and his mom, for example, know loads of autumnal wild mushrooms, but had never come across morels yet. They hadn't even looked for any. When in Paluküla in early May, I asked my grandma and uncle and other villagers about morel mushrooms, and they knew nothing. Yet, my recently acquired new mushroom forager's bible, 400 Eesti seent (400 Estonian mushrooms) had a picture of black morels (Morchella conica) on the cover and claimed that these spring mushrooms should be pretty common in northern Estonia.

I was convinced that if I just looked hard enough, I'd find some.

And so I did. In mid-May, K's mum - as I said, hitherto unfamiliar with morels - asked around in her village about some unfamiliar spring mushrooms, and soon enough one of the neighbours told her that there are funny-looking mushrooms growing on the grassy open field just outside their farm. She picked up the mushrooms (on the bottom left, see photo above) and brought them to us for identification. With the help of the trusty mushroom bible we easily identified them as Morcella esculenta, examples of one of the yellow morels (pallohuhtasieni in Finnish, rundtoppmurkla in Swedish, сморчок настоящий alias smortšok nastojaššii in Russian). A fortnight later we were in Paluküla area again, and K. and I headed out to the field where the mushrooms were found earlier. Nothing.. We wondered around for about half an hour, carefully staring at the open fields, trying to spot a precious morel, but without luck. On the way back to the house we decided to have one last look at a yellow-green open field surrounded by tall birch trees. And voilà - suddenly I spotted a huge yellow morel (bottom right, photo above). And another, and another and another. Four in total. Then my mushroom luck was over, but K. found four more mushrooms (- you see, there is justice and gender equality in the world, after all:) Quite surprisingly, we returned from our first ever morel forageing trip with eight succulent yellow morels (top left, photo above). We must have got a good nose for mushrooms, the pair of us :)

The mushrooms? Well, if you've got something so delicious, you don't want to over-handle them. We cleaned and sliced them, fried in butter with some salt and pepper and a dash of cream, and ate them with some fried garlic scapes and salad leaves (top right, photo above). Mmmmmm.

I've got a feeling that it'll be a good year for wild mushrooms...

PS You can read more about identifying morel mushrooms over at MushroomExpert.com. Only pick mushrooms that you are certain about!!!