Strawberry/Maasikas

…to come home from work and find these beautiful specimens waiting for me! They were hand-selected from the strawberry seller’s bins by my honey, and were placed on the kitchen table along with a rose (but to be honest, I was so enchanted by the strawberries that I didn’t even notice the rose at first!). Strawberries have been available for several weeks already, but I didn’t trust the strawberries in April—I felt it must still be too early. Over the next few weeks I began to notice the strawberry smell wafting from the stands, which made them much more tempting. Unfortunately, the taste of these lovely red berries was not as vibrant as the color—they lacked sweetness, and the texture was a bit too firm as well. But no matter—the sentiment that brought them to my table was sweet enough, and I know that better maasikad are just around the corner…

I realized that I forgot to post about the really old food I mentioned in the first London post. So, here’s some food from the Ancient Egypt section of the British Museum:

Clockwise from top left: pomegranates in a bowl, cake made of chopped dates, two loaves on a basketry plate.

All are between 3000-3500 years old.

This is the stuff people were given to take along to the afterlife. Interesting, no?

So, back to London! It’s been almost a month since I got back now, so

I’m no longer able to think of a coherent narrative to tie my food stories together (OK, the last post wasn’t so coherent either. I haven’t had much time to write). So, here comes London food in list form:

• · We took a day trip to Cambridge so that my sister could check out the universities. It was a sunny day, but chilly and windy, so we wanted to have a proper tea (we didn’t know until later that what we were looking for is called “cream tea.” We found a place that offered just that—a pot of tea, two scones, their jam of the day, and clotted cream. Clotted cream! I had heard of this, but I don’t think I’d ever eaten or even seen it. It falls somewhere between dense whipped cream and butter. Upon opening the little tub, the surface of the cream looked almost “crystallized” (those are the clots). Upon breaking through that layer, you get to a fairly firm substance, like butter, but when you spread it on the scone, it becomes slightly viscous. We’d been sitting there snacking for a while when my sister declared… “I still haven’t figured out what this is.” It was a rather extraordinary substance for those of us seeing it for the first time. Oh yes, and the taste was, as mentioned before, somewhere between cream and butter. As a side note, the scones were really good as well.

• · I’ve read about French macarons on many other food blogs. I’d never had one, and I figured a cosmopolitan city like London was the perfect place to find them. I actually had to duck into a few bakeries before I found macarons at Pierre near the Apple Market. They had them in coffee and chocolate flavors.
  

I tried the coffee one later that same afternoon. It was pretty amazing—the cookies had the crispy outside and chewy insides, and the coffee-flavored filling was slightly grainy with sugar, but still distinctly coffee-flavored. The chocolate one I didn’t try until the next day, and I think the cookies had absorbed some moisture, because they were pretty soft throughout, not chewy. The chocolate filling was a rich ganache, smoother than the coffee cream, so it was basically like eating a sandwich of soft, rich chocolate on soft, rich chocolate. I couldn’t even finish it. I also purchased a palmier from the same bakery for my sister, but she ended up leaving it in the hotel room when she left, so I had it as an airport snack on my way home. It was my first time eating one of those too, and I appreciated its buttery caramelized deliciousness.

• · Fish and chips were a must before leaving London. I don’t really know what to say about them, since everyone knows what fish and chips are like. The fish was really good (and I’m impressed that I got such a good picture of it), the chips were not. Mushy peas are good too—they taste just like peas, but they’re funny-looking. I’d actually like to find out how to make them. Are they basically just mashed peas, like mashed potatoes?

OK, that ends my foodie adventures in London. There were a few more beers I tried that I wanted to comment on, but I’ve lost my notes, so I’m not even going to try. Besides, I’m not nearly as good at writing about beer as Evan, who has linked to me from his blog. Thanks Evan!

I haven’t posted in over three weeks. I’m the worst blogger ever. Oh well, I can deal.

Two weeks ago I was in England for spring break. As a working person, of course, I don’t actually get a spring break, but my college-age sister does, so I applied for the days off and we, along with my mother, planned a trip to London. I love the Estonian word for holiday or vacation—puhkus—because it’s derived from the word puhkama, to rest. Not that anyone gets much rest when they’re on vacation, but it’s a nice thought J. Our original destination was Iceland—we were looking for something conveniently located between the East Coast of the USA and Estonia—but when flying to Reykjavik proved too complicated and expensive, we decided London was a reasonable substitute.

Despite the fact that England isn’t exactly known for its food, I was excited to try not only local specialties, but also things that aren’t available in Estonia. For example, Starbucks coffee drinks. For some reason, my favorite Starbucks indulgence is a white chocolate mocha. I recognize that it’s too sweet, but I like it anyway, every once in a while. And we were given actual mugs! Do Starbucks in the States do that anymore?

Another everyday American item that I occasionally miss is a toasted bagel with cream cheese. There’s cream cheese in Estonia, but no bagels. That craving was satiated in the sandwich shop we refueled in after being jostled by the crowds in the British Museum.

And now for some Brit food! The tavern next to our hotel specialized in local sausages, with a wide variety of different ones available each day. I chose the pork & Guinness sausage, my sister’s was Scottish venison, and my mother took… um… ok, I can’t remember what it was called, but it was a beef sausage. We each got three sausages on a large pile of mashed potatoes with red onion gravy. Mine were nicely spiced, and the red onion gravy with more crispy onions sprinkled on top was wonderful. I also poured a little HP sauce on my plate, because I liked that vinegar-y bite. My sister’s venison sausage had juniper berries in it, the sweetness contrasting with the red meat-y flavor of venison. It was perfect comfort food after the busy day we’d had, which included a tourist bus, the British Museum, Harrod’s, and rush hour traffic.

Of course the meal was accompanied by some English ale. I had Timothy Taylor, a favorite of mine during the trip—it was sweet, but had enough bitterness in the aftertaste to make it serious.

For dessert, we split a sticky toffee pudding. I know the notion of “pudding” is different in British English than in American English, but I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. The dessert that came out looked like a hamburger covered in mayonnaise and perhaps gravy. But the “mayonnaise” was rich custard, the “gravy” extremely sweet caramel (toffee, I suppose) sauce, and the burger was a dense, moist cake that reminded me a lot of American pancakes soaked in fake syrup (as opposed to maple).

That’s all I have time for today. But there is more London food to come, such as enigmatic clotted cream and some very old food. Till next time!

Subject #2: Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies from Smitten Kitchen

After I’d been here a few months, the craving for chocolate chip cookies was getting overwhelming, so I knew I had to make some. I was excited when I found this recipe on Smitten Kitchen, both because they look delicious and because the recipe calls for melted butter (this was in the fall when I didn’t yet have an electric mixer. Trying to cream butter by hand is pretty hard and not that effective…).

Making chocolate chip cookies is a bit more labor-intensive here in Estonia because they don’t have chocolate chips. I think they have some kind of little chocolate droplet things, but they’re sold in tiny bags as baking decorations. So I have to buy a bar of baking chocolate, get out my big ol’ kitchen knife, and chop it up myself. This results in a mixture of bigger-than-chocolate-chip size chunks (which is nice) and also some chocolate shavings.

These cookies came out awesome. The edges were beautifully crispy and contrasted with the chewy centers. They were so enticing when they came out of the oven that J went to try one and bit into a giant molten chocolate chunk, which gushed out and burnt both his mouth and his hand. Oops. Cookies are dangerous.

The only problem with them was due to a stupid substitution I made. I didn’t have vanilla extract yet—it’s available in nicer grocery stores, but really expensive (my mother brought me a bottle from the States at Christmastime). I had picked up something called või-vanilli essents (butter-vanilla essence), thinking it might be kinda the same. Yeah, not really. It’s little vials of oil that smells like cake frosting. I recognized that it was nothing like vanilla, but for some reason, I still added a few drops to my cookie batter. I guess I just worried the flavor would lack some kind of depth if I didn’t add any sort of flavoring at all (so I added something crappy? Sometimes I don’t understand how my brain works…). Anyway, in the finished cookies, I could definitely taste that extra bit of vanilla-y sweetness, which really wasn’t necessary. Probably no one else would notice, but I did. Next time I’ll make these lovely, chewy cookies with actual vanilla extract, and then they’ll be just about perfect.