London Food, part I
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 
. 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!
The Chocolate Chip Cookie Project: Part II
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.
Head Vabariigi aastapäeva! (Happy independence day!)
I’m only 8 days late. Luckily for me, this year on February 24th the Republic of Estonia (Eesti Vabariik) celebrated the 90th anniversary of its declaration of independence, so the celebration is going to continue all year long. So I’m actually not late at all .
One Estonian staple I wanted to try to make by myself was pirukad, Estonia’s dough-stuffed-with-meat offering (every nationality seems to have one—pelmeni, pierogies, empanadas, etc…). I had helped my mother make them before, but never done the entire process from start to finish, so I had to give it a shot.
I used the dough recipe my mother always uses, which is from her Latvian friend. The recipe kind of annoyed me from the start because it’s written in a very free-form, grammatically ridiculous way—here’s an excerpt:
When Pirukad are completely cooled, they can be put in Zip-Loc bags and frozen for later use! They last a LONG-LONG time! Just re-heat them! Microwave is OK! A real oven is better (they don’t get mushy!). BUT!!!! Who cares? They are good any way you fix them!
This particular advice is given in the middle of the recipe. Um, yeah. Also, the instructions hardly include any measurements. Which is why, soon after I added the risen yeast to the warm milk-and-butter mixture, I ran out of flour. DAMN. Luckily there’s a grocery store right across the street, but still, I was terrified the half-done dough would rise too much while I was gone and subsequently be ruined, or something (I don’t know very much about yeast dough…). It was pretty nerve-wracking. I guess I could’ve put it in the fridge to keep it from rising, but the mixture was so warm, I don’t think the fridge would’ve helped.
Once I had obtained flour and mixed it into the dough until I reached the “hard-soft” texture described, it didn’t seem too much the worse for wear. I let it rise as I prepared the meat filling, which I made up off the top of my head. I like pirukad with ground meat filling, so I cooked 2 parts ground pork to 1 part ground beef, and added salt, pepper, and finely chopped onion. I had also diced some bacon (big, fatty slices) and added that, hoping it would impart a nice flavour to the mixture, but it didn’t seem to do anything for it. Next time I’ll just leave it out, or try with some suitsupekk (smoked fatback, mmm). I also added a chopped hard-boiled egg to half of the filling mixture.
The rest of the process went smoothly—gently pulling a handful of dough into a long snake, cutting it into marshmallow-sized pieces, squashing each piece flat, putting a spoonful of filling in the middle, and sealing the edges together. The dough behaved very nicely. The pirukad were also treated to a brushing of egg and water mixture to make them shiny (as you can see, I don’t have a pastry brush, so I gently used a fork). (I don’t know how many pirukad I made exactly, but I was engaged in this filling process for a few hours. Melrose Place on DVD kept me company ).
Overall, I was quite pleased with the final product. The dough may have had a bit too much cardamom in it, but at least it wasn’t bland. And my Estonian co-workers seemed to approve when I brought a batch into work . It wasn’t an overwhelming project for me to do solo in one night, but it would definitely be better with an extra set of hands. Next time…
