Jaanipäev

In Romania on the night of 23-24 of June we are celebrating the Night of Fairies, in Estonia
is John's Day. In Estonian language is called Jaanipäev and as an Estonian person told me, they celebrate the light and sun. In the last 5 years we used to celebrate traditional Estonian way with a bonfire and a big grill, a lot of people and we party until morning but this year we decided to stay home and have a small grill and chose to have more time to rest after a very busy period in the restaurant.
Here I show you how we spent the day cooking a simple meal. Before we started preparing the big meal we had a snack platter with some different cheeses (brie, blue cheese and cedar), marinated olives, peanut butter and some mix nuts all to complement a cold glass of rose wine for a summer day.

The olives I marinated them with rosemary, lots of garlic and good olive oil and leave to marinate for 2 days.
With the garlic, when you thing is too much, then double the quantity for a nice aroma :)

Then we started to prep the meat for grill. For the pork ribs we used only salt and pepper because after they were cooked on the grill, we covered them with a smoked BBQ sauce. For the pork neck I chose a Mexican marinate with taco spices and extra chili and oregano and we put them on skewers. On beef entrecote steak we put just salt and pepper for a natural flavor but be sure the beef is aged and good quality for a tender meat. And of course some chicken fillets for kids.

To complement the meat we marinate the boys in  a local corn beer and we used some fresh vegetable to grill like mushroom, eggplant, peppers and zucchini which I marinated them with olive oil and seasoning. As well I sprayed them with some BBQ sauce. Then we made a cold sauce with sour cream, garlic and herbs and one spicy sauce with curry and cocos milk.

As a garnish for the grill we made two different salads, one is a Mediterranean potato salad with onions, marinated cucumber, oregano, seasoning and virgin olive oil and the second salad of tomato and white cabbage.

                                                             And then we grilled.

                                                            And then we eat.

After a long pause and more beer we had dessert. Bianca made this very good dessert with salted nuts, peanut butter and cream cheese filling  and sour cream frosting.

Recipe for the cake will follow soon.
We had a great day! Pin It Now!

Mission Impossible

After so many years of cooking I never thought it will come a day when I'm not able to roast some....carrots. Yes, it happened today. On my way home I bought some fresh nice looking  carrots. I wanted to make roast cumin carrots puree for dinner with some meat. So, I peeled, chopped in bigger pieces and placed them in a tray, covered with aluminium foil and start baking at 200 degrees C. After 1/2 hour, when I knew it supposed to be quite ready, they were still hard like stone. I checked again the temperature, just in case I didn't set it right (a very slim chance) and it was okay. I put the tray back in the oven for another 1/2 hour. After that....surprise, same stones with the same colour, nothing changed. At this point I got a bit frustrated, saying that's not possible. After another 2 hours in the oven, the carrots from edge of tray were burned and chewy outside and hard in the middle, and the ones from the middle of the tray were hard as a rock and white colored.
I don't know how they grow them, how they keep them, but I can't cook them, nor to eat them with my family. I'm going to dig into this problem to see what I will found out.

Here are the carrots after more that 3 hours in the oven:

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Hello! Happy Birthday! ..I’m your birthday present.

Hello. Happy Birthday ! I’m your birthday present.

In this way I started my day last Sunday at 9 am at one family’s door in Tartu. It was the lady’s birthday. She had no idea I was coming, so she was very surprised when her husband introduced me: “He is the head chef from Vilde restaurant and he is going to spend the day cooking for us and he is going to share some of the professional cooking secrets”. I was told she really likes cooking and I was very impressed about the number of cooking books she had.So we sat down for a coffee, while I checked the conditions and the utensils from the kitchen. We talked about the menu and we went off for shopping, where we spent about 2 hours. I was trying to show them the way I think when I shop and finally we decided the menu according to what we found.We returned home like this:

This is my menu for 15 persons:

Focaccia one of my favorite bread , 

  

  Olive tapenade , marinated olives, filo pastry with avocado and feta, duck liver pate and hummus for starter.
 
 

Main course with Shell fish Jambalaya, Duck confit with orange and Pork roulade with sun-dried tomatoes and basil in a mustard sauce .

For dessert we made a wonderful French classic lemon tart and a nice soft cheese cake with strawberry.

We all try to create roses to decorate the cake and we have great fun.

My day is to end  and I promise to post the recipes as soon as I have some time.. A nice day with fantastic people, good  fresh food and  lots of fun ... I do not think I can ask for more in one day.

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