Estonians taditional foods
Leib, or black bread. Estonians don’t horse around about their leib. It’s almost taken on a sacred quality. It’s so prized, some Estonians refer to meat only as “something to go with the bread.” One Estonian version of bon appetit is jätku leiba—which literally means “may your bread last.”Kartulid, or potatoes, were introduced here in the 1700s. They’re now part and parcel of virtually all genuine Estonian meals.Kotlet, hamburger patty with onions. Verivorst/blood sausage. An acquired taste, to say the least. Sült/jellied meat. As with Scottish haggis, it’s better if you don’t know what’s in it (One hint: pigs feet).
Kohupiim, cottage cheese-like, often used in cakes and pastries. Kringel is a sweet German-style bread knotted and sprinkled with nuts and raisins. A standard at Estonian birthdays.
Kama is a quite traditional, however initially only a seasonal dish and it is one of the undisputed classics of Estonian cuisine. The kama flour is a mixture of rough grain flour and peas. In summer, kama (the aforementioned flour mixture, combined with fresh or sour milk and sugar or salt, added according to taste) is both nutritious and refreshing during a hot day. The composition of kama is not very clear. There is an Estonian saying about a situation when something does not matter: "it's kama to me".
In the old days, milk was mostly consumed in sour form or as butter; more complicated products were developed later. Today, Estonians eat a lot of cottage cheese and curd that both come in a large range of varieties, with salty as well as sweet additions. Fish, ham, shrimps and herbs are some of the more common salty ingredients. Sweet curd products contain jam or come in the form of short sticks covered with chocolate that are called kohuke in Estonian. This would probably sound best translated into Italian as chocolate formaggino.
The best known Estonian fish products are spicy or smoked sprat and marinated small herring. Sprats have also made their mark in the area of cultural history, and in quite an original way. It was written already in the 17th century, that the sprats of Reval (i.e. Tallinn) were "especially sweet" and preparing sprats was a refined activity that even aristocratic ladies used to do it. With the arrival of canning, the sprat tins were adorned with the tower-filled silhouette of the Old town of Tallinn and since then the beautiful view of Tallinn from the sea has been known as the "sprat tin silhouette".
Pork has traditionally been the most preferable meat, it was until recently consumed twice as much as poultry or beef. Smoked ham has been one of the favourites throughout history as well. A very special kind of ham is the one matured in the sauna.
Almost all meat and fish dishes are served with potatoes and vegetables. Vegetables, such as cabbage and turnip have been in Estonian diet since time immemorial - these were eaten in addition to meat or fish or even in cereal based meals. Although they came later, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of potatoes in Estonian cuisine. They are prepared baked, fried, mashed or in the oven. Potato salad with pickles, eggs, sausage and sour cream-mayonnaise sauce as basic ingredients is many Estonians' favourite. Vegetables are generally stewed, but cabbage is also prepared as cabbage rolls (minced meat covered with cabbage) or cabbage-minced meat stew that is especially tasty with home-made dill pickles and sour cream.
Pickles and berry jams are very popular in Estonia, pickled pumpkin and mushrooms, dill pickles and whortleberry jam are common accompaniments to meals, whortleberry jam is especially tasty at Christmas when eaten with blood sausage.
All these products can be made into soups. Milk soups are rather special that can also be eaten sweet depending on ingredients (like milk rice soup). You either love milk soup or you hate it. Various clear vegetable soups can also be found in Estonian diet and a number of Russian-origin soups (solyanka, borsh).
Desserts are also very often in a liquid or porridge form, like bread soup eaten with cream or whipped cream, semolina pudding, or stewed fruit. As many of Estonians own a big garden, apple, rhubarb and berry cakes and pies are offered as dessert. Cold cakes made of biscuits and curd or biscuits and chocolate butter are also common and very delicious.
Milk is one of the most typical drinks; mostly at breakfast, it is sometimes also drank at lunch or dinner-time. Kephir and sour milk are popular too. You will find juice, very often homemade of berries and dripped from birch at springtime very refreshing. The Beer tradition is relatively old in Estonia; Estonians prefer beer to wine and annually consume 73 litres per capita. There are also a couple of other traditional drinks produced of cereals or bread, yeast, hops and honey which have a sweet taste and are non-alcoholic. Strong alcohol mostly in form of good Estonian vodka is also always present at parties and important family occasions or holiday feasts. In fact, Estonians consume 10 litres of strong alcohol per capita annually which is twice as much as in Germany. So the first word you learn in Estonian may easily be "terviseks" (cheers).
The best way to taste a true Estonian cooking is to visit an Estonian home where you also surely have a chance to get to know Estonians over a glass of beer after a good hot sauna and a roll in the snow or a swim in a lake.
Traditional filled sweet buns'Vastlakuklid'Dessert was unknown to the Estonian peasants until the beginning of the 20th century. Before that time sweet dishes were only prepared for holidays or family feasts, and only with honey, which was costly and viewed mostly as a medicine.Nowadays these buns can be found everywhere in pastryshops during Shrove Tuesday.
PreparationMix yeast with lukewarm milk. Add 1/3 part of flour, mix, cover with a moist napkin and leave to rise at room temperature for 15 minutes. Whisk butter and sugar, add cardamom and eggs.Add this butter mixture and the rest of the flour with 1 teaspoon of salt to the pre-risen dough. Knead to a nice even dough and roll 50 g buns. Let buns prove covered with napkin to twice the size.Brush with eggwash and bake in preheated oven at 180' C for about 10 min. Let buns cool down, cut off top and hollow out the inside.Mix those bread crumbs in a bowl with the other ingredients for the filling. Fill buns and bake covered their tops at 200' C for 10 min.Serve cold with whipped cream.
For 50 buns:*Buns:25g fresh yeast, 350ml milk, 800g sifted flour.130g butter200g fine sugar1 teaspoon cardamom2 eggs1 teaspoon saltfor decorations: sliced almondsegg washFilling:200ml double cream2 tablespoons grated almondsseeds of 1 vanilla bean3 tablespoons sugar2 eggs100g butter
