Tag: povertykitchenestonia

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Fishy vegetable soup with pelmeni and miso

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What you need:

– 5 small dried fishes (Peipsi tint – see photo below), or any dried fish, cut to pieces or at least a tablespoon of original japanese fish flakes

– 1 tablespoon of oil

– 2 medium onions

– 1 carrot

– a little bit of geen onion for taste and garnish

– handful of spinach or any other leafy green of your choice

– handful of pelmeni (or any savory dumpling of your choice)

– 3 tablespoons of soy sauce

– 1 teaspoon of miso paste

– salt for taste

– 1 -1,5 litres of water

How to make:

It is basically a Japanese miso soup – but not quite, because getting original ingredients for that is very expensive in Estonia. For this soup, it is best to prepare all ingredients in advance and then start cooking. Chop the fishes – it has to be dry and salty and you really need to adjust the amount according to the saltiness of the fish – as small as you can. Peel and cut the carrots and onions. In a pot, heat the oil and then add onions. Wait until they start to brown before you stir. Then add the cut fish pieces and let it sit there for a minute or two. Add carrots and fry for a minute. Then add water and soy sauce. As soon as water starts cooking, add the pelmeni – they will be ready when they start floating on top. Take the pot from the fire, put in the greens and stir in the miso paste and salt if necessary and enjoy right away.

There is no limit to what ingredients you can use there: mushrooms, cabbage, almost any kind of vegetable, tofu, even leftover meat. As long as you have the base and your greens, everything else is basically cleaning out your fridge.

How much does it cost:

Miso the amount of miso will be around 50 cents, onions perhaps 10 cents in today’s prices, carrot also along those lines, greens maybe 50 cents, tops, as well as the pelmeni. This amount of fish will be also around 10 cents. A bit of oil and everything and you will come out with under 2 euros for that soup.

Peipsi tint

So, you want to know what a Peipsi tint is? Behold, this is it: small fishes (Osmerus eperlanus morfa spirinchus) from lake Peipsi which are mostly eaten as super salty dried snacks which go well with cold beer. You might think that they are little, but in this soup you will definitely feel their fishy taste.

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Moist and fluffy apple cake

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What you need:

– 2 kg apples

– 3 medium eggs

– 50 ml olive oil (or other oil, I won’t tell)

– 1 large lemon (for peel+ juice)

– 150 g brown sugar + some for topping

– pinch of salt

– 1 tablespoon of baking powder

– 200 g flour

– 1 shot of rhum

How to make:

Peel, core and cut your leftover winter-apples, set aside. Pre-heat the oven to 180-190 degrees. In a very large bowl,mix eggs, sugar (if your apples are very sweet, cut sugar down to 100g) and salt until semi-fluffy. Add lemon peel, rhum, juice of the lemon and olive oil and mix again. Add flour and baking powder and mix until well combined into a pretty runny batter. Add the apples and mix until everything has combined. Take a bundt pan (the form with a hole in the middle), oil the sides and pour the cake batter in, sprinkle sugar on top. Take care to leave room on the top, because the cake will rise slightly! Bake in the middle rack for around 40 minutes. When the cake comes out of the oven, it will be very soft, almost like a pudding and needs to cool down completely to keep its form.

Behold: soviet-era bundt pan

How much does it cost:

60 cents for the eggs, perhaps 20 cents for the flour, 20 cents for sugar, olive oil around 1,5 euros, lemon 40 cents, rhum and baking powder – 50 cents. Add some electricity into the mix and you have your huge apple cake at around 3,5 – 4 euros. And apples – in January, your cellar will still be half-full of them.

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Brioche – the most luxurious of breads

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What you need:

  • 3 eggs
  • 500g four (400g type 812 + 100g type 550 or such)
  • 100g butter (unsalted)
  • 10-15g of fresh yeast
  • tablespoon of sugar
  • teaspoon of salt
  • a shot of white rhum
  • 3 eggs
  • a glass of milk (you can use plant milk, but it won’t be that nice and fluffy, fair warning)

How to make:

Evening before:

In a large bowl or pot combine yeast and sugar until the former has liquefied. Add eggs and beat them lightly, add the shot of rhum and milk, combine. Add pieces of butter – not warm, not overly soft, but do yourself a favour and cut them into really small pieces. Add flour and salt and knead for 10 minutes. Let the dough rest for an hour or bit more in a semi-warm place under a towel. Then do a second kneading-stretching of the dough – just turn it over a couple of times. Let it rest for another half an hour – hour. Put a cling film over the bowl and put the dough in refrigerator and let it rest overnight.

You can definitely start banking the bread on the same day, but for the sake of the taste

do.not.touch.the.dough.until.tomorrow

As with most types of really tasty bread, the main ingredient which makes or breaks the bread, is time.

Baking day:

Take the dough out – it should have doubled in size. Start heating your oven to 200 degrees. On a floured surface, divide the dough in 2 pieces. Now try to divide each of those in 3 smaller pieces. Stretch the pieces into long “sausages” of more or less equal size and form them as if you would braid hair. Put each into a separate bread form and cover them with a towel until the oven is hot enough. You can brush the bread with egg or milk, but it is not really necessary for taste. Put the forms in the middle rack and bake for 20-25 minutes. Take them out and let them cool for a bit (if you want to cut them with a knife) or enjoy straight as is, if you like to shred the bread with your hands 🙂

How much does it cost:

The amount of ingredients makes 2 full-sized brioches or around 15-20 mini brioches (bake them 10-15 minutes, depending on the size) and for what you get, the price is pretty neat. Cost of flour is negligible, around 40 cents, 100g butter is around 1,4 euros, eggs – depending what sort you use, currently they are in the range of 20-30 cents, going upwards, each – so ca 60 cents. Milk perhaps 20 cents. Sugar, salt, yeast – perhaps 10 cents total. Rhum? Maybe 50 cents?Add electricity and you come out of it with around 3,5 euros, tops. And your kitchen will smell like that fancy French bakery for hours.

A fair warning about rhum – don’t bother if you can´t get your hands on a nice white rhum. The usual varieties with pirate pictures tend to add weird astringency to the bread which I’m not really a fan of. I got a bottle of pretty cheap (15-20 euros a bottle) but good French rhum agricole from Martinique and this has done wonders to every dish that requires alcohol.

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Absolute classic: pearl groats and potato porridge

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This is an all-time classic.

What you need:

– 2 large potatoes

– 1 glass of pearl groats

– water

– salt to taste

– butter cube to taste

How to make:

It doesn’t get any easier than that: peel the potatoes and cut into small cubes, add the groats, add 2-3 litres of water and let it simmer for an hour or two until water has evaporated and everything has turned soft. Add salt and a small cube of butter, mash the remaining potatoes with a fork on your bowl and enjoy!

How much does it cost?

You can’t go over 50 cents with this recipe.

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Potato soup with sage

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What you need:

– 500 g potatoes

– 10 g butter

– teaspoon of olive oil

– 5 large cloves of garlic

– a large onion or a leek

– 7 large leaves of fresh sage

– a small bit of vegetable stock cube, chili flakes and parsley to taste (optional)

– 1,5 – 2 l of water

How to make:

Peel and cube the potatoes. Finely chop your garlic and onion, heat oil in a large pot and throw them in along with chili flakes (and dried parsley, if using). Wait for a minute or two until the onion turns glassy, throw in the butter and chopped sage leaves. Add the potatoes into the mix, stir for around 5 minutes. Add the vegetable stock and simmer for half an hour. Salt and pepper to taste. If you like, you can puree the soup and serve with either additional butter or a bit of sour cream.

Like it heavier? Leave these french roots of the soup behind and use smoked fatty ham cubes instead of olive oil – just fry them long enough to get them as crispy as you like them and get the fat to come out and then proceed as usual.

What does it cost:

For a bit garlic, butter and oil and electricity and all you won’t get more than 1 euro.

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German- style apple cake

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What you need:

– 4 large eggs

– 100 g white sugar

– 70 g of butter

– 200 g flour

– 1 teaspoon of baking powder

– 1 kg apples

– optional: brown sugar, cinnamon for topping

– a pinch of salt

How to make:

Peel, core and cut the apples into smaller pieces. Whisk sugar, eggs and salt together until the mixture becomes light yellow and foamy. Melt butter. Slowly incorporate flour and baking powder, mix. Add slowly the melted butter and mix until well incorporated. The batter should have the consistency of thick, but still runny molasses. Pour the batter into a larger baking form, cover with apples (no need to mix), top with sugar and cinnamon and bake at 180 C for 30-40 minutes depending on your oven.

How much does it cost:

If you are a good poor country-living Estonian, you would have apples and eggs left in the end of November. So butter is around 1 euro, flour is 10 cents, add some 10 cents for everything else plus electricity, the total cost won’t exceed 2 euro for an truly enormous cake.

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Traditional shredded cabbage stew

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The ultimate Estonian comfort food.

What you need:

– half a cabbage (1-2 kg)

– 300 – 500 g of minced meat

– 1 large onion

– 4 garlic cloves (optional, they make the cabbage spicier, but leaving them out makes the taste milder)

– 2 bay leaves

– 400 ml water

– salt, pepper and parsley to taste

– teaspoon of oil for frying

How to make:

Cut onion and garlic. Roughly chop up the cabbage into pieces small enough to eat with a spoon afterwards. Heat the oil in a large pot, put onion and garlic inside for a minute. If you use dried parsley, now is the time to use it. Add the minced meat and cook it until the juices are starting to come out and the meat is almost, but not quite done. Throw the shredded cabbage inside, add water and bay leaves. Then put a lid on top, let the mixture start cooking and then let it simmer for an hour or until the cabbage is soft enough for your taste. Add salt and pepper and enjoy! This one goes especially well with boiled potatoes.

How much does it cost:

This one makes a huge amount of food. If you go for half a kilogram of minced meat, this would be around 2,5 euros, cabbage costs around 60 cents, and if you have some left from your harvest, you won’t pay anything. In total this won’t be more than 3-4 euros.

This is a versatile one: you can add potatoes and carrots into the mix, triple or quadruple the amount of water and you have a huge pot of soup in your hands.

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Easy fish soup for cold days

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What you need:

– ca 400 g of de-boned frozen pangasius fillets

– 500 g fresh tomatoes (cooking time will be longer) or 400 g pureed tomatoes

– 1 glass of white wine

– 1 teaspoon of (olive) oil

– at least 5 large cloves of garlic (there is no such thing as too much garlic here)

– 1 large onion

– half a teaspoon dried oregano

– half a teaspoon dried parsley

– half a teaspoon dried basil

– as much chili as you like

– 1 liter of vegetable or fish or chicken stock

– 1 tablespoon of tomato paste

– 1-2 bay leaves

– salt and pepper to taste

How to make:

Roughly chop your onion and garlic, heat the oil and put the chopped vegetables there with dried herbs. (If you use fresh herbs, wait for the soup to be mostly cooked until you add them.) When the onion has turned glassy, add tablespoon of tomato paste and stir for a second, then throw in the frozen pangasius and add white wine. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then add tomato puree, throw in your preferred bouillon cube and add around a liter of hot water. Let the soup simmer for 30-40 minutes, until the fish has thoroughly cooked through, then shred the larger pieces of fish a bit, salt and pepper to taste and enjoy!

How much does it cost:

Fish is usually expensive in Estonian supermarkets (like almost everything else), but you can find pangasius bargains for around 6 euros/kg. This makes the cost for the fish around 2,5 euros. Pureed tomatoes come for around 1.3 -1,6 euros, wine will be around 1 euro. Stock, oil and herbs if you need to buy them, still won’t be much more than a euro. This will make the total cost for the soup around 5-5,5 euros and as always, it is enough for 2 very hungry eaters or for 4 moderately hungry ones.

This soup borrows heavily from Italian kitchen and the Italians definitely know what they are doing…. And they have so many more affordable types of fish options. If you can get your hands on other types of seafood for this soup, by all means, do! Shrimps, mussels, any type of your favorite fish would be great for this one – the more stuff, the merrier. If you are lucky enough to get fresh ingredients, then don’t hold back! This can work as soup or as a stew, depending how you customize it. In case you use different types of fresh seafood, you could easily get away with throwing some potatoes and carrots into the mix, but with only one sad frozen pangasius, potatoes would water down the taste of the broth. Switch out the herbs with your favourite ones, play around with different types of seafood and have fun!

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Bean and barley stew

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I won’t lie: this is going to be one of the ugliest foods you are going to make – but also one of the healthiest and tastiest with a classic Estonian twist.

What you need:

– ca 100 g dried brown fava beans, soaked overnight

– ca 50 g barley grains

– 3 stalks of celery

– 2 small carrots

– 5 cloves of garlic

– 2 medium onions

– teaspoon of vegetable oil

– 2-3 litres of water

– salt and pepper to taste

How to make:

Soak the beans overnight or you will be in for a world of hurt. Dice all the vegetables. In a dutch oven, heat the oil and fry garlic, onion and carrots for a couple of minutes. Add celery, barley and beans, fry for a minute. Add water, put a lid on the pot and let it simmer at least for 2,5-3 hours until the barley has „broken down“ completely and has left only a soft ugly-looking porridge behind. Add salt and pepper to taste.

You can always add fried bacon, smoked ham, fresh parsley or other vegetables you like into the mix. It will be ugly, but tasty and will easily fill up 4 people. If you want to go full Estonian, put some sour cream on top. Looks bad, but tastes great.

How much does it cost:

Beans no more than 50 cent tops, barley 5 cents, celery around 50 cents. Everything else still comes from your own cellars in November. Total cost: ca 2 euros. Prep time: no more than 5 minutes.

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Greek-style vegetable soup

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What you need:

– 50g smoked fatty ham

– little bit of olive oil

– 5 cloves of garlic

– 1 large onion

– 3 medium potatoes

– 1 paprika

– 100g long beans

– 1 glass wine

– 1 can tomatoes

– teaspoon of tomato paste

– teaspoon of dried oregano

– teaspoon of dried parsley

– teaspoon of thyme

– 1 liter fresh water (or more)

How to make:

Cut the ham in small pieces and fry over slow fire in a large pot until the fat has come out and the ham is crispy. Meanwhile cut all vegetables into small pieces. Add a little olive oil, dried herbs, garlic and onion and let it cook for a minute or two. Add beans and potatoes, cook a couple of minutes. Add tomato paste, mix well and add the glass of honest cheap wine. Cook a couple of minutes, add tomatoes and water and let the soup simmer for around half an hour. Around 5-10 minutes before the soup is ready, add cut paprika – depending how crispy do you like it. Add salt and pepper to taste and enjoy.

You can do no wrong here: play around with the amount of ingredients, you can add carrots or celery. Honest tip: this soup tastes so much better the next day! This recipe should make enough soup for 4 semi-hungry people or for 2 really hungry ones.

How much does it cost:

Ham and wine around 1 euro each, can of tomatoes is 70 cents, tomato paste around 10 cents, a bit of olive oil not more than 20 cents. Everything else comes from a poor Estonian’s garden. Total cost: 3 euros.