Windy’s Food Corner

What is Latvian Food?

My husband and I recently travelled to Riga, capital of Latvia, to celebrate my birthday. You may say: ‘What? Where is Latvia? Why chose Riga?’ Latvia is in the Eastern Europe, nearby Finland and next to Russia. By chance, I managed to get a good deal from a budget airlines, which was almost same price to go to London by train. We enjoyed the trip and highly recommend you to go for three days if you are looking for a city break.

So, what is Latvian food? Well, even if I had some meals there, I still am not totally sure. According to Riga in Your Pocket, I quote ‘when one bears in mind that Poles, Swedes, Germans and Russians once ruled the roost, it’s no surprise that most local cuisine consists of pork, potatoes, and sauerkraut served with a generous sprinkling of dill.’

We tried a few Latvian restaurants and found that they usually served quite generous portions. I think they really know how to cook pork and use a lot of dill on almost anything. I would say Taverna Pie Sena Dzintara Cela (4 Torun iela) is easily the winner of the best Latvian restaurant that we’ve been. If you fancy to have some steak, you could try Zila Govs (aka The Blue Cow). They advertised that they only used Latvian cow breed and aged the meat for 25-40 days. However, we found that although the steak tasted good, it wasn’t really melt in your mouth as some people claim a good steak should be.

One of the very Latvian foods is ‘grey peas with fried bacon’. We shared it for lunch once and found that was quite filling. Ordering Latvian drinks should be easy if you like beer. However, both restaurants I mentioned above also served their homemade healthy drink. Should a restaurant not have those special drinks, you could order Kvass or a warm cup of Riga Black, which consists of Black Balsam liqueur, blackcurrant juice and a slice of lemon.

Since nearly half of the population is Russian, it wasn’t difficult to find authentic Russian food. We recommend Trakteris (8 Antonijas iela), order a veal dish and cap it off with a shot of cranberry vodka.

Oh! I nearly forget: if you have a sweet tooth, Riga definitely is the place for you! Whether you sit in a café to enjoy a slice of sweet tart with a cup of coffee, or buy a piece of cake or pastry from a supermarket, you won’t be disappointed.

Bacon Pasta with Creamy Cheese Sauce

I’ve been frustrated for a month: we are no longer a house owner but it was very hard to find a nice house to move on, thanks to the current dreadful housing market making people not to sell their houses. However, after a month of waiting, we finally are ready to move again and hope that this time, there won’t be any problem.

With the fact that I am studying for my English exam in June, I just want to make something quick and/or easy managed food nowadays, rather letting my stress ruins my food. When I go to my local supermarket, I always look at free recipes give away section to see whether Jamie Oliver has new idea. I picked up his bacon pasta sometimes ago and my recipe it’s quite similar to his except I added little something to it:

6 slices of bacon
½ onion
½ pepper
1 courgette
Pasta (enough for two people)
100ml single cream
Some cheese
1 teaspoon of paprika
A few basil leaves

Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet. Chop the bacon, onion, pepper and courgette into smaller pieces.

Heat a frying pan and cook the bacon first, then add onion. 5 minutes later, add the courgette and pepper with paprika and black pepper and fry for further 5 minutes. Your pasta should have cooked by then, so drain the water and add it into the frying pan, along with cream and half of the grated cheese.

Take the frying pan off the heat, and switch on your oven-grill instead. Sprinkle the remaining cheese and chopped basil leaves on top of the pasta mixture, and put the frying pan under the grill for 5 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

I remember in a New Zealand supermarket, we couldn’t find any single or double cream, even my friends had no idea what we were talking about! Hmm…

Once again, I would like pass over this dish to Ruth’s Presto Pasta Night hosted by Family Friends & Food this week.

Preserved Roasted Peppers with Basil

From Rachel’s Favourite Food at Home book

Hope you guys have a lovely Easter so far. As for me, er, well, my husband is still sick at the moment (caught flu) and the annoying thing is that the sun has come out for the last two days!

Another updated news from me: (long story but to cut it short) successful in selling our house but not buying a house, back to the process on house hunting, looking forward to have an ESOL exam in June (not).

Back to food, yesterday, I decided to make some food to pass the time. I baked some breakfast cereal bars, fish pie (as we didn’t have fish on Good Friday), and roast peppers. I’ve been hoping to make the roast peppers for sometime, but I need to heat the oven to 230C, which is very high. However, because the fish pie also needed that much heat, so might as well make both together:

3-4 peppers, left whole
Olive oil
Basil leaves

Rub some olive oil over the peppers, then put on a baking tray in the oven for about 40 mins. Take them out of the oven, put into a bowl and leave them to cool. When they are cool enough to handle, peel off the skin, cut the peppers into quarters and scrape out the seeds. Layer in a sterilised jar, adding basil leaves between the peppers and fill with olive oil.

I used some of the pepper in my sandwich today. I think there was a strong taste of basil but I couldn’t taste the pepper itself. I put 6-7 leaves and would put less basil when I make it next time. Nevertheless, I seldom have roasted peppers with sandwich and found that it had an interesting texture. So, I will try to make again, especially when I make fish pie!

(PS I found that Jamie Oliver has a new recipe on hot cross buns. I hope that when I do the food shopping tomorrow, hot cross buns would be on sale now that the Easter is passed!)

Leftover Peasant and Pork Pie

I don’t seem to update my blog as often as I used to, that doesn’t mean that I don’t cook any more. Little update on me: sorting out some dreadful paperwork (in the process of moving house), attending an English course (so now I’ve homework every week), and reading a novel (I haven’t done any reading for months).

Anyhow, I cannot wait to share my latest invention with you guys, as it tasted really good and I’m proud of it:

Some leftover cooked meats (I used some pork and some pheasant)
1 leek
1 carrot
1 onion
Some tinned peas
1 teaspoon of dry sage
Salt and pepper
500g puff pastry
1 egg
Some cheese (optional)

White sauce:
3 Tablespoon of butter
3 Tablespoon of flour
600ml of milk (plus extra)
Some double cream

Preheat the oven to 190C

Chop the leek, onion and carrot into smaller pieces and shred the peasant and pork meat.

To make the white sauce, take a clean pan and put the flour and butter on a low heat. Mix it immediately until you see a big yellowish lump, then add the milk bit by bit. Keep stirring until the white sauce thickens.

Now add the chopped veg into the pan, stir and simmer them for 10 minutes. Stir the mixture from time to time. If the sauce is too thick, add some milk. Then add the leftover meat, peas, sage, salt and pepper, stir in quickly. Lastly, pour some cream and mix with the filling. Heat it for a few minute then switch off the heat. Make sure the sauce is not too watery, otherwise it would leek out and soak the pastry.

Meanwhile, dust and roll 2/3 of the puff pastry with some flour and put it on a pie dish. Pour the cooked filling into the pie dish. Add some grated cheese on top. Brush the outer edge of the puff pastry with a beaten egg. Roll out the remaining pastry, lightly score the pastry and brush with the beaten egg, and use it to form a lid. Press around the edges so the pastry lid is sealed with the base. Put the dish into the oven for 40 minutes, and there you are.

Hate to be sick

On New Year’s Eve, I was standing opposite the London Eye with my husband and friends for 5 hours. It was freezing cold, but my friend said that she didn’t want to miss the fantastic fireworks, as last year she arrived later and the roads were already blocked off. So, we went there early to find a good spot at 7:30pm. The next day, I was starting to feel unwell.

In general term, when one gets cold/flu in England, don’t bother to visit a GP (doctor). It is because they won’t give you any medicines and think that you are waste of their time. However, a week later, I am still not totally recovered, so I decided to go – it turns out I have some sort of throat infection and have got antibiotics for it.

Anyhow, the whole point is that I would love to have cheap, juicy, tasty kiwi fruits right now. While I was in New Zealand, I had kiwi fruit every day. It is rich in Vitamin C with high fibre. What I didn’t know was one variety of kiwi fruit has a golden colour, as well as the usual green. Normally, the golden one is better and is much sweeter than the green one. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the kiwi season when I was there in November, otherwise I would pick some directly when I went to Kiwi 360 farm.

Another food that I really love is honey. In New Zealand, there are a lot of different kinds of honey available – blackberry, honey dew, lavender, manuka, kiwi etc. One can only take 1kg of honey back to the UK, and I bought right up to the limit. So now, I don’t need to buy any cheapo honey from my local supermarket for at least 6 months. Horray!

Food from New Zealand

I don’t think I will forget the big trip that my husband and I took last month. Also, I was so pleased to meet up with my friend who I haven’t seen for 4 years. I don’t know when is the next time to see her again.

This big trip was in New Zealand. It was a very long hours flight (almost 24 hours flight time altogether – who’s up for it?) but it was worth to go. I was particularly amazed the vast variety of things to see in one country – volcanoes, glaciers, forests, beaches, gold mines, Maori culture etc. I hope I can go back there to travel again someday.

In term of food, I found that New Zealand food was like British food, except the quality was better. Without further typing, let me show you some food pictures that I had during the trip…

Christmas is around the corner, so I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.