Pille

I made delicious Vanilla and Ground Elder* Muffins today: The recipe idea is from an Estonian chef, but I've fiddled with the recipe a bit - she used a lot less groud elder and a bit flour. * Yep, I'm talking about Aegopodium podagraria, also known as bishop's weed and goutweed, the common garden nuisance weed - young leaves are surprisingly yummy (I've written more about ground elder here on my blog)

A slice of rye bread with linseeds + butter + cheese; a fermented milk and strawberry cocktail with agave syrup; a milky coffee.

New Potatoes with Wild Garlic (aka ramson), Radish, Cottage Cheese and Kefir Salad: Some Coconut & Rhubarb Ripple for dessert (as posted in the rhubarb thread).

Another excellent rhubarb dessert - Rhubarb & Coconut Ripple (Recipe from BBC Good Food):

← Thank you, Demiglace! No, it wasn't difficult at all. I had a 450 g fillet, which I cut into three lenghtwise (leaving it intact in one end). Then 'massaged' all three parts with the Nomu dry rub marinade, then plaited it. Quickly browned it on a frying pan in some oil, then 15 minutes at 150 Celsius in my oven.

I saw some pickled Peppadew peppers in a grocery store yesterday, so I immediately had to buy some (last time I saw these on sale was 2 years ago in Scotland!). These became our starter: For dinner, we seasoned a pork loin with Nomu African Rub mix, then plaited it, seared quickly on a frying pan and roasted in the oven. With some salad leaves from the patio, it made a very decent main course: And some panna cotta for dessert

Chufi, that rhubarb has the most amazing colour!! Inspired by your enthusiasm for rhubarb, I picked up some local rhubarb from the market yesterday morning. My first rhubarb dish in 2008 was inspired Jamie Oliver's recipe for panna cotta with roasted rhubarb - though I only ended up following his recipe for panna cotta. For roasted rhubarb, I simply cut rhubarb into 5 cm chunks, sprinkled with sugar and candied ginger, covered with foil and baked at 200Celsius for 45 minutes. Very, very nice!

Peanut butter is something you must grow up with in order to appreciate it fully. It wasn't available behind the Iron Curtain and it's definitely not something I would by regularly. Hmmm. I think the only time ever I did buy a jar of peanut butter was few years ago to make these peanut butter cookies (a cup of sugar, a cup of good-quality crunchy peanut butter, 1 egg - that's it). They were quite tasty, to be honest, but I still haven't joined a Peanut Butter (Cookie) Appreciation Society (if there exists one).

For two nights in a row now, we've had pasta with wild garlic pesto for dinner - totally addictive! I guess I'm off to pick some more tonight (but first I'm off to my U.S. Visa interview )

I'll be following this thread with great interest, as I'll be visiting New York for the first time this June (well, my first visit to the US, actually; will be spending few days in Bloomington, few in St Louis, MO, and then 6 days exploring NY). As I'm travelling on my own, I'll be focusing on things I like most, that is things food-related

Where?? I'd love to make that flower paper at home!

Thank you, cmling (and you, docsconz, as well. I'll be visiting New York for the first time in June, will have to see if you've praised some nice ny places on eGullet )

I've written into my black moleskine notebook "peanut, lemon, botarga" (the latter should be wind-cured tuna roe). I enjoyed comparing the different asparagus textures.

Alex, I suspected that - I've tried Adria's microwaved pistachio mousse (there's a recipe in The Cook's Book), and it seemed pretty similar (interestingly, there was pistachio mousse lookalike on the menu, but it was crumbly and not moist like this). Here's a picture taken 11 days ago (that's my dear bf K on the other side): Here's what we had: And here are the rest of my photos: Flickr El Bulli photo stream (not bad, considering how overexcited I was) My favourites: - the spherical olives, as I had read so much about them, and they tasted exactly as I imagined - flower paper - such a simple and brilliant idea, so much flavour - black sesame sponge with miso paste (lovely moist and soft texture) - steamed brioche with mozzarella and rose perfumed air (how does he come up with these combinations??) - I was excited about the Mediterranean sea cucumber as well - it was my first sea cucumber, you see Lovely slightly smoky flavour. - cappuchina leaf with eel and marrow (very cool combination, worked well, especially with the crispy blanched (?) cucumber) - tomato soup with virtual iberian ham (it was white and there was no ham to be seen, but you could clearly taste the tomato and ham) - gorgonzola shell - I'm not a big fan of Waldorf salad, but this deconstructed version was fun - tangerine sorbet with pumpkin seed oil (bold, strong flavours) We enjoyed the horchata dish as well - but we had just been to Valencia, where we had horchata & fartons at two different horchaterias, and had bought some chufas (the 'nuts' used for making horchata), so it was very interesting. The only dish neither one of us enjoyed was the cassis-marinated apple jelly with rabbit jus. - just didn't work for us.

San, it looks like we were seated at the same table - and though some of the dishes we ate, were the same, there are quite a few new ones (we weren't offered crunchy rabbit ears). I got quite a few good photos, as we were there for lunch, and the non-flash photography was a lot easier

In theory, yes, as all bookings must be confirmed a week (or 10 days?) in advance, and if you fail to do that, you'll lose your table, and somebody else might get it I'm not sure how many people cancel their bookings, however

I had a wonderful lunch there on Sunday (e.g. on the fifth day of the 2008 season - they began on Wednesday, April 2nd) But it will take a few days before I sort out all my photos (we only got back home to Estonia late last night, so I need to unpack first).

Thanks for advice! We're flying to Barcelona tomorrow to spend 10 days in Spain (incl. a lunch at EB ), and we'll be spending an afternoon, night and morning in Cuenca as well, so these recommendations are handy.

This is not exactly a tea egg, but my beet eggs are inspired by the Chinese tea eggs, so I hope you don't mind me posting here I made pickled red beet eggs last year for Easter, which were delicious and which I planned to make again this year. Few months ago, however, when reading about Chinese tea eggs somewhere again, I got an idea I wanted to try out. So instead of making pickled beet eggs, I made marbled beet eggs a la Chinese tea eggs. After hard-boiling the eggs I simply tapped them gently to break the shell, then immersed into salted beet juice for an hour. After peeling I had these lovely marbled beet eggs which tasted like 'normal' boiled eggs with just a hint of beetroot:

Spicy Red Lentil Soup, based on a recipe in Claudia Roden's "Tamarind and Saffron" (dinner on Saturday and Sunday): And Vietnamese chicken noodle soup pho ga (dinner with girlfriends on Wednesday; recipe from Jackum Brown's "The Vietnamese Collection"):

Dinner on Saturday and Sunday was Spicy Red Lentil Soup, based on a recipe in Claudia Roden's "Tamarind and Saffron":

That Reuben sandwich looks heavenly indeed. I'm going to travel to the US for the first time this May, and I'll make sure to try to eat a proper Reuben somewhere Last night we had toasted and cooked buckwheat with mince, served with some rather potent horseradish cream (freshly grated, of course):

We were skiing in Austria for a week, where we feasted thoroughly on excellent food, but now it's back to normal home cooking. Last night I made Nigella Lawson's cider and mustart pork chops (from Nigella Express), which was an excellent and tasty dish - the combination of cider, mustard and cream will certainly make an appearance in our kitchen again soon. Here's what our dinner looked like - a pork chop each, plus some green salad leaves and dark rye bread: Tonight we'll have buckwheat porridge with mince meat.

Last night I made a very intense French chocolate cake:

My favourite desserts from the last fortnight: Cranberry Fruit Soup: The soup was served with Bubert, a light and fluffy Estonian egg and semolina pudding: On Shrove Tuesday last week we ate lots of Lenten buns (vastlakuklid): One of the simplest desserts ever, but oh-so-gratifying, is this Estonian pudding of caramelised sour rye bread with whipped cream: And last, but not least, a perfect dip-your-spoon-into-dessert, salted butter caramel and milk chocolate mousse: Now I need to decide what to have for pud today