Tallinn: Old Town in Depth - Part 40

The four seasons of Estonian cuisine

The spring brings rhubarb, wild garlic, sour dock, radishes and fresh goat cheese to the table. Summer favourites include fresh potatoes accompanied with a salad made of cottage cheese, tomato and cucumber, or chanterelle sauce or fish. Summer and autumn is when wild berries ripen – strawberries, raspberries, bilberries, lingonberries, cranberries, cloudberries, gardens are full of apples, plums, black and red currants, sea-buckthorn berries and gooseberries. The fruits and berries become cakes and sauces, but they are also preserved in jars. The long winters and a soft spot for homely flavours have kept the conserving skills of the fore-mothers alive.

Estonians love mushrooms. Going mushroom hunting with family and friends is a popular pass time. The early winter hunting season brings elk meat, roe deer meat, wild boar meat and even bear meat to the table. The winter introduces long cooked roasts and casseroles. The traditional pea, bean or cabbage soup with smoked meat, pearl barley and pork braised with sauerkraut or potatoes are no longer common everyday meals, but they are still prepared every now and then during the winter. The traditional Christmas food includes roast pork or goose with sauerkraut and black pudding.

Black bread, curd, cottage cheese and other dairy products are always on the table, regardless of the season. The all-time favourite is pork, but the meat from beef cattle raised on local natural grasslands is also more and more appreciated. Estonian grasslands are very rich in flora; there’s even an unofficial world record of 76 different species of plant found on one square metre of a wooded meadow. While the trendy concept of nose to tail eating is only being discovered in many places, Estonians have always lived sparingly and prepared food from all kinds of meat, not just from the fillet.

Favourite fish include white fish, flatfish, perch, sprat and Baltic herring which is the national fish of Estonia It was once considered the cheap food of the common people but has now made its way to restaurant menus. Gourmands can take pleasure in roasted and marinated lamprey, and marinated eel and eel soup are served as delicacies.

Also finding its way back to the table is kama, a boiled, dried and ground coarse flour from a mixture of grains. It is eaten with yoghurt, sour milk or curd. There’s also the traditional barley bread, odrakarask, a simple baked bread with baking soda. The favourite’s treats include curd desserts and baked sweets, apple and berry cakes.

The local food culture has been strongly influenced by the Germans who ruled the country for almost seven hundred years, and the Russians whose dominion included Estonia both during the imperial and Soviet times.

Continued in part 41