Estonia - home cooking

Due to life getting in the way, progress of this project - once again - has been very slow of late. But finally, just a couple of weeks ago, a spare few hours on a Sunday afternoon resulted in the next country being ticked off the list. This time, Estonia. When I first considered how we would achieve this country, I just assumed I would have no problem finding an Estonian restaurant in London.

If we had reached Estonia several years ago, which we really should have done, then my assumption would have been absolutely correct. However, in the summer of 2018, there are no Estonian restaurants in operation. There are several Baltic and Russian-influenced restaurants in the city, but none - to the best of my knowledge - that offered any decent range of specifically Estonian dishes. So it was back to the kitchen...

Meat features heavily in Estonian cuisine, as does fish. Much of the food found in Estonia is similar to other countries in the region - potatoes, cheese, herbs, sauerkraut. It has been influenced by other Baltic countries as much as Nordic countries, and Russia. Finding a meal to cook was a little tricky. I didn't fancy any of fish dishes, and some of the meat dishes were, shall we say, "exotic". Including cuts of animal that I neither knew were to find, nor wanted to try in any case. Eventually, the same dish appeared across various sources that ticked all the boxes for me. Frikadellisupp. Estonian meatball soup.

The particular recipe I went for was to serve six, and didn't provide any problems when it came to sourcing any of the ingredients in my local supermarket.

Step one was, of course, to prepare the meatballs. They were a combination of 560g of minced beef (full fat... no lean mince here!), 3 tablespoons of dried breadcrumbs, 1 egg (beaten), 2 tablespoons of sour cream, 1.5 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, a pinch of ground black pepper, 0.5 teaspoon of salt, and 2 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh dill.

We're not massive fans of dill in this household, which I gather is a widely shared opinion. However, I couldn't omit it from this meal, as it is a signature part of the dish.

All those ingredients were mixed well together to form the meatball combination. One massive meatball, if you will. It's important now that this mixture is left to settle for half an hour or so. This softens the meatballs, which helps bind them together when rolled out. I also think that choosing non-lean minced meat helped with that.

Part of that "bonding" time can now be used to prepare the other ingredients for the soup - 1.5 litres of beef broth (I used four stock cubes), 1 large potato (peeled and diced) and 1 large carrot (peeled and diced).

Once the meatball mixture had been sitting for half an hour, it was time to hand-roll it out into meatballs. The idea was to create meatballs around 0.75 inches wide. I found that particularly difficult, and they ended up being a bit larger. It was probably just as well...

You're looking at dozens of meatballs. My mind was then troubled with two questions. One: how are these going to cook through sufficiently now that they're almost twice the size they should be? And two: how the hell am I going to get all these, and all the other ingredients, into one pot?

Anyway, time would tell. I started to heat the broth, and added the potato, carrot and a couple of tablespoons of uncooked long grain rice. And then the meatballs. One by one. I took care to make sure each one had sufficient space, and that they weren't sticking together. To be honest, when I dropped them in they each buried themselves quite nicely into the veg that I had added previously. By the time I had dropped them all in and stirred the pot, the outside of the meatballs had already started to cook, so they no longer stuck together.

The soup was then boiled rapidly for 10 minutes, and then brought down to a delicate simmer for a further half an hour. And it was done! Time to serve.

Rye bread is popular in Estonia. To the best of my knowledge the country has it's own twist on the bread, which is darker (sometimes known as "black bread"). I decided to serve the soup with slices of rye bread widely available in my local supermarket, for that "almost authentic" touch.

Despite being quite firm and stodgy, the rye bread worked well with the soup - softening well enough and taking in a lot of the soup, but nowhere near falling apart. I was quite surprised at how soft, almost melt-in-the-mouth, the meatballs were. I have a habit of overcooking meat out of an abundance of caution, but the consistency of these meatballs was perfect. The meatballs themselves were really nice - the dill was by no means overpowering. The pepper, Worcestershire sauce and even the sour cream came through very well.

The rest of the ingredients, especially the potatoes and the rice, coupled with the abundance of meatballs, meant this was a very wholesome soup. The potatoes and carrots were a simple but effective, recognisable touch. The soup was a little oily on the surface. This was probably the decision to buy non-lean minced meat coming back to bite me on the arse. Or it may just have been the fact I neglected to skim the soup before serving. But it certainly didn't ruin the meal.

It was probably the worst kind of meal for the middle of the most consistently hot summer London has ever seen. But it was very enjoyable. I'm sure this would even more be the case during an Estonian winter.