March | 2015 | thefidgetyfoodie

Sunday cooking sessions with my yiayia

Posted on March 30, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

Yemista or stuffed tomatoes

Whenever I stop fidgeting for five minutes, my favourite place to spend a Sunday is at my yiayia Maria’s house – eating, cooking, raiding her garden for herbs, eating, playing gin rummy and more eating. Her mission in life has always been to feed everyone around her and you only have to look at my mum, sister and I to see that it’s clearly an inherited trait.

Yiayia could make spanakopita with her eyes closed

For most of my youth I took it for granted that yiayia’s cooking always tasted exactly the same (i.e. delicious). It wasn’t until I started to notch up my own miles in the kitchen that I realised that kind of consistency is hard earned.

Spinach and cheese filling in the spanakopita

Of course I want my cooking to taste like yiayia’s right now so I’ve made a point of learning as much as I can from her over the years. Extracting a recipe is easier said than done though, and I have to watch her like a hawk to work out each step. She relies purely on sight and touch to know when something is perfect.

‘How much flour yiayia?’

‘Enough until the dough is ready Alexandramou’.

Of course yiayia!

A spanakopita of this size lasts roughly fifteen minutes in my family

Lucky for me we tend to focus on savoury dishes, so a little variation in quantity usually doesn’t spell disaster. Spanakopita (cheese and spinach pie), yemista (rice and meat stuffed tomatoes) and keftethes (meatballs) are always a good starting point. I wouldn’t dare go freestyle on kourabiethes! Read More

My cheesiest post yet

Posted on March 23, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

Swedish ‘caramel’ cheese

No really. This will officially be my cheesiest post, based on weight of course.

Sure, I’ve covered raclette in depth, while other cheeses have popped up in random posts, but this time I’m going all out with a full dairy overload. Here are five very special cheeses that I haven’t stopped thinking about.

Oscypek display at a market in Krakow

Let’s start in Poland. I had read about oscypek – a protected smoked cheese from the Tatra Mountains, so it was on my radar. The cheese gods were clearly looking down on me on that trip because within ten minutes of alighting at Krakow train station, Maz and I stumbled across a food market with an entire stand dedicated to oscypek. Score!

This poor woman had to deal with oscypek groupies (i.e. us) every night

Made from salted sheep and cow milk, the cheese is formed into decorative shapes, brined and cured in hot smoke. Each little cheese is heated to order on the barbeque and served with a dollop of cranberry sauce.

Oscypek with cranberry jam – absolutely sensational

The sharp, salty, smoked ooziness of the cheese was sublime with the fruity tang of the cranberry. We loved it so much we had seconds that night and came back the following two nights. I think the lady at the stand thought we were a bit strange. This was a culinary highlight of the year and I’m on a mission to track it down in Sydney.

Romanian cheese display in Bran, just below Dracula’s castle

The award for the most bizarre looking cheese on the list would go to this Romanian beauty. The first time I spotted it in a market outside of Dracula’s ‘castle’, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was dealing with. Small pieces of fire wood? Bit odd to find that in the cheese display. Maybe a derivative of fresh coconut? But then it was winter in eastern Europe, not exactly a climate in which one would expect a tropical fruit. After a bit of investigation I discovered it was cheese in bark. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Read More

The day McDonald’s went hipster

Posted on March 16, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

The Corner café entrance

There’s nothing new about the McCafé.

But a McDonald’s hipster café serving quinoa, single origin coffee and serving it on chopping boards? That’s pretty ground breaking for this fast food giant.

The service area is sleek with bright yellow touches

It’s no secret that the traditional McDonald’s format has been losing fans over the years. No matter how many salads and yoghurt cups they introduce, it’s hard to see beyond two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.

The extensive sweet selection

They had to do something drastic. And it seems that move was to turn a former McCafé in Sydney’s inner city suburb of Camperdown into a ‘learning lab’ – a testing ground for new dishes and service styles.

I’m not a Macca’s customer (unless it’s 3am, I’m hungry and it’s the only viable option) but this concept instantly piqued my interest. Plus I love the fact they chose Sydney to trial it, no doubt because we punch well above our weight in the hipster stakes.

A Sunday night recce was the perfect opportunity to scope it out; just me, my trusty friend Marty and a handful of harried nurses from the adjacent RPA Hospital.

I’ll bet everyone recognises that tiling….

The McDonald’s branding is so slight that if you blink, you’ll miss it. There’s just a small McCafé logo under the main entry sign and a few references in the menus. Although I think most people would recognise the distinctive light brown tiles in the kitchen (didn’t everyone take a tour of the kitchen during a McDonald’s children’s birthday party at some stage?).

Doggys are people too

The outdoor herb garden

At first glance all the hipster café signs are there; doggy parking, an outdoor herb garden and plenty of ‘super foods’ like quinoa and kale. Read More

How The Fidgety Foodie became kind of a big deal in Estonia

Posted on March 9, 2015 by thefidgetyfoodie

Tallinn old town

Something really cool recently happened to The Fidgety Foodie.

It all started with my first Fidgety Foodie post, back in October 2014, about Tallinn Airport. I was so taken by my experience there that I felt compelled to write about it. At that stage I had roughly two followers (thanks mum and dad) so the post came and went without much of a ripple.

The cosiest airport I’ve ever seen

Until a few weeks ago when Tallinn Airport itself picked up on the post and shared it through their social media channels. Next thing I knew Estonia Tourism was promoting it. Then the Estonian Embassy joined the party. Before long my web traffic increased by 3000%. That’s pretty extraordinary for a neophyte like me. Not only was half of Estonia reading my post, but I was getting lovely comments and feedback about the blog. This welcoming reception is what compelled me to write about Tallinn in the first place.

I only wish I’d spent more time in Estonia to have experienced more of this beguiling hospitality. I had a mere 24 hours while travelling between Helsinki and Paris with my stoic Swedish friend Joakim.

Tallinn old town

Estonia is a bit of a quiet achiever. Nestled by fellow Baltic neighbours Latvia and Lithuania, it was the birthplace of Kazaa and Skype, is home to world champion wife-carriers (yes it’s a real sport) and was the first country to win Eurovision with a black singer in 2001.

Helsinki – Tallinn ferry

So what do you do with just 24 hours in one city? It wasn’t long enough to scope out the city like a foodie in my usual depth so I had to prioritise; food markets, supermarket and a wander through the old town were on the agenda once we stepped off the ferry from Helsinki.

Choose a gravestone when you pick up your groceries

We headed to one of the food markets tucked away outside the walls of Tallinn old town. It was a mash up of fresh produce, antiques, Soviet war memorabilia and quite randomly, personalised granite gravestones.

Fresh wild strawberries

Being summer, the berries were in top form and I especially loved the freshly picked wild strawberries. Don’t be fooled by the size; each specimen offered a perfectly concentrated ball of intense strawberry goodness.

Pretty pastel eggs

I really wanted to buy a carton of these gorgeous pastel coloured eggs but knew that wasn’t the most practical decision while on the road.

Pickle pick-and-mix

My favourite find was this barrel of pickles. I love pickles at the best of times but being able to scoop them out of salty brine at my leisure was strangely thrilling. Read More