Food and cuisine from Saaremaa

All about Saaremaa!

FOOD AND CUISINE FROM SAAREMAA

• By a ferry from Virtsu Port on the mainland For information, please call +372 618 1310 or see www.ferries.ee • By a ferry from Sõru Port in Hiiumaa For information, please call +372 443 1069 or see www.veeteed.com • By bus For information, please call +372 453 1661 or see www.bussipilet.ee • By plane For information, please call +372 453 0313 or see www.kuressaare-airport.ee

SAAREMAA

Saaremaa has always been known for its smoked fish, homebrewed beer, and rye bread. Feast on all of these golden treats right here! The island’s smokehouses produce thousands of Baltic herring, garfish, and flatfish over the course of the summer. Our sweet home-brewed beer has even found its way onto the menus of the finer restaurants. Every household prides itself in offering homebaked bread.

The competition entitled Flavours of Estonia stands proof that the people of Saaremaa are a long way from eating mere ‘taters and gravy. Several restaurants in Saaremaa have found a spot on that prestigious list. The selection of restaurants is vast, and it caters to both the farmer and the gourmand.

Saare folk always prefer local produce. Pure products from Saaremaa are garnering more and more recognition off the island and, trust me, Saare folk are working hard to make that happen! The island’s delicacies can be recognised by the small blue label and the phrase ‘Saaremaa ehtne toode’.

‘I started off by offering pan bread, mashed ‘taters, gravy, and salted Baltic herring - the simple food we grew up on here.’ ‘Who’s gonna come and eat it?’ many said, doubting the idea would work.

‘These dishes have been on our menu for twenty years now and are the reason people cross land and sea to find us,’ explains Juta Pae, owner of Lümanda söögimaja.

Made in Saaremaa, in a clean environment!

How to get to Saaremaa?

Potatoes and gravy are traditional dishes on Saaremaa. It sounds simple but tastes great and the dish still appears on restaurant menus, albeit with not many restaurants serving the dish. Even so, it still holds an honoured place on the menu at Lümanda söögimaja, which serves traditional Saaremaa cuisine.

Bread has always been at the heart of a meal for Estonians, and this is still very much the case for Saare folk. Loaves of bread smoothened out with love and care are still being baked in the large bread ovens in old farmhouses. However, modern technology is starting to take over and the wood oven is being replaced by modern bread-makers.

Grate ten average potatoes and squeeze out the water. Add about twelve tablespoons of flour to the potato mix and about a half a tablespoon of salt. Fry smoked bacon or cheek meat into the dough. Mix the ingredients together and bake at 250 degrees for 45 minutes.

The fact that a competition for the best home-made bread has been held in autumn on the island for a number of years now stands proof of Saare folk’s love of bread and breadmaking. The event has been popular from the very start, and nearly fifty different breads - both traditional and flavoured breads - competed in the first competition. In addition to the fame and glory, the recipe behind the winning bread was also put into production by a bread manufacturer.

Another traditional Saaremaa dish comes from Muhu Island.

The dessert, aptly called sour mash (hapurokk) would be tough to consider as being food-based on its name alone.

The dish is, however, a highly-valued dessert among Muhu islanders. The main ingredient in traditional sour mash is the same as in pan bread - potato.

Flour is added to the potatoes and the mix is then left to ferment for up to a day. The mash is pressed through a strainer the following day and is set to boil; then sugar is added to the mix. Once it has cooled down, sour mash is served with cold milk. Potato was gradually replaced by fermented milk products, thereby avoiding the annoying potato fermenting process. Collective sour mash feasts were called mash nights on the island.

While pan bread and sour mash used to be traditional dishes both fir Saaremaa and Muhu islanders, the dishes gradually fell into disfavour as general goods became more available and the food culture changed. However, the value of our ancestors’ heritage has become more valued in the last decade and, as such, the traditional dishes are finding their way back onto Saaremaa’s tables.

Those people of Saaremaa who are less keen on baking get their bread and pastries from the manufacturers. There are three larger bread manufacturers on the island. One of these still continues to make Borodino bread, which was probably valued more in Estonia during the Soviet era than was the local currency. Another was granted permission by the former first lady of Estonia to bake bread according to her own private recipe. The third grew out of the idea of baking delicious bread at home for the family - a bread that is the perfect balance of taste and healthy ingredients. Now there are thousands of people who can’t get enough of that bread.

A meal isn’t a meal without bread!

Pan bread and mash nights

There are many dishes that can be found only on Saaremaa.

One such dish is pan bread. Pan bread comes in as many varieties as there are households. Pan bread always includes fatty meat, potatoes, and flour. Meat needs to be nice and fatty. The best pan bread is the kind that drips fat when you bite into it, straight out of the oven.

You can give it go at home.

The fishing season truly begins with the first warm days in spring. The time to fish for roach has arrived! Although roach isn’t really used for much else, dried roach will always be hanging from the eaves of a true Saaremaa islander home by the end of April. Just when the roach are beginning to harden, the fishermen begin hauling in garfish, also known as the poor man’s eel on Saaremaa. Sometimes actual eel get stuck in the traps. Eel is especially delicious when smoked. One of the most versatile fish is flatfish, which Saare folk love either dried, smoked, or fried.

All seafood lovers can also set out to a restaurant. Several restaurants on Saaremaa serve fresh fish which has been caught by fishermen that same morning. It also isn’t uncommon for chefs to get into their fishing waders in the morning and head out to sea themselves.

Anyone who wants to catch their own food should try their luck at a seaside holiday home, where many eager hosts conduct trawls and have a boat ready for such occasions. When asked nicely, many of them will be willing to take an enthusiastic ‘farm hand’ out to sea.

Beer brewing on Saaremaa managed to survive the Soviet era. One of the best beers of the time was, in fact, manufactured on Saaremaa. Beer brewing on the island stumbled momentarily when Saaremaa õllevabrik was closed down, but that obstacle has since been overcome. Although the manufactured quantities fall below those of the golden age of beer on Saaremaa, the quality is all the better.

Saaremaa’s microbreweries brew authentic farm beer according to recipes which have been inherited from the ancestors. In recent years, speciality beers have taken their place next to traditional home-brewed beer. The first microbrewery to compete with farm beer popped up a couple of years ago. Beer manufacturing has regained its rightful place on Saaremaa. Wine and cider are also manufactured here in smaller quantities, but these are, without doubt, overshadowed by beer.

Teetotallers can quench their thirst with some lemonade.

Quench your thirst the Saaremaa way

The silver of the seas on our plates

Fish has always been highly valued in Saaremaa’s cuisine. As there are fewer fish in the sea, people value them more.

Home-brewed beer from Saaremaa is notorious. It’s both wicked and famous. Many people from the mainland don’t even dare take a sip. This spirit, brewed according to traditions that span centuries, is a cunning drink. Home-brewed beer is made according to tips and tricks which have been passed down through the generations, and it tastes sweet and not a lot like beer. It’s easy to forget oneself when sipping on this sweet drink, unaware that one is close to being three sheets to the wind.

The island also has other acclaimed restaurants. Flavour of Estonia has been ranked as one of the best restaurants in Estonia for years now, and quite a number of restaurants from Saaremaa have made the list in recent years. The local chefs and their excellent sense of taste probably has something to do with it. Kuressaare Regional Training Centre has been teaching cooks for decades. You should also look out for Saaremaa Kokkade Liit, the union which was created by the island’s more eager chefs.

The results couldn’t be anything other than awesome, when open-minded cooks have access to fresh produce from Saaremaa. Restaurants are turning more and more towards local produce. Meat and fish aren’t the only local ingredients being used - oils, herbs, vegetables, etc are also increasingly more of a local origin.

When GO Spa’s chef, Alar Aksalu, returned to work on the island of his birth, most of his friends were jealous, thinking that he’d get to rest by the sea. The reality, however, is constant rushing about to provide customers with the best food possible. ‘I do love food. That’s why I studied to become a cook,’ says Alar, who is probably one of the thinnest chefs in Estonian, adding that his colleagues make sure that he always eats lunch. Many believe that a chef should be big boned and plump, but it isn’t easy gaining weight when you’re always running around. Being a native Saaremaa man, Alar knows exactly what customers want.

Fish has always been caught and processed in Saaremaa. A true Saaremaa native will also always have some potatoes sprouting in the soil. Saaremaa sausages and cheeses are made by locals and mainland Estonians alike. However, raw buckwheat, crayfish, and juniper candy are entirely another story. But just like fish, meat, and milk, these too are manufactured on the island.

In addition to the local fish which is caught in the Baltic Sea, the ‘silver of the sea’ has also been grown in artificial settings on Saaremaa itself. But fish isn’t the only seafood to be found on Saaremaa. Crayfish, which are becoming quite rare elsewhere in the world, grow in the clear springs on the gorgeous coastal terrace of the Sõrve peninsula.

The Estonian crayfish with its tender and delicious meat and easy-to-remove shell is a universally-valued delicacy.

Rye, oats, and wheat are quite common in Estonian fields, but the selection of cereal is much wider than that on Saaremaa. We also grow organic buckwheat and spelt. These and other organic grains are ground into a healthy flour, manna, and bran in the ecological stone mills of Saaremaa.

Whilst some will recognise buckwheat or spelt when they see it growing in a field, camelina, or false flax, is unknown to most people. And camelina, which is used in seed form or as the highly-valued virgin camelina oil, is exactly what can be found on the island. We’ve heard rumours that quite a number of chefs have substituted the oils they use in the kitchens in their restaurants for local camelina oil.

Eat like the people of Saaremaa

From ‘taters and gravy to gourmet

The fact that the best gourmet restaurant in Estonia is located on Saaremaa proves that the island offers a plethora of tastes. The restaurant located on Muhu Island has bagged the prestigious ‘best gourmet’ title for quite a few years in a row.

Come and have a picnic in the street!

The village of Leedri is home to delicious sauces that use the local juniper as the main ingredient. The villagers boil juniper and sugar into a bewitching delicacy that also contains nuts, berries, and herbs and spices. According to local lore, juniper is the giver of vitality and health- it blows the breath of the sea into your lungs, brings the warmth of the summer into your bones, and gives power to your voice.

Interesting facts about Saaremaa • Saaremaa’s total land: 2,922km2 • Coastline: 1,414km • Population of Saaremaa: 34,000 • Population of Kuressaare: 13,000 • Average air temperature: 19oC in the summer, -1oC in winter • Average water temperature: 17oC in June, 18.5oC in July, 19oC in August • Saaremaa is the sunniest part of Estonia.

• Kuressaare is the sunshine capital of Estonia.

In September, a street picnic will be organized in Kuressaare with the people of Saare County and our visitors getting together at a long table in the main street of Kuressaare.

Bring along your own treats or buy local food and beverages at the event. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Food vocabulary • Kena keik - a versatile Saaremaa expression that can imply something both positive and negative • Tuhlis - potato • Nott - gravy • Silk - salted Baltic herring • Tuhlimoos - potato salad • Runnakas - a small unpeeled boiled potato • Õllekiha - a type of beer glass • Kört - a runny flour soup • Koost - spoon • Mekkima - to taste

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Saaremaa Tourist Information Centre NGO Visit Saaremaa Tallinna 2 Kuressaare Estonia +372 45 33 120 www.visitsaaremaa.ee info@visitsaaremaa.ee

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