Taste of home: searching for the real Estonia, one bite at a time

These are complicated (but hardly unique in the global scheme of things) ethnic alliances. I am originally one of some 300,000 Russian-speakers in Estonia, the majority of whom had migrated there during the Soviet occupation, mainly sent by the state. My parents, however, were Soviet hippies. In the late Sixties they swapped their kooperativ flat in Nikolaev in Southern Ukraine for one “without comforts” in Tallinn, drawn by the Western-like allure of Estonia ... and Tallinn’s little cafes.

My dad for years frequented a tiny coffee bar opposite the Kosmos cinema for proper Turkish coffee brewed in sand. Mum favoured buns with curd cheese. “Vozdushnye!” (featherlike) is what they were for her.

I grew up in a totally Russian-speaking environment during the 1980s and 90s. At best the two communities, Russian and Estonian, hardly mixed. At worst they passionately despised each other. Food as always reflected the animosity: the ubiquitous Estonian Mulgikapsad (stew of cabbage with potatoes, sold in jars in shops) was and still is often given by Russians as an example of limited, unsophisticated Estonian culture.

Roll forward many years of being a Londoner and my nationalistic bitterness started to soften. With that, understanding and curiosity arrived, helped by my professional and academic interest in food — and, well, the trend in the new Nordic cuisine.

Pille — a proper Estonian, as it were — was a wonderful inspiration for, let’s call it lyrically, my journey of discovery into the food of my homeland. I met her in Tallinn before hosting my first supper club in London, themed on the food of the Baltics, a few years back. We spoke English. She had lived in Edinburgh before. I recall having such an urge to acknowledge my understanding of the old nationalistic divide — I am now a part-time Guardian reader for God’s sake. I get it. It’s as if I needed to “confess” my earlier ignorance (Of “my” people? Of all of us really who were too attached to national ideals).

One ingredient which Pille and I talked about a fair deal which epitomises my newly found curiosity was kama — a unique oatmeal-like mix of ground and roasted barley, wheat, rye and peas. It tastes like milled nuts. Under communism kama was sometimes used as a substitute for chocolate because cocoa beans were very limited. Many of us still have fond memories of delicious, nutty kama bon-bons. The traditional way to eat kama is to mix it with yoghurt or kefir for breakfast. But I was forever taken by Pille’s playful recipe where the grains are mixed with mascarpone and Vana Tallinn, a herby Estonian liquor — the dish is now a regular on my menus in seasonal variations. I also love using kama in savoury dishes these days, as in these sweet potato patties or, with lovely fresh herring fried in butter (like in this Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe with Scottish oatmeal).

As the legendary American food writer M.F.K Fisher once said, “Our three basic needs, for food, security and love, are so mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.”

And so a funny little Baltic dish, a sliver of fish, a gorbushka of rye bread, all talk to me of sensuality, warmth and nostalgia for both the land I have come from as well as – no longer paradoxically – my roots in London. I hold no illusion – romanticising food is easier from a distance. But as a food anthropologist and a hungry in-betweener I want to know what lies underneath national identities and illusionary stable taste buds. Refusing to eat a piece of meat/fruit/bread is never just a fad. The fleeting smell can take one miles and years away and bring us firmly back into the wobbly, uncertain deliciousness of ourselves.