Jāņi 2010

Boy, we had some good food this year for Jāņi and thought I'd share what we made. We didn't make as much as usual - I kinda forgot to set up rupjmaizes kartojums for dessert. If you celebrated Jāņi, what did you have?

We decided to do the spicy pepper version of Jāņu siers finally, substituting very finely minced jalapeno for the caraway seeds. If you like spicy cheeses, you HAVE to do this one - it's quite like spicy Havarti or Jack. It's not really spicy in the way of "burn your mouth hot" but it has a really nice chile flavor. I think this one came out the absolute best - fantastic texture and beautifully cheesy.

We'd made two cheeses this past month - one traditional caraway and this chile one - this chile one came out so beautifully and I'm wondering if using buttermilk instead of kefir made a difference. Guess we'll just have to try again in a few weeks! (It is so, so easy now that we can make a good biezpiens.)

Normally, we do some variation on Artis' family's šašliks recipe but this year, he decided he wanted to try out a couple of ideas. Both came out really, really well, and completely deserving of their own post, so that should be up next week once I can get him to cough up the ingredients. :D

Our garden may not be doing well right now - it seems like half of everything is failing to thrive or outright biting the dust - but the rosemary is going strong. It is so, so nice to simply walk out and clip some sprigs for a meal. Read more about my favorite way to cook these.