Estonian Cookery?
by Carl F. Kaun , 8/28/2002

By the next morning, someone had rounded up a chain saw for them to use, and so they went at it again, as seen in the first picture.  They still had a lot of hard work in store, and it took them several hours to finish working the wood, even with the chain saw.  I don't know if they did approximately what they intended to, or if they had to improvise.  They ended up in a couple of cases with hollowed out trunks, and in a couple of others they tied together pieces, as they are doing in the second picture.  They had some metal inserts that they used in the hollowed-out pieces, but they also made liberal use of aluminum foil to chink cracks and the like.  They had grates that fit into and on top of their works, and they made lids from aluminum foil and cardboard (in addition to using the top of my Homer Simpson kettle).

The third picture shows them up and ready to cook.  They used pretty much straight charcoal for cooking.  I looked inside the things after the cooking was over.  There was charring of the wood along the sides, and it appeared that they used this charring as the source of smoke for flavoring.  Verrry interesting!

I should dispel the notion that this is how it's done in throughout Estonia.  The final picture shows the setup used by the second Estonian team, which placed pretty high in the standings.  The barbecue unit is obviously homemade, but to a pretty traditional (for us) design philosophy.  That's my Homer Simpson kettle there, too.  They gave to top to their countrymen, and kept the bottom part stoked up most of the time to grill and cook things in pots.