Trying to live from the land: have lots of cucumbers and herbs in my garden and made this super green , healthy and delicious salad. In just 2 minutes. There are no proportions and not exact ingredients, just try to use up as much greens as possible. Avocado and feta cheese are store bought.
Ingredients:
cucumber
cilantro
parsley
chives
green onion
feta cheese
lime juice to dress
Directions:
Slice cucumber, I kept the skin because it’s sweet and crunchy
It was one of my favorite breakfasts, called lazy vareniki. Vareniki (similar to pirogi, but with thiner pastry) are Russian or Ukranian dumplings made with potato or ricotta cheese filling. So instead of making a dough, rolling it, cutting, preparing a filling, forming every dumpling you just put everything together in one bowl, mix it, divide into little pillows and boil. Lazy! And done within 5 minutes!
It should be done with tvorog, but if you don’t have it I found that farmers cheese is not a bad option for this dish (don’t use store bought ricotta, it’s too watery).
Ingredients (for 1 serving):
Tvorog or farmer’s cheese – 1/4 lbs (100 gr)
1 egg
Flour – 3 tbsp
Pinch of salt
Directions:
Place all the ingredients into a bowl and mix really well with spoon forming sticky dough
Put the dough on well floured board, flour your hands too.
It should be sticky, but workable, there is no need to kneed it, but you should be able to form about an inch wide log with your hands
Cut the log into small pieces
Put pot with water on medium to high heat, add 1 tsp of salt and bring to a boil. Do not reduce the heat!
Place several dumplings into boiling water, don’t overcrowd the pot.
Boil the dumplings for 2 minutes
Remove from the pot with a skimmer spoon
Garnish with melted butter or sour cream and sprinkle with sugar if you want to make it sweet
Serve hot or warm
Creamy mushrooms
Ingredients:
Works best with shiitake, you can combine it some other mushrooms – oysters, baby bella, but shiitake is a must.
Small shallot or 1 leak
Heavy cream – 1/2 cup
White wine 1/4 cup
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
2 tbsp of light olive oil + 2 tbsp butter
Directions
Heat your pan with 2 tbsp of light olive oil. Start with frying some mild onions (shallot or leaks) till golden brown
Add your dry clean mushrooms to the pan and let them get golden brown, only after they get that nice crust keep stirring them till they are almost fully cooked.
Add butter, stir and fry mushrooms for another minute
Season with salt and pepper
Deglaze the pan with white wine, reduce the heat and cook for about 5-7 minutes
Add the cream, bring to a boil, cook for about 2 minutes
Check for seasoning, add some nutmeg
Serve hot or warm
Walnut Rugelach
These tender cookies are not just a delicious dessert, but can be a great breakfast as they are packed with protein and not loaded with sugar.
Ingredients:
For the filling:
Walnuts 250 gr
Sugar 90 gr 1/3 cup
1 Egg white
Vanilla extract 1 tsp
Optional: lemon zest, pinch of cardamon.
For the pastry:
All purpose flour 220 gr (1 +3/4 of a cup)
Butter 100 gr (cold)
Sour cream 100 gr (1/2 cup)
1 Egg yolk
Baking powder 5 gr (1 tsp)
Pinch of salt
Directions
Finely chop (grind) walnuts in the food processor. You can do it with roller pin, place walnuts in plastic bag, but to small crumbles.
Add sugar, egg white, vanilla extract and mix till everything is well incorporated.
You can also add lemon zest, cardamon, even pinch of chipotle to make it very fragrant
For the dough in a big bowl put your flour, pinch of salt, and pieces of cold butter
Using pastry cutter or a knife cut the butter mixing it evenly with flour till butter is a pea size
Add baking powder, egg yolk, sour cream
Mix dough with your hands, make a roll and put it in the fridge for about an hour
Divide the pastry roll into 3 even parts, do the same with the filling
Take 1 small roll, dust working surface with some flour and roll it to about 12 inch circle sheet
Cut the circle into 8 sectors, with your hands split your 1/3 of filling into 8 parts
Place the filling to the wide end of each sector and make small rolls
Place rolls onto baking sheet covered with parchment paper
Repeat with 2 other parts of dough and filling (you will have 24 crescents)
Put into preheated to 375 °F oven for 35-40 minutes
