Back in the day and the place there was no dressing. There were just 2 options for vegetables salad accompaniment – sunflower oil and sour
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More Zucchini Pancakes
With carrots and onion
Add some carrots and red onions to your zucchini – it makes them chewy and colorful. The taste is the same as with Trader Joe’s “Nests”, but it’s fresh, never frozen and so much better!
Ingredients:
- 1 medium size zucchini
- 1 medium size carrot
- 1/4 – 1/3 red onion
- 2 eggs
- flour – 2 tbsp
- salt, pepper
Directions:
- Grind zucchini and carrot
- Thinly slice onion
- Add eggs, flour, salt, papper
- Mix everything to combine
- Heat a pan with 2 tbsp grape seeds oil
- Fry about 2 min on each side or till golden brown
- Serve warm or room temperature
With ricotta cheese:
- zucchini
- ricotta cheese or farmer cheese 1/2 lbs
- flour
- 2 eggs
Directions:
- Same all steps, then:
- Optional – separate yolks and whites
- Mix egg or just egg whites with your zucchini batter
- Fry them on 1 side, flip
- If you preserved the yolks – make a little indentation with a spoon and gently place egg yolk in the middle of a pancake.
Zucchini Flowers Tempura
Cut fresh “male” flowers, the ones with long stems. Don’t worry – very few of them can pollinate lots of female flowers, so you don’t put your zucchini harvest in danger.
Ingredients
- flour – 2 tbsp
- baking powder 1/4 tsp
- sparkling water – 1/3 cup
- grape seed oil -2-3 tbsp
Directions:
- Mix flour with the baking powder and start adding your sparkling water gradually stirring constantly to avoid lumps.
- Heat the oil in the pan, dip each flower and every sage leaf into the batter and put into the hot oil
- Fry about 2 min on each side till golden brown
- Sprinkle with salt
You can add some sage leaves to the bouquet, applying the same tempura treatment to them:
Zucchini Season 2.0
Up to my ears in zucchini of different colors, shapes, textures and sizes. New this year – this gorgeous round summer squash, with very sweet
Righteous salad, my new favorite.
Baked beets, goat cheese, caramelized pecans on the arugula foliage, sprinkled with olive oil and balsamic reduce. The herb of choice is cilantro. So simple,
Simple stuffed cabbage
First thing first – got to have a cabbage. The size doesn’t matter, but if it’s it medium or big – much easier to cut it in 4 pieces, remove the core, and keep just bigger leaves, the small ones is impossible to stuff so you can take them out and use for salad or something else. Put your whole small cabbage or leaves into a pot , add some cold water, 1 tbsp of salt and put over medium heat. Let it boil for just 5 min, fish it out and let it cool. The stuffing is
Ingredients:
- Medium size cabbage
- Ground beef/chicken/turkey – 1 lb
- 1 small onion
- 1 egg
- Rice – 3 tbsp
Directions:
Prepare the filling
- Fry finely chopped onion in a frying pan with 1 tbsp of vegetable oil
- Place ground beef, fried onions, rice and egg into a big bowl
- Add salt, pepper, rice, other herbs of your choice and/or red pepper flakes
- Mix all to combine using your hand or a big fork
Make the rolls
- Separate cooked cabbage leaves, place about 1 tbsp of filling on each leaf and wrap the rolls. You can also stuff some sweet peppers if you have an extra filling.
- Add about 1 cup of water (or use the water from boiling cabbage) into a big pot or dutch oven.
- Bring it to a boil, add 1 tbsp of salt, 1 tsp of pepper, a can of diced tomatoes (or some other tomato sauce and/or paste)
- Reduce heat to low, and place the cabbage rolls into a pot with the boiling sauce
- Simmer for about an hour
- Taste the sauce for salt and adjust to your taste.
- Serve hot, garnish with parsley/cilantro/chives
My family strudel
It’s all about pastry, the filling can vary: a combination of jam, berries, nuts, dry fruits, chocolates, poppy seeds or maybe even savory. But the pastry I remember my mom was making was magical, she was rolling it out to the whole width of the kitchen table – paper thin, stretchy, but very delicate. It was almost invisible inside wrapping the layers of the filling. But that’s what makes it melt in your mouth. Another good news is – this strudel can last for several days in room temperature.
For the pastry Ingredients:
- 200 gr cold butter
- 200 gr sour cream
- 2.5 cups app purpose flour
- 1 egg
- pinch of salt
Directions:
- Place cold butter and flour into the big bowl
- Cut it with pastry cutter or do it in the food processor till butter is pea size
- Add sour cream, pinch of salt, 1 egg
- Mix into a ball using your hands for about 2-3 minutes
- Divide into 2 equal parts, wrap with the plastic wrap and put into the fridge for a couple of hours at least (you can keep it there for a week).
- Take 1 ball, sprinkle working surface with some flour and start rolling trying to make it into a rectangular like shape (15-16” wide), it should be super thin, but it’s not hard, the pastry is very stretchy.
- Brush the pastry with melted butter or neutral olive oil (not extra virgin, it shouldn’t have a strong smell). Sprinkle with sugar/cinnamon/cacao mixture or you can skip this step
- Put the filling in a single row, or you can spread it wider to have several layers of party inside.
- Roll the pastry around the filling forming a log.
- Put strudel on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper, brush with beaten egg.
- Make small incisions (about an inch from each other) on your strudel so it’s easier to cut after it’s baked
- Place into preheated to 375 °F and bake for 40-45 min or till golden brown, cool completely
Tart cherries filling (the proportions are very flexible):
- Tart cherry jam without syrup – 2 cup
- Walnuts – 1 cup
- Lemon zest – 1 tbsp
- If the jam is too sweet – lemon juice 2 tbsp
- To make the filling more condensed add more nuts or dried cherries or even crashed cookies.
Fantastic yet homey Lemon Pie
It is a serious upgrade of traditional Russian lemon pie (Limonnik). The very rare case when reducing the calories improves the flavor. The calories reduction comes from substituting of the 3rd of the flour with the almond flour (will try to substitute half next time) and as always I put half of the sugar than in the original recipe (the amounts here are post-reduction). It’s still sweet, but much crumblier and interesting, also ginger makes it very fragrant. Hope you bake it soon, it will be great with your cup of tea or coffee.
Ingredients:
for the dough:
- 200 gr (1+2/3 stick) of butter
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 cups regular all purpose flour
- 1 cup almond flour
- 2 tbsp sour cream
- 1 egg
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
for the filling:
- 1 big or 1+1/2 medium lemons ( I took 2 small mayer lemons)
- 2/3 cup of sugar
- small (1 inch size) piece of ginger
Directions:
- In a big bowl place cold butter, flour (all purpose and almond), sugar, salt.
- Cut the butter with pastry cutter (or on a food processor) till butter is pea size
- Add sour cream, egg, continue mixing with a steady spoon
- Switch to hands and kneed the dough till you make it to a ball. Almond flour makes it a little harder to bring together. If it’s too crumbly add 1-2 tbsp of cold water. Or delegate the process to the food processor.
- Divide the dough into 2 unequal part (70/30).
- The smaller part goes to freezer, the bigger one – to a fridge for about an hour
Make a filling by:
- Zest the lemon
- Grind the lemons using a box grater or food processor
- Grind piece of ginger
- Add sugar and mix all together
- Remove lemon seeds from the filling
Bake the pie:
- Cover baking form with the parchment paper
- Take the bigger part of the the dough and using your palms spread it evenly to form a bottom later of the pie with small walls
- Spread the filling over the bottom layer
- Take the smaller part of the dough from the freezer and grind it over the filling evenly, it should be easy.
- Place into preheated to 375 °F oven and bake for about 45-50 min or until golden brown
- 30 min into baking sprinkle the pie with sliced almonds (optional)
- Sprinkle the pie with powdered sugar when it’s room temperature
Stellar Kiss Cake
It has been a royalty of a cake in my family, my mom baked in only on very special occasion – our birthdays or the New Year. It is super rich, no low calories here, but it’s not the richness that makes it exceptional, the flavors are overwhelming. Soft merengue loaded with walnuts between 2 sponge like layers, every layer saturated with icing (we call it cream in Russian). It was very labor intensive at the times when there were no hand mixers, now it just requires some planning and enthusiasm. But it is totally worth it.
Ingredients:
- Butter 300 gr
- Granulated sugar 1/2 cup + 1/2cup
- Confection sugar (granulated sugar can be used instead) – 1 cup
- Sour cream 3/4 cup
- Baking soda 1/2 tsp
- Large eggs 3 + 2
- Flour 1.5 cup + 1 tbsp
- Milk 1.5 cup
- Chopped walnuts – 1 cup
Directions:
The bottom and the top layers:
- 150 gr room temperature butter cream with 1/2 cup of sugar using whisk or a hand mixer.
- Add 3 egg yolks, continue whipping
- Mix soda with sour cream
- Add to the butter and yolks mixture, combine and whisk together
- Gradually add flour till fully incorporated, you can use hand mixer all the way just reduce the speed
- Divide the batter in half place each part into a greased with butter or neutral vegetable oil baking sheet
- Place into preheated to 375 F oven and bake about 25-30 min or until golden brown
For the icing:
- In a saucepan mix 2 egg yolks with 1/2 cup of sugar
- Add 1 tbsp flour, mix to combine
- gradually add 1.5 cup of milk
- Add 150 gr of butter
- Put a pan on a low heat
- Bring a boil stirring constantly till the cream thickens a little
For the middle layer:
- Add a pinch cream of tartar to the egg whites (5 egg whites)
- Beat the whites in a stand mixer or with hand mixer in a big bowl
- Gradually add confection sugar (granulated will work too) while beating
- Beat for another 2-3 minutes till the mixture is glossy
- Carefully fold in chopped walnuts
- Bake in 325 F oven for 35-40 min
- Leave in in the oven for about 30 min after turning the oven off
- Assemble the cake – put one of the sponge layers to the platter, spread the icing, then carefully put the merengue layer, spread the icing, do the same with the top layer.
- Decorate with ground chocolate.
- It has to stay in the room temperature for several hours or overnight for the icing to soak
