Easy Recipies

Tataki Tuna

January 6, 20241 min read AlwaysTasty

I never thought it’s so easy to prepare! Just needs sushi grade log of tuna, sesame seeds, black pepper and optional ginger. Pat dry your

Roasted Turkey Breast

Great substitute for store bought cold cuts, but much better. No additives, preservatives – just pure delicious.

Ingredients:

Turkey breast (bone and skin removed)
Marinade
Spice Mixture
Butter – 2 tbsp

For marinade:

Water – ~1.5 liter/32 ounces, maybe a little more, just to cover turkey breast
Juice of half lemon + optional orange or grapefruit juice
Garlic – 3-4 cloves (smashed)
Ginger – 1 inch piece, sliced
Salt – 1/4 cup
Sugar – 1 tbsp
Apple cider vinegar – 1/4 cup

For spice mixture:

Salt – 1/2 tsp
Black pepper – 1/4 tsp
White pepper – 1/4 tsp
Paprika – 1 tsp
Cayenne – 1/4 tsp
Cinnamon – 1/4 tsp
Cumin – 1tsp
Dry garlic – 1tsp

Directions:

Pour water into a deep pan
Add salt, sugar, vinegar, make sure salt and sugar dissolves
Place turkey breast into a pan
Squeeze lemon juice into the marinade, add garlic and ginger
Let it marinade in the fridge for several hours or overnight
Mix your spices
When it’s marinated (after several hours or overnight) – pat dry turkey breast
Place on a rack over deep baking sheet
Massage turkey breast with the spice mixture
Pour 3-4 cups of hot water into the baking sheet, so the turkey breast remains moist, but it shouldn’t touch it.
Add couple of bay leaves and all spice to the hot water
Preheat your oven to 275-300 °F
Place baking sheet into oven and roast 2-2.5 hours
After an hour baste the breast with melted butter to develop stronger crust
Add more hot water in case it evaporated.
Repeat basting couple more times till fully cooked
Let it cool down
Serve cold or room temperature

Place all marinade ingredients into a pan

breakfast Easy Latest Recipies

Oatmeal Is Not Punishment

December 27, 2023May 8, 20241 min read AlwaysTasty

And it doesn’t have to be boring. Here is how I make pure oatmeal muffin with no flour, no eggs – just rolls of oats

Family Recipes Recipies Uncategorized

Highly recommended

December 8, 20231 min read AlwaysTasty

These are traditional Russian mini cheese cakes (syrniki) with mashed roasted pumpkin. The tradition says: take 1/2 of ricotta cheese (home made tvorog), 1 egg,

Pumpkin Gnocchi

Ingredients:

Roasted butternut squash puree – 2-3 tbsp
Farmer cheese (tvorog) – 1.2 lbs
1 egg (can be 2 if small)
Flour – 4 tbsp
Salt 1/3 tsp
Butter – 2 tbsp for garnish + sage leaves

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
Melt butter in a small pan, add couple of sage leaves (or dry sage), pour over gnocchi
Serve hot

Sourdough Olive bread

No special equipment or technique required, just your hands and some planning ahead. To have a freshly baked loaf on Saturday morning you need to start the process Thursday evening by waking up your starter. Then on Friday you mix, fold, pre-shape and shape. Sounds like many verbs, but each action takes under 5 minutes, fermentation and proofing takes time. But the result is so rewarding!

Ingredients:

Active leaven – 100 gr
Room temperature water – 350 gr
All purpose flour 450 gr
Whole wheat sprouted (spelt) flour – 50 gr
Chopped olives (2-3 tbsp)
Salt – 10 gr

Directions:

Mix 20 gr cold starter with 50 gr water and 50 gr all purpose flour into a jar (or tall container)
Leave on a counter top overnight (10-12 hours at least or till it raises 2.5-3 times in volume)
In a bowl mix your active leaven with room temperature water
Add flour, salt, chopped olives
Mix everything with spatula just to incorporate
Cover with plastic wrap and leave in warm place for 30-40 minutes

Fold the dough 4 times every 30-40 minutes (depending on how warm is your house). You should feel the dough elasticity increase with every folding.

Leave it on the counter top for the bulk fermentation for a couple of hours.
After 2 hours (the dough should raise about 40-50%) put the dough onto working surface lightly dusted with flour.
Using the scraper pre-shape the dough onto a ball by pulling a dough from each side and flipping each side into the center (letter fold) Leave your ball sim side down to rest for 15-20 minutes

Prepare your proofing bowl or basket, it can be any bowl lined with tea towel sprinkled with flour (rice flour is best for that, but any flour will work).
Make a final shaping into a boule or batard and put the dough inside your vessel seam side up.

Leave on the counter top to proof for another 2-3 hours till your dough rises about 20-30%
Put it in the fridge overnight for cold fermentation.
The next morning place your heavy pan (dutch oven works best) into the oven and heat it for about 20-30 minutes to 500° F
When the oven is pre-heated pull your dough from the fridge, flip it over the piece of good parchment paper.
Using very sharp knife make a cut in the dough so it can raise
Sprinkle with some herbs or spices of your choice (optional), I use bread dip blend
Using gloves very carefully remove hot pan from the oven, open the lid. Quickly place your dough inside, cover the lid and put the pan back into the oven.
Bake on 500° F for 20 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for another 20 min (or till your bread is golden brown)
Remove the bread from the pan and put on the rack to cool. Let it coll completely before cutting.

Life style Recipies

Legendary Russian Rye bread – Borodinsky

November 9, 2023November 22, 20231 min read AlwaysTasty

Very famous ballerina Maya Plisetskaya once said “People didn’t invent anything better than bread and butter”. I am sure this is the bread she meant

Legendary Rye Bread (Borodinsky)

First thing first: you will absolutely need this product – fermented rye malt. It is this powder that adds that sweet & sour almost umami flavor that distinguishes this bread from any other. I couldn’t find it on Amazon, but it is available on Etsy and ebay from several vendors. The delivery can be long (2-3 weeks), it may come from Kazakhstan or some other distant place.

Here is the picture:

The rest of the ingredients are all wildly available:

For Leaven(for the night):

starter from the fridge – 70gr
room temperature water – 70 gr
rye flour – 70gr

For Brewing (for the night):

Rye flour – 80 gr
fermented malted rye – 25 gr
ground coriander – 6 gr (1 1/2 tsp)
boiling water – 250 gr

For Initial Dough:

all leaven
all brewing
rye flour – 170 gr
room temperature water – 50 gr
yeast – 0.5 gr (optional)

For Final Dough:

Molasses – 20 gr
Room temperature water – 80 gr
Sugar – 30 gr
Salt – 10 gr
Rye flour – 100 gr
Whole wheat flour – 75 gr
Coriander seeds (whole and/or crushed)

Directions:

The bread is done in 4 main stages:

1st stage – leaven:
- Mix your starter with room temperature water, the add rye flour, cover and leave overnight on the counter
2nd stage – brewing:
- Mix well brewing dry ingredients
- Add boiling water, mix well so everything is incorporated
- Place in 60° C or 140° F oven ( or on some heating pad) for 2 hours. Leave it in the oven after turning it off overnight

3rd stage – initial dough:
- In a big bowl combine leaven, brewing , flour and water. Add yeast if you want the dough to rise faster, I skip it.
- Cover with plastic wrap and put in a warm place (28° C or 82° F) for an 3-4 hours
4th stage – final dough:
- mix well water, molasses, salt, sugar till salt and sugar dissolve
- Add your wet ingredients to the dough
- Add both types of flour and mix the dough well with spoon or wooden spatula
- Cover with plastic and let it raise for another hour

Prepare the baking form by covering it with the parchment paper
Using wet hands extract the dough from the bowl, shape it a little and place into the baking form.
Press the dough into all corners of the form with your wet hands
Sprinkle with coriander seeds and press them a little
Leave it to raise for an 1-2 hours
You can bake it after raising or put in the fridge overnight.
Preheat your oven to 250°C or 500° F
Bake for 10 min then reduce temperature to 200° C or 450° F and bake for another 55-60 min

Lekach – Honey Cake

This traditional Rosh ha-Shana dessert was one of my mom’s favorite. She never wrote down the recipe, and every store bought honey cake I tried in Israel was so unimpressive – they were too moist, or too sweet or too heavy, mostly all of the above. As I was leaving Israel my dear friend wrote me his mom’s recipe which I implemented several years later and the result was the closest one or even better than my mom baked (honestly by then I didn’t remember what it was, but I am sure my mom would approve) – it was soft, light, airy, fragrant, full of but not overloaded with walnuts, melting in your mouth. Absolutely fantastic with coffee, and worth documenting. So here it is … I will still keep that small piece of paper with my friend’s handwriting as long as I live.