We just call it a toast without any country affiliation. And it’s not sweet, it’s savory. You make it with the same egg and milk
Category: Recipies
Cheese Gnocchi (lazy vareniki)
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
- Let the cool and dust with confection sugar
Home made Ricotta
The name is not very appetizing because store bought ricotta is awful, or inedible to say the least. What I make is called “tvorog” in
Sour Cherries Crepe Suzette
I am a huge lover of sour cherries. I wanted to recreate the classic Crepe Suzette with a cherry flavor, but couldn’t find a cherry
Cabbage is not only for coleslaw
Cabbage is one of very under appreciated vegetables. It can be absolutely anything – from salad to steak (yes – a cabbage steak), from condiment
Healthy snack
My favorite snack while cooking – kale chips. Just tear some kale leaves, sprinkle with olive oil, several drops of balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper. Add
Borsch – the staple of Russian cuisine.
The most common, popular and loved Russian soup. There is no classical recipe, almost every family has one of its own. Just three mandatory ingredients
My version of Borsch
I never really knew how my mom cooked borsch. I remember it was a very long process, she boiled whole beet roots with the broth, then shredded cooked beets for which they had to be cooled and then she put them back to the pot. By the time I needed to cook borsch my mother was sick in a hospital, so I asked neighbors and my mom’s friends. I collected and compiled all the advices they gave me, and after several trials developed the recipe of my own. What makes it different – I split the cooking process into two parts: broth (chicken, turkey, beef bone or just vegetable) to which cabbage and potatoes are added and beets/herbs/tomatoes mixture – the essence of borsch flavor, which joins the broth pot in the end. For this mixture I shred raw beets, put it into a separate pan, add a little amount of water, sprinkle it with lemon juice to preserve the color, and cook it with the lid on on medium high heat, so it takes no more than 10 minutes for the beets to be fully cooked. It simplifies the cooking process by a lot, and can be done ahead of time or in parallel and is very fast. There is a minus though – an extra pot to wash.
For 3.5 liters pot (8 servings)
Ingredients:
- Medium size beet root, if stems and leaves look good – use them too. In that case the root can be smaller
- Onion (for the broth)
- Parsnip
- Celery
- carrots 2 medium size (for the broth)
- Sweet pepper
- Potatoes – 2 medium
- Chili pepper – 1 small (optional)
- Big ripe tomato, or a cup of diced tomatoes
- Tomato paste – 1tbsp
- Cabbage – it should be about a cup when shredded
- Garlic – 3-4 cloves
- Bay leaf
- Parsley
Directions:
- Start cooking you broth with usual aromatics (onion carrots, celery), season with salt, pepper, add bay leaf. Cook on medium heat. Make sure you have enough room in the pot for the vegetables.
- When broth is ready and meat is cooked add shredded cabbage and diced potatoes. It will take about 10 minutes for the vegetables to cook.
- Season with salt, pepper, add bay leaf.
- In a separate pan place shredded beat with chopped stems and leaves, add 1/2 cup of water, sprinkle some lemon juice (about 2 tbsp) to preserve the color, cover with the lid and put on medium heat.
- It should take about 7-10 minutes for the shredded beets to cook through, but check in 5 minutes and add some water if needed.
- Add your other chopped aromatics: sweet pepper, chopped parsnip, chili pepper, parsley.
- Cook everything together for 2-3 minutes
- Add fresh and/or diced tomatoes, tomato paste or maybe even ketchup, bring the mixture to a boil and take off the heat.
- Add the mixture to the pot with broth when potato and cabbage are almost cooked, bring everything to a boil. Check that potatoes are cooked, check for seasoning, add salt/pepper if needed. It should be very fragrant, rich and slightly sour from tomatoes and cabbage.
- Turn off the heat, add pureed or smashed garlic, cover the lid, let your borsch rest and the all flavors mix.
