Not to be confused with a dressing. Vineigrette is a name of Russian salad based on boiled or baked vegetables.
The ingredients are all simple and very available with the exception of Russian style sauerkraut (you find in any Russian store), but it can be replaced with the regular or totally skip, just put more pickles. The unique taste is again a combination of sweet (beets, potato, carrots, peas) and salty or marinated pickles. The proportions are super flexible too – put more beets if you like it sweeter, add pickles if you want more crunch and brine.
Can be served as a side dish, appetizer, packed for picnic or lunch. Kept in a fridge for 2-3 days and gets even better. And it’s good for you!
Ingredients:
Boiled, better baked beets – 2-3 medium
Boiled Yukon gold or red potatoes – 3 medium
Boiled carrots – 3medium
Shallot – 1 small
Pickles – 3-4
Sweet peas – 1 can or 1 cup of frozen blanched
Sauerkraut (better be Russian) – 1 cup
Directions:
Finely chop (to a pea size) potatoes, beets, carrots, pickles and shallot. The best beets are baked, all the juices remain inside and pealing is easy. Just wrap each one in a foil and put in your oven when you use it. You can keep them baked in a fridge for several days before you use them. Pea size chopping may sound intimidating, but it’s super easy, everything is cooked and soft.
Blanch frozen sweet peas in a boiling water for about a minute so it keeps the bright color or add canned peas.
Slightly chop sauerkraut (if you have it).
Add salt and pepper, dress with olive oil.
Serve cold or room temperature.
Delicious cookies that melt in your mouth and they are good for you!
They are so easy and so delicious! And flexible – you can use any nuts or seeds you like or have, any dry fruits or berries.
The carb content can probably be reduced even further by substituting part of the flour with the whole wheat flour, maybe use more oats, but I didn’t try that. I like them the way they are too much.
Dried berries (raisins, cranberries, tart cherries) – 1/2 cup
Directions:
Put all the ingredients except nuts and dried berries into a bowl and mix them with a spoon first.
When it’s too hard to use a spoon, use your hands.
Add nuts and berries, combine the batter using your hands into a ball.
The dough will be a little sticky.
Make a log, wrap with a plastic wrap and freeze it, just to make it easier to divide a dough into cookies.
Preheat your oven to 350 °F
Using sharp knife, slice frozen dough into 1/4 inch slices and put on a baking sheet covered with the parchment paper.
Bake for about 20-30 minutes or until golden brown (depends on your oven).
Buckwheat
Buy roasted, but not too dark, I usually buy 2 cups packages that are sold in a Russian store, but you can find it in every health store now.
Ingredients:
Roasted buckwheat – 2 cups
Olive oil – 1 tbsp (optional)
Boiling water – 3 cups
Salt – 1 tbsp
Instructions:
Rinse and drain the grains
Place the grain into a heavy pan on a medium high
Add salt and olive oil (if you choose it)
Roast (dry) the grain, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes
Add boiling water, reduce the heat to very low, cover with a lid and let it sit for about 20-25 minutes.
Turn the heat off and let it rest for 5 -10 minutes.
The grain will absorb all the water and will be fully cooked.
If you want to add roasted vegetables you can do it by starting with roasting the vegetables, then adding the grains, roasting it all together, then pouring boiling water.
Or you can have the kasha ready and mix it with your choice of vegetables, source or gravy.
Beetslaw
Another super easy, refreshing and unusual salad. With minimum ingredients and effort you can have a nice side dish or healthy lunch. It will look great on your dinner table or party buffet.
Ingredients:
Boiled or baked beets – 2 medium or 3 small
Granny Smith apple, pealed – less than a whole one, about 3/4
Shallot or small red onion – 1
Roasted pine nuts – 2 tbsp
Dressing:
freshly squeezed lemon juice – 1/2 of a lemon
olive oil2 tbsp
salt
pepper
Directions:
Finely slice cooked beets, apple and onion
Add roasted pine nuts
Pour the dressing over the salad and stir to combine
Roasted Mushrooms and Egg Salad
This salad is a meal in itself – very rich, creamy and satisfying. Easy to pack, delicious to eat.
Ingredients:
Yellow onion – 1 medium
Shitake mushrooms – 8 ounces
Hard boiled eggs – 2
Manchego cheese 3/4 cup
Dressing:
You can use regular Mayonnaise or whisk together:
Olive oil – 3 tbsp
Mustard – 1 tsp o
Directions:
Slice onion thinly
Fry the onion in the light olive oil on medium heat for about 5-7 min or until golden brown, remove to a bowl
In the same skillet fry mushrooms till golden brown, add to the bowl with the fried onions
Using hand grinder grind hard boiled eggs and the cheese, add to fried mushrooms and onions.
Add your dressing, season with salt and pepper, mix to combine.
Olivier salad
Ingredients:
Chicken breasts 2 pieces
Boiled (or baked) potatoes – 4 medium size
Boiled (or baked) carrots – 4 small or medium
Hard boiled eggs – 3 large
Pickles – 5 medium size (the recipe is here, these are the best! )
Canned sweet peas (1 can) or frozen (3/4 of a cup) peas (blanched and cooled), adds more color to the salad
Some variations may include small apple and/or onion
Salt 1 tsp
Pepper 1/2 tsp
Dressing:
Mayonnaise 3 tbsp
Olive oil 3 tbsp
Mustard 1 tsp
Directions:
Finely(!) chop all the ingredients, it has to be really small cubes 1/4 inch, not exactly pea size, but close. It is important to have all the ingredients the same size, that’s part of what makes it so smooth. And probably the reason people did it on some occasions – chopping requires some time. But you can watch a movie or listen to a book chopping.
If you use canned peas – remove the water.
Season with salt and pepper, adjust to the taste
Add the dressing so that each little cube is lightly coated.
Taste and adjust salt and pepper if needed
Gefilte Fish
Ingredients:
2-3 medium size fish (I used bronzini and white seabass, total weight was about 3 pounds)
5-6 medium size yellow onions ( the written proportions are – 400 gram onions per 1 kilogram of fish)
6 medium size carrots
1 small beet, peeled
5 slices of dried in the oven white bread (not really for the Passover, but Matzah flour can be used)
10 walnuts, about 2 tbsp
3 eggs
Start with planning. This dish does require a lot of work, but if planned well – you can make it in stages spending some time within couple of days and then it’s not so overwhelming.
But first thing first – buy a fish. It should be good fresh scaled fish, always better to have a combination of 2 different kinds of fish. In Russia we used carp and pike, which is hard to find in the US and you don’t really want to use them if it’s found. Carp is not a good fish here. I found bronzini’s and white sea bass, I think snapper or trout will work too. The fish should be medium size, not too big, no bigger than a foot long. Makes it harder to process, but usually the smaller the tastier. You should ask to scale the fish but keep the heads and tails on, it is important!
Step1. Separate fish flesh from the skin and bones. All you need is a good knife and a lot of patience. This is the most laborious and least pleasant part.
Cut heads and tails off, put them into a separate bowl and keep in the fridge. You have to extract the eyes if you didn’t specifically ask to do it in the store.
Cut each fish into portion size pieces, keeping your knife along the skin – separate flesh from skins, trying to preserve those skins (you will need them later for the presentation); separate the flesh from skeleton; preserve biggest bones;
Step 2. Prepare vegetables.
Peel onion, carrots and beet,
Chop onions,
Grind carrots and beet. Preserve good dried onion peels!
Pour about 1/3 cup of light olive oil into a heavy pan, add all your vegetable, season them with salt and pepper (start with 1 tbsp) and start frying them.
Once the vegetables are almost cooked through and onions are golden brown – start adding some water into the pan (start with 1/2 cup of water) switching to brazing and braze for about 15-20 min.
You should have them fully cooked, check for seasoning, turn the heat off and let them cool
Step 3. Stuffing
Have the flesh of the fish, more than half of your cooked vegetables mixture, slices of dried white bread and walnuts ready for grinding.
Grind all together using some electrical grinder, maybe you can use food processor, but I never tried. It should be ground, not pasted.
Add eggs, salt, pepper, and combine. I do it with my hands, you can use spoon or maybe even a whisk, it’s very soft mixture.
Step 4. Prepare your pan.
Take the pan with the vegetables, place several onion peels in the very bottom, under the cooked vegetable mixture. Put heads and tails onto the peels. Pour about 2 cups of water and turn on the heat.
Step 5. Stuff the fish or just make the cottlets.
Form portion size pieces or cottletes, wrapping skin around each piece. Each piece should be fried a little on both sides.
Pour a table spoon of light olive oil into the skillet , add table spoon of butter and start frying cottletes in batches, about 2-3 minutes on each side. You may need to add some more oil and butter as you go.
Once a cotlette has that golden crust – load it into the pan with heads, tails and vegetables. You normally have more “stuffing” than skins.
Once all cottletes are fried and loaded into the pan, make sure it’s not overloaded, it should be barely covered with sauce. Put the lid on, bring to a boil, reduce heat to the very minimal.
Check sauce for spices, add several bay leaves, black pepper corns and ground pepper. Let it cook slowly for at least 2 and a half hours with the lid on. If you see there is too much sauce bubbling over the lid – slightly open the lid and allow it evaporate.
Let the fish completely cool down and put into fridge.
Serve cold with horseradish as a condiment, it’s classic!
Radish, cucumbers and sour cream salad
Try this bright and crunchy salad. 5 minutes preparation time – and you have very refreshing side dish for your chicken or fish, or lunch with a piece of bread.
Ingredients:
Radishes 5-6
cucumbers – 2-3
green onions 2-3
dill
parsley
sour cream
Directions:
Finely chop radishes, place them into a bowl, add some salt and stir. This will allow some juice to come out of radishes
Chop the rest of the ingredients
Mix all together
Add a little more salt, pepper, dress with sour cream
Beet and walnuts salad
This is one of the most simple beet salads. Of course the beets have to be cooked first.
You can boil it, but the best way is baking. Just wash it, wrap in a foil like you do with potato and put it in your oven (I usually place a couple there when I bake or cook something else). You can check the readiness by poking through the foil with a toothpick, should feel soft. When it’s baked all the juices remain inside the root and the sweetness is concentrated. If you don’t use them right away you can keep them in a fridge for several days. And the peeling is very easy.
Ingredients:
Peeled baked beets – 2 medium
Roasted walnuts – 2-3 tbsp
Garlic – 2-3cloves
Directions:
Peel the beets and grind using hand grinder (very easy),
Chop walnuts or even break them with your hands
Finely chop or grind garlic
Season with salt and pepper
Dress with several drops of olive oil and or 1 tsp of mayonnaise
Decorate or garnish with some pickles or capers
2 Ingredients Chicken Salad
Chicken Salad
Ingredients:
roasted chicken – 2 medium chicken breasts, (can be either white or dark meat)
celery – 2 stalks
The dressing can be just plain mayonnaise, but it is somewhat heavy for me, so I take olive oil, add French mustard, mix it together to emulsify and add a little bit of mayonnaise just for the color.
Dressing:
olive oil – 1/4 cup
French mustard – 1tbsp
mayonnaise – 1 tsp
Sprinkle with red pepper flakes.
The celery adds crunch and tastes like pickle in this salad. And as always with chicken salads – you can serve it on a plate, make a sandwich with it, put it in a container and take to work etc. The easiest possible way to utilize your roasted chicken leftovers!
