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Wonder Bread

What makes this bread wonderful is a combination of flours – bread, spelt, rye and amaranth. Makes the crumb very soft and silky and crust – thin and delicious. And VERY HEALTHY!

Ingredients:

  • 100 gr of active starter
  • Water (room temperature) – 350 gr
  • Bread flour – 350 gr
  • Whole wheat or spelt flour – 50 gr
  • Rye flour – 20 gr
  • Amaranth – 30 gr
  • Salt – 10 gr
  • Optional: seed mix (flax, sunflower, pumpkin) – 60 – 80 gr or finely chopped olives

Directions (mostly the same as here https://stellarkitchen.net/?page_id=747):

  • Pour water into a big bowl
  • Add your active starter, mix well
  • Add flour, salt and garnish (seeds or olives)
  • Mix well, cover and put in a warm place ~75 °F
  • Repeat 4 foldings every 30-45 minutes (using the technique shown here: https://stellarkitchen.net/?page_id=747).
  • Let your dough sit for 3-4 hours, it should raise ~ 70%.
  • Form the bread and place to the raising basket or towel covered form ( sprinkled with flour).
  • Let it proof for another 2-3 hours, depending to your room temperature, it should raise about 20-25%.
  • Put the formed bread into the fridge for cold fermentation overnight.
  • Bake in preheated to 500 °F oven in dutch oven or some over bread vessel with lid for 20 minutes
  • Remove lid, reduce temperature to 450 °F and bake another 20-25 minutes till you see golden crust.
  • Remove, cool completely and enjoy
Active starter, bread, spelt, amaranth flours
Mix everything, add seeds
Initial dough
After the 1st folding
2nd foulding
3rd folding
4th folding
View from aside
In the basket
After proofing
In the dutch oven

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

Sauerkraut Russian style

It is one of Russian specialties, a unique combination of tasty and healthy food, loaded with vitamins C and K, iron and fiber and contains probiotics. It is called sour cabbage, and with all due respect to all things German is much better than pale mushy sausage condiment. It makes a great side for anything – chicken, fish, steak or ribs. It can even be a salad of its own, or mixed with some sliced shallots and topped with olive oil. One of my favorite meals when I was a child was mashed potatoes mixed with sour cabbage.

The cabbage should be fermented in its own juice, therefore it has to be green cabbage usually harvested late in fall. Another traditional ingredient is carrots, it contributes more to the color, not so much to flavor. The only important proportion to remember – 30 grams of salt per kilogram of cabbage. The rest is optional

Ingredients:

  • Cabbage 1 kg (2 lbs)
  • 2 medium carrots
  • Kosher salt 30 gr
  • 2 garlic gloves (optional)
  • Caraway seeds 1 tsp (optional)

Directions:

  • Cut the cabbage into 4 big parts, remove the core
  • Make sure you weight what will be chopped, the ratio of cabbage to salt is important
  • Shred the carrots
  • Chop the cabbage into thin strings, the way you do for the coleslaw
  • Add salt, caraway seeds, thinly sliced garlic and several red pepper flakes
  • Place everything into a big bowl
  • Mix everything with your clean hands, don’t squeeze, just mix to evenly distribute salt, carrots and spices. It is actually tasty right away, somewhat like oversalted coleslaw
  • You will see that the cabbage starts extracting the juice when salt touches it.
  • Transfer the mix into a glass jar pressing it tight with a spoon, potato masher or just your fist.
  • Cover the lid
  • Let it sit on the counter top for 3 days, check daily, open the lid and let some extra gas to evaporate, but still pressing it is submerged into the juice.
  • It should be ready in 3-4 days, just taste it – it won’t taste like a coleslaw anymore. It will taste like sour cabbage.
  • Needs to be refregarated once ready

Abundance of Cilantro!

It’s not just a way to preserve such fragrant and delicate herb but make a great condiment of your own.

Here is one idea – cilantro pesto:

Ingredients:

  • Cilantro – about 1 cup (stems can be used too)
  • Garlic – 3-4 cloves
  • Red pepper flakes
  • Lime juice 2-3 tbsp
  • Olive oil – 3/4 of a cup
  • Pistachios – 1/4 cup
  • Salt -1/2 tsp
  • Pepper – 1/4 tsp
  • Optional – Manchego cheese

Directions:

  • Put all the ingredients into the food processor and pulse till it becomes a paste.
  • It can stay in the fridge for weeks, great with rice, pasta, fish, cracker or just slice of bread.

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