Prunes Topped with Cream

I'm a bad, bad blogger. I have so many cool things to post about, but I don't ever seem to have enough time. But tonight I made this easy dessert that was so fast, I figured that writing a blog post about it would be fast, too. So basically, there was no excuse not to!

This is a Russian dessert that I first had at one of the several New Year's parties I attended in Ukraine. However, I find it remarkable that this could just as easily be French, as it features two French favorites: prunes and crème fraîche. That's basically like sour cream, but a little bit more mild.

I think this dessert is also fairly healthy, but beware that I find it really hard to stop at just one piece!

Ingredients:
12 prunes
12 walnut halves
~1/4 c crème fraîche (substitute full-fat sour cream)
1 T of sugar (can add more or less to taste)

Method:
Mix the cream with the sugar really well. If it's too sour, add a little more sugar. It shouldn't be super sweet though, it's going to balance the sweetness of the prunes. If your prunes are already pitted (stoned? Sounds weird.) then you're more than halfway finished. If they're not, take the stones out. Make a slice down the prune and just wiggle it out until it gives up. Tuck a walnut half inside each prune, and arrange them on a plate. Top them evenly with the cream and sugar mixture. Done!

Notes and Serving Suggestions: This recipe is so fast, especially if your prunes are ready. It is easily expanded as well, for a party or something. If you do this for a party, maybe poke a toothpick in them. They're really great with tea! I think of this as a dessert, but I think it would also be a cool hors d'oeuvre or tapas style food item.

Vinagret

The main part of today's lunch is pictured here: pelmeni (Siberian meat dumplings) and vinagret. Vinagret and olivier are what I think of as the "Big Two" of Russian salads. Both are extremely classic, everyone knows them, and you probably won't go to a Russian party or holiday celebration where they aren't present.

Even though everyone knows them, of course everyone has their own way of preparation. And of course, everyone is surprised to find out when someone else makes one of these salads differently, as they are "classics" for which the preparation is set in stone. ;-)

Here is how I've made it, which I believe is a pretty standard preparation. At least, my boyfriend proclaimed that it was "a real one."

Ingredients:
1 medium to large beet
1 large potato, boiled and peeled
1 large dill pickle (like this), or 2-3 smaller sized (baby dills)
1/2 a medium apple
1.5 c kvashennaya kapusta (or substitute drained sauerkraut)
1.5 c canned or jarred peas (you could use cooked frozen ones, but for some reason I've always liked the taste of canned peas)
A couple of tablespoons of oil (we use a mix of sunflower and olive, and it's tasty)

Method:
Boil the potato and the beet. Peel them. I usually boil first and then peel. It's easy, and the vegetables retain more nutrients and taste. (Experimentally verified!) It's best to do this in advance, if they are cooled off they are easier to chop into nice little cubes.

Everything except the cabbage and peas will be chopped into smallish cubes (in the neighborhood of .25"x.25" to .5"x.5"). Start with the beet and potato. Add them to a salad bowl. Salt just a little bit. You'll be adding other salty things (pickle, cabbage) so don't add too much, but the beet and potato should get a little salt of their own. Chop the apple and pickle(s) into small cubes. Drain the peas. Add these things to the salad. Now add the cabbage (or sauerkraut). Drizzle the salad with the vegetable oil, and stir well.

Notes and Serving Suggestions: This is probably my favorite Russian salad. I love all the ingredients separately and together they're awesome. Plus, there's no meat or mayonnaise! (Well, some people add herring. And some people use mayonnaise. See the intro to this post.)

This is great as an appetizer or part of an appetizer course, or, as we had today, as sort of a side dish.

Shuba (Herring in a Fur Coat)

The finished salad with a portion removed

There are many versions of how to layer this salad, but this is the one my BF's mom uses. The salad is shaped into a dome or elongated dome on the plate. But if I ever get around to having a dinner party, I want to make mine look like a fish. These ingredients will make a small salad that fits on a dinner plate. That means 4 big servings or 8 small ones. (A small serving would be enough if you had other salads/appetizers, but a big one is good if this is the only salad.)

Ingredients:
135 g salted herring fillets (I used ones with 4% salt) (bones removed)
1/2 a large beet
1 medium sized potato
1 small onion
2 hard boiled eggs
1/4 c mayonnaise

Method:
Boil the beet and potato until they are soft. You can peel first and then boil, but I like to boil and then peel (I've heard it makes the vegetables tastier and more nutritious). Boil the eggs. Keeping everything separate: Grate the potato on the fine grater setting and the beet on the course one. Chop the onion extremely fine. Chop the herring into pretty fine pieces, too. When the eggs are done, peel and chop them (yes, you guessed it, into pretty fine pieces).

Now the layering. Spread a very thin layer of mayo on the plate, where you will make the salad. Cover that layer with all the herring. Cover the herring with all the onion. Next comes the potato, then the egg. Now, you should have sort of a dome made from these layers. Cover the whole dome with the rest of the mayo, and then put the beet all over the mayonnaise.

Me with the finished product:


Notes and Serving Suggestions: This salad seems to be an obligatory part of the new year's table. It often shows up
on festive occasions in general. Served usually as an appetizer or part of a large salad/appetizers course, but I find it filling enough to be the main part of a light dinner. Also, all that mayo isn't so bad distributed throughout the whole thing. :-)

Kotletiy

These are Russian hamburger patties/meatballs. They are simple, fast and extremely delicious, especially with mashed potatoes.

Ingredients:
1 small onion
50 g bread, stale is ok
Milk enough to soak the bread (~1/3 c)
About 400 g ground beef
Salt and pepper to taste
Oil for frying onions (just a little) and patties (a lot, enough for shallow frying)
Flour for dredging

Method:
Let the bread soak up all the milk. It should be soft enough to just be mush, like oatmeal consistency. While it's soaking, fry the onion, diced. I let the onion get a little brown. Mix the bread, onion and beef very well. You should be able to form balls, but they will be a little sticky. Dredge the balls in flour, shaking off excess. Fry in the oil a few minutes each side, till just almost cooked all the way through. Let them drain on a paper towel on a plate, they will finish cooking with carry-over heat.

Notes: I love these! The salting is tricky, I'd rather undersalt than oversalt. We've had a batch both ways, and well, you can always add, but you can't take away.

Seriving Suggestion: The best with mashed potatoes, also good with bread. They are tasty cold but I prefer them warm and juicy. I even chopped up leftovers and put it on top of a plain frozen pizza; that was delicious.

Spanikopita

This is one of my favorites, but I've never made it till now (it's currently in the oven). It's Greek spinach and feta pie.

Ingredients:
1 package of phyllo dough
1 small onion
1/4 c parsley (fresh)
1/2 c dill (fresh)
.25 kg of fresh spinach
100 g feta cheese
2 small eggs
Salt to taste
Copious amounts of olive oil

Method:
For the filling: boil the spinach, drain, squeeze and chop. Mix in a bowl with: the parsley, dill and onion (all chopped), feta cheese (crumbled), salt, and eggs (beaten).

Pie: My packet was divided into two equal sections separated by paper (one section for the top, one for the bottom). I think there were about 5 sheets in each layer. Grease a pan (I used a cookie sheet with some depth) with olive oil, and put down a layer of dough. Brush that layer with olive oil. Continue until you've done 5-6 layers. Now spread the filling over the dough. Continue the same dough laying procedure (5-6 sheets interspaced with olive oil). Bake at 180 C (350 F) till golden brown on top.

Notes: It certainly was easy to make, the hardest part being handling the dough (not that hard). However, I think I did something wrong. I don't know what. The pie was quite tasty, but did not look quite right. All the top layers were very separated. I know with phyllo they're supposed to be kind of separated, but we're talking completely. I think there are a few things I will do differently next time:

1) Let the pie sit a while before baking, so that the top layers have a chance to come together more ... maybe pat the thing down a little, too.
2) Much, much more spinach filling (it is only a thin layer, I would like it to be a thick one). This was limited today by what I had around.
3) I will take a tip from Baklava recipes I've read and cut into individual pieces before baking
4) Probably bake at a slightly lower temperature next time.

But it was good taste-wise. Even the flaking off phyllo is tasty; it got all goldeny and crunchy, it's like really thin crackers.

It occurred to me that the phyllo sheets are practically perfect for samosas. They're just like what my grandmother used to use.

Vegetable Pancakes

Just made these, but we'll have dinner later tonight. I ate one though. It was tasty, but for dinner I'm going to serve them with sour cream mixed with garlic and dill (that'll be really good)!

Ingredients:
1 small potato
1 small-medium zucchini
2 medium carrots
1 small onion
1/4 c flat leaf parsley
2 eggs
1/2 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
Salt and lots of ground black pepper to taste
Oil for frying

Method:
Grate all the vegetables except the onion. I only peeled the carrots. The onion slice very thinly, and the parsley chop. Add all to a mixing bowl. Crack in the eggs, well, add the rest of the ingredients (except oil) and mix very well. Warm oil to fry. Place dollops of the vegetable mix in the pan, smush them a little to make them more pancake shaped. I did 3 at a time in my pan. When done on one side (golden brown, a couple of minutes) flip and finish on the other side. Remove from pan and let drain on towels/paper towels.

Notes: I think a good step to do, which I was going to do and forgot, is to salt the vegetables, let them sit a few minutes, and then remove the liquid that comes out of them before you add the eggs and flour etc.

Serving Suggestion: Well, I intend to top them with sour cream or yogurt mixed with chopped dill and minced garlic. I'll probably either have them with leftover schi from yesterday, or some arugula. These could be a light meal or appetizer. Probably good for breakfast too.

Tasty (and very Swiss-French) White Pizza

This is my attempt at imitating a pizza I've seen on to go menus here. It's not anything like pizzas I've seen on American menus, but it's really good! The real Swiss-French version of course includes lardons, i.e. bacon. But I don't eat a lot of meat, and I especially try to avoid pork (paranoid about tapeworms).

Ingredients:
Ready made pizza dough or pizza shell
Creme fraiche or sour cream (about 1/4 c)
2 medium mushrooms, washed and sliced
1 medium potato, baked
3 cloves of garlic, diced
1 small onion, sliced thinly
1/2 c shredded Gruyere cheese

Method:
Preheat oven according to instructions for your dough/shell. You can certainly use home-made dough if you want. Place the dough on whatever you'll cook it on. Cover with the creme fraiche, leaving the amount of crust you prefer along the border. Sprinkle with the garlic. Sprinkle about 1/3 of the cheese on top. Arrange on the pizza: onion slices, mushroom slices and slices of the baked potato. Now sprinkle with the remaining Gruyere. Bake until crust is done, it will be enough time for the cheese to get melty and parts of the pizza to be golden brown.

Notes: I can't tell you how tasty this was! Of course you can add more garlic or mushrooms. That's never a bad thing. I also think it would be tasty with wild mushrooms, but I just used champignons de paris (standard button type).

Serving Suggestion: This was eaten for dinner, but I want to try it for a dinner party as an appetizer, cut into small squares.

Oven Dies at Inopportune Moment, or Tomatoes Stuffed with Eggs

Actually, "Gas runs out at inopportune moment" is more correct. So no oven or stove. And we don't have a microwave. All we have is an electric teapot and a toaster. AND it happens as we have two things in the oven: My Boyfriend's Roasted Chicken, and a new recipe I'm trying, Tomatoes Stuffed with Eggs (Russian site). We noticed just shortly after putting them in, so no food-safety issues, simply disappointing. We put the things in the fridge to prepare tomorrow. We were going to ask our colleague/friend/neighbor upstairs if we could use her oven, but she was out rock climbing. She lives a more exciting life than we do. :-D

I'll post the recipe for the tomatoes here, for any who don't speak Russian. I made a couple of small additions, but unfortunately I can't yet tell you how this recipe tastes! I'll update it tomorrow, after we buy a new gas bottle from the store. Of course, as of 7:45, every place selling these things was closed. That's France for you.

Tomatoes Stuffed with Eggs
original recipe at: http://gotovim-doma.ru/view.php?r=571-recept-IAichnitsa-v-pomidorakh

Ingredients:
X medium-large tomatoes (where X is the number of tomatoes you want to make)
X smallish eggs (I buy large eggs, so I just picked the smallest ones from the carton)
X tablespoons ricotta cheese
X tablespoons chopped onion
X raw eggs in their shells
Salt and pepper

It's the first ingredient list that looks like a high-school algebra lesson! Yay! As for the tomatoes, you don't need like beefsteak tomato large ones, just a normal round tomato will do quite nicely.

Method:
Wash tomatoes and slice a thin slice off the top. Take out the seeds and inner flesh of each tomato. Using a grapefruit spoon works great. Don't discard the insides, use them in soup, a salad, eat them, whatever. Place tomatoes in a shallow baking dish, sprinkle all over with salt and pepper. Place the chopped onion and ricotta cheese at the bottom of each tomato, then crack a whole egg into each tomato. You can salt and pepper again, and then pop into the oven for 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit). From the picture on the site, the yolks will be runny and the whites set.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: To serve, plate and sprinkle over with chopped green herbs of your choice. I'm going to do dill and parsley, but basil, green onion, maybe coriander and mint, would all work beautifully. About egg size: assuming you use normally sized tomatoes, if you make a lot of these it may be worth it to buy a carton of small/medium eggs. I used large, and there was a little spillage over the edge, but since I only made 4 and since it was the first time trying it, I didn't buy any special eggs. I think this would be a good addition to a dinner (main course, with pasta, rice, or a big salad in the summer) or a nice little appetizer. Or even a breakfast.

The Original Recipe: What a great site! I look forward to trying many more from there. I spent a good hour and a half today just reading recipes on that site. I counted it as "practicing Russian" and not "shamelessly ogling tasty food." The recipe is for two tomatoes, but I don't think cooking time will change much. It also notes that you can add the greens before baking, to make them softer, and that you can add things other than eggs (as I did). It suggests ham, sausage or fried mushrooms (yummy!).

Amy's Knock-Off

I made the filling tonight for another round of pirozhki. As I said before, I was going for a knock-off version of the Amy's Roasted Vegetable Pizza topping. I think it was pretty successful!

"Amy's" Roasted Vegetable Pizza Topping

Ingredients:

8 small onions (I did 7 yellow, 1 red)
2-3 T oil (I used sunflower)
1/4 c nice balsamic vinegar
Salt to taste
2 roasted red peppers (make your own if you like, I used jarred ones)
About 4 artichoke hearts (frozen, canned, bottled, fresh cooked)*
1 1/2 cups of shiitake or oyster mushrooms (I used oyster)

*I didn't read the can on mine that carefully, turns out I actually bought artichoke bottoms. Also tasty, and much less expensive.

Method:

Caramelize the onions. When done caramelizing, deglaze the pan/pot with balsamic vinegar. Remove from heat. Chop the mushrooms, stir them into the onions. At this point: if you're going to use this for pizza, I suggest spreading this mix over your pizza crust, and then topping with strips of pepper and whole artichoke hearts (you may want to use more of them in this case). If you're going to use it to stuff a sandwich/pirozhki, or even to mix with pasta: chop the artichokes and the peppers slightly larger than the mushrooms and stir it all together. It's ready to go!

Serving Suggestion and Notes: I think this would be really nice on a pizza, or stuffed into a baguette for a quick sandwich. You could also easily use it as a dip at a party. It was tasty and easy! The most time consuming thing is slicing so many onions (and I sliced them pretty fine), and taking the time to caramelize them nicely. But, it is a great thing to make ahead and have around. You could even put it into small containers and freeze for fast use. As far as whether or not this tastes like Amy's version, well, I think it is very similar, but I think hers uses less red pepper. In my version, the red pepper over-dominated a bit. This may also be because her version uses tomatoes and a little lemon juice ... maybe the acidity balances out the pepper and the sweetness of the onions and balsamic vinegar.

Spicy Eggplant Rolls

These are a really tasty and simple appetizer. I had them in Ukraine this summer at someone's dacha (countryside home).

Spicy Eggplant Rolls

Ingredients:

1 eggplant
1 T oil
1/4 c flour
sprinkling of salt
1 tomato
1 bunch of parsley
2 cloves of garlic
2 T mayonnaise

Method:

Cut the eggplant into long thin strips. I do this by cutting it top to bottom in half, and then each half into half (top to bottom again), progressively until I have eggplant slices (cross sections of the whole veggie) that are about 1/4" thin. I then cut those in half to make 2 strips from each cross section. Sprinkle with salt on each side, and toss in a plastic bag with the flour so it coats them lightly. Pan fry the strips in the oil on medium-high heat until soft and golden brown on both sides. Set aside on paper towels to drain and cool slightly. Dice the garlic finely, and cut the tomato into strips that are about the same length as the width of the eggplant strips. Rough chop the parsley. To make the rolls, take a fried eggplant strip, spread with a little mayo, sprinkle a little of the garlic over that. Put a couple of the tomato pieces at one end, then roll up. Stand it up like it's a piece of sushi, then sprinkle parsley over the top. Complete procedure for all eggplant strips.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: For thicker slices of eggplant, you may need to use a toothpick to keep them rolled up. For thinner slices (or if you can cram a bunch of rolls into a bowl) it's not necessary. These are really tasty, they're kind of a summer food, which I'm missing. They were so good on a hot summer day, eating in the backyard of a house near the sea.

Tamago: Japanese Omelette

I think this omlette is so pretty and different!

Tamago

Ingredients:

6 eggs
1 T soy sauce
1 T mirin (very sweet rice wine)
1 T rice wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic
2 pickled hot peppers (optional)
note: can substitute 2 T white wine for the mirin and vinegar
a fairly large pan, something like a non-stick griddle is best (I use a crepe pan)
a little bit of oil to grease the pan.

Method:

Mince the garlic cloves very finely, and slice the peppers into very thin rings. Beat all the ingredients together as you would for an omelette. I use this method for greasing the pan: dip a sort of balled-up paper towel into about a tablespoon of oil. Wipe the towel on the surface of the pan, which you should heat to medium/high level. When it's hot, spread a very thin layer of the mixture on the pan. When the egg is pretty set, roll the omelette. begin with the edge closest to you and roll it up like you would a rug. You'll end up with a log on the side of the pan away from you. Now, wipe the pan again with the towel, and spread another layer of egg mixture, keeping your log where it is. The new egg mixture will sort of flow under the log and stick to it. That's good. When the second layer is pretty set, roll the log towards you. The new layer will be incorporated, and you'll have a thicker log on the side of the pan closest to you. Repeat the process as many times as you can. You may have to alternate the heat between medium and medium/high to keep the omelette from burning. The recipe will give you about 6 to 7 layers. When you have the finished log, cut it into equal pieces. I like to do this by cutting the log in half, and then cutting each half in half, and so on, until I have 8 pieces about 1 inch in thickness.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: These are really pretty on a plate, I think they look like the rings in tree stumps, you know, the ones that tell you how old the tree is. You can serve them with stir fried veggies, cooked rice, or a simple clear soup. They have an interesting yet familiar taste, and I like to add the sliced hot pepper. It adds just the right amount of heat.