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. :-)

Extremely Fast Dinner

This was made (and I'm sorry to say) eaten in less than 45 minutes. Yeah, I eat too fast.

This fast and yummy dinner consists of kasha with fried eggs and cress saute.

Ingredients:
1 package cress (I think mine was garden cress, 75 g package)
1 small onion
1 T olive oil
1 big clove garlic
1.5 cups kasha, rinsed well
Eggs (however many you want)

Method:
Kasha: rinse well, put in a pot with 1.5 cups of water. Add some salt (as you would for rice), bring to a boil. You should also add some butter, but I don't have any right now, so I added a little bit of olive oil and a gruyere cheese rind for flavor. Allow to boil (not vigorously) till all water is evaporated, then remove from heat, cover and let steam for at least 5 minutes. You can cook it longer for softer kasha, this will need a bit more water.

Saute: Warm oil in a pan. Add chopped onion and saute until golden-brown. Add garlic, saute a couple of minutes. Just before serving, add cress and cook till wilted down.

Eggs: Fry them how you like them. (For me, over medium or sunny side up).

Serving Suggestion: Good eaten kind of all mixed up. Also good with bufala mozzarella cheese on the side.

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.

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!).

Cheap but Good: Tuna Salad with Rice and Corn

This is a really tasty salad, and it's very filling, too. I use tuna packed in oil, because I ALWAYS use tuna packed in oil. I find it much more flavorful.

Tuna Salad with Rice and Corn

Ingredients:

1 can of tuna packed in oil, 160 gram can
1 can of corn, 300 gram can
2 cups of cooked white rice (I prefer long grain)
2 hard boiled eggs
Salt and Pepper

Method:

The rice should not be hot, warm is fine, or room temperature. Cold is fine too, but I prefer it warm or room temp. This is a perfect use for leftover rice! Combine the rice with the (drained) corn and the (undrained) tuna. I guess if you're really watching your fat grams or whatever you could toss the oil from the tuna, but it seems like such a waste! :-) Roughly chop the hard cooked eggs and add them to the bowl. Stir everything together well, salt and pepper to taste.

Serving Suggestion and Notes: You can also add chopped fresh herbs, or dried ones, like parsley or dill. I hear thyme is tasty with corn. I don't eat a whole lot, so for me a small plateful of this is a complete dinner. If you're compelled to have something green in there, I'd stir in some peas or some baby spinach (that sounds really good). My boyfriend also considers this as a complete meal, but he needs about 3 times more than I do, and he *always* has to have bread. With anything. :-)

****Cost and Nutritional Analysis coming soon!!!!!****

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.