Kvashennaya Kapusta

This is the fermented cabbage we made this weekend. It's kind of like magic. The first day you don't want to eat it, but of course you try a little bit out of curiosity, and it is insanely salty. I kept asking my BF, "Are you sure we didn't add too much salt? Are you sure?" And he'd just respond, "Don't worry, you can't spoil this with too much salt!" I had my doubts. But then the fermentation actually happened, and it turned into the sour cabbage that I remembered eating in Ukraine.

Ingredients:
2 medium/large heads of white winter cabbage*
2-3 medium carrots
about 5 pieces dried horseradish**
A LOT of salt

*Using the winter kind, which is white and sort of flatter, is important because the leaves are firmer. I think it may still be tasty with regular cabbage, but the texture is better with the winter one.
**This is optional but I strongly recommend it! Each of the dried horseradish pieces I have is about .25"x.25". I'm sure you can substitute fresh, but it's probably stronger, so use less in that case.

Method:
Wash the cabbage, wash and peel the carrots. Grate the carrots on your grater's rough setting. Shred the cabbage (like for coleslaw or other salad). In a large vessel (I use a wide, deep bowl, like this but about 2-3x as deep), put a few handfuls of cabbage and carrots, then add a lot of salt. Sprinkle liberally all over the cabbage. Now, scrunch the cabbage and carrots with your hands, really work the salt in there. Toss in a piece of the horseradish. Add the next layer, a few more handfuls of the cabbage and carrots, and repeat. When you have exhausted all your vegetables, they're all in the bowl and thoroughly scrunched with salt, put a weight of some kind on the cabbage. We put a salad plate on top of the cabbage, and then a large pickle jar filled with water on top of the plate. Let it sit at room temperature for 2-3 days.

Ours took about 2.5 days before it wasn't salty anymore, but nice and sour. The cabbage should still have crunch, but it's softer. There will be a lot of liquid in the bowl, too. Keep it, it's tasty. And while the cabbage is sitting at room temperature, you don't have to worry about stirring or anything. If the liquid rises above the veggies that's fine.

Once the cabbage has fermented, keep it in a cool place, like the refrigerator, or outside (like we do) if it's cold enough.

Notes and Serving Suggestions: I really love this stuff. We made that huge bowl of it this weekend, and it's over half way finished! To serve it, put some cabbage in a serving bowl. Drizzle with a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil, sprinkle with a teaspoon or two of sugar (to taste), and mix well. Let sit for a few minutes then serve. You can also add herbs, such as dill, and sometimes people add chopped apples. Served as a salad, or as a side dish.

Weekend Cooking Summary (Late)

This past weekend we cooked:

-Shuba
-Golubtsy
-Pelmeni
-Kvashennaya Kapusta (salted fermented cabbage)
-Russian blini raised with yeast

Plus my BF and I accidentally made tvorog (farmer's cheese). We were trying to make ryazhenka.

I'll post more about the cabbage, blini, tvorog and ryazhenka later. In the mean time here's a pretty picture of golubtsy:


Ok, so the pictures not so good, but I assure you the cabbage rolls were!

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. :-)

I'm Tired!

I cooked more today than I probably have in the past month! Today I made golubtsy (cabbage rolls stuffed with meat and rice), kvashennaya kapusta (salted cabbage, alluded to in the New Year post), and shuba herring and beet salad, also alluded to in the New Year post).

I had also intended to make a bunch of pelmeni today and freeze them, but it looks like that will have to wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm also going to make a bunch of meat broth, and maybe I'll try my hand at bread (but probably I'll leave that for next weekend). But so far I feel pretty good with 7 cabbage rolls (big ones!) in the fridge, 7 in the freezer, and one in my stomach. :-)

Pictures and recipe for shuba tomorrow, and the same for kapusta shortly afterward.

Weekend Cooking Projects

This weekend (tomorrow) I'm going to try and make the delicious kvashennaya kapusta (salted cabbage) that I ate ate my BF's parent's house. I know it involves horseradish, carrot and cabbage, but I'm not sure about the rassol (brine). We're going to call tomorrow and ask. :-)

My hopefully soon-to-be-in-laws have a huge stand alone freezer that is stocked with produce from their piece of land (dacha) and tons of pelmeni. They also have lots of cool stuff in jars: preserved tomatoes, aforementioned cabbage, homemade prunes, plumes in sour-sweet syrup, tomato juice, apricot jam, pickled cucumbers, pickled garlic, cherry jam, jars of kompot (kind of like juice), and honey.

The upshot of this is that half of a meal in the winter consists of simply opening a jar or the freezer. I think that is brilliant, and I want to create the same thing over here. You see, we work, a freaking lot. As some of you may have noticed, the big collider (scariest machine ever, I believe it was called) where we're working is going to be turned back on pretty darned soon. We have to prepare for that, so that we can graduate and continue to be gainfully employed. As such, BF and I are both VERY busy, and we have been living on mostly noodles and fried eggs.

That was fine before, but after a week of being fed the goodies I've described earlier in this post and in the last one, it doesn't sit very well with me. Not only because it's not as tasty, but also because it's kind of demoralizing. It makes me feel not like a grown-up to be eating noodles with fried eggs every night, until we run out of eggs, like we did tonight.

Yeah. So, tomorrow we're gonna be busy. I've decided to make 1) salted cabbage to put in a bunch of jars, 2) pelmeni (meat dumplings) and 3) golubtsy (cabbage rolls) to put in the freezer. Sunday I may make vareniki (cheese filled dumplings) and a bunch of meat broth to also freeze.