Category: Tips, Advices & How-to (Page 2 of 4)
Boiled Shrimps
June 14th, 2014 in Fish, Main Dishes, Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
Store sold ready to use cooked shrimps can be used for recipes which call for boiled shrimps (salads, soups, stir fries, etc). Or you can boil raw shrimps and get more tender, tasty and less expensive version of store sold cooked shrimps.
Shrimps cooked this way also work great as a meal on its own, snack for beer or an appetizer.
Use fresh or frozen shrimps, shell-on or fully cleaned ones, or even whole shrimps (these will require more cleaning after though). You can also use this recipe to “unfreeze” cooked shrimps and infuse them with spices (just reduce cooking time to not overcook them).
Usually package instructions say to thaw frozen shrimps before cooking, but I don’t do it. Cooking frozen raw shrimps this way works for me just as good not frozen ones and it also saves time.
Cooking time will depend on size of shrimps: the smaller shrimps are, the less time for cooking they require – turn heat off as soon as shrimps float to the surface (this means they are cooked enough).
No Yeast Puff Pastry Dough (Faster Variant)
February 22nd, 2014 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
Real puff pastry dough is taking a lot of time to make from scratch, most of the times it is easier to just buy it instead. Another alternative could be to try this easier and much faster variant.
Disclaimer first: this dough will probably not be a best choice for some fancy croissants or so, but it will work great for layered cakes, pies, sugar cookies, and such.
Either butter or margarine will work for this recipe, I used margarine. Make sure you don’t let ingredients and dough itself warm up, if you need to pause while making the dough, put it to the fridge to cool down.
Prepared dough can be used right away, or can be frozen for later use, make sure to use freezer bag.
How to Make Butter from Whipping Cream
October 26th, 2013 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
Couple of years ago we discovered Snowville Creamery. This creamery is local to Columbus OH area and it produces milk, half-half and whipping cream amongst other dairy products. These are absolutely delicious but only come in a half-gallon cartons.
And if I can find something to do with a half-gallon of milk, whipping cream is absolutely other matter: it is not so easy to use all of it (not unless I plan to eat whipped cream every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner for couple days in a row) in time.
Did I mention that Snowville Creamery whipping cream is absolutely delicious? It would be an absolute shame to let it spoil. So when I buy a whole carton and I only need a cup or two of it for some recipe, I do butter from the rest.
By the way, if you can’t find Snowville Creamery products nearby, make sure you use 100% not homogenized whipping cream instead, with no extra ingredients in it (check the label!).
How to Make Vegetable Broth
September 28th, 2013 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
Making vegetable broth isn’t such a hard thing to do: get bunch of roots and vegetables, stick them all in a pot and in about 1-1.5h you will get a vegetable broth to use for a soup or another dish which you know what it is made of (unlike a canned one).
Good thing about making vegetable broth yourself is that you can use vegetables left over from other dishes: stems from greens (parsley or dill), stem from white cabbage or stem and leaves from cauliflower, greens from leeks, etc – bits and pieces that you wouldn’t have any use for otherwise.
You can boil fresh vegetables just fine, however the method with roasting vegetables first produce more tasting and colorful broth. If you are looking to get more colorful broth keep inner clean brown layer of onion shell on, using more carrot will help too.
How to Prepare Homemade Bacon Crumbles
July 13th, 2013 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
I have several recipes using bacon crumbles, so I decided to post step-by-step instructions on how to prepare these at home.
Process is not complicated, and will not take more than 15-20 mins along with cooling down.
How to Make Quark (Fresh Cheese) from Kefir
June 29th, 2013 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
This is somewhat easier way to get quark (fresh cheese): it requires less time since you don’t need to sour milk and such, since kefir is used instead.
There is a trade off to that of course, the taste of quark will depend greatly on taste of kefir itself, as well as its fat content. So use good quality kefir to prepare quark.
Note: 2 quarts of low fat kefir will make you about a pound of quark.
Vanilla Custard
March 10th, 2012 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
I use vanilla custard to fill eclairs and cream puffs. It is easy to do (just don’t forget to stir) and tastes delicious!
This custard can also be spread thin dry layers of multi-layer cakes such as “Napoleon”.
Vanilla custard calls for egg yolks, so you can find these recipes which call for egg whites somewhat useful.