Recent Posts: Page 39 of 59
Ukrainian Sour Cherry Dumplings
August 27th, 2011 in Main Dishes, No-meat by Julia Volhina
I didn’t believe my eyes when I saw sour cherries (pitted!) in the Andersons grocery store. It doesn’t happen that often to me here, in US. So I couldn’t simply leave that store without my portion of sour cherries…
Of course, we enjoyed them plain with a bit of sugar, and also made some cherries with whipped cream dessert, however most of sour cherries went to ukrainian sour cherry dumplings – “varenyky (vareniky) z vyshniamy”, and for this one we made plenty of pictures.
With mentioned amount of ingredients you will get about 50-60 dumplings. Most probably you will not need to cook all of them right away – so just freeze remaining potion of dumplings for later use (first put wooden board with dumplings to the fridge until dumplings are frozen, then move them to a ziploc bag and store frozen). Frozen dumplings can be boiled right before serving, just like you usually do it.
Roast Brussels Sprouts
August 20th, 2011 in Sides by Julia Volhina
Roast brussels sprouts are great as a side dish or a snack. They don’t require much of attention while cooking: just clean sprouts, put them to a baking pan, toss with oil, salt and pepper and roast until ready.
You can cook them to your liking: increase temperature a bit and you get crunchy outside and soft inside, decrease temperature and increase cooking time – get softer sprouts.
Hope you like them!
West Ukrainian Cheese Cake
August 13th, 2011 in Desserts by Julia Volhina
This cake is similar to the cheese cakes so popular in west part of the globe. However this one is made from quark cheese (fresh farmers cheese), not from the cream cheese.
It is very popular dessert treat in West Ukraine. It is often being made with raisins, however I don’t like raisins, so I am doing it without any filling. Just add them if you like.
During the baking this cake will rise in the oven, and then it will fall down a bit while colling down. That i s ok, just important not to open oven while baking or cooling.
To make up for a bit uneven shape, you can cut uneven sides off before serving it.
Minced Cutlets Stuffed with Mushrooms
August 6th, 2011 in Beef, Main Dishes by Julia Volhina
This is a tasty tweak to original minced beef cutlets recipe. The mince is prepared exactly the same way and mushrooms and onions stuffing gives ground meat juiciness and extraordinary taste.
A bit of agility is required to put stuffing inside of minced meat cutlets, but once you get it – it seems easy: meat is sticky, so if you get some holes, they can be easily patched by adding a layer of mince on top of the hole.
To prevent meat from sticking to hands – rinse hands with cold water from time to time while assembling minced cutlets.
Tomatoes Stuffed with Fresh Cheese
July 30th, 2011 in Appetizers & Snacks by Julia Volhina
These campari tomatoes stuffed with fresh quark cheese, chopped greens and garlic can be nice addition to any celebration table or a cookout: they look festive, taste good and can be easily eaten with fingers.
If you can’t find quark cheese (sometimes called farmers cheese, or fresh white cheese, or tvorog in russian) it may work with feta cheese, but I like it more with quark.
Seeds and pulp from tomatoes as well as top parts – once removed – are not needed for this recipe. You can discard them, or use in some other dish.
Many kind of stews and soups would only benefit from fresh tomatoes. I used seeds and juice from this batch to marinate a nice ribeye steak.
Fried Pork Chops
July 23rd, 2011 in Main Dishes, Pork by Julia Volhina
This is probably the easiest way to cook pork chops – simply beat them up, dust with flour and fry until ready. Actually you can fry any kind of pork meat like this: pork loin slices, pork chops, cutlets, shoulder parts, etc.
For thicker meat cut increase cooking time: it is important to cook pork thoroughly, when cut with a knife it should produce clear juices, especially near the bone.
Lemon juice gives pork meat a nice sour kick in taste; garnishing with chopped greens looks pretty, but is absolutely optional.
Green Salad with Tomatoes, Avocados and Shrimps
July 16th, 2011 in Salads by Julia Volhina
This is one of the salads which uses avocado dressing from the last week recipe. It is green, fresh summer salad topped with boiled shrimps with a hint of spiciness provided by the dressing.
My advise is to assemble this salad right before you are planning to serve it: it calls for avocados, tomatoes and lettuce (all of which react to oxidation by loosing taste and pretty look).
However avocado dressing can be prepared in advance and stored in airtight container in fridge.