Tag: flour (Page 4 of 8)
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.
Chicken Lasagna with Spinach and Fresh Cheese
February 4th, 2012 in Chicken, Main Dishes by Julia Volhina
Don’t get scared by amount of ingredients: it isn’t that complicated to cook chicken lasagna with spinach and fresh cheese at home, especially if you have noodles which doesn’t require boiling.
Of course it will take some time too cook stuffing as well white sauce, but at the end you will get whole baking pan of tasty creamy lasagna.
I used fresh spinach, but frozen will work good too, just thaw it before cooking and drain liquid before mixing with cooked chicken. Tvorog (fresh cow cheese) can be replaced with ricotta of the same weight as well.
Serve lasagna 10-15 mins after you take it from the oven; leftovers can be stored in fridge and re-heated in microwave.
Layered Liver Cake
January 28th, 2012 in Appetizers & Snacks by Julia Volhina
Layered liver cake, dish of traditional Ukrainian cuisine, is often served as appetizer on various celebrations, in fact I tried it first time on a wedding.
For this recipe I used chicken liver, but beef liver will work good as well.
Carrots and onions stuffing can be skipped all together – it will decrease cooking time and reduce amount of mayo to be used (since layers will not need that much mayo to stick together). However carrots go great with liver.
How many layers you get from this amount of ingredients depends on the size of the frying pan you use. I think 11” frying pan is the best – not too big not too small. The ideal amount of layers for this recipe is about 12; if you get more split them in half and assemble 2 cakes.
“Firewood on Snow” Cake
January 7th, 2012 in Desserts by Julia Volhina
This cake looked unusual even for me when I saw it first time: doesn’t it resemble a bunch of firewood covered with a snow to you?
This recipe is Yuriy’s mom speciality dessert and it often appears on the table during family celebrations. Yuriy’s mom preserves pitted sour cherries in their own juices under sugar each season, so there are always plenty of them ready for use.
If you don’t have sour cherries preserved in such way – you can always go with pitted cherry kompot like I did, but in this case add a bit of sugar to the dough, or cake will not be sweet enough.
I would want to tell you that this cake is easy and fast to do, but I can’t. It took me quite some time to make dough, prepare “firewood” sticks and then assemble the cake; but that is probably because I cooked it first time in my life.
After cake is assembled allow some time for layers to soak in sour cream frosting to get soft: leave it in cool place (but not fridge) at least over night (depending on how liquid sour cream is it may take longer). It is good idea to prepare cake at least a day before you are planning to serve it.
How to Make Unsweetened Yeast Dough
October 22nd, 2011 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
Yeast dough is commonly used for baked pies and fried pies/dumplings (pirozhki/pyrizhky).
Slavic cuisine features pies with various sweet and savory stuffing, and they all are usually prepared with dough as simple as this one.
Dough for small pies doesn’t usually require time for rising, you can start assembling them as soon as dough is kneaded: when you are finished with last one – first is ready to to fry/bake.
For whole piece pies you may need to set dough aside for 20-30 mins before cooking to rise.
Beef Stroganoff with Mushrooms and Cream
September 17th, 2011 in Beef, Main Dishes by Julia Volhina
This recipe features a small modification to the beef stroganoff recipe I posted earlier, but a good one: a cup of cream and cremini mushrooms give this dish a very rich taste.
Field mushrooms will also work good in this recipe, but cremini are the best.
As usual, I suggest serving beef stroganoff with a side of boiled buckwheat, it tastes great with mushrooms and cream and, of course, beef.
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.