Tag: ukrainian (Page 5 of 8)
“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.
Cabbage Rolls in Sour Cream Sauce
December 23rd, 2011 in Beef, Main Dishes by Julia Volhina
Another variation for ukrainian cabbage rolls: meat staffed cabbage rolls with gentle sour cream and onion sauce.
Making these from scratch will take some time as any recipe for cabbage rolls even if you use ground beef and don’t need to prepare it yourself, you still need to separate cabbage, assemble rolls and then cook them.
But don’t let this to stop you – even though it is time consuming to cook cabbage rolls you will get enough rolls for later – just store left overs in fridge or freezer.
Semolina Porridge (Mannaya Kasha)
December 17th, 2011 in Main Dishes, No-meat by Julia Volhina
Mannaya Kasha is one of foods associated for russian people with their childhood. When I was little I was always told it is rich on nutrients and required for healthy kid growth – every kid knew that to grow strong and healthy they need to finish up their plate with semolina porridge.
Just as a note: while researching for proper translation for this recipe, I stumbled on information that semolina porridge isn’t recommended for kids younger than 3 years (which was new to me) as it contains high amount of gluten and also phytin. But because it also has a lot of proteins and high content of vitamins E and B1 it is very good for kids after 3 year old who have no gluten intolerance.
While cooking it is important to stir mannaya kasha all the time (I use whisk for this and it helps a lot), or you will get clots and no kid likes them in their mannaya kasha.
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.
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.
Sorrel and Pork Soup (Green Borscht)
June 18th, 2011 in Hot Soups, Soups by Julia Volhina
Sorrel and pork soup, or as it is called also green borscht (obviously because of the color), is one of these dishes you can rarely eat in US, unless you are ukrainian, poland, russian family or visiting one of those :).
I was a bit unlucky in buying sorrel this time. Sorrel is very seasonal (meaning available only on spring), and for some reason WholeFoods (the only place where I was able to find it) carries it in herbs section – read this as 2-3 branches per a pack.
I ended up getting last 3 packs they had in their stock, but even that was less then needed for this soup (I am actually still wondering, who buys sorrel in WholeFoods in such packs and for what?).
Anyway, if you are more lucky than me and either know where to buy enough of sorrel or growing it by yourself, you can safely use more, and by more I mean much more: 3-4 cups is good. If you want to make it’s sour taste a bit less intense – fry it before adding to the cooking pot or/and use more water when cooking broth.
Khrustyky Pastry (Hvorost)
March 26th, 2011 in Desserts by Julia Volhina
This pastry is very popular in countries of ex-USSR. The shape is what gave them their russian name – “hvorost” – which means “dry wood used to make a fire”. Ukrainian name – “khrustyky” – describes texture – which it very crisp.
I had troubles trying to figure out what english name to use for this dish. Even if there is an equivalent of it in cuisine of some english speaking country, I don’t know about it.
So, feel free to let me know if you have some ideas in this regard 🙂