Yulinka Cooks

Stuff Russians Like

2012-01-31T10:53:00.000-08:00

Oh, hello! I'm taking another protracted blogging break while I figure out what to do with Yulinka Cooks. In the meantime, enjoy this read from a much-more frequently updated Russian girl blog: Why do Russians love Ferrero Rocher? (Ferrero Rocher are those round little chocolates that come in a crinkly gold wrapper.)

Writes Vicki Boykis:

"If you’ve ever been to a Russian house, you know what I’m talking about. The tea set comes out, the fruits and nuts come out, and out comes the Ferrero Rocher."

What else do Russians like? Off the top of my head: jams of all kinds (eaten out of a saucer, with a spoon), honey, Russian ginger cookies (prianiki). Take it away, readers!

From Iron Curtain to Iron Chef: 20 Years in American Food

2011-11-14T15:52:00.000-08:00

As of October 24, 2011, I have lived in the United States for 20 years. I’ll spare the reflections on growing up in two cultures, etcetera, suffice to say it’s been a pretty good run.

Let’s talk instead about these 20 years in food. My palate follows the typical immigrant child trajectory: Instant infatuation with all things American; attempts to bring “American” food like tacos and lasagna into the immigrant household; followed by an eventual appreciation and nostalgia for the foods of the old country. Let’s take a closer look:

1991: My family and I arrive in the U.S. from Russia. The food we’ve known in the USSR is homemade and unvaried, made-from-scratch and pale in color. Fast food and snacks, wrapped in bright food packaging, are rare and expensive. Here, the sheer variety of food and its colors sends us spinning. We eat our first American delicacy: Oreo cookies, purchased late in the evening from a hotel vending machine (we strategically go at night because we’ve never seen a vending machine and don’t know how it works).

This is followed by daily discoveries: pink bologna wrapped in layers of plastic, tiny cups of purple-tinged yogurt with sprinkles, vanilla ice cream with strawberry streaks that make me think of marble, confetti-colored marshmallows in Alphabits cereal. Life’s a kaleidoscope of color and gloriously artificial scents and flavors. My mom nearly mistakes a bottle of lemon-scented dish soap for lemon juice.

1991, later in the year: We acquire our first toaster and I spend an evening toasting piece after piece of Wonder Bread.

1992-1993: I’m mesmerized by the food American kids bring to school: diagonally sliced sandwiches that always include a piece of lettuce, pretzel twists in plastic baggies, Fruit by the Foot, gummy fruit snacks, fruit juice boxes with straws attached (“Americans think of everything,” my mom says!). Also, school pizza parties courtesy of Pizza Hut and classroom treats for every possible occasion, in an era before childhood obesity.

1994-1995: I discover the microwave. My parents use it for reasonable purposes, like heating leftovers. I use it for eating my way through Pick ‘n Save’s frozen dinner selection. My favorite brand, for reasons that elude me now, is Kid Cuisine. I ignore my mom’s borsch. Lunch is Lay’s sour-cream-and-potato chips, a box of Ocean Spray juice, and a Little Debbie brownie. My parents’ infatuation with American food is over. My mom declares that everything tastes like plastic.

1996-1997: Adolescent body image issues kick in: I decide I’m fat. It’s a good time to start eating “healthy,” since it’s the decade of low-fat everything: Snackwell’s, Healthy Choice, fat-free pretzels. I oversee my mom’s cooking and complain every time she reaches for oil and butter. This causes some tension between us.

1997-1998: I dabble in cooking. Everything I want to make is “American”: lasagna, tacos, spaghetti. I’m not interested in borsch.

1998-2000: My infatuation with American food, both junk and home cooked, is ending. Weird, foreign food is kind of cool! Three cheers for multiculturalism. My mom goes on kick of Russian home cooking: pirozhki (little pies with meat, cabbage or mushroom fillings), pelmeni (Russian dumplings), cabbage soups. I gobble it all up.

2000-2005: I continue to dabble in cooking, although my mom’s interest wanes. Food at home, and to this day, alternates between Russian basics like kotleti and the occasional lasagna. I watch the Food Network and read cookbooks.

2006-2007: Inspired by an explosion of food blogs and my very first kitchen, I launch Yulinka Cooks. My theme is Russian/Soviet food, and I stick to it, making vatrushki, tvorog, and kvass. Many of these multistep dishes are just okay and my photos are less than okay, but food blogging becomes my on-again-off-again creative outlet.

2008-2011: Local and sustainable is big, and I dabble in some Milwaukee-area food coverage. I keep cooking and blogging, although with a bit less enthusiasm. I write about “American” food, which doesn’t resonate with readers—but Russian classics like kvass generate comments!

Now: I’ve evolved into a decent cook and cook plenty, mostly Americanized basics, and mostly from scratch. I shop at farmer’s markets. I know better than to be impressed with Oreos—not local or sustainable!

Still, at times I miss that fresh-off-the-boat innocence, that moment when packaged cookies falling through a vending machine seemed magical. (If I were making a movie, they'd fall in slow motion.)

As my 20^th Thanksgiving rolls around, I’m thankful that I’ve had the chance to experience both worlds—the dark one for a little while, and the colorful one for keeps.

Photos from ConAgra Foods and Nabisco

Russian Grocery Store Tour: International Foods

2011-10-18T16:51:00.000-07:00

I'm surprised that I’ve never reviewed International Foods--the original Russian grocery store in Milwaukee. Opened in the early 1990s during the post-Soviet immigrant wave, International Foods is really the only Russian grocery in Milwaukee that gets press or the occasional American customer.

Location: 1920 E. Capital Dr., Shorewood, Wis., (414) 964-7115.

Atmosphere: The original, sparsely-shelved Eastern European grocery store.

Customer Service: Who knows? Known for both a brusque Soviet attitude and the occasional sweet cashier.

Product Selection: Good selection of deli specialties and ready-made Russian party food such as salads, herring in a fur coat, pastries, pickled tomatoes and cucumbers and much more. I believe International Foods does catering, too. Otherwise, a decent selection of Russian basics, plus a small selection of Russian-language books in the back of the store.

Pricing: On the higher side, but not shocking.

Buy: The homemade deli selections.

Avoid: Watch out for stale bread and cashiers who give you the cold shoulder.

Final Rating: ***

Rating Key:

*Soviet cafeteria food

**Day-old buckwheat kasha

***Borsch made by a non-native

**** Babushka’s homemade pirozhki

*****Black caviar on a buttered baguette and a shot of chilled vodka

Other recommended Russian/Eastern European grocery stores in Milwaukee: Spartak, Parthenon Foods, and A&J Polish Deli.

Soviet Kitchen Items

2011-09-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

The new book “Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design” has been getting some buzz. You can see a nice gallery of photos and stories from the book in Foreign Policy magazine. I can’t get my hands on a copy yet, but the preview inspired me to rummage through my parents’ kitchen in search of unsung icons of Soviet cookware design.

Perhaps the most iconic of my finds is this drinking glass—granyonyi stakan (гранёный стакан). This thick, 14-sided glass was manufactured and sold throughout the Soviet Union.

I’ve gleaned some factoids about these glasses from--where else?--Wikipedia (in Russian and English).

-These glasses are said to be designed by Vera Mukhina, creator of the famous Soviet sculpture “Worker and Kolhoz Woman”.

-They’re sturdy and made to survive falls on hard flooring, which is why they were commonly used on trains and in food service.

-Most importantly, according to Wikipedia: “An image of granyonyi stakan in popular culture is associated either with vodka and pickled cucumbers, or with tea and podstakannik.”

Speaking of which, this is the podstakannik (подстаканник), a glass holder, usually used on trains for serving hot tea.

Next find—a 1970s-era book called “Advice to a Young Housewife,” which contains recipes and good housekeeping tips. Check out the loopy illustration on the cover. (Previously, I blogged about Soviet recipe postcards from the '70s and '80s--canapes, potatoes and soups.)

An enamel camping mug—note the picture of black currants, the classic Russian berry.

If the above artifacts strike you as unironically stodgy, I must point out that not everything made in the Soviet Union was ugly. Check out these delicately painted porcelain tea and espresso cups, produced in the USSR in the 1960s.

The proof is in the logo--LFZ (ЛФЗ in Russian)--Leningradski Farforovyi Zavod, or the Leningrad Porcelain Factory.

Finally, money. As my father noted, none of the above could be acquired without a ruble or two. Here, you can see one, five and ten-ruble bills, plus a ruble coin. I encourage you check out Wikipedia for on Soviet money Let me note that the paper bills include writing in the different languages of each of the Soviet republics—cultural sensitivity on the part of the USSR’s Department of the Treasury!

Rhubarb Pudding Cake

2011-08-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

I’m always looking to expand my arsenal of simple fruit cake recipes (more on fruit cakes—not the Christmas kind). This recipe is a fast contender for a summer favorite. You beat together some butter, sugar, an egg and flour, and plop the batter over chopped fruit. The recipe calls for rhubarb, but this would work just as well with apples. The batter spreads as it bakes, creating a cake layer to cover the jammy, pudding-y fruit.

Here’s the recipe, via the Journal Sentinel’s Sunday food section, with a few modifications.

Cube rhubarb or apples into ½-inch chunks—you should have about four cups. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine 1cup flour, 1 ¼ tsp. baking power and 1/8 tsp. salt; set aside. In a big bowl, beat 5 tablespoons unsalted, room-temperate butter with a mixer until smooth. Add 2/3 cups sugar, beat well. Add 1 tsp. vanilla extract, ¼ tsp. cinnamon and 1 egg; beat well. Add the flour and ½ cup milk alternately to the sugar mixture; combine until just smooth.

Butter an 8-inch baking dish and spread the fruit in the dish. Sprinkle with about 2/3 cup sugar (less, maybe ½ cup, if you’re using apples, especially if they’re on the sweeter side).

Spoon batter over the fruit—don’t worry if it doesn’t cover all the fruit; the batter will spread and plump up while baking. Bake about 45 minutes, and let cool before eating.

Good with whipped cream or ice cream…but who am I kidding, perfect when eaten with a spoon right out of the pan.

Finds in the Fridge

2011-08-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

It still surprises me that after nearly 20 years in the U.S., my parents and I keep distinctly Russian food in our
respective fridges.

Like thrifty Soviets, we store it all in recycled plastic containers. (There's no Container Store in Russia, you know.)

Case in point:

What's this? Yogurt, you say? Oh, no.

It's homemade pickles!

And what's this? Iced tea, you guess? Nope--it's homemade kvass.

I doubt we're the only immigrants who do this sort of thing. What "native" food do you have in the fridge? Tell me on the Yulinka Cooks Facebook page. (Like my cross--*caugh* self--promotion?)

A Different Kind of Fruit Cake

2011-08-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

I’ve never made a layer cake with frosting in my life, but I do like baking fruit cakes. Not the kind you make for Christmas (though I suspect they get an undeservedly bad rap), but simple cakes that involve fruit covered in batter. They’re easy to make, reasonably light, work for breakfast or dessert, go well with coffee, tea, milk, etc.

Sour apples like Granny Smith work really well in these cakes, but so do rhubarb, strawberries, peaches, blueberries--anything that's tart. You don't need to do anything with the fruit besides cut it into chunks, and frozen berries work great. It doesn’t hurt to add a bit of vanilla or cinnamon to the batter. See the recipes below for details.

These are the variations I like:

The classic Russian charlotte: 3 eggs, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, ½ tsp. baking powder; mix; pour over fruit chunks; bake 60 minutes at 370. Here's my old apple charlotte recipe.

Yogurt cake: Similar to the above, but with 1/2 cup of plain yogurt and sour cream, and a bit of oil for extra richness.A few weeks ago I made this cake using peaches for the fruit; recipe here.

Buttery cakes with a bit of yogurt or kefr for richness and moisture. See this rhubarb cake recipe for details.

When it's too hot for pierogies...

2011-07-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

...let NPR do your blogging for you. Check out their nice write-up of Soviet summer food--including okroshka (cold vegetable soup made with kefir), grilled trout, Azerbaijani salad, and syrniki (farmer's cheese pancakes). I've previously blogged about making your own farmer's cheese. And here's my version of Azerbaijani salad (chopped veggie salad with cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers).

Did you know that Yulinka Cooks is on Facebook? That's a "like"! Never miss a Yulinka Cooks post, ever.

Russian Summer Tea

2011-07-13T15:24:00.000-07:00

The Merchant's Wife, a painting by Boris Kustodiev

Most recipes are about ingredients and proportions and cooking times, but this one calls for the right atmosphere--the right atmosphere for a Russian summer tea.

I’d guess that many Russians have sentimental memories of drinking tea for hours on warm evenings on their dacha (vacation country house).

There will be sweets, fruit, fresh-picked berries from the garden, endless cups of tea, chit-chat with family and friends, the house cat or dog trailing around, all to the backdrop of the summer sun sinking into the earth well into the evening. It’s Russian pastoral. (For a good cinematic version of this scene, see the movie Burned by the Sun.)

Here’s an approximate recipe for recreating a Russian summer tea, whether you’re in Russia or, as most of my readers, somewhere across the ocean.

Season:

July, July, August, early September

Weather:

Warm in the evening, but not humid. Breezy but not windy.

Location:

Your cottage or country house. Oh, you don’t have one? A suburban backyard patio or deck, or even an urban balcony will suffice.

Company:

Ideally, your extended family, with assorted friends and visitors on hand. Dogs and cats welcome.

Tea:

If you have a samovar, a Russian hot-water brewing device, use it. If not, make a big pot of hot tea, and be ready to brew more.

Snacks:

Two or three different desserts—simple fruit cakes are always good. Chocolate candies. Two varieties of jam (black currant and raspberry recommended). Honey. Thinly sliced lemon. Three or four of the following: watermelon, strawberries, cherries, raspberries, blueberries, peaches, grapes.

Conversation:

This is a great occasional to talk politics, society and the arts. (And no need to brush up on the facts—the point is free-form chit-chat, banter, and humor--not accuracy.)

Summer Slacking Series: Milwaukee Farmers Markets & More

2011-07-05T15:17:00.000-07:00

What I’m doing during my summer slacking season:

-Not blogging.

-Making random-ingredient salads on weeknights. Here’s a tomato-brie-scallion-sausage-and-crouton creation with balsamic vinegar. I also made a tomato-bacon-pea salad that was surprisingly good. Sauté some chopped bacon, add a few handfuls of frozen peas and cook until the peas are just done. Let cool a bit, mix with sliced tomatoes. Chop up some scallions or parsley, if you have them on hand.

-Making fake Mexican huevos rancheros: Heat up some refried beans in a small pan. Add an egg or two, sunny-side up. Cover pan with lid; cook 3-4 minutes (see the Beyond Salmon blog for more guidance on cooking eggs). Eat with salsa, chopped red peppers, scallions and sour cream.

-Making iced tea with fruit flavorings: lime juice, lemon juice, whole strawberries (add strawberry chunks to the pitcher).

-Checking out farmers markets in downtown Milwaukee. Here’s my brief guide:

East Town Tuesday Market, 3 p.m.-7 p.m., Cathedral Square Park. The crowd: office people and various East Side types. This market is new in 2011, and, judging by the small turnout, I'll be surprised if it continues next summer. Atmosphere: Sparse. Chill. Buy: Necklaces, hand-made soap, art prints, baked goodies. I haven’t seen a single fruit or vegetable for sale here. Bring: A wad of cash for the $50+ handmade jewelry.

Westown Market, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Ziedler Union Square. Crowd: Office workers. Atmosphere: Company cafeteria. Buy: Flowers for your desk, lunch from the many food vendors and trucks, cookies for the afternoon slump. Bring: Your co-workers.

East Town Saturday Market, 8 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Cathedral Square Park: Crowd: Crowded. Students, young professional types, young families. Atmosphere: Festive. Buy: Hey, this place sells produce, so buy a vegetable that’s in season. Bring: Kids, if you have them—the action’s at the playground.

For addresses and a complete listing of Milwaukee-area farmers markets, see this guide in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Sour Cream Cake With Peaches

2011-06-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

I hate to waste food. Homeless kittens and puppies tug at some people’s heartstrings, but a half cup of soon-to-expire sour cream in the fridge makes me cry. In my zeal to rescue the sour cream, I found myself making this cake at 10 p.m. on a weeknight--and I'm glad I did.

My inspiration was Orangette’s yogurt cake recipe, in which I subbed sour cream for the yogurt. Dozens of yogurt cake variations have been floating around the blog world ever since Clotilde Dusoulier posted her now-famous recipe for this simple, traditional French dessert.

Yogurt cake is lightly sweet and mild, kind of like pancake batter, so you can add fruit, or nuts, or chocolate to spice it up. For my cake, I added a couple of sliced, soon-to-be-squishy peaches (it’s not just leftover sour cream that makes me sad).

Sour cream makes the cake super-dense and moist, as does Orangette’s addition of lemon juice syrup that you pour over the baked cake.

Here’s the recipe with my modifications:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large bowl, combine and mix well ½ cup sour cream, ¾ cup sugar, 3 eggs and 1 tsp. vanilla concentrate. Add 1.5 cups flour, 2 tsp. baking powder; mix. Add ½ cup canola oil, and mix well.

Dice a couple of medium peaches (or nectarines, or apples, or strawberries, or rhubarb—any tart fruit will work).

Butter a 9-inch cake pan, and pour ½ batter into the pan. Add diced fruit on top, and then pour the rest of the batter to cover the fruit. Sprinkle with raw sugar.

Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cool cake completely.

Optional: Juice an orange and a lemon. Add ¼ cup powdered sugar to the juice and mix well. Pour over the entire cake, and serve.

Summer Slacking Salads

2011-06-15T10:29:00.000-07:00

June marks the start of my summer slacking season on the blog. Hey, in Wisconsin, warm weather begins in June and ends mid-September, if we’re lucky—so there’s some urgency to take advantage of it.

These are my dos and don’ts for a nice summer evening in Milwaukee:

Do: Go for a walk or bike ride on the lakefront

Don’t: Go to the gym

Do: Read on the patio at Alterra

Don’t: Read at home

Do: Get custard at Kopp’s

Don’t: Bake

Do: Make salad

Don’t: Make anything that leaves grease stains on your stove

So, salad. Here’s a little number I made on a hot day last week. Mix everything in a big bowl.

Brie, cut up in chunks
Sliced tomatoes (make sure both brie and tomatoes are at room temperature—they will taste better)
Chopped scallions
Black olives
Chopped parsley
Thinly sliced onions
Dressing: something Italian, or a red wine vinegar/balsamic/olive oil combo

And here are a few other low-maintenance salads to make during summer slacking season, ranked by time commitment:

Russian Chopped Salad (Chop, mix)
Leftovers Salad (Scour fridge for leftovers)
Crunchy Summer Salad (Chop, mix, boil egg)
Roasted Vegetable Salad (Chop, turn oven on)
Potato Summer Salad (Cook potatoes)

Russian Folk Remedies

2011-06-07T06:23:00.000-07:00

In February, I blogged about Russian cold remedies; come summer, let’s talk about cures for hot-weather ailments.

Russians put sour cream on everything—why not sunburned skin? I tried this after a few too many hours in the sun on Memorial Day. Sour cream won’t cure your sunburn, but it will soothe crispy skin. Make sure to use very cold sour cream, and smear on a thin layer. Wait 20 minutes or so, until most of it is absorbed, then gently wash off the rest. You can also use yogurt and buttermilk.

For tired, sore or bloodshot eyes, try the tea bag remedy. Brew some tea using tea bags (Lipton is perfectly okay for this). Remove the tea bags and let them cool, then carefully squeeze out the extra moisture. Lie down or sit back, and place a tea bag over each eye. Apply for…well, for as long as you want. This will feel very soothing and pleasant—it’s the world’s cheapest spa treatment.

Other Russian remedies:

For cooling down in hot weather—drink hot green tea, just like they do in Central Asia.

For hangovers—drink pickle juice.

For stress and anxiety—valerian root drops and water.

For fuller hair—wash it with raw egg yolks.

Russian Candy Review: Limonchiki (lemon drops)

2011-05-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

In this occasional series, I review candy you can find at Russian grocery stores.

Previous installments:

The Candy: Caramel’ki Limonchiki (карамельки лимончики)

The Name: Loosely translated, limonchiki means little lemons or--my preference--lemonettes. Caramel'ki means caramels, but in Russian candy parlance this usually refers to hard candy with filling, rather than caramel.

The Look: An off-color yellow shell, with plum jam in the middle.

The Taste: The shell is tart and the middle is sweet and jammy.

Verdict: Pretty good for hard candy. I give 'em an A-.

In Milwaukee, you can buy limonchiki at Spartak in Whitefish Bay. Or, check out this guide to Russian/Eastern European groceries.

Russian Chopped Salad

2011-05-10T06:01:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist taking a picture of my parents' Russian house salad. The base is cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley or dill, scallions, and either sunflower oil or sour cream for the dressing. Sometimes my mom will add any and all crunchy vegetables in the fridge. The only requirement for this salad is that it’s colorful. Here’s the formula:

Base (all chopped):

Tomatoes

Cucumbers

Scallions

Parsley, dill, or preferably both

Optional:

Radishes

Peppers—red, yellow green

Red onions

Pickles

Olives, feta, or blue cheese (not remotely Russian, but good)

Dressing:

Sunflower or olive oil, a bit of grainy mustard, dash of sugar, splash of vinegar, splash of pickle juice (secret ingredient)

A few tablespoons each of sour cream or plain yogurt and mayo, dash of mustard, dash of sugar

A Call for a Cause--and Creativity

2011-05-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

Cookies for Kids' Cancer Bake Sale May 21: If you’ve always wanted to sample my baking—and you live in or around Miwaukee—you’ll have a chance at the Cookies for Kids' Cancer Bake Sale on May 21. Milwaukee food bloggers, myself included, are contributing treats for this fund-raiser organized by #MKE Foodies. You can also bid on one-of-a-kind stuff donated by Milwaukee chefs and restaurants in the silent auction.

Event details:

Bake Sale and Silent Auction for Kids' Cancer

Saturday, May 21, 2011

1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery
901 W. Juneau Ave., Milwaukee
RSVP on Facebook

Call for Creativity: I love this flow chart of asparagus recipes by Mark Bittmann in New York Times' Sunday magazine. Cool and unusual way to write a recipe. So much food writing goes the memoir route—you know the type, we food bloggers have all done it:

This asparagus morel quiche takes me back to childhood Christmases at my Norwegian great-aunt Norma’s house…. Or…. Whenever I make this mousse de jambon, I think of the time when I was 19, living in a little apartment in Paris, with this French boyfriend who broke my heart, etc.

This kind of thing can be affecting when done right, but we shouldn’t always try to emulate Ruth Reichl or Molly Wizenberg. Let's get some inspiration from food bloggers who come up with creative ways to write about food—like the Amateur Gourmet’s restaurant review comics and DudeFoods' gonzo photos.

Soviet Recipe Postcards--Cooking With Potatoes

2011-04-26T05:36:00.000-07:00

“All in all, no other garden craze has been surrounded by so many legends, fairy tales, myths and fables as the potato….” So begins the introduction to this collection of potato recipes produced by Lenizdat, a Soviet publishing house. (I’ve previously blogged about their soup and sandwich recipe cards.)

Potatoes are indeed big in Russian cooking, but I usually think of them in simple recipes, like soups or maybe boiled or fried and served as sides to meat. Let’s go on a retro-photo tour and see just how much you can do with potatoes in Russian cuisine. Like most old recipes, these are vague about proportions and cooking times. Email me (yulinkacooks at yahoo dot com) if you’d like specifics, and I’ll do my best to translate and clarify.

Potato Kebabs--Who says there’s no vegetarian food in Russia? Granted, the editors suggest you deep fry the potatoes in lard before skewering them, but feel free to use vegetable oil.

French Fries!--Again, the recipe calls for lard, but these fries are to be served with cucumbers and pickles, tomatoes, sauerkraut, fresh cabbage, salad, mushrooms and pickled lingberries and apples. Take that, McDonald’s!

Soup With Potato Dumplings--called ooshki (ушки), or “little ears” in Russian, which aren’t unlike gnocchi.

Waldorf Salad (from French cuisine—editor’s note)--Boiled potatoes, apples and walnuts, with mayo, lemon juice, salt and sugar for the dressing.

Potato and Meat Casserole--Call it Shepherd’s pie. You mix mashed potatoes with eggs, butter and sour cream, and place the mixture in a buttered pan. Top with browned onions and ground beef, and bake. Serve with pickles, sauerkraut, vegetables and “greenery” (zelen'/зелень in Russian, meaning fresh herbs like parsley and dill). This recipe, and the one below, make good use of leftover mashed potatoes.

Potato Roll Stuffed With Eggs--Make dough out of mashed potatoes, stuff it with hardboiled eggs and bake. Good with schi (sauerkraut soup), according to the recipe!

Beef and Potato Stew--I like this photo because it shows the essential condiments to the Russian stew—rye bread, pickles, sauerkraut, tomatoes, dill and peppers. And that’s probably kvass--rye bread beer--in the mug.

Other recipes included in this set are stuffed potatoes, deep-fried potato dumplings (smazhenzi/смаженцы, from Slovenia), and, from Belarus, potato dumplings with mushrooms and pork (kalduni/калдуны) and potato pancakes (draniki/драники, which I once made). Contact me for recipes.

Weeknight Dinner Diaries

2011-04-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

Suggested ideas for weeknight dinners and a dessert, all made and enjoyed around these parts.

Monday: Tomato, cucumber and bacon salad. Slice up tomatoes and cucumbers and fry up some bacon. Let the bacon cool, then add to the vegetables, along with some sliced onions, if you like. For the dressing, a bit of mayo and sour cream is good. Salt and pepper liberally.

Tuesday: I’m such a lobbyist for leftovers. Let’s say you have leftover pork loin (cooked in a crock pot with apple juice and soy sauce, surprisingly delish) and roasted potatoes from the weekend. Cut them up and sauté in a pan with some spinach. Add curry spices. Eat with dollops of sour cream.

Wednesday: There’s more time to mess around in the kitchen mid-week, so make this zucchini-bacon-and-cheese goodness. Slice up 4-5 zucchini and sauté in olive oil for 10 minutes or so.

Place the vegetables in a foil-lined pan and grate some cheese over them—mozzarella and Parmesan are always good. Add some diced ham or bacon. Bake at 425 for 20-25 minutes, and broil last five minutes. Let cool a bit before eating.

Thursday: If you’re running low on groceries by the end of the week, look around the pantry. You may be pleasantly surprised by the delicious things you can make using frozen, canned or jarred ingredients. For example: this posh-looking pumpkin soup had an unsexy start: an onion, garlic, canned pumpkin puree and chicken stock in a box.

Method: Dice and sauté a big onion in some olive oil and butter. Add a few minced garlic cloves when the onions are almost done. Sprinkle on some spices—I used Penzey’s Southwestern mix, but you can get creative here. A bit of curry spice is always good. Add the pumpkin, stock (I used about 12 ounces) and ½ cup milk, and bring the soup to a boil. Turn heat to a simmer and cook on low heat for 10 minutes or so.

Adjust the flavor to taste--I added 2 tbs. fresh lemon juice, 1 tbs. brown sugar, and ¼ cup plain yogurt. Play around until it tastes right to you. Add more stock or milk, if you like. Some diced ham or bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces and sautéed, is really good in this. Eat with crackers or croutons, and extra yogurt.

Friday: Have dinner out but make dessert! Slice up some strawberries, sprinkle with sugar and top with sour cream. Some cookies or chocolate wouldn’t be amiss here, either.

Cauliflower Not Mac-and-Cheese

2011-04-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

Let’s do a quick focus group.

What comes to mind when you hear “cauliflower gratin”?

French. Butter. Cheese. Milk. Baked. Rich. Crusty. Yum. Yes?

The purpose of my research is to rebrand the cauliflower gratin. (A gratin, by the way, is a baked vegetable covered in a creamy cheese sauce.) Yes, this sort of thing is usually rich and fatty, but I like to think of my cauliflower gratin as a lighter version of mac and cheese—healthier comfort food for the winter months (or cold spring months, in these parts).

Baked cauliflower is naturally bland and creamy, kind of like noodles, but with far fewer calories and carbs. A gratin is hot and bubbly, the food equivalent of wearing a fuzzy, oversized sweater. So you can have your crusty, cheesy hot mess in a baking pan without the nutritional disaster that is traditional macaroni and cheese.

Here’s what I do, based on a recipe from the blog Chocolate and Zucchini: Preheat the oven to 425. Cut up a large head of cauliflower into small-ish chunks. Place in a foil-lined pan, and sprinkle with a bit of salt, black pepper and a dash of nutmeg.

Melt 2 tbs. butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir 3 tbs. flour into the butter and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add 1 cup of milk to the butter and flour, and bring the milk to a simmer, stirring to make sure the flour is dissolved.

When the milk has a thick, saucy texture, turn off the heat and let cool for a few minutes. Add cheese—I usually add 3 tbs. whipped cream cheese, and ½ cup of whatever cheese I happen to have on hand, as long as it’s a fairly mild variety. I’ve used mozarrella, provolone, etc., successfully. (Comté is traditional for gratin, but we’re rebranding here.) Pour the cheese sauce over the cauliflower.

Sprinkle with breadcrumbs (optional), and bake 25 or so minutes, until the cauliflower is soft; then broil for 5 minutes. Let cool a bit and dig in.

Five Years of Yulinka Cooks

2011-04-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been food blogging for five years. The idea for Yulinka Cooks was hatched in 2005, when I discovered first-generation food blogs like The Amateur Gourmet and Chocolate and Zucchini. In March ’06, inspired by my first kitchen and armed with a $30 digital camera, I set up a Blogger account.

Since then, I’ve written 239 blog posts, read 1,224 comments and went through five kitchens. I abandoned Yulinka Cooks a few times but couldn’t break it off for good.

I made borsch, pickled mushrooms and herring in a fur coat. I rose to the top of Google search results for a while with my recipe for homemade Russian farmer’s cheese. I earned a bit of beer money in blog ads before BlogHer kicked me out for failing to update. I dabbled in food-themed travel blogging and memoir-writing. I got myself into a real newspaper. I picked up some Photoshop tricks and spruced up the layout. I wrote snarky reviews of grocery stores. I met cool people who read and commented on this blog.

For better or worse, Yulinka Cooks has been the online backdrop to the better part of my 20s.

If you’re reading this, thanks. I raise five shot glasses of vodka to you.

Random Yam, Potato and Bacon Salad

2011-03-22T18:33:00.000-07:00

Not to brag or anything, but I’m pretty good at scrounging up random ingredients to make a tasty meal. This is my typical thought process:

Scene: Late-December weekday evening, 9:30 p.m. I’m in the kitchen, wondering what to make for a holiday potluck the following day.

Problem: Everything I want to make requires either a trip to the store or an oven, which won’t be available at the party. Cut up some fruit and veggies? No, too lazy. Buy something that’s pre-made? I can’t---I mean, I’m a food blogger.

Inspiration: Two yams and three potatoes, exactly five slices of raw bacon, parsley, Swiss cheese and some nice Italian dressing, all found in the nooks and crannies of the fridge and pantry.

Solution: Roasted potato-and-yam salad with Swiss cheese and bacon.

Method, if you eye the proportions: Cube and roast the potatoes and yams in olive oil at 425 until soft and caramelized (45 minutes or so).

In the meantime, dice or cut up bacon and sauté until crispy. Combine bacon and Italian dressing (1/2 cup, about) in a big bowl. When the potatoes are done, let cool to room temperature.

Add potatoes to the bowl with bacon and dressing. Marinate overnight in the fridge. Add cubed cheese and finely chopped parsley right before serving, and serve at room temperature.

Lesson: Always poke around the house before you go to the store!

Rice and Spinach "Kasha"

2011-03-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

This is another entry in my Winter Detox series, where I make food that’s a) appropriate for post-holiday fitness resolutions, and b) has a comfort food factor. This spinach and rice thing/kasha* is my go-to weeknight dinner when I feel like cooking for myself.

No recipe here. I usually start out by sautéing some spinach with a bit of bacon (I know, not terribly healthy, but a strip of bacon is remarkably low in calories—about 40 a pop.) Any kind of cheese is good in this, as are sautéed mushrooms. Eat your spinach with rice or some toast on the side. Add a poached egg if you’re really feeling decadent. Good brunch dish, too.

*Kasha is Russian for any kind of porridge/hot cereal, and I like to think of this as a kind of healthy, American kasha. Buckwheat—known as kasha in the U.S.—is called grecha (греча, гречнивая каша, or гречka) in Russian.

Product Review: Wafer Cake

2011-03-08T05:12:00.000-08:00

Whether it’s baked milk or pickled tomatoes, Russian and Eastern European grocery stores are filled with mysterious and sometimes delicious foodstuffs. In this occasional series, I review the good, the bad and the weird.

I saved this post especially for March 8, International Women's Day. In Soviet Russia--and, I suppose, to this day--March 8 is an all-purpose women's holiday, a mix of Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. If you're from Russia, this chocolate wafer cake is a totally appropriate gift for the women in your life--along with a bouquet of mimosas, the traditional flowers for this holiday.

You wouldn’t think that a wafer “cake” (wafel’ni tort/вафельный торт) is anything special, but, according to my mom, getting your hands on one was a pretty big deal in the Soviet times.

This cake is basically a big wafer, usually covered in chocolate, and always sold in a cardboard box. The brand in the photo is called Kapriz (каприз)--that is, "caprice"!

The best versions of wafer cake crisp and fresh, and aren’t bad with a cup of tea or coffee. To serve, slice into neat square or rectangles, like a good Russian hostess.

For a guide to Russian/Eastern European stores in the Milwaukee area that sell this kind of thing, see my shopping guides.

Winter Detox: Butternut Squash and Spinach Whatever

2011-02-28T22:14:00.000-08:00

This is something I like to think of as a post-holiday detox dinner. It’s healthy enough for New Year’s resolutions, it has a comfort-food factor for cold winter nights and it’s easy to make.

Roast some butternut squash on a Sunday afternoon when you’re pottering around the house.* When you’re ready to eat, sauté some spinach in a bit of olive oil. Add cubed butternut squash and some cheese—almost anything works here, although I like whipped cream cheese because it makes a nice, creamy sauce and isn’t terribly caloric.

Or add a bit of butter—it’s okay, a pat won’t set you back too much. Eat with rice, pasta or as is.

*To roast squash: Preheat the oven to 425 and line a large pan with foil. Cut up a butternut squash into 4-inch chunks. Don't bother peeling. Place squash in the pan; sprinkle with brown sugar, salt and black pepper. Add a splash of olive oil.

Roast 30-45 minutes, until the squash is easily pierced with a fork. Let cool and peel.

Russian Cold Remedies

2011-02-22T06:56:00.000-08:00

Been sick yet this season? In Russia, you wear down the cold! In keeping with cold and flu season, here’s a rundown of traditional Russian cold remedies. None of these will cure your cold, of course, but all will make you feel better when you’re going through boxes of Kleenex and rubbing your bleary eyes.

Tea: Tea is the Russian cure-all for everything—illness, hangovers, heartbreak, you name it. Brew yourself a pot of strong Earl Grey (see my user-friendly directions) and choose your add-in: lemon and honey, raspberry jam, or a good splash of brandy...okay, vodka.

Raspberry jam: Whether you add it to tea or eat as is, Russians say raspberry jam is good for colds. I’m neutral on this.

Oatmeal with raisins and butter.

Kasha: I don’t know if this counts as a traditional Russian remedy, but it helps me when I’m sick. Kasha* (каша), in Russian, is any hot cereal, such as oatmeal or cream of wheat. It's usually made with milk, not water, and it’s good comfort food when you’re out of sorts. Eat with a big pat of butter. You can afford the calories when your immune system is weak, you know. (*Kasha refers to buckwheat in English--in Russian, however, buckwheat is called grecha/греча.)

Hot steam: This one’s fun. Boil some potatoes in a large soup pot; drain when done. Lean over the empty pot, cover you head with a blanket—and breathe. The steam’s supposed to clear the nasal passageways. It’ll also open up your pores--kind of like a DIY spa treatment! Save the potatoes for salad Olivier, if you manage not to sneeze all over them.

Gogol-Mogol: Also on the weird side is this eggnog-like drink. I have no idea if it helps cure colds, as I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid it. Gogol-mogol involves mixing a raw egg with honey, hot milk and butter. Here’s a recipe.

Chicken noodle soup with meatballs.

Soup: Chicken soup, of course, but any kind of hot soup will do.

This is by no means a complete list. For more Russian cold remedies, including non-edible ones—ground mustard on your socks, anyone? —check out this blog. And share your favorite cold remedies, Russian or otherwise, in the comments.

Russian Candy Review: Korovki

2011-02-18T05:11:00.000-08:00

This is part three of my occasional Russian candy review series. See also part one and part two.

Who’s up for a little cow? That’s what these caramel candies are called in Russian—Korovki, which is short for little cows, plural (коровки=little cows/корова=cow, singular/коровы=cows, presumably full-sized).

They come in bright little wrappers with a picture of a blissfully happy cow on the front. As for the taste, these are like a soft, creamy version of Werther’s butterscotch toffee. They’re a bit too sweet for my tastes, but work when I need sugar rush. I give them a B-.

You can buy Korovki at most Russian and Eastern European groceries. In the Milwaukee area, I recommend Spartak in Whitefish Bay. For more on Milwaukee-area shopping options, check out this guide.

Times Are 'a Changing: Blogging in 2011 vs. 2006

2011-02-15T06:22:00.000-08:00

Yulinka Cooks is back in business! Did you miss me? If not, I can’t blame you. It’s hard to keep up with all the food blogs out there. We bloggers are competing for readers, page views, comments, attention. During my hiatus I've thought about how blogging's changed since Yulinka Cooks began back in '06. Here are my tips on blogging in 2011:

Go hyper-local: Like the newspaper industry, food bloggers should focus on gaining a local readership. Cover local food, local restaurants, local farmers. Meet local foodies, organize local events (the Milwaukee-based food blog Burp! is doing this right).

Find a Niche: It’s hard to sustain a food blog that’s all over the place. Pick a theme, the more unusual the better, and stick to it. (This pertains to all blogs, not just food—see the fashion blog Manrepeller for an example. The theme is clothes that confuse and repulse men. Weird? Yes. But in a universe full of fashion blogs filled with recycled industry gossip, this blog stands out and gets covered in the New York Times.)

Forget Anonymity: When I started this blog in 2006, hardly anyone who read it knew me offline. Later, thanks to a mention in the local paper, local food blogger events and the ubiquity of Facebook, nearly half my readers seemed to be from the Milwaukee area. Co-workers and acquaintances (now Facebook friends) would mention my blog posts. My blog came up, unprompted, during job interviews.

Social Media: You pretty much have to be on Facebook and Twitter now, if you’re a blogger.

Be Creative: Remember when food bloggers got book deals? That stopped circa 2008. Great recipes and artsy pictures aren’t enough to pull in readers, let alone a publishing contract, unless you run a really major blog like Smitten Kitchen. So be creative. Be weird. Don’t settle for just another recipe-and-picture food blog.

Have Fun: When blogging's fun, it shows! Also: find a few blogs that you really admire, read them and leave comments. The bloggers will appreciate it. As will I if you stick with Yulinka Cooks. Thanks again for reading!

All Blogged Out

2010-06-06T20:34:00.000-07:00

After four years of cooking and blogging, I'm closing up shop for a while. A huge thank-you to all for reading and commenting.

I may come back some day--who knows? In the meantime, feel free to e-mail me (yulinkacooks at yahoo dot com) with any questions about recipes on this blog.

Spring

2010-05-02T21:32:00.000-07:00

Tulips and rhubarb cake (recipe here--substitute rhubarb for apples). And here's another rhubarb cake recipe from the archives.

Amish Bread Starter: Free to a Good Home

2010-04-12T22:04:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago a volunteer where I work brought in some delicious Amish breakfast bread (right), and I asked for the recipe. Little did I know that I would be given not only the recipe, but also a batch of bread starter.

I've never worked with bread starter before, but this one's low-maintenance and totally not scary. All you do is give it an occasional stir, and feed it some flour, sugar and milk halfway through the 10-day fermentation process. On the tenth day, you bake. Oh, and you also end up with four more batches of starter.

Being exceptionally generous, I'm willing to share my starter. Anyone interested? Oh, please, tell me you are. I feel guilty tossing perfectly good starter, but I can't possibly tend to four batches of bread.

If you're in the Milwaukee area and you'd like some starter, e-mail me at yulinkacooks@yahoo.com or leave a comment.

Oh, and here's the recipe for the breakfast bread itself:

Heat the oven to 325. Add the following to the starter, mixing after each addition: 3 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 2 tsp. cinnamon, 1 cup oil, 2 cups flour [I added just 1 by mistake, but my bread came out fine], 1 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp. vanilla, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 large or 2 small packages instant pudding mix [I bet you can leave this out with no ill effect], 1.5 tsp baking powder. You can also add raisins, nuts, etc.

Grease two loaf pans [I used one 10-inch, round cake pan]. In a bowl, mix an additional 1/4 cup sugar and 1.5 tsp. cinnamon. Dust the greased pans with 1/2 of mixture. Pour the batter evenly into the pans. Sprinkle the remaining cinnamon/sugar mixture on top. Bake 45 to 60 minutes.

Happy Spring

2010-04-03T11:05:00.000-07:00

Coming from a non-religious Soviet culture, my family doesn't truly celebrate religious holidays. So you could call this dinner a "festive spring meal" or somesuch, where Russian holiday favorites ("herring in a fur coat," pickled mushrooms) and remnants of religious traditions (dyed eggs) mingle on the same table.

Brunch

2010-03-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

So I hear brunch is a pretty popular pastime these days. In Milwaukee, there's at least one blog devoted to full-time brunching and bloody mary-ing: Milwaukee Brunch Reviews.

I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to restaurant brunches, but I do like brunching at home. Brunch is often part of my routine on Tuesday mornings, the day when I work afternoons and evenings. It's also a good time to catch up on blogs, Twitter, e-mail and so on.

My favorite brunch food is pretty simple: spinach sautéed with some bacon and mushrooms, and topped with a poached egg and maybe a bit of cheese. Sometimes I'll toss in leftovers like roasted potatoes. Poaching eggs seems to cause such anxiety for cooks (think Julie Powell's near-breakdown in the movie Julie & Julia), but I've never had much trouble. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

I bring a few cups of water to a boil in a saucepan, add a splash of vinegar (to prevent the egg white from separating) and then turn the heat to the lowest setting. I break an egg or two into a saucer and slide them into the water. I like my eggs runny, so I fish them out after three minutes.

For the beverage, I go for my recession latte--coffee made in a French press with a splash of hot milk.

Tuesday Morning Brunch for one:

Heat up a teaspoon of olive oil in a skillet. Add a slice or two of bacon, chopped up, and sauté for a minute. Add a handful of chopped mushrooms, and cook until the mushrooms are done, 4-6 minutes. Toss in two big handfuls of spinach (or half a package of frozen spinach, defrosted), and cook until wilted, 3-5 minutes. Add salt and black pepper to taste, and top with some cheese if you like. In the meantime, poach eggs as described above and make coffee.

My favorite side these days is a warmed up tortilla with cream cheese, but if you have more time, homemade yogurt scones are a close runner-up.

Chocolate-Covered Sirki

2010-03-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a little blogging break while I deal with grad school stuff (to be completed in late March, yay!), but in the meantime please enjoy this updated post about chocolate-covered sirki. Sirki (сырки) are mini-cheesecake bars that are sold in every corner grocery in Russia. They're hard to find in the U.S., but I'm providing a tweaked recipe from Anya von Bremzen's Please to the Table cookbook. I know, I shouldn't have.

Russian Candy Review: Part Two

2010-03-03T20:07:00.000-08:00

In Russia, you eat the bear. Oh, okay, you actually eat Mishka Kosolapyi (мишка косолапый), which translates as "clumsy bear," more or less. This is basically a chocolate-covered wafer candy with a picture of a mama bear and cubs on the wrapper. Cute, crunchy and tasty; I give it an A.

This is the second installment of my long-ago promised series on Russian candy (part one is here). You can buy mishkas at most Russian and Eastern-European grocery stores in Milwaukee; go here for locations. Yulinka Cooks endorses Spartak in Whitefish Bay, Wis.

Zapekanka

2010-02-13T20:37:00.000-08:00

I’m having problems with zapekanka. It’s a kind of Russian cheesecake made from curd cheese (also called farmer's cheese or tvorog in Russian; see my recipe here). I’ve played with recipes from old Russian cookbooks, the kind that don’t have precise measurements or baking times. Normally this isn’t a problem—I never measure ingredients and substitute them at will. This works pretty well for me, except, of course, when baking. It doesn’t help that farmer’s cheese is a soggy ingredient, so some guidelines come in handy here.

Unfortunately there aren’t too many zapekanka recipes out there—this one, by a Russian-born food blogger, is probably the closest to what I’m looking for. I’ve always thought of zapekanka as a breakfast food or a light dinner, not dessert, however. Anyway, I had some leftover curd cheese last week, and I improvised this recipe:

1.5 cups curd cheese mixed with a bit less than ¼ cup sugar, ½ tsp. vanilla extract, 3 tbs. flour, ½ tsp. baking powder and an egg yolk. The egg white was beaten until peaks formed and added to the rest of the ingredients. I also tossed in some raisins (any kind of dried fruit works well in a zapekanka). I baked the whole thing in a buttered, 9-inch pan at 370 degrees for about 45 minutes. The final product was beautifully golden and airy, although it quickly sank once it left the oven. It was also a bit soggy and too sweet, just like two previous attempts.

So, readers, any advice for making a successful zapekanka? Recipes in Russian are welcome. (I don't usually search online in Russian because I can't read it as fast as English--blame first language attrition.)

Mid-Week Cooking Notes

2010-02-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

Oh, I know the photo is hideous, but that's great comfort food for a cold February night. Feast your eyes on chicken kotleti (Russian pan-fried burgers) and mashed potatoes, with a mushroom-and-red wine gravy.

Product Review: Hren (horseradish relish)

2010-01-24T20:05:00.000-08:00

The pink stuff’s hren (хрен). Say it with me: hren!* Hren means horseradish in Russian, and that’s horseradish relish with beets in the photo. Hren is a very popular Russian condiment, and Eastern European groceries sell different varieties that range from mild to bitingly spicy. The beet version is my favorite: sweet-and-sour and delightfully fuchsia. Hren is typically eaten with meats or cold cuts, but I also like it on roasted potatoes.

*By the way, in Russian, the word “hren” and its variants are a milder version of the equivalent to the f-bomb. It’s sort of like saying “freakin’” instead of the real thing in English.

Calling All Blogs

2010-01-20T19:04:00.001-08:00

If you write a blog on Russian or Eastern European cooking, please leave a comment or e-mail me at yulinkacooks@yahoo.com. I'd like to compile a list of links to food blogs that cover this topic. Blogs on food from the former Soviet Republics are welcome, too.

Cooking Notes

2010-01-17T19:50:00.000-08:00

This post takes inspiration from former Milwaukee food blogger Haverchuk, who used to do roundups of cooking that hadn’t made it onto the blog that month, “like the deleted scenes on your DVDs.”

A few weeks ago I made draniki, Belarusian potato pancakes. These are a lot like latkes, but without the onion. You shred about 5 or 6 small peeled potatoes in a food processor; then add 2 tablespoons of flour, a beaten egg, salt and pepper. Be sure to salt the batter generously, or your pancakes will be bland.

Heat a glug of vegetable oil in a non-stick pan, and ladle ¼-cup scoops of batter into the pan. The pancakes should be 3 to 4 inches long, about 2 inches wide, and ¼-inch thin. When frying, you really have to generous with the oil, or the pancakes start burning. Fry for about 30 to 50 seconds, then flip and fry for another 30 seconds; repeat until both sides are golden-brown, about 2 minutes. These are pretty good with sour cream. Tip: Don’t make them on a weeknight when you really don’t feel like cleaning oil splatters off the stove, okay?

I tried these spinach-stuffed mushrooms at a New Year’s party, and have made them about four or five times since then. This is a Paula Deen recipe, and it’s really quite delicious. Unlike most of Deen’s repertoire, it doesn’t even call for five pounds of butter. I did make some tweaks to the original directions. Be sure to sauté the mushrooms caps for about 5 to 7 minutes before stuffing them, otherwise they don’t cook through. For the spinach filling, I subbed some homemade farmer's cheese for the feta. Ricotta would work, too.

#MushroomFail

2010-01-04T18:31:00.000-08:00

Well, this pickled mushroom recipe bombed. In fact, my mushrooms turned out like barely edible little salt bombs. The recipe, which I followed precisely, called for two tablespoons of plain non-iodized salt to one pound of mushrooms. What went wrong here? Is there any way to fix this?

By the way, the recipe, from Anne Volokh's The Art of Russian Cuisine, is very similar to this Deb Perelman recipe, which also turned out unbearably salty when I tried it a few years ago. (Perelman is behind the usually foolproof Smitten Kitchen blog.)

Happy New Year!

2009-12-30T19:31:00.000-08:00

This is a time when Christmas trees are hitting the curb and holiday celebrations are winding down for most Americans. For Russians, however, the party starts on December 31. In the Soviet times, New Year's Eve became the big winter holiday, complete with the many trappings of Christmas, but with none of the religious connotations. (Think New Year trees and "Father Frost" bearing gifts; more on this below.) I'm off to celebrate with friends and traditional Russian New Year's Eve food (recipes below). Have a wonderful New Year's, everyone. Thanks for reading all year long.

From the archives:
More on New Year's, and a recipe for "herring in a fur coat."
The New York Times on New Year's in the Soviet times.
More on Russian New Year's history.

New Year's Recipes:
Mushroom deviled eggs
Oliver salad

Mushrooming Forth

2009-12-23T19:35:00.000-08:00

I'm back to my old tricks--pickling and marinating vegetables. This time, I'm trying a recipe for pickled mushrooms from Anne Volokh's The Art of Russian Cuisine. I've been looking for a good recipe for Russian-style pickled mushrooms for ages, but I've never found one that was really satisfying (this attempt is the closest I've gotten).

Volokh's recipe is different from my past attempts because it doesn't call for any liquid or vinegar--just mushrooms, aromatics (garlic, dill) and salt. You weigh down the mushrooms with something heavy (like my big bottle, above). The mushrooms release liquid, which becomes the brine. They're properly pickled in 10 to 14 days. Stay tuned for an update.

From the archives: A recipe for marinated mushrooms from Anya von Bremzen's Please to the Table

Some Notes on Russian Cookbooks

2009-12-20T15:42:00.000-08:00

Move over, Please to the Table; I’ve got a new Russian cookbook to play with. It's Anne Volokh’s 600-page The Art of Russian Cuisine, published in 1983. (Anya Von Bremzen’s 1990 Please to the Table, by the way, has been my main inspiration for this blog.)

I haven’t had a chance to try any of Volokh’s recipes, but I’m impressed by the scope of her book. All the usual Russian foods (borsch, pelmeni) are well-represented, but so are lesser-known dishes such as seledka pod shuboi (herring in a fur coat) and Napoleon (tricky but popular layered cream cake). The chapters on making your own rye bread and pickling and preserving fruits and vegetables are extensive. Volokh’s recipes are more detailed than Von Bremzen’s, and she included handy diagrams for work-intensive dishes such as vareneki (dumplings) and multi-layered pies.

If there’s a downside to the book, it’s that Volokh spends a bit too much time on 19th-century Russian haute cuisine. (The amusing author photo in my edition shows Volokh wearing what looks like a 19th-century hat and gown.) Has anyone in Russia cooked dishes like poached sturgeon with cream sauce and Veal Prince Orlov between, say, 1920 and 1995? There’s little from the former Soviet republics with the exception of the most well-known dishes like plov, the Uzbek lamb and rice stew.

Von Bremzen, too, includes grouse and such in her book, but she also extensively covers the foods of every USSR satellite nation from Estonia to Tajikistan. I like that she notes Soviet-era food shortages and adaptations 20th-century home cooks have had to make. Unfortunately, Von Bremzen's recipes often need some tweaking and her ingredient proportions tend to be off.

I've heard from blog readers that Volokh's recipes are more precise, so I'm looking forward to perusing her book and trying some of her recipes, starting with pickled mushrooms.

Thanksgiving in a Bowl Soup

2009-11-28T20:11:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the long silence, guys. Oh, I’ve been cooking, but I haven’t made anything exciting in weeks. Nothing that’s inspired me to write a post that’s longer than 140 characters. (See my Twitter feed, at right, for the latest in Yulinka Cooks non-news.)

This soup is a rare exception. I thought of it while driving home from a post-Thanksgiving shopping trip, knowing I had various soup-friendly ingredients to use up. The ingredients were chicken stock, a bunch of spinach, butternut squash puree originally made for ravioli, the aforementioned ravioli, and leftover turkey.

This is how it all came together. I brought the chicken stock to simmer and added the butternut squash puree (roasted squash, a few tablespoons each of butter and whipped cream cheese, hint of sage and nutmeg--yum). In the meantime, in a skillet, I sautéed a diced onion in olive oil, and added a bunch of chopped spinach to the pan when the onion was almost cooked. The spinach was sautéed for a few minutes until it wilted. I added the vegetables to the chicken stock; then I added few handfuls of pre-frozen butternut squash ravioli to the soup pot.

I hesitate to share my ravioli recipe because a) it was something I created on a lark one Sunday night, b) I didn’t really follow a recipe and I didn’t use a pasta machine to roll out my dough, two steps usually recommended for fresh pasta-beginners, and c) I really overstuffed the ravioli and most of them didn’t seal properly. (I used this pasta dough recipe, but in the future I’ll follow this excellent, detailed guide to making fresh pasta.)

Anyway, when the ravioli were almost cooked—it only took about 2 minutes—I added some diced, roasted turkey to the soup pot. Some stirring, a bit of kosher salt, some black pepper, and the soup was done. It was creamy, slightly sweet, nourishing and filling. It was like a festive holiday meal with your family, assuming you like your family. It was Thanksgiving in a bowl, in short. I will be making this again and again.

Note: Keep in mind that you can substitute quite a lot of ingredients here—you don’t need butternut squash ravioli; just use a favorite pasta or diced, cooked potatoes (or forget the starch altogether). Instead of turkey, you could use leftover chicken, ham or diced sausage. But do make the butternut squash puree.

Apples From "R" Apples

2009-11-08T20:33:00.000-08:00

Barthel Fruit Farm and Niemann Orchards may be the popular Milwaukee-area farms for apple picking, but my heart belongs to the little-known “R” Apples. This place does no advertising, has no Web site, and good luck trying to find its address on Google.

If you do find yourself driving past this place in rural Mequon, pop in and you could be in for some great deals on pick-your-own fruits and vegetables (see this old post about "R"Apples' tomatoes.)

In the fall, "R" Apples has 8 to 10 varieties of apples for picking. For the past two weeks they’ve had Suncrisp , Ida Red, Jonathan, Jonamac, Jonagold, Braeburn, Red Delicious and Spartan for the unbelievable price of 30 cents per pound. The Suncrisps and Ida Reds are some of the best apples I’ve had this year.

"R" Apples should be open for apple-picking through Thanksgiving on weekends, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call ahead, though—their hours can be flexible (they were closed when I showed up at 11 a.m. last Sunday, but opened by 12:30 p.m.)

"R" Apples
12246 N. Farmdale Rd., Mequon
Phone: (262) 242-0669

Press

2009-11-03T21:29:00.000-08:00

It's terrible social media etiquette to interrupt a long blogging silence just to say, "Hey, I'm in the news," but, hey, I'm in the news. Actually, I'm in Milwaukee Home and Fine Living Magazine, which published my savory mushroom pie recipe (and mistakenly called me a chef--I just play one in my kitchen).

Product Review: Suhariki

2009-10-19T21:21:00.000-07:00

Suhariki are a simple little snack that I’ve eaten dozens of times without considering to highlight them here. Russian for crackers or little toasts, suhariki are sold in every Eastern European grocery I’ve been to, usually right next to sushki (bagel-shaped crackers). Basically these are lightly sweetened crackers or cookies that you eat plain as a snack, or topped with any combination of cheese, jam or what have you. I like them for breakfast with cream cheese and jam, washed down with a café au lait, or as a late-night snack with some milky tea.

Some Notes on a Week in Paris and Rome

2009-10-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

-I spent the first week of October in Paris and Rome, and while I had a very nice time indeed, very little of it was about food. I love food and cooking, but when traveling I'm not the sort of foodie who goes out of her way for purportedly great food . Abroad, I'm all about walking, sightseeing, people-watching...adventurous eating goes on the (ahem) back burner. Sure, I had compiled a list of great bakeries and restaurants to visit in both cities, but when I was hungry, I'd pop into the nearest boulangerie or pizzeria for a baguette sandwich or a slice. I go to Europe for the culture, man. Oh, and my budget was really tight.

(Below: View from the second floor of the Louvre.)-Paris gave me some emotional ups and downs. I had been there twice before, and the pleasure of revisiting the city was great. I loved the people-watching: the man in the metro with a pet rat on his shoulder, stylish girls in scarves, skinny jeans and over-the-knee boots (all the rage right now).
-On the other hand: knowing that I was yet another tourist trekking from one attraction to the other. Knowing that I will never, ever, speak French without an accent. Plus, it’s hard to come up with a new perspective on Paris; it’s all been done before, mostly by Americans with bohemian bourgeoisie aspirations.

--Food: I was winging this trip on the cheap, so there were a lot of street crepes and baguette sandwiches, all acceptable. When I was craving a place to relax with a pot of tea, we went to the Creperie de Cluny in the Latin Quarter. Some think this place is a tourist trap, but I had perfectly good crepes here (in the evening, many patrons were locals, or at least French speakers). Below: Crepe with ham, cheese and potatoes, topped with an over-easy egg.
-I did go to the famous Laduree bakery to try the famous macaron cookies (below). The line stretched out the door and the five staffers made a big show of being busy but not doing much. My chocolate macaron, eaten on a park bench in the Tuileries and washed down with tea, was pretty good; the unnaturally green pistachio macaron was cloying. I think Laduree is all about the experience of sitting in its fancy dining room or eating the pastries somewhere in the heart of Paris. Back in my hotel in the 20th arrondissement, my third macaron tasted like a store-bought chocolate cookie. -Ice cream: I bypassed the famous, but, I think, overrated Berthillon ice cream for the excellent Amorino, a gelato chain with several locations.

-The gourmet market at Galeries Lafayette, the huge department store, was more fun to browse than most museums, not least for the exorbitant prices surely set to shock tourists.

-Rome: I liked the food here better. It seemed more colorful, fresher, brighter, like Rome itself. Two carabiniere recommended L'Insalata Ricca, a popular local chain, for lunch. Huge salads seem to be the most popular offering. The patio where we sat was packed with locals. The bread served here was the best I had on the trip. Below: Trevi Fountain.
-The weather was in the 80s and I spotted peaches blooming on trees. Score one for Rome. Below: The Spanish Steps at night.

-Gelato: It was all pretty good, but the best I had was San Crispino, a minute’s walk away from the Trevi Fountain. This is the thinking man’s gelato: muted colors, natural ingredients and sophisticated flavors like honey and Borolo wine.
-Street pizza: This was more like flatbread with toppings! I am surely a horrible gourmet for preferring American pizza.

From the Archives: Early Fall Eats

2009-09-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

I've been out and about, readers, but here are some favorite fall recipes to tide you over:

Rice-stuffed tomatoes. Great when you're tired of BLTs and Caprese salad. Yes, it can happen.

Eggplant and zucchini stacks. Towers of vegetables, sauce and cheese.

Butternut squash and mushroom salad. Butternut squash recipes on food blogs means fall is truly here.

Eggplant and pepper ragout. A sort of ratatouille.

And to wash it all down, see this piece from OnMilwaukee.com on favorite fall beers. (I prefer Lakefront Pumpkin Lager.)

From the Archives: Tea

2009-09-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

"Dinner has ended long ago, but still we are sitting at the table, drinking our fifth or seventh cup of tea; and I am thinking that Russians can sit at a supper table while saying brilliant or ridiculous things longer than seems physically possible; further, this trait may explain Russia's famous susceptibility to unhealthy foreign ideas, with the post-mealtime tea-drinking providing the opportunity for contagion; and, further yet, I am wondering whether tea perhaps has been a more dangerous beverage to the Russian peace of mind, over all, than vodka."

-Ian Frazier, ""Travels in Siberia--I," New Yorker, Aug. 3, 2009

This blog, on tea.

Tomato Season

2009-08-28T21:27:00.000-07:00

Tomato season in my kitchen began this week. It's a bit late, but we've had a cool summer here in Wisconsin and tomatoes are slow to ripen. Local farmers markets have been selling 'maters since July, but they're expensive. (I paid $1.75 for one large tomato a few weeks ago.)

I prefer to buy tomatoes from pick-your-own farms in the Milwaukee suburbs of Mequon and Cedarburg. Last weekend I picked a few pounds of disappointingly green tomatoes at "R" Apples in Mequon for about 60 cents a pound.

The cashier reassured me that my pickings would ripen if I kept them for a few days in a brown paper bag. He was right. The tomatoes never quite developed that bright, farmers-market red, but they were still pretty tasty. I snapped the above photo a day after picking.

Later in the season, when tomatoes are more plentiful, I might make ratatouille or tomatoes stuffed with lamb and rice. For now, I'm satisfied with thinly sliced tomatoes generously topped with red onion rounds and a sprinkle of kosher salt.

"R" Apples
12246 N. Farmdale Rd., Mequon
Phone: (262) 242-0669

Fast Food: Pelmeni

2009-08-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

You might think that pelmeni--Russian dumplings with meat filling--are a special-occasion food. They're time-consuming to make--you have to mess around with pasta dough, for one. Plus you’ve got to make the stuffing, roll out the dough, fill the dumplings and in all likelihood freeze them, as pelmeni are usually made by the hundreds.

Despite all this effort, pelmeni are considered a quick and low-maintenance meal in many Russian households. Boil a pot of water, toss in some dumplings, and in about seven minutes dinner's ready. Of course, many Russians in the U.S. (and probably nowadays in Russia) simply buy ready-made pelmeni and keep them in the freezer for emergency meals.

Above is a shot of my recent pelmeni dinner (our pelmeni came by way of an aunt who buys them from some lady in what I call Milwaukee's "Little Brooklyn," i.e. Shorewood). I prettied up my pelmeni with some sautéed mushrooms and a handful of chopped dill, but that's optional. Sour cream, I feel, is not, but some like to top pelmeni with butter or a bit of white vinegar.

I think nearly every Russian grocery in the U.S. carries pelmeni in its freezer case. In the Milwaukee area, I recommend Spartak in Whitefish Bay. If you want to tackle homemade pelmeni, see this promising-looking recipe from the blog Tea and Cookies.

From the Archives: Pickle Season

2009-08-12T20:58:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I bought a big bag of pickling cucumbers for about $4 at the West Allis Farmer's Market. Above is a shot of pickle-making in progress (I used this recipe from my archives). Cucumber season is short--I recommend you make this in the next couple of weeks. Pickles make a great side to boiled fingerling potatoes.

Two Summer Recipes

2009-08-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

The first summer I had a blog I liked making complicated recipes. Stuffed zucchini, stuffed tomatoes, stuffed this and that. These days I’m far more likely to toss zucchini slices on a grill or slice up tomatoes for a salad. I’m not really inspired to make multi-step dishes that have you chop, dice and sauté. My tastes have changed, for whatever reason. Every once in a while, though, I miss hands-on cooking and make something other than grilled veggies. Last week, I cooked up these two dishes:

Sauteed zucchini with onions and corn (grilled Polish sausage on the side). Dice and sauté an onion in butter in a skillet. When the onion’s golden and soft, add two thinly sliced zucchini, and keep sautéing until they’re soft. Add some crushed garlic; sauté 30 more seconds.

Add the kernels from one cob of corn—parboiled, grilled or even raw if your corn’s really good. Sauté a few more minutes. Take off the heat and let cool 5 minutes. Top with feta cheese and chopped scallions. Serve with protein of choice (also great with pasta).
Braised cabbage with Middle-Eastern spices: I have pretty standard cravings—chocolate, good bread and so on—but every once in a while I’ll crave cabbage. That’s right. In particular, I’ve been in the mood for braised cabbage like the kind served at the lunch buffet at Casablanca, a Middle-Eastern restaurant in Milwaukee. This was my attempt to recreate their recipe:

Clean a small head of cabbage and cut it up into chunks--about a dozen. Heat up some olive oil in a large sauté pan and cook the cabbage slices, flipping them over once in a while, for about 15 minutes. It's okay if they fall apart. You might have to cook them in batches. Put the browned cabbage in a foil-lined pan.

Finely dice two fat garlic cloves, and sauté them in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Sprinkle in a healthy shake of cumin, cinnamon and turmeric; sauté for about 30 seconds. Sprinkle the garlic and spices over the cabbage chunks. Evenly add 1.5 cups crushed tomatoes to the cabbage (or 1.5 cup tomato sauce). Top cabbage with 1 cup crumbled Feta cheese. Bake at 425 until the cabbage is soft and the Feta is melted and golden brown; about 25-30 minutes.

Summer Non-Recipes

2009-07-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hello, readers. Did you miss me? No? I didn’t miss this place either. I haven’t been cooking much lately, you see. Instead, I’ve been having dinners of cut-up vegetables and salsa, raw sugar snap peas and dip, grilled zucchini with feta. Simple and summery. You don’t expect me to dig out my camera and spend my evenings blogging about that, right? Right.

Over the past couple of months, though, I did come up with a little arsenal of quick non-meals that might inspire you to give up cooking for a while, too. (For more on this phenomenon, see Mark Bittman’s 101 simple summer salads piece from last week’s New York Times.)

Here are some ideas:

Thinly sliced cucumber round sandwiches with cream cheese and turkey (above).

Grilled zucchini and summer squash slices, cut into chunks and eaten with some feta and cubed ham or turkey.

Grilled zucchini slices topped with cheese or bacon or thinly sliced ham, like open-faced sandwiches.

Cut-up carrot sticks with black bean and corn salsa.

Slightly sautéed sugar snap peas or green beans, topped with feta.

Hot, grilled onion rounds (especially red onions) topped with cheese.

Sliced radishes, sprinked with kosher salt and topped with cheese or turkey.

Thursday Linkage

2009-07-08T19:35:00.000-07:00

*Do you have trouble making the perfect roast chicken? Breasts too dry, skin too chewy? Have I got a recipe for you! Helen Rennie of Beyond Salmon came up with an endlessly tested, multi-step recipe for the perfect bird. If brining or trussing isn't good enough for you, I urge to check out Helen's inventive and exhaustive--if not exhausting--write-up.

Now here's my caveat: I think foodies' quest for perfection can stem from too many options, too much food. Sure, it's fun to come up with the "perfect" recipe, but it's just as good to eat something, anything when you're truly hungry. Go on a long, strenuous hike and see how good that granola bar and instant coffee taste afterward.

*Do you keep leftovers till they grow mold or do you toss them ruthlessly? This amusing New York Times piece chronicles the wars over leftovers. I'm very much pro-leftovers--here's a recipe for a salad made of leftover grilled chicken, and a post on a potato-and-cheese pie made of leftover mashed potatoes.

Camping Food: S'mores vs. Rye Bread

2009-07-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

Some kids like s'mores; I liked toasted rye bread. Growing up in Russia, I spent my summers in the country, in a small village not far from St. Petersburg. One of my best memories of those days is toasting bread over a campfire. I thought this was an absolutely delicious treat, especially when the bread was sprinked with salt and eaten with ripe plum tomatoes on the side.

These days, toasting rye bread (oh, and bagels) is still my favorite part of camping. I'm off for a camping/canoeing trip this weekend, and I hope to return with more stories about Russian campfire treats. Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

Summer Salad

2009-06-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a beautiful little salad I made for dinner tonight. No long story about its origins this time. This is simple stuff--diced veggies, a bit of cheese, some ham, olive oil and vinegar. It was a hot summer day; the salad was cold and crunchy. I ate it outside on our little patio as the sun set.

Here's what you do: cut up some radishes, carrots and cauliflower florets. Or use whatever vegetables you have on hand. It's all good here. Add some chopped parsley, dill and scallions. Crumbled feta, diced ham or turkey and a hard-boiled egg, quartered, work nicely here, too. Dress with whatever you like. Crunch away.

Roasted Cauliflower with Stuff

2009-06-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

Here’s a really delicious and simple way to cook cauliflower. Cut it up, roast it in the oven with cheese, onions and some spices, and add whatever protein you have on hand. It’s a low-maintenance meal-in-a-dish that can be as light or rich as you like.

Preheat the oven to 425. Cut up a large head of cauliflower. Place in a foil-lined pan. Add about 2 tbs. olive oil, a good shake of paprika, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir so the vegetable chunks are evenly coated.

Cut up a medium red onion into slices; dice ¼ pound bacon into 1-inch pieces. Add the onion and bacon to the pan. Roast for about 20-25 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so.

Remove from the oven and add cheese—practically any kind and any amount will work here. I added about ½ cup each shredded cheddar and diced havarti. Roast 10 more minutes, or until the cauliflower is tender but not overcooked. Add 1 cup frozen peas, and stick the pan in the oven for another minute or so, until the peas are defrosted.

Serve with good, toasted bread. This is also great over rice, especially when topped with a poached egg.

Russia/Estonia Postscript: Food

2009-06-15T19:02:00.000-07:00

[Last week I blogged my July 2008 trip to Estonia and Russia. Go here for an intro and previous posts. This is the last part of my travelogue.]I wish I could write more about food in Estonia and Russia, but I tried very few foods that were new to me. We also didn't eat out much because restaurants are so expensive in the major Russian cities. That said, I did sample a few local specialties.

In Tallinn, I really liked a restaurant called Kuldse Notsu Kõrts. I blogged about its delicious potato-mushroom casserole here. The restaurant manager kindly shared the recipe.

In St. Petersburg we stayed with a friend of my mom’s and usually ate at home. We picked up groceries at some of the local stores—Netto is a reasonably-priced supermarket chain that I remember. The stores have come a long, long way from the scarce Soviet times. You can get everything that’s available in the U.S., plus local convenience foods like frozen pelmeni and manti (meat and lamb dumplings, respectively).

I have to note that produce and dairy products tasted better than what you get at U.S. supermarkets. The cucumbers were fresh and sweet; the tomatoes tasted like tomatoes. I’m still impressed by all the different dairy and cheese goodies you can get in Russia—dozens of varieties of farmer’s cheese, different kinds of kefir, rhiazenka and sour cream.In St. Petersburg we went to the famous indoor markets (Sitni Rinok and Senney Rinok), and I wanted a taste of everything. These places sell beautiful (and pricy) fruit, vegetables, pickes and preserves, cheese, fish, meat, spices, dried fruit, sweets, you name it. I didn’t take any photos because the vendors start hawking their goods as soon as you make eye contact, but here’s a sample pic. This photo and the one at the top of the post are by Shannon Rae.

As for restaurants, I’ve become a huge fan of Teremok, which I wrote about here. This fast food chain makes traditional Russian dishes like blini and borsch. The food is good and fresh, and the service is quick and reasonably good by Russian standards. I loved Teremok’s kvass (rye bread beer, below) and mors (a cranberry drink).

A Yulinka Cooks Travelogue: 24 Hours in Moscow. Part 6 of 6.

2009-06-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

[This week I'm blogging my July 2008 trip to Estonia and Russia. Go here for an intro and previous posts. In this entry: Moscow.]

Before this trip, I had been to Moscow once, when I was 8. My parents, grandparents and I came here for an interview with officials at the American embassy a few months before we immigrated to the U.S. It was January, bitterly cold and snowing. My parents took me to see the Kremlin, pointing this way and that to the famous landmarks. My dad carried me through the Red Square. I closed my eyes to shield them from the blowing snow.

This time, my dad and I head to Moscow on our own. My parents hate this city the way some Americans hate New York. It’s loud, rude, expensive and dirty. Muscovites and St. Petersburg natives have always been rivals, I learn. Still, we’re unlikely to visit this part of the world any time in the near future, and Moscow is on my to-do list. My dad, the native St. Petersburg resident, pulls the short straw on this one.

We take the overnight train to Moscow and get in at 5 a.m. Just past 6 a.m., we’re at the Kremlin. The Red Square is nearly deserted, besides the occasional office worker and packs of stray, sad-eyed dogs.
Everything's closed and we walk around aimlessly. On our third lap, two cops flag us down. They’re young and they’re drunk. They ask to see our passports. They study our train ticket stubs to and from St. Petersburg. They look at that vitally important "registration" document it took hours to get in St. Petersburg.

Our papers are in the order, they finally admit, but walking around this early in the morning is unusual for tourists, they say. It's downright suspicious! They are, to their credit, surprisingly jovial. I’m guessing it’s the end of their shift. Now they want to chat.

Where are we from in the U.S.?

Near Chicago, my dad says.

Chicago? The hell you say. One of them whistles. Chicago is impressively far away.

Now it’s our turn to ask questions. Could they recommend a bus tour of the city?

Oh, you don’t want to take the bus in Moscow, they say. The traffic jams are awful! You'll be stuck in traffic for hours.

Traffic jams are pretty bad in St. Petersburg, my father says.

Ours are much worse! they reassure us proudly.

We wish each other well and go on our way. The sun has risen, and the Red Square is slowly filling with tourists.
We go on a tour of the Kremlin (overpriced and underwhelming).

We take that bus tour of the city, and don’t get stuck in traffic.
We go to Arbat, the famous pedestrian shopping street. These days, everything is under construction here; you have to shout over jackhammers to be heard. My dad points to the nearby American embassy. He sneaked in there sometime in 1989 to grab an application for asylum in the U.S. You had to wait for the Soviet guard to turn away, he says. If you were spotted, you could get arrested and lose your job.

The good old days! Now, it seems like no one’s excited about America anymore. The U.S. hasn’t lived up to its promise here. People are hungry for Euros, not dollars. (I have to note that a few months ago George Soros claimed that America’s economic collapse is comparable to that of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.)
There's a lot to think about. It’s hot, and we’re tired of talking over the din. We go to Teremok (Russian fast food chain) on Arbat to eat blini and drink kvass--rye bread beer (photo below). It's cheap, cold and delicious. We head back to the station to catch our train back to St. Petersburg. A few days later, we'll head back home.
Next: A few notes on food.

A Yulinka Cooks Travelogue: A Blast From the Past. Part 5 of 6.

2009-06-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

[This week I'm blogging my July 2008 trip to Estonia and Russia. Go here for an intro and previous posts. In this entry: down memory lane in St. Petersburg.]

One day, we go on a walk down memory lane.

We see the communal apartment where my parents lived in the early 1980s. I spent the first year of my life here.
We walk past the building where my dad grew up. He stops at the front door, considers ringing the doorbell, but thinks better of it.

There was a store on this corner, a public bathhouse across the street, he says. They’re gone now. Later, without us, he goes back to his old primary school, and gets kicked out by the custodian.

He had lived in this city for more than 30 years. Now, he has a whole different life in the U.S. His life is split in two.

-Does that make him sad, wistful?

-No. He’s firm on this. I can’t imagine what I’d be doing if we had stayed here.

Neither can I. It seems inevitable that we should immigrate to the U.S. How would my life have turned out had we stayed? I don’t know. I rarely even wonder about this alternative universe.

We go to Kupchino, a suburb on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. This is where we moved when I was a year old. Kupchino is home to ‘70s and ‘80s-era high-rise apartments, gray, multi-story blocks. These days, it's also filled with strip malls and big-box stores. They’re even building churches, unimaginable in the atheist Soviet times.

I may not remember the palaces and museums of downtown St. Petersburg, but I do remember Kupchino. I grew up here, I went to school here, I played on the playground in the courtyard of our apartment building. Today, everything looks decrepit, unkempt. Some apartments are boarded up.

This is where we’d be living if we hadn’t left Russia, says my dad. This place leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Everyone wanted an apartment here once, my mom sighs. There was a 20-year waiting list for one these!
Across the street from our old apartment building, there’s a children’s hospital. It was under construction from the early ‘80s to the mid-'90s. Now it’s open for business, but like everything else, it looks empty and abandoned. We visit my old school (below); it’s closed for renovations. So is the neighborhood library where my mom once worked. There's nothing here for us. We head back to the city. The nextday, we’re off to Moscow (where we almost get arrested).

A Yulinka Cooks Travelogue. St. Petersburg: The Good, the Bad... Part 3 of 6

2009-06-10T20:28:00.000-07:00

[This week I'm blogging my July 2008 trip to Estonia and Russia. Previous entries begin here.]

My parents are debating whether Russia has changed since the fall of communism. Their consensus is this: Superficially, the country has changed. You can buy everything that’s available in the West. People are driving cars and traveling. Nearly everyone has a cell phone. What hasn’t changed? The Soviet mindset, the bureaucracy, the stone-faced apathy and rudeness of the clerks and cashiers.

When we arrive, our host, an old friend of my mom’s, says we may need to “register” our visa. What this means, we later find out, is that if you come to Russia on a homestay visa (issued to you personally by a Russian citizen)*, you need to check in and get special paperwork from the city where you’re staying. Fail to do this and you face heavy fines and other unspecified misfortunes.

So on a Monday morning, we head to a nearly police station to register. We’re told you can register here only on Wednesdays, 1:30-2:30 p.m., but other stations might be open. We traipse around two more police precincts before we’re directed to the city’s visa registration office.

Naturally, there’s a line. Registration is held from noon to 1 p.m. only, we’re told. People have been waiting since 5 a.m. Put your name on a list, someone adds, but you probably won’t get in. We sign a piece of scrap paper and wait. Someone else advises us to register at the post office. It's faster, they say.

Okay. Anyone know where the nearest post office is?

No one does. We go outside and ask strangers for directions. People shrug. The hell with it; we head back and wait some more.

Did you fill out the paperwork? we're asked as it gets closer to noon.

There’s paperwork?

Everyone laughs. If you don’t have the paperwork, you’ll be waiting here all week!

We race to fill out paperwork. We need multiple photocopies of our passports and visas. There’s no copy machine in the office. We go in search of one at a travel agency across the street.

Can we use your copier? We ask the young staffers.

They give us a deer-in-the-headlights look that's a customer service trademark here, but nod.

We make copies and run back to the registration office.

It turns out we need yet more copies of something or other. I keep our place in line; my parents race to the travel agency. It’s now closed for lunch, but they sneak into a nearby office complex and sweet talk the security guard into letting them use a copy machine.

It’s almost 1 p.m. now. Surprisingly, the line moves fast. At 12:55 p.m., we get called in. But it’s not us they need, it’s my mom’s friend, who invited us. She goes in; paperwork is issued; she’s out in two minutes. We get a little paper document that says we can stay in St. Petersburg. Lose it, and there will be hell to pay. (After we leave the country, our host must come back here and complete more paperwork testifying that we’re gone.)

We fly out of the registration office into the afternoon sunlight. We’re elated, we feel free. This is what it was like in the Soviet times, says my dad. You would bang your head against the wall trying to get something done. But when finally got it, you felt so happy! It’s different in the U.S. Everything’s easy!

*(I understand that if you travel to Russia with a tour group, or stay in a hotel instead of a private home, the travel agency or hotel staff can take care of the registration. Don't quote me on this, though; ask your travel agent.)

We spend the next several days seeing the city, which is beautiful and majestic and sometimes reminds me of Paris, but with grander architecture and a sadder history.

We take a few day trips, too...

Pushkin/Tsarskoe Selo (Czar's village). Pushkin, the famous 19th century Russian poet, went to school in these parts. This was also a summer residence of the Russian czars: Pushkin

Peterhof (palace, fountains and gardens)

Pavlovsk (park in the country; former summer home of the Russian imperial family)
Next: Down memory lane in St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg, First Impressions

2009-06-09T21:59:00.000-07:00

[This week I'm blogging my July 2008 trip to Estonia and Russia. Go here for part 1 and here for part 2.]

St. Petersburg. We have a history with this city, my parents and I. My father was born and grew up here. My mom came here in her early 20s, hungry for big city life and culture. I was born in St. Petersburg and spent part of my childhood in this city, although the regal, famous St. Petersburg of books and postcards is a distant memory. This rankles my mom. “Don’t you remember this?” she asks me every time we stroll past a museum or a monument. “We took you here all the time.”

I don't remember riverboat tours down the Neva river or Spas na Krovi (Church of our Savior on Spilled Blood).
I don’t remember Nevsky Prospect, the famous boulevard where people go to see and be seen. I don’t remember Letny Sad (summer garden), a lovely refuge from the noise and dust of the city. I don’t remember the Bronze Horseman, the famous monument to Peter the Great. I don’t remember white nights. We catch the tail end of this phenomenon when the sun never really sets. The sky is indeed white long past midnight, turning milky gray from 3 a.m. all through the early morning. These photos were taken at 11:30 p.m. A few childhood memories do stand out. The Kazan Cathedral, for example, where, in 1987 or ’88, a Japanese tourist took a Polaroid photo of me. I was disappointed that I didn’t get to keep it. I remember the Hermitage. When I was 6 or 7, my parents took me here to see the Knight Hall, an exhibit of mediaeval armor, always popular with kids. I remember the Rostal Columns along the Neva river. Before we left for the U.S. in 1991, my mom took me here for a goodbye tour of the city. She wanted me to see the famous landmarks so that I wouldn’t forget. Who knew, then, if we would ever come back again?
This is the sentimental, beautiful, wistful part of the trip, the part that makes we wonder what life would be like if we had never left. Of course, I know very well that life would be harder and poorer had we stayed. Tomorrow, the vagaries.

Tomorrow: St. Petersburg, the good, the bad...

A Yulinka Cooks travelogue: From Estonia to Russia. Part 2 of 6.

2009-06-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

[This week I'm blogging my July 2008 trip to Estonia and Russia. The first entry, on Estonia, is here.]

The iron curtain has fallen, but it doesn’t really feel like it when you’re traveling to Russia. It takes months to get a visa, and don’t expect anyone from Russia’s American embassies to help you.

But let’s say you finally get your visa. Now you have to cross the border into Russia. If you’re coming by overnight train, from, say, Estonia, this is how it happens. You board the train and hand your passport over to the conductor. Sometime during the night, you will be awakened twice. (Actually, it’s better if you don’t sleep. You should be on guard.)

The first time, Estonian border guards will check your passport and visa. That's the easy part. The second time, your documents will be examined by the Russian border control. You will asked, no, ordered, to stay in your compartment. Your bags will be searched. If you’ve already had the misfortune to deal with Russian authorities, you will be tense. You will be anxious. You will know that they can tell you, in a bland, stone-faced way, that your visa doesn’t conform to some obscure, absurd and incomprehensible regulation, and that you cannot enter Russia.

You half-expect this to happen, while paperwork is filled out --there’s a little piece of paper that you cannot ever lose or God knows what misfortunes will befall you--and passports are stamped and returned.

Finally, the guards nod and move on to interrogate passengers in the neighboring compartment--Italians who speak little English and less Russian. The conductor studies their passports and reads their names aloud in a sing-songy way. You feel bad for them, but it’s not your concern. You, you are now free to enter Russia. Dobro pozhalovat'!*

*Welcome.

Next: St. Petersburg, grand and beautiful.

A Yulinka Cooks travelogue: When in Tallinn. Part 1 of 6.

2009-06-07T22:26:00.000-07:00

Last summer I went to Estonia and Russia. It was somewhat of an epic trip, a blast to the past, if you will. You see, my parents and I immigrated to the U.S. from Russia in the early 1990s. For years, we had talked about taking a big family trip to Russia. My dad and I, after all, had never been back after the move (my mom goes back on her own every four or five years).

So after much planning, we traveled to Tallinn, Estonia, St. Petersburg and Moscow last July. Yes, July of 2008. When I got back, I got swept up in work, school, etc., and didn't write much about the trip besides this quick summary and some travel-inspired reflections on identity. Almost a year later, I'm finally getting around to blogging the trip here.

Here's what's coming: photos of the glorious St. Petersburg, a comically harrowing account of how we almost got arrested in Moscow, notes on Russian fast food and more. I will be posting updates all week.

Let's start with Estonia. Why Estonia? I had wanted to visit one of the former Soviet Baltic countries; my parents had been to Tallinn for their honeymoon and were curious to see it again.
We spend two-and-a-half days in Tallinn, which, in hindsight, is too much. Tallinn's famous, mediaeval old city is charming and tiny. In the morning on our first day, we get lost strolling the labyrinthine streets; by that afternoon, we can traverse the old town in about 15 minutes.

The guidebooks say Tallinn is a well-preserved mediaeval city, but it reminds me of an outdoor mall. Stylish teenagers stroll around in groups; tourists drink beer in outdoor cafes; girls in faux-mediaeval costumes sell sugared almonds. The shops sell expensive knick-knacks, but I see more browsing than buying. What’s outside the old city? I guess it’s the real Tallinn where people live and work. We walk around the old town's perimeter, then take a bus ride to Kadriorg park and palace, about 20 minutes away. The park paths lead to a small beach on the Baltic sea. It’s a chilly and overcast day, but dozens of wedding parties are posing for photos.

We stop for coffee and good, cheap pastries at a bakery on the outskirts of the old city. Closer to the center, everything is expensive. What’s worth a splurge? Kuldse Notsu Kords, an Estonian restaurant that serves soups like svekolnik and entrees like this stunningly delicious potato-wild mushroom-and-cheese casserole.

Everywhere we go, I hear Russian. The guidebooks advise travelers to speak any language other than Russian in Estonia. This Baltic country was occupied by the Soviet Union for years; Estonians resent Russians, the books say. The books also tell me that 25% of Estonia’s residents are ethnic Russians. I see them everywhere—they live and vacation here, they work in shops and restaurants. When I speak English to the shop clerks, they don't understand. I switch to Russian and get what I need.

Has Tallinn changed a lot since the Soviet times? I ask my parents.

Sort of, they say. The luxury shops weren’t here before, of course. But Estonia has always been one of the least “Soviet” USSR satellites. In the 1970s, says my dad, when he went to Tallinn for the first time, he ordered coffee. It was served in a dainty cup with a little pitcher of cream on the side. This still amazes him. Had you ordered coffee in Russia at that time, you’d get a chipped glass of murky liquid!

Somewhere I read that Estonia is the most successful of the former Soviet republics. Everything here is Western: service comes with a smile, the clerks are friendly, money is easily exchanged. If this doesn’t strike you as important, keep reading about my experience with customer service in Russia.Sometimes remnants of the Soviet era seep out. A drunk Russian at the airport loudly complains about a lost suitcase. A shop clerk in the old city chases after two kid shoplifters, yelling, in Russian, “I’ll kill you, fuckers.” We get unceremoniously kicked out from the city's train station as we wait for the overnight train that will take us to Russia.

Someone barks: It’s 9 p.m., the station’s closed, go wait outside. People get up and drag their suitcases. The sun is setting and it’s getting colder. In eight hours, we’ll be in St. Petersburg.

Next: Crossing the border into Russia, an adventure.

Rhubarb Cake

2009-06-02T21:32:00.000-07:00

The only desserts I like to bake are simple fruit cakes. They’re easy, low-maintenance and fairly light. Why bake huge cakes or batches of cookies for a household of two? My go-to recipes are this apple charlotte (can be made with a variety of fruit), this curd-cheese cake with apples, and, now, this rhubarb cake. The recipe, from the Estonian food blog Nami Nami, caught my eye because it calls for kefir or buttermilk. I love using cultured dairy in baking—it makes cakes more tender and balances excess sweetness.

Here’s my tweaked recipe. The rhubarb is from Witte's Vegetable Farm in Cedarburg, Wis. (at $1.50 per pound, it’s a very good deal).

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
1.5 tsp. baking power
100 grams butter, melted and cooled
2 eggs, beaten
200 ml milk, yogurt, kefir or buttermilk (I used 50/50 milk and sour cream)
1 lb. rhubarb, finely diced

Preheat the oven to 370. Mix the dry ingredients (flour through baking powder) in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, add the milk ingredients to the butter; mix. Add the eggs and stir well.

Combine the dry and wet ingredients; mix. Fold in the rhubarb. Grease a 10-inch pie pan. Pour the batter into the pan; sprinkle with demerara sugar. Bake 50-55 minutes, until the top of the cake is golden-brown and a toothpick or knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.

If you like, sprinkle with powered sugar before serving.

A Trip to Grassway Farm (New Holstein, Wis.)

2009-05-25T18:35:00.000-07:00

One sunny summer day, you should go on a road trip to New Holstein, Wis. Your destination is Grassway Organic Farm; your hosts, Kay and Wayne Craig. They tend the farm and run the Grassway Organics store. Oh, they also give tours to city kids with cameras. Your tour starts with "awws." Who can resist these calves? Don't get too close, though, or they'll spook.

Watch for cats roaming the property. We spotted this bundle of cuteness under a bush near the owners' house.
Follow your hosts through the fields to check out the cows. (Hint: wear comfy shoes that you don't mind getting dirty.)

A few cows come up to us and lick our fingers. We melt. Why, hello, gorgeous.

This is where the cows are milked, twice daily, at 6:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

If you're more into chickens, there's 300 of them, more or less, plus a couple of roosters--all free-ranging. Yes, Grassway Farm does sell eggs.

We also saw goslings and chicks.

The tour ends at the farm's Grassway Organics store, which sells fresh eggs, frozen beef, chicken and turkey, cheese, yogurt, some fruits and vegetables, spices and grains. By this time, Kay and Wayne are like old friends. Load up the car and tell 'em you'll be back.

Grassway Organics Farm Store and Farm, N600 Plymouth Trail

New Holstein, WI 53061

(920) 894-4201

More on Grassway Farm: My friend Anna blogged about this trip here.

Moroccan Carrot Salad

2009-05-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

There was a time when I liked complicated cooking. The early days of this blog featured a lot of intricate stuffed vegetables, multi-step baking recipes and so on. I guess I’ve had it with endless peeling, chopping and sautéing, because these days I’d rather have carrot sticks or grilled vegetables rather than a carrot salad or stuffed zucchini. Despite my new minimalism, I do have a soft spot for a few favorite multi-step recipes, including this Moroccan carrot salad. Here’s my take on this dish, with a few updates based on a similar recipe from Sendik's markets’ surprisingly good food magazine.

First, make the dressing. Heat a small skillet, and sprinkle in ¼ tsp. each of the following spices: cinnamon, ginger, allspice, black pepper, red pepper flakes, turmeric and ground cardamom. Heat the spices for 30 seconds, then place in a small bowl and combine with 2 tbs. olive oil, 2 tbs. fresh lemon juice, 1 tsp. sugar and a healthy dash of salt.

Peel 1 pound of carrots; slice into ¼-inch thick rounds. Place the carrots in a saucepan, cover with water and add 2 grated or pressed garlic cloves. Bring to a boil and cook over low heat about 5 minutes, just until the carrots are crisp-tender. Be careful not to overcook.

Drain the carrots and place in a bowl. Toss with the dressing right away. Very finely chop a wedge of red onion (about ½ cup) and a small handful of fresh parsley; add to the carrots. Add ¼ cup halved and pitted Kalamata olives; mix. Let stand at room temperature for a few hours, or refrigerate overnight and bring to room temperature before serving. Add more lemon juice, salt and sugar to taste.

Farmer's Cheese Cake with Apples

2009-05-18T19:10:00.000-07:00

I did some tweaking in my old and all-time popular post: how to make your own farmer's cheese (also known as curd cheese and, in Russian, tvorog). Check it out and give cheesemaking a shot. What can you do with a few cups of farmer’s cheese? Make cheesecake. Cakes and pastries with farmer’s cheese are very popular in Russia and Eastern Europe.

One of my favorite dessert recipes comes from the excellent Estonian food blog Nami Nami. It’s for an airy curd-cheesecake with grated apples. I’ve made it once before, for Thanksgiving. Here's a slightly revised version:

Preheat the oven to 370. Grease a 9-inch pie pan.

Finely chop 1/4 cup each of apricots and dried plums (don’t call them prunes). Place in a small bowl, along with 1/4 cup raisins, and cover with boiling hot water. Put aside.

Combine 60 grams flour, ½ tsp. baking power, 50 grams sugar and ¾ tsp. cinnamon in a bowl. Peel, core and finely chop two large apples, preferably a tart variety like Granny Smith. Separate two eggs, and beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks.

In another bowl, mix 250 grams farmer’s cheese, 100 grams sour cream or Greek yogurt and ½ tsp. vanilla extract. Fold in the dry ingredients. Add the apples and the egg yolks; drain the dried fruit and add to the mixture; then add the egg whites. Mix well.

Pour the batter into the pie pan; bake 45-55 minutes, or until the top of the cake is firm and golden-brown. Let cool before eating, but serve warm, if possible. Goes great with strawberry jam.

Weekend Notes

2009-05-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

A family joke goes that my favorite food is shrimp dipped in chocolate. Not quite, but I do like both, separately.

*Turns out Fabian Seafood sells shrimp out of a truck on Milwaukee's Green Bay Avenue (Glendale) at the Mobile Gas Station. I've heard of this company selling never-frozen shrimp (so they claim) at local gas stations, but I had always assumed this was a Milwaukee urban legend. Guess not. Check their Web site to get on a mailing list.

*Chocolate with pop rocks is my favorite junk food of the moment. At first bite this stuff tastes like a Crunch bar, and then pop rocks start going off in your mouth. Weird and addictive. I haven't seen this chocolate in Milwaukee, but I did find Kras, a Serbian brand of pop-rock chocolate, at the City Fresh Market in Chicago.

Product Review: Rye Bread

2009-05-05T21:28:00.000-07:00

Bad news first: It’s hard to find good Russian rye bread in Milwaukee. I’m talking real rye: dense, dark and faintly sour. Workaday rye that you can pair with a bowl of borsch for a complete meal. Sturdy rye for smearing with butter and layering with fatty sausage, like Russians do. Ignore cottony, faintly-brown rye that’s sold at supermarkets. Turn your nose at foo-foo versions made with cheese and nuts and whatnot.

Now, here’s the good news: Monastyrsky (monastery) rye is pretty close to the real deal. It’s trucked in from Chicago and sold at Spartak* in Whitefish Bay. It’s thick, heavy and hole-y. No, it’s not perfect. It’s almost five bucks per loaf. Sometime it's sold out. Other days it’s a bit stale. But when it’s good, it’s very good. Call Spartak to check when they’re getting a shipment.

Here’s how you eat Russian rye: Slice it thick, spread with butter and sprinkle with a bit of grainy salt. I like to dip it in sour cream. Goes great with borsch and schi.

*5587 N. Diversey Blvd., Whitefish Bay, Wis., (414) 332-3347.

Boozy Beet Salad

2009-05-03T18:24:00.000-07:00

Some food bloggers never cook the same thing twice. I’m the opposite. My cooking repertoire includes a few dozen dishes that I make over and over. One of them is this creamy beet salad. I do tweak my recipes like crazy, but I’ve never messed with beet salad until today.

The Russian cookbook Please to the Table has an intriguing recipe for beets mixed with walnuts and cognac-soaked prunes. I’ve been eyeing this recipe for a while because it gives humble Russian beet salad a pre-Revolutionary, French-tinged air. Actually, the final result isn’t so different from my usual version, but the boozy prunes and walnuts do give the salad a crunchy punch.

Here’s what you do: Wash a couple of beets, cover with cold water in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer until the beets are easily pierced with a knife, 50-60 minutes. In the meantime, hard boil two eggs and prepare the prunes.

In a small saucepan, heat up ¼ cup cognac (um, Jack Daniel's is all I had on hand) until it boils, remove from heat and soak a handful of prunes in the warm alcohol for 30 minutes. Then finely chop the prunes (reserve the alcohol), mix them with a minced garlic clove and ½ cup of finely chopped walnuts.

Let the beets and eggs cool to room temperature; peel them; then grate over a large salad bowl. Add the prunes, nuts and garlic to the bowl. Peel and finely chop a cucumber, a handful of fresh dill and a small wedge of red onion; add to the salad. (I’m often tempted to add a little feta cheese to this salad, although it's not at all Russian.)

For the dressing, combine a few tablespoons each of sour cream and mayo; 2-3 tbs. of the reserved cognac; a tablespoon of sunflower oil; a good splash of vinegar; ½ tsp. sugar; and a dash each of salt and black ground pepper. Feel free to tweak the dressing ingredients to taste. Dress the salad and mix well. Let stand 15 minutes before serving.

Accidental-Ricotta Flatbreads

2009-04-25T19:56:00.000-07:00

The other day I accidentally made ricotta cheese.* I’m not sure what happened—I was trying to make farmer's cheese, using a technique I’ve got down pat, but the stars were misaligned or I failed to please the gods of food chemistry.

What to do with two cups of unplanned ricotta? I made ricotta-and-spinach flatbreads using this excellent dough recipe. Originally intended for cheese bread called hachepouri from the republic of Georgia, this dough is wonderfully versatile. I’ve rolled it out for pizza and stuffed it with filling for savory pastries.

This time, for the filling, I mixed ricotta with a few cups of sautéed spinach, some diced, cooked chicken, ¼ cup crumbled feta and an egg. I made half the above dough recipe, rolled the prepared dough into two rounds, and spread the filling atop each round. The edges of the dough I rolled up around the cheese, like for pizza. All this was baked at 400 for about 30 minutes until golden and bubbly. Give it a try sometime.

*I’ve made my own my own ricotta before, on purpose--pretty good, but takes a lot of milk to yield a little cheese.

Not Quite Frozen Dinner

2009-04-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

If there’s one thing I never eat, it’s frozen dinners. Neither Lean Cuisine nor Amy’s Kitchen grace my table. It’s not that I’m a fresh food snob. Some of my best friends eat frozen dinners. It’s just that I like to cook even when faced with an empty fridge. Sometimes I roast whatever vegetables I have on hand and eat them with cheese and crackers. Other times I cut up some carrots and make a yogurt dip. It's nearly as easy as nuking a plastic tray.

I do, however, keep a freezer well-stocked with odds and ends that might make a good meal. Throughout the winter, I had chicken stock, leftover pasta dough and boneless chicken breasts in the deep freeze. Are you thinking soup? I thought chicken meatball and noodle soup. This isn't exactly fast food, but the soup comes together pretty quickly if you remember to defrost everything four to six hours in advance.

I work with different ingredient amounts each time I make this, so I can't share exact proportions. Eye it. Bring the stock to a simmer in a big soup pot. In the meantime, make the chicken meatballs. (You could, of course, use pre-ground chicken, turkey, veal, pork or beef if you like. I've got an overstock of chicken breasts.)

Run the chicken breasts through a food processor until ground but not pureed; mix with some bread crumbs, an egg, a few tablespoons of chopped parsley; add a good shake of salt and black groundpepper. I also like to add crumpled feta cheese.

Shape the meat mixture into meatballs that are about 1 inch in diameter, place them on a foil-lined tray and refrigerate. Roll out the pasta dough as described here. Finely chop and then sauté a carrot and a small onion in olive oil in a skillet for about 10 minutes until soft. Add the carrots and onions to the simmering stock.

Add the noodles to the stock and cook about 2 minutes, stirring to make sure they don’t stick to the bottom of the pot. Carefully add the meatballs and simmer until the chicken is just cooked, 3 to 4 minutes. Adjust the seasonings. Serve the soup in big bowls. I like it topped with chopped parsley, dill or scallions, and sour cream.

Three Years of Yulinka Cooks

2009-04-11T19:01:00.000-07:00

March 27 was the third anniversary of Yulinka Cooks. Some people celebrate with cake; I celebrate with caviar canapes.* (Last year I rang in my two-year blog anniversary with a slice of herring in a fur coat.)

The past year has been pretty successful for this little blog. I got my first press clipping and made some money thanks to blog ads. Granted, my blog's return on investment is very low, but I still like cooking and coming up with engaging ways to write up my kitchen endeavors. With that, let's go on a tour of my third year in the blogosphere. (Go here for my first-year anniversary write-up and here for a two-year birthday post.)

In May, I had fun with leftovers, which earned me a mention in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
In July, I went to Estonia and Russia. My travels inspired some reflections on what it's like to be Russian-American.
In the fall, I traipsed all over the Milwaukee suburbs in pursuit of local food. I also tweaked my borsch recipe.
When it got colder, I made schi (Russian sauerkraut soup) for the first time. Other successful first-time dishes were lagman, an Uzbek lamb stew, and an Estonian potato/mushroom/cheese casserole. One of the weirder recipes to appear on this blog was chicken stuffed with crepes.
I didn't blog much in February and March, but I did write up this blog's policy on freebies, samples and PR pitches. I also joined Twitter and was super excited to attract 53 whole followers, including the CEO of Lifeway, a company that makes kefir.
Thanks for reading, all. I really do appreciate it.
*My caviar canape recipe is here.

Russian fast food: Potatoes and pickled mushrooms

2009-04-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up in Russia, there was no pre-made convenience food. The Russian food scene in the 1980s was still a long way from fast food and take-out. What we did have were potatoes and handpicked wild mushrooms, fried up and served with sour cream. In fact, this is very popular Russian food, practically a national dish. In her Russian cookbook, Please to the Table, Anya von Bremzen writes: "This is the quintessential Russian dacha [summer country home] dish...For me the dish never fails to evoke the happiest memories of childhood--of my last summer days at the dacha, the height of the mushroom season..."

Oh, man, this just makes me sigh. I, too, went mushroom hunting in the country as a child, a fact I love to romanticize. Who knows, maybe I hated mushroom-hunting as a kid. For all I remember, it could have been tedious or exhausting. Chances are, however, that I will never pick wild mushrooms in the Russian countryside again, so I'm entitled to a little faux-nostalgia. (As far as I know, good eating mushrooms don't grow in Wisconsin--and if they did, I'd be very cautious about picking them. I have no experience identifying American wild mushrooms. Seriously, don't eat wild mushrooms unless you can ID them and, you know, not poison yourself.)

These days I make a modernized version of this meal, making do with healthier roasted potatoes and store-bought white mushrooms. Anya recommends frying the mushrooms in butter for an authentic meal, but I prefer my mushrooms pickled. (Not fast, but convenient if you make a large batch.) I've been toying with pickling recipes for the past year, and I've come up on the best one yet. It's by Russian-born writer Julia Ioffe, as published in the fall/winter 2009 issue of Russia! magazine.

For the potatoes:
Preheat the oven to 425. Peel some potatoes--Yukon Gold work best. Slice lengthwise into 1/2-inch-thick matchsticks. Place in a foil-lined pan, sprinkle with salt and ground black pepper and drizze with olive oil. Roast 20-25 minutes, turning often, until the potatoes are done.

For the mushrooms:
(Recipe modified from Julia Ioffe)

Ingredients:
-1 pound white mushrooms (unless you're one of the luckies who has access to fancy-pants chanterelles, etc.)
-handful black peppercorns
-handful whole cloves
-2-3 bay leaves
-1 tbs. salt
-1.5 tbs. white vinegar
-1 tsp sugar
-1.5 cups water

Wash the mushrooms and scrub off the dirt. If the mushrooms are very large, slice in half. Place in a large pan, cover with water, bring to a boil; then simmer 20 minutes.

Drain the mushrooms (or save the mushroom stock for soup). Transfer the mushrooms to a clean glass jar.

In a small saucepan, combine the peppercorns, cloves, bay leaves, salt, sugar, vinegar and water. Bring to a boil. Pour over the mushrooms in the jar. Toss in a couple of small, peeled garlic cloves if desired.

Let sit at room temperature for a few hours. Taste the liquid and adjust the seasonings. Then transfer the jar to the fridge and let the mushrooms marinate at least 48 hours. Mine were great after 72 hours.

Serve with roasted potatoes. Top with chopped parsley or dill, and sour cream.

Great Expectations

2009-03-31T09:03:00.000-07:00

Another day, another attempt at pickling mushrooms. I've made Russian-style marinated mushrooms before with mixed results, and I've yet to find a really great recipe. If I'm happy with this attempt, I'll blog about it.

Weekend Eats

2009-03-21T21:06:00.000-07:00

*I kicked off the grilling season a few weeks ago. Yes, the weather isn't getting much warmer than 55 degrees around these parts, but we stubbornly huddle around the grill in our winter coats. I like grilling vegetables, especially eggplant, bell peppers, onions and tomatoes.

I slice everything into rounds, toss them on the grill, and cook about 15 minutes, flipping the veggies often. When the vegetables are done and everything's cool enough to handle, I slice the eggplant and peppers into strips, toss them in a bowl with the tomatoes and onion rounds, and add chopped parsley, minced olives, cubed mozarella, a bit of olive oil and a splash of red wine vinegar. This salad is good as a relish, but I often end up eating it out of the bowl with a tablespoon.

*I rarely find myself on Milwaukee's south side, but last weekend I took a drive to A&J Polish Deli, 1215 W. Lincoln Ave. It looked just like the Russian groceries on Milwaukee's North Shore. The two exceptions were Polish-speaking clerks and a great selection of cheese, deli meats, sausage (including kielbasa that's very good on the grill).

A belated Maslenitsa

2009-03-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

I celebrated a belated Maslenitsa last week. Maslenitsa, the Russian Orthodox version of Fat Tuesday, is famed for its pancake feasts. Now, by “celebrated,” I mean that I made and ate a bunch of pancakes. Religious holidays were taboo when I was growing up, and the little I know about this celebration comes from 19th century Russian lit.

My pancakes were blini, the Russian version of crepes, which I’ve blogged about in the past. This time, I decided to forgo the usual sweet fillings for savory rollups with cream cheese and smoked salmon.

This sounds fancy, but it’s very simple. Fry up a bunch of blini as described in the linked recipe above. Spread with cream cheese—fluffy Philadelphia whipped cream cheese works best. Layer with thinly sliced smoked salmon. Roll up and eat.

For more on Maslenitsa, see this excellent blog written by an expat American woman who's raising two young daughters in Moscow.

On Freebies, Samples & PR

2009-03-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

I love getting PR pitches in my inbox. There’s nothing like attention from a real, live company to make an obscure blogger feel like Kind of a Big Deal. I am new media; hear me roar. But should I accept the freebies and samples on offer?

My policy is this: I’ll accept samples of products that a) fit the Russian/Eastern European theme of this blog, and b) would be of interest to my readers. (I already do occasional product reviews of Russian foods and brands.) I might also accept samples of products I consider good and would be happy to plug even if I weren’t being offered freebies. Lifeway kefir is an example.

That said, I still like reading PR pitches. The good ones are personalized and address the Yulinka Cooks theme or a specific post. Hey, we bloggers love attention and flattery. If you thought my recipe for homemade farmer's cheese sounds really, really cool, let me know! That’s an approach recommended by the Bad Pitch Blog, a collection of do's and don’ts for PR people. Truth is, even personalized pitches follow a formula, but I still appreciate the effort.

Tip #2: Don’t offer me freebies. Really. The best pitch I’ve ever received was from Red Gold tomatoes, which offered product samples to my readers. The idea was to run a contest for the best recipe that called for canned (Red Gold) tomatoes.

Readers would submit recipes through the comments, I’d pick my favorite, and the chosen commentator would receive product samples as a prize. Red Gold gets it. Bloggers live for comments and traffic. Reader interaction is a huge part of this Web 2.0 business. No one wants to blog into the void.

Now, I passed on Red Gold’s offer because it’s not a favorite brand and canned tomatoes are kind of a stretch for this blog’s theme. But would I do this for a different brand or product? You bet. (Burp!, a Milwaukee food blog, ran Red Gold’s contest and garnered more than 50 comments.)

That’s it! Go forth and pitch.

When the economy gives you lemons...

2009-03-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

* ....throw a bunch of sugar at it. Lemons were on sale this week at Sendik's; so I bought half a dozen and made sugared lemons.

*A food blogger for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is compiling weekly grocery store deals on her blog, Post-College Kitchen. If you're in the Milwaukee area, check this out. I hardly ever buy produce, meat or dairy that isn't on sale.

*If you find yourself at a dinner party with two food bloggers, you're unlikely to eat until the said bloggers have photographed everything on the table. My friend Anna hosted a party where we shot these delicious smoked salmon-and-goat cheese canapes, among other things.

*Readers, you've been doing a great job of pretending you like the links, notes and whatnot I've been posting lately. Work, school and countless odds and ends have kept me from cooking much in recent weeks. Recipes will resume.

Weekend Odds & Ends

2009-03-01T17:50:00.001-08:00

*Yulinka Cooks is now on Twitter. Read food-related musings that pop into my mind when I'm not working on the blog.

*The sushi craze has invaded Moscow and St. Petersburg, judging by all the fast-food sushi places I spotted last summer. I didn't try any of them, but I wonder what they serve. In my experience, the Soviet generation is extremely averse to any kind of "raw" food. Bad food quality and frequently-spoiled meat encouraged people to cook everything well-done. The parents and I sparred over baked salmon this weekend: I cook it 10 minutes per inch; they go for nearly 30.

Sushki, Saving, etc.

2009-02-24T18:32:00.000-08:00

*Meet sushki! Isn’t that a fun little word to say? Sushki! In Russian, it stems from the word for “dry,” and, indeed, sushki are little round crackers (that are always sold on a string.) Think of them as a cross between a bagel and a pretzel. I like dipping them in milk and twirling them on my fingers.

*The local paper has a new blog on saving money in a recession. Did you know that you can save on groceries if you clip coupons and don't shop when you're hungry? It's true. There’s something tragicomic about earnestly peddling these tips amidst the horror show that is the economy. (Here's my stab at money-saving tips: a guide to grocery shopping in Milwaukee on the cheap.

*Are you ready for the Recession Latte? That's what I call the coffee drink I often make in my very own kitchen for about 20 cents a pop. You make some strong coffee in a French press using freshly ground coffee beans. Then you heat up some milk (I like 1 cup milk to 1/2 cup coffee), add to the coffee, and voila: tastes like a latte minus the expense (and, um, the foam).

Chicken Stuffed with Crepes

2009-02-15T21:42:00.000-08:00

This is what I made for Valentine's Day dinner:

I know you're thinking, "The hell?" Hear me out. For months, a certain someone has been telling me that his parents make roast chicken and turkey stuffed with crepes.

Could I make him some chicken with crepes? I thought this sounded beyond weird; so I pretty much dismissed his requests. One day, I tasted his mom's chicken stuffed with crepes. The chicken itself was fine, but it was the crepes, rich and soaked in delicious chicken juices, that made it so memorable.

What better time to stuff a chicken with crepes than Valentine's Day? This was to be my gift. Truth is, I don’t know exactly how his parents cook this sort of thing, and there’s little chance of getting step-by-step directions from them. So I decided to keep it simple. I made a bunch of crepes, stuffed them into a chicken, sewed up the cavity, and roasted the chicken like I always do.

How was it? The chicken was all right but the crepes were a bit dry. I suspect that I either roasted the chicken too long or didn’t use enough oil when frying the crepes. The certain someone later told me that you're supposed to shred the crepes before stuffing the chicken. Well, thanks for letting me know after the chicken was out of the oven. Still, this was a pretty good dinner, especially when I served the crepes with gobs of sour cream.

If you think chicken with crepes sounds strange, check out this recipe (in Russian, but with photos) for a deboned chicken stuffed with stuffed crepes. Someday I will make this.

Friday Stuffed Mushrooms & Drinks

2009-02-06T20:39:00.000-08:00

Don't abandon me, reader. I'm working on great, exciting projects for this blog. But in the meantime, I'm swamped with more pressing things, like, say, real work.

Here's the most exciting meal I made this week: stuffed mushrooms and a nice, stiff cocktail. Buy some big white mushrooms, remove the stems, and saute the caps in olive oil for 8 to 10 minutes until they've started to release liquid. Make the stuffing--do something easy like feta, ricotta or farmer's cheese mixed with some chopped tomatoes and basil.

Preheat the oven to 425. Place the mushroom caps in a foil-lined pan. Salt the mushrooms and fill each one with a tablespoon of stuffing. Bake under the broiler for 10 minutes, or until the cheese is hot and golden brown. Wash down with a sugared-lemon vodka cranberry.

Chicago & Vegetarian Russian Food

2009-01-31T19:37:00.000-08:00

*I love grocery shopping on Chicago’s Devon Avenue. The Indian and Pakistani groceries always yield fascinating and reasonably-priced spices and vegetables. Another favorite store is the City Fresh Market (3201 W. Devon Ave.), which carries lots of Eastern European and Russian foods. The produce is cheap. I came back to Milwaukee with four bags of groceries. I know I should get excited about Chicago’s museums or nightlife or something, but I always look forward to Devon the most. (For more on Devon Avenue, go here.)

*It’s true that Russians think vegetarianism is loony. It’s also true that traditional Russian food is often labor-intensive. Yet it’s possible to have a quick, vegetarian Russian meal, like the one I made after a day in Chicago. For example: potatoes, boiled or fried, with chopped dill and sour cream; sautéed mushrooms and marinated vegetable salad. You could also open up a jar of lutenitsa or eggplant caviar or any kind of pepper-eggplant-tomato appetizer (check out the selection at your local Eastern European grocery, like, say, Fresh City Market, above).

Lagman (Uzbek lamb stew)

2009-01-25T09:08:00.000-08:00

I originally started this blog so I could explore Russian food that I don’t know much about—food like plov, lagman and hachepuri. That is, food from the former Soviet republics that’s often made in Russia, but that isn’t Russian (Slavic) at all. Prov and lagman are Uzbek dishes; hachepuri is Georgian. The foods of former USSR satellites such as Georgia, Armenia and Uzbekistan are fascinating and overlooked.

This weekend I made shurpa lagman. Shurpa and lagman are actually two different Uzbek dishes, but both are variations on lamb and vegetable stew or soup, spiced with cumin and coriander. Lagman is typically served with thick, handmade noodles. I studied three different versions of the recipe—one from an Uzbek immigrant, as published in the New York Times, the other from Anya von Bremzen’s Russian/Soviet cookbook Please to the Table, and the third from my Uzbekistan-born friend Anna.

My shurpa lagman wasn’t exactly authentic—I left out some common ingredients, like eggplant and daikon—but it was still a great success. It turned out like a cross between stew and soup, with thick chunks of carrots, peppers and lamb in a spicy, rich broth. I even served it with homemade noodles (although dried pasta like fettuccine would work fine).

Method:

Heat some oil in a heavy skillet. Salt, pepper and brown 1 pound boneless lamb, cut into 1-inch chunks, for about 10 minutes. Place in a bowl and put aside. Drain the fat from the skillet; heat some more oil and sauté a large, chopped onion until it’s soft and golden. Add to the lamb; then sauté 2 large chopped bell peppers (I used green and red) and 1 large, diced carrot. Add 1 tsp. each freshly-ground cumin and coriander, ¼ tsp. red pepper flakes, a couple of bay leaves, 1-2 dried, hot chili peppers, and a healthy shake of kosher salt and ground pepper.

Place the lamb and vegetables in a Dutch oven, add 4 cups beef (or chicken) stock and bring to a boil. Turn the heat to a simmer and cook 1-1.5 hours, until the lamb is soft. Toward the end of cooking time, add 1 cup chopped tomatoes, 1.5 cups cooked chickpeas, and ½ tbs. white vinegar. Taste for seasonings (I needed to add a bit of sugar). Add a minced garlic clove and a couple of handfuls chopped parsley and cilantro

Serve with noodles. I decided to make my own on a lark, and they turned out surprisingly well. I’ve never made fresh pasta before, and I half-expected a disaster in which the pasta dough falls apart or tears into useless bits. I used an okay recipe from the Please to the Table book—the noodles were a little bland. Next time I’d go to the experts (like Marcella Hazan’s cookbooks) for instructions on making fresh pasta.

For the noodles, my recipe had you put 1.75 cups flour and ½ tsp. kosher salt in a large bowl. Then you make a well, and add 1 slightly beaten egg, ¼ cup water and 1 tbs. oil. Mix with your hands until the flour and liquids are combined. On a floured surface, knead the dough with the backs of your hands for at least five minutes.

Divide the dough in two rounds. Cover with a moist towel and let rest 30 minutes. Flour a rolling pin and roll out one of the rounds to a 1/8-inch thickness. Carefully roll up the dough like a jellyroll; check to make sure the layers doesn’t stick. With a sharp knife, slice the roll into ¼-inch strips; unravel them; and let dry 10 minutes or so. (I froze the other dough round for future use.) Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the noodles 5 minutes. Serve the lagman over the noodles.

Potato Magic, Updated

2009-01-18T10:19:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I wrote about a delicious potato-mushroom-cheese casserole that I had in Tallinn. A few weeks ago I e-mailed the restaurant, Kuldse Notsu Kõrts, and asked if they could share the recipe. Some time passed and I really didn't expect to hear back, but then, lo and behold, the manager e-mailed me the recipe!

I liked Kuldse Notsu Korts when I ate there, but now it gets my wholehearted recommendation; if you're ever in Tallinn, go there for traditional Estonian food.

Should you make this casserole at home, try to get your hands on some chanterelles (nearly impossible in Wisconsin, unfortunately) and use plenty of butter and cheese as directed. This makes a real difference in the flavor. I halved the recipe and used a mix of button, shiitake and portabello mushrooms.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 kg Potatoes
0.5 L milk
70 g butter
salt

1 big onion
1 kg chanterelles
50 g butter
Salt, pepper
50 g flour
0.5 L milk
100 g cheese-I used swiss and provolone
Mixed herbs (parsley and dill)

Method:
Peel, boil and drain the potatoes. Mash them slightly; add warm milk and butter, then beat well.

Fry the chopped onion and chanterelles in butter for about 10 minutres, season with salt and pepper, add flour and milk, and stir until the mixture thickens.

Slightly butter a large casserole pan or dish. Fill the dish with potatoes; pour the mushroom sauce on top. Sprinkle with grated cheese and bake for 20 minutes at 425.

Serve with chopped green herbs.

Leftover Potato Magic

2009-01-13T20:48:00.000-08:00

If you have leftover mashed, boiled or baked potatoes, please don’t toss them. Yes, I know, leftover potatoes are less than sexy. They’re pale and watery; they don’t reheat well. With a bit of work, however, they can make a tasty meal in a new guise.

Here’s what you do: Preheat the oven to 425. In a bowl, combine your (peeled) leftover potatoes with ½ cup to 1 cup warm milk. If you’re starting with mashed potatoes, add less milk; if you’re working with whole potatoes, add more milk and mash until you have a chunky puree. Add kosher salt and ground black pepper to taste.

Sauté some mushrooms in a bit of olive oil or butter. Add to the potatoes; mix. Butter a pie pan, add the potato-and-mushroom puree, and smooth it out with a spoon. Top with shredded cheese—what kind and how much is up to you. I used provolone and Swiss, which worked fine. Bake 20-30 minutes, until the potatoes are heated through and the top layer is golden-brown.

This is an easy, weeknight version of the potato-mushroom-and-cheese casserole (photo above) that I had in Tallinn last summer. I’ll soon make the real version, with wild mushrooms and about 20,000 calories worth of cheese and butter.

Spice Cake with Jam and Baked Apples

2009-01-11T13:51:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite blogs is The Other Side of the Ocean. Madison law professor Nina Camic travels all over the world, takes great photos and updates daily. Study Ocean for a lesson on how to write a personal blog without oversharing. Nina—when you follow someone’s personal blog, it seems okay to use first names—knows good food, and I often get ideas from her holiday meal lineups. A spice cake looked tempting, so I e-mailed Nina and asked for the recipe, which she graciously supplied.

I made this cake a few days ago when my parents came over for dinner. We ate the cake with lingonberry jam and baked apples, but it would also go well with whipped cream or crème fraiche or ice cream. I liked the recipe, but next time I’d add ¼ tsp. black pepper for a spicier kick.

The baked apples proved popular, too. I cored and sliced 4-5 apples and placed them in a foil-lined pan. In a small saucepan, I melted a couple of pats of butter with 2 tbs. brown sugar and a splash of milk (use cream if you have it). I poured the liquid over the apples, mixed in some diced, dried fruit (raisins, apricots, plums), and baked this at 400 for about 45 minutes, until the apples were soft and saucy. Sometimes I like to add nuts or granola. This tastes best served warm.

Spice Cake. This recipe is slightly adapted from the All Around the World cookbook by Sheila Lukins.

2 c flour
1 3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 TBSP ground ginger
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
[I’d also add ¼ tsp. ground black pepper]
1 1/2 c whole milk
1 1/2 c granulated sugar [I used 1 ¼ cups]
8 TBSP (1 stick) butter, cut into pieces
1/3 c molasses
2 large eggs, slightly beaten

Preheat oven to 325 F. Lightly butter 9 inch round cake pan. Line bottom with round of waxed paper cut to fit and butter the paper. [I didn't do this, but it's a good idea if you want to invert the cake onto a plate later on. My cake almost broke in half when I tried to shake it out of the pan!] Sift the dry ingredients into large bowl. Whisk to combine and set aside.

Combine milk and sugar in saucepan and bring just to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in butter and molasses.When butter is melted, quickly whisk the liquids into dry ingredients.

Whisk in the eggs. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake until toothpick inserted into center of the cake comes out clean, 50-60 minutes. Cool in pan; then invert onto rack and cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar.

30+ Minute Meals

2009-01-09T19:17:00.000-08:00

The mess after a simple dinner.

I made a quick and easy weekday dinner last night: broiled chicken thighs, steamed rice, and sautéed broccoli with cherry tomatoes and feta. I used wholesome ingredients and avoided the canned “detritus” shortcuts that Mark Bittman slams in this article. It was a dinner worthy of Living Simple.

Now, here’s the planning and work it actually took:

-The night before, I removed some chicken from the freezer and put it in the fridge to defrost (30 seconds, but quite a bit of foresight).

-The next evening, I washed the chicken, which hadn’t fully defrosted, and soaked it in cold water for a while (the fastest way to defrost something). Then I trimmed the fat and prepped the meat for broiling (25 minutes).

-While the chicken was in the oven, I made steamed rice, which took little work on my part (2 minutes).

-In the meantime, I washed and chopped the broccoli, halved the cherry tomatoes, minced the garlic and crumbled the feta (12 minutes).

-When the chicken was almost done (30 minutes in the oven), I sautéed the broccoli and tomatoes in olive oil, 7 minutes.

-The meal took about 10 minutes to eat.

-Afterward, the cleanup effort: 15 minutes to wash the dishes; 10 minutes to clean the oil-splattered stove and tea kettle that’s on the back burner; 7 minutes to clean the counters; and 5 minutes to sweep the kitchen floor.

Here’s the tally. It took 34 minutes of active time to prepare this quick, simple meal, and then 37 more minutes to clean up. That’s more than an hour in the kitchen, not including eating time.

I cook because I like it.* I make my own chicken stock, I avoid canned ingredients, and I never, ever, eat frozen dinners. But I have to admit that even simple weekday cooking can take a hell of a lot of time and effort. Let’s take 30-minute/quick-and-easy meal advocates with a grain of kosher salt.

* No, I don’t like cleaning, but I stick to a “if you want something done right, do it yourself” philosophy in this area.

Sugared-lemon vodka cranberry & other notes

2009-01-04T16:53:00.000-08:00

*I often make sugared lemons to sweeten my tea, but lemon syrup works just as well in cocktails. Here's a little drink I came up with a few days ago: one part vodka, two parts cranberry juice, a tablespoon of sugared lemon syrup, and a slice of lemon. Tastes like a $10 foofy cocktail.

*Read about Ukrainian chef Vasyl Lemberskyy, who runs Transfer restaurant in Milwaukee. I've heard good things about Transfer, a pizza place.

*Anyone got a good recipe for Russian marinated mushrooms? I've searched high and low, but nothing I've tried tastes quite right.

Mushroom-Deviled Eggs

2009-01-01T11:41:00.000-08:00

I don’t know about you, but I’m done with the holidays. I’ve had enough rich food, desserts and bubbly for a few months. Well, okay, truth is, I’ll probably be in the mood for these addictive little mushroom-deviled eggs in a few weeks.

We had these as part of our New Year’s Eve Russian appetizer dinner, but they’d also work well as dinner starters or snacks.

These are super-easy to make and lighter than traditional, mayo-heavy devilled eggs. Hard-boil a dozen eggs. Let cool, slice across horizontally and remove the egg yolks. Saute 8 ounces of finely chopped mushrooms in some olive oil; salt and pepper to taste. Let cool for a few minutes.

Add a tablespoon of finely chopped parsley. Finely dice the egg yolks, and add to the mushrooms; mix. Stuff the eggs with the filling. Pop the eggs in your mouth, one after one.

New Year

2008-12-29T21:29:00.000-08:00

I met "Father Frost" at a kindergarten party circa 1980-something.

New Year's Eve is kind of a big deal* for immigrants from the former Soviet Union. The New York Times explained it so in 1985:

The secular attributes of Christmas-the lighted tree, the gifts, the cards, Santa Claus, street decorations - have been assigned by the Soviet state to New Year's, and it is then, starting on Dec. 31, that Russians will try to do justice by both New Year's and Christmas, combining the midnight drinking of the former and the gift-giving and family cheer of the latter in ample measures.
The idea of the hybrid holiday is usually attributed to Stalin. In the first years after the revolution, the Bolsheviks apparently tried to stamp out the celebration of Christmas altogether, targeting the traditionaldecorated fir trees as a particularly glaring symbol of reactionary rituals for which there was no place in the new atheist society.

The people, however, proved reluctant to part with a cherished winter holiday. So in 1935, the story goes, Stalin did what the Kremlin has done so many times since with sticky customs - he co-opted it. He lifted the ban on Christmas trees,except that he said they were New Year's trees, and he declared that New Year's, Novyi God, was to be a national family holiday - a sort of surrogate Christmas stripped of any Christian meaning.
The people, it must be acknowledged, took to the idea. New Year's has evolved into probably the most popular of official Soviet holidays...the streets are hung with bright lights, decorated with brightly decorated trees, and the stern Lenins and Marxs make way for Grandpa Frost, the Russian Santa Claus. The Soviet New Year's, in fact, has become pretty much what Christmas has become in the secular Western world - a day for families to gather and share gifts and goodies under a tree, brightly lit and trimmed with homemade decorations.

I've never had a good American-style New Year's. You know, the kind where you dress up and go out and ring in midnight with a horde of friends. New Year's Eve has stayed a family holiday for me. This year again, I hope to report on delish zakuski (appetizers) that are typically served on Dec. 31.

Whatever your New Year's Eve traditions, I wish you a good one.

*At least New Year's used to be the big holiday--I wonder if traditions have changed at all in the past 17 years. Anyone care to update me?

Breakfast Gravlax

2008-12-22T17:42:00.000-08:00

Whenever salmon is on sale somewhere, I buy an extra pound for gravlax. This salt-cured salmon is easy to make and tastes like a cross between smoked salmon and sashimi. It's delicious with cream cheese on toasted rye bread (above), but I've also been known to eat it with rice and soy sauce, faux sushi-style.

I consult these two recipes when making gravlax, but my prep only calls for salt and sugar. I rarely bother with alcohol, citrus flavorings, dill, etc.

For 1 pound of salmon fillets, I use 2 tbs. kosher salt and 2 tbs. sugar. Cover the salmon completely with the salt and sugar, wrap it in saran wrap, and place the fish in a dish or a pan. Use something heavy to weigh down the salmon on all sides (I use canned goods), and keep it in the fridge for 48 hours, turning the fillets over every 12 hours. UPDATE: Gravlax tastes even better after being cured for three or four days.

Before serving, rinse the cured fish to wash off the extra salt and liquid, pat it dry with paper towels, and slice thinly.

Cooking Rules I Broke While Making This Chicken Stew

2008-12-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

Cooking rules I broke in making this chicken stew (served with mashed potatoes):

1. Didn’t use a whole chicken; only chicken thighs. Why do stew recipes call for a whole chicken, anyway? Does anyone want to gnaw on a wing or eat a dry breast?
2. Used cheap old wine. For the sauce, I finished off two bottles of red and white wine that I’ve had in the pantry for ages. I have never been able to tell the difference between good and crap wine when used in cooking. The sauce was delicious.
3. Thickened the sauce by sprinkling a bit of flour in it, and stirring quickly. It worked, but that’s not how you’re supposed to do it, right?
4. Used russet potatoes instead of the preferred Yukon gold for the mashed potatoes. They came out fine.

Be a rule-breaker, like me:

Brown six chicken thighs in a skillet for 10 minutes on all sides. Place in a Dutch oven. In the same skillet, sauté some coarsely chopped onions and carrots. Add a couple of garlic cloves; salt and pepper to taste.

Add vegetables to Dutch oven. Deglaze the skillet with 2 cups of wine—use whatever you got. Simmer until the wine reduces, but if you want to thicken it, you probably shouldn’t just sprinkle in flour willy-nilly. Read some Mark Bittman or Julia Child, etc., on how to do this properly.

Add the sauce to the Dutch oven with a couple of bay leaves; bring liquid to boil, then it turn down to a simmer. Cook until the chicken is very tender; 25-30 minutes or so.

Frou-Frou Salad

2008-12-14T06:50:00.000-08:00

This is a fancy-pants, frou-frou salad, the kind that’s sold at Whole Foods for $9 a pound. It’s the type of salad that’s featured in upscale food magazine stories about updating your Thanksgiving menu. It’s a salad I would normally ignore. A work potluck and a bare fridge changed my mind. I needed to bring something to a holiday lunch, I didn’t want to do extra grocery shopping, and I had a butternut squash and mushrooms to work with.

Winter squash and mushrooms are a good salad match (see a past recipe), but I wanted a grain to make this dish more substantial. A search through my pantry revealed a box of Israeli couscous, a bag of sunflower seeds and some pecans. This ingredient combo created a surprisingly delicious dish: sweet, creamy butternut squash, savory mushrooms, grainy couscous, and crunchy nuts and seeds.

The dressing was a fruity raspberry vinaigrette (okay, it was actually Paul Newman’s low-fat raspberry vinaigrette, which I doctored with extra olive oil and lemon juice. This is one of the few bottled dressings I like).

Frou-frou salads the world over, please accept my apologies. I dismissed your brethren, but this salad changed my mind. I will be making it again.

Method:
Preheat the oven to 425. Peel a medium butternut squash, cut it into ½-inch cubes and place in a foil-lined pan. Sprinkle with 1-2 tbs. brown sugar, 2 tbs. olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Roast until soft and easily pierced with a knife, about 30-35 minutes. Let cool to room temperature. (I also roasted some chopped onions to use in the salad, but I would either leave them out or sauté them with the mushrooms next time.)

While the squash is roasting, cook ½ cup Israeli couscous. I boil it like pasta and rinse it after cooking (if using in a salad), but you can also cook it by absorption (see instruction on the box). Clean and slice 8 oz. white or portabella mushrooms. Heat up some olive oil in a skillet, and sauté the mushrooms 10-15 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let the couscous and mushrooms cool 10-15 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine the squash, mushrooms and couscous. Add ½ cup chopped pecans (walnuts would also work). Add sunflower seeds to taste.

Add ½ cup of your favorite fruity dressing and mix well. I used ½ cup bottled raspberry vinaigrette , 2 tbs. olive oil, 1 tbs. lemon juice, and extra salt and pepper.

Serve right away at room temperature. If making ahead of time, like I did, add nuts and dressing right before serving.

Mushroom Pie

2008-12-08T20:59:00.000-08:00

Is it good blogging etiquette to do previews of posts you're too busy to write? Let's give it a try. Here's mushroom pie. In brief: roll out some dough, top with sauteed mushrooms, onions, and cheese, then bake 'til done. Details coming soon.

Updated Dec. 8: Okay, here we go: I’ve wanted to make a savory Russian pie for a while. This isn’t it, but I don’t care. My makeshift rustic pie/galette was great. A traditional Russian pie (pirog) is usually made with yeast dough and toppings like cabbage, mushrooms and onions, or even fish. Here, I used yeast-free dough and a hodge-podge topping of sautéed onions, mushrooms and whatever cheese I had in the fridge. The dough was easy to make and roll out, the toppings were a cinch, and the whole thing took only 20 minutes to bake. I can even see myself using this dough for pizza. Yeast, who needs it?

The dough recipe is from Nigella Lawson's Feast, by way of The Traveler's Lunchbox. I usually cut the recipe in half when I make it, and then freeze half of that. So you need a quarter of the original recipe for this pie.

The dough ingredients are 2 tbs. of butter, 1 egg, 1 cup full-fat, plain yogurt, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. baking soda, and about 3 cups of flour, with an extra cup or so for kneading. Mix the yogurt, eggs, butter and salt in a bowl. Add flour by the cupful, stirring until it’s absorbed. Knead on a floured surface for a few minutes, adding the baking soda. Refrigerate 20 minutes before using (I always freeze half the dough for future use).

In the meantime, sauté a bunch of chopped onions and mushrooms in olive oil or butter. Add a minced garlic clove and ¼ tsp. thyme in the last 30 seconds of cooking. Salt and pepper to taste. Let cool 10-15 minutes. Add cheese—what kind and how much is up to you. I used havarti, and a lot of it. Preheat the oven to 425.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough to a 1/4-inch thickness. Carefully place the dough in a buttered pie pan (I lined mine with foil). Spread the mushrooms over the top. Fold the edges of the dough over the filling to create a crust. Bake 15-25 minutes, until the dough is golden brown. Let cool before eating.

This goes great with soup, especially what I call simple soup—chicken stock, sautéed onions and carrots, and tiny poached chicken meatballs. In a food processor, blitz 1 boneless chicken breast and ½ onion. Add a handful of breadcrumbs, a splash of milk, a good shake of salt, and a dash of red pepper flakes. A bit of grated Parmesan wouldn't hurt, if you have it. Mix. Use a teaspoon to scoop and form small meatballs. Bring the chicken stock to a boil and add the meatballs. Turn the heat down, and simmer 5 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.