Finds in the Fridge

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?)

Mid-Week Cooking Notes

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.

Cooking Notes

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.

From the Archives: Early Fall Eats

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.)

Thursday Linkage

*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.

Weekend Notes

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.

When the economy gives you lemons...

* ....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

*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.

*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).

30+ Minute Meals

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

*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.

Cheese-Making Disaster

I've been successfully making farmer's cheese for more than three years. The recipe blogged here is tried and true, and, until this weekend, I had only one cheese-making disaster.*

Then I tried a recipe for farmer's cheese from Anya von Bremzen's Russian cookbook Please to the Table. It's good to try something new and different, right? Plus, I love this cookbook and often use it for inspiration (if not for the recipes).

So I followed Anya's instructions, mixing milk with sour cream (my recipe uses milk and buttermilk). I waited 48 hours until this mixture formed curds and whey (my recipe takes 24 hours). I did the required straining and draining. I dumped the cheese, which looked pretty good, into a bowl. Then I tried it...and spit it out.

I can't remember a time when I made something so awful that I couldn't even taste it. I'm a competent-enough cook that this doesn't happen. Until now. Why was Anya's farmer's cheese so bitter? What went wrong here? Food chemists, help me out.

*I once used buttermilk containing sodium citrate to make farmer's cheese, and ended up with a bitter, milky pancake instead of mild, fluffy cheese curds.

Fun With Leftovers

A food blogger for the local paper writes that some of her friends can’t stand eating leftovers. They toss food that’s more than a day old. That reminds me of my promise to share my very own tips on stretching your grocery budget. Tip no. 1: Don’t toss leftovers.

I really don’t understand why people wouldn’t eat leftovers. Is it the American obsession with hyper-freshness? Is it because eating the same thing twice in a row is boring? I can’t cure excessive zeal for food safety, but I can offer some ideas on making leftovers a little more interesting.

Here’s one: use leftovers to make salads. Recently, I found myself with a fridge full of grilled chicken, grilled tomatoes, and sautéed green beans, all left over from a cookout. I knew everything would taste inferior if I just nuked it in the microwave. Instead, I cubed the cold chicken and tomatoes, heated up the green beans for barely a minute and cut them into 1-inch pieces, and chopped up some scallions, parsley, and a hardboiled egg. All this went into a salad bowl with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar for the dressing. A completely new dish made out of last night’s food.

From a previous post, more ideas on using up leftovers:

Milk: Make homemade cottage cheese (aka farmer's cheese, curd cheese or tvorog).

Cottage cheese: Bake muffins.

Cooked, cold chicken: Make chicken-stuffed crepes or chicken and spinach hachepouri.

Raw chicken, random vegetables: Make stock.

Tomatoes past their prime: Roast 'em.

Roasted tomatoes, canned tomatoes, or tomato paste: Make chana masala soup.

Cooked vegetables: Make salad.

Grocery Shopping on the Cheap in Milwaukee

Hey, did you hear there’s a recession going on? If not, news stories about rising food prices will tell you all about it. I hope you’re as amused by money-saving tips like “buy things that are on sale” and “don’t throw away leftovers” as I am. Kitchen economics actually is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a recession guide to grocery shopping in Milwaukee, but I hesitate because my guide would require the reader to a) have a car, b) have extra time to shop around c) shop mostly for produce, non-organic meat, dairy and some pantry staples, and c) shop for two adults, or two plus a young child at most. I won’t pretend to know anything about feeding teenagers.

What I can do is offer some Milwaukee-area shopping suggestions for the penny-pinching semi-foodie. This isn’t really meant for locavores, the strictly organic-minded, green activists, or those who would spend their last cent on artisan cheese. My target audience is people who want to make reasonably good food without blowing their budget.

Lena's—“Shockingly cheap vegetables under the glare of fluorescent lights…” is how I’ve described this chain in the past. You don’t go to Lena’s for the atmosphere; you go for the produce prices—$1 a pound strawberries, anyone? How about a huge bag of red, orange and yellow bell peppers for about 70 cents? The quality can be spotty, but more often I can’t tell the difference between these veggies and the ones sold across the street at the Outpost, a pricy, organic grocery store. To the “but food should be expensive!” crowd, I say: No farmer’s market or co-op initiative or corner grocery or eat local crusader will offer fruits and vegetables at these prices to people who couldn’t afford them otherwise. Also, Lena’s runs specials on whole chickens at 69 cents a pound. Just sayin’.

El Rey—This chain of Mexican groceries reminds me of the international stores on Chicago’s Devon Street. Busy, colorful, English rarely spoken. I like the big store on National Avenue and 16th Street. The last time I stopped by, 30-cent avocados and 50-cent super-sweet mangos were on offer. The meat department selections are well-priced and stocked with unusual items like tripe and tongue for you au courant nose-to-tail eaters.

Asian Mart--The place is rundown and the selection can be spotty, but the husband-and-wife owners are super-friendly and the prices are good. There’s a variety of produce and even frozen whole fish sold in the back, with prices written on a chalkboard. Call ahead if you want something specific. This store also carries a nice selection of Asian goodies, from sauces to rice to bowls and steamers.

Sendik's has a reputation as a high-end chain, and the Nehring-owned stores are indeed expensive. The Balistreri-owned locations, on the other hand, have some good deals on produce, fish and meat. You can find surprisingly good-quality vegetables on the reduced produce cart at the Silver Spring Drive store.

Coming next: More places to shop, including farmer’s markets. Plus, my very own money-stretching cooking tips.

One-Track Mind

This has been a common sight in my kitchen for the past month. Pickling in action, that is. Mushrooms, cabbage, you name it. If this mystery project is any good, I’ll write about it.

Roasted Tomatoes

When life gave me five pounds of crappy supermarket tomatoes last week, I considered tossing them. But, as often happens, my thrifty Soviet housewife side came through. What do you mean toss them, I thought. My grandmother almost starved to death during World War II—I can’t waste food. Growing up, I often heard the saying “a Soviet housewife can make candy out of s#*t,” meaning, of course, that Russian women developed a knack for making good food using inferior ingredients. These days it’s all about the fresh, local and organic, but resourceful cooks will find a home for those squishy or wilted vegetables. Waste is for amateurs.

Here’s an example: It often surprises me how much the most underripe, out-of-season supermarket tomatoes benefit from roasting. I’ve blogged about successfully roasting cherry tomatoes, but even the usually useless Roma and beefsteak tomatoes are pretty good after some time in the oven. All you do is slice them up and put them in a foil-lined pan with a couple of teaspoons of salt, a teaspoon of sugar, and a good splash each of red wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Add some red pepper flakes and ground pepper, too, if you like. I usually toss in a handful of peeled garlic cloves. Roast at 400 for an hour, an hour and a half. The tomatoes will release a lot of juice; they’re done when the liquid evaporates and the tomatoes are shrunken and blistery. Let cool; they taste best at room temperature.

I often add these to salads, but they’re limitless in their use. This time I roasted some red and orange peppers alongside and made pepper and tomato salad the next day. And here's another recipe that promises to transform winter tomatoes into something edible.

End of the Week Notes

*Mark Bittman is blogging in the New York Times dining section. I think of Bittman as the Dr. Spock of home cooking: he’s so calm, so reassuring. Sure, you can make a meal in 10 minutes or whip up one of these 101 appetizers for your next shindig. Don’t worry. You know what to do. I’m rarely inspired by his recipes, but I’m glad he’s around.

*I like it when people resurrect their abandoned blogs. Welcome back, Seasonal Cook.

*The Amateur Gourmet blogs in two modes: zany, off-kilter foodie and earnest gee-whiz newbie. Which do you prefer: his review of Per Se (former mode) or a write up of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore's Dilemma (latter mode)?

*I made baba ghanouj last weekend and had a revelation (cooking is full of revelations): a little sugar makes this eggplant dip taste so much better. Leave out the eggplant, if you like, just don’t forget the sugar--seriously. Without sugar, baba ghanouj is harsh and acidic. With sugar, it’s smooth and rich. Thanks to Is That My Bureka for this tip.

*If you live in Milwaukee and are looking for cheap groceries, especially produce, consider Lena's. Lena’s attracts six types of shoppers: 1) poor black people, 2) poor Russian retirees, 3) poor Chinese immigrants, 4) poor Indian immigrants, 5) poor college students, and 6) me. Last Sunday, though, I spotted crunchy, organic co-op types picking up their fruits and vegetables at the Capitol Dr. location. A sign of the recession?

Music To Cook By

None.

I suspect that this meme is really a chance for food bloggers to flaunt their eclectic music tastes. Listening to music while cooking is overrated. Oh, it may be fine if you're doing some quiet and tedious kitchen task, like peeling 20 pounds of potatoes. Once you start sautéing, stir-frying, deglazing or browning, all music is drowned out by the hiss and sizzle of the pan. And what can you possibly hear when running a food processor, blender or KitchenAid? Furthermore: music equipment and greasy, floury hands do not mix.

Allow me to demonstrate that music has no place in the kitchen. I'll explain just why the next 10 tracks my iPod randomly pulls up are totally inappropriate for listening to while cooking.

1. Confutatis, from Mozart's Requiem: Starts quiet, then gets loud, then gets really quiet, and so on. Forget about listening this when dealing with a hot, sizzling pan; you'll miss all the nuances.

2. Like a Friend, Pulp: Actually, this isn't bad if you're chopping vegetables or something.

3. There is a Bed, Marc Almond: Makes one think of sex, get distracted, and burn dinner.

4. I Just Wanted to See You so Bad, Lucinda Williams: See song #2.

5. Too Drunk To Fuck, Nouvelle Vague: Save this for your next cocktail party soundtrack.

6. Dear Prudence, Siouxsie and the Banshees: Ok, this is fun and catchy. Not bad if you're baking.

7. I Spy, Pulp: If Serge Gainsbourg and Oscar Wilde had ever teamed up, they could have written this sharp, malicious little number. Deserves a more careful listen than it would get during dinner prep.

8. Peek a Boo, Siouxsie and the Banshees: Hey, something must be wrong with my iPod's shuffle! This is getting repetitive! An irritating ditty; you don't want to get stuck with greasy hands or something when this comes on.

9. A track by Franz Ferdinand from their first album: More appropriate as a soundtrack to reading the frontman's so-so food writing.

10. Tangled up in Blue, Bob Dylan: Like track 7, deserves a more careful listen than it would when dealing with a hot pan.

Cooking Notes

*When making farmer's cheese, do not ever use buttermilk containing sodium citrate. Ask Harold McGee for a scientific explanation. All I can say is that your milk won't curdle properly, the cheese will have the texture of styrofoam and you'll end up tossing the whole thing.

*How come my cooking never tastes as good when I follow recipes precisely? I'm one of those cooks who looks at recipes for ideas and techniques but rarely follows the steps. Either I don't have all the ingredients, or the recipe instructions seem off, etc. And it usually turns out fine! Here's what happens when I follow recipes to the letter:

Anya von Bremzen's avgolemono, from Please to the Table.

I think this recipe is fussier than it needs to be. Anya has you saute onions and add four spices to your usual chicken stock, eggs and lemon. The soup tastes ok, but would be just as good with the basic ingredients. All you really need is top-notch chicken stock.

Meatballs in pomegranate sauce, also from Please to the Table. These were fine. Not great, like Lindy's, but fine. A little too tart and a little dry, but...fine.

Chickea and chicken dumplings. I really had high hopes for these. The recipe is exotic but not terribly difficult. The Wednesday Chef tried it and gave a thumbs-up. But my dumplings turned out dense and bland! I regretted wasting excellent, homemade chicken stock on these. What happened? I suspect it's more my fault than the recipe's. I've never made dumplings of any kind before, and produced the dreaded leaden cannonballs on my first attempt. I wasn't inspired to take a photo.

Weekend Cooking Notes

*I survived the heat wave by eating salads and steamed corn-on-the-cob. Now that the weather has mercifully cooled down, I'm back in the kitchen. Today I made an unexpectedly wonderful dinner. Nothing new, nothing unusual, just pretty great late summer food.

Once again I made hachepouri, Georgian cheese bread. Last time I ended up with one big cheese pie. This time I halved this recipe and made six small pies. Three of them looked a lot like calzones--oval and puffy. The other three turned out like stuffed pita bread, and were much better. I think the trick to this recipe is flattening out the cheese-filled dough pocket until it's at least 1/2-inch thick. I bet hachepouri would be wonderful filled with caramelized onions and tomatoes along with the cheese, but then you'd have calzones. We ate warm hachepouri with Julia Child's ratatouille.

*Inspired by a Moroccan veggie stew with couscous at Casablanca, a local Middle-Eastern restaurant, I made a pretty good chicken version last week. I don't think I got the spices quite right, but I was pretty close. I sliced a boneless, skinless chicken breast into strips and sautéed it until it was almost done. Then I removed it from the skillet and added a bunch of carrots, zucchini and yellow squash, cut into ¼-inch ovals. Cooked them until they started getting soft and golden, then added garlic and spices--cumin, coriander, cinnamon (key spice), a teaspoon of sugar and a little cayenne.

Fresh tomatoes would work very well in this, but I was saving mine for salad. So I added about 1/2-3/4 a can of whole, peeled Muir Glen tomatoes and a splash of water. Brought the whole thing to a boil, simmered until the veggies were soft, then added the chicken and a couple of tablespoons of plain, full-fat yogurt, and simmered a little more. Casablanca doesn't use yogurt, but I think it really made this dish. The chicken breast did manage to dry out even though I didn't cook it very long, but I used it because I wanted to make a 30-minute weekday dinner. Next time I'd use a whole chicken, cut into parts. Chickpeas and eggplant would be very nice this kind of stew, too. Eat with couscous or rice.