Accidental-Ricotta Flatbreads

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

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

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

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

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

*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

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

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...

* ....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).

Chicken Stuffed with Crepes

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

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

*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)

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

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

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

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

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.