Pie on the Fly

In lieu of proper blogging, I'm posting pictures of Russian pies this week. That's cabbage pie, a cheesecake-like pie called vatrushka and mushroom pie. My mom made these, I don't have the recipe, nor do I plan to recreate them myself since I'm not that into Russian baking these days. (I couldn't find many reliable-sounding recipes for Russian pies, so if you know of any, please share.)

However, to make this more of a proper blog post, I will share a few cultural factoids about Russian pies:

• You may know about pirozhki (пирожки, plural; пирожок, singular), which are small, pastry-like pies.
• A pizza-sized pie like the one above is called a pirog.
• The Russian word pirog (пирог) stems from the word "pir" (пир), which means feast.
• Popular pie fillings for Russian pies are cabbage (sauteed with onions and mixed with hard-boiled eggs), mushrooms, fish and rice, and for pirozhki, potatoes, ground beef, or fruit. I once blogged about making mushroom pie.
• A vatrushka (ватрушка) is a pastry filled with farmer's cheese (also known as tvorog/творог). I made vatrushki (ватрушки, plural) back in the day.

Two Summer Recipes

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.

Schi (Sauerkraut Soup)

Kisliye schi* is one of the weirder Russian soups. First, it’s made with sauerkraut. Second…it’s made with sauerkraut. If you aren’t from Eastern Europe, when was the last time you’ve given any thought to sauerkraut soup? Me, I’ve given a lot of thought to sauerkraut soup lately. It’s a great winter meal in a bowl. It’s easy to make. It’s cheap—recession cheap!

And yet it’ll never be as popular as, say, borsch, the ruby red prom queen of Russian food. Schi involves cabbage in various guises. It’s kind of beige in color. It has a funny name that’s hard to pronounce in English (say shee). It’s… oh, come on, it’s made with sauerkraut! As I fruitlessly Googled schi recipes a few days ago, I thought this soup didn’t have a chance on the culinary scene.

Yet there’s hope on the horizon. It turns out that in November, New York Magazine ran a recipe for sauerkraut soup served at the reassuringly chic New York diner Veselka. Deb of powerhouse food blog Smitten Kitchen actually made and liked the soup. So when I found myself with leftover Thanksgiving sauerkraut and stock last week, I decided there was no better time to make a schi of my own. In the interest of full disclosure, this is the first time I’ve ever been inspired to cook it.

I’ve cobbled together recipes from New York mag, Anya von Bremzen’s Russian cookbook Please to the Table and my mom. Some of these recipes call for ingredients as varied as wild mushrooms and tomatoes, but I’ve kept my schi simple. Here’s the method:

First, you need a nice, rich stock with chunks of meat, preferably beef or pork. Chicken stock could suffice, if it’s a good one. I used my crock pot stock made with pork ribs (see recipe here).

When you’re ready to make schi, bring 6 cups of stock to a boil in a soup pot, and then turn the heat down to a simmer. Dice the beef, pork or chicken into ½ -inch pieces.

Peel and dice a medium potato. Shred ¼ of a small cabbage (about 2 cups). In a skillet, heat up some butter or sunflower oil. Dice a small onion and a carrot, and sauté the aromatics until the onion is soft and golden, about 10 minutes.

Add the cabbage to the skillet and sauté 5 minutes. Add the vegetables to the soup pot. Simmer 15 minutes; add the potatoes the pot and simmer 10 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft and the cabbage is tender.

Add 2 cups sauerkraut and a good splash of sauerkraut liquid to the soup pot. Add the diced meat. Stir; simmer 10 minutes. Adjust salt and pepper. Mince a large garlic clove, and add to the soup pot. Serve the soup with minced parsley or dill and huge dollops of sour cream. Rye bread is good on the side.

*Updated Dec. 7: Sassy Radish correctly notes that schi is made with fresh cabbage; kisliye schi (sour schi) is made with sauerkraut.

Braised Cabbage

Enough with the melancholy; let’s talk cabbage. I’ve been craving something cabbage-y ever since I had a lunch of coleslaw and fried potatoes back in Tallinn. It’s been cooler here in Wisconsin; so I went with braising-—a surefire way to make cabbage mild, rich and almost dip-like. This recipe, which I made up as I went along, was good with grilled chicken and even better on its own the next day.

In a large plan, I sautéed a chopped onion and some diced bacon in a splash of olive oil on high heat until the onion was soft and translucent, about 6 or 7 minutes. Deglazed with some marsala wine, and added a whole head of shredded cabbage, stirring it often. Then another good splash of marsala and white wine (about ¾ cup altogether), since I had two open bottles that I wanted to finish up.

Sautéed on high heat until the cabbage cooked down, which only took 10 minutes or so, and added kosher salt, a bit of paprika and a bay leaf. Turned down the heat to low, covered the pan, and let the cabbage cook another 30 minutes. About 10 minutes before it was done, added about 5 ounces of chopped ham and a couple of ounces of yogurt cheese (available at Russian groceries, but all kinds of cheese will work here, especially Parmesan, goat and feta). Topped with chopped scallions for serving.