Zucchini Cheese Pie

This Mediterranean vegetable cheese pie has been on my mind ever since Ann at Redacted Recipes blogged about it. I’ve been meaning to whip it up this week, but when the time came I didn’t have most of the ingredients. That rarely stops me, however, so I’d like to present my take on a vegetable cheese pie: a layer of zucchini covered with ricotta-parmesan-pepper-tomato topping. I actually used homemade farmer’s cheese (aka my famous tvorog) in place of ricotta, which worked very well. A nice discovery, as I rarely use farmer’s cheese in savory recipes.

Method: I covered the bottom of a round, foil-lined pie pan with thinly sliced, salted zucchini rounds and roasted them at 425 until they were soft, 20 minutes or so. (You could also sauté the rounds in olive oil instead.) In the meantime, I combined a cup of farmer’s cheese with an egg, ¼ cup of grated parmesan, a couple of ounces of mozzarella, some leftover roasted red and yellow peppers, and a little leftover tomato sauce. (You could leave out the peppers and tomatoes just as well, or use other vegetables in their place.)

I spread this mixture over the soft zucchini, and baked the pie at 425 until the cheese was firm and golden-brown, about 25 minutes, plus the last five minutes under the broiler. The pie tastes best lukewarm, so let cool 10-15 minutes.

Roasted Vegetable Salad(s)

I wow my co-workers with my culinary prowess at least once a week. No, I don’t bring baked goodies to work. Nor do I feast on elaborate leftovers. It’s my “vegetables with stuff” that impress. I often roast whatever veggies I have in the fridge and mix them with cheese, herbs, dressing and maybe chicken or fish for lunch the next day. These salads, even when eaten out of a plastic container, look colorful and pretty. Served on real plates, my lunches look like something out of Gourmet (or maybe the Whole Foods salad bar, but you get my point).

My salads revolve around some combo of zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, asparagus, cauliflower and carrots. Is there an easier way to cook these vegetables than to roast them? You cut ‘em up, toss them in a foil-lined baking dish with a splash of olive oil and some kosher salt and pepper, and stick 'em in the oven for a while.

I usually roast at 420 or 425; peppers take about 45 minutes; zucchini, asparagus and carrots, 20 minutes; see this for more on tomatoes and cauliflower. Cooking chemistry does its thing, and the vegetables emerge from the oven sweet and nutty. (I also like to roast fruit: once, I made a delicious roast chicken with grapes and pitted cherries -spread the fruit in a roasting pan, plop a prepped chicken on top, and follow your usual method. Past-their-prime strawberries, peaches, apples and pears all improve in the oven. Add some caramelized onions to your roasted fruit, and voila: instant chutney.)

I top the cooled vegetables with scallions, dill or parsley, olives, if I have them, and goat or feta cheese. For the dressing, I usually use olive oil, a squeeze of lemon or lime juice, or some red wine vinegar. Sometimes I mix in a little roasted garlic. Or I make creamy dressings with mayo, plain yogurt or sour cream, and olive oil.

On Food Likes and Dislikes

Above is a photo of a wonderful lunch I had on Saturday: smocked mackerel and boiled new potatoes with sour cream. Does that sound good to you? It tasted wonderful to me. But it saddens me to admit that few Americans my age would go for this repast.

This lunch got me thinking about how we develop food preferences. I love all things brined, pickled, smoked and fermented: fish, pickles, sauerkraut, kefir, and so on. I was weaned—almost literally!—on this stuff. In Russia, infants were given kefir instead of formula. I gave up pickles for potato chips after coming to the U.S. You don’t want to be the kid who eats weird crap when you’re nine, you know. In my late teens and early 20s, however, I rediscovered Russian food. It’s cool to be all diverse and multiculti when you’re in college! One taste of fatty, luscious smoked mackerel and I never looked back. On the other hand, I also love food that no one had ever heard of when I was growing up, and that my parents still won’t consider eating: sashimi, curries, tofu, etc.

Now, my boyfriend, who immigrated to the U.S. in his teens, has far more Soviet tastes that I do. Last week, he asked me to cook some buckwheat. “We could have it with kotleti,” he said. “Or hot dogs.”

Okay.

Kotleti are pan-fried meat patties, kind of like burgers but served without the bun. They’re the weekday staple of Russian households, the Soviet equivalent of sloppy joes. Hot dogs, always boiled, never grilled, are another go-to Soviet protein.

When I sing praises to the foods of my childhood, I don't mean boiled potatoes, hot dogs and kotleti. This is the kind of food I never, ever crave. And if I were to make this stuff, I would cook a “gourmet,” Epicurious-ized version. Buckwheat with chicken stock, dried mushrooms and caramelized shallots. Kotleti with panko breadcrumbs and Indian spices or something. And hot dogs—well... I just don’t have much to say about hot dogs.

So when I heard the boyfriend’s request, I put on what I call my PR face—the look spokespeople have during news conferences. Open, fake-friendly and willing to answer questions—to a limit. “Sure,” I said. “I could do that.” Shallots, dried mushrooms and panko are on my shopping list.

Grocery Tour: Parthenon Foods and Deli

This is the second stop of my Milwaukee-area Eastern European grocery tour (the first installment is here). Parthenon Foods is not a Russian grocery store—it’s owned by Greek immigrants—-but it sells all the usual Eastern European goodies, as well as lots of Mediterannean and Middle Eastern items.

It may look like a rundown quickie mart from the outside, but this store has an excellent selection and very friendly, if sometimes overbearing, service. The isles are cramped with stuff (jars of picked vegetables and souvenir plates by the register, bags of spices and rice everywhere), so be careful when maneuvering your way through the store—you may knock something over.

Location: 9131 W. Cleveland Ave., West Allis, 414-321-5522.

Atmosphere: See intro.

Customer Service: Super-duper friendly. You will be asked if you need help at least twice during your visit. If you’re overloaded with bags, the owner may help you carry your purchases to your car.

Product Selection: A large selection of olive oil, lots of pickled vegetables and yummy spreads like lutenitsa, spices, pasta, unusual grains like buckwheat and millet, a small liquor department, cheese, Greek yogurt and kefir, Russian and Polish candy, pickled and smoked fish, and lamb and fresh fish on Wednesday. Also some frozen, pre-made stuff, like dumplings and pierogis. You can see more on Parthenon's Web site.

Pricing: Reasonable. Good deals on deli items like olives and cheese.

Buy: I love the creamy, soft French feta sold at the deli. The halvah, sold by weight, is pretty good, too.

Avoid: I don’t remember any duds, but admittedly I haven’t sampled my way through most of the deli and meat/fish selections.

Final Rating: ****1/2

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

Roasted vegetable and potato salad with smoked salmon

If you had the good fortune to acquire a huge smoked salmon fillet, what would you do with it? My first instinct was to slice it up and eat it over the cutting board with my fingers. That would have been okay if I were eating alone, but since I wasn’t, I felt obliged to make something more coherent. A dig through the fridge revealed potatoes, peppers, asparagus and cherry tomatoes. Voila: Roasted vegetable and potato salad with smoked salmon.

I roasted a cup of cherry tomatoes, a couple of garlic cloves and two yellow and orange peppers, cut into strips, at 430 for about 25 minutes, then added a pound or so of trimmed asparagus to the pan for another 10 minutes of roasting. In the meantime, I parboiled two potatoes and sliced up some—ok, a lot--of smoked salmon into chunks.

I let the vegetables cool a little when they were done; then I cut the asparagus into 1-inch pieces, peeled and cubed the potatoes and combined everything in a salad bowl. For the dressing, I mixed the soft, roasted garlic with a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice, a tablespoon of olive oil, and some kosher salt and black pepper. The salad was great, and I regret only that I didn’t have any parsley, scallions or goat/feta cheese on hand to make it downright fantastic.

Review: Russian Candy

I have a real weakness for cheap chocolate. Sure, I like the hoity-toity super dark stuff, but I won’t pass up M&Ms, or dark Mars bars, or Twix. I’ll even eat Hershey’s kisses, provided they’re the almond kind. (I’ll pass on plain Hershey’s bars, thanks.) I’m never more tempted to eat cheap chocolate than when I’m shopping at Russian groceries, all of which sell a big selection of candy. The quality varies, but the varieties are breathtaking: my little local store must stock at least 15 kinds. Some have been on the market since the Soviet times, others are new, many have baroque names. Anyone up for a mishka kosolapiy (clumsy bear) or a ptichie moloko (bird’s milk)?

In this third part of my series on stuff you can buy at Russian/Eastern European groceries, I will sample and review Russian candy. My goal is to taste my way through all of the God knows how many varieties and produce the definitive hierarchy of Russian sweets. (A hierarchy of American candy bars can be found here.)

This one’s called “Condensed Milk.” It’s actually dark chocolate-covered…something. The filling is off-white, grainy, and tastes kind of nutty and super-sugary. A C list-candy: good mostly when you crave a sugar boost.

The name means “little trunks with condensed milk.” Little trunks--aww! This one’s for the A-list: a soft, creamy, slightly lemony filling, covered with dark chocolate. A little too sweet, but I don’t mind.


Rachki! That means “crawfish” in Russian, but for some reason a lobster is pictured on the wrapper. What does this candy have to do with shellfish? I suspect “rachki” refers to the crunchy, hard exterior; inside is a crumbly chocolate-nut filling. Eh. I’ll eat this if I crave sugar and nothing better is around. C-list.

Two years of Yulinka Cooks

Holy crap, this little blog of mine is two years old! Last year I celebrated with a jaunt through my first 12 months of blogging. This year, let’s enjoy a slice of birthday herring in a fur coat (above) and take a look at what I accomplished since March 27, 2006:

Most popular and single most useful post: How to make tvorog (Russian farmer’s cheese). Tvorog is this blog’s raison d’etre, the post with the most page views and nearly the most comments. Tvorog is the number-one search term that brings people to Yulinka Cooks. Google tvorog and my blog is the first result! Take that, bloggers with book deals.

Most comments: Oddly, my kvass-making (rye bread beer) post just beat out tvorog for the most comments. Kvass is a pretty obscure beverage in the U.S. and making it at home requires an unusual interest in beer-brewing and Russian drinks. There was much discussion in this thread about method, technique, etc., but my kvass was still terrible and I have zero interest in making it again.

Common search terms that bring people here: Tvorog, eggplant caviar, lentil soup, kvass, borsch and blini. Last year I complained that my readers are boring: most of you use this blog as a reference source for recipes and click away. Indeed, my stats show that I have few repeat readers. Wham, bam, no spasibo m’am!

Most popular recipes: The usual suspects: eggplant caviar, tvorog, Korean carrot salad. My favorites are Georgian lamb and green beans, squash gratin, tomato bean soup with sausage and chana masala soup.

Biggest success: My first borsch was pretty damn good. In fact, all my soups have been pretty successful. I’ve made this pickled mixed vegetable salad three times in the past month and I will be making it again. Also: pickles and chocolate-covered sirki (mini cheesecakes).

Biggest failure: Kvass, but that was expected. My ill-fated sauerkraut really rankles, though. I’m supposed to be good at making vegetables. Also, most of my baking was just ok. Did I make it sound like my sweet yeast dough experiments of April-June 2006 were awesome? I may have exaggerated a little.

Least popular post: I guess no one cares about my wit and wisdom on food politics or forays into Indian cooking. I can’t imagine why.

Favorite post: On Tea. Few people realize just how important tea is to me, but I drink about eight cups of the stuff a day. I’m also fond of the kasha post and the holiday round-ups: New Year and Thanksgiving.

Want to give me an anniversary gift? Delurk in the comments.

"If 1960s Las Vegas had its Rat Pack and 1980s cinema its Brat Pack, early 21st century food has its Fat Pack."

Foodies are fat, says the New York Times. No surprise here: I looked at my weight history at the doctor's a few weeks ago and noticed that I really porked up around March 2006, when I started this blog. I was at my lowest weight since college in February 2007, when the blog went on hiatus. Coincidence? I think not. I hesitate to write about my weight neuroses, but I fret about staying slim as much as I do about what I’ll eat for dinner.

My solution is to eat with abandon once or twice a week and then watch it the rest of the time. Monday through Friday, my diet is mostly fish, lean protein and vegetables (cooked in varied and delicious ways, thanks), plus some fruit, dairy, lentils/beans and olive oil. I watch my portions, and I’m never quite full after a meal. Small sacrifice, since weekends are for pasta, bread, larger portions, etc. This works: I’ve stayed pretty close to my ideal weight for more than a year. I’d sign a Faustian deal to stay at this weight for life.

(More interesting is that foodies swear that it’s only processed junk that makes you fat. Surely pork belly from that local, organic, humanely-raised pig that you bought from your good friend the farmer at a charming little outdoor market will not make you gain weight... Er, never mind.)

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.

Blogging Notes

Has it been a week since I last posted? Gulp. I swear, time runs faster when you have a blog. Cooking has been haphazard lately; so enjoy these crumbs:

* “Our rock stars are ricotta makers:” I sometimes have Marie Antoinette-like fantasies of tending a little farm in the country, raising my own chickens and growing vegetables. Well, some New York hipsters are are doing just that. I bet urban farming will soon overtake knitting as the “it” retro-chic hipster activity.

* HR cant about diversity makes my eyes roll to the back of my head, but real-world multi-culturalism makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. This weekend I shopped on Chicago’s Devon Avenue, a mostly immigrant district where Hasidic Jews share the sidewalk with women in burqas. I bought vegetables from one of about a dozen Indian groceries (all super cheap), jostling my way past sari-clad women and employees carting huge bags of rice. I also stopped by Argo, a Georgian bakery, for some kiln-baked bread. (I blogged about another trip to Devon here.)

* I used to think that American-style baking was too easy. You mix dry stuff in one bowl, wet stuff in another, combine, shove the whole thing in the oven, and voila. Not so: Helen of Beyond Salmon shows that good baking is an exact, complicated science. I hardly ever bake anymore, but if I have a hankering for a cake, I will follow Helen’s guide.

* Regina Schrambling of Gastropoda has harsh words about amateur cooks who blog: "…nattering about what they fed their boyfriends last night, or fuzzily photographing their latest batch of heart-shaped cookies…" Ouch. That’s more biting than Pete Wells' anti-blog rant.

* A thought: bloggers need editors for style rather than content. I read Gastropoda because it’s short and sharp, a rarity in the blogosphere. (The same reason I read, say, Gawker.) It’s too easy to go on for freakin’ forever when you don’t have a word limit.

Soviet Kitsch: Soup

It’s time for another installment of Russian Retro Recipe Cards. This time, the topic’s soup. I've documented Russians’ love of soup pretty thoroughly on this blog, but I’m always surprised by the variety and the sheer oddness of some soups described in Russian and Soviet cookbooks. Let’s take a look at a few (from Soviet soup recipe cards circa 1988): Got random processed meat products in the fridge? Here's the soup for you: solianka, which one Russian cookbook author calls "mixed-up meat soup." This basically a beef-based vegetable soup with chunks of sausage, hot dogs, bacon, etc. Every soup needs a side: above are potato dumplings. I think the best side, good rye bread aside, is homemade pirozhki.
Fruit soup! Rhubarb-apple-strawberry soup, with a side of marinated apples (yes, you can pickle apples) and slices of lemon. This is served cold in the summer.
Milk soup--hot milk with rice or pasta, served with a pat of butter in the middle of the bowl. I think of this as comfort food, even though I've got no good reason to eat it anymore (milk, carbs and butter will no longer make me grow big and strong, alas). This is food for when you're sick with a cold or flu.
Some sort of fish soup. Is that smoked herring to the right?
That's 24-hour schi (sauerkraut soup). Schi is usually made a day in advance to allow the flavors to settle, but this recipe has you freeze the soup for a day and then defrost and heat before serving.

Marinated Mixed Vegetable Salad, Take Two

I was planning to write off this marinated vegetable salad as another one of Anya von Bremzen's inspiring but not quite thought-out recipes. The instruction say the salad is ready to eat the day after you make it—well, no. I think Anya forgot about the “marinated” part. I sampled the salad at 24 and 48 hours, and it tasted like cabbage sprinkled with salt and vinegar. Then life got in the way and I shoved the salad to the back of the fridge and forgot about it. A week later, eureka! It finally tasted the way Russian homemade, pickled vegetables are supposed to: briny, sweet and sour, with a tingly zing. (The recipe still required some tweaking--see my instructions below. For one thing, the amount of brine Anya has you make was not nearly enough to cover all the vegetables.)

Method:

-Finely chop 1 medium head of cabbage; mix with 1 tbs. kosher salt in a large bowl and let stand for 1 hour.

-In the meantime, make the brine. Combine 3/4 c. water, 3/4 c. white vinegar, 12 whole black peppercorns, and 1.5 tbs. sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil, then turn off the heat. Let cool. (I had to make another 1/2 recipe of brine to cover the vegetables.) When the liquid is cool, add 2 tbs. sunflower oil to marinade.

-Squeeze the cabbage with your hands so it releases water; drain as much water as possible. Combine with a thinly sliced: carrot, 3 red peppers, 2 white onions, and 2 green tomatoes (I left these out). Toss with 3 peeled garlic cloves and 2 dried, hot chili peppers.

-Toss the vegetables well with the marinade. Let stand 1 hour, then put into clean 2-quart jars. I didn't have extra jars, so I put the vegetables in a big soup pot and simply covered it with a lid.

-The vegetables will need to marinate in the fridge for a few days; start tasting around day four. Eat with chopped dill or parsley. This salad is great with roasted chicken, pork or beef, and it’s also good on its own as an appetizer.

Recharging

Food hasn’t been on my mind lately. I’ve been busy, I’ve been sick, I’ve been on the road. I’ve been taking too many shortcuts, cutting too many corners. Last week I was fighting a low-grade cold, the kind that dulls your appetite and makes everything taste flat. And then, when I had a chance to redeem myself on a long weekend in Puerto Rico, I just gave up. Being a foodie can be exhausting: always looking for that authentic, out-of-the way little place where the locals eat. This is not as fun as it sounds. Oh, no: It takes research, reading, asking the Chowhounds. I said to hell with it. My traveling companion doesn’t care much about food, my lingering cold wore me down, and so we ate at chain restaurants with nary a second thought. This week, though, I’m back on the mends. My cold is almost gone, my appetite is back and my palate is sharper. I’m itching to make something new, something different. First up, a belated write-up of this marinated vegetable salad. In brief: it's a keeper. Recipe coming soon.

Pickled

I'm making good on my New Year's resolution to experiment with pickling vegetables in 2008. Above is pickled mixed vegetable salad from Anya von Bremzen's Please to the Table: shredded cabbage, onions, carrots and red peppers in a marinade made with water, vinegar, salt, sugar and sunflower oil. I'll post a recipe if this is any good.

Product Review: Lutenitsa

Here’s the second installment of my occasional series on worthwhile items you can buy at Russian/Eastern European grocery stores. (In the first write-up, we sampled baked milk.) I highly recommend lutenitsa. Depending on the brand, this is a sauce or a spread made with red peppers, tomatoes, onions, sunflower oil and usually something spicy, like a little hot pepper. Lutenitsa is Bulgarian, not Russian, but I hear it was a very popular imported product in Russia during the Soviet times. I like adding lutenitsa to tomato-based soups and stews, especially borsch, or eating it as an appetizer with cheese on crackers. It's also good eaten right out of the jar. Just sayin'.

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?

Two Mushroom Recipes

When people find out I was born in Russia, they’re all, “Is it really cold there?” I just shrug. I guess we had cold winters when I was growing up, but that’s not what I remember. You know what I do remember? Going mushroom picking. I’ve waxed Proustian about gathering mushrooms in the forest, and that’s what I think about whenever I cook with ‘shrooms. Granted, these days I usually use plain old white button mushrooms, not the fancy, rare varieties we picked down on the dacha, but making mushroom stuff still fills me with the warmest, fuzziest feelings on this side of my mom’s borsch.

Last weekend I marinated some mushrooms using a recipe from Anya von Bremzen’s Please to the Table. It needed quite a bit of tweaking--thanks to the Seasonal Cook for sharing her tips--and next time I may use another recipe altogether. Still, for a first attempt, these are pretty good and a no-brainer to prepare.

You clean a pound and a half of mushrooms (I used white button mushrooms, but you can use fancier ones if you have them), cover them with 2 cups of cold water and bring it to a boil. Then you add 1 tsp. kosher salt, and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Remove the mushrooms with a slotted spoon and strain out a cup of the mushroom liquid. In a small saucepan, add 1 cup of tarragon vinegar to the liquid, along with some peppercorns, bay leaves, and 1 tsp. sugar (I’d use 2 tsp. next time). Bring the liquid to a boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Cool. Put the mushrooms in a clean jar with layers of peeled garlic cloves and dill sprigs. Add the marinade and top with a tablespoon of sunflower or olive oil. Refrigerate for at least 4-6 hours, preferably a couple of days.

The mushroom soup I made to chase down my pickled fungi (mmm…) is not at all Russian, but I wanted something different from my previous soups. I soaked and cleaned some dried porcini mushrooms as described here. For the soup, I sautéed some chopped onions, carrots and celery in olive oil and butter in a heavy pot; added a sprinkle of sage and thyme; deglazed with white wine; and poured in 4 cups chicken stock, the dried mushroom soaking liquid, a splash of the mushroom cooking liquid left over from making pickled mushrooms, and maybe an ounce of goat cheese.

All this simmered for a little while; then I pureed it in a blender. I added the soup back to the pot, brought it to a simmer, and tossed in 1 peeled, chopped potato. In the meantime, I sautéed about ½ pound of sliced white button mushrooms in olive oil with a bit of bacon (maybe two slices) and some minced garlic. When the potatoes were done, in about 10-15 minutes, I added the mushroom chunks to the soup, stirred, and served the soup with tons of chopped dill and dollops of sour cream.

Mushroom Madness

It's been all about mushrooms this past weekend. Pickling them with garlic, dill and tarragon vinegar.

Waiting the recommended 4-6 hours until they are ready.
Eating them as a prelude to this creamy mushroom soup made with dried and fresh mushrooms, chicken stock, goat cheese, potatoes and just a hint of bacon for that smoky flavor.
Recipes later this week. For now, just stock up on mushrooms and dill.

Korean Carrot Salad

Here’s a salad and a history lesson for you. This spicy dish is known as “Korean carrots” throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics. How did that name come about? “Korean carrot salad, morkovcha koreyska, is a legacy of Stalin's mass deportations of ethnic Koreans from the far eastern Soviet Union to its western frontiers," explains the New York Times in this excellent article.

This salad is often served as part of a zakuski (appetizer) spread for holiday meals and special occasions. I’ve had a couple of different versions of these carrots—recipes vary by household—and came up with the version below.

Method:

Make this salad a day before you plan to eat it. It needs to marinade overnight.

You will need about 1 pound of carrots, cleaned and peeled, the longer the better. Use a mandoline to slice them into thin, spaghetti-like strands. Place in a large bowl. Mince 2 garlic cloves; add to the carrots.

Sauté a small, diced onion in about ¼ cup of sunflower oil until the onion is soft and translucent. Add 2 tbs. of whole coriander seeds and cayenne pepper to taste (I used about ¼ tsp.) toward the end of the cooking time. When the onion is done, immediately add it and any leftover oil to the carrots; toss.

In a bowl, mix 3 tbs. of white vinegar, 2 tsp. of sugar, and 1 tsp. of salt. Add dressing to the salad, and mix well. You can also another handful of whole coriander seeds. Refrigerate 4-5 hours; preferably overnight.

Chicken Soup with Spinach and Pelmeni

I think making chicken stock is pretty easy. Admittedly, I’m probably doing it all wrong, but that doesn’t stop me and it shouldn’t stop you, either. Chicken stock, according to the super chefs quoted in this San Francisco Chronicle article, is a Herculean task. I wouldn’t pit my stock against Thomas Keller’s, but I think my amateur efforts a) taste really good, and b) are reasonably low-maintenance.

I actually make two types of stock. The first is what I call “American” chicken stock, based on recipes I gleaned from cookbooks and blogs. This involves simmering chicken parts or roasted chicken carcasses with aromatics for 3-4 hours. I often freeze batches of this to use in stews, sauces and pureed soups. The other type is Russian chicken stock (broth, if you want to split hairs) as my mother makes it, and which I once vaguely described here. This involves simmering a whole chicken in a pot with just a few aromatics added toward the end of the cooking time. Russian home cooks don't really make chicken stock for later use; it's usually served immediately as part of a meal. My mom puts chunks of the cooked chicken and either cooked rice or tiny pasta shells in a bowl, tops with ladlefuls of stock, and garnishes with chopped dill and parsley. This type of stock is richer and more concentrated than my American version. It's also my submission to the comfort-food themed Monthly Mingle over at What’s For Lunch Honey.

The last time I made my mom’s chicken stock I decided to forgo the rice and chicken meat for pelmeni and spinach. Pelmeni are Russian meat dumplings, not unlike ravioli or tortellini. Frozen pelmeni are sold in every Eastern European grocery. It’s a pleasure to slurp fat, brothy dumplings and silky spinach out of an oversize café au lait cup a cold January weekend.

Method:

1. Take a whole chicken (between 3 and 4 pounds) and put it in a stock pot or a Dutch oven. Cover with cold water. On medium-high heat, with the pot partially covered, bring the water to a boil. As soon as the water begins to boil, turn the heat down to a very low simmer.

2. At this point, you will need to skim the foam that will form on the surface. Get a slotted spoon and a bowl and remove the foam every 4-5 minutes for 20 to 25 minutes. You will have murky, grimy-looking stock if you skip this step. This is by far the hardest part of this exercise; the rest is easy.

3. Once foam stops forming, add 1 small, peeled onion, cut in half, a couple of bay leaves, and a handful of black peppercorns to the pot. Then let the chicken simmer for about an hour and a half. (If you must have your chicken rare, take it out of the pot as soon as it’s cooked through. Remove most of the meat when the chicken is cool enough to handle; add the bones back in and keep simmering.)

4. In the meantime, finely dice 2 medium carrots, a large celery stalk and two cloves of garlic. Twenty minutes before time’s up, add the celery and carrots to the pot; keep simmering until the vegetables are soft. At about 90 minutes from the time the stock came to a boil, carefully remove the chicken from the pot but don’t turn off the heat.

5. Add the minced garlic and kosher salt to taste to the stock; stir. Keep in mind that salt really bring out the flavor in stock.

6. Add pelmeni to the pot. Don’t add more than you’re planning to eat—leftover dumplings will get soggy. Five-six dumplings per serving should be enough. A few minutes before the pelmeni are done-- they will take about 8 minutes-- stir in a couple of cups of baby spinach leaves. I love spinach; so I usually add more, but it’s up to you.

7. When the spinach is wilted and the pelmeni are cooked, remove the onion and turn off the heat. Serve. This is great topped with grated Parmesan cheese.

8. Eat the cooked chicken with leftover stock ,or use for blinchiki or hachepouri.

Short and Spicy Blog Writing

Do you like reading food memoir-type blogs? You know, the kind that feature charming and moving episodes from the blogger’s life, followed up with companion recipes and food porn-y photos. I do, but I think the poignant story/recipe/glossy photo format can be overused and stilted. Reading these blogs sometimes feels like eating rich meal after rich meal, and feeling unpleasantly full. Bloggers aren’t to blame for sort of writing, though; it seems to be a trend in food journalism these days.

I myself often fall into the personal story/recipe rut. As I was re-reading my original fish chowder post-- it went “this is a wonderful soup to eat on a cold day and it reminds me of this story from my childhood blah blah blah”-- I realized I was bored. So I re-wrote the post to make it more amusing for myself and my readers (all five of you.) Granted, my pictures are about as far from glossy food porn as you can get, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be just like the cool kids. The first thing I tried to do when I laid my hands on my parents’ far nicer camera was to attempt to take arty close-ups set against a blurry background. Nobody bloggers like me imitate the big guns.

Still, there’s something to be said about blogs that just do recipes—no soul-searching, no memoirs, no food porn, just recipes, and lots of them. Anne's Food is a very charming example of such a blog; Simply Recipes is the best of the bunch. I’d also like to see more acidic, snappier food blog writing out there. Gastropoda is reliably curt and bitter but useful mostly to New Yorkers. I love The Hungry Tiger for its charming collection of vignettes that rarely exceed 200 words per post. (This blog is also my candidate for the next book deal.) The now-defunct Seasonal Cook demonstrates here and here how to write food memoirs that aren’t affected or dubiously upbeat. It’s all fine and good to eat rich, cheesy, starchy comfort food. But sometimes all you want is a spicy, citric starter.

The poor and lazy man's fish chowder

The road to the poor and lazy (wo)man’s fish chowder:

Three months before you make this soup: Stock up on frozen tilapia. Buy lots and lots of it, more than you’ll ever want to eat. Hey, it’s a) cheap, b) healthy, and c) a no-brainer to cook. (When you start making more money your tilapia consumption will fall drastically, as you’ll be able to afford more exciting seafood.) Nothing against tilapia, mind you. It’s a perfectly pleasant fish that you’ll be thoroughly sick of by the time you’re ready to make this soup. You can also substitute cod.

Two months: Start keeping an eye out for specials on shell-on shrimp. Eat most of the shrimp, but save and freeze the shrimp shells in a Ziploc bag. Try to save up about 3-4 cups of shrimp shells. Don’t forget to freeze some shrimp for the soup, you glutton.

Two weeks: You should really clean out your freezer. Did you know that you have tilapia that’s been in there for God knows how long? Maybe you could do something new and different with it. Think about that. Look up some recipes.

One week: Remember those shrimp shells that you froze, like, months ago? Don’t they look disgusting? Remember how you’ve been meaning to do something new and creative with them, like make shellfish stock? Why don’t you try that? Go look up half a dozen recipes for shellfish stock.

Two days: You’re planning to roast the shrimp shells before lovingly simmering them for hours with aromatics, like more ambitious bloggers? Ha. No, you’ll actually toss the shrimp shells in a crock pot. You can make shellfish stock in a crock pot, right? Googling “fish stock crock pot” proves inconclusive, but whatever. Cover the shrimp shells with water, and add a splash of white wine and some carrots, celery and onion, and simmer on low for eight hours. Cool, strain, and pour into containers and freeze. Wasn’t that easy? Don’t you feel like a good, virtuous little housewife? Oh, and don’t forget to air out your apartment.

Fish chowder day: Pick a bitterly cold day. Soup tastes better on a cold day. Get out your shrimp stock, shrimp and tilapia. Sauté some chopped onions, carrots, and green pepper in olive oil on medium-high heat in a heavy soup pot. Lower the heat and added minced garlic, some dried thyme, red pepper flakes and salt. Deglaze the soup pot with ½ cup white wine.

Add 4 cups shrimp stock; ¼ tsp. crushed saffron threads; 1.5 cups of good canned tomatoes, chopped; 1 tsp. sugar; and a couple of bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and let the whole thing simmer for 10 minutes.

Add a tilapia fillet (about 8 oz), cut into chunks. When the tilapia is done, in about 4 minutes, add about ½ cup of shrimp (about 4 oz). Simmer the soup for a couple of more minutes, and add 2 tbs. chopped basil, a splash of lemon juice, and a pinch each of salt and sugar. Top the soup with chopped parsley before serving. Eat with crusty bread or over rice. Want more starch? You could even make this with potatoes (add some peeled potatoes, cut into ¾-inch chunks, to the simmering shrimp stock. Cook until the potatoes are done before adding the tomatoes and other ingredients.)

Post-soup: Feel virtuous. Rub your belly. Glow. You’ve made a delicious soup out of boring frozen fish and gross-looking shrimp shells. You’re a resourceful and creative cook. You rule. Your fish chowder rules. Peace.

Soup blogging: Ugly yet delicious spicy chicken rice soup

This is a delicious yet very ugly soup that I don’t recommend you make for company. For yourself, sure; for others, no. The original recipe, which, unlike mine, is quite photogenic, ran on a Finger in Every Pie back in November. That recipe calls for simmering lemongrass and ginger in turkey stock before adding the aromatics, shredded turkey, bok choy and herbs. When I got around to making this soup last week, I didn’t have all of the ingredients or remember the recipe instructions, but that never stops me. I wanted a gingery, spicy chicken rice soup, so this is what I came up using what I had in the kitchen.

For the stock, I used a roast chicken carcass, which I put in a crock pot with an onion, a couple of carrots, and some celery stalks, 2-3 bay leaves and a splash of white wine. All this was covered with cold water and simmered on low for about eight hours. I cooled the stock, refrigerated it and degreased it the next day. (This is the easiest, laziest way of making homemade chicken stock.)

For the soup, I brought the 6 –7 cups of stock to a simmer and tossed in a couple of 1-inch pieces of peeled ginger, 1/8 cup fresh lemon juice, and a couple of teaspoons of salt.

Meanwhile, I sautéed a large chopped onion, a couple of chopped carrots and celery stalks, and some minced garlic and ginger in olive oil. When the onion was golden and the vegetables were soft, I added them to the stock, along with ¼ cup of uncooked rice, and let the soup simmer for 9-10 minutes, until the rice was almost done. I then added a tablespoon of soy sauce, a tablespoon of hoisin, two tablespoons of chili garlic sauce (I used Blue Dragon brand, not very spicy. Adjust to taste.), and a splash of fish sauce.

I took the soup off the heat and pureed about 1/3 of it in a blender, along with some chopped scallions and basil. (Actually, I tossed in some spinach into the soup pot before pureeing by mistake, which accounts for the soup’s hideous green color. Oops. Do not do this--add your greens after pureeing). The soup went back into the pot with shredded roast chicken meat, and another splash of soy sauce, fish sauce, garlic chili sauce and lemon juice. I topped the soup with chopped scallions, but it would also be good topped with sesame seeds, sesame oil or herbs like cilantro and basil.

2008 Food/Blog Resolutions

It’s a bit late for New Year’s resolutions, but what the hell. In 2008, I resolve to:

*Drink more coffee. I like coffee and cappuccino and lattes and all that crap, but I’m rarely willing to shell out $3+ for a shot of espresso and some hot milk. Food snob that I am, I’m also not willing to drink pre-ground, drip coffee. So this year I am acquiring a coffee grinder and a French press. Hey, the local coffee expert says my attempts will be at least as good as Starbucks'.

*Try more new recipes from my cooking bible, Please to the Table, especially soups, salads and appetizers. I’m a pretty lazy cook, actually. Sometimes all I want to make is roasted cauliflower or butternut squash, my equivalent of sticking a frozen pizza in the oven.

*Cook more with alcohol. French onion soup made with brandy. Chicken and pork in Calvados-spiked sauce. Coffee with steamed milk and Bailey’s. Fruit-infused vodka.

*Make more appetizers, period. Small plates are all the rage, haven't you heard?

*Pickle and marinate stuff. Attempt to make homemade sauerkraut, again. And pickled mushrooms.

*Give a dinner party, and, consequently, be praised for my cooking by people who are not related to me.

*Do all of the above and while sticking to my calorie restriction/optimal nutrition experiment five days a week. At least the optimal nutrition part.

*Have this blog noted just once in the local media. Come on, MKE and OnMilwaukee, it’s not like you have anything better to write about.

*Blog more. Ha.

Soviet Kitsch: Sandwiches and Canapes

Looking for appetizer ideas? Why not consider this Soviet cookbook from the 1960s? Seriously.

Admittedly, when it comes to food, I’m no fan of all things retro. I don’t collect old cookbooks, I have no interest in making “gourmet” versions of 60s stalwarts like tuna casserole, and I’ve never perused the Gallery of Regrettable Food. That said, I do have a soft spot for my mom’s collection of Soviet cookbooks and recipe cards. This is partly because they’re a slice of a historical era that holds some interest for me, and also because they often have useful hints and techniques for under-quipped cooks, like making dumpling dough sans pasta machine.

I rarely turn to these cookbooks for actual recipes, which tend to be minimalist (grated carrots), unappetizing (boiled sausage and potatoes), or both. Plus, these books never list exact ingredient amounts, oven temperatures, or introduce recipes. Soviet cookbooks are entirely food-porn free, as eating and cooking was a pragmatic affair for their readers. A rare exception is this little booklet on sandwiches and canapés. Yes, the photography is terrible (yet no worse than mine on this blog), but the sandwich and appetizer ideas are charming, original and totally edible.


Sandwich towers made with toasted rye bread rounds and stacked with cucumber, cheese, tomato, hardboiled eggs, ham, smoked fish and what have you.

Sandwich sailboats--toasted white bread and Swiss cheese sails, held in place with a toothpick. When I was a kid, this is all I would eat at times.

Some sort of smoked fish--herring or mackerel--with hard-boiled eggs and red pepper. Note the scenically positioned whole fish, complete with heads, tails, and eyes. Yum.

Herring in a Fur Coat

Around this time of the year, Christmas well-wishes are usually followed up with “Uh, do you celebrate Christmas?” I guess I do, although this is not at all common in Russian-Jewish immigrant families. New Year's--a Soviet-ized Christmas, really--is the big holiday for Russians, but Christmas itself is generally ignored. As for Hanukkah, few Russian Jews celebrate it in earnest. This holiday is usually commemorated by saying “Hey, it’s Hanukkah!” on the second of the eight days and then forgetting about the whole thing.

My parents and I, though, are accidental non-conformists: ever since we came to the U.S., we happened to receive annual Christmas dinner invitations by our respective American friends. Add to that my childhood yearnings for an American Christmas, and you get holiday revelry chez Yulinka: a tree that stays up mid-December through early January; a festive dinner and gifts on Dec. 25, and a classic Russian appetizer and vodka spread on Dec. 31. And so it was this year.

St. Nick looked over a very American dinner of stuffed pork loin and roasted butternut squash...

... while an Old World babushka made sure that homemade sauerkraut, picked tomatoes and herring in a fur coat made an appearance on the table.

Herring in a coat (seledka pod shuboi), the Russian version of seven-layer salad, is usually made for New Year’s, but it’s often served at festive dinners year-round. A layer of herring is covered with beets, potatoes and eggs, dressed with mayo, and topped with herbs, onions and sometimes olives. Every family has its own recipe, but I think my mom’s has a leg up thanks to a layer of tart apple that gives this rich appetizer a nice kick.

Method: Herring in a fur coat is best when made 12-24 hours before serving and left to “marinate” in the fridge.

You will need:
-1 smoked/salted herring fillet (about 1 lb, sold prepackaged at Russian stores; not pickled herring)
-2 small cooked, cooled and peeled potatoes and 1 large, cooked beet. Bring water to a boil in a sauce pan, add the beet and the potatoes, turn the heat to a simmer and cook until you can easily poke the vegetables through with a knife. The potatoes will take about 30 minutes; the beets, 1-1.5 hours.
-2 large, hardboiled eggs
-1 small, peeled Granny Smith apple (or another tart variety)
-1/2 small red onion, minced, plus a few thinly sliced pieces
-2 tbs. each chopped scallions, parsley and/or dill

Dressing:
In a small bowl, combine 1/4 cup mayo, 1/4 cup sour cream (or thick Greek yogurt), a dash of salt and pepper, and a splash of vinegar.

Cut the herring into small pieces (about 1/8-inch) and spread evenly on a big, round plate or serving dish. Dice the potatoes and spread over the herring. Sprinkle with some finely chopped red onion.

Spread about 3-4 tablespoons of dressing over the potatoes and herring. Grate the apple over the potato layer, and spread 3-4 tablespoons of dressing on top. Sprinkle with finely chopped red onion.

Grate the beet and the eggs over the apple layer. Top with the remaining dressing (make more as needed) and chopped scallions, parsley, dill, and thinly sliced onions. To serve, use a butter knife to slice and transfer to individual plates with a spatula.

Food blogs that should exist, but don’t

Looking for a unique food blog theme? With more than 40,000 food blogs out there, a theme or a niche is a good idea. Plenty of bloggers take nice pictures and post good recipes, but there’s nothing that really distinguishes them from thousands of other foodies. Most big bloggers have some sort of a theme: Amateur Gourmet, self-explanatory; Chocolate and Zucchini, cooking and eating in Paris ; Gluten-Free Girl, learning to live and cook sans wheat. Even this little blog was more successful when I followed my Russian cooking theme. Believe it or not, people come here for the tvorog and eggplant caviar recipes, not for my sallies on kitchen economics.

I'm offering the following food blog ideas for budding bloggers. Don't thank me; the pleasure is all mine. (I wouldn't be surprised if these blogs were already around, though. Let me know if they are.)

Dinner and a movie: A foodie film buff reviews movies and writes about food.

Testing the American Test Kitchen’s recipes: Just like the Wednesday Chef tests recipes published in the New York Times and the LA Times, I’d like to see a blog that reviews recipes from America's Test Kitchen's Cook's Illustrated. (This is the magazine devoted to developing the “best” recipe for everything.) Nearly every recipe they come up with has some sort of gimmick or trick to it—do these really work?

Poor foodie: There used to be a good blog, Frugal Foodie, about cooking on the cheap. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated since last February. Won’t someone take over?

CRON foodie: Cooking good food on the calorie restriction/optimal nutrition diet (cron). Most cronies eat pretty miserable food: raw kale salads, fat-free cheese. It doesn’t have to be this way—Kalyn and Fat-Free Vegan make tasty-looking, healthy food. I’d like to see this type of blog with a cron bent.

Soup blog: All soup, all the time. This blog has to be out there. Please point me to it.

On (Not) Wasting Food

Have you heard of the Wasted Food blog? Jonathan Bloom chronicles food waste in America while writing a book on this topic. Bloom’s blog strikes a chord with me. To paraphrase a comment I left elsewhere:

I lived in Soviet Russia until I was 9. My grandmother, who survived the Leningrad blockade (when a lot of people starved to death), was a fanatic about not wasting food. I grew up hearing about how she “saved” food that was on the verge of spoiling, or that we had too much of thanks to Soviet surpluses. Milk got turned into homemade cottage cheese; limp cabbage became sauerkraut.

While I never went hungry as a child, certain foods, like bananas, were very rare treats when I was growing up. I loved bananas, but they would only be sold once or twice a year and you had to wait in line for hours to buy them. I wouldn’t have dreamed of tossing a banana.

When I came to the U.S. I was shocked by how much food kids at school threw away. They tossed out bananas! Even back then I would always save whatever I hadn't eaten for lunch and take it back home. I carried my little brown lunch bag all through recess. I still hardly ever throw food away. There's something callous about wasting food.

Bloom and his commenters are often perplexed about how not to waste food, but actually it’s pretty easy. Stick to a grocery budget, make soup stock out of those wilted vegetables and leftover chicken parts, plan ahead. In fact, like, home cooking on a budget, what it really takes is planning and an innate interest in cooking. When I buy groceries I always think about what I can do with leftovers, so planning has become second nature.

In contrast, I recently cooked dinner with a friend who gave me carte blanche to make whatever I wanted. It was past 7 p.m. on a weekday I had decided on roasted salmon and potatoes. We made a beeline for the grocery store to pick up the ingredients. (Have I mentioned that this friend has a minimally stocked pantry and little cookware?) Shopping without looking at what’s on sale, without a plan for using leftovers—-what strange, unsettling feeling!

Commenters on Bloom’s blog are always looking for recipes incorporating leftovers. Nothing new from me this week, but here are some past offerings which make good use of whatever you may have in the fridge:

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.

Russian Grocery Tour: Little Europe

Do you have a hankering for sauerkraut and pirozhki? Do you miss standing in line for herring and smoked fish? Do you want to be verbally abused by a platinum-blonde cashier named Olga? Oh, yes, you do.

Welcome, nostalgic émigrés and curious Amerikantsi, to the Russian grocery store. Despite the evocative names these stores bestow on themselves—-Little Europe, Spartak—-they look oddly similar inside, as if some sort of Central Soviet Grocery Bureau mandated the décor. Invariably the size of a small living room, these stores are home to beige shelves, an ancient-looking cash register and fluorescent lighting. Promo posters of tarted-up pop stars are plastered on the walls, along with ads selling/seeking cars, jobs, nannies, wives, etc.

Yet if you push your way through the babushkas jostling around the fish counter, you will be rewarded with foodie gems and curiosities like marinated mushrooms, exotic dairy products and candy bars named after grizzly bears.

Join me, reader, as I take you on a multi-blog post tour of Milwaukee-area Russian groceries. We will negotiate back room caviar deals with gruff proprietors. We will investigate just what is in those frozen dumplings. We will buy herring. Ok, maybe we’ll just buy herring. In this first installment, we head over to Shorewood’s Little Europe.

UPDATE, March 2009: Little Europe has closed.

Location: 4517 N. Oakland Ave, Shorewood, Wis. (414) 967-8841

Atmosphere: See intro. A bit more spacious and better lighted than the average Russian grocery, though, complete with a little alcove for books, CDs and DVDs.

Customer Service: Surprisingly friendly and warm when one of the owners is working. Apathetic when a teenager (the owners’ son?) is putting in a shift.

Product selection: In addition to all the usual Russian goodies—-sunflower oil, tea, jars of marinated vegetables, kefir and cheeses—-Little Europe has some unusual offerings like frozen wild mushrooms. Also, there’s a very big selection of frozen pelmeni and other doughy goodies. For the poor folk, check out reasonably priced frozen fish. Nice selection of kitschy chocolate candy in the back; I recommend the tiny fruit candies in flavors like black currant and apricot.
A small selection of Russian books, magazines and CDs/DVDs for you Slavic studies majors.

Pricing: Good. Very reasonably priced loose-leaf tea. The frozen wild mushrooms range from $5.99 to $8.99 a bag. The dairy and the yummy marinated vegetables are pricier, but no sticker shock.

Buy: Frozen mushrooms.

Avoid: The uninspired rye bread, trucked in from Chicago. Can’t blame Little Europe, though. I think every Russian grocery in town sells this stuff.

Final rating: *** to ****, depending on who’s behind the counter

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

Table for One

Eating alone: I like it. Oh, I know I’m not supposed to. It’s anti-social and weird and is probably tied to overeating. From a foodie perspective, it’s not a great deal either: it’s makes no sense to cook large roasts or pans of brownies or pancakes for one. (There’s no such thing as a pancake recipe that serves just one.) And, c’mon, what kind of person really enjoys eating alone? That’s what you do when you’re stuck somewhere on a business trip, or when killing time at the airport, or when you’re a young single person living alone in your little apartment. Ahem.

But consider: When eating alone, you can eat and make whatever you like, with no concerns about how a potential dining partner will enjoy your efforts. For me that usually means roasted vegetables, and more vegetables: brussels sprouts with feta, cauliflower topped with a poached egg, butternut squash, eaten with a side of sautéed mushrooms and spinach. This is stuff you can’t serve to company. Guys, in my experience, particularly don’t take to it.

Eating alone also spares you from awkward social dynamics of eating with others. I once met a man, a real gourmet, who said that the best dining companions are a good headwaiter and a damn good sommelier. To this I would add that a magazine or a book is often as good of a dining companion as any. Eating one with a significant other, for instance, is never as blissful as it sounds: in the beginning, there’s a scramble for conversation topics and awkward pauses; a little later, long pauses and more interest in satiating hunger than in one’s partner; much later…talk about the miscellanea of life, I guess. Home repairs, yard work, kids. I wouldn’t know.

I admit that eating alone has its downsides: I like wine but I wouldn’t think of drinking alone; I miss feedback (that is, praise) for my cooking; I’d hesitate to eat alone at a restaurant with wait staff, though I admire people, especially women, who do so. An underappreciated dining companion, I think, is a reticent reader with an appreciation of food. When I was a kid one of my favorite things to do was to crunch on an apple while reading a favorite book. To this day my eyes often stray to whatever readable matter is on the table—newspapers, old mail, labels on condiment bottles. A good meal and a good book (or magazine, or newspaper, or even work, why not) in front of each diner, and voila: domestic bliss.

Oh, and here’s a loose recipe for my favorite roasted cauliflower with a poached egg. Serves 1, maybe 1.5.

Start with a small head of cauliflower. Cut the cauliflower into florets or just slice it diagonally. Put in a foil-lined pan and add a dash of kosher salt, ground black pepper, red pepper flakes, paprika, and olive oil. Roast for about 25-30 minutes, turning the cauliflower over halfway through the cooking time.

Five minutes before the cauliflower is done, bring a couple of cups of water and a splash of vinegar to a boil in a small saucepan. When the water is boiling, break a large egg or two into a saucer, making sure to keep the yolk whole. Turn down the heat to a very gentle simmer and carefully slip the egg into the water. Start a timer—you want to poach the egg for about 3.5 minutes. In the meantime, remove the cauliflower from the oven and and plate it. Grate or sprinkle some cheese over it—Pamesan, feta, whatever you like. Toast some nice bread. Your egg should be done by now. Use a slotted spoon to carefully remove it, gently shake off the excess water, and place the egg on top the caramelized cauliflower. Salt to taste. Jab the egg with a fork until the soft, gooey, eggy yolk seeps over the cauliflower. Eat. Use the bread to wipe your plate clean.

Sugared Lemons

I’ve been drinking tea without sugar since I was a kid, but lately I’ve developed a sweet tooth. It’s not that I dump white sugar into my mug by the teaspoonful, but a little subtle sweetness isn’t unwelcome. I usually go for honey, fruit preserves or sugared lemons.

Sugared lemons are just what they sound like: blanched lemons, sliced thinly, and layered with sugar in a clean jar. The sugar works its magic, and a few days later you get lemon slices mingling with lemon syrup. Add a slice of lemon and a splash of syrup to black tea, and you’ve got nice lemon flavor minus harsh acidity.

Method:

Boil some water. Place your lemons in a bowl and splash some boiling water over them. This makes the lemons more fragrant.

While you’re at it, get a clean, empty jar big enough to hold your sliced lemons (jam jars work great), and swivel some hot water around in it. Pour out.

Cut the lemons into thin slices. Place in the jar and pour some sugar over the slices. How much sugar? Your call. I was taught to cover the lemons in sugar completely, but you can use less, of course. Refrigerate. The lemons will develop a nice sugar syrup in a day or two.