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

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

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

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

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

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

We also saw goslings and chicks.

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

Grassway Organics Farm Store and Farm, N600 Plymouth Trail

New Holstein, WI 53061

(920) 894-4201

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

Moroccan Carrot Salad

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

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

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

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

Farmer's Cheese Cake with Apples

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekend Notes

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

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

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

Product Review: Rye Bread

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

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

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

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

Boozy Beet Salad

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

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

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

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

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

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

Accidental-Ricotta Flatbreads

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.

Mushroom-Deviled Eggs

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

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

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

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

New Year

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

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

The secular attributes of Christmas-the lighted tree, the gifts, the cards, Santa Claus, street decorations - have been assigned by the Soviet state to New Year's, and it is then, starting on Dec. 31, that Russians will try to do justice by both New Year's and Christmas, combining the midnight drinking of the former and the gift-giving and family cheer of the latter in ample measures.

The idea of the hybrid holiday is usually attributed to Stalin. In the first years after the revolution, the Bolsheviks apparently tried to stamp out the celebration of Christmas altogether, targeting the traditionaldecorated fir trees as a particularly glaring symbol of reactionary rituals for which there was no place in the new atheist society.

The people, however, proved reluctant to part with a cherished winter holiday. So in 1935, the story goes, Stalin did what the Kremlin has done so many times since with sticky customs - he co-opted it. He lifted the ban on Christmas trees,except that he said they were New Year's trees, and he declared that New Year's, Novyi God, was to be a national family holiday - a sort of surrogate Christmas stripped of any Christian meaning.

The people, it must be acknowledged, took to the idea. New Year's has evolved into probably the most popular of official Soviet holidays...the streets are hung with bright lights, decorated with brightly decorated trees, and the stern Lenins and Marxs make way for Grandpa Frost, the Russian Santa Claus. The Soviet New Year's, in fact, has become pretty much what Christmas has become in the secular Western world - a day for families to gather and share gifts and goodies under a tree, brightly lit and trimmed with homemade decorations.

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

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

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

Breakfast Gravlax

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

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

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

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

Cooking Rules I Broke While Making This Chicken Stew

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

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

Be a rule-breaker, like me:

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

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

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

Frou-Frou Salad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mushroom Pie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

"The city has been discussing an indoor winter market, which could happen in the next couple of years..."

There's a bit of possibly exciting news buried in this blog post about winter markets in Milwaukee. The West Allis market, the city's largest, could be moving indoors for the winter sometime in the future.

This year, the Westown Farmers Market is held in the Grand Avenue mall downtown every first and third Wednesday of the month, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. I've never shopped there because the time is incovenient, but it's a start.

Thanksgiving Zakuski (Appetizers) Rundown

The highlight of Thanksgiving chez my parents is zakuski (Russian for appetizers). Zakuski are always served as part of a spread at holidays or big meals. Here’s a rundown of this year’s offerings. (For posts on Thanksgivings past, see this and this.)

Pickled herring, served on a round plate surrounded by olives: Er, this is more American than Russian, I think. C.

Smoked herring, served with tomato wedges: Now this is real deal: salty, smoky and fatty. Almost as delicious as last year’s smoked mackarel. A.

Marinated tomatoes: Spicy, briny and absolutely delicious. As always, the "drunken babushka" brand are the best. A+.

Korean carrot salad. Here's a recipe. A basic, solid dish. B.

Marinated mushrooms: What’s a holiday meal without marinated mushrooms? B+.

Pickles. These came from a jar. C.

Pastries with cabbage filling. B-. Normally I'd go crazy for these, but there was just too much food.

Homemade sauerkraut. B. Like the pastries, the kraut got lost in the shuffle.

Fried zucchini slices topped with tomatoes. A! A guest brought these--an unusual and welcome starter.

We had turkey and mashed potatoes, too. A, as always.