Cauliflower Not Mac-and-Cheese

Let’s do a quick focus group.

What comes to mind when you hear “cauliflower gratin”?

French. Butter. Cheese. Milk. Baked. Rich. Crusty. Yum. Yes?

The purpose of my research is to rebrand the cauliflower gratin. (A gratin, by the way, is a baked vegetable covered in a creamy cheese sauce.) Yes, this sort of thing is usually rich and fatty, but I like to think of my cauliflower gratin as a lighter version of mac and cheese—healthier comfort food for the winter months (or cold spring months, in these parts).

Baked cauliflower is naturally bland and creamy, kind of like noodles, but with far fewer calories and carbs. A gratin is hot and bubbly, the food equivalent of wearing a fuzzy, oversized sweater. So you can have your crusty, cheesy hot mess in a baking pan without the nutritional disaster that is traditional macaroni and cheese.

Here’s what I do, based on a recipe from the blog Chocolate and Zucchini: Preheat the oven to 425. Cut up a large head of cauliflower into small-ish chunks. Place in a foil-lined pan, and sprinkle with a bit of salt, black pepper and a dash of nutmeg.

Melt 2 tbs. butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir 3 tbs. flour into the butter and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add 1 cup of milk to the butter and flour, and bring the milk to a simmer, stirring to make sure the flour is dissolved.

When the milk has a thick, saucy texture, turn off the heat and let cool for a few minutes. Add cheese—I usually add 3 tbs. whipped cream cheese, and ½ cup of whatever cheese I happen to have on hand, as long as it’s a fairly mild variety. I’ve used mozarrella, provolone, etc., successfully. (Comté is traditional for gratin, but we’re rebranding here.) Pour the cheese sauce over the cauliflower.

Sprinkle with breadcrumbs (optional), and bake 25 or so minutes, until the cauliflower is soft; then broil for 5 minutes. Let cool a bit and dig in.

Five Years of Yulinka Cooks

So I’ve been food blogging for five years. The idea for Yulinka Cooks was hatched in 2005, when I discovered first-generation food blogs like The Amateur Gourmet and Chocolate and Zucchini. In March ’06, inspired by my first kitchen and armed with a $30 digital camera, I set up a Blogger account.

Since then, I’ve written 239 blog posts, read 1,224 comments and went through five kitchens. I abandoned Yulinka Cooks a few times but couldn’t break it off for good.

I made borsch, pickled mushrooms and herring in a fur coat. I rose to the top of Google search results for a  while with my recipe for homemade Russian farmer’s cheese. I earned a bit of beer money in blog ads before BlogHer kicked me out for failing to update. I dabbled in food-themed travel blogging and memoir-writing. I got myself into a real newspaper. I picked up some Photoshop tricks and spruced up the layout. I wrote snarky reviews of grocery stores. I met cool people who read and commented on this blog.

For better or worse, Yulinka Cooks has been the online backdrop to the better part of my 20s.

If you’re reading this, thanks. I raise five shot glasses of vodka to you.

Random Yam, Potato and Bacon Salad

Not to brag or anything, but I’m pretty good at scrounging up random ingredients to make a tasty meal. This is my typical thought process:

Scene: Late-December weekday evening, 9:30 p.m. I’m in the kitchen, wondering what to make for a holiday potluck the following day.

Problem: Everything I want to make requires either a trip to the store or an oven, which won’t be available at the party. Cut up some fruit and veggies? No, too lazy. Buy something that’s pre-made? I can’t---I mean, I’m a food blogger.

Inspiration: Two yams and three potatoes, exactly five slices of raw bacon, parsley, Swiss cheese and some nice Italian dressing, all found in the nooks and crannies of the fridge and pantry.

Solution: Roasted potato-and-yam salad with Swiss cheese and bacon.

Method, if you eye the proportions: Cube and roast the potatoes and yams in olive oil at 425 until soft and caramelized (45 minutes or so).

In the meantime, dice or cut up bacon and sauté until crispy. Combine bacon and Italian dressing (1/2 cup, about) in a big bowl. When the potatoes are done, let cool to room temperature.

Add potatoes to the bowl with bacon and dressing. Marinate overnight in the fridge. Add cubed cheese and finely chopped parsley right before serving, and serve at room temperature.

Lesson: Always poke around the house before you go to the store!

Rice and Spinach "Kasha"

This is another entry in my Winter Detox series, where I make food that’s a) appropriate for post-holiday fitness resolutions, and b) has a comfort food factor. This spinach and rice thing/kasha* is my go-to weeknight dinner when I feel like cooking for myself.

No recipe here. I usually start out by sautéing some spinach with a bit of bacon (I know, not terribly healthy, but a strip of bacon is remarkably low in calories—about 40 a pop.) Any kind of cheese is good in this, as are sautéed mushrooms. Eat your spinach with rice or some toast on the side. Add a poached egg if you’re really feeling decadent. Good brunch dish, too.

*Kasha is Russian for any kind of porridge/hot cereal, and I like to think of this as a kind of healthy, American kasha. Buckwheat—known as kasha in the U.S.—is called grecha (греча, гречнивая каша, or гречka) in Russian.

Product Review: Wafer Cake

Whether it’s baked milk or pickled tomatoes, Russian and Eastern European grocery stores are filled with mysterious and sometimes delicious foodstuffs. In this occasional series, I review the good, the bad and the weird.

I saved this post especially for March 8, International Women's Day. In Soviet Russia--and, I suppose, to this day--March 8 is an all-purpose women's holiday, a mix of Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. If you're from Russia, this chocolate wafer cake is a totally appropriate gift for the women in your life--along with a bouquet of mimosas, the traditional flowers for this holiday.

You wouldn’t think that a wafer “cake” (wafel’ni tort/вафельный торт) is anything special, but, according to my mom, getting your hands on one was a pretty big deal in the Soviet times.

This cake is basically a big wafer, usually covered in chocolate, and always sold in a cardboard box. The brand in the photo is called Kapriz (каприз)--that is, "caprice"!

The best versions of wafer cake crisp and fresh, and aren’t bad with a cup of tea or coffee. To serve, slice into neat square or rectangles, like a good Russian hostess.

For a guide to Russian/Eastern European stores in the Milwaukee area that sell this kind of thing, see my shopping guides.

Winter Detox: Butternut Squash and Spinach Whatever

This is something I like to think of as a post-holiday detox dinner. It’s healthy enough for New Year’s resolutions, it has a comfort-food factor for cold winter nights and it’s easy to make.

Roast some butternut squash on a Sunday afternoon when you’re pottering around the house.* When you’re ready to eat, sauté some spinach in a bit of olive oil. Add cubed butternut squash and some cheese—almost anything works here, although I like whipped cream cheese because it makes a nice, creamy sauce and isn’t terribly caloric.

Or add a bit of butter—it’s okay, a pat won’t set you back too much.  Eat with rice, pasta or as is.

*To roast squash: Preheat the oven to 425 and line a large pan with foil. Cut up a butternut squash into 4-inch chunks. Don't bother peeling. Place squash in the pan; sprinkle with brown sugar, salt and black pepper. Add a splash of olive oil.

Roast 30-45 minutes, until the squash is easily pierced with a fork. Let cool and peel.

Russian Cold Remedies

Been sick yet this season? In Russia, you wear down the cold! In keeping with cold and flu season, here’s a rundown of traditional Russian cold remedies. None of these will cure your cold, of course, but all will make you feel better when you’re going through boxes of Kleenex and rubbing your bleary eyes.

Tea: Tea is the Russian cure-all for everything—illness, hangovers, heartbreak, you name it. Brew yourself a pot of strong Earl Grey (see my user-friendly directions) and choose your add-in: lemon and honey, raspberry jam, or a good splash of brandy...okay, vodka.

Raspberry jam: Whether you add it to tea or eat as is, Russians say raspberry jam is good for colds. I’m neutral on this.

Oatmeal with raisins and butter.

Kasha: I don’t know if this counts as a traditional Russian remedy, but it helps me when I’m sick. Kasha* (каша), in Russian, is any hot cereal, such as oatmeal or cream of wheat. It's usually made with milk, not water, and it’s good comfort food when you’re out of sorts. Eat with a big pat of butter. You can afford the calories when your immune system is weak, you know. (*Kasha refers to buckwheat in English--in Russian, however, buckwheat is called grecha/греча.)

Hot steam: This one’s fun. Boil some potatoes in a large soup pot; drain when done. Lean over the empty pot, cover you head with a blanket—and breathe. The steam’s supposed to clear the nasal passageways. It’ll also open up your pores--kind of like a DIY spa treatment! Save the potatoes for salad Olivier, if you manage not to sneeze all over them.

Gogol-Mogol: Also on the weird side is this eggnog-like drink. I have no idea if it helps cure colds, as I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid it. Gogol-mogol involves mixing a raw egg with honey, hot milk and butter. Here’s a recipe.

Chicken noodle soup with meatballs.

Soup: Chicken soup, of course, but any kind of hot soup will do.

This is by no means a complete list. For more Russian cold remedies, including non-edible ones—ground mustard on your socks, anyone? —check out this blog.  And share your favorite cold remedies, Russian or otherwise, in the comments.

Russian Candy Review: Korovki

This is part three of my occasional Russian candy review series. See also part one and part two.

Who’s up for a little cow? That’s what these caramel candies are called in Russian—Korovki, which is short for little cows, plural (коровки=little cows/корова=cow, singular/коровы=cows, presumably full-sized).

They come in bright little wrappers with a picture of a blissfully happy cow on the front. As for the taste, these are like a soft, creamy version of Werther’s butterscotch toffee. They’re a bit too sweet for my tastes, but work when I need sugar rush. I give them a B-.

You can buy Korovki at most Russian and Eastern European groceries. In the Milwaukee area, I recommend Spartak in Whitefish Bay. For more on Milwaukee-area shopping options, check out this guide.

Times Are 'a Changing: Blogging in 2011 vs. 2006

Yulinka Cooks is back in business! Did you miss me? If not, I can’t blame you. It’s hard to keep up with all the food blogs out there. We bloggers are competing for readers, page views, comments, attention. During my hiatus I've thought about how blogging's changed since Yulinka Cooks began back in '06. Here are my tips on blogging in 2011:

Go hyper-local: Like the newspaper industry, food bloggers should focus on gaining a local readership. Cover local food, local restaurants, local farmers. Meet local foodies, organize local events (the Milwaukee-based food blog Burp! is doing this right).

Find a Niche: It’s hard to sustain a food blog that’s all over the place. Pick a theme, the more unusual the better, and stick to it. (This pertains to all blogs, not just food—see the fashion blog Manrepeller for an example. The theme is clothes that confuse and repulse men. Weird? Yes. But in a universe full of fashion blogs filled with recycled industry gossip, this blog stands out and gets covered in the New York Times.)

Forget Anonymity: When I started this blog in 2006, hardly anyone who read it knew me offline. Later, thanks to a mention in the local paper, local food blogger events and the ubiquity of Facebook, nearly half my readers seemed to be from the Milwaukee area. Co-workers and acquaintances (now Facebook friends) would mention my blog posts. My blog came up, unprompted, during job interviews.

Social Media: You pretty much have to be on Facebook and Twitter now, if you’re a blogger.

Be Creative: Remember when food bloggers got book deals? That stopped circa 2008. Great recipes and artsy pictures aren’t enough to pull in readers, let alone a publishing contract, unless you run a really major blog like Smitten Kitchen. So be creative. Be weird. Don’t settle for just another recipe-and-picture food blog.

Have Fun: When blogging's fun, it shows! Also: find a few blogs that you really admire, read them and leave comments. The bloggers will appreciate it.  As will I if you stick with Yulinka Cooks. Thanks again for reading!  

All Blogged Out

After four years of cooking and blogging, I'm closing up shop for a while. A huge thank-you to all for reading and commenting.

I may come back some day--who knows? In the meantime, feel free to e-mail me (yulinkacooks at yahoo dot com) with any questions about recipes on this blog.

Spring

Tulips and rhubarb cake (recipe here--substitute rhubarb for apples). And here's another rhubarb cake recipe from the archives.

Amish Bread Starter: Free to a Good Home

A few weeks ago a volunteer where I work brought in some delicious Amish breakfast bread (right), and I asked for the recipe. Little did I know that I would be given not only the recipe, but also a batch of bread starter.

I've never worked with bread starter before, but this one's low-maintenance and totally not scary. All you do is give it an occasional stir, and feed it some flour, sugar and milk halfway through the 10-day fermentation process. On the tenth day, you bake. Oh, and you also end up with four more batches of starter.

Being exceptionally generous, I'm willing to share my starter. Anyone interested? Oh, please, tell me you are. I feel guilty tossing perfectly good starter, but I can't possibly tend to four batches of bread.

If you're in the Milwaukee area and you'd like some starter, e-mail me at yulinkacooks@yahoo.com or leave a comment.

Oh, and here's the recipe for the breakfast bread itself:

Heat the oven to 325. Add the following to the starter, mixing after each addition: 3 eggs, 1/2 cup milk, 2 tsp. cinnamon, 1 cup oil, 2 cups flour [I added just 1 by mistake, but my bread came out fine], 1 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp. vanilla, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 large or 2 small packages instant pudding mix [I bet you can leave this out with no ill effect], 1.5 tsp baking powder. You can also add raisins, nuts, etc.

Grease two loaf pans [I used one 10-inch, round cake pan]. In a bowl, mix an additional 1/4 cup sugar and 1.5 tsp. cinnamon. Dust the greased pans with 1/2 of mixture. Pour the batter evenly into the pans.  Sprinkle the remaining cinnamon/sugar mixture on top. Bake 45 to 60 minutes.

Happy Spring

Coming from a non-religious Soviet culture, my family doesn't truly celebrate religious holidays. So you could call this dinner a "festive spring meal" or somesuch, where Russian holiday favorites ("herring in a fur coat," pickled mushrooms) and remnants of religious traditions (dyed eggs) mingle on the same table.

Brunch

So I hear brunch is a pretty popular pastime these days. In Milwaukee, there's at least one blog devoted to full-time brunching and bloody mary-ing: Milwaukee Brunch Reviews.

I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to restaurant brunches, but I do like brunching at home. Brunch is often part of my routine on Tuesday mornings, the day when I work afternoons and evenings. It's also a good time to catch up on blogs, Twitter, e-mail and so on.

My favorite brunch food is pretty simple: spinach sautéed with some bacon and mushrooms, and topped with a poached egg and maybe a bit of cheese. Sometimes I'll toss in leftovers like roasted potatoes. Poaching eggs seems to cause such anxiety for cooks (think Julie Powell's near-breakdown in the movie Julie & Julia), but I've never had much trouble. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

I bring a few cups of water to a boil in a saucepan, add a splash of vinegar (to prevent the egg white from separating) and then turn the heat to the lowest setting. I break an egg or two into a saucer and slide them into the water. I like my eggs runny, so I fish them out after three minutes.

For the beverage, I go for my recession latte--coffee made in a French press with a splash of hot milk.

Tuesday Morning Brunch for one:

Heat up a teaspoon of olive oil in a skillet. Add a slice or two of bacon, chopped up, and sauté for a minute. Add a handful of chopped mushrooms, and cook until the mushrooms are done, 4-6 minutes. Toss in two big handfuls of spinach (or half a package of frozen spinach, defrosted), and cook until wilted, 3-5 minutes. Add salt and black pepper to taste, and top with some cheese if you like. In the meantime, poach eggs as described above and make coffee.

My favorite side these days is a warmed up tortilla with cream cheese, but if you have more time, homemade yogurt scones are a close runner-up.

Chocolate-Covered Sirki

I'm taking a little blogging break while I deal with grad school stuff (to be completed in late March, yay!), but in the meantime please enjoy this updated post about chocolate-covered sirki. Sirki (сырки) are mini-cheesecake bars that are sold in every corner grocery in Russia. They're hard to find in the U.S., but I'm providing a tweaked recipe from Anya von Bremzen's Please to the Table cookbook. I know, I shouldn't have.

Russian Candy Review: Part Two

In Russia, you eat the bear. Oh, okay, you actually eat Mishka Kosolapyi (мишка косолапый), which translates as "clumsy bear," more or less. This is basically a chocolate-covered wafer candy with a picture of a mama bear and cubs on the wrapper. Cute, crunchy and tasty; I give it an A.

This is the second installment of my long-ago promised series on Russian candy (part one is here). You can buy mishkas at most Russian and Eastern-European grocery stores in Milwaukee; go here for locations. Yulinka Cooks endorses Spartak in Whitefish Bay, Wis.

Blogroll Goodness

I revised my blogroll the other day, and I’m pleasantly surprised by the many new Russian/Eastern European blogs. There’s a wonderfully diverse mix out there—from Taste of Russia (an American blogger eating her way through Russia) to Natasha's Kitchen (a Ukrainian twist) to Rich Food for Lean Times (by a Wisconsin-based blogger who’s originally from Azerbaijan).

I’m also a bit overwhelmed by all the great content these bloggers are cranking out. Oh, to be a new blogger, cooking your heart out and writing about it every day. I, too, posted four to five times a week back when I started in ’06. (Exhaustion and burnout will set in soon enough, bwa ha ha!). Anyway, check them out, and let me know of anyone I may be forgetting.

Zapekanka

I’m having problems with zapekanka. It’s a kind of Russian cheesecake made from curd cheese (also called farmer's cheese or tvorog in Russian; see my recipe here). I’ve played with recipes from old Russian cookbooks, the kind that don’t have precise measurements or baking times. Normally this isn’t a problem—I never measure ingredients and substitute them at will. This works pretty well for me, except, of course, when baking. It doesn’t help that farmer’s cheese is a soggy ingredient, so some guidelines come in handy here.

Unfortunately there aren’t too many zapekanka recipes out there—this one, by a Russian-born food blogger, is probably the closest to what I’m looking for. I’ve always thought of zapekanka as a breakfast food or a light dinner, not dessert, however. Anyway, I had some leftover curd cheese last week, and I improvised this recipe:

1.5 cups curd cheese mixed with a bit less than ¼ cup sugar, ½ tsp. vanilla extract, 3 tbs. flour, ½ tsp. baking powder and an egg yolk. The egg white was beaten until peaks formed and added to the rest of the ingredients. I also tossed in some raisins (any kind of dried fruit works well in a zapekanka). I baked the whole thing in a buttered, 9-inch pan at 370 degrees for about 45 minutes. The final product was beautifully golden and airy, although it quickly sank once it left the oven. It was also a bit soggy and too sweet, just like two previous attempts.

So, readers, any advice for making a successful zapekanka? Recipes in Russian are welcome. (I don't usually search online in Russian because I can't read it as fast as English--blame first language attrition.)

Mid-Week Cooking Notes

Oh, I know the photo is hideous, but that's great comfort food for a cold February night. Feast your eyes on chicken kotleti (Russian pan-fried burgers) and mashed potatoes, with a mushroom-and-red wine gravy.

Product Review: Hren (horseradish relish)

The pink stuff’s hren (хрен). Say it with me: hren!* Hren means horseradish in Russian, and that’s horseradish relish with beets in the photo. Hren is a very popular Russian condiment, and Eastern European groceries sell different varieties that range from mild to bitingly spicy. The beet version is my favorite: sweet-and-sour and delightfully fuchsia. Hren is typically eaten with meats or cold cuts, but I also like it on roasted potatoes.

*By the way, in Russian, the word “hren” and its variants are a milder version of the equivalent to the f-bomb. It’s sort of like saying “freakin’” instead of the real thing in English.