Welcome, Journal Sentinel readers

My longtime dream has come true: this little blog got a shout-out in a real, live newspaper. I was interviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for a story on leftovers, which you can read here.

New readers, start with this post for my wit and wisdom on leftovers. Got a favorite leftover recipe? Share it in the comments.

Here are some more ideas on using up leftover food:

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.

Cooked vegetables: Make salad.

Salad Olivier

“A young woman, trapped in Brighton Beach by her immigrant parents’ expectations, finds her place at the family table by sitting down with a knife to make Salad Olivier. It is the Russian party dish par excellence: a mound of hard-boiled eggs, canned peas, pickles, potatoes and meat, diced and bound with a tangy mayonnaise. For particularly swanky occasions, the salad is covered with aspic.”

The above passage is from a New York Times article about the Russian immigrant writer Lara Vapnyar. A lot of Vapnyar’s stories reference food, and I was amused to see Salad Olivier singled out. The Times makes it sound like Olivier is a joke, a dish on par with jello salads or sloppy joes on the American table. Yet no Russian celebration is complete without it. I usually bypass Olivier because clumps of mayo turn me off, but I wouldn’t mind a lighter version, made with yogurt-based dressing and frozen rather than canned peas—a gentrified, upscale Olivier, if you will. In fact, this weekend, I had a request to make Olivier for a family cookout. I hemmed and hawed for a while, but then gave in. My version is pretty traditional, save for the dressing.

Method:

Peel and boil 3-4 potatoes and a couple of carrots until soft—be careful not to overcook the carrots. Cook 3 eggs until hard-boiled. Cool the eggs and vegetables completely.

Cube the potatoes and carrots; place in a salad bowl. Add ¼ cup finely chopped red onion and 3-4 cubed dill pickles. Peel and finely chop the eggs; add to the salad, along with ¼ cup of finely chopped parsley or dill (or both). Add a couple of cups of cubed ham, cooked chicken or cooked beef. Add ½ cup peas (the frozen kind, defrosted beforehand—not canned, please.)

For the dressing, get a bowl and mix some sour cream, plain or Greek yogurt (or mayo), ½ tsp. sugar, a squeeze of lemon juice, a splash of pickle brine and some kosher salt and black pepper. Dress the salad right before serving. Spruce up with a parsley sprig and a tomato slice.

Fun With Leftovers

A food blogger for the local paper writes that some of her friends can’t stand eating leftovers. They toss food that’s more than a day old. That reminds me of my promise to share my very own tips on stretching your grocery budget. Tip no. 1: Don’t toss leftovers.

I really don’t understand why people wouldn’t eat leftovers. Is it the American obsession with hyper-freshness? Is it because eating the same thing twice in a row is boring? I can’t cure excessive zeal for food safety, but I can offer some ideas on making leftovers a little more interesting.

Here’s one: use leftovers to make salads. Recently, I found myself with a fridge full of grilled chicken, grilled tomatoes, and sautéed green beans, all left over from a cookout. I knew everything would taste inferior if I just nuked it in the microwave. Instead, I cubed the cold chicken and tomatoes, heated up the green beans for barely a minute and cut them into 1-inch pieces, and chopped up some scallions, parsley, and a hardboiled egg. All this went into a salad bowl with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar for the dressing. A completely new dish made out of last night’s food.

From a previous post, more ideas on using up leftovers:

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.

Cooked vegetables: Make salad.

Russian Grocery Tour: Spartak

Welcome to Spartak, the third stop of my Milwaukee-area Eastern European grocery tour (see also the first and second installments). Word on the street is that Spartak is the most popular of all Milwaukee-area Russian groceries. This small, bustling store is well-priced, well-stocked and staffed by reasonably helpful employees.

Location: 5587 N. Diversey Blvd., Whitefish Bay, (414) 332-3347.

Atmosphere: Just your average Russian store—beige shelves, scrappy posters on the walls, a large freezer filled with dumplings, fish, etc., in the back. Be prepared to stand in line on the weekends. Spartak also gets very busy and crowded around the holidays (that would be New Year).

Customer Service: Surprisingly good! Every time I’m in, the male cashier asks if I need help finding something, brings out items as requested, and promptly rings them up.

Product Selection: A very nice variety of everything from sauces to buckwheat kasha to the delicious marinated tomatoes described here. This is also the place to get candy, sausage, herring, and various unusual dairy products. Make sure to check out the goodies in the back freezer--this is where Milwaukee’s entire Soviet diaspora buys fish like tilapia and flounder, and puff pastry dough for semi-homemade pirozhki.

Pricing: Honestly, I haven’t been doing an item-by-item price comparison between the stores I profile, but the prices here seem pretty reasonable.

Buy: Marinated tomatoes and other pickled vegetables, sold in big glass jars by the back wall. Look for the brand with the red-nosed babushka logo. Also: kielbasa, herring (whole and packaged chunks) and smocked mackarel.

Avoid: I haven't had anything terrible here, but make sure to check the expiration dates on packaged products. No matter how friendly and helpful, Russian grocers just aren’t as stringent about this stuff as Americans.

Final Rating: ****

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

Updated: Eggplant, tomato and pepper salad

Food at Russian gatherings rarely includes a set meal with courses. Instead, there’s a big spread of appetizers, salads, canapés, cold cuts, pastries, sandwiches, cakes, and so on. I’m usually tempted by the salads, which are never made with lettuce. Rather, they’re heartier potato-based offerings, marinated salads or cooked, mixed vegetable salads like the one above. I didn’t make this excellent eggplant, tomato and pepper salad, but I loved the idea:

-Thick, round slices of eggplant, sautéed in sunflower oil until soft
-Very thinly sliced raw tomatoes
-Very thinly sliced raw green peppers
-Very thinly sliced white onion rounds
-Julienned carrots
-An entire bunch of chopped cilantro (I’d use dill or parsley, a personal preference)
-A couple of tablespoons of sunflower oil and a little white vinegar for the dressing

Grocery Shopping on the Cheap in Milwaukee

Hey, did you hear there’s a recession going on? If not, news stories about rising food prices will tell you all about it. I hope you’re as amused by money-saving tips like “buy things that are on sale” and “don’t throw away leftovers” as I am. Kitchen economics actually is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a recession guide to grocery shopping in Milwaukee, but I hesitate because my guide would require the reader to a) have a car, b) have extra time to shop around c) shop mostly for produce, non-organic meat, dairy and some pantry staples, and c) shop for two adults, or two plus a young child at most. I won’t pretend to know anything about feeding teenagers.

What I can do is offer some Milwaukee-area shopping suggestions for the penny-pinching semi-foodie. This isn’t really meant for locavores, the strictly organic-minded, green activists, or those who would spend their last cent on artisan cheese. My target audience is people who want to make reasonably good food without blowing their budget.

Lena's—“Shockingly cheap vegetables under the glare of fluorescent lights…” is how I’ve described this chain in the past. You don’t go to Lena’s for the atmosphere; you go for the produce prices—$1 a pound strawberries, anyone? How about a huge bag of red, orange and yellow bell peppers for about 70 cents? The quality can be spotty, but more often I can’t tell the difference between these veggies and the ones sold across the street at the Outpost, a pricy, organic grocery store. To the “but food should be expensive!” crowd, I say: No farmer’s market or co-op initiative or corner grocery or eat local crusader will offer fruits and vegetables at these prices to people who couldn’t afford them otherwise. Also, Lena’s runs specials on whole chickens at 69 cents a pound. Just sayin’.

El Rey—This chain of Mexican groceries reminds me of the international stores on Chicago’s Devon Street. Busy, colorful, English rarely spoken. I like the big store on National Avenue and 16th Street. The last time I stopped by, 30-cent avocados and 50-cent super-sweet mangos were on offer. The meat department selections are well-priced and stocked with unusual items like tripe and tongue for you au courant nose-to-tail eaters.

Asian Mart--The place is rundown and the selection can be spotty, but the husband-and-wife owners are super-friendly and the prices are good. There’s a variety of produce and even frozen whole fish sold in the back, with prices written on a chalkboard. Call ahead if you want something specific. This store also carries a nice selection of Asian goodies, from sauces to rice to bowls and steamers.

Sendik's has a reputation as a high-end chain, and the Nehring-owned stores are indeed expensive. The Balistreri-owned locations, on the other hand, have some good deals on produce, fish and meat. You can find surprisingly good-quality vegetables on the reduced produce cart at the Silver Spring Drive store.

Coming next: More places to shop, including farmer’s markets. Plus, my very own money-stretching cooking tips.

Turshi

One of the things I like the most about cooking is transforming a charmless, underwhelming ingredient into something delicious. That’s why I enjoy pickling and marinating so much: you start with a blah vegetable—cucumbers, say, or cabbage or mushrooms--add some ratio of salt, sugar and vinegar, wait a while, and end up with that briny/tangy flavor that only pickling can produce. Magic!

In the past few months I’ve made pickled mushrooms, this marinated vegetable salad and gravlax (as well as pickles and sauerkraut in years past). I’m pleased to add turshi to my pickling repertoire. I first learned about turshi—Armenian pickled vegetables—from Anya von Bremzen’s cookbook Please to the Table. I’ve had mixed luck with Anya’s recipes so I hesitated to try it, but then reader and commenter Victoria Frolova kindly offered to share her grandmother’s version. I used bits and pieces from both recipes to come up with my own. It tastes a lot like the marinated vegetable salad mentioned above, but crunchier and spicier.

Method:

This recipe is based on one liter of liquid. You will need about 3 large carrots, a medium head of cauliflower, 2 large red peppers, 2 or 3 celery stalks, a large onion, 5 cloves of garlic, a bunch of herbs like dill and parsley, kosher salt, sugar, bay leaves, hot chili peppers, peppercorns and maybe some vinegar. Slice carrots and celery into matchsticks, separate the cauliflower into florets, peel and cut the onion into rounds, cut peppers into strips, and mince the garlic. You could also add zucchini, tomatoes and cucumbers, sliced into rounds.

Bring a pan of water to a boil and blanch the carrots and cauliflower for about two minutes. Drain, then layer the vegetables in a large glass jar with garlic, chili peppers and herbs.

For the marinade, bring a liter of water to a boil and add 6 teaspoons of kosher salt, 8 teaspoons of sugar, a couple of bay leaves and a small handful of peppercorns. Let the marinade simmer a little until the sugar and salt dissolve. Victoria suggests adding a tablespoon of white vinegar at this point if you want a tangier flavor, which I did. Cool the marinade for five minutes, then pour it over the vegetables and seal the jar. Keep turshi in the fridge; it should be done in about two weeks (mine took two and a half). Start tasting after a week or so.

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.