Tag Archives: Blogging

Roast quail for St.Valentine Day

 Quail may be tiny birds but they pack a real flavor punch. Perfect for Valentine’s Day meal.

 There’s something adorable about presenting your Valentine with their own whole bird. The easiest way (and messy) to eat a small quails is with your fingers 🙂 or you can carve it as turkey.
Quail(Click on the photo to see it in a larger size)
 Serve one quail per person as a starter or two as a main course.
 
Ingredients
4 whole quails
4 medium potatoes
2 carrots
2 medium onions
1 small bunch thyme
6-8 juniper berries
2 tbsp runny honey
2+2 tbsp olive oil 
salt, pepper
 
Method
  1. If you’ve got frozen quail, defrost it overnight in the refrigerator.
  2. Take the quail out of the fridge 1 hour before cooking. Wipe the outside of the bird and inside the cavity, using kitchen paper.
  3. Season inside with salt&pepper, put in sprig of thyme and one juniper berry. Tie the legs together with string (optionally).
  4. Season birds with salt&pepper and thyme, brush with honey and 2 tbsp olive oil.
  5. Preheat oven to 200C. Put thinly sliced potatoes, carrots, onions, thyme and juniper berries into a roasting tin. Sprinkle with salt&pepper, drizzle with olive oil. Cook for 15-20 minutes.
  6. Sit the quail on top and roast for 25 minutes more.
 
Enjoy!
 

Slow-cooked beef with fruits

  In Russian language, we have one word “tomlenie”, which is similar to the word “stewing”, but has a significant distinction. Tomlenie is a slow-cooking process of meat, fish or vegetables in Russian petch (oven/stove, have a look at the pictures of traditional Russian petch here and here).  
  Nowadays traditional Russian ovens can be found only in out-of-the-way places (villages and provinces, located in the remotest depths of the country).
  It’s considered that, slow-cooking in the common oven is close to the “tomlenie” process, but the real taste and aroma of dishes prepared in Russian petch unfortunately couldn’t be done anywhere else.

Slow-cooked meat

Let’s try to prepare the closest dish.
First of all, we need a clay pot with a lid. 
Be patient! Stewing will take several hours.
Don’t worry! During this time you don’t need to check or mix the dish every 10-20 minutes, thus you can have a break and watch your favorite movie, and even prepare a side dish. 🙂

Beef with fruits

If you don’t have clay pot-use casserole.
If you don’t have a lid -cover the pot with foil.
Replace cherries with cranberries.
Omit the sugar.
Spice the meat with 1/3 tsp of crushed cardamom, it brings a nice interesting note. 
You can add 2-3 tbsp of dry red wine for the better taste (after the frying meat).
Ingredients to feed 4 people:
Beef, cut into 2-3cm cubes – 700g/1lb
Golden onion – 1 big, sliced
Pitted prunes – 150g/5 oz
Cherry fresh or frozen – 150g/5 oz
Sunflower or olive oil for frying- 1 tbsp
Cinnamon – 1/2 tsp
Sugar – 1 tbsp
Bay leaves – 2
Whole black peppercorns – 8-10
Salt, pepper – to taste
some parsley, chopped
 
Method:
  • Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the onion for 5-7 minutes, add beef cubes and fry until slightly browned.
  • Sprinkle the meat with sugar and cinnamon.
  • Put the meat in a clay pot, add boiling water (just to cover the meat), bay leaves and peppercorns. Season with salt and pepper. 
  • Don’t forget to close the pot with a lid! 🙂
  • Transfer to a preheated oven, 200C/400F, for 2 hours.
  • Check the quantity of the liquid, and add some more water  – if desired (the meat always should be in the broth).
  • Reduce temperature to 180C/380F and return to the oven for a further 1 hour.
  • Add prunes and cherries (no need to defrost), check the seasoning and return again to the oven for 30 minutes.
  • Switch the oven off and leave the pot in it (until the oven is still warm).
  • Sprinkle with fresh parsley.
 
The good garnish to such meat is a buckwheat porridge, mashed or boiled potatoes. It could be served with broth; in a clay pot or on a serving plate.
Enjoy the holiday dinner! 🙂
 

The little tiny Holiday cookies

Christmas and New Year are definitely my favourite holidays. Hustle and bustle time. Snowing outside, everybody is in rush, searching presents and gifts for the loved ones. Unfortunately in the UAE I can’t feel such wonderful emotions in full, but I can bring the festive mood and flavours to my home by baking some winter treats.

 These little cookies are so rich in chocolate, that could give little more warmth for the family tea-time. Adding some spices-cloves, cinnamon or cardamom and a small hazelnut or pistachio inside is also great! 😉

And if you pack them in a little Xmas box – it might be amazing gift for a friend.

I’m pretty sure that better to double the amount of the ingredients, so you don’t need to cook it twice! Cookies-2

Ingredients:

1 egg

50g/2 Tbsps sugar

60g dark chocolate (60-70% cacao)

100g/4-5 tbsp flour

1 Tbsp butter

Icing sugar – to cover the cookies

Method

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a bowl under the simmering water, gently stir.

Whisk the egg and sugar together in another bowl until light and fluffy.

Carefully fold in the chocolate mixture, then add the flour and combine.

Scoop the cookie batter with a teaspoon, shape small balls and roll them in plate with icing sugar.

Place on a baking tray and bake for 9-10 minutes in a preheated oven 180C/360F.

Enjoy the holiday! 😀

Cookies-1

Apple pie with semolina

There are so many things I love about autumn!
Chose a day in our rush-life-time and stop! Stop and look around! You could see many bright colors, that golden fall has brought for you. Browny-orange and fiery red leaves are falling from trees. Gloomy and gray sky. Breeze in! Cooling and lightly burning air. 
 
What an amazing day to bake a warm apple pie! 🙂
Apple pie_1 
Ingredients:
 
Apples (pink lady) 3
Cottage cheese 100-150g (1/2-2/3 cups)
A handful of raisins, optionally
Butter 50-70g (4-5 Tbsp), melted
Semolina 150g (1 cup)
Flour 2Tbsp
Egg 1
Sugar 100g (1/2cup), I used brown  
Cinnamon 1/2 tsp, optionally
Baking soda 1tsp
Bread crumbs or crushed nuts (hazelnuts, almonds) 1-2Tbsp, optionally
 
I forget to put soda in the pie mixture sometimes, so don’t worry if you’ve done the same, the pie will be nice and tasty anyway! 😉
Using fine semolina makes the pie more fluffy, however, I used that time coarse-grained and the pie was none the worse.;)
Feel free to change a quantity of the ingredients to suit your own taste.
 
Method:
 
Slice the apples, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.  
Meanwhile, combine cottage cheese and egg. Add semolina, flour, soda and melted butter, mix.
Add apples, raisins and carefully combine.
Butter the baking pan, sprinkle some bread crumbles or crushed nuts, add the apple mixture.
Bake until golden color for 30-40 minutes. 200C/400F
 
Enjoy!!! 😀
 Apple pie_2
 
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