Tag Archives: breakfast

Tvorognaya zapekanka

Tvorognaya zapekanka literally means a cottage cheese bake. This is a very special treat for me. It reminds my childhood and good time when I was going to the kinder-garden. Some of my friends do not share the same nice memories about the food in a kinder-garden, and even few of them hate any cottage cheese bakes (and not only bakes) and don’t want to believe that it can be so tasty! Thank God, I was luckier and remember not only huge onion chunks in a beef stew 😀 but also good meals, like this sweet cottage cheese bake and delicious plum jam.

Speaking about tvorog (that’s how we called cottage cheese or farmer cheese in Russia, and it can be both smooth and chunky), I do like it and consume regularly: either as is or adding it to the apple pies and cabbage bakes. So, I’ve tried hundred times to make a bake somewhat childish, and every time it was too liquid or too sweet.. Finally, here it is! The bake is perfect! The only notice, maybe next time I will use a smaller baking dish to make the cottage cheese bake higher.

Russian sweet cottage cheese bake

Servings: 3-4
Time: <1hr
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If you’ve got a chunky and dry cottage cheese – push it through a sieve or stir with electric blender into a smooth mixture.

Ingredients

450-500g cottage cheese

40g butter, melted

2 medium eggs

3 tbsp white caster sugar

2 tbsp semolina (I used coarse, but fine is ok, too)

2-3 tbsp milk, warm

3 tbsp sour cream

a pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla extract or any other vanilla

50g raisins/currants

Glaze (optional)

1 egg yolk

1tsp icing sugar

Garnish

sour cream or sweet condensed milk

icing sugar, if desired

Method

In a small cup, soak semolina in warm milk for 5 minutes. Add sour cream and mix well.
In a other small cup, soak raisins in hot black tea or water for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside.
In a bowl, beat eggs with sugar and salt until pale and creamy, allow sugar to dissolve.
In a large bowl, smooth cottage cheese with a folk or electric blender, add butter and mix. Add beaten eggs and vanilla, mix to combine. Add semolina and raisins, and combine.
Grease the baking dish with some butter or oil, pour the mixture in and bake in preheated 200C oven for 25 minutes. At this step check the color of your bake: if its top is still pale, brush the bake with glaze and put the dish back into the oven for 15 minutes or until golden-brown; if top is already golden-brown, omit the glaze and bake for 10-15 minutes more.
Cut the cottage cheese bake into slices. Serve warm or cold with a dollop of sour cream, if desired. It’s also tasty to pour over some sweet condensed milk (instead of sour cream).

Enjoy!

Trout fritters with green peas

Last weekend I bought a beautiful rainbow trout. It’s a very delicious fish, that rich in omega-3 fatty acids, and its’ also an excellent source of vitamins and protein. One its part gone to be cured (you may find the recipe here), another was roasted and I still had some more. I decided to make a pie from the book “pies and tarts” by S.Reaynaud. The recipe is very simple, it’s called for the trout, puff pastry, peas and horseradish, I’d had all that stuff. I’d made the filling and was disappointed because its quantity was more then enough, despite that I used more puff pastry then was needed. Fortunately, the overall result was fine, and the pie tasted pretty good. Have you tried to cook any pies from that book?

Thus I had to fix the remaining trout.. And here is the easiest and quickest recipe of delicious fritters. I used fresh trout, but you can substitute it with salmon, fresh or canned. I ate these little fritters for breakfast, they were good and satisfying!

After plating I topped it with with sour cream and some horseradish sauce, also I recommend finishing it with a slice of cured trout or salmon. It was truly divine!

Trout tritters with green peas and horseradish

Trout fritters with green peas

Servings: 2-3
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

100-150g fresh trout, chopped

2 large potatoes, peeled and grated

50-60g green peas, fresh or frozen

1 Tbsp finely chopped onion, optional

1 egg white (or whole egg)

1-2 tsp horseradish sauce

3-4 Tbsp thin cream

4 Tbsp or more plain flour

sea salt, white pepper, to taste

Garnish: sour cream, horseradish sauce, lemon wedges, cured trout/salmon slices

Method

Preheat oven to 200C. Line the baking tray with parchment.
Squeeze out the liquid from potatoes. Add it to a mixing bowl along with trout, peas and onion. Add horseradish, egg white, cream and combine.
Add flour, salt and pepper, and mix well.
Scoop out the dough to make 10-12 fritters. Gently press them down with hand.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden-brown.
Serve with sauce you like and cured trout slices.

Enjoy the meal!

Trout fritters with peas and horseradish

Mrs Pumpkin’s Rolls

Mrs Pumpkin and Mr Squash are in trend this autumn! 🙂 It seems everybody is obsessed with them and cooks lots of dishes. Bright, sweet-smelling and delicious, that is hard to resist and don’t to eat it; moreover pumpkin is a great course of vitamins A, C, B, K, E!

Pumpkin always pairs good with such warming spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla. And it’s amazing how all the cozy autumn spices make cool weather quite easy to enjoy, and bring a sense of comfort on cold days.

Today recipe is for all Mrs Pumpkin’s admires! 😀

These rolls are perfect for weekend breakfast, or simply enjoy it anytime! Cinnamon-scented pumpkin filling, cheese glaze and hazelnuts make rolls crazy delicious!

Pumpkin Rolls with brown sugar and cinnamon

Actually, it was an experiment. I had to use cottage cheese leftovers, and firstly I planned to make cookies; but it seemed bored, besides that I’d made shortbread cookies a day before, thus idea of pumpkin rolls was born!

As you may see, I’m so pleased with the result of my experiment! Perfectly spiced and tender rolls! They can be served with lightly sweeten mascarpone or yogurt instead of cheese glaze. And one more important thing – the dough has no yeast, so the rolls can be easily made in the morning or when you’re short on time and don’t have time to wait for the dough to rise. 🙂

Mrs Pumpkin's Rolls

Servings: 8-10
Difficulty: moderate
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Ingredients

The dough

1 egg, at room temperature

40g brown sugar

120-150g cottage cheese

80g plain flour

110g wholewheat flour*

1/2 tsp/2.5g baking powder

a pinch of salt

1/3 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

20g butter, melted

Pumpkin filling

300g pumpkin

1 medium apple

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated

30g mix of dark muscovado and brown sugar/ or only brown sugar (adjust sugar to taste)

20g butter, melted, for brushing the dough

Honey cream cheese glaze

70g Philadelphia cream cheese, at room temperature

1/2 Tbsp liquid honey

2-4 Tbsp full fat milk

icing sugar, if needed

hazelnuts, roasted and roughly chopped

Method

For the dough, beat egg with sugar until pale and sugar is dissolved about 4-5 minutes. Add cottage cheese and fold in. Add flours, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, vanilla and mix in. Stir in butter and mix to combine. The dough should be soft but not sticky. *Add more flour if the dough is too sticky. Cover and keep to rest.
Meanwhile, prepare pumpkin filling. Core and cut in small cubes pumpkin and apple. Heat butter and olive oil in a frying pan, add pumpkin and apple cubes, drizzle with lemon juice; saute on a medium heat for 8-10 minutes or until pumpkin is soft. Add cinnamon and nutmeg, mix and set a side to cool. Blend to get a puree.
Roll the dough out to 37×26 cm rectangle. Brush the dough with melted butter, then sprinkle with brown sugar. Spread evenly the pumpkin mixture on the dough. Cut the dough into 8-10 equal strips, and carefully roll each strip into a ‘barrel’.
Transfer rolls to the baking tray, lined with baking paper and greased. Bake in preheated 180C oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden-brown.
For the glaze, beat the cream cheese until smooth, then add honey and milk and beat again. If you want to make the glaze more liquid add more milk and mix. Add icing sugar, if it’s not sweet enough.
Arrange pumpkin rolls on a serving plate, pour the glaze over the warm rolls, and sprinkle with hazelnuts.
Enjoy warm!

Rolls can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge up to 3 days (without glaze). Reheat before serving.

Pumpkin Rolls/Sprinkle the dough with sugar

Pumpkin Rolls/Spread the pumpkin filling

Pumpkin rolls not only look amazing, they taste great! 😉

Draniki

Draniki – thin and round potato pancakes, are often pan-fried and served with sour cream. The word ‘draniki’ originates from the verb ‘drat’ (soft t), which means grate, rub. It was originally a common breakfast, and today we stick with this tradition, but in some restaurants it’s served all day long. Draniki are so beloved and popular in our country, that not even every Russian knows, that it is Belarus dish.

Potato was brought to Russia in the end of 17th century, when it was served as an exotic dish only at royal banquets, and potatoes were sprinkle with sugar, not salt and pepper as nowadays. At that time in Belarus, potato had been known for 80 years. Today potato became the main vegetable in Belarus, and now over 200 potato dishes are known.

Similar potato pancakes can be found in many countries, like hash browns in the USA, kartoffelpuffer in Germany, Swiss rösti, or Jewish latkes, and etc.

This is a simple recipe that is easy to prepare and produces great results! 🙂 Enjoy!

Draniki - Russian potato pancakes

Servings: 2-3
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

4 large potatoes

1 egg

2 Tbsp all-purpose flour

2-3 Tbsp fresh dill, finely chopped (or 1 1/2 tsp dried)

a good pinch of salt

a good pinch of pepper

2-3 Tbsp sunflower oil, for frying

sour cream, for serving

Preparation

Peel potatoes and grate (using medium or large holes of a box grater), transferring to a bowl of water. Soak potatoes for 10-15 minutes, then drain well in a colander, and squeeze grated potatoes with hand, extracting as much liquid as possible.
Transfer potatoes back to a bowl and stir in egg, salt, pepper and dill. Add flour and mix until well-coated. The mixture should be wet and thick (not soupy!).
In a heavy-based or iron skillet heat the oil until hot, but not smoking. Place the large spoonfuls of the mixture into pan, pressing down and spreading into cm/inch rounds with a fork or spoon. Reduce heat to moderate. Brown draniki on one side about 5 minutes, turn over and brown on the other. Let drain on a paper towels.
Serve warm with sour cream or raw.
Draniki are also good with creme fraiche, herb cream cheese and ricotta.

The remaining draniki can be kept in a refrigerator up to one day. Reheat in a 160C/320F oven, about 10 minutes.

Syrniki

Syrniki are fried pancakes, which are made from cottage cheese and traditionally garnished with a sour cream. They are very popular and widely-cooked not only in Russia, also in Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. The word ‘syrniki’ is derived from Russian word ‘syr’ which means cheese.

The main ingredients are cottage cheese, flour, eggs, sugar, sometimes raisins and vanilla. Commonly syrniki are eaten for freakfast, but could be served as a dessert.

You can find a great variety of syrniki recipes, in one you should add one egg, in another three, in third just few spoons of flour or semolina flour, and etc. Finally, it doesn’t matter which recipe you’re using, just adjust it to suit your own taste.

TIPS:

Flour and sugar. One adds only few tablespoons of flour, in such option, might be difficult to shape syrniki and turn them over during frying, as they will be soft, but at the same time tender and creamy. Amount of sugar is totally depends on your preferences.

Filling. Raisins and vanilla are most popular ingredients for the syrniki filling, but you can go further – add cinnamon, dried apricots, plums or cherries, lemon or orange zest.

Dressing. Sour cream, jam and sweet condensed milk are the most favourite toppings for syrniki. If you neither like the one nor the other, make berry or chocolate sauce, or just dust it with icing sugar, or pour over some honey, add dulce de leche…

You can fry syrniki on a moderate heat in a frying pan for 5 minutes on each site or until golden-brown (using few tablespoons of sunflower oil). I propose you the recipe of an oven-baked syrniki, which is much better and healthier, as you don’t need to use oil.

Russian Syrniki

Servings: 3-4
Time: 30-40min
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients:

Cottage cheese, 500g

Eggs, 2

Sugar, 2-4 Tbsp

Flour, 50-80g

a pinch of salt

Semolina, 2 Tbsp

Vanilla sugar or extract, 1 tsp, optional

Raisins/sultanas, 50g

Preparation:

In a small bowl or mug, put raisins, cover with warm water and let it soak, meanwhile you do all below steps. Optionally, you can add a tablespoon of cognac, brandy or rum along with water for an extra flavor. Then pour the water out and wipe raisins.
In a large bowl, combine eggs, sugar and vanilla together and beat well until pale color (use hand whisk or electric mixer).
Add flour, semolina, salt, raisins, and combine well.
Shape beautiful syrniki -about 5cm/2inch in diameter and 1cm/0.5inch wide.
Arrange syrniki on a greased baking tray and bake in preheated 200C/400F oven for 20-25 minutes or until nice golden color.
Serve warm with a dollop of sour cream.
You can keep all remaining syrniki in a fridge, and reheat them next morning.

Syrniki are so delicious that I could eat them every other morning. Cooking of syrniki is highly recommended as alternative to regular pancakes! 🙂

Enjoy! ❤