Tag Archives: cooking

The ruby-red treat

Who doesn’t like a glorious cherry pie? 🙂

One of the good thing about this pie is that you can use different types of pastry crusts and cherries. I like to use fresh sour cherries, but here such cherries are nowhere to be found, I’ve seen only sweet and they are overpriced. So I quiet often use frozen or canned.

I made it a couple of times during the winter and I wish I would have made several more! The pie is quite easy to make and it came out amazing! Moreover, the fact that you can make the pastry ahead of time, makes the pie perfect for company or holiday parties.

Don’t forget that cherries should be pitted! The sugar amount for the filling varies depending on how sweet your cherries, adjust it to suit your personal preferences.

The ruby-red Cherry Pie

Servings: 1-2
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Ingredients (for 13 cm/5 inch pie pan):

Short crust pastry:

190g plain flour

100g butter, chilled and cut into small cubes

1/2 tbsp white sugar

a pinch of salt

30-40 ml cold water

Cherry filling:

300-400ml pitted fresh or canned cherries

1-2 tbsp white sugar, if needed

1 tsp corn starch

1 tbsp lemon juice

1/2 tbsp cherry liquor or brandy (optionally)

1/2 tbsp fine semolina

Glazing:

1 egg yolk+ 1tsp milk

1/2 Tbsp granulated white or brown sugar

Preparation:

Place all ingredients for the filling in a bowl, and gently combine. If you’re using fresh cherries, let them stand for 20 minutes, then toss it again.
Combine the flour, butter, sugar and salt until coarse meal. Pour water slowly and incorporate gently until the dough begins to hold together. Roll into two ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use (at least 30 minutes). The short crust pastry can be kept in the fridge for a week! I suggest to double the quantity of pastry and make it ahead, thus you can prepare a big pie for the family or several individual pies during the week.
Roll one portion of dough into 22 cm circle and transfer to the pie pan. Keep it in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap, while you roll out the top of the pie crust.
Roll the second pastry ball into smaller circle – 18-19 cm. Use a knife to cut vents into the top crust, so the steam has a place to escape while the pie is cooking. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Preheat oven to 180C/360F.
Remove the crusts from the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for 5-7 minutes so they have time to soften.
Sprinkle the bottom pastry with semolina, and fill the pie.
Lightly brush the rim with egg wash. Top it with second crust.
Brush the entire surface with egg wash, sprinkle with granulated sugar.
Bake the pie for about 35-40 minutes until the crust is golden brown and the cherry juices are beginning to bubble. Let the pie cool on a rack for sometime.
ENJOY! 😀

Kumquat preserve

Hi there! First of all, I’d like to say Happy belated Easter to all who celebrated it, hope you had a really great, joyful and warm holiday!
I’ve been out of bloogging for some time, because my sister visited me and I didn’t have free time to post; we were walking, swimming, shopping and chating all days long. We meet really rarely – one or two times a year, and I miss her all the time..

Thus I didn’t prepare anything for the Easter this time, but I’ve got a great recipe of the citrus preserve! It is the unusual one, because made out of kumquats!

I do like kumquats, that sometimes to treat myself I’m buying a kilo and eat them alone. 😀 Just joking. I have never seen any kumquat jams in stores, and if you like it’s citrus bitterness – go for it!

Kumquat preserve

Servings: 2 jars
Difficulty: easy
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Such homemade preserve makes a great gift for family or friends.

Ingredients:

500g firm kumquats, cleaned and sliced

400g white sugar

120ml water

2 star anise

1 cinnamon stick

In a saucepan, put sugar, water and spices, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.
Add kumquats.
Bring the ingredients to boil.
Then switch off the heat, remove the saucepan from the hob and set aside to cool.
After 1 hour return the saucepan to the medium heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
Repeat the step #5 and #4 two more times.
Pour the preserve into prepared hot sterilized jars and seal, or eat it straight away.

I’ve eaten the result on toast, as topping for panna cotta or cheesecake, and even with chicken!

The preserve is perfect for person who likes the bright, bitter and familiar flavor of orange! 🙂

Vareniki

Almost everybody in Russia knows and adores vareniki! So do I. 😀

Vareniki – are dumplings, stuffed with savoury or sweet filling.

It’s considered that vareniki is a traditional Ukrainian dish, but originally it came from Turkey. It was a dish made from boiled unleavened dough with meat and vegetables filling. When “Vareniki” appeared in Ukraine for the first time, they were called ‘diush-var’. The Ukrainian people liked this dish so much that these dumplings quickly spread over the Ukraine and beyond, and became widely-popular, turned into traditional Ukrainian cuisine and began to call as ‘vareniki, and this name simply means – boiled.

Ukrainian savoury vareniki are usually topped with shkvarki – fried salted pork fat, and also can be topped with fried onions or just accompanied with sour cream according to local taste or preferences (i.e. last two toppings are quite popular in Russia).

The most popular fillings are potatoes, mushrooms or fish. Vareniki could be also made sweet, with cherries or sweet cottage cheese filling.

There are many recipes of vareniki nowadays, with egg or sour cream in dough, based on water or kefir.

My recipe is the simplest one, and I used a mix of mashed potatoes and mushrooms. You can use the same dough for sweet fillings, such as cherries or black currant.

Here is the short video how I make these lovely twisted edges of the Vareniki.

Vareniki

Servings: ~70 pieces
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Vareniki can be frozen well, that’s why I usually make a big batch, put them in ziplocks and freeze! No need to defrost before cooking.

Ingredients

The dough:

500g plain flour

1 egg

2 tsp salt

200 ml warm water

The filling:

800-900 g potatoes, boiled and mashed

1 onion, cut into small cubes

300 g wild or button mushrooms, sliced

1 Tbsp oil + 1 Tbsp butter

Small bunch of dill, finely chopped

Salt, pepper to taste

Garnish per portion:

1-2 Tbsp sour cream

1 Tbsp chopped dill

a knob of butter

Method

Dissolve salt in warm water. On a flat surface make a well in the flour, add egg and salted water. Knead until the dough is pliable. Cover with plastic wrap or towel and let rest for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, saute onion and mushrooms in oil and butter. In a bowl combine mashed potatoes with vegetables and dill. Season to taste. The filling is ready.
Roll the dough into 8cm/3-inch circles, place 1 tsp potato mixture into center, fold the dough over filling and press it.
Bring a large pot of salted water to boil (salt the water as for pasta or you like). Put vareniki into water and carefully stir with a spoon. When they come to the surface – cook for 4-5 minutes more.
Serve vareniki with sour cream, chopped dill and a knob of butter on top.

You can brown vareniki a bit in a butter straight after the boiling. Serve with sour cream, but already without extra butter on top.

Enjoy the delicious vareniki! 🙂

Are you going to Angie’s party? You can try superb cocktail there! 😉

Healthy&Light Vegetable Soup with Chicken

I guess we all didn’t like veggies when we were kids 🙂 kids mostly love fruits and so was I, because fruits are sweet and veggies are not. But, despite our childhood preferences my today’s post is about vegetable soup which I could probably like many years back if I would tried it before. My today’s soup is light, smooth and simply delicious.

When I made it first time and tried, it was love from the first spoon. 😀 In Russia soup has another look (like Schi I posted about earlier), but creamy soup have different consistency and taste. Needless to say, that soup with fresh veggies and plenty of protein in chicken breast are always a healthy choice for a general well-being and also for those who look after their body shape.

Such soup for dinner can be a weekday lifesaver, especially if you make a huge pot ahead! 😉

This soup can be made completely vegetarian, or based on chicken stock (nothing beats the flavor of homemade chicken stock!), or it’s good way for using leftover chicken. Do what works best for you. 🙂

Ingredients:

Cooked or raw chicken breast – 2, medium size

Zucchini – 1 large

Bell peppers – 2-3

Tomatoes – 3

Onion – 1

Garlic clove – 1

Dry thyme – 1 tsp, optionally

Bunches of dill and/or parsley, finely chopped, or 2 tsp dry

Olive oil – 1 Tbsp

A pinch of chilli or cayenne pepper

Salt, pepper – to taste

Preparation:

If you make this soup with raw chicken breast follow next step, otherwise go to the step 3.
First of all, put the chicken breasts into a pan and cover with water (1l/34oz or so). Add bay leave, whole small onion and several peppercorns; bring to boil, simmer for 20 minutes or until the breasts are ready. Discard herbs and onion. Take the chicken out, cool it, then cut into small cubes and set aside. Reserve the stock. You can do it a day or two ahead.
In a soup pot, heat the olive oil. Add the onion and cook until tender for 5 minutes.
Cut bell peppers into cubes, add to the onion and saute for 4-5 minutes.
Cut the zucchini into cubes, add to the veg-mixture and saute for 2 minutes more.
Add chopped garlic, herbs* and chili pepper, stir and cook for 30 seconds more.
Chop the tomatoes, add into the pot along with chicken stock (or water), season with salt and pepper and simmer for 10-15 minutes.
Puree the soup until smooth. Put chicken cubes* into soup, bring it to a boil. Cover with a lid and simmer over moderate heat about 10 minutes.
Ladle the soup into bowls, garnish with fresh dill or parsley and serve with baguette slices.

*I recommend reserve some chicken and herbs for garnish.

Enjoy!