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Veal with pink pepper and squash puree

Hey guys! What’s the autumn in your country/city? The weather here finally became amazing – only +29C! And in my home-city in Russia is -7C! Which weather do you like more?

I had the leftovers of squash in my fridge.. and I needed to come up with something to have for dinner. A very simple way to use it – make savory pancakes, but that idea seemed too boring for me. Further ‘excavations’ brought me a beet, a piece of pecorino cheese and a glass of red wine. And the idea came up! Give it up and just drink wine. 😀

So, the measurements in the recipe are given roughly, don’t be afraid to be an artist and make it to suit your own taste. The dish has a wonderful flavour, and this is a very simple way to cook. I served it over a bed of mashed squash and potatoes, and that was incredibly satisfying! Bright and slightly sweet squash and beet, mildly spicy pink pepper give that contented and warm-inside feeling which is what autumn cooking about.

Veal with pink pepper and squash puree

Servings: 1
Time: 20-30mins
Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients

100-150g veal, cut into cubes

5 pink peppercorns, crushed

few sage leaves

1-2 Tbsp dry red wine, optional

80-120g squash or pumpkin, cooked and mashed

1 Tbsp beet, cooked and cut into cubes

1 small potato, cooked and mashed, optional

1-2 Tbsp pecorino cheese, grated

sea salt, to taste

1 Tbsp olive oil

Method

In a bowl put veal cubes, pink pepper, some salt and chopped sage. Pour in wine and stir well. Cover and let marinate for 10-20 minutes.
Make vegetable puree for the garnish. Combine mashed squash, potato and cheese together. Season to taste.
Heat an oil in a frying pan over medium heat. When oil is hot, add meat and fry it. Turn occasionally until done as desired and browned on all sides.
Mix pan-fried veal with beet cubes.
Put the squash puree on a serving plate. Arrange veal on top. Sprinkle with sage and pecorino cheese, if desired.

Of course a great glass of red wine goes hand in hand with this delicious veal. 😉

Enjoy the dinner!

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! 😉

Grilled Tiger Prawns

Summer is a lovely time to spend outdoors, having a barbecue, grill meat and veggies, enjoying weather..with some exception for Dubai, it’s terribly hot; the barbecue standing lonely, and waiting for the chilly days to be dust off.. If you are lucky and enjoying weather, I recommend to try this one of the most flavorful grilled prawns recipe I have tried (or grill it in the oven). The recipe is on my list of easy and impressive dishes!

I’d like to invite all bloggers who’s parting @FF to try these scrumptious prawns! I’ve got a couple of bottles of white wine.. 😉 I’m sure today evening will be a hit!

Grilled Tiger Prawns

Servings: 3-4
Difficulty: easy
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2-3 prawns per person are enough for an appetizer, but for the main course increase the quantity as many as desired.

Can be served with a glass of good wine and pineapple salsa.

Ingredients

12 tiger prawns

1 shallot or small red onion

3 garlic gloves

1 small red chilli, optional

1 Tbsp fresh coriander, finely chopped

½ lemon, juice

sea salt, black pepper to taste

Butter Sauce

60g butter

2 Tbsp coriander, finely chopped

2 Tbsp lemon juice

Cut prawns in the middle and clean. You can cut off heads or leave it. Arrange them in a big shallow dish.
Finely chop shallot, garlic and chilli. Sprinkle it over prawns along with coriander, add salt and pepper to taste. Cover the dish and let it marinate in the fridge for 1-3 hours or overnight.
Remove from the fridge 30 minutes before grilling. Grill for 5-7 minutes.
Make the sauce. Heat the butter in a small pan, add remaining coriander and lemon juice; adjust seasoning.
Serve hot! Enjoy!

Cherry Strudel with nuts

First time I have tried strudel at home. It was a frosty winter day, I was at home finishing a homework after school, when my mother came and told me she’d got a new dessert recipe! I was so excited, because it has been a habit in our family, almost every evening we had a tea with some freshly-baked pies, buns or danishes whether it were homemade or store-bought.. Easy to guess, it was a strudel recipe. At that time of the year we could make only apple-raisin filling; compare to today it was impossible to buy even frozen cherries, only if you hadn’t froze it by yourself last summer. So, we had some nice apples, which were picked from garden and kept in a cellar, raisins and walnuts; the recipe worked so good, the pastry turned thin and smooth.. and we liked the result – new, mysterious and so delicious strudel! 🙂 Believe me or not, since then I’m using exactly the same pastry recipe and it works! 🙂

Certainly, you can cheat and use filo pastry, though you should try to make the pastry from scratch at least once, it only sounds complicated. Most of you know, that nothing could beat the homemade pastry! 😉

Do you know, that first strudel recipe is dating back to 1696; strudel legend says that the Austrian Emperor’s chef was perfectionist, he even made an order that strudel pastry should be so thin that you could read a love letter through it!

Cherry Strudel with nuts

Servings: 6-8
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Ingredients

Pastry:

250g all-purpose white flour

1 egg

50g melted butter

125ml warm water

a pinch of salt

Filling:

700-900g pitted cherries

3-5 Tbsp caster sugar

4 Tbsp finely crushed almonds or breadcrumbs

3 Tbsp walnuts, coarsely chopped

3 Tbsp hazelnuts, coarsely chopped

40g currants (black)

40g golden raisins

3 Tbsp cognac/brandy/rum

40g melted butter, for glazing

1-2 Tbsp icing sugar, for serving

Preparation

The pastry. Sift flour on to a clean surface, add salt, and make a well in the middle. Slightly beat an egg with water and butter, add the mixture into flour. Knead the dough for 10 minutes, time to time punch it down and throw until it becomes elastic and smooth. Wrap it in clingfilm and leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven 200C/400F. Line the baking tray with baking paper, grease it with some melted butter or oil.
The filling. In a cup or small bowl, put all washed raisins and cover with cognac; soak for 15 minutes, then pour out remaining cognac. Cut cherries into halves, you may keep some whole.
The pastry. Dust a workspace with flour and roll out the pastry into rectangle as thinly as possible. You can place wet and floured tea-towel, and do it on it. When you can’t roll the pastry any more, begin stretching it using your hands – place back side of your hands under the pastry and stretch it. Keep on going until it is very thin or you can see pattern of the tea-towle through it.
Brush the rolled dough with melted butter. Sprinkle with crushed almonds, leave en edge 3cm uncovered. If using breadcrumbs, brown them in some butter until golden-brown.
Spread cherries, and sprinkle with sugar. Adjust amount of sugar, depending on your taste.
Scatter raisins and remaining nuts on top.
Fold uncovered edges in, then roll up the pastry into a sausage shape.
Gently put the strudel on the baking tray, brush with melted butter. Bake for 35-45 minutes until the pastry is golden.
Allow to cool slightly before serving, dust with icing sugar. Serve while it’s still warm with vanilla ice cream or sauce.

For the vanilla sauce, in a medium pan warm 125ml milk and vanilla bean (don’t allow to boil); add 1 beaten egg yolk along with 1Tbsp caster sugar and 1 tsp cornmeal into pan; stirring constantly, cook on a medium heat for 9-12 minutes, until the sauce thickens a bit. Let it slightly cool and serve with strudel.

Let’s party, lovely bloggers! Let’s drink (ha, only lemonade so far..) and eat all those tasty dishes, that we’ve brought at FF! 🙂

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! ❤