Tag Archives: My Life

Carrot rolls with orange marmalade

When the sun is shining almost every day, you’ve got an inexpressible feeling when it starts raining. You can breeze in fresh and cool air. All day has been gloomy, cool and windy. I made a huge mountain of these rolls early today. Then I wrapped up myself in a cozy blanket, filled a cup with my favorite Earl Grey tea, took few carrot rolls and sat outside to enjoy the sound of rain!

These freshly baked rolls with orange taste and cinnamon-ginger aroma added a real autumn-note to my day.

Carrot rolls with orange marmalade

Servings: for crowd
Time: 1hr
Difficulty: moderate
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You can make the dough one day ahead.

*The weight before grating.

**You can substitute orange marmalade with apricot or peach jam.

Ingredients

300g plain flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1/3 tsp ginger powder

a pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

1/3 fine salt

150g washed, cleaned carrots*, finely grated

150g butter, cold

100g sour cream (20% fat)

2-3 Tbsp white sugar (you can add more to suit your taste)

Filling

orange marmalade (with orange peel)**

dry-roasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped

Preparation method

In a large mixing bowl, sift the flour and add spices. Cut butter into small cubes or grate it. Rub into the flour mixture until you get coarse crumbs. Mix in grated carrots.
In another bowl whisk sour cream with sugar, fold into batter. You should get a soft dough. You may add a bit more flour if needed.
Divide the dough into 2 parts and shape disks, cover each with a plastic wrap and put into the fridge for 30 minutes or overnight.
Take one part of the dough from the fridge and roll it into a 2mm-thick circle. Cut into triangles; the size is up to you. Spread 1-2 teaspoons of orange marmalade on each triangle, add a teaspoon of hazelnuts and roll into croissant shape. Repeat with the second part of the dough.
Arrange rolls on a lined baking tray. Sprinkle with more hazelnuts, if desired. Bake in preheated 190C oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden-brown.
Serve warm or cooled.

Enjoy!

Carrot rolls with marmalade and hazelnuts

Sunday Breakfast: Savory bread pudding

During the week I’m trying not to buy an extra loaf of bread, if I still have some leftover. But when I see a freshly-baked croissants it’s so hard to resist.. And the poor leftover bread is lying and waiting to be used somehow. Though I use leftover bread and make breadcrumbs with herbs or croûtons for a soup-puree, but sometimes I simply do not need it. Several years back when I started being interested in various cuisines and tried to cook different recipes, I stumbled upon one English recipe – ‘bread pudding’. I was surprised how simple this dish is, and lately – how trendy it can be. It dates back to the early 11th century England and was a popular dish among poor classes, because leftover bread was used for this frugal meal. We have similar dish in Russian cuisine, which is called ‘grenki’ (fried bread); for that we just dip white bread slices into a mixture of eggs, milk and sugar, and then fried it. But what I like the most in English version, that I can bake it and even make it a night ahead. Plus there are endless possibilities for bread pudding: I can add soaked raisins, fresh peaches or any other available berries, vary the type of bread and even make it savory! And that’s what I did this time – I cleaned up my fridge and used not only bread leftovers, I added fried mushrooms with onions (have got some from a pie filling), some peas and cheese. Simple and tasty! 🙂

Savory bread pudding

Servings: 2
Time: 30mins
Difficulty: very easy
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Also tried to add some fried smoked bacon, it adds a nice smell and taste.

Ingredients

few white bread slices, cut into cubes

2 eggs

80ml full-fat milk

1/2 dried thyme

salt, freshly ground black pepper, to taste

fried onions+ mushrooms

a handful of peas (if using frozen, no need to defreeze)

50g feta or mozzarella cheese, cut into cubes

some grated parmesan, optional

1-2 tsp butter or oil, for greasing baking dish

Method

Preheat oven to 190C. Grease a baking dish, arrange bread cubes.
In a bowl, whisk eggs with milk and spices. Pour over bread crumbs, mix with your hands or a spoon.
Mix in fried mushrooms, onions and peas. Season with some extra pepper. Put in the oven for 14-15 minutes.
Take the dish out and top with feta or mozzarella cubes. Sprinkle with some parmesan as well, if using. Put back into the oven for 5 minutes more.

Serve immediately for breakfast! Enjoy!

P.S. Even if the bread is too stale, don’t throw it – go outside and feed birds! 🙂

Savory Bread Pudding with mushrooms and peas

Radish-Cucumber salad

Many of you already greeted the autumn season and began to bake various apple pies and cook hearty dishes. Autumn signs have been also trickling into Dubai, but slowly and it is still summer-like days here with plenty of strong sunshine during the day-time. Mornings and days, though still warm and sunny as usual, have been followed by lovely and cool evenings. Despite of all hot days, it’s a big advantage of living near the Gulf: we can enjoy the sea and sand any time over the year long. That’s what we did one afternoon – went to a beach. But before the joy of swimming in the sea, I prepared a very simple, light and fresh, and crunchy salad. It needs only few ingredients including beautiful radishes, which I found at local supermarket and just couldn’t resist picking up a huge bunch.

As you can see, the recipe is V-E-R-Y simple: all you need is love, fresh sliced cucumbers and bright radishes, chopped spring onions, some seasoning and sour cream!

I like this salad. It reminds me summer holidays: staying at parents house, fun of gardening and eating lots of fresh veggies and berries. And for that reason I decided to mix up vegetable slices with traditional Russian dressing – sour cream, instead of olive oil. Simple and well-loved. Be generous with spring onion! You may also add some chopped dill, if you wish.

Radish-Cucumber salad (with sour cream dressing)

Don’t be sad if the summer is over in your place, I will post autumn recipes soon {more pie recipes are on the way..} Thanks for reading and Stay turned! 🙂

Knyshy

One day I was watching numerous foody videos.. among those millions just one stuck in my head. Russian cook (don’t know his name) made small pies with potato filling, which he called knyshy. Pirogki with potato mash are one of my favourite, they always bring back memories about parents’ home ..kitchen, my mother is making pies, me and my sister are impatiently sitting and waiting while pirogki are baking in the oven.. Sweet time!

The difference between these pies and regular Russian pirogki is in the dough and shape, first ones are round, second are oval and usually made from yeast dough. I browse the Internet, and found not much information about these little pies. According to different sources, knyshy belong whether to old-Russian or Belarusian cuisine. In 19th century knyshy were widely-eaten pies among middle-class people, and the most popular filling was buckwheat kasha with fried onion and bacon.

It took me some time to shape them and make look like small barrels filled with tasty potato mash instead of rum (or whatever you imagine when hear barrel), but knyshy turned out beautifully and puffy, so they definitely worth all the hard work.

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Knyshy - little pies with potato filling

Servings: 16 pies
Difficulty: moderate
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Ingredients

Dough:

1 egg

120ml sunflower oil

120ml warm water

1 tsp vinegar

400g plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

Filling:

600-700g potatoes

1 large onion, chopped

1 tbsp oil+ 1 tsp butter for frying

1 tbsp butter

some chopped dill, optional

salt, pepper to taste

Egg wash

1 egg, beaten

Method

In a bowl whisk egg with oil, water and vinegar.
Sift flour with salt and baking powder into another large bowl.
Pour the egg mixture into the bowl with flour. Mix all ingredients together, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave to rest for 40 minutes.
Meanwhile, prepare the filling. In a frying pan heat oil with butter, add onion and fry until lightly golden. Clean and peel potatoes, cut into medium chunks and boil until ready, drain. Using a potato masher blend butter into potatoes until soft. Mix in fried onion and dill, if using. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Divide the dough into two parts. On a lightly floured surface roll out one part into 30x40cm rectangle. Spread half of the filling near the edge of the longest rectangle side. Make the roll. Cut the roll into 8 pieces: 5cm width each.* Carefully seal the ‘hole’ on one side, shaping into a roundish form (like a small barrel), place pie sealed side down on a lined and greased baking sheet. Repeat with all pies.
Brush all pies with egg wash. Bake in preheated 190C oven for 40 minutes.

*You may cut the roll into smaller pieces to get more but small-sized pies.

Enjoy!

Sunday Breakfast

I think, breakfast is one of the most important meal of the day. I never miss breakfast; even if I woke up at 12 or 1pm – I prefer to eat something from breakfast category whether it’s mushroom kasha or sweet pancakes.

I know that lots of people skip breakfast or have only coffee and sort of to-go bar; some say they are not hungry enough, or another reasons are lack of time or motivation. But eating breakfast can help you to wake up, to boost your energy and metabolism. Moreover, experts say that people who eat breakfast tend to have a lower risk of many health issues. Breakfast should be around 30% daily calories intake. So, skipping the breakfast leading to seek out higher calorie food later in the day.

Thus, I decided to start a series of ‘Sunday Breakfast’. Why breakfast? – that you’ve read above. Why Sunday? – because it’s usually weekend, no need to hurry – you’ve got plenty of time to prepare any breakfast you/your family like. I’m going to post breakfast recipes that I’m cooking and enjoying. And I’d be more than happy if you share with me your breakfast ideas and recipes; if you decided to take part in this series – send me links to your posts or articles in the internet with your favourite morning meal. You can also write recipes and send me by email, so I could choose a suitable for me and taste them.

Let’s begin a healthy way to start the day, especially if you haven’t had a breakfast for a long time!

I’m quite sure that almost everyone loves zucchini fritters. We call them oladii/oladushki in Russia, that means small pancakes (have a look another recipe by clicking here). These zucchini oladushki are more healthier, because I used fine oats instead of plain flour and fried them almost without oil. As you can see from the photos: they are served with fried quail eggs, which can be substitute with regular ones; herbs add a nice and aromatic touch – to wake up your senses!

Zucchini oladushki with fried quail eggs

Sunday Breakfast: Zucchini Oladushki

Servings: 2
Difficulty: easy
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*I didn’t use salt, because I used parmesan which is salty itself, but you can add some salt if needed.

**If zucchini oladushki don’t stick to your frying pan- omit the oil.

Ingredients

1 large zucchini, grated

few spoons of fine oats (or wholemeal flour)

*3-4 tbsp grated parmesan

3 quail eggs or 1 regular egg for the zucchini mixture

2 tsp lemon juice, optional

2-3 tsp fresh thyme leaves (or 1 tsp dried)

1/2 tsp dried oregano leaves

freshly ground black pepper to taste

**1-2 tbsp olive or sunflower oil for frying

quail eggs for serving, as much as you like

some grated parmesan for garnish, optional

In a bowl, combine all ingredients, except oil. Heat the oil (if using) in a frying pan on medium-high heat. Using a tablespoon pour a spoonful of the mixture into pan, making oladushki/fritters, fry for a 2 minutes on each side.
Keep zucchini oladushki in a warm place: put them in warm 50C oven or cover with foil. Meanwhile, fry quail eggs (you may use the same pan).
Top oladushki with fried quail eggs, sprinkle with parmesan if desired.

Enjoy your breakfast!