Month: September 2011

sweet · sweet bread · traditional Russian recipe

Nina’s Vatrushka and ChocoCookies

georgiagilmour2 Comments

This sweet post I’m dedicating to my sole mate Nina, a.k.a. PLD, I guess that her friendship’s one of the reasons why I look back on my undergraduate years at St Petersburg University with positive warmness rather than disappointment. I have long wanted to dedicate a post to you, Nina, but just recently recalled I have your recipe of vatrushka, a traditional Russian sweet round bun with cottage cheese on top. The dough can be either with or without yeast, some recipes I’ve come across requested several egg yolks, but this one is really simple and the result is more than satisfactory!

First, a nostalgic photo from my undergraduate years:

Sometimes I just hated that lecture hall (above) especially when we had evening classes which meant being later squashed in an elektrichka going back home. But the view has always been nice, Neva river with St Isaac Cathedral and the monument to Peter the Great on the other side. We had our classes in a historic building and haha the classrooms were accordingly ANCIENT sometimes with koe-kak (meaning carelessly, slop-built) renovation, which of course added some mmm flavour to it but took away all the comfort. Strangely enough I cannot remember those years as that much student years, those of my postgraduate studies seem to me more student, indeed.

Ok, now let’s move closer to Nina’s vatrushka recipe. Get your samovar hot and boiling, take your babushka‘s homemade jam and enjoy!

Nina's vatrushka

Nina’s vatrushka (slightly adapted)

Ingredients

  • 100 ml milk
  • 100 ml vegetable oil (flavourless type recommended)
  • 120 g white sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 250 g all purpose flour (I have my flaxseed flour coming close to its best before date, so I’ve mixed 50 g of it in, that’s why the colour is not white, and I used more flour)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • baking soda on a tip of a Tbs
  • vinegar or citric acid diluted in a tsp of water if you’re not a fan of vinegar

Topping for 4-5 vatrushkas that you’ll make from the above ingredients you’ll need

  • about 150 g cottage cheese (make your own!)
  • sugar to taste
  • 1 egg
  • a splash of sour cream (optional)
  • vanilla (optional)
  • as well as add-ins such as raisins (very traditional) or dried fruits (optional as well)

Method

Blend milk, oil, sugar, egg together then add flour and salt, mix slightly and then make a trick – ‘burn’ your soda with vinegar (or diluted citric acid) by pouring just a tiny bit of it on soda placed on a Tbs. When it makes ‘pshhhhhh‘ pour it in the batter you’re making. Good. If you think that the batter is not pliable, add some more flour but not too much. You just need to divide it in 4-5 parts (or more if you want small vatrushkas), shape them adding some flour into circles and place on a greased cookie sheet. Make a kind of well in the centre, so that the filling goes inside and stays there. Yes, the filling/topping: blend cottage cheese with an egg and some Tbs of sugar (adding vanilla, sour cream, etc at this point too, if using), if it’s not enough for your vatrushkas, just make some more =) (or finally use some add-ins, they’ll enlarge the volume). Scoop the filling into the wells in the centre of each vatrushka, leaving the borders empty, don’t be meticulous, everything will turn out right! Even a huge vatrushka with too little a filling will be gobbled down, I swear.

Place the cookie sheet with your vatrushkas in preheated to 175 C oven, leaving them to bake for about 25 minutes. You’ll understand they’re done when the cottage cheese topping gets a little bit browned and with a common test (a toothpick inserted in the dough should come out clean).

Vatrushka with Chococookies

Remove the buns from the cookies sheet, cool and then perhaps sprinkle with some hmmm sprinkles =) Or leave intact and enjoy! Don’t forget to heat the samovar and do invite your babushka to tea!

Keep – if any are left – the vatrushkas in the fridge, cause anyway they’re made from cottage cheese and it has a tendency to go sour… So my advice is to eat them quickly =)

***

The next day I made some chococookies in the morning – to complement the vatrushkas =) As I’m having this quite an obsession to use all the purchased different kinds of flour/bran etc etc, I’ve adapted the recipe I found on one of the blogs, www.melskitchencafe.com, that I’m following, to my demands.

Healthier Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies after

Healthier Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (adapted from www.melskitchencafe.com) makes about 18-24 cookies but I didn’t count

Ingredients

  • 1/3 cup all purpose flour
  • 1/3 cup white whole wheat flour – I made a miture of oat, flaxseed flours and oat bran
  • 1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (in Russia this type’s called… Hercules =)
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 6 Tbs butter
  • 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar – I made a mixture of brown and white sugars
  • 1 cup dried cranberries or cherries – I used some cranberries+chopped some dried apricots and prunes
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract – I used cinnamon instead
  • 1 large egg, lightly beaten
  • 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips – I chopped half a bar of that bitter chocolate Osobiy, a favourite among my friends and me=)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 C.

(I’m copying the recipe): In a large bowl, combine the flours, oats, baking soda and salt. Melt the butter in the microwave or in a small saucepan on the stove. Remove from the heat and stir in the brown sugar. Add the butter/sugar mixture to the flour mixture, beating with a mixer at medium speed until well blended. Add the dried cranberries or cherries, vanilla and egg. Beat until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Healthier Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies before...

Spoon rounded tablespoonfuls of dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment, silpat liners or coated with cooking spray. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned on the edges. Remove the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely. (I had to bake them for 20 minutes, perhaps because of the changes I’ve made to the original recipe).

The cookies are very nice and let’s believe that there ARE healthy cookies =) Well, at least those are definitely healthiER than normal chococookies.

I’m currently reading this blog I’ve heard about on l’Altra Europa programme – a German and an Italian journalists travelling all way from Moscow to Lisbon through Europe on various trains. Got some funny moments and lots of train-related experience those two, for sure.

Yes, I’m still in a search. Still.

Good night!

G.

P.S. To you, my friend, I do remember that day!


=)

leftovers · no recipe

Introduction to Soviet Creativity and Practicality

georgiagilmour2 Comments

So far we have touched upon (veeeeeeeery vaguely) the Northern region of the Soviet empire, i.e. Archangelsk’s ‘sochni’ (I also mentioned that the Northern Russian pies are made from a mixture of wheat and rye flour, I can add also that the form of the pie is usually square and there’s no double crust – the filling is more like topping, even in sochni it’s in some way rather a topping than filling =) See Archangelsk in the North under Karelians?

Here, just look, what a vaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast enooooooourmous multinational country!

USSR Ethnic Groups 1974
USSR Ethnic Groups 1974

No-no, I’m not being nostalgic in any way, not of USSR at least =) I took this picture from Wikipedia’s entry about USSR, it’s an Ethnic Groups map from 1974. A so to say classic condition of USSR, full of nations, republics and natural resources. No Chernobyl yet, no Afghanistan yet, no Perestroika yet. Very boggy life of a normal Soviet citizen.

In this blog I intend to revive and revise the good ol’ times‘ culinary geography by gathering together the pieces of the cuisine puzzle of the USSR. I’ve got a vast work head of me, haha. Of course, I’m no expert, so mostly I’m able to speak of those regions my relatives are from or generally about the country.

As I have previously (not once) promised, I’ll talk about dacha and prostokvasha, the latter being a part of my leftovers topic that I’m going to develop. These two realities can be applied to the whole USSR with some reservations: not ALL people had (and have) dachas and not all of them were (and are) fermented-milk freaks=)

This is supposed to be mostly food blog, so let’s first concentrate on this prostokvasha thing, that’s been mentioned in my posts not once and that really deserves being talked about. Remember matsoni and kefir? Here’s matsoni on the left, the one I used to bake khachapuri. It’s a Georgian version of prostokvasha, more zesty and if you have ever tasted ewe milk yoghurt or ayran (which is actually made from matsoni), you know what I mean. We, Russians, love fermented milk products, that’s what I missed in France and Greece, my favourite being kefir and ryazhenka or BAKED milk (!). Prostokvasha is kind of absolutely naturally produced yoghurt, a fermented milk product, the name meaning in Russian ‘easily soured‘, so it’s the most basic type of fermented milk, very useful, on the base of which you can get loads of other stuff. I got lots of new information about these goods from that Pohlyobkin‘s book and would love to bake my own but haven’t ventured out yet=) Besides, it’s believed that fermented milk is digested easier than normal milk.

Prostokvasha is a wonderful example of how practical and creative Russians (ans Soviets) can sometimes be. Although in Europe (and recently here too) milk seems to never go off, in Russia we still have this tricky milk that tends to go off before the ‘best before’ date. So, multiple solutions arise in the head of an average homo sovieticus. ‘Children, drink milk and you will be healthy‘ cried out Soviet propaganda songs or better ‘The one who drinks milk, will jump high! will run far, the one who drinks milk!‘. I have a wonderful 1958 Soviet propaganda book about child diet and healthy life, I will certainly post some shots from it, as soon as we have a sunnier day to make nice photos. A common picture will be a plump healthy boy/girl drinking a mug/Soviet glass of milk. And all that quite effective milk propaganda also meant a certain amount of milk that will inevitably go off in an average Soviet family. And a real Soviet housewife never finds it a nuisance!

This abundance on the left was never to be found in its entire enormity anywhere except Moscow, perhaps, but what people remember is that kefir was of smetana (=sour cream) thickness and smetana was never of kefir thickness. And all those glass bottles were better than any recycling process – cause they were returned to special collector points (extra working places!) for 10 kopecks and then reused: filled up and sealed with that aluminium foil cap which was of a specially designated colour for each dairy product. Glass doesn’t take in any harmful substances or microbes, so if it’s rinsed it can be reused with no problem. I still remember having silver cap for a milk bottle, purple cap for bio-kefir, golden for ryazhenka and green for kefir. Oh, and those sirok little thingies, they are just amazing, like a small ice-cream but made from tvorog glazed in chocolate, with vanilla flavour or with sweetened condensed milk and unfortunately getting so much artificial now that you don’t want to buy them (one of the things I dreamt of while being in Europe – you see how foody I am? =).

Back to our moutons. Prostokvasha can be divided in two of its components: sivorotka which is whey in English and a thick ‘hat’ which is actually your future tvorog (=cottage cheese)! Wanna make some prostokvasha yourself? Just open the milk package and leave it open for two days (or less if it’s not that fresh) in a warm place. In order to make things run smoother, add a Tbs of sour cream (which is one of my favourite products of all times and most of the Russians will agree with me). The thing you get can either be eaten as a very light yoghurt (better sweeten it and shake before eating) or… Wanna make some fresh homemade cottage cheese? You’re twice lucky if your milk has gone off cause you won’t then need to sour it artificially with lemon juice or a splash of sour cream. So, heat your prostokvasha over medium heat (NOT in an enamelled pot, better aluminium), stir and you’ll see the whey liquid part from the ‘hat’. Wait till this hat thickens and stops growing. Strain the whole thing, don’t discard the whey, cause this is also known as buttermilk (see further) and what you get IN the strainer is your fresh cottage cheese = tvorog (on the right) – and  now you can

  1. add herbs, garlic, lemon juice, roll it, cover with plastic and put in the fridge to get your soft cheese for breakfast
  2. add sour cream and sprinkle sugar to taste
  3. bake some blinis (coming! I promise!), put the sweetened tvorog in the middle, fold like an envelope, heat on both sides and enjoy filled blinis
  4. make some pasta dough and use your tvorog as a filling – this is how you’ll get vareniky
  5. generally, you can use it anywhere where cottage cheese or even cream cheese is required (I used it even to complement my scarce feta stock for Tiropsomo).

tvorog from prostokvasha

Another option to ‘get rid of’ your suddenly soured milk is to use it in the batter for the above-mentioned blini, olad’i (thick small blini), dough for pirog=pie (not to be confused with the Polish pierogi), etc etc. You can easily imagine how many recipes using buttermilk (sour milk) there were in all times in Russia (don’t forget to throw a glance on the map). So no need to buy buttermilk (=pahta in Russian) if you see it required for a recipe. Just make some yourself.

For more national versions of fermented milk I have no other proposition apart from referring you to Wikipedia entry about Fermented milk products. Perhaps you’ll find a new thing to eat=))) And on to dacha now…

***

garden

Dachas are here not only since Soviet times, they served also something like a second home in the country for city-residing aristocrats and well-off city dwellers back in Russian empire times (that’s before 1917; ever read Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard?).

We have been typical dachniks in my family from 1972, when as it was quite common at that time my grandparents were gifted with a plot situated in cooperative dacha grounds, thanks to their job at the factory. So all of their workmates got their plots somewhere near and our street (with dacha houses aligned) got the name of the factory – Izhorskaya. At that time Soviet government was no fool to give so much freedom for its citizens as PROPERTY (=capitalism), so EVERYTHING was in an utmost way regulated. First, an allotment was generally no more than 600 m² (famous shest’ sotok plot), just enough to have your garden and a small house, second – this very house should be of a standardised size, the second floor (if any) being strictly UNinhabited. We still have those rules somewhere on a shelf in our dacha house which was of course upgraded in the 90s with INhabited second floor (a cosy wood-panelled creation of my Grandpa’s).

Nevertheless, THAT was already some freedom, a place to live how you want, to escape from town, to spend your summer economically and to employ your inherited ability to CULTIVATE and the love for the sole and nature (as almost all the aristocrats were killed/expelled during the glorious Social revolution, we’re mostly all the descendants of peasants, so dacha was a reminder of home in your native village). Or just a perfect place to drink vodka in a secluded place.

crazy garden strawberries in September

A usual dacha house is typically painted in green (as is ours), has triangular roof, large veranda f0r summer meals and storage of all things, Russian-style pechka (=fireplace) where you burn all those leaflets and old newspapers you gather throughout long winter days longing for summer at your dacha place =). The dacha complex usually includes banya (kind of sauna that’s also a place to wash yourself, i.e. a traditional Russian bath), garage (for those who are bourgeois enough to have a car) saray (not the Turkish saray meaning a palace=) to store your garden and construction instruments and just all the junk and here comes usually the first to be built and surely the most necessary building – a toilet (YES, OUTSIDE, no comment =). Your garden is full of flower beds BUT the main point is to grow your OWN potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, marrows, herbs, strawberries (and all kinds of ….-berries, we love them), there’s an orchard with apple and plum trees (all depends on the region or your own ambitions and craziness), a ditch = kanava to take water and (originally) to protect you from the fires (we got our dug out in exchange for a bottle of vodka) and a greenhouse for your desperate attempts to grow some thermophilic plants in this bloody climate (especially in the North). And then comes yet another problem – where the hell (s0rry) use/sell/give out all those berries, compotes, jams, winter salads etc etc. =) One has to have lots of relatives to help you with the load!

Paradise apple tree

Of course now people tend to materialize those child dreams to bloody (second time this word!) cover in concrete the whole 600 square metres – or less cardinally just turn all the potato plots into eternal grass lawns that you just need to mow on time. And from the 90s there are huge awkward dachas in pseudo-Gothic/Hellenistic style with tall ugly fences and god knows what else (according to the taste or more exactly to the level of its absence in most cases). They have wi-fi, hi-fi, swimming pools and NO CUCUMBERS =) Of course there were also gosdachas (from Soviet times – a dacha that was handed down from one politician/military man/VIP to another, without actually owning it) and now dachas for the same politicians but with an individual river bank plot etc etc, but mostly dachas especially if there are their original owners and BUILDERS in view – they are still the same. And people rediscover their dacha plots now, buy new plots, sell their parents’ one, build, grow, make kebabs and still drink vodka. Imagine how ghastly the roads leading to the country get Friday evenings? EVERYBODY’s there =) no, not exactly, the rest is moving their elbows on a crammed elektrichka (suburban train) or marshrutka (commercial bus). The same picture is in the opposite direction on Sunday evening.

on a neighbour's porch

What else to tell you about dacha? That you’re lucky if you have a pond/river nearby, a garden-house for outside meals, a forest somewhere round for mushrooms/berries/firewood picking and if your dacha is not very far away. My dacha has always been a very dear place to me, I’ve spent all my summers there since my birth, although I tend to lose that special attachment to it with the years. For my grandparents it’s a whole lotta part of their lives as it’s for many aged people nowadays. They prepare sprouts, seeds, materials during winter, they plan the garden and construction, we make them presents ‘for dacha‘, always having it in mind when we change furniture or clothes (cause dacha is typically a place for all the junk and just old stuff). I’ve surely missed something about dacha, but I think that’s already enough =) So next time you’re in Russia, eat some dairy products and get to someone’s dacha for some authentic experience! What can be better than tea on a veranda with an electric samovar?

electric samovar for dacha tea

Your unemployed G.

bread · Greek recipe

Some More Greece on a Moody Day

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Duh…

It seems Universities are made to spoil people, making them used to free student life, especially those international programs with scholarships =) I wonder if ever Universities make people ready for their so-to-say adult life, with a job, with desk work etc etc. I guess no. At lest such humanitarian things as philology. Well, all this should have been obvious to me – what else would you expect after 6 years of Uni education?

Tiropsomo with cumquats

Ok, no more of this, let’s turn to some Greek cooking instead of complaining! My post today is inspired by this Jamie Oliver’s gourmet journey to Athens and Aegina, my favourite Aegean island (there are 4 parts in this program, all are on youtube). I’m going to introduce you to two bread recipes, not that much authentically Greek, but at least inspired by Greek cuisine. As the weather gets colder and moodier, I tend to recall Greece more and more, especially my first and ultimate Greek language teacher, a wonderful person who completely changed my attitude to teachers, Isabelle Stamatiadou. I met her in Strasbourg and she was a ray of light for all of us a little bit depressed and oppressed with the French teaching style. A ray of Greek light, with embracing warmness and humaneness and kindness. I think Greek cuisine has lots of these – in my opinion – inherent to Greeks qualities. With all this crisis going on in Greece, I just wish them to keep going THEIR way.

tiropsomo in a Greek mold

The first recipe I’m going to give you, I heard on SBS radio‘s Greek service (sorry, Isabelle, still listening to that’s-not-Greek =), to the podcast of which I’m listening to for want of directly GREEK podcasts on the Internet. The program can be downloaded or listened to online here in Australian Greek =) . The program is called “Ελληνικές γεύσεις“, or “Greek flavours“, hosted byΘέμης Καλλός (Themi Kallos), where  a certain chef Μαρία Μπενάρδη (Maria Benardi) presents one by one her versions of traditional Greek recipes with a definite homesick longing for Greece. The program from the 20th of September, 2011, gave me a wonderful chunky cheesy recipe of Τυρόψωμο με φέτα, κασέρι και θυμάρι – Cheese-bread with feta, hard cheese and thyme. I didn’t khm re-listened this program, just jotted down the recipe on a piece of paper while listening and introduced some changes, of course. This recipe doesn’t take much time or much tedious kneading, it’s simple and delicious. So:

tiropsomo

Τυρόψωμο με φέτα, κασέρι και θυμάρι – Cheese-bread with feta, hard cheese and thyme (adapted from www.sbs.com.au)

Ingredients

  • 500 g all purpose flour
  • 7 g yeast – I used instant dried yeast
  • 1/4 tsp salt (with all this feta you just don’t need more salt!)
  • 1/2 cup olive oil (Greek, please!)
  • 200 g feta, crumbled – sorry, Greece, had to buy German version of feta, the Greek one being considerably more expensive; I used just under 200 g + some homemade tvorog (cottage cheese)
  • 200 g of what Greeks call ‘kaseri‘ or just some common cheese that you can grate =) Cause for Greeks only FETA is cheese – I used some habitual sort of cheese and about 1/3 of the original
  • 2 t fresh thyme, chopped – I used dried thyme, couldn’t find fresh
  • 3/4 to 1 cup warm water (lukewarm) – the amount of liquid depends on your feta – if it’s in brine (use it!) and quite soggy than you’ll need only 3/4. Mine being German was quite solid, so I used 1 cup.

grated cheese with thyme

Method

In a bowl mix all the flour plus salt plus yeast plus 1/4 cup of olive oil plus 1/2 of all the amount of cheese (what I did was to put all the feta in the dough and the grated cheese went on top). Add as much lukewarm water (remember the brine!) as you need to form a ball of dough, knead slightly and put in a greased bowl, cover and let rise for half an hour.

cutting tiropsomo

In another bowl (μπολάκι =) mix the remaining oil with half of the thyme and knead the dough ball a bit so that it takes these ingredients in (I used less oil and already mixed in some thyme while making the dough). Put the ball in a greased bread pan (I used a shallow terracotta pan that Greek ewe yoghurt comes with for just about 2 euro, oh myyyyyy, I collected quite a number of them while staying in Thessaloniki =). Add the remaining cheese mixed with the rest of thyme on top, pressing a bit so that the cheese sticks to the dough.

Bake in preheated to 180 C oven for 35 minutes. The dough will spring in the oven and the cheese will melt, creating a great cheese crust.

Result: The bread turned out very chunky, cheesy, it seems you’re eating cheese rather than just bread. Feta is god!

tiropsomo with an apple

***

The next recipe is Kalamata Olive and Dill / Rosemary Bread that I spotted on In a Nutshell blog. As the above one went for breakfast (finished today), I needed some black bread for lunch and dinner, so this one is just OK. It’s a two loaf recipe, with an easy starter and with a certain Greek flavour in it. The only thing is that it needs fresh yeast  but you can always use an appropriate amount of dried yeast (e.g. look here for the Yeast Conversion Table). It’s also quite artisan-looking and the aroma of the baking bread is just overwhelming, you should try it! Here we go:

Kalamata olive bread

Kalamata Olive and Dill / Rosemary Bread (adapted from inanutshell.typepad.com) makes 2 loaves (à la baguette)

Ingredients

For the starter: (don’t worry, it won’t take long!)

  • 1 cup warm water – warm enough to your fingers, not to kill the yeast
  • 2 tsp fresh yeast – I had my 50 g fresh yeast block, which I used whole for this recipe
  • 1 cup whole wheat flour – under strict economy measures applied to my stock of whole wheat flour from Greece I used all purpose flour plus wheat and rye bran which costs about nothing here and also ‘Eight grains’ flour mixture I came across in the first ever supermarket in St Petersburg I visited recently for the first time in my life – Frunzensky universam it’s called, quite expensive but they’ve promised me even whole wheat flour in stock this week!

my starter looked like this

For the dough:

  • 3 Tbs light brown sugar (I have JUST brown sugar)
  • 4 tsp fresh yeast
  • 1/4 cup + 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil (apparently ONLY Greek!)
  • 1 Tbs salt
  • 1,5 Tbs dried dill (rosemary would work equally as well and that’s what I used)
  • 2/3 cup warm water
  • 1 jar of pitted kalamata olives (traditional Greek), thoroughly drained, roughly chopped – I used less and of course my olives were Spanish… ooops! I also added some flax and caraway seeds
  • 4,75 cup all purpose flour – I used a little bit more

Method

First combine the the starter ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. Briskly stir with a wire whisk (I used a fork) to incorporate and fully dissolve yeast. Cover with a towel and let rest in a warm area for 30 min.

In a large mixing bowl, add yeast, brown sugar and warm water. Stir vigorously with a wire whisk to dissolve yeast. Once dissolved, add olive oil, salt, dill, starter, and about half the flour. Mix until evenly combined. Add in remaining flour and olives, here you can already work with your hands. Work the dough until it no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl and is evenly moistened. The dough will be soft and pliable, but not sticky (for this condition I needed just a little bit more flour).

not very much a baguette but who cares

Divide the dough in half. Form each half into a smooth ball. Place the dough onto a lightly oiled cookie sheet. Cover loaves with a warm damp cloth (I used ex-kitchen towel). Let them rest in a warm draft-free place for 30 min.

Gently form the loaves into an oblong shape about the thickness of a baguette (mine were quite thick). Place them back on the cookie sheet, and again, cover with a warm damp towel and leave to rest in a warm draft-free area for 30 min. Preheat your oven to 200 C.

Score the loaves with a sharp bread knife, mist with water, bake for 30-40 minutes (mine took 35 min). You want the crust to be a rich golden colour. Remove the bread from the oven when ready, and cool before slicing.

And I would add – enjoy the aroma! I didn’t want my bread to be too tough with olives so I added less, but with all those flax and caraway seeds I added and also with that amazing 8-grain flour (which contains even some peas, whole grains, bran etc) my bread came out very puffy and just perfect to break it with hands not cutting with a knife.

2 loaves of Kalamata olive bread

Wish me luck in my job-seeking. And I wish you to visit Greece and enjoy all the possible types of bread, cheese, fruit and vegetables there (and of course meat, I forgot)! The 2 other components that create Greece and make it so unique and welcoming are nature and its people. Miss you, Greece! Miss you, Isabelle!

G.

sweet · sweet bread

Cranberry Bread Revisited

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

One of the things I’ve recently baked was Cranberry bread from A Treasury Of Cookbook Classics by John Butler (one of our first beautifully illustrated books with mouth-watering recipes that contained all the impossible ingredients, in awful Russian translation, but still comprehensible; no Wikipedia entry for him, I’ve already checked=) ). I should rather say that I re-made it cause it was one of the things we baked with my soul-mate Tanya, back in our school days when we both studied together. There’s a joke that in order to see each other we just need to demolish a building that stands right between our homes =) There are lots of other jokes, for sure, who would believe we’re friends already for 10 YEARS?!??!?! Wohoooo!

Cranberry bread in autumn light

So this bread goes for you, also it’s a bit Finnish, don’t you think, Tanya? =) You will understand, as you always do.

And also finally I did it with CRANBERRIES and not with blackcurrants or whatever we used back then. I’ve recently been to Auchan, a place where you can find some rare goods and shop cheaply, and found there not THAT expensive dried cranberries, so I had been looking for a recipe with cranberries when I suddenly recalled this one. However, I did make some changes, this is normal for me. Bread is very nice, not over sweet and somewhere between a stollen and a coffee cake, cause there’s hardly any liquid in it when it’s baked. I’ll make a double translation here: first this book was translated from English into Russian apparently by a I’ve-never-been-to-any-kitchen translator and now I’m translating back it into English. Here we go:

original recipe from Butler's book with some memorabilia

Cranberry Bread (adapted from A Treasury Of Cookbook Classics by John Butler, 1998 in Russian translation, p. 266)

Ingredients

  • 300 g flour (3 cups)
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 4 Tbs butter
  • 150 g white sugar
  • 100 g walnuts, chopped – I used less
  • 1 Tbs lemon zest, grated – I used orange zest from the freezer
  • 1 egg – I used 1 whole + the leftovers from another recipe, I recommend using at least 1 LARGE egg
  • 150 ml orange juice – I had only homemade apple juice and it went OK
  • 200 g cranberries (the translation says ‘fresh’ but I guess from the photo it’s dried) – I used less
  • 1 Tbs milk
  • brown sugar for sprinkling on top (my addition)

heart, nuts and berries

Method

Preheat oven to 175 C. Grease a baking pan 22x12x7 cm (a common rectangular bread pan, mine is from glass) lightly, line the bottom with parchment paper and grease it too (I just lined the pan with paper and greased it a bit).

Mix the flour with baking powder and salt. Cut in the butter. Add white sugar, nuts and zest. Mix slightly.

In a different bowl beat the egg till foamy, then add the juice while stirring.

Mix the egg mixture with the dry ingredients. Add berries.

with an apple

Place the batter in the pan (it’s gonna be quite thick, especially if you follow the ingredients instructions precisely), even the top with a spatula. Brush with milk and scatter some (brown) sugar on top.

Bake 1 h 15 min till a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean (I had to cover the top with aluminium foil during the last 15 min or so cause I was afraid the colour will be a bit toooooo brown). Remove from the oven, run a sharp knife between the pan and the bread, turn the pan over, remove the pan and the paper. Cool (and enjoy!).

with a homemade chocolate

The recipe says 10 portions but I would say it’s TOO LITTLE for 10 portions!! And it also says each portion contains 287 calories, hehe=) Ah, yes, it also suggests serving it for πρωινό, Ι mean, breakfast (zavtrak in Russian) but, well, for me it can suit any time of the day, really.

I guess it would be equally (if not more) nice with some whole wheat flour to make it healthier and more ‘rustique‘.

Have a very warm and cozy weekend, people, with lots of light and tea. I have a whole week of job seeking (and being job-seeking-sick) in front of me, cause I’m, yep-yep, still unemployed.

with my Greek tea cup

Good night, sleep tight and listen to good music when you wake up tomorrow!

G.

no recipe

Post-Soviet Era Eccentricities and Kitsch

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Just couldn’t keep myself from posting several kitschy things I came across after returning from Greece this summer. You know, this theory – developed partially by Leo Tolstoy – of a changed state of mind (kind of ‘ostranenie’ of Soviet formalists…  ooops, I still remember all that linguist wisdom), when you notice some things that used to be so ordinary and familiar after some illness or travelling or whatever. This is my state of mind now – I tend to be more attentive to details and foolish things =)

Just to make you understand where I live and what is here to stay from the hard Soviet times. Paraphrasing Ilf and Petrov, ‘grave heritage of Soviet regime‘. So here we go (I apologize for the poor photos, they’ve been taken mostly with my mobile phone camera)

Lot #1

How’s that? The sledge in Russian is ‘sanki‘ and it’s the most common means of transport for the citizens from the age group 1-12 years =) And if you park your sanki in front of children goods store, don’t forget to secure it with a cord and a lock! No kidding, but several days after I passed the same spot and saw only the cord. No kidding.

Lot #2

 Hmmm… This eeeeeemmm throne welcomes you in the eeeeh lobby of the hairdresser’s in my suburb town. No, please, don’t think there’s only one hairdresser over here, of course not, but it’s my Mother’s favourite. The chair is certainly inherited from the hard Soviet times marked with a eeeeeh special aesthetic attitude towards notions of design, comfort and taste. Hmmmm.

Lot #3

Here are some gems of post-Soviet shop window decoration, this particular case is of a sanitary goods shop right next to the famous hairdresser from the picture above. You see a very nice lady welcoming you (although a bit faded) and even several examples of what you can buy there. Marvelous! The reflection in the window is a late-Soviet block of flats. they were everywhere, absolutely identical and ugly. Guess if they’re better inside?

Lot #4

Some more of Russian shops kitch – here you can find Furniture, Flowers, Shoes, Clothes, Bags, all under one roof of an ex-military factory that was – as my Mum recalls – just on the edge of the town once, was a closed (quasi-secret) organization during my childhood and now – the factory is still guarded from the pedestrians with some wires but its territory has diminished dramatically. You think we live in a garbage bin? Well, in some way you’re quite right.

Lot #5

Those are the gates of that ex-military factory, Voenohot (a typical Soviet-style abbreviation), the gates are open in a welcoming gesture, come, come inside and enjoy shopping! I guess a normal Soviet citizen would not have believed that!

Lot #6

And for the dessert – some ‘Parisian’ Cucumber seeds package which contains besides a veeeeeeeeery useful proverb for all of you cucumber lovers – ‘Yesterday cannot be caught up (reached), tomorrow cannot be avoided’. Weeeeell, in what way IS it useful for gardeners? Anyway, my Granny hasn’t even noticed that=) Such proverb package placing is somehow popular these days, we have Milk and Kefir packages with some proverbs and saying connected with them, such as (a satirized phrase from MilkyWay commercial) ‘Milk is two times funnier if [it comes] after cucumbers’ =) You would definitely buy this Milk out of the sheer pleasure of proverbs =)

I tagged this post as fun, but sometimes I doubt much if there’s anything to laugh at or rather to cry, but surely I prefer to be a little bit more positive and to prolong my life with some healthy laughs.

This is it for today from the post-Soviet eccentricities.

Coming soon,

G.

P.S. tomorrow I have a job interview finally, after a long dead season.

Georgian recipe · pies · sweet · sweet bread · traditional Russian recipe

More Soviet Experiments

georgiagilmourLeave a comment

Finally, here are two more quite Soviet recipes with minimal instructions which I somehow managed to follow and eat =) As it’s clear that I’m still unemployed, it’s ok to take advantage of this time to write posts, n’est ce pas?

Georgian cheese bread from nami-nami.blogspot.com

The first one is sour non-yeast flat pie Khachapuri (Georgian: ხაჭაპური (!!!!!) – xač’ap’uri or ‘cheese bread’) from traditional Georgian cuisine that is made from suluguni cheese, a bit like Greek cheese halloumi, also with this special texture, as if it’s meat that you can divide into layers or better threads or fibre (do you get that??). My Father is an expert on Caucasian dishes having been born in Kabardino-Balkar Republic where my Grandpa moved with his wife to work in the mines. He recalls the best khachapUri (the accent on the 2nd syllable from the end) pies which dough was of a crepe thickness (I would rather say thinness) and of course the harmonious proportion between the cheese filling and the dough.Yes, the CHEESE, it should be a real suluguni, and even here in Russia, with so many Georgians here we still have some rubbery suluguni that is in no way close to the original. So I advise you to get hold of some feta or any decent pickled cheese and mix it with some hard type of cheese (or even halloumi if you’re lucky!).

It’s the second recipe I’m using to recreate authentic khachapuri pies, the first one was from Nami-nami blog, held by an Estonian occasionally cooking something from Georgian and Russian cuisine. Go here for the recipe and if you choose to make it, be sure to roll the dough finely and even make 2 huge pies, because I didn’t and my pie got tooooooo much of dough. On the left is the result, you can see how tall is the dough part, although the taste was equally nice!

On the right is the result out of the recipe from already mentioned Culinary Dictionary A to Z, with lots of tzatziki sauce and generally more like khatchapuri: less dough, more cheese is the principle. My expert Pohlyobkin, cause I once more referred to his book for the recipe, says that if the dough is made with yeast, that’s not the authentic pie! Also he mentions other a bit contradictory things, like ‘the amount of cheese should be 2 times more than the flour’ and then he offers to take half a kilo of cheese and ‘as much flour etc‘ for a LITRE of liquids (that means MUCH more flour than 250 g!!).

Khachapuri with tzatziki sauce

Well, I adapted the recipe to nowadays conditions and here it is:

Khachapuri (adapted from a taciturn recipe in ‘O koulinarii ot A do Ya‘ by W. Pohlyobkin, pp. 192-193)

Ingredients

Dough (makes enough for 3-4 rather large pies with thin dough part)

  • 0, 5 litre matsoni (or use kefir or plain natural yoghurt) – I happened to find matsoni in a local supermarket chain, see on the right
  • 2 Soviet glasses of milk (= 500 ml milk)
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 tspbaking soda
  • 0, 25 (!!) tsp salt

flour till the dough is of a very slightly ‘forming/shaping’ constituency… here’s the problem – I used about a KILO of it for a litre of liquid but I’m sure a more talented especially Georgian (and not just GEORGIA) housewife would have used about 500 g or something, but I’m not THAT talented!

Matsoni on Pohlyobkin's book

Filling (makes enough for only two of the pies, the rest is up to you – I made one with still not finished Granny’s courgettes and some grated cheese and one with mince meat and spices specially for my carnivore Father the next day, keeping the somewhat fugitive dough covered in the fridge. Or just double the ingredients!)

  • 500 g pickled cheese (use feta, halloumi or a mixture of some salted pickled cheeses from your area) – I used that fake suluguni and only around 340 g, so I ended up with lots of dough and no filling left
  • 1-2 eggs (I used 1 whole egg and a leftover egg white)
  • 25-50 g butter, melted (I used about 20 g)

Suluguni cheese

Method

First prepare the filling, which is a tricky process but – remember! – in the end you’ll get a truly Georgian khatchapuri!!: place your cheese in an enameled bowl (do not let metal come into contact with your cheese, so use enameled dish!) filled with cold water and leave for 5 hours – that’s how you’ll get rid of extra salt in your cheese.  Than mash your cheese with a spoon to a constituency of a paste, add eggs and melted butter (I skipped the soaking part as my cheese was far from being salty, so try a bit and decide for yourself, perhaps you’ll even have to add more salt! I also had problems MASHING the cheese, cause without any soaking and also being VERY rubbery, it just wouldn’t mash).

dough

Dough (there are no instructions concerning the process, so I’ll tell you what I did) is simply a mixture of all the stated ingredients and then proceed to the flour experiment – add as little as possible (I suggest making half of the recipe), till you get just slightly pliable dough, enough so that you can put on a greased baking sheet (or a skillet), roll it out perhaps even with your fingers, spread the filling in the centre, lift the edges as if you’re making a hand pie or calzone, seal the dough and quickly turn the whole thing over, flatten and make a whole in the centre. Pohlyobkin writes that you should then put it in the oven COVERED (I covered it with aluminium foil) for 10 min (I preheated oven to 180 C at first but then understood that 200 should be better, so bake at 200 C) and then TURN it over, which is just impossible if your pie is huge, so I skipped this turning over and just brushed as instructed the top with some butter and egg, returned the pies to bake additional 40 min or so – if you bake 2 pies at a time, make sure to change their position, to rotate them too, so that not only one of them gets all the heat and both are baked through and nicely browned.

Khachapuri

Result: The pies are great, with any filling and of course better on the day of baking but if you happen to make the original amount of dough and end up with lots of pies, just warm them up the next day in a microwave or better in oven. The finer you roll the dough, the more filling you put, the greater is the result!

Khachapuri inside

***

And for the dessert – a recipe that I came across while searching for one that will enable me to reproduce one of my favourite store-bought sweet treats – an ‘envelope’ with jam (konvertik s povidlom), usually with apple jam, almost apple sauce. It’s most certainly NOT made out of puff pastry so I ignored the ones where this kind of dough was required and finally made my choice. The original recipe is truly Soviet, although perhaps not that much truly traditional, with amazing measurements and enormous quantities etc.  I halved the recipe and still got a LOT. So if you have nice thick jam on hand (and we DO) along with fresh yeast (that can be easily substituted with active dry or even instant yeast, just Google the topic), go ahead!

Jam envelopes

The author claims that this dough is suitable even for pizza as it almost doesn’t contain sugar but I wouldn’t try using it for pizza (poor Italians! if only they knew…) but for some small mmm I would say sweet pies it’s ok.

Jam Envelopes (already halved, adapted from here, recipe is in Russian, of course)

Ingredients

  • 200 g butter or margarine, at room temperature – I took less, about 150 g perhaps
  • 0,5 l jar of flour (?!?!?) – just measure 500 ml flour or 3 cups =) and I used more as usual
  • 25 g fresh yeast (or make proportional substitution with dry yeast)
  • 0,5 of a famous Soviet glass of milk – or just take o,5 cup milk + 2 Tbs
  • 1 egg
  • 1 Tbs white sugar
  • half a pinch of salt (haha!)
  • half a Tbs vegetable oil
  • vanilla sugar, to taste
  • jam, thick (I used blackcurrant, the same as for Linzer cupcakes and it was still not THAT thick)
  • chopped nuts, optional (not sure they’ll be ok here)
  • egg yolk (my addition – useful for securing the corners of the envelops and for brushing)

Method

Rub together fresh yeast and sugar, heat the milk (do not boil or you’ll kill the yeast) a bit and pour it over the mixture. Add some flour (just lllllloooooovvvveee these instructions!), mix and set aside for 10 min (let’s say, add the flour till the mixture constituency resembles that of not thick sour cream, this is called opara or poolish or starter, but doesn’t take hours or overnight to get ready, you’ll see a kind of cloudy white cap emerging on the surface). Sift the rest of the flour and then rub the butter/margarine into the flour (‘cut’ it together with the flour).

Beat the egg into the opara and add vanilla sugar and oil, then merge with flour-butter crumbly mixture (it should be crumbly, eh?) and knead till you get, well, dough. Leave to rest for half an hour, OBLIGATORILY covering the bowl with plastic film (in Russian the effect that you will get otherwise on your dough can be translated literally ‘being WINDed’, sorry for grammar=).

Roll the dough out to desired thickness (eh?!), cut out squares (hmmm, well, my mathematics resulted in some 12 squares, I suppose). Put jam in the middle of each square (here be careful not to put too much, leave the borders free and also make sure that your jam is REALLY thick! you can even put it into the fridge for some time so that it doesn’t spread all over the piece of dough and beyond! The author advises to add some chopped nuts if the jam is not thick but I didn’t do it).

Jam envelopes

Lift the corners and fold them as an envelope (here I just dipped my finger in the egg yolk, reputed for its clue-like facilities, then brushed the corners with a bit of it and pinched the corners). (CAREFULLY) place them on a baking sheet (I buttered it. They will puff while in the oven, so leave spaces between the envelopes), bake at medium temperature (??!! 180 C was OK) till LIGHTLY BROWNED (AGAIN?!?!? it took mine some 15 min and I also brushed them with the rest of the egg yolk for a nicer crust before baking).

Surely I was too generous with the jam (that we’re trying to use up, hehe) at first and my envelopes gave away some jam but as they cool (DO remove them from the sheet quickly though, because otherwise the jam will solidify and you’ll have some problems lifting them) the jam gets thicker so it was OK. The dough is nice (and even on the next day) and light, without much yeasty taste.

P.S. Always forget to tell you that tsp = teaspoon and Tbs = tablespoon in my Ingredients lists, which are both quite a relative measurement, I know, but I find it less challenging than grams…

Coming soon!

G.

muffins · sweet

Ode to My Baboushka

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Broadcasting from my renovated room with new curtains (bought 2 Ikea plaids and converted them into curtains+share one of plain white curtains with my parents’ room=), another day with no prospect of a job, even the open vacancies on headhunter were almost absent today (perhaps it’s just Monday?). I have quite a crowd of things to share with you so I’m starting with that what I promised –  some (warm) words about my Granny.

Granny is such a wonderful person, extremely kind, caring and I love her… well, she IS my Granny! She’s quite conservative in her way of life and how she considers that of others (including ours) – but that is so very characteristic of baboushka, isn’t it? (BTW, the accent is on the first syllable, bAboushka, so Kate Bush is wrong;) ) She has her garden, her every year struggle with growing cucumbers which always hide from her in the leaves till they get enormously huge; with tomatoes which you have to pick before the cold weather (hey, don’t forget I live in the North) which means they get their colour artificially, lying somewhere under the cupboard; with – finally – courgettes that are more like gigantic brothers of zucchini which we tend to enjoy much more… The garden is her life, anyway, her and my Grandpa’s, cause during spring, summer and autumn days there’s always something (= A LOT) to do and this is a mandatory condition for any Soviet person to… live. Yes, you cannot live without being constantly involved in doing, mending, working, baking, sewing, constructing, growing or destroying (that depends on a person=). From their early ages my grandparents have always been working, saving each day for something (a very Soviet habit or even an obsession, that my parents seem not to have inherited;) ), being our constant support in everything that concerns hmm money. We have a family joke about our grandparents hiding a clandestine money-printing machine or breaking into banks on a monthly basis. Well, now to be serious, they just possess this Soviet … grasp, which enables you not only to plan (remember 5-year state planning for industry, economy etc in the USSR?) ahead but also to realize those plans! Guess what? They’ve never been rich but with rigid economy measures during the Soviet times. Now they continue the same lifestyle although it became self-denying  too much, I think. I wish I could EVER pay them back, not only in money, I mean in all that they have done for us.

festive table with all the required components

Ok, now the recipe of the cupcakes (well, they’re more like muffins) I made for my Granny’s birthday. As it is her usual habit to cook MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCH more than expected (and also to get upset when we arrive – as it was arranged – already after lunch and refuse to eat much), we saw a typical Soviet festive table, including the best crockery of the house (I love it, some of it is very subtle and as it is on the table each year for a special occasion, it reminds me of my childhood years, when we with my sister would come to our grandparents’ place to get our presents, hehehe, or to give our handmade presents to them), salmon, sausage and cheese and butter plate, wine, homemade apple juice (always on the table for the sober children), fruit, chocolates and of course the cake – this time sour cream and sweetened condensed milk one, with chocolate shavings on the top.

Smetana cake

My cupcakes just got lost 😉

tea time

Linzer Cupcakes  (adapted from www.anediblemosaic.com)

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 3/4 cup canola oil – I used a mixture of leftover melted butter and sunflower oil
  • 3 eggs – I used leftover egg white and 2 whole eggs
  • 3/4 cup milk – I used buttermilk (homemade prostokvasha) as I ran out of milk
  • 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 2 cup all purpose flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • About 1 1/2 cup jam (whatever kind you like) – I used my Granny’s very thick and sweet blackcurrant jam
  • About 3 Tbs powdered sugar  – I didn’t count how much I used

Method

Preheat oven to 180 C and line a cupcake baking pan with paper liners (I have only individual muffin-sized forms so I just lined them with paper liners bought in Germany=).  Use a handheld electric mixer (well, any mixer I suppose) to beat sugar and oil together in a large bowl, then cream in eggs until light and fluffy; beat in milk and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, and salt.  Gradually beat dry ingredients into wet until just combined, making sure not to over-mix (that’s what I usually tend to do, so be careful!).

Fill each cupcake well with batter to just under the top of the paper liner (DO it as it’s said, cause I didn’t and had to pull away the liners so that I could cut the top). Bake 22-24 minutes, or until light golden around the edges and a toothpick inserted into the cupcake comes out clean or with just slightly moist with a crumb or two.  Cool for 5-10 minutes in the cupcake baking pan and then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

When the cupcakes are cool, cut the tops off with a serrated bread knife (this is easiest to do by turning the cupcake upside down on the countertop, and then gently running the knife between the cupcake top and the top of the paper liner).  Use a small heart-shaped cookie cutter (or whatever shape you like) to stamp out a heart from the cupcake tops (I used a heart-shaped one and also the smallest cookie-guy cutter I had for the smallest muffins. RESERVE the cut hearts and dust them with powdered sugar!).  Pour a little powdered sugar into a small sieve and lightly dust the cupcake tops with a sprinkle of powdered sugar.  Spread a spoonful of jam on the top of each cupcake, then put the tops on and spoon a little jam into the heart-shaped cut out (I changed the procedure as i was going to transport the cupcakes to my Granny’s, so I first cut the tops off, cut the hearts, put the jam in the centre, replaced the toppings, filled the heart with a bit more jam and put them all in a container. When we arrived, I took them out and decorated with sugar powder).

the process

Visit the original recipe blog for clear instructions on how to make your cupcakes ‘linzer‘ ! And also better choose a rather thick jam cause otherwise you’ll get a lot of fuss trying to prevent the jam from escaping your cupcake.

The cupcakes lasted several days (as I baked more things), gradually becoming more moist with the jam. If you cover your cupcakes for the night or if you live in the same humid conditions as we do, DO expect that the powdered sugar decoration will disappear and you’ll have to renew it in the morning.

Real Linzer, aren’t they? almost an Austrian recipe =)

cupcakes

***

As far as cupcakes and muffins are concerned, let’s mention also my yesterday effort to use at least one of already dying courgettes from my Granny’s garden.  This is what I did:

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins (adapted from here) 

Ingredients

  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 cup cocoa, sifted – I used less than half a cup of cacao and the rest was this Soviet barley-chicory ‘coffee’
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp allspice – no such pepper in my pantry so I used some cayenne pepperand a little powdered ginger
  • 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon – I love cinnamon and always don’t measure it =)
  • 1 1/2 cups brown sugar – hoho, I economized and used half white, half brown
  • 1/4 cup melted butter
  • 3/4 cup vegetable oil – lessssssssssss
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/2 cup buttermilk (I used prostokvasha, eeeeh, will tell you later about it!)
  • 2 cups zucchini (washed , ends removed, peeled, cut in half lengthwise and seeded,  grated and squeezed out)
  • 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips – no such thing here, so I just chopped a bar of my favourite – and Melina’s 😉 – Russian bitter  chocolate Osobiy)

Method

Preheat oven to 180 C. Line 20 muffin cups with muffin liners or spray with nonstick cooking spray (I used my muffin tins and newly purchased small metal tins from Bielorus which cut my hands all over, that’s why they cost only 25 cents each!). In a large bowl whisk together flour, cocoa, salt, baking soda, allspice and cinnamon; set aside.
In a medium bowl whisk together the sugar(s), butter and oil. Beat in eggs, one at a time until combined. Stir in vanilla, buttermilk, zucchini and chocolate chips. Gently stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined.
Divide batter equally among prepared muffin cups. Bake until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean and muffin tops are springy to the touch, 20 to 24 minutes (in my case it took half an hour as my muffins were large); rotating halfway through baking time. Cool muffins in muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool 5 minutes before serving.

autumn light

My Father got inspired and made some photos of my chocozucchomuffins =) and even decorated them! So more professional photos yet to come. AND for those who have never seen ZUCCHINI used in such a way, I’m telling you – just don’t tell anyone and nobody will ever guess that they ARE there! everything disappears inside, you only get great moist texture with some chunky chocolate pieces and occasional green spots – which happens if you forgot to peel your courgette well. The second thing is NOT to eat them immediately after baking, let them cool and set, because while they’re still warm, the courgette thing can easily give itself away =) But don’t worry, after some time everything will be OK. And if you’re still not at all convinced and reassured, they even use beetroot and POTATOES in cakes! And I’m sure you’ve already tried carrot cakes with cream cheese filling? Or pumpkin pie? That’s it!

I’ve already got a recipe from my Granny so once will try it for sure. It still takes me loads of time to write (or better compose) a post and I apologize for promising much and doing everything slowly, perhaps I’ve been in Greece for too long =)

P.S. Couldn’t keep myself from posting more of that subtle crockery and sweeeeet cake of my Granny’s!

Smetana cake once again

See you soon,

G.

Romanian recipe · sweet · sweet bread

Celebrating My Room’s Rebirth with Cozonac

georgiagilmour2 Comments

Cozonac with our garden plums

I’m continuing my international cuisine experiments, this time with a Romanian sweet filled bread, Cozonac (meaning ‘biscuit’). I have no friends yet from Romania so I’m dedicating it to my room’s rebirth. It’s coming back to life after tiresome ceiling and window sill redo along with the change of carpet, sofa and yet-to-come (hopefully from IKEA) curtains and sofa cover. This Cozonac is tasty, not too sweet (you can guess my parents eat it with homemade raspberry jam) and really effectively huge =) I had to bake it additional 15 min I think, cause it seemed a bit too soft in the middle (I should have chosen a larger pan). Anyway, it’s just what you need for a rainy and veeeeeeeeeeeery windy day when you also have to go to two job interviews (oooh, how boring…).

Before moving on to the recipe I want to apologize once again for not continuing my Soviet or Russian traditional topics, I will return to them soon, got already some ideas and recipes from my Granny (whose birthday is tomorrow, which means more baking from her and my sides;) ). I’ve even already written some posts about public catering and leftovers dishes but for publishing that I still have to cook at least some of the recipes I’ll be talking about in my future posts.

And one more thing before the recipe – some photos from my room redo which was mostly done by my Mother, who’s an expert in so many things, a truly Soviet person. She’s my constant counselor and well of knowledge in what regards the Soviet era (sometimes it’s hard even for her to realize this huge difference between the ‘good ol’ times’ and nowadays). She’s in this photo on the left with my Father, both in their special Soviet clothes, kept in some remote corner for how many years.

And this is me on the right. I’m contributing to my room better look after two consecutive winters when exactly my room got flooded from above – we live on the last floor…Even with no apparent holes in the roof milliards of last-floor households got their roofs damaged with all that hhhm stuff combined with the crazy amount of melting snow leaking and also showering down from the roof attic. We got our 10 000 roubles compensation for it, that’s true, but who can make up for my Father’s risk climbing on the roof to get rid of the snow which can further damage our ceilings?! Ok, that’s not the place to flood you with my complaints =)

So, the clothes are from the Soviet era, typical ones, my Mother got the trousers from Detsky Mir store (Children World store with all kinds of goods for kids) in the beginning of the 90s and they were considered rather cool and apparently not only suitable for children. The T-shirt is just pure cotton, even transparent after active use =) Kidding, I’m not wearing this stuff, nor does any of my family except for such special occasions when you paint the ceiling, we actually swap them with my Mother.

The old carpet changing is the most interesting part (if you don’t mind its pieces flying all around the room when you lift it and look under it…). Now I’ve got two identical ‘Persian’ carpets from Germany, bought God knows when for special coupons one could get – as in case of my Grandfather – for the business trip abroad during Soviet times. He went to Germany and instead of actual money (you’re not supposed to buy Western-capitalism stuff!!) he got those coupons which could be used only in a specialized shop back home (famous Beryozka shops, with exported goods not available in other Soviet shops, only on black market). The only thing my Mother and Granny could find in that shop was this Persian carpet from Germany. After my Grandfather’s second business trip and the same amount of coupons, the only solution was to buy yet another carpet – identical (great choice!). For how many years those two were hanging on our walls – a typical Soviet way of disposing of carpets, gathering dust, being a kind of sound-insulation too and protecting from cold. But also taking away lots of light, as they are dark. So now (such a blasphemy!) they’re aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah under our legs, quite soft by the way =) They are weird, too bright for a carpet but at least now they ARE carpets. Soviet way of hanging them as a sort of picture or a status sign doesn’t work for me, I prefer practical things.

And about things – on the left is a small treasure I found behind the bookcase, which is not THAT old but it’s here since we were children with my sister. I can clearly remember most of the found things, except for this weird story about some ‘An-Maly notes‘ of a girl who wore pink and spoke Russian with an accent =) haha, written and illustrated by me =) What else was there? The plasticine figures made according to the patterns from the plasticine package, the box from Estonian marmalade (from hard Perestroyka times), Norwegian candies (I even remember their taste, don’t remember how we got them though, not a usual stuff to buy in those years), nut shell (why not?), a box with some ‘treasures’ (usually children bury them underground to discover them later, it’s called ‘small secret’), an old pencil, a postcard for my great grandmother and a paper stating that we won’t chase for green plastic bags owners in particular districts of my city =D That was a ‘game’ we created with my sister and friends, haha, Green Plastic Bags mission! Now I put all of them into a paper bag and will take them to our dacha, a usual place to keep all your old stuff.

But now, the recipe, adapted from fabfoodblog.blogspot.com.

Cozonac, Romanian sweet bread 

  • 600 g all purpose flour
  • 100 g butter, melted and cooled (I used somewhere about 1/4 of that, so don’t melt too much;) )
  • 150 g white sugar
  • 4 eggs, separated
  • 1/4 l milk + a bit more for the yeast
  • 25 g fresh yeast (now I have only half a package for my Soviet stuff)
  • 60 g walnuts, almonds, nuts, chopped (I used walnuts, cashew, raisins and chopped dried fruit)
  • 3 Tbs cocoa powder
  • zest of one lemon (I took some orange zest from the freezer)
  • 4 Tbs rum (‘Zapekanka‘ I told you about before)
  • 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 egg yolk and a little milk (it took me whole yolk and a bit of prostokvasha (kind of fermented milk or buttermilk) cause I ran out of milk )

Loosen the yeast in a little warm milk and leave for 5 to 10 minutes until bubbly (mine wouldn’t bubble).
Meanwhile, heat 1/4 l milk but do not let it boil. Place 2 Tbs flour in a salad bowl, add the hot milk and mix vigorously until smooth. Leave to cool down somewhat.
Separate the 4 eggs into whites and yolks.
Beat the whites with a pinch of salt until soft peaks.
In a bowl, mix together the 4 egg yolks, the powdered sugar, 2 Tbs rum, lemon zest and 1 tsp vanilla extract until smooth and homogeneous.
When the milk and flour mixture has cooled down, add 2/3 of the beaten egg whites and the egg yolks mixture. Mix, and leave for a few minutes (As there was no mention of the yeast-milk mixture, I added it at this stage).
Place the flour in a large salad bowl and add the preceding mixture. Mix. If the dough is too wet, add some flour but not enough to obtain a stiff dough. Knead for about 10 minutes (I’m too impatient to knead for 10 min…)
Start adding melted butter, one tsp at the time. Knead well, then add more butter. Keep kneading the dough for about 20 minutes (popopopo!). Depending on the dough and how it feels to the touch, you might not need to add all the butter (I added all in all about 25 g of melted butter and I don’t think the dough lost a lot from it).

halved Cozonac the next day

Shape the dough as a ball, place in a lightly oiled container, cover with a towel and leave to ferment for an hour.

During this time, mix the cocoa, 2 Tbs rum, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, the chopped dry fruits and the remaining 1/3 of the beaten egg whites to obtain a thick paste (I would make more filling as there’s so much of dough that the filling is totally lost somewhere in the middle).
Divide the dough in 2, 3 or 4 equal parts (I made 3 parts). Flatten each part in a rectangle, spread the cocoa mix and roll up. Braid the strands together, then place in a lightly buttered baking tin (choose a wider one so that the bread won’t take ages to bake). Cover with a towel and leave to proof for an hour.
Pre-heat the oven to 200 C.

Bake at 200 C for 10 minutes then lower the oven temperature to 180 C. Bake for a further 10-15 min (I baked mine 10 min) then, using a pastry brush, coat the surface with a mix of egg yolk and milk (at this point, before brushing, my bread was already brown and very tall almost touching the oven ‘ceiling’). Bake a further 20 min (here I had to cover it with aluminium foil which was tricky cause the bread was so huge and tall. I took it out after 20 min and as it was too soft in the middle, I left it covered but already taken from the pan for additional 15 min in the oven, then switched it off and left the bread there with an open door).
Immediately remove from the baking tin and leave to cool on a rack for a minimum of 2 hours before serving.

Ok, have to go now. Wish me luck and less reluctant and lazy approach to job seeking.

G.

bread

Bread Ψομί Pain Pane Hleb

georgiagilmour4 Comments

I’ve got quite a few bread recipes waiting their turn to get published, let’s give two of them this chance!

I’ll start with Easy Tomato Bread found at About.com which although quite sticky and refusing to rise turned out to be such a lovely loaf with soft texture and unusual – for bread – tomato flavour and taste. Let’s call this recipe American (at least its author is from Pennsylvania) and dedicate it to my overseas or better Transatlantic friend Sarah.

Easy Tomato Bread

Easy Tomato Bread adapted from breadbaking.about.com

Ingredients

  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 Tbs sugar
  • 1 Tbs butter (as there’s no shortening in Russia)
  • 1 Tbs active dry yeast
  • 3/4 cup warm water
  • 1/2 cup crushed tomatoes  (the original recipe asked for tomato paste, but that was what I had on hand)
  • 2-1/4 cups flour (I used about 3 cups for sure)
  • dried basil (to make it a little bit Italian too)
  • 1 egg white
  • poppy seeds

Method

In medium bowl, mix together salt, sugar, butter, yeast, water, basil and tomatoes. Mix in 2 cups of flour.
Turn dough out on floured board. Knead in remaining 1/4 cup flour (or in my case more more more flour, perhaps all due to my crushed tomatoes).
Put dough in greased bowl, turn over so that top is greased. Cover and let set in warm place for about 1 hour or until double in size.
Punch down. Turn out onto board and knead for about 3 minutes.
breakfast
Form dough into loaf. Place in greased rectangle loaf pan. Cover and let rise for about 45 minutes or until double in size (mine wouldn’t rise, just a little bit, but in the oven it sprang).
Brush on egg white and sprinkle poppy seeds on top. Score the loaf by making three quick slashes across the top.
Bake at 190 C for 45 minutes or until the bread sounds hollow when you tap on it with your fingers (never try it on a hot pan;) ) Remove from heat and turn loaf out. Let cool on a rack or on a clean cloth. suggests that this bread can be wrapped and frozen for up to three months. I swear it won’t last for more than 2 days!
Easy Tomato Bread slices

***

The second bread doesn’t have a person to dedicate it to, let’s just move on to it. Surely it’s also American, cause it’s from King Arthur Flour recipes (love their blog and recipes!), so Sarah, it’s again for you =) Although it’s not winter yet, we, Russians, just cannot live without black bread, so usually I bake two kinds of bread – ‘white’ (see Tomato bread, hehe) and ‘black’ – from rye or whole wheat flour. The first one is for breakfast and it corresponds roughly to what we call ‘boolka‘ in Russian (and I as a child pronounced ‘booka‘) and the second type is for lunch or dinner and it’s most likely referred to as ‘hleb’ (or my version – ‘hep’); however both types are ‘hleb’ (‘bread’), that’s a general word as in English.

heart of winter loaves

Heart of Winter Loaf adapted slightly from www.kingarthurflour.com. Makes 2 loaves.

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
  • 3/4 cup oat flour or ground oatmeal
  • 1/3 cup flax flour (I’m happy to have found all these required types except whole wheat in Russia)
  • 1/4 cup dry milk
  • 2 Tbs white sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp instant yeast
  • 1 3/4 cups water

Topping
1 egg white, lightly beaten + the seeds of your choice (I used caraway, flax and poppy seeds, coriander, black sesame)

Method

Combine all of the dough ingredients (the flour mixture is just extraordinary!), mixing and kneading to form a smooth, sticky dough. Cover the dough, and let it rise for about an hour; it should become puffy.
Divide the dough in half, and shape each half into an oval loaf. Place the loaves on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Cover the pan, and allow the loaves to rise for about 90 minutes, or till they’ve increased in size by about one-third. Just before baking, brush the loaves with a lightly beaten egg white, then sprinkle with seeds. Slash each loaf diagonally three times (or more=) ).

extraordinary mix of flours for Heart of Winter Loaf
Bake the loaves in a preheated 200 C oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove the bread from the oven, and transfer it to a rack to cool.

My canary bird seemed to enjoy this bread =) He was moving so quickly that I couldn’t capture him on a photo right. But in this one he looks so funny, just as he did 10 years ago!

P.S. Sarah, good luck to you and a letter to your far-far-far away place will soon be on its way =) Wish I could share these loaves with you!

Tomorrow there are two job interviews so… who knows! We’ll see.

See you soon,

G.

German recipe · Greek recipe

Remembering Greece and My Dear Friend on a Rainy Day

georgiagilmour4 Comments

Actually I’ve been remembering Greece quite often these days, when the autumn is coming into its realm of rain, wind and running nose. I’m still in search of a job, so I’m ‘baking out’ in order not to gnaw myself too much (‘How long will it continue? Where the hell are all nice jobs? Do I deserve something more …?’ etc etc).  My favourite escapism trick is to bake, that’s also my favourite method of cooking food. Curiously yesterday and today the things I baked had all somehow a connection to Greece, although only one recipe was actually a Greek one.

ready for baking

So let’s start from the morning Marble Cake or Marmorkuchen in German, a recipe I got in a letter from my dear friend Jana whom I met in Thessaloniki last year. Another letter-inspired dish =) I followed it – as usual – not in a word-to-word style, changing a few things. The cocoa powder I used for it was Greek (finished it today), the remainder of what I managed to bring from Thessaloniki to my place after living there for a year. I’m citing you the recipe as written by Jana.

Marmorkuchen

Jana’s Marmorkuchen slightly adapted from a great Jana’s letter

Ingredients

  • 1 cup of oil (I used hardly half of it)
  • 1 cup of soda water (Russia is no Germany, so I used my Father’s favourite sparkling mineral water + some baking soda, quite straightforward, but it seems to have worked;) )
  • 1 packet of baking powder (I took about a Tbs)
  • 1 packet of vanilla sugar (I used vanilla extract)
  • 1 cup of sugar (my sweet-toothed parents would have liked more)
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 cups of flour

Method

You only have to merge everything together, says Jana, (not the cocoa powder yet). Then take the half of the dough (German people say 1/3 of it minimum, but trust me they’re too accurate and stupid – that’s not me saying it, that’s Jana 🙂 ) and mix it with the cocoa powder. Put both doughs in one pan and ‘paint’ a pattern into it with a fork (not too much, because then the cake won’t be like marble and you’ll have a chocolate cake:) I don’t mind in most cases).

autumn harvest

This is it, very laconic and simple, a truly German cake, I got even hooked to this long and soft Marmorkuchen from Lidl while I was in Europe=D My cake was in the oven for about an hour at 175 C, perhaps I should have chosen another pan, more long or wider. Anyway it was gobbled down in 2 days with the help of my grandparents who also brought today some delicious autumn harvest goods from our country house (it seems I already promised to talk about dacha concept, I will eventually do it!).  There were some forest mushrooms from yesterday walk which I missed unfortunately. Those mushrooms (we’re true hobbits here!) are already turned into a delicious soup.

Next thing I baked was a Greek Alevropita (Αλευρόπιτα, literally ‘flour pie’) that actually was so quick’n’good that I did it again in the evening for my parents. It’s a foolproof appetizer that can be made with any kind of topping I suppose (it even reminded us of Flammekueche or Tarte flambée). Here’s the simple recipe found via Tastespotting from The Meaning of Pie blog

Alevropita before being gobbled down

Αλευρόπιτα (Alevropita) adapted from www.themeaningofpie.com – go there for all the required safety instructions =).

Ingredients

  • 2+2 Tbs olive oil, for batter and for the skillet
  • 2 tsp vodka (I used Russian 20% brandy-like spirit called Zapekanka, bought specially for cooking)
  • 1/2 cup water
  • half an egg (lreserve the rest for the second Alevropita😉 )
  • 1/2 cup plus 2 Tbs all purpose flour, sifted
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 1/8 tsp baking powder
  • as much crumbled feta cheese as you want (I used ‘Serbian cheese’ or Srpski sir that appeared in our supermarkets – more creamy and less salty; possible extra topping ingredients : minced garlic, oregano, I can imagine bacon or something like that too)
  • 1 Tbs unsalted butter, softened

Method

Preheat the oven to 500 C with the cast iron skillet inside (the largest you have).

Meanwhile, combine the water, vodka, olive oil, and half an egg. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk them together.

Carefully remove the heavy hot pan from the oven. Pour the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil (or less) in the skillet and spread it as you would do for frying. Immediately pour in the batter and spread it to the edges of the pan to the extent possible moving the skillet (the skillet is so hot that the batter will be cooking as you spread). Sprinkle the feta on top of the batter (with garlic and oregano etc, if using). Dot the batter with small pieces of butter.

Carefully, return the pan to the oven for an additional 15 to 20 min (it took only 15 min the both pies I baked, they got really browned at that point). Carefully remove the pan back to the stove-top. With a large spatula, remove the bread to a cutting board. Cut it into pieces and serve (my parents added some sour cream on top, a typical Russian-Soviet extra thing, used like a sauce for everything, you’ll see it most probably on each lunch/dinner table here).

4 pieces left

So as I said, I baked this thin flat pie for the second time, adding garlic and oregano. The second got gobbled down with no problem so quickly that I didn’t have an opportunity to make a photo of it.

The wooden round board has a long story of at least 26 years : when my parents were getting married, my Father’s Mother brought here all the way from the Caucasus (where they lived while my grandfather was working there) ON THE PLANE prepared layers for the wedding cake. They were that huge, A LOT of them and she ‘wrapped’ them between two round boards, one of which still serves us loyally.

This time no Soviet recipes yet, sorry, I’m perhaps still too much into international cuisine. But 25 g fresh yeast in my fridge will soon make me bake something truly Soviet =)

P.S. Dear Jana, only you will understand this photo =) thank you very much for the κουτί, it’s great for keeping all those baking powders! Miss you.

Coming soon,

G.