About Me and My Cooking Blog
Hello there,
That is me at Niagara Falls
My name is Julia and I am very glad you’ve stopped by to read my cooking blog.
It looks like nowadays not many people have time and/or mood to cook food at home.
And I think, even less of them are actually enjoying the process of making home food, they probably think: making food is hard or boring.
So I really hope you will find recipes posted here useful, tasty and fun to prepare, and you will actually enjoy cooking them.
About me
I was born in USSR, the country which doesn’t exist anymore, nevertheless it is still hard for me to differentiate the dishes I prepare (and my mom prepares, and my grand mom does till now) by various countries cuisines they are supposed to be belong to. Just because all of them are the dishes I am used to eat since I was little, and I never bothered to think whatever it is russian, or ukrainian, or polish, or hungarian, or romanian, or georgian, or god knows which else: if it tasted good – so I liked it. And I like it till now! That is why you can find dishes from various eastern European cuisines on my website.
I was living in Russia behind the polar circle for a while almost since I was born, then it was a time to study in university and that was in Ukraine, then I had an opportunity to live and work for few years in Austria. During my times of living in the heart of Europe, I’ve visited Italy, Romania, Poland, Germany, France, Czech Republic and I really love all those countries for their common and different sides, and I hope you will find a hints of each of them in my recipes.
Finally on the beginning of 2008 my foot was set on another continent: today I live and work in US, and I hope to discover interesting recipes of this part of the world. Looking back today I really think the possibility to travel like was one of greatest outcomes which the braking of USSR gave me, however I really miss my family in Ukraine and I really wish I can visit them more often.
Join me
I hope you like my site, and If you can’t find here a recipe you are looking for feel free to ask me about it: if I know how to make it – it will be added to the site as soon as I can.
I also will be happy to answer any questions about recipes I’ve already posted: all of those recipes are done by me, photographed by my better half and eaten by both of us (and some times by our friends), so all those dishes are real homemade food we eat on daily basis.
As you probably noticed, I am posting new recipes on weekly basis, feel free to follow me on Twitter, add EnjoyYourCooking to your Google Plus circles or become a fan of EnjoyYourCooking on facebook so you don’t miss updates. I also will be happy if you join me there to discuss recipes, homemade cooking or even just for fun.
I really think what by cooking food by your hands you are not only giving yourself and your family a chance to stay healthy, but you are also showing relatives you do care about them. I think it is important to know what is on your plate. Indeed, we are what we eat… So make your food yourself! And yes, Enjoy Your Cooking!
Julia
enjoyyourcooking.com
PS. Please read copyright info before using any content (including text or images) from this website in your work.
I am so glad I found you blog on google. I was looking for Uha recipe and it directed me to your blog. thank you, there are foods I will certaintly try.
Thanks and welcome
Julia – very glad came across your blog – please do not stop writing recepies. Found a few I will definitely try in the next few days. Also wanted to ask if you know how to make Plov ? I understand there are quite a few ways to make it. Let me know please if you have a favorite recepie. Thanks
Hello Edward and thank you!
I do have 2 recipes for plov (with chicken or pork):
Pork Plov: http://www.enjoyyourcooking.com/main-dish-recipes/pork-pilaf.html
Chicken Plov: http://www.enjoyyourcooking.com/main-dish-recipes/chicken-pilaf.html
The main thing there to not to over cook rice
and ofc you can use lamb instead of pork for the original recipe. I don’t really like lamb.
I am very happy that found your blog. There are many great recipes – some of them alraedy have tried, others will be tired. And I was amazed that some of your recipes (Russian Salad (Olivier), Oladi (Russian Pancakes) with Apple, Russian Kefir Pancakes (Oladi), Fresh Cheese Pancakes, Borscht (Beetroot Soup), Cold Borscht, plov) we (lithuanians) also make on casual days like in russia
Yes, it is sometimes very hard to specify what country recipe belongs to, since most of them are very popular in many-many countries…
Hello, I just found your site after visiting Ukraine for the first time and wanting to find out how to make some of the delicious food I ate there. I had a great marinated mushroom salad at someone’s house there, but I don’t know what it was called. It had small whole button mushrooms, I think julienned carrots, a dressing that involved garlic, vinegar, and sugar, and I don’t know what else. It did not have mayonnaise in it. Does this sound familiar to you?
That doesn’t sound familiar to me, but for sure sounds delicious… I would love to have this recipe…
Hi Julia,
my name is Yuliya and I like your site! Nice pictures, too! I also have a blog about Russian cooking ( http://www.yuliyas.com ), although right now most of the recipes I published there are not really traditionally Russian, just my own creations. It’s interesting to see how even the traditionally Russian recipes can be so different from person to person. I’d like to follow you on Twitter, please follow me too if you are interested (@YuliyasBlog)
Every cook adds something from himself to any recipe, that is why recipes differ from person to person, especially for such multi-cultural and big country as Russia.
Hello Norma who sent me question about Kefir and Quark/Tvorog/Fresh Cheese via contact form.
If you read this, I just wanted to let you know that yahoo returns email sent to the address you left in the contact form with the following error: “This user doesn’t have a yahoo.com account”.
So I will post my reply here, and hope you will be able to find it.
Sincerely,
Julia
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Hello Norma,
I am very happy that you found my site useful, and thank you for contacting me with your questions. I am glad there still people whose passion for cooking knows no borders
Regarding quark, if you do kefir at home you already on half way to making quark. I never did it myself – still have to try it some time, but in theory it isn’t that hard.
My mom used to do it this way:
- Pour kefir into smaller pot.
- Pour of water into bigger pot and put small pot in (I don’t know how to explain better, the small pot should be in the water but it shouldn’t touch bottom of the bigger one).
- Put this “construction” on the burner and bring water to boil, let is boil for about 5 mins.
- Then turn heat off and let it all cool down until water is warm (not hot anymore)
- Arrange several layers of cheese cloth in the colander, pour kefir in and strain all liquid off.
- After most of liquid if gone you can actually wrap quark in cheese cloth and squeeze remaining liquid off.
I actually didn’t know there exist such things as quark makers, my mom always used pots and cheese cloth, it didn’t seem like something that requires more than this equipments.
Hope that helps.
Julia
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If you are looking for instructions of how to make quark (tvorog), see the comment above.