My Main Dish Recipes
February 4th, 2012 in Chicken, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina Don’t get scared by amount of ingredients: it isn’t that complicated to cook chicken lasagna with spinach and fresh cheese at home, especially if you have noodles which doesn’t require boiling.
Of course it will take some time too cook stuffing as well white sauce, but at the end you will get whole baking pan of tasty creamy lasagna.
I used fresh spinach, but frozen will work good too, just thaw it before cooking and drain liquid before mixing with cooked chicken. Tvorog (fresh cow cheese) can be replaced with ricotta of the same weight as well.
Serve lasagna 10-15 mins after you take it from the oven; leftovers can be stored in fridge and re-heated in microwave.
Tags: bechamel, cheese, chicken, dinner, flour, fresh cheese, lunch, milk, noodles, parmesan, parsley, romantic, spinach
January 21st, 2012 in Main Dish Recipes, No-meat, Side Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina I think any kind of potatoes can be cooked this way, however red skin ones are the best here. You can take big potatoes and slice them in smaller wedges or smaller ones and cook them whole or sliced in halves.
Vary amount of herbs as well as herbs themselves to your taste, in additional to rosemary, thyme, oregano you can use parsley, dill, black pepper, etc; I would just advise to keep rosemary in – it goes great with potatoes.
Over-roasted herbed redskin potatoes can be a no-meat dish on itself or you can accompany a meat entry with it as a side dish.
Tags: garlic, no meat, oil, potato, side dish
December 23rd, 2011 in Beef, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina Another variation for ukrainian cabbage rolls: meat staffed cabbage rolls with gentle sour cream and onion sauce.
Making these from scratch will take some time as any recipe for cabbage rolls even if you use ground beef and don’t need to prepare it yourself, you still need to separate cabbage, assemble rolls and then cook them.
But don’t let this to stop you – even though it is time consuming to cook cabbage rolls you will get enough rolls for later – just store left overs in fridge or freezer.
Tags: cabbage, dinner, ground beef, lunch, meat, onion, rice, russian, sour cream, ukrainian
December 17th, 2011 in Main Dish Recipes, No-meat by Julia Volhina Mannaya Kasha is one of foods associated for russian people with their childhood. When I was little I was always told it is rich on nutrients and required for healthy kid growth – every kid knew that to grow strong and healthy they need to finish up their plate with semolina porridge.
Just as a note: while researching for proper translation for this recipe, I stumbled on information that semolina porridge isn’t recommended for kids younger than 3 years (which was new to me) as it contains high amount of gluten and also phytin. But because it also has a lot of proteins and high content of vitamins E and B1 it is very good for kids after 3 year old who have no gluten intolerance.
While cooking it is important to stir mannaya kasha all the time (I use whisk for this and it helps a lot), or you will get clots and no kid likes them in their mannaya kasha.
Tags: breakfast, butter, kid food, lunch, milk, no meat, russian, semolina flour, soft food, sugar, ukrainian
December 10th, 2011 in Beef, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina Chanterelles are mushrooms which I simply can’t pass in the shop, even though they are seasonal or maybe because of that.
It is my shame, but I don’t know any way to prepare them other than this stew with veal and peas, but it sure tastes great!
You can substitute beef for veal, just increase cooking time to ensure meat is soft enough. You can also substitute white dry wine for water, if you feel like this.
Tags: dinner, lunch, meat, mushroom, peas, romantic, stew, veal
November 26th, 2011 in Beef, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina My mom usually cooked big zucchini like this: stiffing it with ground beef and rice mince.
However I wasn’t able to find an “adult” zucchini in any shop here in US to cook it. It seems that they don’t survive long enough to grow big here (maybe green piece should look into that, I don’t know).
Anyway, I believe spaghetti squash is a good substitute for this recipe: it serves the purpose by being squash and providing a cavity to cook stuffing, and it also brings nice unique texture to the dish with its “spaghettiness”.
The taste here is similar to cabbage rolls (as if they were made of squash 
), however the amount of work you need to put into this one is considerably smaller.
Tags: beef, boiled rice, dill, dinner, ground beef, ground meat, lunch, onion, squash, stuffed, tomato
November 5th, 2011 in Duck, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina Duck meat does go great with apples; usually stuffing a whole duck with apples and then roasting it in the oven is a way to go. But first – it can take quite some time, and then – it bears hassle of dealing with bones when serving and eating.
All of that is gone if boneless duck breasts are sliced and stewed with apples in a deep skillet like in this recipe. It also makes it easier to serve exact amount of meat for each portion.
Any apples will do good for this recipe, however sour ones are better.
Tags: apple, dinner, duck, meat, poultry, romantic, stew
