My Main Dish Recipes




Russian Fried Pies with Meat and Rice Stuffing

October 29th, 2011 in Beef, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina

Fried pies (piroshki/pyrizhky), resembling individual size fried buns of yeast dough with stuffing, are very popular in all countries of ex-USSR. There are many stuffing variations for these: fruity and sweet or savory.

This is recipe for piroshki with boiled meat and rice stuffing – meat left over after preparing broth or soup is usually used to prepare these. And later fried pies can be served together with that soup or broth.

Piroshki are good choice if you need to take food to-go: they don’t require refrigeration to keep them fresh (for 1-2 days).

Crepes with Boiled Meat and Rice Stuffing

October 15th, 2011 in Beef, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina

A cup of beef broth with a couple of meat and rice stuffed crepes will always remind me of my childhood: mom used to cook these all the time.

There is always boiled meat left over from cooking broth, and stuffing crepes with it is easy way to prepare a nice meal to go with it.

Assembled meat and rice stuffed crepes can be stored in fridge for couple of days – you just need to warm them up by frying right before serving.

And if you cook a way too much (as I usually do) just seal some portion of stuffed crepes in a bag and freeze them up, this way you will always have some fresh stuffed crepes when you need to prepare some food fast.

Russian Zucchini Paste

September 24th, 2011 in Appetizers & Snacks, Main Dish Recipes, No-meat, Side Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina

This is recipe of zucchini paste from my mom: easy to cook, contains only vegetables (zucchini, tomatoes and onions) and is very-very tasty.

I usually eat this paste on bread toast, for breakfast or as a snack; however it is also a nice side dish to help increase vegetable servings in your daily diet.

Zucchini paste can be served warm or cooled down.

Beef Stroganoff with Mushrooms and Cream

September 17th, 2011 in Beef, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina

This recipe features a small modification to the beef stroganoff recipe I posted earlier, but a good one: a cup of cream and cremini mushrooms give this dish a very rich taste.

Field mushrooms will also work good in this recipe, but cremini are the best.

As usual, I suggest serving beef stroganoff with a side of boiled buckwheat, it tastes great with mushrooms and cream and, of course, beef.

Salmon Roast in Foil

September 10th, 2011 in Fish, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina

For me the best tasting salmon – is boiled salmon, and with this recipe I get taste of boiled salmon without actually boiling it. The same as boiled salmon this one tastes great garnished with mayo; a glass of white wine is good accompaniment as well.

This salmon roast can be cooked on the grill as well, just pack each fish piece into separate piece of foil and then cook without pan until ready.

Onions here are optional, they give a bit of taste to the dish but they also make sure that fish doesn’t touch the foil.

Pork Loin Roll with Prunes and Carrots

September 3rd, 2011 in Main Dish Recipes, Pork by Julia Volhina

Ingredients in this recipe for most part are the same as in meat stew with prunes and carrots, however for this one I suggest using pork loin – it is tender and much easier to slit flat to be able to roll it with stuffing.

Prunes are go great with pork meat. If you have dry prunes with pits – soak them in boiled water for 15-20 mins to soften and then remove pits before continue with recipe.

Boiled potatoes are great side dish for this entree, whatever you decide to go with mashed potatoes, baked potatoes or simple boiled potatoes, it will work good.

Ukrainian Sour Cherry Dumplings

August 27th, 2011 in Main Dish Recipes, No-meat by Julia Volhina

I didn’t believe my eyes when I saw sour cherries (pitted!) in the Andersons grocery store. It doesn’t happen that often to me here, in US. So I couldn’t simply leave that store without my portion of sour cherries…

Of course, we enjoyed them plain with a bit of sugar, and also made some cherries with whipped cream dessert (didn’t make any pictures of this one to post a recipe, shame on me), however most of sour cherries went to ukrainian sour cherry dumplings – “varenyky z vyshniamy”, and for this one we made plenty of pictures.

With mentioned amount of ingredients you will get about 50-60 dumplings. Most probably you will not need to cook all of them right away – so just freeze remaining potion of dumplings for later use (first put wooden board with dumplings to the fridge until dumplings are frozen, then move them to a ziploc bag and store frozen). Frozen dumplings can be boiled right before serving, just like you usually do it.