My lunch recipes
September 4th, 2010 in Beef Dishes, Main Dish Recipes by MeCooking
Russian meatballs (or “tefteli” how they are called in Russia) are prepared from ground beef and rice mix and cooked under some kind of sauce. They usually have big size (1 or 2 meatballs is enough for a serving).
This is a recipe for “tefteli” my mom uses: big meatballs, dipped into flour, then fried over in some oil and cooked with vegetable sauce (carrots, tomatoes, onions and dill) until ready.
I’ve modified recipe a bit to use freshly pureed tomatoes instead of tomato paste. However, if you don’t have fresh tomatoes under your hands, you can use canned tomatoes or tomato paste diluted with water.
Boiled potatoes or mashed potatoes are usually the first choice of side dish for tefteli for me, boiled buckwheat or pasta work good too.
Tags: boiled rice, carrot, dill, dinner, ground beef, lunch, onion, romantic, russian, sauce, tomato
August 7th, 2010 in Salad Recipes by MeCooking
I never tried fresh celery stems before we got to US. I was more familiar with celery root – it is largely used to prepare soups and stew or even salads of European cousines, but I can’t say eating stem parts of it is as popular in Europe as in US.
According to wikipedia, celery is a source of good low-calorie dietary fibre, which makes it not only tasty (btw I found taste of it fascinating) and also healthy.
Saying all of that, here comes the nice salad recipe for fresh celery stems and boiled white chicken meat; grapes give it a little kick in flavor, as well as almonds. Hope you will like it.
Tags: almond, celery, chicken, grape, lunch, mayo, parsley, poultry, salad, vegetables
July 17th, 2010 in Beef Dishes, Main Dish Recipes, Pasta Dishes by MeCooking
Several weekends ago, when I asked Yuriy what should we prepare for dinner, I got an answer – lasagna, and I was intimidated a bit – I never prepared lasagna before. So I spent some time in internet researching recipes and found several I liked. I’ve combined them, added some touch to my taste and prepared this lasagna.
This was my first attempt to make lasagna. And main challenge for me was to properly prepare noodles: according to the instructions on the pack they required boiling before using. I’ve added 2 tablespoons of oil to the boiling water and was boiling them layer by layer and it totally helped to prevent noodles from sticking while boiling.
This lasagna turned out perfectly: balanced combination of meat and vegetables (just how I like it), noodles were very tender, it was totally worth all the time I’ve spend boiling them, getting out of water and trying arrange them in the pan.
Tags: baked, bechamel, bell pepper, carrot, cheese, dinner, garlic, ground beef, italian, lunch, noodles, onion, pasta, tomato, vegetables
July 3rd, 2010 in Beef Dishes, Main Dish Recipes, Pasta Dishes by MeCooking
Lots of recipes require using clear soup (meat broth, stock), however not all of them also require boiled meat which is often used to prepare meat broth. So the question is, are there any good recipes which actually require boiled meat and no broth?
This is one of them: russian pasta with ground boiled beef and fried onions (btw, it is called “makarony po-flotski” in Russia; I have no idea why, but we always called this dish so).
Any “al dente” kind of pasta will work here: I’ve used penne, just read instructions on the pack and cook them accordingly. You may also vary proportion of meat to pasta to taste.
Tags: boiled meat, dill, dinner, ground beef, lunch, meat, noodles, onion, pasta
June 12th, 2010 in Egg Dishes, Main Dish Recipes by MeCooking
Egg omelette with ham or canadian bacon and vegetables is a nice breakfast dish. It takes more than an hour to prepare, but it totally worth it.
Unlike most of other omelettes which are usually fried eggs with some other ingredients, this one is prepared by baking them in the oven.
It is a bit hard to tell exact baking time for this dish – it depends a lot on the size of the baking pan you use and amount of ingredients: my advice would be to test omelette with wooden toothpick (pierce it through from top to bottom and remove it) – if it does come out clean – baked omelette is ready.
Tags: baked, bell pepper, breakfast, egg, ham, lunch, shallot, tomato, vegetables
May 15th, 2010 in Main Dish Recipes, Pork Dishes by MeCooking
Pork roasted by this recipe usually turns out juicy and flavored. It is nice dinner dish, can be served warm or cooled down; leftovers are good for sandwiches.
It takes about an hour to cook from beginning till end. It is very easy to prepare recipe. Apart of main ingredients, which are mainly pork and garlic, you will also need a sheet of cooking foil.
Tastes good accompanied by dry red or rose wine.
Tags: dinner, garlic, lunch, pork, roast, romantic
May 1st, 2010 in Beef Dishes, Main Dish Recipes by MeCooking
That is probably one of my favorite dinner recipes: slices of beef roasted under mayonnaise, shredded mozzarella and onions, and it is very easy to cook.
You can make steps 1-7 some time in advance, then put meat into the fridge and continue later; just get meat to the preheated oven about 1 hour before you are going to serve it. That comes extremely handy when you need to get a lot of other things taken care of right before the dinner.
Some dry red wine is a nice addition to this dish, especially if the dinner is going to get romantic.
Tags: baked, beef, cheese, dinner, lunch, mayo, onion, romantic
