My lunch 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
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
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).
Tags: boiled meat, boiled rice, dough, dumplings, lunch, onion, picnic, russian, stuffed, yeast
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.
Tags: boiled meat, boiled rice, breakfast, crepe, kid food, lunch, meat, onion, rice, stuffed
