My milk 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 28th, 2012 in Appetizers & Snacks by Julia Volhina Layered liver cake, dish of traditional Ukrainian cuisine, is often served as appetizer on various celebrations, in fact I tried it first time on a wedding.
For this recipe I used chicken liver, but beef liver will work good as well.
Carrots and onions stuffing can be skipped all together – it will decrease cooking time and reduce amount of mayo to be used (since layers will not need that much mayo to stick together). However carrots go great with liver.
How many layers you get from this amount of ingredients depends on the size of the frying pan you use. I think 11” frying pan is the best – not too big not too small. The ideal amount of layers for this recipe is about 12; if you get more split them in half and assemble 2 cakes.
Tags: appetizer, carrot, dill, egg, flour, garlic, liver, mayo, milk, onion, parsley, snack, 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
October 22nd, 2011 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina Yeast dough is commonly used for baked pies and fried pies/dumplings (pirozhki/pyrizhky).
Slavic cuisine features pies with various sweet and savory stuffing, and they all are usually prepared with dough as simple as this one.
Dough for small pies doesn’t usually require time for rising, you can start assembling them as soon as dough is kneaded: when you are finished with last one – first is ready to to fry/bake.
For whole piece pies you may need to set dough aside for 20-30 mins before cooking to rise.
Tags: dough, egg, flour, milk, yeast
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.
Tags: dough, dumplings, egg, flour, fruits, milk, no meat, sour cherry, stuffed, sugar, ukrainian
August 6th, 2011 in Beef, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina This is a tasty tweak to original minced beef cutlets recipe. The mince is prepared exactly the same way and mushrooms and onions stuffing gives ground meat juiciness and extraordinary taste.
A bit of agility is required to put stuffing inside of minced meat cutlets, but once you get it – it seems easy: meat is sticky, so if you get some holes, they can be easily patched by adding a layer of mince on top of the hole.
To prevent meat from sticking to hands – rinse hands with cold water from time to time while assembling minced cutlets.
Tags: beef, bread, cutlet, dinner, egg, ground beef, lunch, milk, mushroom, onion, romantic, russian
June 11th, 2011 in Desserts by Julia Volhina I am used to call this kind of braid sweet bread Hala (Хала in russian), however when I was preparing to write this recipe and did a bit of research to make sure I get name right in english, I discovered that real Challah (Hala) doesn’t contain dairy.
Considering this recipe have butter and milk and eggs in it, I didn’t risk to call in challah. After all it is a sweet braid yeast based sourdough bread.
It tastes good by itself and even better with a cup of yogurt or cultured milk (kefir or buttermilk).
Tags: baking, bread, butter, dessert, egg, egg yolks, flour, milk, poppy seeds, sugar, yeast
