My potato recipes
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 31st, 2011 in Hot Soups, Soup Recipes by Julia Volhina If you are looking for easy to cook recipe for soft pureed soup with vegetables, mushrooms and cream this is it.
Boil vegetables, add fried onions and mushrooms and blend it all together with heavy cream. By the way, using hand blender makes cooking of this soup much easier.
If you want soup-puree to be more liquid, keep water left from boiling vegetables and add it to the soup at the end to receive desired thickness.
Tags: cream, dinner, mushroom, no meat, onion, parsley root, potato, soft food, soup puree
June 18th, 2011 in Hot Soups, Soup Recipes by Julia Volhina Sorrel and pork soup, or as it is called also green borscht (obviously because of the color), is one of these dishes you can rarely eat in US, unless you are ukrainian, poland, russian family or visiting one of those 
.
I was a bit unlucky in buying sorrel this time. Sorrel is very seasonal (meaning available only on spring), and for some reason WholeFoods (the only place where I was able to find it) carries it in herbs section – read this as 2-3 branches per a pack.
I ended up getting last 3 packs they had in their stock, but even that was less then needed for this soup (I am actually still wondering, who buys sorrel in WholeFoods in such packs and for what?).
Anyway, if you are more lucky than me and either know where to buy enough of sorrel or growing it by yourself, you can safely use more, and by more I mean much more: 3-4 cups is good. If you want to make it’s sour taste a bit less intense – fry it before adding to the cooking pot or/and use more water when cooking broth.
Tags: borscht, carrot, dill, green food, hard boiled egg, onion, parsley root, polish, pork, potato, rice, russian, sorrel, soup, sour cream, ukrainian
March 5th, 2011 in Duck, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina I love duck meat. And other day we were lucky to find a couple of duck breasts in Market District opened recently near by (nice store by the way).
So, I got them, also eggplant and some potatoes, and cooked this nice dinner.
Any duck meat will work just fine for this stew, I was just lazy to remove bones.
Tags: dinner, duck, eggplant, garlic, meat, potato, poultry, stew, vegetables
February 19th, 2011 in Hot Soups, Soup Recipes by Julia Volhina This soup doesn’t include any meat, it is based on mushrooms and have vegetables (carrot, parsley and celery roots, potato) as well as pearl barley.
Such kind of mushroom soup is very popular in Russia. Various kind of mushrooms can be used in this recipe, but I must say fresh or frozen porcini are the best tasting ones, if you can find them, of course.
If you are not trying to follow Great Lent rules – my advise is don’t skip on sour cream, 1 tablespoon of sour cream to the bowl of mushroom soup not only adds nutrients, but also gives the soup its unique rich taste.
Tags: carrot, celery root, dill, garlic, grain, lenten, mushroom, no meat, onion, parsley root, peas, potato, russian, soup, vegetables
December 18th, 2010 in Hot Soups, Soup Recipes by Julia Volhina One of the challenges when cooking classic beet root soup, borscht, is to get all vegetables (and there are quite few) cooked till perfect readiness at the same time.
Considering different vegetables require different cooking time it is sometimes hard to achieve. For borscht you need to make sure beens are soft, while potatoes are not over cooked and beets don’t lose their color.
So, to make this happen: I cook beens in a separate cooking pot (just until they are soft and ready), cook beets skin on (like for salad) in separate pot in advance, and add these two to the main cooking pot at appropriate times.
By the way, using of canned beets and beens instead of cooking them yourself is an option (which I never did, but it may safe you some time).
Tags: bean, beet, bell pepper, borscht, cabbage, carrot, celery root, dinner, onion, parsley root, potato, russian, soup, tomato, ukrainian, vegetables
November 27th, 2010 in No-meat, Side Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina There is no easiest way to cook potato than boiling. You get tasty and nutritious dish fast and with literally no hassle: just clean it, put to the cooking pot, bring to boil and wait.
Young potato boiled skin on tastes especially good when dressed with several spoons of sour cream, seasoned with chopped dill and minced garlic.
If you don’t have young small potatoes, use red skin ones, or any others. Clean potatoes before boiling, for young potatoes washing will be enough, old potato may need to be peeled.
Tags: garlic, no meat, potato, side dish, sour cream, vegetables
