My sour cream recipes
January 7th, 2012 in Desserts by Julia Volhina This cake looked unusual even for me when I saw it first time: doesn’t it resemble a bunch of firewood covered with a snow to you?
This recipe is Yuriy’s mom speciality dessert and it often appears on the table during family celebrations. Yuriy’s mom preserves pitted sour cherries in their own juices under sugar each season, so there are always plenty of them ready for use.
If you don’t have sour cherries preserved in such way – you can always go with pitted cherry kompot like I did, but in this case add a bit of sugar to the dough, or cake will not be sweet enough.
I would want to tell you that this cake is easy and fast to do, but I can’t. It took me quite some time to make dough, prepare “firewood” sticks and then assemble the cake; but that is probably because I cooked it first time in my life.
After cake is assembled allow some time for layers to soak in sour cream frosting to get soft: leave it in cool place (but not fridge) at least over night (depending on how liquid sour cream is it may take longer). It is good idea to prepare cake at least a day before you are planning to serve it.
Tags: cake, dessert, flour, fruits, margarine, sour cherry, sour cream, sugar, ukrainian
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
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 12th, 2011 in Salad Recipes by Julia Volhina This simple salad with tomatoes and cucumbers is very popular in Ukraine, and I don’t see any reasons why it wouldn’t be liked in any other country which grows tomatoes, cucumbers, dill and sour cream with onions and garlic.
As opposite to summer salad with tomato and cucumbers with vegetable oil based dressing, this one uses sour cream and mayonnaise.
If you are trying to cut on calories – use mix of sour cream and low calorie yoghurt, or just yoghurt as a base for dressing, but, believe me, this salad tastes the best with real sour cream.
Tags: cucumber, dill, garlic, mayo, no meat, salad, shallot, sour cream, tomato, ukrainian, vegetables
December 25th, 2010 in Eggs, Main Dish Recipes, No-meat by Julia Volhina Easy to do breakfast for two (or more, if needed) – omelette with sour cream seasoned with shredded cheese, chopped dill and green onions.
This omelette is good as it is, as well it can be used as a base for various stuffing.
This recipe doesn’t require flour (is gluten free); amounts of sour cream, cheese and greens can be varied to taste.
Tags: breakfast, dill, egg, green onion, sour cream
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
June 26th, 2010 in Cold Soups, Soup Recipes by Julia Volhina Are you suffering from hot weather like me? When outside feels like in the oven there is no better food to eat than cold soup. Lithuanian borscht is a nice refreshing buttermilk based cold soup you can put together without any extra hassle and then enjoy it sitting on the patio.
The real trick to Lithuanian borscht is to find good kefir – it should be original kefir which hasn’t been flavored with any tastes, not salted and not sweetened. I used plain unsweetened kefir (can be replaced with buttermilk) from Lifeway and it worked out perfectly.
The rest of ingredients: vegetables (beets, cucumber and greens) and hard boiled eggs, are easy to get and not pricey at all. And btw, even though this soup is called a “borscht”, the only thing it has in common to other borschts, I guess, is the color.
Tags: beet, borscht, buttermilk, cucumber, dill, green onion, hard boiled egg, kefir, lithuanian, no meat, soup, sour cream, vegetables
