Tomatoes Stuffed with Fresh Cheese Recipe

These campari tomatoes stuffed with fresh quark cheese, chopped greens and garlic can be nice addition to any celebration table or a cookout: they look festive, taste good and can be easily eaten with fingers.

If you can’t find quark cheese (sometimes called farmers cheese, or fresh white cheese, or tvorog in russian) it may work with feta cheese, but I like it more with quark.

Seeds and pulp from tomatoes as well as top parts - once removed - are not needed for this recipe. You can discard them, or use in some other dish.

Many kind of stews and soups would only benefit from fresh tomatoes. I used seeds and juice from this batch to marinate a nice ribeye steak.

Green Salad with Tomato, Avocado and Shrimp

This is one of the salads which uses avocado dressing from the last week recipe. It is green, fresh summer salad topped with boiled shrimps with a hint of spiciness provided by the dressing.

My advise is to assemble this salad right before you are planning to serve it: it calls for avocados, tomatoes and lettuce (all of which react to oxidation by loosing taste and pretty look).

However avocado dressing can be prepared in advance and stored in airtight container in fridge.

Avocado Salad Dressing

This creamy avocado salad dressing somewhat resembles guacamole dip, after all it consists of almost the same ingredients, just in different proportion.

However it is much more spicy and more liquid which obviously makes it easier to dress salads with it: lettuce salad with tomatoes, avocados and shrimps is my personal choice for this dressing.

Ready spicy avocado dressing can be stored in the airtight container in fridge for several days.

Pork Roast with Garlic, Mayo and Spices

Yet another pork roast - and it is spicy one. Slow cooking turns meat in this roast tender and juicy and it makes great dinner.

To save some time on preparation you can marinate meat in advance and then just put it to the oven 3 hours before it needs to hit the table.

Juices produced while meat was cooking make great addition when poured over the meat or its side dish of potatoes served with it.

Spicy Guacamole Dip

First time I tried this green dip, it was served as a side dish to something very spicy in mexican restaurant, and it didn't impress me. Probably, that was about color: I never seen avocados before and their bright green color seem almost artificial.

Nevertheless, I tried it and since then these unusual and very nutritious fruits are very important part of my diet: amusingly they have more potassium than bananas, have high fiber content and rich on vitamins E, B and K.

This variant of guacamole is a bit spicy. If you want to make it mild: either increase amount of avocados or reduce amount of serrano peppers and onion; adding sour cream can help reduce hotness as well.

Cheese Balls Appetizer

Cheese, clove of garlic, a bit of mayo, shredded coconut and about 20 mins of time it is all you need to prepare cheese balls appetizer.

Cheese goes great with wine. So cheese balls are great for wine tasting or wine party.

Cheese balls are finger food and can be served as is or on crackers.

Chicken Pilaf

An easy tweak to classic pilaf recipe – chicken instead of lamb – will make this dish to shine all different colors. Chicken require less time to cook, it is more lean so, let's say it is more healthy and also faster to prepare :)

Using whole chicken is an option, but in this case you probably need to bone it first (unless you like to chew on bones).

Take boneless thighs, if you don't like to spend time removing bones. Chicken breasts can be used as well, but may end up being too dry – mix them up with some other parts such us thighs or so.

Another trick to this recipe is using cast-iron pan, ideally round one. It makes rice to cook more evenly which is more important part – get soft not overcooked rice.

Mulled Wine (Glühwein)

I was unfortunate to catch a cold another day, and somewhere in between sneezing and sweating I reminded myself of mulled wine - probably the best drink to warm you up and clear your sinuses.

Mulled wine, or gluehwein (how it is called in Austria and Germany) or glintvein (how it is called in Russia) is a drink prepared by heating red dry wine with various spices and citruses.

This popular in Europe drink is often sold during cold season around Christmas time on open air markets and fairs - it really helps to warm up.

Glühwein is very easy to prepare, if you prefer - use whole spices instead of ground ones, that will make straining part much easier, however ground spices work just fine. Enjoy responsible!

Ketchup and Mayonnaise Mix Sauce

This is the easiest recipe for simple cocktail sauce which makes a great addition to boiled shrimps, or fried meat or chicken main dishes. I even serve it as a side sauce for russian meat dumplings (pelmeni).

You can vary amount of each ingredient to taste: if you like ketchup taste more – add less mayonnaise; add more garlic if you want to make sauce more spicy; also fresh parsley can be replaced with cilantro.

Fried Chicken Recipe

It is the easiest way to cook chicken: get meat pieces, rub them with salt and spices, and then fry. Nothing complex and yet still very tasty.

Whole chicken legs are the best for this recipe, you can even get into more extreme and fry whole halves of chicken or cornish hen (bigger pieces are more juicy, but you may need to increase cooking time for big portions of meat).

Drumsticks, thighs and even wings can be cooked the same way: but you may need to reduce cooking time and increase amount of spices – just keep proportion of spice the same: 1 part of cumin to 1 part of ground black pepper to 2 parts of ground coriander - and it will be fine.

Baked Spicy Chicken

It is chicken time! And I think, one of the easiest ways to prepare various parts of chicken (or even chicken in a whole!) is to bake them with some spices.

Baked Spicy Chicken dish is great for the dinner: its cooking doesn't require much of attention, which gives you time to take care of other important things :). However you will need to start cooking it in advance to let chicken soak in the sauce.

So let's mix up some spices, garlic, mayonnaise, pour it over the chicken and bake it all together.

Pork Pilaf

Typical Pilaf (plov, pilav) is prepared from rice and meat, and seasoned with spices. It is a dish, various recipes of which can be found in Middle Eastern, Central, South Asian and East African cultures, from where it was borrowed to various cuisines: so now dishes similar to pilaf can be found in every country recipes list.

Having roots on the East, original pilaf usually being made from lamb or mutton. However, I believe, it can be made pretty much of any kind of meat: beef, pork, chicken, duck, whatever you prefer.

I am not the big fan of lamb, so I usually prepare pilaf with a pork meat (which is a step away from the original recipe, but I like it). Feel free to replace pork with any other kind of meat you like and create your own pilaf recipe (you may also need to adjust the cooking time accordingly as different kinds of meats requite different time of preparation). Treat yourself to a delicious meal with a hint of orient spices!

Cotopulo Gyros (Chicken)

Gyros is Greek meat dish (right, it can be not only chicken gyros, but also beef, pork or lamb).

To make it: marinate sliced meat, place it on a tall vertical spit, which turns in front of a source of heat and cut meat out when is ready...

Well I don't have such vertical spit at home, so I prepare gyros in a different way.

And I like the gyros made of chicken more, so it is why that post about “Cotopulo Gyros” after all. And yes, it is spicy!

Ham Rolls With Carrot Stuffing

Got people coming over in a 20 mins and got nothing to bite? Make a ham rolls stuffed with fresh carrot & garlic salad.

Easy and fast! Tastes better when accompanied by beer and TV.

Fresh Carrots & Garlic Salad

And again carrots with a lot of vitamin A and carotene. The best way to keep those nutrients from “dying” while cooking is to eat them fresh. And garlic can't spoil it anyhow.

Enjoy Fresh Carrots & Garlic Salad as an healthy addition to your meat meals.