My tomato recipes
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
September 24th, 2011 in Appetizers & Snacks, Main Dish Recipes, No-meat, Side Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina This is recipe of zucchini paste from my mom: easy to cook, contains only vegetables (zucchini, tomatoes and onions) and is very-very tasty.
I usually eat this paste on bread toast, for breakfast or as a snack; however it is also a nice side dish to help increase vegetable servings in your daily diet.
Zucchini paste can be served warm or cooled down.
Tags: appetizer, breakfast, finger food, lenten, no meat, onion, russian, side dish, snack, tomato, vegetables, zucchini
July 30th, 2011 in Appetizers & Snacks by Julia Volhina 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.
Tags: appetizer, cookout, dill, finger food, fresh cheese, garlic, green onion, mayo, no meat, parsley, snack, spicy, stuffed, tomato, vegetables
July 16th, 2011 in Salad Recipes by Julia Volhina 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.
Tags: avocado, cilantro, greek, lemon juice, lettuce, salad, shrimp, spicy, tomato, vegetables
May 7th, 2011 in Appetizers & Snacks, Main Dish Recipes, No-meat, Side Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina Eggplants fried in flour and egg coating are good on their own as a no-meat main course, appetizer or snack. But they can also be served as a side dish.
Tomato sauce with basil and garlic is a good addition to fried eggplants; it adds a bit of spiciness to plain taste of eggplants.
And parmesan goes great with that combination too.
Tags: basil, egg, eggplant, garlic, no meat, parmesan, side dish, snack, tomato, tomato paste, vegetables
April 30th, 2011 in Sauces & Dips by Julia Volhina This light tomato based sauce will add a hint of mediterranean cuisine to any dish.
It goes great with fried or grilled vegetables (e.g. zucchini and eggplants); seafood (mussels and shrimps) and meats; it also can be served as pasta sauce.
Sweet tomatoes are the best fit this recipe. If you prefer to remove seeds, choose pulpy tomatoes, it will be easier.
Tags: basil, garlic, no meat, sauce, tomato, tomato paste, vegetables
April 16th, 2011 in Hot Soups, Soup Recipes by Julia Volhina Gentle tomato soup with rice filling garnished with freshly chopped basil is a russian variant of tomato-basil soup.
It is beef broth based and if you want to make it more tomaty and thick, reduce amount of water you use for broth and increase amount of tomatoes.
I’ve garnished soup with basil even though it isn’t very widespread in Russia, but it gives a nice kick to flavor of this soup. After all basil and tomatoes are the combination which can never taste wrong.
Tags: basil, broth, carrot, celery root, onion, parsley root, peas, puree, russian, soup, tomato, vegetables
