My ukrainian recipes
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
January 14th, 2012 in Salad Recipes by Julia Volhina Knowing me you can probably guess that this tender slaw-like salad made of grated fresh celery root, apples and chopped egg is dressed with mayo.
By the way, celery root here is hardly recognizable: it has nutty taste and (if you are not used to it) tastes nothing like celery stalks, maybe because of apples.
I would define this taste as unusual; if you stumble upon fresh celery root in a store – give it a try, after all celery is known as low-calorie source of dietary fiber.
Tags: appetizer, apple, celery root, egg, hard boiled egg, mayo, onion, salad, ukrainian
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
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
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 13th, 2011 in Desserts by Julia Volhina This cake is similar to the cheese cakes so popular in west part of the globe. However this one is made from quark cheese (fresh farmers cheese), not from the cream cheese.
It is very popular dessert treat in West Ukraine. It is often being made with raisins, however I don’t like raisins, so I am doing it without any filling. Just add them if you like.
During the baking this cake will rise in the oven, and then it will fall down a bit while colling down. That i s ok, just important not to open oven while baking or cooling.
To make up for a bit uneven shape, you can cut uneven sides off before serving it.
Tags: baked, breakfast, butter, dessert, egg, egg whites, egg yolks, fresh cheese, lemon juice, semolina flour, sugar, ukrainian
