Food and Crafts for All Occasions

Do Chua, Vietnamese Sweet Pickled Daikon and Carrots

To continue the tasty theme of Asian style pickles, here’s another great recipe for you. Do chua is Vietnamese daikon and carrot pickles that are served alongside a variety of dishes, in salads and in famous Banh Mi sandwiches.

Sweet, Sour and Spicy Thai Style Pickled Cucumbers

My friend Amanda calls these pickles amazeballs. And I completely agree: these super easy to make pickles are truly delish. Like most Asian style pickles they are significantly sweeter than local, but the addition of spicy Thai peppers to the marinade perfectly balances out this sweetness.

Sautéed Eggplants with Soy Sauce, Rice Vinegar, Garlic and Dill

I don’t know what took me so long to post my best-loved eggplant recipe. I’ve been cooking it quite often for the last ten years and every time I’m amazed all over again how delicious it is. The recipe takes almost no time and effort to make, so all you busy bees out there can easily cook it on a weekday night.

Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

 

When wild mushrooms are not in season, my next favorite mushrooms to cook are Portobello with their slightly sweet and slightly earthy flavor and dense, meaty texture. They work particularly great for stuffing.

Better than Butter

 

If you’ve ever frozen leftover raw eggs, you should have noticed that while egg whites, when defrosted, are just like fresh, yolks completely change their texture. They lose their fluidity and become gelatinous and semi-solid. When thawed completely, they keep their round shape and can be sliced with a butter knife and spread on a toast just like butter. For me, it’s even better than butter.

Blistered Shishito Peppers with Garlic Aioli

With all the holidays and then my B-day, I have completely abandoned my blog.

Well, I'm back now with my new favorite appetizer – blistered shishito peppers with garlic aioli.

Shishito peppers are slender and relatively small peppers with a mild flavor. In Seattle, you can buy them at Uwajimaya. They can be substituted with Spanish padron peppers, which have similar taste, but are shorter and rounder and look more like miniature green bell peppers.

Russian Style Wild Mushroom Gratin, aka 'Julienne'

Mushroom julienne is a dish made with sautéed mushrooms (preferably, wild) combined with sour cream or béchamel sauce and baked in small individual ramekins or cocottes under a cheese crust. It's one of those treats, eating of which is always accompanied by joyful moaning and multiple "OMG" exclamations. No exaggeration here!

Julienne is quite rich, so a small serving is enough to enjoy it. It’s served as a hot appetizer and I prefer to eat it with a teaspoon.

Blini, Russian Crepes

Blini are Russian crepes. They can be made with yeast or plain batter, with regular wheat flour or its combination with other flours, like buckwheat, rye etc. My all-time favorite is small, very thin blini made from a simple non-yeast batter based on all purpose flour and milk.  

These blini go equally well with savory and sweet toppings. Most of all I love them topped with salmon caviar. Paired with a shot of ice cold vodka or hot, sweetened black tea – mmmmm…. Ilya loves them with homemade lox with onions and fresh dill. For dessert, my choice would be to top them with a dollop of sour cream and sprinkle with white cane sugar just like I used to do it when I was a kid.

Half Sour Pickles

So called “half sour pickles” are little cucumbers that have spent no more than 2-3 days in brining solution. Because of the short brining time the cucumbers don’t get completely pickled, though don’t taste raw anymore either. Half sour pickles are the best of the two worlds - they retain perfect fresh crunch, sweetness and, sometimes, natural green color too, while acquiring light pickled taste and saltiness.  They are a perfect chaser for a shot of ice cold vodka!

Kvashenaya Kapusta, Russian Sauerkraut

Every year somewhere in the mid fall, Ilya and I make a batch of Russian style sauerkraut. It is called Kvashenaya Kapusta and tastes significantly less tart than regular sauerkraut. It is made only of shredded white cabbage, salt and carrots that are tossed together and then the nature does the rest with the lactic acid fermentation. You can eat it as it is, only lightly drizzled with unrefined sunflower oil, or use it for soups, salads, stews, and fillings for dumplings and pies.

Homemade Lox or Salt-n-Sugar Cured Salmon

Homemade lox is Ilya’s favorite snack. A piece of dark bread and several slices of the salmon and he is happy as a clam. For a weekend lunch, I cut croissants in half, spread some light whipped cream cheese on them (chèvre works great too!), top with thin avocado slices, some capers and, finally, with the lox. You  can eat the sandwich as is, open faced, or bring the halves together to form a tall closed one.

For a party, the cured salmon goes well with small rye toasts and sides of horseradish and sour cream or crème fraiche.

The good news about homemade lox is that it's surprisingly easy to make. It takes less than two days to cure it and almost zero effort. You can take any kind of wild salmon: king, sockeye, silver, whichever is available in a store.

Duck Rillettes

When I make rillettes, I usually make two batches - one meat and one poultry. My favorite poultry for rillettes is duck. I wouldn't mind at all to make one from goose hindquarters, but unfortunately they are not sold separately, whereas duck whole legs can be found in Asian supermarkets like Uwajimaya and Ranch 99.

Pork Rillettes

The colder it gets outside, the more time I spend in my kitchen cooking and baking. Nothing warms the house better than the heat from the running oven and stove.

This Wednesday I was heating the house by cooking a batch of rillettes. I’ve been making them every fall and winter for several years now, so it’s become a tradition.

Pickled Tomatoes, 2 Methods

Since Ilya and I moved from a downtown apartment to our house in Wedgwood, we’ve been growing tomatoes every year. We don’t have much space for planting, but Ilya built a long, deep raised bed along the southern side of the house and tomatoes are very happy there.

Deep Fried Calamari

Who doesn’t like deep fried calamari? Tender inside, crispy outside, dipped in tangy tartar or sweet-n-sour marinara?  I see no hands! Everybody loves deep fried calamari!

So why wait to go out to eat them instead of making them at home? They are one of the fastest meals ever. Even faster than deep fried smelt. I don’t use double breading for calamari, dredging in seasoned flour is quite sufficient and gives them perfectly thin and crispy “skin”.