Food and Crafts for All Occasions

The King of Pancakes: Dutch Baby

Dutch baby is an amazingly versatile, super delicious and astonishingly easy to make oven-baked hybrid of pancake and popover. It can be made sweet or savory and topped before or after baking with all sorts of tasty things. It’s good for breakfast, br/lunch or dinner and is suitable for both everyday meal or special occasions.

Pizza, Part IV: Baking

In winter, we bake pizzas in the oven on a pizza stone; in the summer, we prefer cooking it on the Green Egg. Here’s how it goes:

Pizza, Part III: the Toppings

Besides a good dough, the success of pizza depends on its toppings. A tasty topping means a tasty pizza, right?  And to make a tasty topping is quite easy – all we need is quality components and a balanced combination of them.

Pizza, Part I: the Dough

I’m a big fan of pizza and have been perfecting my recipe for a long time. Still haven’t reached the ideal, but getting close with practice.  

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.

Snack Break: Lavash Stuffed with Prosciutto, Fresh Mozzarella and Basil

Actually, this dish is so simple that its name contains the whole recipe. All you need is: