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.

Nectarine and Blueberry Crisp with Almonds and Rolled Oats

Here’s one more delicious dessert to make with nectarines and blueberries. Hurry up while the nectarine season still lasts! It’s almost almost over!

My nectarine crisp is not super sweet and has a nice crunch that comes from rolled oats and almonds. You can whip it up in 5 minutes and cook in 20, which makes it a perfect weekday dessert. Put it in the oven before you sit to have dinner - with cooking and cooling it will be ready right about you’ve finished your meal.

Super Topping: Baked Nectarines and Blueberries

To continue on nectarines and blueberries, here’s the simplest recipe you can cook with them and it makes an awesome topping for ice creams, semifreddo or yogurt parfait. I myself can eat them plain, especially when they are still slightly warm. So make sure to cook plenty - I guarantee you will find yourself sneaking them in your mouth right from the baking dish again and again, so delish they are!

Puff Pastry Tarts with Goat Cheese, Blueberries and Nectarines

Here’s another delicious recipe for the nectarine and blueberry combination. And almost as easy to make as the clafoutis if you use a store bought puff pastry.

Nectarine and Blueberry Clafoutis

Now is the season for my all-time favorite fruit combination: nectarines and blueberries. I like it anytime, anywhere and anyhow. Raw and cooked. In tarts, pies, crumbles, clafoutis, roasted with honey and goat cheese or baked and used as a topping for ice cream or semifreddo.

Romancing the Potato: Roasted Potato Wedges

I’ve already posted one roasted potato recipe here. This time, it’s different potatoes, different cut and different presentation.

Roasted potato wedges can be served as a finger food which together with a great bold flavor makes them an ultimate crowd pleaser. And given that they are no hassle to make, they please a cook no less. Just get nice long and relatively thin potatoes - Yukon or, which is even better, small Russets - and you’re good to go.

I love my potato wedges spicy and herby, served with a cooling sauce like tartar. On the other hand, you can go light on spicing potatoes and put some hot pepper into the accompanying sauce instead, your call. Either way, it’s a winner.

Smoked Trout Dip

This dip is another delicious use of smoked trout. My husband raves about it every time I make it.

Have it on warm toasted bread. Some thinly sliced radishes on top will give a nice touch.

Green Salad with Smoked Trout, Poached Eggs, Potatoes and Asparagus

This has been one of my favorite salads lately. Sort of a version of Niçoise salad with smoked trout instead of tuna and poached eggs instead of boiled ones. My greens choice for this salad is a mix of frisee (I love ’em bitter!) and Asian greens mix (not to be confused with Asian salad mix!) which includes mizuna, pak choi, baby tat soi and other fancy and very tasty herbs.  If you cannot find Asian mix in stores, go for Spring Salad Mix or something like it.

As for the trout, you can smoke it yourself or buy it in a store. Trader Joe’s carries quite delicious and inexpensive smoked trout. If you want to smoke trout yourself and are a happy owner of a Green egg grill, follow the instructions given here for salmon. The only difference with trout would be that you would need much less salt and shorter time to cure it in the fridge since trout fillets are much smaller and thinner than salmon. For the same reason, the cooking time will be shorter too. Shoot for 45-50 min.

Japanese Style Spicy Baked Prawns

Have you ever tried baked spicy mussels in sushi bars? They use Sriracha infused mayo and garnish the mussels with flying fish roe and sesame seeds. I’m a sucker for these things. And I like the recipe even better with prawns on a half shell. Not your traditional Dynamite prawns, but super delicious and cute looking, too.

Roasted Potatoes

This is such an easy and super simple recipe that I never actually thought of putting it on my blog. But then everybody who tried these potatoes at my house loved them a lot and asked me for the recipe, so I decided to finally post it here.

Roasted Garlic Spears

Late spring and early summer are the season of all sorts of green scapes and spears: onions, leeks, chives etc. They are considered a super healthy food and also are quite delicious. I came across them in many stores this year- Asian supermarkets, Metropolitan Market, QFC.

My current favorites are garlic spears. When raw, their flavor reminds me that of ramps, wild leeks (in Russia we call it ‘cheremsha’ with a stress on the last syllable), fresh, sharp and very garlic like. We like to dip the raw stems in salt and use a chaser to a shot of vodka along with a crusty rye bread.

When cooked, their sharp flavor mellows down significantly and is reminiscent of that of roasted garlic cloves. Roasted garlic spears are an awesome side for grilled or roasted fish or poultry. Better than asparagus, to my taste!

Grilled Radicchio and Belgian Endive

Whenever we grill fish, meat or poultry, we also grill some vegetables to go as a side. Halved tomatoes, whole mildly spicy peppers like Poblano, Anaheim or sweet Korean; asparagus, mushrooms, and basically whatever vegetable we find appropriate for a certain dish. Our recent favorite to go with a whole grilled fish are radicchio and Belgian endive.

Best Ever Simmered Corn with Chipotle & Cumin Butter, Cotija Cheese, and Green Onions

Even though the local corn season will only start somewhere in mid-July, devoted corn fans in Seattle should be happy right now since most of the supermarkets offer quite nice Mexican corn. And for a reasonable price, about 50 cents per cob or so. So if you missed this somehow, it would be a good time to run to the store and grab some.

The secret to a great simmered corn on a cob lies in seasoning the water you cook it in. Two ingredients go in there, salt and sugar in equal amounts.

Sautéed Chard with Kalamata Olives, Sun Dried Tomatoes and Basil

Sautéed chard makes a flavorful side dish to serve along with roasted or grilled fish or poultry. It’s also perfect as a stuffing for pies and quiches, as a pizza topping or as a sauce for pasta. The earthiness of chard plays wonderfully with sweetness of sun dried tomatoes, saltiness and tartness of Kalamata olives, sharpness of garlic and strong, fresh scent of basil.

Cuban Sandwich Style Puff Pastry Pie

My husband is a big fan of sandwiches. Huge. I always laugh how he can turn any meal into a sandwich, even a soup!

Since currently he works from home most of the time, I try to make his lunch – usually a sandwich and salad – more fun. Like, for instance, turning his favorite Cuban sandwich into a Cuban puff pastry pie.