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.

Marinated Green Beans, Vietnamese Style

This is not a traditional Vietnamese recipe, but rather my play with Vietnamese ingredients. Quite a successful play, I should say. These beans turn out really mind blowing: slightly sweet and tart, and spicy, and savory, and packed with umami.

Paella with Chicken, Sausage and Peppers

If paella is an only dish on your table, 1 cup of rice for two people would be more than enough. For this amount of rice take a pan with a diameter no less than 12 inches (10” bottom).

Paella, My Thoughts on Successful Paella Making

From the vast variety of one-pot meals, paella is one of the world’s most famous and most delicious. It can be colorful and complex, containing all sorts of seafood, meats and vegetables, or simple and unpretentious, consisting only of a few ingredients, as it, most likely, traditionally was.

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.

One Potato, Two Potato: Smashed Potatoes 2 Ways

One:

And two:

My husband is a huge – huuuuuge - fan of potatoes. Loves ’em spuds. All types. All ways of cooking. Well, some more than others, but ultimately – any. Fried, sautéed, boiled, roasted. Mashed and smashed. Grated in latkes. Grilled on skewers. As a side dish as well as in soups and salads. The more the better.

So, I cook potatoes quite often. And if you’re crazy about them too, I have some good recipes for you. Today it is smashed potatoes. Two ways. A traditional one, where you roughly mash skin-on boiled potatoes. And a relatively recent one, where you boil whole small potatoes, smash them by pressing each one flat and then roast of fry them till the crispy exterior.

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.

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.

Dinner: Pan Seared Duck Breast with Balsamic Pearl Onions, Sauteed Fennel and Pureed Cannellini Beans

As a rule, I serve our dinners family style so that everyone can help themselves to what they like and in the amounts they like. This way, nobody is compelled to eat what they don’t want to; food doesn’t get wasted and guests don’t have to feel embarrassed if they didn’t finish something on their plates or took 2

But once in a while, when there’s just two of us, we like to play restaurant and have our meals thoughtfully matched and plated. Like the other night, when I served pureed cannellini beans and sautéed fennel with a pan-seared duck breast with pearl onions in balsamic sauce and crispy fried sage.

Pearl Onions in Balsamic Vinegar

Let me tell you that these onions are seriously addictive (ask my neighbor Maren!). I prefer to always have them in my fridge as they make a great snack for an impromptu party. Serve them cold or at room temperature with soft goat cheese on a piece of crusty rustic baguette or ciabatta. Blue cheese will work as well. They also make quite a terrific topping for steaks, lamb roast and pan seared duck breast.

Borsch (or Sweet and Sour Soup, Russian Style)

What is your favorite Russian dish? Questions of the kind “what is your favorite something” have always puzzled me. Are you kidding? In my forties (just like in my thirties, twenties, but unlike in my teens, however) I cannot single out any particular writer, book, band, movie, restaurant or food that I would call my favorite. I do enjoy variety.

Surprisingly though, in Russian cuisine, with all its diversity and complexity, I can name one dish as my all-time number one favorite. Yes, it’s in the title of this post; it is borsch.