Russian-style Apple Pie

Yes, long-overdue, but here's another post! :D

This is probably the easiest thing you can make, I promise! I've tried a number of different apple pie recipes, but most North American recipes call for the typical crust-fruit-crust type of a pie. Being from Belarus, I'm used to more of a "mixed" pie variety (I might've commented on this before :P), some people would call that a tart.

I've made this Apple Pie before (a recipe from a Russian book I have), but it takes a bit of a commitment and I was feeling really lazy... So anyways, I was browsing on a Russian-language website and found this easy recipe of Sharlotka (aka Russian apple pie, or a Charlotte, if you will). I guarantee it, you'll love it! Minimal ingredients and depending on the type of apple you pick and the amount of sugar you use, it can be tart or sweet, or somewhere in between - the choice is yours!

Green Tomato Relish

What can I say... This recipe is simply delicious and VERY unexpected also! Because the fall is upon us and because the temperature was starting to dip low at night, we figured that it was time to pick the remainder (a large remainder) of our tomatoes before they got damaged by the frost (never mind this AWESOME stretch of weather we're currently on!). Aside from a few really nice ripe fruits, we had lots of green tomatoes... lots!

What to do with all of them? The only thing we've ever really done with green tomatoes back in my native country was to pickle them (they are delicious, might I add!). But I felt like I wanted to do something interesting instead.

Once again, I scoured the Internet for an idea... I found 3 or 4 interesting things, but finally stopped at a recipe for a Green Tomato Relish. Although I WAS hesitant at first (I'm not a big fan of relish), but I decided to give it a try, and I was not disappointed that I did! It's sweet, yet soft and mild, there is something about it that makes me want to put it on everything!

Green Tomato Relish

Homemade Salsa

HERE WE GO!

As promised, and a bit overdue, I'm sharing a recipe of salsa I made for the first time ever. I've never actually made salsa before - my adventures in preserving have mostly been in jams (posted here and here). But this year our garden provided us with an overabundance of tomatoes, so it was TIME to do something about it. After looking around the net for a few simple, but interesting recipe, I stopped at one that I felt would be a) easy to prep and b) easy to modify - I adopted (and tweaked) from the Stop Lookin Get Cookin blog.

And here it finally is!
(Note that I skipped the step of peeling the skins off tomatoes and I did NOT add sugar to the jars before pouring in the cooked salsa, in part because I just forgot, but also because there's enough sugar as it is.) 

Homemade Salsa

Russian Strawberry Compote

I remember when I was a young I used to LOVE when the first harvest of berries came around our dacha. My grandparents always had an abundance of strawberries growing in the yard. So usually, after we would feast ourselves on said berries, there were enough left over to prep and preserve them for the winter. There was LOTS of jam (and I'm making some this summer!), but there were also large 3L jars of berries compote.

This is my first time making this beverage (and if preserved properly, it keeps well into the winter months), so I decided to search for a recipe online. Of course, if you search for "strawberry compote", you will find a recipe for something that has a syrup-like consistency and is meant to be poared over pancakes, ice creams, etc. Though there is nothing wrong with that (yum!), it wasn't what I was looking for.

So instead, I ended up searching for "клубничный компот" and finding what I needed :)

(in Russian, of course). It looks and tastes more like a strawberry juice.

I hope you enjoy it as much I do!

Who doesn't like cake? ("Rotten Tree Stump Cake")

Playing catch-up has been tough so blogging's been on the back burner a little...
This recipe was supposed to be shared with you, oh... about a month and a half ago! But, of course, life got in the way.

While vacationing in Belarus in January, my sister and I (well, more like my sister ONLY, I was mostly taking photos) made a delicious cake, whose name doesn't do it justice.

I do hope you attempt to make it as it is SO so easy! Here's a little preview:

Cherry Bomb Jello Shot

Past weekend, we finally had an adult party at our house, which to me means LOTS OF BOOZE, he-he :) Of course, there's your usual selection of beer, wine and hard liquor to mix with various juices... BUT I wanted something fun! Like the good old days when parties had jello shots, remember?! Also a kick-ass punch (stay tuned for that one).

I scoured the Internet in search for a perfect recipe... Finally, I came across 2, which I sort of combined (they had different quantities of ingredients, and only one of them had instructions)... Anyways, here is it!

Cherry Bomb Jello Shot

Russian Meat Pie

Let me start this post by saying that I've never done anything like this from scratch. Come to think of it, I don't remember ever having a truly homemade meat pie before either. Usually it's one of those prepared from frozen meat pies (which we don't often), and those are alright, but I've always found the top crust a bit... tasteless...

Now, I don't know whether this is a truly Russian recipe (it's probably not), but I found and translated this recipe from a Russian-language website. What intrigued me about it was the use of eggs - 6 eggs to be exact! (I know, what???!!!) - also the dough for its crust, which is a basic non-sweet pastry dough. One of the more important outcomes from this was that hubby liked it!!! Oh and did I mention that he does NOT eat eggs?

So, without further ado, here's the Russian Meat Pie recipe.
(as usual, click on the image to enlarge)

Meat pie, complete with delicious moist crust!

Fresh Summer Salad

A few people were over having supper with us the other day and I made a simple salad that I think goes well with on a side of anything. It's packed with fresh veggies and herbs, dressed with simple oil and it just delicious. I was asked how to make it and I didn't even think about because it's SO easy! I swear to you that this is probably the easiest salad you'll ever make.

Zucchini Pancakes

For those that know a little bit about my home country of Belarus know that most, if not all of our national dishes are usually made with potatoes. That's right, I come from the potato land (and I love potatoes)! However, this year, once again, I let our first zucchini overgrow in our vegetable garden... to about 4 lbs!

What to do... I love potato pancakes, they are a staple in Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian cuisine. Originally, my plan was to make potato-zucchini pancakes, but since I ran out of potatoes this weekend, it became just Zucchini Pancakes. They are sooooo easy to make and so quick that I didn't feel the need (and frankly, had no time) to make illustrations. I'm sure you'll be able to figure this out, it's that easy :)

Hubby had them with maple syrup. Being true to my Slavic roots, I had mine with sour cream.

Delicious Meatball Soup

Let me tell you - my kid LOVES soup! Sometimes she wakes up and her first food-related request is "I want soup". I admit that up until very recently I've mostly been buying already prepared soups thinking it saves on time and it's relatively inexpensive, even with premium brands.

But a few days ago I've decided that enough is enough! I gotta make my own soups: if I make a big batch, I can always take some as lunch or even freeze it. Frankly, having soup for lunch is a much healthier option than, say, a sandwich because soup fills me up, but I don't feel stuffed and sleepy afterwards. And a regular bowl of soup generally runs at about 200 cals per portion (provided it's not one of those creamy soup variety).

So anyways, my first "by the book" soup (as opposed to something I'd just thrown together). In English, I guess you could call it Meatball Soup, but we call it Soup with Frikadelkas (суп с фрикадельками). Even just hearing the name of this soup instantly reminds me of home, my childhood and of my mom making it because I just LOVE it (especially the meatballs, he-he)! It's light on the stomach & easy of the prep. So, here it is.

Yum!

Mom's cabbage salad

My mom makes this easy salad that goes great as a side to any supper (or lunch, or by itself). I love it so much that while my mom is here for a visit, I got her to make this salad 5 times already (that's in 2 weeks!).

Anyways, it's really simple, but my friend Di asked me to write it down, so here it is:

Beef and Irish Stout Stew

I'll be honest with you... other than having a great time in an Irish pub when I was younger, I really don't see the significance that St. Patrick's Day brings. Then again, I'm not Irish by any stretch of genealogy, so I have an excuse.  BUT... as I'm doing his genealogy, it turns out, my hubby is 1/32 Irish (his 3rd great grandfather was born in Ireland and immigrated to Canada during the Great Potato Famine).

So this year I figured, why not make some Irish dish for supper. I looked and looked, and there are TONS of recipes out there, many sound delish! However, even though I like to cook, I look for simpler dishes that are still delicious, but will be easy to replicate and don't require any fancy-hard-to-find ingredients. I came across the Beef & Irish Stout Stew and decided to give it a try. It turned out AWESOME! And I'm not just saying that cause I made it, it really was THAT GOOD :) I'm not a huge fan of beef, but this just melts in your mouth with minimal chewing of beef involved (you know, the kind one has to do with a well-done steak).

Enjoy!
(click on photos to enlarge)

Lemon Cheesecake goodness

I've been wanting something sweet this weekend, but didn't feel like eating anything store bought cause it's usually that buttercream stuff, which has lost its charms... So since it was Sunday, and I had some time on my hands, I turned to that Special Cookbook Edition of Canadian Living (mentioned a while back when I promised to make recipes from it).

Well... here it is - a recipe for Lemon Cheesecake Bars (well, mine was just a rectangular "cake"). I'll give you the amounts as the recipe lists them, but I will mention that I didn't have the proper bake ware, so I ended up cutting all of the amounts in half and making a smaller version of this delicious dessert. It turned out light and fluffy, unlike your usual "heavy" cheesecakes, and the hint of lemon added that much needed contrast in taste (kind of reminded me of a lemon meringue taste).

Enjoy!

Mmm... Sugar cookies....

Christmas time is THE time of the year when I think it's justified to indulge a little, food-wise (and refer to it later as a little "holiday" weight, he-he). I also think it's the time when the consumption of cookies increases sharply. So to add to that, I made some delicious sugar cookies!

I got this recipe for a mommy friend, who was kind to share it with us. She is a blogger mommy, so rather than re-write her recipe, just click on the link for step-by-step instructions to making these tasty treats: Amber's Sugar Cookie Recipe

Enjoy! And happy holidays!

Start a mini revolution!

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a post about my first experience making a chilli. Chilli is one of those things that I always thought about as being complicated and hard to make, and honestly, I never went looking for a recipe... Until I watched a TV show and then bought a recipe book by Jamie Oliver (aka the Naked Chef) called The Food Revolution. For those of you who haven't seen it - it was a reality show with a premise of making over the eating habits of one of the unhealthiest cities in the USA, Huntington, WV. The show was great and his book is just as good.

I have to say that I love this chilli recipe. But more importantly - my very picky husband AND my daughter do as well. This recipe makes quite a bit of quantity, so after eating the chilli for 3 days (that's right, they didn't mind having it for supper 3 days in the row!), we froze the rest :)

Here's how it goes:

You can barely see the rice - cause chilli is SO good! he-he :)

... and that's how much chilli is made from this recipe (something like 8 servings +)

Zucchini Pie

My awesome neighbour and friend G shared a zucchini pie recipe with me today, and now it's my turn to share it with you! Since I still have zucchini left from our garden what a better way to eat it by trying something new?! And I love to try new foods, he-he... :)
So here it goes:

G's zucchini pie, yum!

Yup, MORE jam!

If you thought that I done jammin' you were wrong! He-he... :)
Zucchinis keep growing, which means I have to keep doing something with them (other than eat them right away, like I said I don't want to eat zucchini-something every day!).

This time I made zucchini jam with................ KIWI! That's right, kiwi! Only this time I photographed a step by step procedure for you so I dare you to try making this jam.

Time for jam!

Okay, so you remember that zucchini. That's right that SAME zucchini!!! There was still some left after making soup and zucchini bread... So I was trying to figure out what else I could do with it, and my mom tipped me off that I could make jam. What she had in mind was zucchini+kiwi. I've never heard of jams being made out of zucchini, but when I started searching online, turns out that there are quite a few recipes out there. And after I made it, I wanted to make more! So I asked my mom for her strawberry jam recipe. And the reason this last one is my favourite is because you get whole berries swimming in jam (it's the second recipe in this post, so read on).

Strawberry and Zucchini & Pineapple jams

Yummy Zucchini Bread

So... Where were we?... Ah yes, I was telling you about our harvest. One of the veggies we picked last Friday was that giant zucchini (it was hiding from me!). Well, it's great - we got lots of veggies! But what the heck am I going to do with all of it. Of course, easy answer is pickling... Right, but it's tedious (though I AM going to do that). Salads? Sure, but again, how many salads are we going to eat every day (same salads that is). I already made a vegetable soup - there is no recipe for this one, I just threw what I had into the pot, added some cubed beef, cooked it all and called it soup, he-he. It was actually pretty good - and what's even better, my hubby liked it (he's SUCH a picky eater that if he likes something, I know that it must be good!).

So here is a recipe of a Zucchini bread I found online. There were lots of different recipes, but I found this one looked easier to make (which it was). And what's even better, hubby liked it too!

My sister's BORSCH

My sister stayed with us for 4 weeks, and kept talking about making a borsch pretty much the whole time she was here. Personally, I LOVE borsch soup, only it takes about 1 hour to make it (though actually it is pretty simple). Since we were busy almost every day, we kept putting it off. Finally, this past Thursday (her last day in Canada), she did make it for us!!!

So, here's the promised to you a while ago, the much anticipated recipe of the BORSCH as we make it :))) We'll call it a Belarusian borsch as a Russian recipe usually includes an addition of cabbage.
(Note: wikipedia calls it Borscht)

A dollop of sour cream makes this a perfect lunch meal!