Tag: easy
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Beet Smoothie Soup
This recipe has been brewing in my mind for awhile – a smoothie and a cold soup in one. The best part – it is almost no-boil, where most of ingredients are fresh vegetables. And the best best part is – the proportions are quite arbitrary, just flow with your desires and you will be…
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Ah… Sangria
It’s Saturday. I sip ice-cold sangria, and outside it’s hot, hot, hot. The heat is so unusual, that the streets of Park Slope and Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn are blissfully empty. A few passerbys, perilously close to the melting point, saunter on the shady side of the street, looking lost. I wish I could take…
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Lazy Ravioli with Cheese
It is 95 F today in Boston. Feels like Florida. Even more so since our portable a/c has not arrived yet. So, what’s for dinner today?.. Well, something simple with minimum cooking. I happened to have a package of farmers cheese in the fridge, and something lazy came to mind. I have omitted the most…
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Okroshka
Okroshka is a traditional cold Russian summer soup that doesn’t need to be boiled. It is usually made on hot days when nobody wants to move, let alone cook something serious in the kitchen. This soup contains mostly raw vegetables, boiled eggs, and fermented drink kvas. It makes a quintessential healthy food. This soup is…
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Fiddlehead Fern Salad
This recipe is another experiment with fiddlehead fern salad. The first one was a complete fiasco. This time it was dashed off intuitively, with Asian cuisine in mind. To my taste, it turned out quite well. If you are in this particular mood, follow me… What you need: 1.5 cups fiddlehead fern 1 big clove…
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Quick Olady – Mini Buttermilk Pancakes
Olady (pronounced [aladyi]) is one of many Russian traditional flour treats, usually served for breakfast. There are classic and simple olady. Classic are made with yeast, and simple are made with baking soda and buttermilk or sour cream. Today’s recipe is fast and simple, the final product is light and airy, and just begs to…
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Korean-Style Steak
After 40 days of veganism during the Russian Orthodox Lent, I am a true carnivore again! The idea for this recipe – a steak with a marinade that includes pureed fruit – comes from my boss, who has spent some years in Japan and is more in tune with Asian olfactory sensibilities than me. Pureed…
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Octopus's Garden Salad
Today the sun is shining again in Brooklyn. My local wine store put out a sign: “Weather, make up your damn mind!” Indeed, yesterday was windy, menacing and wet, and today Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden” comes to mind: We would be warm below the storm In our little hideaway beneath the waves Perhaps due to this…
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Charlotte – Easy Apple Pie
This is a Russian favorite (pronounced Shar-lot-ka), and also probably the easiest cake you will ever bake. It requires hardly any preparation and only the most basic ingredients. And yet… the distinctive pink crust and lovely tartness of the apples make it a perfect home-made companion to tea and coffee. Ready to try? What you…
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Cookie Cake
Exhausted by two major storms last week, I was not inclined to stand long hours in the kitchen on the weekend. But the cold weather and snowy surroundings called for something sweet. When shopping at my favorite Russian market, I glanced at a shelf with plain Russian cookies, cookies that I remember since my nursery…
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Olivier – Russian Salad
Most of the potato salads served in American Restaurants under the name “Russian Salad“, are simplified variations of this 20th century Russian classic. In Russia this salad is most commonly called Olivier Salad, and no self-respecting Russian feast can go without it. Where I come from, we call it simply the Winter Salad. Indeed, every…
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Mazurka – Dried Fruit Cake
No, I am not talking about a Polish folk dance. Mazurka is a sweet quick bread made with a lot of nuts and dried fruit. The nuts and fruit constitute as much as half of the dough. Mazurka is astonishingly easy to make, and is not meant to be a sophisticated cake. The bread consistency…
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Cauliflower with Slow-Cooked Garlic
Unlike writing (allegedly manuscripts do not burn), cooking is a transient art, swept away by Time just as the Tibetan sand paintings. Just as with the sand paintings, the sweeping away itself is a ritual. Business lunch, romantic dinner, coffee break. Just like birthdays meals remind us that we are alive. They celebrate not a…
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Quick Pickled Cucumbers
Sometimes a normal person has cravings for sweet, sour or salty, and many other things. Don’t get me wrong, but I think it’s very healthy to follow your cravings, otherwise you will get depressed and plain unhappy, and there is nothing good about it. Am I not right? Quick pickled cucumbers are one of my summer cravings.…
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Classic Beets Salad
Out of the Russian gastronomic stereotypes (apart from cabbage, which is also German, and vodka, which is really quite popular around the globe) beets is one of the most persistent. And yes, we are truly beet-eaters. Beets are a proud ingredient of many traditional Russian dishes. Nothing to be shy about. Beet root is known…
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Cheater's Green Tea Ice Cream
In the last few weeks of summer, it is permissible to catch up on ice cream before the coming of sleet, rain and snowfalls, before the unforgettable slushy winter blues catch up with you and steal your soul, if only temporarily. Because I have been careful to avoid ice cream in the sweltering July days…
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Savory Zucchini Muffins
Remember my recipe for Squash Pancakes? I love these pancakes, but striving to live a healthier lifestyle, I always think about less harmful ways of cooking. So the idea of baking instead of frying those pancakes has been brewing in my mind for quite a while, and only negative influence of my very conservative other half was preventing…
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Portobello Salmon
Finally, there came to be a dreary Sunday, the kind that causes bouts of spleen and laziness, chains one to her Brooklyn apartment, and hence also to its aging gas stove. Thus it came to be that I ignored my plans to go to the city for yoga, and instead cooked my favorite salmon recipe…
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Jilo
I live in the area where due to some mysterious immigration tendencies there are many Portuguese speaking people, some are from Brazil, some from Portugal. Those from Europe are a little scornful of those from South America, but both are very friendly and hard working people. They keep bakeries, restaurants, and little shops with Brazilian specialty foods. A…
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Poor Man's Caprese
Most people who’ve paid a few visits to Italian restaurants know caprese, a traditional Italian salad composed of just 5 ingredients: tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. It is lovely, satisfying, complete, but as a history of restaurant-going has proved, caprese is not the surest item on the menu. It leaves nothing…
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