Tag: healthy
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Home-dried Bananas
This snack came to life as a result of a nostalgic memory of dried bananas that were sold long ago back in Russia. It was made in China and was a popular addition to our not very plentiful diet. They used probably the smallest variety of bananas on Earth, and most likely dried them in…
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Red Lentil Soup with Ginger
After visiting a newly opened Indian store I was inspired by rows and rows of lentils they have for sale and endless spices where many of them were new to me. It was incredible to learn and see in one place how many varieties of lentils exist. The quick lentil soup I usually make is…
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Pink Summer Salad with Gooseberries and Mozarella
It’s Saturday, it’s summer and the sun is shining in Zurich. Because I live alone these days, I hardly ever cook anything interesting (except for parties, when things get too hectic to make pictures). When I do cook, my most favorite thing to cook for just myself is a salad. I become a painter who…
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Goat Soup with Dumplings
I didn’t know what the goat meat tastes like until I made a refreshing Saturday morning trip to Blood Farm in West Groton, MA, and cooked the goat meat soup for the first time in my life. I was hoping to get fresh meat, but it was frozen, I should have asked to keep it…
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Health Nut's Raw Vegetable Relish
Consuming sinful Parisian pastries on my latest trip drew my mind to healthier things – fresh vegetables, spring herbs, vitamins, the stuff of life. Today’s recipe is for an ultra healthy relish of carrots, tomatoes, peppers and rhubarb marinated cold in the juice of one whole lemon and a few other flavors. This spicy, zesty…
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Fresh Beet Smoothie
Beet Smoothie?.. If somebody told me about it a few years ago, I would be very skeptical. Once I tried it though, it became one of my preferred smoothies any time of the year. It is very timely after Easter when you eat a lot of high-calorie viands and your body needs a break. Fresh…
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Sour Spinach Soup
This spinach soup is a nostalgic effort to reproduce one of my favorite soups from the past times. When we bought a house in the US, I was full of dreams and plans about my own organic garden. I tried to grow many things, from greens to strawberries, and once even cantaloupe (that was relentlessly…
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Farmers Cheese Muffins
These muffins are actually a healthier variation of Farmers Cheese Pancakes. The main ingredients are the same, but the way of cooking is quite different. It’s baking instead of frying – a preferable way to cook in the age of fat phobia. I used tvorog bought at a Russian market, but farmers cheese will also…
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Shiitake and Lentil Pilaf
Today’s recipe is a vegetarian pilaf as satisfying and rich in flavor as mom’s Lamb Pilaf. Imagine the aroma of mushrooms and garlic, the rich taste of lentils and the nuttiness of wild rice punctuated by tiny nuggets of spice stored in the green peppercorns. You have to pay for this richness, though, by using…
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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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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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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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Beef Liver Patties
As much as I liked pea soup, I hated liver in my early years. Oh God, I remember so vividly how I was sitting over my plate in desperation, unable to get this hateful piece of fried liver down. I was a rather sickly child, and mama fed me with half-done liver for anemia. That’s…
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Rassolnik – Chicken Soup with Pickles
Rassolnik is a fairly common traditional Russian soup. Its name comes from the Russian word rassol, or brine in which pickled cucumbers are kept. It is true that brine can be used in preparing this soup, but it is not essential. In practice, pickled cucumbers alone are sufficient to give the broth the tangy acidity…
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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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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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Fish Rissoles
Following our rule to cook fish at least once a week, we decided on fish for Saturday. There was no particular recipe in mind, and, exhausted by endless repair work over dreadful garden shed, I almost ended up cooking something quick like baked fish fillets with mustard, garlic, and mayo, but suddenly I got extremely bored with…
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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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Soup with Puff Klezki
A soup with klezki, one of the simplest Russian dishes, must have been handy during the time of empty shelves in the Soviet supermarkets. I barely remember those times, they left in me no bitter sediment, and this soup has left me nothing but warmth. There are other variations on klezki, most notably the German kößchen, but the klezki I…
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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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