Tag: salad
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Turnip Salad
After Orthodox Easter gluttony with Kulichi and Paskha, my body is longing for something light and fresh, like this quick and simple turnip salad. It seems that turnips are ignored as food by many because I often find them wilting on store shelves. People seem to under appreciate this milder alternative to more pungent red…
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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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Red Radish Salad
An advocate of minimalism in life, which unfortunately is possible mostly theoretically in our world of consumerism, I adore simple dishes that do not involve many ingredients. Some of those dishes come from my childhood in Russia, where minimalism was dictated by permanent deficit. Our memory carries on all our life impressions including food, and…
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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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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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Cloaked Herring
This Holiday Season was marred for me by a nasty flu that has been keeping me disabled in terms of elaborate cooking. Alas. I will see better days… Only Masha’s presence and inspiration made it possible to create something worth mentioning. The herring dish I am sharing with you today is one of the favorite…
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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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Vinegret – Jazzy Holiday Salad
Without vinegret, a winter vegetable salad, Russian traditional table is missing one of its important components. As far as I remember my precious self, vinegret (please do not confuse it with vinaigrette – a dressing made of oil and vinegar)was always in my mama’s festive winter menu, especially on New Year’s eve. Colorful, refreshing and…
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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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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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Tomato Herring Salad
Herring is one of those products that is under appreciated here in the US. It evokes the feelings of unconcealed disgust and possibility of poisoning. This is strange since anchovies, which are very similar, are widely used in gourmet preparations. Herring is not only Russian traditional food, it is also a favourite in many European countries, Scandinavians being the…
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Cucumber & Crispy Bacon Salad
Oh no, there’s yet another one of my lazy, spontaneous salads. But it is good, I do promise you! At least one witness does agree with me. Today, after another evening of fruitless apartment hunting in the heat and smelliness of New York, I told Gary over the phone that I was in no mood…
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Curried Daikon Salad
No, it is not black caviar you are seeing. It’s roasted black mustard seeds. Working from home today (a luxury I sometimes allow myself), I alloted myself a small lunch break. Not appreciating this distraction caused by hunger, I rummaged through the fridge, uninspired and impatient to get back to work. There was daikon, sour…
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Avocado, Zucchini and Watercress Salad
Next to mama’s elaborate posts informed by years of experience and accompanied by beautiful photos, mine are beginning to look more amateur than I would like. But there is not much that I can do about the scarcity of time. I suppose, our recipes reflect our lifestyles. Mine are usually about quickly throwing something tasty…
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Daikon Salad
This favourite of ours was inspired by Asian salads that became popular in Russia in the 80-s. Korean salad, as we called it, was made mostly of carrots with the addition of garlic, red and black pepper, salt, white vinegar (there was nothing else in stores), and sunflower oil (also the only option we had at that time). Daikon, Japanese…
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Stuffed Peppers, Spring Cabbage Salad
Today was one of those (relatively few) days, when I forsake all my youthful yearnings for extreme sports, shopping, museums, nightlife, and instead settle for a day of picture-perfect domesticity. I decided to take it to a relative extreme and spent a few solid hours in the kitchen, cooking enough food to last us a…
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White Grapefruit and Salmon Salad
Cooking can be just about the food, or it can be a therapy: a release from a grueling day at work, or from the sadness that settles on you suddenly in a blanket of volcanic ash. And therapy it was for me yesterday night, when I composed this overture of a salad: sweet, refreshing, and…
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Lazy Tomato Salad
One hot summer day I felt lazy to peel, slice, and mix. That’s how this minimalistic tomato salad was born. “Is that all? – asked Alex when he saw a shallow dish. – I will not eat this”. That was the verdict. But when we tried it, we were amazed how sweetness of tomato, tanginess…
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