Tag: summer
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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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Black Currant Ice Cream
Buckets of free black currants is what we were used to. Every summer we picked them in our own garden, ate them with relish (until our tongues ached) and preserved them to last through the long Siberian winter. In America currants are not easy to find, and when you do find them be ready to…
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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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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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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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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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Red Shchi
This variation of cabbage soup was my aunt’s favourite. Remember my aunt Shura who taught me all cooking basics? She cooked with her own special attitude, appreciating good quality products and enjoying the process of cooking with them. She just loved to cook this red shchi in summer when there were plenty of ripe fresh tomatoes. Actually,…
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What Is This?..
What do you think you are seeing? Raw pork? No. Pink peach wedges? No! Unripe watermelon? No!! If somebody showed it to me some time ago and said it’s potatoes, I wouldn’t believe it. But the truth is it is potatoes. Freshly dug out and almost young potatoes was my last weekend happy find at one of…
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Wild Strawberries Thrill
You are not mistaken – these are wild strawberries. I’ll tell you more: those strawberries were unexpectedly found by Alex when he was moving the lawn and ran into a small strawberry field that spread between two lots. It is beneficial sometimes to have a neighbor who doesn’t give a damn about his lawn – it offers Mother Nature…
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Summer Eggplant and Tomato "Sandwich"
Summer is around, and with everything blooming, growing and producing, one longs for something right from the garden. Eggplant is one of these fruit of agricultural labour that is particularly good during summer time. Winter eggplant that is grown and forced to produce fruit artificially, has a bitter taste and requires special handling, hence more time for…
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