An overview of the Russian diet

A perfect Russian lunch

Anyone who's been following my instagram feed knows that I eat a lot of Russian food, especially in our cafeteria at lunch. And I'm a big fan of institutional food, with fond memories of chicken fried steak in the cafeteria at my elementary school. But Russian cafeterias are something else. First of all, pre-made frozen foods are just about unheard of. Every day, someone is peeling potatoes, grinding cuts of meat, and making soup from scratch. Then, there's the Russian meal structure. You start with a "salad", which can be anything from fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, to a mayonnaise-heavy potato salad, to boiled tongue. Next is the "first course": soup. In the summer, we have cold soups with kvass, but there are also hot soups. My favorite is solyanka, which has cured meats, pickles, and olives. Soup almost always has some sour cream as a garnish. Then, the "second course": the entree. Usually, some sort of meat. At our cafeteria, we have beef goulash, cutlets made from ground meat shaped into patties, or pieces of chicken or pork with cheese and tomato on top. And then you need a "garnish", the carb: potatoes, pasta, rice, or my favorite, buckwheat. Sometimes there are golubtsy, stuffed cabbage rolls, or stuffed peppers. Or an "omelet" which is just baked eggs. Then you need a drink: compote from berries, or tea, and something sweet: a pirozhok or some other baked good. The cafeterias are also very cheap, compared to cafes or restaurants, and really just as healthy and filling. 

a fresh start.

A Russian spread in May

I haven't stopped cooking. I have, however, decided not to get a CSA this year. This turned out to be a good decision, since I wouldn't have been around in the fall for it anyways: in August, I'm moving to Illinois. (I've been promised a good farmer's market in my new home, Urbana, though! Plus the Midwest is farm central, right??) So, I decided to revamp this blog and write more broadly about my adventures in the kitchen. But, this decision also coincided with my departure for Russia for two months, so I've also decided to feature my eating adventures over here as well. I've become one of those people that takes pictures of their food at restaurants, and posts these images to Instagram and Facebook somewhat obsessively. Sorry. But not really. Sure someone wants to know what Chinese food in Russia looks like, or has never tried buckwheat kasha because it sounds kind of scary. Well, for the next several weeks, I'll try to explain what food is like in Russia today. Or at least my version and approach.

Old, forgotten post...

I wrote this back in September. Clearly, the semester got away from me!

As the semester gets under way, I'm finding less time during the week to cook.  But it's so difficult to let the beautiful produce from the farm go to waste.  This past weekend, I planned out several meals, and spent an entire day cooking.  The result is a fridge full of food.  This, however, leads to the potential for spoilage, just at a different pace.  So, I turned to an old habit from when I was a busy graduate student taking classes & studying for my general exams: freezing meals for future use.  Now, I can have the fresh taste of fall even in the middle of winter, when it's too cold to go out or I'm too busy grading exams to cook.

Winter greens, hearty meals

The greens are back at the farm!  This week, I got chard, kale & arugula.  More on the kale later, but this week's arugula went straight into a pesto.  I love the combination of arugula with walnuts, but this recipe is really missing garlic for me.  But, it went quite well with the wheat berries I boiled.  The chard got braised in this recipe.  (I only had a small bunch of chard, so I halved the recipe.) Like the description says, it really does taste like something that has been cooking all day.  The flavors are really amazing, especially considering it uses canned beans.  On a crisp fall day or a cold winter night, this vegetarian meal will stick to your ribs and keep you warm.

Hot sauce, take 3

I finally had enough time to attack the remaining 50-odd hot peppers from the farm.  A few weeks back, they offered UNLIMITED hot peppers, but I didn't know what kind they were.  I also picked up some red hot chili peppers (good luck using Google to figure out what other name these peppers go by...), and a ghost pepper (aka bhut jolokia).  The last batch of hot sauce I made wasn't really all that hot, so I wanted to try again.  Making hot sauce is one of the easiest things I've ever done in the kitchen: remove the stems, boil peppers with some garlic, maybe some carrots, drain, and puree with some acidic liquid: citrus juice or vinegar.  I wanted to really get the flavor of the peppers, so I didn't use carrots this time.  I also increased the pepper count: two dozen "mystery" peppers, 1 ghost pepper, and 3 chili peppers, with four cloves of garlic.  Since the last batch was really citrusy (not a bad thing at all!!), I used a mixture of vinegar and lime juice.  Actually, I only had three limes, so I added some vinegar to get the total liquid up to one cup.  My food processor only hold four cups, and I really reached the limits of its capacity, but ended up with an amazingly hot sauce.  Since this process is so easy, I went ahead and boiled up the remaining 2 dozen peppers.  (For those keeping track, between the pickled peppers and the hot sauce, I probably brought home around 100 of these peppers!)  Plus, this way I could gauge how much heat came from the bhut jolokia, and how much came from the other hot peppers.  I was out of limes, so I squeezed the juice of a naval orange, and added vinegar to fill up the cup.  This hot sauce was probably just as spicy, but there's not way to know for sure until the sauce has cooled and the flavors have melded over a few days.  I can't wait for my friends to try it and let me know how this stacks up to the first batch I made with scotch bonnet peppers...

A (quarter) peck of pickled peppers

3 pounds of peppers

After weeks of saving up hot wax peppers and mild banana peppers from the farm, I got a bumper crop of some sort of hot pepper.  They were offering an unlimited supply, so I filled a plastic grocery bag, probably close to 3 pounds.  Unfortunately, I don't know what kind these peppers are, but a farmhand told me they were "medium" spicy.  After the poblano-burning-my-hands incident, I figured I'd be safe in considering them on the hot side, but perhaps not a Scotch Bonnet.   

Putting food by

When I first heard that there were unlimited tomatoes in the farm share, I instantly thought this would be the perfect excuse to learn how to can my own tomatoes for future use.  Canned whole tomatoes are a staple in my pantry for soups and sauces, so if I could save money on the store-bought version by investing a little time, why not?  Unfortunately, I missed the unlimited-tomato offer, which is not that big of a problem since I really wanted plum tomatoes.  So I kept an eye out for a good deal, and one day I stopped at a farm stand close to home that had a large basket of plum tomatoes for just $16.  The box I left with had around 30 lbs. of tomatoes...more than I knew what to do with.  Almost.