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.

Off my game

After a weekend away, and a long day of teaching and yoga, I decided to cook up some dishes in advance to save time later.  I had three eggplants saved up, but they were looking sad and wilty (who knew eggplant could wilt!?).  I was craving Indian, but couldn't find anything online that sounded tempting.  I turned to my favorite cookbook, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and found exactly what I wanted: Curried Coconut Eggplant with Potatoes.  Perfect, since I just got sweet potatoes, and the recipe also calls for tomatoes.  The only thing I didn't have was ginger, but knew that wouldn't matter too much.  What does matter, though, is that you don't burn the spices.  First I burned the mustard seeds I was supposed to be toasting.  Then the rest of the spices burned, including all my garlic.  I went forward, though, and stirred all the veggies & coconut milk into the charred mass.  We'll see how it turns out when I have it for dinner tomorrow, but I'm not too hopeful.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I managed to burn the frittata I made for the morning as well.  I hope my cooking skills recover by the time I get to the giant bag of hot peppers.  They were unlimited in this week's share, so I should have enough for pickling and a new batch of hot sauce.

Stuffed peppers & gazpacho

Teaching four classes is turning out to be more work than I had thought, but I have still managed to keep up with the produce.  Keeping up with the blog is another story...Soon I'll write a post about the preserving I've been doing, but in the meantime, some regular old recipes for what I've been making.  The summer vegetables are at their peak, and there has been a wonderful variety of peppers at the farm.  I've been saving up the hot ones to pickle, but when another CSA member offered me her share of poblanos, I knew I had enough to make something a little special.

Dips & sauces

Fresh salsa

Being away for two months, I've forgotten how much I have to keep up with my produce.  It really is nice to feel like there's always food in the house, but I hate having to toss a gorgeous tomato that's gone bad because I didn't get to it in time.  I'd almost completely forgotten about my plans to make salsa fresca.  It's one of my favorites to make, especially when I'm in Russia and want something exotic.  Finding tortilla chips in Russia isn't difficult, but a good dip is hard to come by.  My favorite part about this dip: add avocado and you have guacamole!

The colors of summer

My colorful haul for the week: wax
peppers, cucumbers, summer squash,
tomatoes, eggplant, onions,
herbs & spaghetti squash

Today was my first time back at the farm myself in over two months.  What a treat to see the bins of veggies and pick out my produce.  As I moved around the room from cooler to cooler, I noticed a trend in my bags: one was full of greens & yellows, and the other was full of reds, purples, and oranges.  When I make a salad or think about what to serve for dinner, I often try to eat a variety of colors.  I guess I've gleaned information from the FDA over the years that different colors of fruits and vegetables indicate different kinds of vitamins and minerals, so you get more of a balance by eating different plants.  But it was a real treat to see the variety in one week's worth of produce.

Back in the saddle

Adorable tiny graffiti eggplant!

After quite the hiatus, I'm back to cooking with the amazing produce from my CSA.  Soon I hope to write a bit about my food life while I was in Russia, but in the meantime, more seasonal Jersey veggies.  Since I only arrived on Friday after a 32-hour journey home, my roommate was kind enough to visit the farm for me.  This week's haul: eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes (unlimited pick-your-own!), onions, bell peppers, jalapenos, Hungarian wax peppers (and some rather similar looking sweet peppers, but we quickly discovered you can distinguish them by smell), cucumber, butternut squash and a mix of herbs.  This is an entirely different ball game from the greens of June.

Another take on bok choy

Spicy rice noodles with
bok choy & salmon

So I didn't post about this recipe before I left for 9 weeks in Russia, so the details are a little fuzzy.  I know that I used salmon instead of steak, and that the results were AMAZING.  As usual, the fish sauce adds a lovely depth to the dish.  One day, I'd love to know when to add it without having it called for in a recipe.  But for now, I'm happy to use it whenever I see it listed in the ingredients!

Greens, greens, greens

Red & green romaine salad

This week's share was even bigger than the last.  I'm leaving town soon, so I knew better than to even try taking everything.  My farm gives the leftover produce to charity, so I know that at least it will go to good use.  Anything is better than something going bad in the fridge.  So, the haul: cauliflower, romaine, collards, Tuscan kale, red Russian kale, arugula, spinach, bok choy, Swiss chard, and basil.  All this to get cooked in 4 days!  I made pesto from the basil (using what I had from last week as well), and two batches of arugula pesto.  That will keep in the fridge for a while, I hope.  My roommate will put it to good use when she's back in town I'm sure.

Eat your vegetables!

Curried cauliflower with chickpeas and tofu

As it was getting closer to the end of the week, all I had left is cauliflower and broccoli.  At least something holds up in the fridge for more than a day!  I searched for something new and interesting to try with cauliflower, and found this promising recipe.  I hadn't made anything Indian for a while, so I was sold.  My original plan was to serve this with some brown rice, but I had raging carnivores coming over for dinner, so I also made some meatballs using this recipe, but with lamb instead of pork. (I also used a combination of golden raisins and dried cranberries instead of currants, and wish I had chopped them as the recipe states. Now I have pine nuts for my basil pesto at least!)  I couldn't find fennel seed for the cauliflower, but thankfully ginger was back on the shelves.  The cooking itself was pretty easy: chop, saute, simmer.  The tofu is cooked separately, after being coated in flour, which is a technique I'd never used but probably will again in the future.  The results were stunning.  The chickpeas and tofu really complemented the cauliflower.  The lamb meatballs were perfect: juicy and flavorful.  But the meat-eaters all went back for seconds of the vegetables...success!

Collards, take two.

Last week I made collard greens, and they were pretty tasty thanks to the addition of bacon.  I still had some bacon left, so I wanted to see how to improve.  Rather than just improvising, I thought I'd give this recipe a try.  Alongside it, I also wanted to try Mark Bittman's method for cooking salmon that I saw on the New York Times website this week, but using some Cajun seasoning I have in my pantry.  Both recipes were huge successes, and paired really nicely.  While the collards were simmering, the smell of the cider vinegar was really strong.  I was quite surprised when the sweetness of the brown sugar came through in the first bite.  The flavors melded really well: sour, sweet, spicy, salty.  This recipe does take some time to make, but you could easily let the greens simmer all afternoon.  The salmon, wild-caught Silver Coho bought frozen from Trader Joe's, cooked up really fast because my filets were so small.  I think this is my new preferred way to prepare fish!

Don't hold the anchovies!

It's a bit of a juggling act to get all these leafy greens cooked before they are too wilted to enjoy.  I had to do something with the broccoli rabe.  I found a good recipe on chow.com, and stocked up on anchovies.  As a kid, I only knew anchovies from references in TV and movies, when people usually order a pizza with "everything, hold the anchovies."  So I assumed that they were something no one liked.  All those fictional characters were really missing out.  I first started using them in my puttanesca sauce (sardines, by the way, also go well in puttanesca, but they're another food that TV taught me was strange), and enjoy their flavor a lot.  In this pasta dish, they really stand out -- they even stood up against the hot Italian sausage I added, though I did use two tins instead of one.  We had a great meal, rounded out with some broccoli, and good wine :)

Bok Choy dumpling soup

Chopped bok choy ready for cooking

Like I said in my last post, having a CSA is a lot of work.  Lately I've been shopping mostly based on one or two meals in advance, and now I get all my produce at once.  But no one wants to eat just collards or broccoli for dinner, so I have to plan how I'm going to dress up and highlight my veggies.  I've been scouring my favorite food sites for recipes, and consulting with friends and family.  Luckily, I've been able to find good recipes that require very little extra shopping, and the ingredients I need to buy aren't too fancy.  It does help that I have a fairly well-stocked kitchen to begin with.  Which is why when I saw that this soup required star anise and cloves, I didn't bat an eye.  I keep those in my pantry for mulling wine in the winter, and am always glad to find another use for these spices.  If you don't have a lot of spices, try to find a store that sells them in bulk, so you can just buy what you need.  In my area, this store has saved me a ton of money!

This is a lot of work! But I have some tricks to help

Farfalle with arugula pesto

I finished up last week's cooking with some pasta and arugula pesto.  I have never really cared for pesto, and now I think it's the basil-pine nut combination.  This arugula-walnut stuff is great.  So creamy, so zesty.  I used a lot of onion and garlic in the dish, which never hurts.  I had some grape tomatoes that never made it to a salad, so those got halved and sautéed, along with some asparagus.  The pasta I had in my pantry was farfalle, from a kasha varnishkes craving (note to self: find something to eat with buckwheat!), and I added a little freshly grated parmesan at the end.  The final product was amazing.

Martha Stewart actually has a good Asian recipe!

Red bok choy

Ok, Martha is a big cliché.  And there was the whole insider trading thing.  But I've found that 1) she can laugh at herself (Exhibit A, Exhibit B), 2) her recipes are holding up in my kitchen (Exhibit C has been made by me and my roommate with great success).  So when I did a search for what I had on hand, bok choy and skirt steak, and one of Ms. Stewart's recipes came up, I decided I'd give it a try.

Let me back up a second.  I really had wanted to make flank steak, with the amazing marinade from How to Cook Everything.  But they were out of this cut at Whole Foods, so I took a gamble with skirt steak.  Then I got home and read how it's not a very tender cut, but used a lot in stir-fries.  So I decided I'd go with rice instead of potatoes.  And this led me to this recipe.  I was skeptical about the sauce: peanut butter and honey with soy sauce and vinegar?!  Since I had all the ingredients, I figured it couldn't hurt to try, and if it didn't work out, well...that's what sriracha sauce is for, right?