Russian Season

With this post (which is going to be a little bit chaotic, as there’s so much I’ve got to tell you!) we are taking a short break until January. I am off to Slovakia on Friday (via Vienna - do you think I’ll still catch the winter sales this weekend?!) and will be back just a few days before the New Year. Being a Russian Orthodox, I celebrate Christmas on 6/7th of January, so there’s still plenty of time until Christmas for me. Anyway, I’m certainly going to participate in Christmas celebrations while I’m in Slovakia, and then spend a cosy New Year’s Eve together with my family. Sure we’re going to bake and cook a lot for New Year’s Eve, so expect new posts in the beginning of January ;-)

Speaking about travel, I’ve just read there’ll be direct flights from Riga to Belgrade starting from May 2010 – I’m so excited! I’ve always wanted to visit Serbia, and voila – they’re opening this new destination specially for me! :)

In this post I would also like to thank Barbara Rolek, the Guide to Eastern European Food at About.com, for mentioning our website. You can’t imagine how excited I was when Barbara wrote and let us know she was going to include RussianSeason in her latest list of blogs to watch for. Barbara is a professional cook, food writer and restaurant critic. Be sure to check out her Top10 (Eastern European) Foodie Gifts!

I’m not sure I will have the opportunity to spend a lot of time online while I’m away – I bet that you wouldn’t be often seen online either if you had only 10 days to see the Tatra mountains, visit Vienna, and learn a bunch of Slovak recipes! So, just a few technical notes: if you posted a comment and it never got published – don’t worry, it’s probably my Akismet module which sometime filters out good comments. I’ve got to approve them manually afterwards. Also, if you have a comment or a question to ask, please feel free to email us, I’ll reply when I come back (I *love* hearing from our readers!)

Before leaving, I’ve made two large pans of baked goods for my friends. I’d been thinking of some simple, homely goodies that would not be too fragile and yet look/taste festive. So I decided on Lazy Pahlava and Oatmeal Bars with dried cherries and walnuts, which evolved from a plain oatmeal cookie recipe. Those translucent dried cherries bring a Christmas note and add a fruity flavour to the bars, while the walnuts kind of merge with the oats and create that nutty aroma.

We wish a very happy Christmas to everyone! Thank you very much for being out there, cooking, inspiring, reading, commenting! See you soon! ^_^

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Oh my God, it’s Sunday afternoon and it’s the first time this weekend that I’m cooking :(  That’s because I’ve got to buy/find/fix/finish a million things before my Christmas vacation.

While the Potato&Mushroom pie is baking, I’ll just post a couple of pictures of those beautiful and juicy tangerines we got yesterday. I love when tangerines come with sprigs and leaves. Aren’t they marvellous?

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As soon as I saw Baby Portabella & Mozzarella on Mini Toasts at Sunny-side Up Recipes, I knew I would be making these. The recipe seemed perfect: golden-brown mini toasts topped with melting mozzarella and mushrooms sautéed in rose wine, seasoned with Italian herbs… just perfect! I really wanted to share this treat with somebody, so when Grandmother said she was going to visit us, I know what we’d offer her as an appetizer ;-)

Of course I had to alter Sunny’s ingredient list a little bit – for example, I couldn’t find any Portabella mushrooms, so I took plain champignons. The bread slices I used were bigger in size (I wish they sold such mini-toasts here!), and I removed the crust as it seemed to be too coarse for such a delicate dish. But the bread was really flavourful and I even ate almost all of the crusts while cooking, hehe. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week we bought some incredibly soft and sweet autumn pears, and Mom immediately came up with the idea of a Pear and Cream Cake. We used frozen puff pastry – or you might prefer to make your own at home, which means you are a very patient person :) I easily come to a compromise between the store-bought and the home-made when it comes to puff pastry. They sell some really good-quality pastry in a nearby supermarket, and it makes life so much easier! Isn’t a home-made croissant or turnover made with frozen puff pastry still better than having sandwiches for lunch again?!

Anyways, we laid those sugary-simmered pears on a sheet of pastry, topped them with whipped egg and cream, sprinkled the cake with almond shavings, put it into oven and waited for 45 minutes, enjoying the warm smells of melting cream, vanilla, and baking pastry. The cake came out tender and sweet, with a very mild citrus flavour and a dreamy touch of vanilla. We let it cool until room temperature, so it became easy to cut. You might as well try serving it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. Read the rest of this entry »

This is just a quick and simple omelette we made the other night with leftover chanterelles. Actually we’ve been frying and freezing a lot of chanterelles to be able to make some soups or those lovely Chanterelle Turnovers after the season is over. I guess I’ve already mentioned that these mushrooms are one of my favourite ingredients – I’m sure I could stay on a chanterelle diet for weeks and weeks! Another ingredient I love is lemon and lemon zest. But a lemon zest diet would be more challenging, I suppose.

You might notice that we didn’t add any spice to this omelette. In fact, I don’t support the overuse of spice at all. Yes I love the warm and mild flavour of vanilla in sweet pastry, or the exotic flavour of curry in sautéed vegetables, or those balsamic, piny notes of fresh rosemary that are so perfect for roasted salmon. But, eggs should taste like eggs and spinach should taste like spinach, to my mind. That’s why this omelette does not contain any spice.

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Everybody in our family loves risotto, which we make with or without mushrooms, adding zucchini and white wine. Aww that creamy, tender texture of risotto rice, saturated in olive oil and Parmesan cheese. And yes, we know this is not at all a Russian dish :)

But, sometimes you just don’t have all the necessary risotto components at hand. For example, this time we didn’t have any Arborio rice or Parmesan cheese. So, we decided to cook white rice with vegetables and mushroom stock instead. And it tasted good! The flavourful mushroom stock paired perfectly with eggplants. And fried carrots lent a cheerful warm colour to rice. The day was saved!

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