Russian Season

On weekdays, I start my day with just a cup of tea and a tiny bit of cottage cheese. Even if I have something yummy in the fridge, I don’t care because I am usually too sleepy to enjoy food. The situation changes greatly on weekend mornings that bring you all the luxury of long and lazy breakfasts, with endless tea drinking and a slow, relaxed talk.

This plum tart was baked last night and, despite the irresistible smell of melted plum jam, it waited patiently until this morning to be served along with the wonderful Ginkgo tea I get from Slovakia.

The pie is absolutely easy and turbo-quick to make, as it uses frozen puff pastry and home-made plum jam (taken from Mom’s collection of preserves: tons of strawberry, cowberry, plum, cranberry, black currant, cherry and raspberry jam). The jam was strong, sour and even with a tiny note of bitterness. I served the pie with a drizzle of dark chocolate sauce, but unfortunately the photos turned out to be blurry when I viewed them on a large screen, so just believe me: it goes very well with dark chocolate dressing.

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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 »

In this Northern country we happened to live in, autumn is approaching already. I’ve noticed I have much less cravings for ice-cream and sorbets, and much more for tea, hot chocolate and something sweet and baked, preferably something you can prepare on a Friday night and stretch the pleasure into the weekend.

Sunny P said she was with me about the lemon zest diet – well, unfortunately I haven’t yet thought of one, but we did make a pie with four large and juicy lemons the other night. Just imagine that tart-and-fruity filling wrapped into a soft, moist pastry. Mmm. I think we’ll be making this pie with cranberries in place of lemons some time in future, and of course I’ll post the recipe and pictures if we do. Basically you might use almost any fresh berries as a filling, but something sour is better. And the most exciting thing about lemon filling is that you grind the lemons entirely, with all zest.

Another important tip is to let the pie cool properly before serving. Maybe even leave it in a cool place overnight and let the lemons soak into the pastry.

Finally, about the lemons. We had those really sour ones, so we took 1 cup sugar per lemon for the filling. If you prefer to use sweeter sorts of lemon, such as Meyer or other, please make sure you re-calculate the amount of sugar you need. Read the rest of this entry »

We baked this delicious, summery cake for Mom’s birthday just the other day.

A luscious raspberry filling resting on a buttery sweetcrust base and topped with a layer of airy, delicate whipped egg whites, covered with tiny drops of sugar syrup. Those amber-coloured drops appear if you leave the cake overnight; you don’t have to apply them specially, just in case you were wondering:) Just because when people first see this cake they’re mostly interested in how we make these drops of sugar for decoration.

Actually, if you look at the list of ingredients, you will see that it’s very simple.

I have to warn you however, that when you bake this cake, the hardest part is not to eat it all in the process of cooking. Personally I can never restrain myself from having a bit of raw home-made shortcrust pastry again and again while I am busy with other ingredients. Then, the egg whites; whipped with caster sugar and vanilla, they could serve as a standalone dessert, I believe. And of course the sugared raspberries – so ripe and enjoyable. So I am sincerely happy for you if you don’t like raw sweetcrust pastry or whipped egg whites. At least you’ll be able to wait patiently till the cake is ready. I can’t.

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One of the things I’ve always liked about living in Latvia is its dairy products. I love Latvian milk, sour cream, cottage cheese, yogurt, and all those products that I don’t even know the English names for. And, if you want to spoil my day, offer me some thin, transparent, blueish 0.5% milk for breakfast :) which they often do in hotels by the way.

Cottage cheese, or curd, or tvorog in Russian, is one of key dairy products for us, and an essential ingredient in a lot of dishes we cook at home. We have already talked about Khachapuri here, and now we’d like to offer you another kind of pastry which can be done with cottage cheese.

So, Raspberry and Cottage Cheese Turnovers. Sweet milky filling and luscious, fragrant berries enclosed in filo pastry. Oh, and there’s vanilla in them, too. Can you resist anything that contains vanilla?

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There’re many ways to make this traditional Georgian dish. We make Khachapuris of filo pastry with cheese filling inside – we find this the best way to preserve the softness and moistness of cheese and curd. Khachapuris can also be made in the form of small open boat-shaped pies, or filled and folded like envelopes, or even topped with a raw egg.

So, this recipe is more of a “Fantasy on a theme of Khachapuri”. We adapted it from a range of different (and quite controversial) recipes, but the essential ingredients remain: salty cheese, curd, and egg.

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