Russian Season

I never count calories, so be warned: when I make something light and low-calorie, it is by pure accident. Because if I want something, I will have it. Be it healthy or guilty. But I think this pudding with fresh fruit counts as a low-calorie dessert… doesn’t it? It includes no cream, eggs or soft cheese, just milk. The percentage of milk fat can be adjusted to individual taste. I believe it’s also a fun and healthy way for kids to have their semolina. Food tastes so much better when it’s bright-coloured!

The pudding is very similar to Cranberry Semolina Mousse, but its obvious benefit is that it’s made with fresh berries and fruit – no heat treatment this time. The bright fragrance of apricot blends nicely with the classic flavour of strawberries, and semolina adds a pleasant grainy texture. All you really have to do is cook semolina and wash your blender after you puree the ingredients. Couldn’t be any easier!

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At some point, I was afraid that with this ongoing Icelandic volcano eruption we wouldn’t have summer at all, but it seems like there’s still not enough ash above Europe to deprive us of summer. This week has been really warm and we’ve been enjoying cold beverages, refreshing salads, frozen desserts, and cold soups. I still haven’t bought an ice-cream machine, but I’m determined to do so by mid-June. Then I’d probably need a book with ice-cream recipes – any suggestions are very welcome as I have just enough time to order one from Amazon (again, unless the volcanic ash doesn’t come between). Oh and speaking of the volcano eruption, when I first heard about that air service collapse that had happened due to the ash cloud spread, my first thought was: how will my boyfriend get here from London?? and my second was: oh my God if this continues for more than a week, how are they going to transport fruit and vegetables from overseas? Do you think I can now be considered a true foodie? :)

Anyway, this cold beetroot soup is quite a typical Eastern European soup; different variations of this soup exist in Polish, Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian cuisine. It’s healthy (as anything with beetroots is), attractive (as anything of pink colour is), and refreshing (as any cold soup is). You also have slices of fresh, crunchy cucumbers and radishes in it, and a pinch of spring onions, and little cubes of hardboiled egg. There’s a hint of sweetness and a hint of sourness in it, a bit of crunch and a bit of tenderness. There’s the vitality of fresh herbs, which you are free to experiment with. And of course there’s plenty of freshness in each bowl of cold beetroot soup.

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Ukha (pronounced ooo-h’a!) is a clear Russian fish soup made with the minimum of vegetables and the maximum of different varieties of fish. To learn more about ukha, we referred to a reprint of a 1890 book from Saint Petersburg, the so called Northern capital of Russia. The book suggests almost 230 kinds of soups and around 80 soup “accessories” such as meatballs and fishballs, pelmeni, croutons, noodles, dumplings, and flavoured butters. I was surprised to find out that ingredients like Brussels sprouts, olives, and capers, as well as French wines, were widely used in Russian cuisine already in the 19th century (somehow I used to believe capers were first imported to Russia 100 years later).

We studied 23 different recipes for fish soup and compiled a method that seemed conventional enough yet applicable to modern reality. Most of the recipes called for loads of pike, sturgeon, starlet, and other kinds of fish you cannot find in an ordinary Latvian supermarket (well sometimes you cannot even buy tomatoes here – like it happened to my Mom today; if some places on Earth sound like foodie paradise, this country’s food market is rather a foodie purgatory – monotonous, limited, and pathetic). Moreover, most of the recipes suggested that you start with small and cheap fish and, when the broth was ready, you throw away that fish and add large pieces of more expensive fish. Which I think is just unfair towards the ingredients. The key point is to use several varieties of fish, so we thought of a red&white ukha with salmon and cod. The cod, which I was pretty skeptical about in the beginning, came out surprisingly tender, and I have to say that its mild flavour was even better than that of salmon! We tried to stick to all directions regarding the broth, so it came out clear and transparent.

Just one note: don’t ignore the parsley root! It’s one of the secret ingredients (like it is in a lot of soups). As soon as we decided we would be making an ukha, I ran to the market to buy a parsley root. The parsley root season has not yet started in fact, but I was lucky to find a stand where they still had some. I guess I looked pretty silly trotting from one market stall to another and asking for a single parsley root! :D

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The smell of Russian Kulich reminds you of that of a Russian church, where air is always filled with warm scents of labdanum and melting wax. The mix of cardamom, nutmeg, and ginger creates that special air of solemnity which accompanies this great Sunday. Looking at the towering Kulichi with their heads glazed with snow-white icing, you might think of Orthodox churches with their hemispheric cupolas.

The most wonderful thing you will discover about Kulich is that it will remain surprisingly fresh and moist for 5 to 7 days. This is an important quality of this Easter bread because the holiday lasts for a whole week, during which people visit their friends and relatives and give each other Kulichi.

The technique we use to colour eggs for Easter is boil them with onion peels. Onion peels give them a dark brick-red colour, and it’s absolutely safe. I also decorated a few eggs with non-toxic gold and silver.

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This year all Christians celebrate Easter on the same day, which is perfect to my mind: not only because we kind of unite on this Sunday, but also because I have a few days off :) It’s unexplainable how in a country where the Orthodox tradition is second most widespread religion, none of the Orthodox holidays are officially recognized. But that’s how things are in Latvia (tolerance is not our forte). So I’m glad that at least this year I had a day off on the Great Friday and we had the time to get ready for Easter.

We spent all Saturday in the kitchen together with my Mom – whipping, beating, chilling, melting, kneading enormous lumps of heavy dough, worrying about the dough rising slowly (which is no wonder as it contains 15% of dried fruit and nuts; I would even say it’s our Easter tradition to worry about the dough – same story every year); then finally baking and topping the Easter cakes with smooth and glossy icing. Phew!

A post about the result of this great cooking day – Kulichi – is on its way; in the meantime, I will tell you about another very traditional Russian treat, an Easter table essential, which is much easier to prepare. This dessert made of fine-grained cottage cheese, whipped cream, and boiled egg yolks, is called Paskha (which actually means Easter). We also like to add in plenty of diced dried apricots, golden raisins, and walnuts. I love the sweetness and creaminess of Paskha, chilled and airy, right from the fridge, with the fruity bits of dried apricots in it. Here I’ve got to remind you that in Orthodox tradition, Easter is preceded by the Lent, which allows only a very restrictive list of products. That is why all Easter dishes are packed with calories and made with lots of eggs, milk, cream, and butter. I have to confess however, that while our family menu is mainly vegetarian all year round, we don’t feel strong enough to give up dairy products and eggs for Lent :-p

P.S. This is how we like to prepare Paskha – if you check the traditional, original recipes, Paskha is always placed into a special pyramidal mold. We prefer to keep it moist and airy!

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You should never reveal your talents or skills at work if you want to reserve some time for your hobbies. Your boss and colleagues will immediately find a way to apply them. I don’t belong to that type of people for whom career is synonym of happiness; I do my job for a living. That’s why I panic every time I get included in a new project, a working group or in a brainstorming team. I wish I had never said I could edit web pages or make banners. I wish I had never said I could use the computer. I wish I were tiny and invisible. But you cannot be invisible if you’re a press officer and it’s the pre-election period. You must be optimistic, fresh and bursting with energy and ideas. Which eventually brings me to a state of complete stupor, so when I come home from work, all I want is hide under my blanket, sleep, and dream about being invisible to co-workers. Over the last weeks, I’ve been eating frozen string beans and other type of meals you can prepare in 10-15 minutes. I haven’t even opened my last issue of Bon Appetit. I haven’t been checking Tastespotting and Foodgawker…

This is just a recipe for a simple cottage cheese cake my Mum makes. It’s good fresh from the oven or cooled, with crème fraiche or berry jam. One of its main advantages is that it’s very simple to make.

I’m thinking of making lemon&lime sorbet tomorrow – that’s the most complicated dish for me to handle at this time. Wish me luck.

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