Russian Season

A few days ago I discovered this amazing blog The Stone Soup that suggests lots of simple recipes with the minimum of ingredients and equipment, which really appeals to me. And can you imagine - Jules, the author of this blog, possesses the secret of making ice-cream without an ice-cream machine! Isn’t this wonderful? It’s only made with cream and honey. Which means my ice-cream mixture was ready in about 10 minutes, plus about 6 hours for freezing. Or maybe 7. That’s it. I left it in the freezer overnight and it still remained soft and creamy - simply unbelievable! I really like the idea of making 100% natural (well, as natural as store-bought cream can be) ice-cream at home. Until now I’ve only experimented with different kinds of sorbet.

I couldn’t resist decorating my ice-cream with pictachios just as Jules did it - mine were slightly salted and this touch of salt worked great with the sweetness of the honey-flavoured ice-cream and the dried dates that I also used as a garnish.

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Stuffed Peppers is one of those old good recipes which we adapted from a kind of family relic – a gorgeous Romanian cookbook. It’s packed with irresistible recipes of fruit pies, berry pastes and jams, sweetcorn&cheese casseroles, and other meals I drool over. Of course it also includes a variety of poultry and meat recipes – not as exciting for me, yet useful.

While stuffed peppers are a basically simple dish to prepare, this might be pretty time-consuming as you’ve got to prepare all vegetables separately - and also spend some time seeding and stuffing the peppers, of course. But it is definitely worth the wait – also because you can store the peppers in fridge for 2-3 days no problem.

One of the key points here is to blanch the peppers before stuffing them, as a couple of minutes in boiling water makes them much more elastic. It’s also important to choose peppers that are not too thick and fleshy, otherwise you will feel like “hmm there seems to be too much sweet pepper in this dish!”. On the other hand, they should not be very thin, as thin peppers are easy to overcook, especially if you’re going to reheat them afterwards (I accept no microwaved food, just in case).

Everything else is really simple. In this post, we’ll tell you our method of cooking stuffed peppers in two variations: with and without meat. The vegetarian version is for me and it uses eggplant instead of meat.

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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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Borsch is absolutely the king, or better say the Tsar of soups in Russian/Ukrainian cuisine. It’s red, hot, spicy, garlicky, and only a spoon of sour cream (Smetana) can tame it!

You can never have too much Borsch: make it in a large saucepan and serve in hearty portions. Borsch can be stored in the fridge for 2 and more days,  it will just infuse more and more.

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Chanterelle season in Latvia starts around early July, and we’ve been cooking a lot of them lately. The simplest way to cook these wonderful, aromatic mushrooms is just sauté them until golden brown, adding some finely chopped onions and seasoning with fresh dill. Or sauté them with a couple of tablespoons of sour cream, until they turn into a soft and mild sauce.

Chanterelle soup is not as rich in flavour as, say, porcini or even champignon soup. But it very summery, translucent and subtly infused with notes of fresh garlic. And it is quick and very easy!

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