На кухне: End of The Cooking Season

It's back to work in a couple of days, and that spells certain doom for the hours of meal planning and preparation that were enjoyed over the past several weeks. Here's a round up of what I've tried (recipes linked!):


Sweet and Sour Veggies with Rice (from Siberian Adventures): WOW. Apple vinegar, tomato paste, soy sauce, and sugar combine to taste just like takeout!!



Chicken Kotleti You Will Dream About (From Natasha's Kitchen): Since I'm squeamish about cooking meat, kotleti were always a restaurant dish.... until now. The recipe was really easy to follow- toss everything in the blender, then fry. We ate these all week!



Yummy Yogurt Marinated Chicken (from food.com): Again, the meat thing. I guess this is good if you like a big piece of chicken, but it's not really my thing. Probably won't make this again.



Moroccan Inspired Baked Potato Slices (from food.com): The cinnamon, lemon, and (I used fresh) cilantro went together really well, but the potatoes ended up half burned/half crunchy. What went wrong? Still, worth another try.


Crunchy Carrot Slaw with Ginger Soy Sauce (from food.com): After a Ginger Orange Carrot Sauté that did not result in my tastebuds thinking they'd "died and gone to heaven", fortunately this carrot slaw stepped in to save the day. I made the ginger soy sauce w/out mustard (ewww) and it still rocked!


Ricotta-filled Peppers (from Sitno Seckano): I wanted so, so badly to fall in love with this dish. It looked elegant and gorgeous on her website but things went wrong from the beginning. The outdoor market wasn't selling green peppers, so I got red ones. And then we couldn't find any ricotta cheese at the grocery store- is it even sold in Ukraine?- so I ended up using plain old cheese. When they popped out of my oven they did indeed look pretty... but they weren't exceptionally tasty. I'll keep this recipe around and give it another shot whenever the elusive ricotta shows up.



Potato, Cucumber, and Red Bell Pepper Salad with Chive (from food.com): So sad, but I can't find my picture of this salad : ( As you can guess from the ingredients- mayo + mustard, I made this for D. Thumbs up from him.

Spinach Twice-Baked Potatoes (from food.com): On the menu for tonight, stay tuned... Eh, they were an awful lot of work. I haven't seen big baking potatoes here, and do you have any idea how long it took to scrape the centers out of many smaller potatoes? Ages, that's how long. That plus no cheddar cheese... I'll lay this recipe to rest and save a lot of future labor.


Curried Egg Salad Sandwich (from RealSimple.com): I'd totally forgotten about the convenience of sandwiches! Made this up as a regular sandwich for D and a mayo-less salad for me.



Also, when pulling some kefir out of the fridge for okroshka-

okrosha in the making

delicious, delicious pelmeni

it struck me how (relatively) cheap kefir is here. In Alaska a bottle would cost about $5 while last weekend we bought a bag for just $1. And it's not only kefir- it's also pelmeni and gretchka, foods that before we'd buy at the Russian Imports store for an arm and a leg. But the trade off is no ricotta :p

Happy cooking!