I made this first in Russia. It turned out great. Today I made it in the US, and it sucked. I used «Food Club Real Mayonaisse» from Fry's Groceries. Way too salty. I need to either find a different mayonnaise or make the mayonnaise myself. Weirdly enough, Russian stores have a much better selection of mayonnaise than typical US stores do.

• 200 grams (7 oz) of hard cheese
• 1-2 hard-boiled eggs
• 1-2 cloves of garlic
• mayonnaise

Attempt 3

2015-11-21: I made it again, this time with pre-grated cheddar, which makes the salad look quite different since in Russia one uses white cheese. This time I used 1/2 cup of mayo. I'm thinking next time 3/4 cup would be better. And instead of garlic cloves, I used 1 tsp of garlic powder.

• 7 oz of shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 medium-size hard-boiled eggs
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 cup of mayonnaise

This is a dish I cook fairly regularly with variations on the spices. This time around I'm using some Indian chile that the Tadjik lady at my local market said would be spicy.

Ingredients

• sunflower oil
• 5-6 small onions chopped coarsely (two ordinary onions)
• 4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 tbsp of whole cumin seed, ground in a spice grinder or pestle
• 1 tbsp of Indian chile
• 1/4 of a huge head of cabbage (half of a medium head), chopped
• 750 grams of ground chicken (~ 1 2/3 lbs)
• 1 cup of boiling water
• 1 chicken bouillon cube

Method

1. Chop onions coarsely.
2. Pour enough sunflower oil into the bottom of a frying pan to cover it. I'd guess the pan can be from anywhere from nine to twelve inches in diameter. Put the frying pan on medium heat.
3. Pour in the onions. Stir occasionally so that they all approach transparency together.
4. Once the onions are barely beginning to brown, add the garlic and cook till fragrant, which should be about a minute, maybe two.
5. Add the cumin and chile. Cook for one minute or so, stirring, to release the flavors into the oil.
6. Add the ground chicken. Fry. Stir occasionally, breaking up the chicken into smaller and smaller chunks.
7. Pour the boiling water into a cup. Add the bouillon cube. Mix it up till it is a broth.
8. Once the chicken looks roughly cooked, add the cabbage. Add some of the broth. Cover. Let it cook a while.
9. Stir occasionally. Add more broth if it seems like it needs it. The goal is to get the cabbage cooked and all the flavors mixed.
10. As the cabbage approaches being done, remove the cover so that the excess broth begins to evaporate and concentrate. It's okay if there is some liquid left, but we aren't aiming at a full-fledged stew.
11. Once done, turn off heat. Cover with a splatter guard so that more liquid escapes and flies don't land on the finished product.
12. Once you think it's ready, serve.

Notes:

Any time a Russian tells you that something is spicy, don't believe ’em. This recipe did have a minor bite, but it was not as spicy as the spice lady at the farmers' market said that ?Indian chile? would be. Okay, she was actually a Tadjik, still...

Nonetheless, this dish turned out great.

I'm currently in Russia. Back in the States we often cook with neutral tasting oils like safflower oil or Canola oil or mixed vegetable oil. That's understandable. They allow the taste of the ingredients to come forward. But I find myself liking Russian sunflower oil more and more. It has a distinct odor as it cooks, and a pleasant, subtle flavor in the resulting dish. Frankly, I'm tempted to try cottonseed oil and mustard oil before I leave Russia. The latter is legal here, but not in the States.

Buckwheat with onions and mushrooms is a beloved Russian side dish. Decided to make it tonight. Below you will find not a standard recipe, but what I simply experimented with.

Ingredients

• 1 1/3 cups of buckwheat groats
• 2 2/3 cups of boiling water
• 1 astonishing chunk of butter
• 4 small onions, sliced in thin half circles
• 250 g (1/2 pound) of button mushrooms (шампиньоны), sliced about 1/4 inch thick

Method

1. I boiled the water in my electric teapot. Added it plus a bouillon cube to a pan that had the buckwheat. Put that over a low flame. Covered the pan.
2. Melted the butter in a heavy-bottomed frying pan. Threw in the onions. Cooked till translucent. I didn't add the mushrooms at the beginning of this step because I wanted the onions to carmelize as the mushrooms where added in the next step, but I didn't want them to burn.
3. Added the mushrooms to the frying pan.
4. When the buckwheat was still just a bit tougher than I wanted to eat, I turned off the heat and uncovered it.
5. I had some extra chicken fat and juice in the fridge from a previous recipe, probably about a quarter cup's worth. I added this to the frying pan. Wow, what a great smell.
6. By this stage there was no free water in the pan with the buckwheat. Once the mushrooms seemed done, I added the buckwheat to the frying pan, along with half a cup of water to complete the cooking process. Once the water was gone, I considered the dish done.

Turned out quite well.

Comments

• In retrospect I shouldn't have added the bouillon cube or chicken stuff later. Instead I should have cooked it so that the flavors of the buckwheat, butter, onions and mushrooms were clear, along with nothing else. My reasoning is that the first time you make something, you should do the really basic version so that you later understand why people do the more complex versions.
• If you don't use bouillon in the buckwheat, you will need to add salt to the water that boils the buckwheat.
• You should also probably add a bit of salt and some black pepper to the frying pan for the last minute or two before adding the buckwheat.
• There are lots of variations on this recipe, but if you are using it as a basic side dish to complement an interesting main dish, then why make it more complex? Not too surprisingly, there are variations that add a bit of sour cream.

Damn, this is simple.

• Vegetable oil
• 2 cups of buckwheat
• 4 cups of boiling water
• 1 cube of chicken bouillon

Pour vegetable oil in pan. Turn on low heat. Pour in buckwheat. Turn on your hot water pot to boil. In the meantime with a spatula mix the buckwheat so that all the grains are covered with a bit of oil. You could toast it a bit if you wanted. Pour the boiling water over it when ready. Drop in the cube. Put a lid on it. Cook till the water is gone. Don't stir.

I suspect you could skip the oil step.

Turned out fine. In the past I've had buckwheat with a much stronger taste, but this time it was pretty mild. I wonder why?

Variations:

• I think this would be accompaniment to strong-tasting main dishes.
• It would also be good with some brown gravy and a poached egg or two on top.
• It would also be good to reheat the cold buckwheat in butter, but it aside, and serve up a couple fried eggs with it.

2014-07-12: I've tried a couple more variations.

• Mix the buckwheat with some hot mustard, throw it in the microwave. Good.
• Mix the buckwheat with some soy sauce, throw it in the microwave. Good.

Ingredients

• Vegetable oil
• 4 small onions, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 tbsp cumin, crushed
• 1 tbsp ground chipotle
• 1 tsp pepper
• 750 grams of ground chicken (about 1.5 pounds)
• 1/2 head of cabbage, shredded
• 2-3 cups boiling water
• About 1 tsp salt

Pour vegetable oil into frying pan. Add onions. When they are almost translucent, add garlic. Cook for a minute. Add cumin, chipotle and pepper. Cook for a minute. Add chicken. Fry till done, stirring and breaking up into reasonable bite size. Add water and salt. Add cabbage. Bring to a slight boil, cover, and cook until the cabbage is soft. Remove from stove. Serve.

For the chipotle I used ground chipotle powder I had found at Cost Plus (World Market). Awesome. A tablespoon of that stuff gave the dish a bite, despite the fact that the chipotle had sat on the shelf for a year.

The ground chicken I used was made from breast meat, which is nearly fat free. It meant the broth was kind of boring. Next time I'll through in a bouillon cube.

Notes: Properly speaking, bigus is made with both fresh cabbage and sauerkraut, some kind of meat, and often has prunes added, but people in Russia sometimes fudge and call any nondescript mix of meat and cabbage bigus, so that's the name I'm giving this dish.

I'm trying a second time to produce a sweet oat pilaf. By pilaf I simply mean a dish where the oats are neatly loose from one another instead of sticking together in a poridgy mass. I have read some buckwheat kasha recipes where the buckwheat was first mixed with beaten egg to coat the kernels and then heated in a frying pan with the goal of keeping them separate. That will be my approach this time. This would probably work better in the oven, but I'm currently in Russia with an oven that cannot be controlled precisely, so I'm going to work on the stove top.

• 2 cups whole oat groats
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 5 cups boiling water
• 4 small onions, coarsely chopped
• Vegetable oil, neutral tasting (not olive), enough to cover the bottom of the frying pan
• 4 medium cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 1 tsp black pepper
• About a tsp of salt
• 1 banana, sliced
• 1/2 pound of golden brown (not yellow) raisins. This was really three handfuls; I have big hands.

Method

1. First I beat an egg. Mixed in 1 cup of oats. Mixed so that every grain was coated. Heated the mixture in a medium frying pan (with a heavy bottom) over lowish heat with the goal of cooking the egg and separating every single grain. By the time the first batch was done, the egg was leaving a residue in the bottom of the pan that was beginning to turn brown. I hate brown egg mass. Scrubbed out the pan. Repeated the process with the second cup of oats and the second egg. Scrubbed out the pan again.
2. Then I added the vegetable oil to the bottom of the pan and added the chopped onions. When they were approaching translucency, I added the garlic, then the curry powder, then pepper. Cooked briefly.
3. Added the boiling water. Added the oats. Roughly evened them out in the pan. Added the raisins. Added the bananas on top. Sprinkled with the salt. (Next time do the salt before the raisins and bananas.)
4. Covered the pan. Put the flame to the smallest level possible. Intended to let it cook for 50 minutes.

Now the processs of watching begins, since this is an experiment...

• 45 minutes into the process this stuff is smelling freakin' great.
• 50 minute check. Still smells freaking great. Water still remaining. Oats from the bottom of the pan already edible. Should have checked the oats on the side as well, but I didn't. Taste... can't tell yet, hard to say. I'll give it ten more minutes.
• 60 minute check. Side oats are also ready. Still too much water in the mess, so I'm removing the lid. Next time I'm thinking 4 cups of water might be sufficient.
• 70 minute check. Yup, 5 cups was too much. Next time four cups. For now I'll leave it be to get rid of more liquid. If that doesn't work, I'll eat it watery.
• 80 minute check. Still too watery, but I don't want to cook it anymore. I have turned off the flame and will let it simply vent to the air. We'll see what it is like in 20 minutes.

Results and commentary

• First off, in terms of keeping the grains separate this approach was a complete and total success. In fact, it was so successful that I'm wondering if my original premise was wrong. Maybe when using whole oats you don't have to worry so much about the grain turning into a goopy mass. Next time around I'll use only 4 cups of water.
• Flavor-wise this turned out great.
• I had worried that the dish would burn for a couple reasons. First off, oat porridge made with flakes burns easily if there is too little water. Secondly, the addition of banana makes it burn more easily. This time around there was no burning issue whatsover. When I use less water next time, I'll have to keep my eyes open more carefully just to make sure.
• Next time around I'll try to make a savory pilaf with some kind of meat.

I think that cooks avoid whole oats because they take a long time to cook. Now that I know how easy they are to cook, I won't avoid them in the future. The boiling water plus low flame approach worked great.

I liked my millet pilaf so much the other day that I decided to try the same thing with oats. Oats are harder to get to a pilaf texture.

• 4 small onions, coarsely chopped
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 tbsp of curry powder
• Maybe a tsp of black pepper
• Some salt
• 1 sliced banana
• 1/2 pound of golden brown (not yellow) raisins
• 2 cups of oat flakes
• 5 cups of hot water

Grabbed a heavy frying pan, not one of those flimsy aluminum jobs. Something with a solid, thick bottom. Covered the bottom with sunflower oil. Poured in the oats. Very slowly heated, trying to coat every flake and slightly cook them. The purpose of this process was to try to end up with seperate flakes, not mush. Removed the flakes to a bowl after a while so I could continue using the same frying pan.

More oil. Soften the onions. Add the garlic, cook briefly till fragrant. Add the curry powder. Cook briefly. Add the oats, raisins, banana, hot water. Simmer.

Stir every 5 minutes to prevent the oats from sticking and burning on the bottom of the pan. Remove when oats are just past al dente.

In terms of getting separate flakes, this was a failure; I probably needed to cook them till they slightly changed color. In terms of flavor it was a complete success. Next time around I will try whole oats if I can find them, and probably use a couple of beaten eggs to see if if I can't get the groats to remain separate. That's a trick that Russians sometimes use with buckwheat kasha main dishes.

I made this in Kazan from stuff on the shelf. The last occupant left some millet groats, golden raisins and banana chips. Don't remember the last time I cooked millet. Still, if I can't make a decent curry-spiced pilaf out of that, then take away my chef's card!

• 4 small onions, coarsely chopped
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 tbsp of curry powder
• Maybe a tsp of black pepper
• Some salt
• 1 cup of banana chips
• 1 cup of yellow raisins
• 2 cups of millet
• 5 cups of hot water

Softened the onions in olive oil. Added garlic, fried a moment. Added curry powder. Cooked a bit. Added millet, hot water, raisins, banana chips. Boiled a while. Tasted the liquid. Added pepper & salt. Boiled till the millet was about al dente.

I had wanted this to be a pilaf, and indeed the millet came out fine without being mushy. Not quite a pilaf, but still very tasty.

My friend Mickey posted a link to a savory cauliflower cake. I wanted to delete some of the carbs, i.e, delete the flour, so here is what I attempted.

Ingredients

1/2 medium head cauliflower, trimmed and broken into small florets
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
3/4 teaspoon caraway seed, ground or crushed
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper, or to taste
3/4 teaspoon salt
8 eggs, room temperature
1 jarred roasted red pepper, rinsed and chopped (about 1/2 cup)
3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill, divided

Method

1. Fry onions in olive oil until translucent. Add caraway, coriander and red pepper. Cook for one minute. Remove mixture from heat and allow to cool to room temperature. Once they are cool, proceed to next step.
2. Beat eggs together. Mix with all ingredients. Pour into buttered 8"x8" baking dish. Place into oven preheated to 300°. Cook for 60 minutes. Remove. Let sit for 15 minutes. Serve.

The top of the quiche should be just barely starting to brown around the edges when you remove it from the oven.

This turned out well. I expected it to take 55 minutes to cook, but it took 60. Not quite sure why. I'll try this a time or two more, and then it will be a regular recipe for me.

Next attempt. This time I had opened a bottle of Fetzer Gewurtztraminner. I had thought a sweet wine would not work for poached chicken, but what the heck. Why not give it a try.

Method

1. I sliced a medium sized yellow onion thin. Began to sauté it in a frying pan with olive oil.
2. In the meantime I sliced a boneless, skinless chicken breast into two cutlets.
3. Once the onions have got a little bit of brown, I removed them from the pan. Added the cutlets. Sprinkled the top side with garlic powder and black pepper.
4. Flipped the cutlets. Cooked a while.
5. Removed the cutlets. Returned the onions to the pan. Added some steamed asparagus to the pan that I had made previously to warm them up.
6. Once they were warm, I removed them to the plate. Drizzled all the extra sauce over the veggies and the chicken. All done.

To my surprise, this was pretty tasty. Mild flavor, but no salt needed.

Now I'm curious to try it with a really assertive red wine.