Beef and Cabbage

- beef chuck (~2 lbs)

- onion

- garlic

- mushrooms

- carrots

- cabbage

- tomato paste

- spices (salt, white/black pepper, ground cumin, paprika, red pepper flakes)

Cut meat into slices or bite size pieces, lightly brown, then add hot water to the pan, cover and simmer for ~20-30min. While that is happening, fry separately the chopped onion, garlic, carrots, mushrooms and add to the meat mixture. Add spices to taste. Add chopped cabbage, mix and continue to simmer while covered another ~15min. Add 2-3 spoonfuls of tomato paste, taste the final mixture. 

Enjoy over rice or noodles or by itself.

Ukranian Ricotta Pancakes (Sirniki)

Followed THIS recipe with minor alterations:

- Used whole milk ricotta (15oz) and squeezed it using cheese cloth (*could have done a better job with this as there was still plenty of moisture which necessitated the use of more flour)
- Used double the amount of flour in the food processer

- Fried in a cast iron skillet - make sure to patiently wait for it to heat up before adding high smoke point oil (peanut, for example). Fry on low heat or they will burn.

-Serve with preserves, apple butter, sweetened condensed milk, sour cream (traditional) or anything else that tastes good with them.

Turkey-Chicken-Rice Balls (Tefteli)

Loosely based on THIS recipe

Ingredients:
1lb ground turkey (not completely lean, 93:7 is good)
1lb ground chicken (also not too lean)
1 egg
white onion
fresh garlic
rice
flour
butter and oil
paprika
smoked salt
black and white pepper
marjoram
chicken stock
sour cream
tomato paste

- Make 1/2 cup white rice - undercook it by adding less water/stock than usual, let cool
- Fry chopped onions lightly, combine in a mixing bowl with rice, cool
- Add ground chicken, turkey, egg, 3 cloves fresh chopped garlic
- Add pepper/salt/paprika to taste (yes, I taste my raw meat)

- Roll mixture into balls (bigger than a golf ball, smaller than tennis ball, doesn't really matter)
- Dredge balls in flour
- Fry on all sides but not until fully cooked in a little bit of oil (we use grapeseed)
- In a separate pot, start the liquids - melt 2tbsp butter, whisk in 1-2 tbsp flour, add stock (we used a diluted bouillon cube and adjusted the overall amount of salt accordingly)
- Add 2-3 tbsp of sour cream, mix
- Add 1-2 tbsp of tomato paste, mix
- Transfer all fried balls into the liquid, bring to boil, reduce heat, simmer for ~20 min