Quinoa Salad

- 1 cup of quinoa / 2 cups of liquid (1 cup chicken stock/1 cup water)
- Bring to boil in a pot together, reduce heat, cover, let simmer ~15 min or until water is close to being absorbed (taste it, kernels shouldn't be hard or mushy and should be pleasant to chew)
- Quickly cool grains by dumping them in a strainer and rinsing with cold water. Make sure all extra water drains
- Chop up fresh tomatoes, red pepper, parsley, red onion, cucumber (or steamed asparagus and cooked beets)
- Dress salad with fresh squeezed lemon juice and olive oil

Borsch (Russian Beet Soup)

First of all, the word "borsch" does NOT have a "t" in it.

Ingredients (traditional)

- Beef with bone (variation on traditional - use lamb shoulder with bone and meat; if vegetarian, start by boiling pot of water and add beets directly to it, let boil and continue from that step)
- Potatoes (ones that don't get too mushy after being cooked)
- Cabbage (green)
- Carrots
- Beets
- Garlic
- Onion (white)
- Dill or parsley
- Tomato paste
- Salt/pepper/oregano (variation on traditional - add freshly ground cumin and red pepper flakes for spice)

Fill pot with water (halway), throw in the beef with bone. Bring to boil, boil for about 30 min. Take off foam with a spoon (leads to a clearer broth).

The point is to have enough vegetables in the soup so it's not too water but isn't as thick as stew. Adjust amounts based on taste. I personally enjoy a lot of cabbage.

While meat/bone are cooking, grate 1-2 medium beets on a cheese grater. Throw these in after meat has been boiling for ~30min. Boil grated beets for 10-15 min.

In the meantime, in a separate pan, fry up 1/2 white onion (chopped) and 1-2 peeled and grated carrots in some oil. Chop a few cloves of garlic. Throw everything into soup.

While above is simmering, chop up 1/2 small cabbage into thin long slices and throw into soup.
Peel and cube 2 large or 3 small potatoes and throw into soup.

Let everything boil on small for 10-15 more minutes (until potatoes are cooked). Salt and pepper to taste.

You can keep the bone with meat as they are or you can take it out towards the end, clean the bone and throw it away and chop the meat up and throw it back into soup.

Towards the end, add 3-4 tablespoons of tomato paste, mix, bring back up to a boil.
Lastly, throw in finely chopped dill/parsley and bring back up to a boil.

Serve with a dollop of sour cream, bread with butter.

Breakfast Bread Bowl (Glorified Eggs in a Basket)

Followed THIS  recipe loosely

Fully cooked bacon and kale (sauteed with onions and sweet peppers)

Used bread that was very dense so the final product was hard to eat. Next time will use smaller individual buns.

Eggs didn't come out the texture we expected - likely due to the moisture coming from underneath (kale) but they were cooked. Yolks cooked fully before the white. Next time will scramble the eggs or fry over-medium separately and serve on top.

Overall taste was great!

Crepes (Blini)

Makes enough crepes for 2-4 people to each have ~2-4 crepes
Doubling the recipe will feed 5 people twice, as dessert

1 cup flour
2/3 cup cold milk
2/3 cup cold water
3 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp melted butter
extra melted butter for in-between layers of fried crepes (so they don't stick to each other)

Combine all ingredients (take care to add liquids to flour slowly and whisking thoroughly to prevent clumps from forming in the batter.

Refrigerate at least 1hr, or overnight.

Head non-stick frying pan, pour mix on, spread by tilting the pan quickly and evenly. If mix turned out too thick, add cold water or cold milk and mix before frying.

Brush on some melted butter around the edges of each cooked crepe after it's transferred to a plate. This prevents each cooked crepe from sticking to the one next to it.

Serve with caviar, sour cream, jam, Nutella/bananas, sweetened condensed milk or eat plain
Check out the Bearnaise sauce recipe for a savory option to put over crepes

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