So Many Recipes, So Little Time
The grilling season is officially open. Pulling out mangal and warming up with my favorite chicken shashlyk flavored with cumin, paprika, loads of garlic, and lemon juice. All sealed into the meat with the best grilling accessory — mayo. There’s a little story here. Everyone knows and makes fun of a heavily mayo-based Soviet cuisine…
Another day — another lasagna. Nothing special: good sausage, good cheese, home made marinara — that’s what it is. Another family favorite workhorse. This recipe is huge and good for large gatherings. It also stores well and, in our clan, its leftovers have never been frozen, beautifully survived transportation to college campuses, and never went…
Ever since my first days in the United States, I have not been comfortable with food packed in bags. Not that I did not like it — I actually loved it. But that food was intimidating — so new and different. When we were out for dinner to family or friends’ houses, I always admired…
As long as I remember myself, Uighur food has been one of my favorites. It is forever associated with Central Asian republics possible only during summer vacations, mom and dad off from work, vegetables unavailable in cold Moscow, exotic flavors. Inside the Iron Curtain, from Moscow, -stan republics and their food were the mysterious “Abroad.”…
After seeing a lot of deconstruction happening lately in a cooking community, I’ve decided to deconstruct something of my own. To experiment, I pushed off Anya von Bremzen’s recipe from Please to the Table. Dishes from this book taste exactly like what mom used to make back in Moscow when she did all the cooking…
After having spent a year and some to recap the adventures of our ten day trip to Russia, it seems appropriate to save some recipes this trip came with. One of the things I could never get used to in the US is having cereal for breakfast. It just doesn’t do it for me —…
Bigos is one of those Eastern European dishes that has as many versions as borscht. And debate about its origins can only be compared to arguments what pizza is better. It is also one of those meals that can go a Rolls-Royce route or a pickup truck one. A few years ago, for a family…
This is a compilation of my mussels experience and a result of my constant craving for Southeast Asian flavors, plus a result of the complaint that we don’t eat enough mussels. Why do I always feel they cannot make a proper satisfying dinner? Is it because they are so small? But we always end up…
The house south of us has always been a home to great cooks. First owner taught cooking classes and had quite a collection of cookbooks. During the moving purge, many of these cookbooks ended on the curb. Back then, in the previous century, I did not have too many of my own and was picking…
From the mostly autobiographical novel “This is Me — Edichka” by Eduard Limonov which protagonist is a Russian immigrant abandoned by his wife living on welfare in New York (translation is mine — forgive me, Edichka): “If, between 1 and 3 pm, you happen to be walking along Madison Avenue where it’s cut by 55th…