Russian Borscht (Борщ)

This recipe of borscht combines healthy efforts, secrets from my culinary school teachers, personal preferences along with some adjustments I had to make regarding the availability of American produce and taste. It might look somewhat time-consuming, but it is definitely worth cooking!

First, meat part. For borscht any kind of meat will work: beef, pork, chicken. I used chicken thighs for mine. Take off the skin and fatty parts. It will save you about 2000 calories for the whole pot! Leave bones in. All normal Russian borscht recipe calls for some bones for the stock. Pork and beef bones are the best, by I simplify it and just use chicken. If you vegetarian (like Harsha) just use vegetable stock and skip this part.

Trick #1: place the meat of your choice into pot half filled with COLD WATER! Never use warm water to start with. Bring water to boil and dump it out!!! Yes, first stock is the most fattening and unhealthy part of the whole process. You don't want fat floating in your borscht. It will be tasty even without it!

Pour cold water again (half of pot) and bring to boil. This time, with my permission, you can keep the stock! Bring it to a boiling point and skim foam from the top. Simmer for at least 30-40 minutes and pull the meet out of the stock to cool down. Yes, this is my trick #2. Meet needs to be taken out of the soup, cooled down, separated from the bones and cut into small pieces.


In meantime, take three medium potatoes, pealed them off, cut into cubes and cook them in a separate saucepan.

This is trick #3: it takes longer to cook potatoes in stock. It will take about 10-15 minutes to cook them in just simple water. In stock it will take longer - 30 minutes at least, because of fat part of the stock. Cook it for about 15 minutes and set apart.

Beet is an essential part of borscht. It gives color and special taste. If you don't like it much - you can cook it without beets. Tomato paste will give the desired red color, but taste will be a little bit different. I use canned beets. It is easy.

Open the can, drain the liquid into a separate bowl and save it, cut or shred the beets and set them apart too.

Now the cabbage. One small head of cabbage is enough for the 5 liters-size pot. I simplify it too by using a bag of coal-slaw salad from the store. (I got so lazy that even don't want to cut the cabbage!) But it s about the same price and already pre-cut into small pieces, so why not?
Here goes my trick #4: cabbage never goes into borscht by itself. It is supposed to be added with bell pepper. That little trick will give you better taste. Sometimes borscht will smell like boiled cabbage, but if you listen to my advice and use belle pepper, it will eliminate unpleasant smell and your soup will smell like Bulgarian dinner! So, cut 1 or 1/2 of bell pepper and place in on the top of cabbage and set apart. You see, all ingredients are just sitting on your counter getting ready to be added into the soup. Be patient. Cooking doesn't take that long. Preparation does.

I adore garlic. It drives my husband crazy because I smell like garlic for a week! But there is no borscht recipe without garlic. So, embrace yourself and peal a couple of cloves of garlic and mince them.


Herbs and green onions are good additions too. Use any herbs that are in season - parsley, dill, cilantro. Anything you like. Cut them into small pieces and mix with garlic and green onions. And, yes, you guess it correct - Set apart too.

When tomatoes are in season, I like to add some fresh tomatoes into my borscht.

I crash them in the food processor, but simple grater or blender will do the work just fine. It is not a necessary ingredient, just a summer touch when you have plenty of tomatoes at hands.

But this one essential! Onion and carrots cut into small pieces....

and fried them with oil. Add 1 can of tomato sauce at the end. Trick #5: bring to boil tomato sauce and add 1 teaspoon of sugar, one bay leave and fresh ground pepper. Set apart.


Now when you have a hundreds bowls on your counter, you are ready to complete your borscht! The order is really important. Bring stock to boil, add potatoes with water in which it was cooked. Now, cabbage with bell pepper together. Let it boil for about 3-5 minutes (depends if you like overcooked or crunchy cabbage taste). If you like it crunchy, after a couple of minutes of boiling, add the tomato sauce. If you like it very soft, let it boil for another 5 minutes, then add tomato sauce. Add shredded beets with juice, fresh tomato and pre-cut meets. Add your herbs. Bring to boil.

The main rule of cooking soup is bring it to boil after you add anything new to it. So, even when you add you spices and herbs, you have to make sure that it was boiling after that. I like to add fresh ground pepper, salt, and a couple of bullion cubes. Also make sure you have enough liquid and add just tap water if it's needed. But don't forget to bring to boil after that!

The best way to finish is to correct your spices, bring to boil the last time, turn your burner off and let it stand for about 20 minutes at the same burner, so it will gain its taste.


My borscht turned out really good. I enjoyed it very much. I wish you would too!

Creme-brulee for real

Creme-brulee is one of my favorite desserts. I was always fascinated about burnt sugar on the top of Creme-brulee. I watched the movie No Reservations where Katrine Zeta-Jones fries brown sugar with her torch and makes it pretty-looking with fruit decoration! And I just wanted to try to make it!
So, my long-term goal was to get me Creme-brulee set and on one memorable day of July 3rd Paul bought me a Creme-brulee set from Bath, Body and Beyond Store! It was $20 and with discount coupon we got it for $17!

Set had a small torch and 4 ceramic dishes called ramekins. We also bough a canister of butane for the torch, heavy cream for the recipe and I was ready to cook my first Creme-brulee ever!
The recipe is actually really easy to prepare. The hardest part is to bake it to perfection. But ingredients are simple: for 4 small ramekins you will need 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, 3 eggs yolks, 1/4 cup of sugar and a pinch of vanilla sugar or 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract. The recipe specifically calls for using a good quality vanilla. I used my vanilla extract from Mexico.

Beat egg yolks, 1/4 cup of sugar and vanilla in a mixing bowl until thick and creamy.


Then pour 1 cup of heavy cream into a saucepan and stir over low heat until it almost comes to boil. Remove the cream from heat immediately.

Stir cream into the egg yolk mixture; beat until combined. This process called "tempering" - meaning increasing the temperate of eggs to the temperature of heavy cream. You have to slowly add hot cream into egg yolk mixture and don't let it to be overheated.

For the better quality you need to drain you mixture in case if some parts of egg didn't dissolve. Take a strainer and pour the mixture into a measuring cup.

We are ready to pour our mixture into ramekins. I prefer to do it next to the oven since the next step is transferring the baking dish with hot water into the oven will need a special care.

Pour mixture into ramekins or any other shallow heat-proof dishes.


Pour hot tab water into the baking dish just enough to come 1/2 way up to the ramekins sides.


Carefully place in 325 degrees by Fahrenheit oven for approximately 25-30 minutes until Creme-brulee just set and still slightly trembling in the middle.


Remove from oven and cool to room temperature. Now we come to the fun part. Torch! Paul filled it with butane and showed me how to use it.

I used just regular white granulated sugar. Brown sugar works pretty good too - even faster. And Paul told me that there are different colors of sugar sold just for Creme-brulee lovers somewhere on Internet! I need to explore that topic!

You need to spread the sugar evenly on the top of Creme-brulee and caramelize top with torch by constantly moving it from side to side. It was FUN!!!!

Make sure you don't burn it, because even after you take the torch away sugar keeps burning and it can be overcooked. If you don't have a torch, you can use just a regular oven with broiler. Place dishes with Creme-brulee under broiler until sugar melts, about 2 minutes. Watch carefully so as not to burn. It is ready!

I decorated mine with strawberries and mint leaves. It was the most delicious Creme-brulee I've ever eaten! Join the club of Creme-brulee lover and try one for yourselves. It is good!

Patriotic Cake for 4th of July

I made a 4th of July cake and I want to share with you my recipe.
For the base of the cake I just used a regular "mix in the box". Betty Crocker brand works pretty good. I took the Super Moist white cake and mixed it with water, eggs and oil according to the instruction.

While cake was baked in the oven, I washed my berries and then dried them with kitchen towel.

I used Heavy Whipped Cream and Powdered Sugar for preparing the topping.

It takes about 10 full minutes to whip the cream until it is almost stiff. For 2 cups of heavy cream I added about 2/3 of sugar. Add vanilla; beat until cream holds peaks.

I baked the cake for 30 minutes. Cooled 5 minutes and carefully removed it from pan to the cooling rack. Let the cake cool completely.

With long knife I cut the cake horizontally in two pieces.

Spread the whipped cream over the first part...

Here is my secret ingredient - I cut grapes in halves and placed them over the whipped cream like fruit topping int he middle of the cake.

Carefully placed the second part of the cake on the top of grapes. Spread more whipped cream.

Now decoration part. Blueberries were placed in the corner like blue field for the stars on American flag.

Then stripes made with strawberries. I cut them in fourth to try to make them look like the real red stripes.

Place the rest of whipped cream into decorating bag and make more stripes between strawberries...

And stars...

Cake is ready!

I decorated mine with more fruit like grapes, strawberries and mint leaves. It very delicious and moister.

Frozen Strawberries

Old habits die hard...I'm saying it because I recall my childhood in Russia and I remember that every summer every Russian family was canning like crazy in order to have something to eat over the cold winter season. That's why every summer I get "Canning Rush". Even living in America now and having fresh fruit and vegetable available all year around at store, I get this urge felling in summer that I need to do some canning. So, that was my preface, now see my effort and recipe for....Frozen Strawberries!

I already have strawberry jam, so I decided to do something different. Frozen strawberries sounded like not a bad idea. All you need is 7 C. sugar and 4 C. water and enough strawberries to fill up you containers. I had 4 big cases of strawberries and it gave me about 4 liters of mashed syrup.

First, mix water and sugar together and bring it to boil and then let it cool down completely.

Clean and prepare enough strawberries for containers you have at hand. I sorted my berries and filled up a couple of clean and dry jars just with the whole berries. I froze then without syrup. The rest was washed and sliced in halves.

You can either slice berries or leave them whole. I wanted mine to be crashed so I can easily use them for lemonade or smoothies. Blender or Cuisinart machine will do the job just fine.

I turned my machine for 3-5 minutes to make sure they all processed.

Fill up the prepared container with crashed strawberries about half of their volume.

Add the sugar syrup to make them full. Place the lid and freeze!

I made me a nice cup of lemonade with lemon slice from the leftover I've got.

Creme-brulee video

Hello from London, the land of world-wide cuisines! I tried creme-brulee dessert already twice and I loved it very much. So, I promised myself that after I come back to America, I will try to cook them and see if they will turn out as good as English ones. But since I'm away from my home, I will post the video I had found on Internet and let you enjoy the process. Video is here.

Baked Tiliapia

This recipe wasn't planned at all. I was happy to find previously frozen really cheap whole tilapia at the Fish Department of Wal-Mart and I decided to cook it. My fish was already clean inside and out, so if you are buying your fish somewhere else, make sure you clean it, wash it, take guts out and scale. Wash fish again and set aside.


I cooked my fish stuffed with cabbage. If you don't like fried cabbage, just skip this step and move to the next one. All other preparations will be the same for fish without any stuffing.


But for cabbage-lovers it takes a little bit longer. I bought a bag of pre-cut cabbage. They called it here "Cole Slaw Salad" (Russian: Капустный Салат). I dumped all cabbage into a frying pan with two tablespoons of vegetable oil. Cook it for 5-7 minutes. Add salt, pepper, 1 bay leave and 1 small can of tomato sauce. Fry another 3-5 minutes. Set aside to cool down.

Now baking part. It can turn out into a lot of cleaning afterwords, so I took a piece of aluminum foil and lined up my baking sheet to save me time on cleaning.

Fish loves veggie oil, so be generous on greasing your baking sheet. Also fish likes salt and there is nothing more horrible in my cuisine then unflavored fish or feeble witticism. :) So, season your fish generously with salt and pepper inside and outside as well. Place seasoned fish on baking sheet and stuff as much fried cabbage inside its tummy as you can. Skip this step if you don't like stuffing.

Now a little trick secret that I learned while I was trained as a chef. Prepare fry sauce. It is how Americans called mayonnaise mixed with ketchup. A couple of tablespoons of mayo and a little bit of ketchup mixed together will give you a special nice crust on the top of fish.

Apply the sauce on fish and place it in the oven for 30 minutes. Temperature 375 by Fahrenheit.

Vyalya! The stuffed tilapia is ready! Hot, warm or cold - it is good and appetizing at any temperature to consume!


I left my fish at the kitchen table. The next morning I found....


a pile of bones! Sergey ate it all, even cabbage part! Thanks goodness, I had two of them! :)