Aebleskivers!!

Sometimes they start out OK:

And then it all goes wrong.  Like when you use your new (but old)  cast iron pan, but it's not really seasoned, but you think it'll be ok, cause you put some oil on it:

May be if I covered them in enough powdered sugar? 

Nope.  They're pretty messed up. 

And they defiled my 'new vintage' pan:

Not to mention Jesse's laughter and taunting, because the whole reason I wanted the 'old new' pan, was because I claimed it would stick less than my existing Lodge, which has been known to produce perfectly spherical pancakes.  

Take 2, after coating pan in oil head to toe and heating in oven for a few hours.  4 hours at 400'F produced a nice hard coat, not sticky.  Upped the butter content as well.

Ha!!  (Going conservative this time, in case it goes poorly again). 

And a 3/4 turn..

And, spherical pancakes!!

A whole pan of them, even:

Never mind the batter bits, those aren't stuck and will come right off, I got a little ladle happy. 

They are supposed to be coated with powdered sugar, but Jesse has a nasty Orange Crush + Reese's Peanut Butter cups habit he can't seem to break, and he's therefore denied sugar in the house. 

Jesse likes the ones that aren't fully closed, he stuffs them with lingonberry preserves.  I like to inject mine with whipped cream.  They're kind of like pancakes, but lighter, and airy-er.  Success!!!

Giniling, a Philipino Delight

My best friend introduced me to this years ago, and it is one of my favorite dishes. It is SO good, served with white rice, and it is just as good fried up with couple eggs for a breakfast omelet.



1.5 lbs beef
half a yellow bell pepper, diced
half an orange bell pepper, diced
tomato, diced
1 carrot, diced
and onion, diced
1 potato, diced
few garlic cloves, diced
tablespoon ketchup
3 tablespoons soy sauce
¼ cup frozen green peas
a handful of raisins

I toss in the garlic and onions first, then add carrots, then bell peppers, and potatoes.



Each vegetable goes in and cooks on low heat while I’m chopping the next. I love that there’s really no prep, other than chopping up vegetables. I add the beef in last, add salt, ketchup, and soy sauce, and mix.



It cooks over medium-low heat (I use cast iron pans, so everything I cook requires lower temperature). I taste it for salt and add more soy sauce if need be. Drain the mix, if necessary. I cook with really lean beef, so there’s hardly anything to drain.
Once the potatoes and beef are done, I toss in a handful of raisins and the green peas. Cover the skillet, and let it stand for a few minutes.



Concurrently, cook a pot of rice (1 part of rice to 1 part of water).

Serve the beef mixture over or next to 'sticky' rice.



SO good.

Next morning - toss with some eggs for an omelet. SO good, part deux.

Stuffed Potato Nightmares - Cooking Fail

My grandmother put me up to this, probably just to have a good laugh. She claimed, that by boiling and mashing some potatoes, and combining them with an egg and some flour, a dough could be made, into which you fold a filling of meat, or mushrooms, or sauerkraut. Ha.

What I ended up with was a potato mix with a texture no unlike baby diarrhea.. It more or less told me to take a hike.



I called my grandmother in panic, who told me to just add more flour, because "you can't spoil it with flour". She took it back when I told her I used 4 times the recommended amount of flour (3 tbsp). Apparently, there IS such a thing as too much flour.

Anyway. It was awful. I tried spooning the potato mix onto the griddle, placing a spoon of meat mix in the middle, and covering with another spoonful of potato mix, but it didn't cook into a solid object, like, say, a pancake, and instead would move around on the griddle, like, say mashed potatoes.. with meat and mushrooms mixed in.

My incompetence in this potato thing is compounded by the fact that, unlike my grandmother, I can't throw them into a formidable layer of oil to fry. I make do with a thin layer of olive oil on the griddle, because of my low-far cooking efforts to keep Jesse's gallbladder stones happy. May be they would fry up into one piece. But trying to flip them on the griddle was like playing with raw, clumpy pancake batter. SO gross.



Luckily, Jesse has no idea what the finished product is supposed to be like. He ate up both my sad attempts, probably trying to figure out why I'd go such a convoluted way to arrive at a really mangled shepherd's pie.

I tossed a couple into a tupperware container, and having given up pretending they are to hold any particular shape, I ate it at lunch with a spoon, like shepherd's pie.

My grandmother shared a lovely story - when she was a newlywed, her husband killed a couple chickens and left her to make them into a meal. Remembering that in the village, her mom steamed the chickens to pluck feathers, my grandmother poured boiling water into the bucket, covered it, and came back few minutes later, ready to pluck away. As she went to pull a chicken out by its leg, the leg came out, to reveal a half cooked, still inside-intact chicken. Apparently, not meal grade anymore. Turns out, the chickens are only to be briefly splashed by the hot water, and never actually immersed, until they are plucked, gutted, and soup-ready. I think it was supposed to make me feel better - which, it did. I am super glad that my first encounter with any chicken is completely defeathered. :D

I'm going to use the remaining stuffing for some vareniki (potsticker like things). Assuming I can mix up some decent dough. As for the potato mix.. since I'm not really into heavily flour-fortifed mashed potatoes, I might have to let it go. SIGH.

Golubtsy - or, little pigeons

Golubtsy

(Gołąbki in Polish, Holubtsi in Ukrainian) means little pigeons, although they look as unpigeonlike as possible. It is a popular Russian dish that involves wrapping meatballs into cabbage leaves and either simmering or baking for a long time on low heat in a tomato or sour cream sauce, served with sour cream.

Since I try to adapt most recipe’s for a low fat version in honor of Jesse’s gentle gallbladder, I have to cook with fat free sour cream (reminiscent of milk Jell-O..yuck) and I use ground lean turkey breast with lean ground beef. They came out OK. My grandmother’s are better, but she’s got 70 years on me, so I’m not too butt hurt.

My very basic recipe (makes 20 rolls, assuming the cabbage cooperates and has at least 20 leaves)
Cabbage
½ lbLean Ground Turkey Breast
½ lbLean Ground Beef
Onion
Carrot (2)
Sour Cream
Salt
Pepper
Half gallon of milk
4 tablespoons of rice
Dill, parsley, green onion, etc.

I cut around the ‘stem’ part of cabbage – the idea is to give a head start to the whole leaf separating process. The Cabbage gets dropped into a hot pot of water, and as the outer leaves soften up, you pluck them off with a fork. I actually pluck them off with bare hands and swear a lot, but a fork would probably do the trick and lend a more ladylike atmosphere to the whole process.

Stuffing is combined turkey and beef. (If it was up to me, I would use, as intended by nature, history, and culture, half pork, and half beef. But, alas) I grate the carrots and chop up onions finely, and sautee them in some olive oil until they’re half done. During same time I bring 4 tablespoons of rice to a boil. When in Russia, and meat was scarce, a lot more rice was used, but beef is afforadable here, so, less rice. (I don’t even want to talk about the affordability of “lean ground turkey breast” but I would have liked to pretend-faint in the aisle of Vons. But whatever, we’re being all.. healthy, and all).



By the time the onions, carrots, and garlic have cooked, and you have thought of 8 ways to spend $8, none of which include lean turkey breast, and all of which are funner, you can take the rice, drain it, and with half sauteed vegetables fold them into the meat. I mix it well with sea salt and black pepper, and I also add a few tablespoons of sour cream into the meat to keep it soft. (And Lord knows you need it when dealing with the above mentioned turkey breast. That was my last turkey breast shot, I promise). I don’t know that Fat Free sour cream does the same thing Normal Sour Cream does, but I’m mentally willing it to. Some people throw in an egg for same purpose, I don’t, I like my eggs to manifest themeselves someplace eggy, like French Toast crust.



I line the pan (I use cast iron pots, enameled is probably better, but I was going in the oven with this, and my enameled LeCreuset has plastic lid knob) with couple cabbage leaves. Most recipes advocate envelope type assembly, but my grandmother taught me to simply roll the 2-3 tablespoons of meat into the leaf (I shave off the thick part to make leaf uniform) and tuck in the ends. This asembly doesn’t unroll like my previous envelope rolls.



I stack these into the pan, seam side down. During this, I heat my half gallon of milk (a little less), salt it, chop up green onions, dill, and parsley, a bit of butter, if you can, (I can’t) and some flour to thicken.

When the pot is full of ‘mini pigeons’, I pour in the milk broth, to cover, and bring to boil. As it comes to boil, I put it in 350’F oven, for a couple hours.



They came out good. Again, I thought they were a little dry, but largely because in the oven, some milk escapes from under the tight lid, and my top layer wasn’t really covered anymore. I may try stovetop simmer next time.

A lot of recipes call for tomato sauce, I may try next time. Instead of milk, one uses water or broth, sautee more onions and carrots in it, also a sliced apple, and into this combine either diced or fresh sautee tomatoes (with lemon juice), or simply ketchup dissolved in hot water – 1 to 2 parts. This sounds intriguing and chopped onions and carrots make a nice addition to the broth.

Serve with sour cream, enjoy! Jesse americanizes his with ketchup, which is vile, in my opinion, but seems to work for him.