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Archive for March, 2010

Cooking Step-by-Step – Sirniki

28 Mar

A little while ago I found out that a friend of ours has developed quite a craving for sirniki. Sirniki in this part of the world are also known as Farmer’s Cheese Pancakes. I promised our friend I that I will make sirniki and document the steps so that she can enjoy them, in the comfort of her own home, whenever the fancy strikes her:) I, this is for you!

To make sirniki you will need the following ingredients (I never officially measured the ingredients so you’ll just have to eye it).

1. Farmer’s Cheese (a.k.a Tvorog) (approximately 1 package)
2. One egg
3. One tablespoon of sugar
4. Salt (to taste)
5. One tablespoon of all purpose flour
6. Raisins (to your liking)

To begin, place the farmer’s cheese into a medium sized bowl
Sirniki_add-tvorog

Add the egg and mix with farmer’s cheese
Sirniki_add-egg

Mix in salt
Sirniki_add-salt

Mix in sugar
Sirniki_add-sugar

Mix in raisins
Sirniki_add-raisins

Mix in flour
Sirniki_add-flour

Once all the ingredients are well mixed, take the mixture by the tablespoon full and form into small patties
Sirniki_forming

Spray a hot frying pan with cooking spray, and add the sirniki, a couple at a time. Fry the sirniki, turning after a few minutes, until golden brown on each side
Sirniki_frying

The end result should look something like this…
Final-Product

…and should be delicious.

I, I hope you enjoy making sirniki as much as you enjoy eating them :)

Sirniki on FoodistaSirniki

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Sunday Breakfast Series – Breakfast Pizza

23 Mar

If you follow Smitten Kitchen, (as if I may be so lucky to share some of the same fans) :) you probably read the breakfast pizza post that was featured by of Smitten Kitchen.

As I commented on that post and said that I will definitely be trying out the recipe, I had to keep true to my word. So what better way to use this great recipe idea, than to include it into my Sunday Breakfast Series. With that, welcome to the second installment of the series with the Breakfast Pizza.

To prepare the dough I followed Deb’s directions. The day before the actual breakfast, I mixed in yeast to a bowl filled with 1/3 cup of water. Added the flour and added the salt and used my hand held, electric mixer to mix the ingredients, increasing the speed every couple of minutes until the mixture took on dough consistency. I sprinkled additional flour onto my wooden cutting board, turned the dough out of the bowl on the floured cutting board and divided into two portions. Once that was all done, I put the board with the dough into a plastic grocery bag and refrigerated it until the following morning.

Breakfast-Pizza_Dough-&-Top

When the morning arrived I was very excited about the dough waiting for me in the fridge and the prospect of making pizza for the first time ever. For my toppings I used the following:

Slices of Turkey kielbasa
Sliced Red Onion
Mozzarella Cheese
Eggs
Scallions
Cilantro (my all time favorite herb)

Breakfast-Pizza_Raw

I tried doing the cool, twisting of the dough thing, by putting the dough over my fists, however, I failed miserably. Therefore, my pizza took on the shape of my rectangular cookie sheet that I baked it in (I do not own a pizza stone). I heated the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit, laid out the dough on the cookie sheet, covered the dough with mozzarella cheese, turkey kielbasa, slices of red onion and raw eggs. I put the pizza in the oven for approximately 10 minutes and…VOILA!

Breakfast-Pizza_Final

A fabulous breakfast, A (the husband) raved about it for at least a couple of days. I won’t lie, I was pretty proud of myself, even though the pizza wasn’t actually round.

Thanks Deb for sharing this great recipe! I look forward to trying out more of your recipes.

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MoGo BBQ – Short Rib Burrito

19 Mar

I absolutely have to share the lunch experience I had today. A regular Friday started as a pretty nice, warm and promising day. However, no big plans were made for lunch as there is always plenty of work to keep me busy during the lunch hour.

One of my coworkers suggested going out for lunch and grabbing some food from a Korean BBQ truck. This is one of those trucks that travels around and is never in one place for two long. I want to introduce you to the MoGo Korean BBQ Taco Truck. Also known as Mobile Gourmet. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, definitely look for the truck. If you check out their website you can follow where the truck will show up next. The truck offers a menu of delicious and affordable dishes. They offer standing dishes as well as daily specials (try the Dirty Dog).

To get back to my lunch, I chose the short rib burrito and let me tell you, it was Delicious with a capital “D”. The burrito has rice, Korean style short ribs, with MoGo bbq sauce, lettuce/cabbage slaw, melted cheese, kimchi, spicy chipotle sauce, all wrapped in a flour tortilla.

All I can say is YUM!
p_2048_1536_AF844496-1072-442C-9347-2A107C9007CD.jpeg

Yes, it is as delicious as it looks. I am definitely going to be on the look out for the next appearance of the MoGo truck. Check out the MoGo website and you can follow them on Facebook to find out where they will be next and to check out the menu.

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Sunday Breakfast Series – Smoked Salmon Breakfast

14 Mar

Over a relatively short period of time I accumulated what I would consider to be a large collection of recipes. Whether it be from cookbooks, cooking magazines, the internet or from family members, I now have a drawer full of recipes.

Since it’s only truly on Sundays that we could allow ourselves a lazy morning, A (the hubby) and I, thought it would be great to have a new breakfast dish every Sunday.

Last Sunday was the first day of our Sunday Breakfasts. We started with a very simple dish, small smoked salmon canapes.

Salmon-Breakfast

To add this to your Sunday morning table here is what you will need:

Smoked Salmon
Cream Cheese
Sliced bread
Dried Dill Weed
Red onions

Toast the bread and cut off the crust to create bread squares. Spread each bread square with cream cheese top with slices of smoked salmon and sprinkle with dried dill weed. Peel a red onion and cut in half. Cut one of the halves cross wise. Arrange on a plate and serve.

These canapes are a great option for a light Sunday breakfast.

Keep coming back because there are great breakfasts coming soon in the Sunday Breakfast Series!

P.S. I wanted to give a shout out to my great friend V of VandJ Photography, who gave me some great photo editing tips!!! Thanks V, you’re the best!

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Soba Noodles with Shrimp and Cilantro

11 Mar

It’s Thursday night, one more work day and the weekend will be upon us once again. To celebrate this last night before the weekend, I decided to cook up a dinner. I’ve wanted to make a soba noodle dish for a while. Finally, I got my hands on a great recipe, thanks to my Food and Wine magazine subscription.

This was a last minute decision, so after work I stopped by an Asian market to pick up the missing ingredients. I spent at least 30 minutes looking for tamari and agave syrup (as listed in the recipe) and still came up empty handed. So in the interest of time I decided to wing it and got honey and garlic sauce instead. Besides the sauce substitution, I also opted for a frying pan to cook the shrimp (in the interest of time, as well as due to lack of a grill). Other then the above mentioned substitutions, I pretty much followed the recipe (conveniently provided in the link above).

Now that I’ve gone on and on about how tonight’s dinner came about, here is the actual dinner itself.

Soba-Noodles-with-Shrimp

To report, dinner was delicious, even with all the substitutions.

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Chocolicious!

04 Mar

It’s almost the end of the week and I am exhilarated for the weekend. After a long day at work, I decided to distract myself and bake. Granted I am not much of a baker, but I saw a recipe for brownies in my mother-in-law’s issue of Cooking Light magazine. I was surprised to find that for once I had all the required ingredients on hand. I asked if I could rip out the page with the recipe and she graciously let me.

There is a little bit of a story with baking these brownies. They are called Black and Tan Brownies. Based on the way the recipe looked (and on how inattentively I read recipes) I initially thought that it’s two recipes in one (Tan Brownies and Black Brownies). It was only after I put the tan brownies in the oven and washed all the dishes, did I look at the recipe again and realize that in fact I only made one part of the brownies. Well, lucky for me I had most of the other required ingredients, and I was able to complete the “Black Brownies” portion of the recipe as well.

There was one hick up, I used all of the butter I had for the tan brownies. I decided to take a chance and use non-fat milk instead of butter to melt the chocolate. It was a risk, and this substitution possibly altered the outcome. But I am happy to report that even though my brownies didn’t look like those in the photo of the recipe (or like typical brownies for that matter), they are fabulous! And this isn’t just me tooting my own horn. My hubby loved them, and I brought some samples to work, and got great responses there as well.

So without further ado…here they are…

Black-and-Tan-Brownies

Of course, what’s the point of all this blogging without the recipe to try for yourselves.

Even though there isn’t that much chocolate to call this post chocolicious, my “blond brownies” are still delicious. Enjoy!

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Brunch…best meal of the day

01 Mar

There was a time in not such a distant past when we would meet with our friends V&I and R&M for Sunday brunch in various restaurants in San Francisco. For a while there, our tradition was abandoned due to busy social calendars and other commitments.

This past Sunday we reinvigorated our tradition of Sunday Brunch. This time however, instead of meeting in a quaint cafe in the city we met for brunch at casa la J&A. Home made muffins (blueberry and banana nut bread), egg frittata, and of course no brunch is complete without some mimosas. My cooking sidekick V blew everyone away with her delicious banana nut muffins.

After such a great re-start, we plan on keeping up this tradition.

Brunch-Collage

V, you’re next!

P.S. There have been some requests for the recipe of the banana nut muffins. V kindly allowed me to share it with you. You will find it on the Food Network website.

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