February 9th, 2014
All politics aside, I love the winter Olympics. As the daughter and granddaughter of athletes, I grew up in a household that payed very much attention to all important sporting events. Winter Olympics was always our ultimate favourite, when all other things in life came to a sort of standstill and the whole family would be glued to the television, biting our nails and cheering (it got very loud at times!). This year’s Olympic games are even more special to me than usual. Sochi, the summer getaway town of my youth, where I stayed with my aunt in her ancient house with an outdoor shower and palm and fig trees in the backyard, holds an incredibly special place in my heart. I still dream about the cool, deep blue waters of the Black Sea and its pebbled beaches. The fact that the Games are taking place right there fills me with so much excitement, nostalgia, and pride. My cousins still live in Sochi and I get many daily, detailed, first-hand reports. I’ve always thought that Olympics should be about the olympians who invest their entire lives into this one time opportunity, and it saddens me when politics get in the way.
Now to the recipes. To me, this Russian-inspired comfort dish is the most appropriate one to make during the winter Olympics in Russia. If I absolutely had to choose my most beloved Russian dish, potato pancakes (draniki as we call them) would be the one. Traditionally fried, they don’t often appear on our table for obvious health reasons. This time I tried baking the latkes and was amazed by the little to no difference in taste. Great news for those of you who, like me, have an aversion to frying – goodbye to the greasy mess, smoke and achy stomach. And I can still indulge in my most beloved dish, once in a while.
Beet salad is also a very common Russian side dish, usually made with mayonnaise and sometimes cheese. I replaced traditional mayo with an avocado ‘mayonnaise’ and eliminated the cheese. Another pleasant surprise, the taste is very similar, and even better!
My two favourite sports to watch are Ice Skating and Biathlon, back to that!
Baked Potato Latkes
Note: The amount of pancakes you end up with somewhat depends on the type of shredder that you use. I use a very sharp mandolin, with a shredding attachment that produces more volume than a regular box grater. For me, this recipe yields 30 small pancakes.
I make my baked latkes in a muffin pan, if you don’t have one, see #6 for alternate baking directions.
2 lb Yukon gold potatoes (or you can mix it up, I used Yukon and purple potatoes)
1 small yellow onion
1 egg
1/3 cup oat flour (grind rolled oats in a blender or food processor)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper – to taste
olive oil for brushing
1. Peel and shred the potatoes. Place them into a colander and thoroughly rinse with cold water. Leave to drain in the colander, while peeling and shredding the onion.
2. Shake the water excess off the potatoes as much as possible and transfer them into a large bowl. Add in shredded onion, egg, flour, salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly.
3. Squeeze the mixture between your fingers, one small portion at a time, and try to make it as dry as possible. Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C).
4. Thoroughly grease a muffin pan(s) with olive oil. Distribute the potato mixture between muffin holes, pressing it into the bottom to achieve a regular pancake thickness. Brush with olive oil and bake for 40 minutes. Let cool slightly before removing pancakes from the holes.
5. Serve with sour cream/Greek yogurt and Beet-Avocado salad.
6. If you don’t have a muffin pan, preheat oven to 425 F (220 C). Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and lightly grease it with olive oil. Form 12 pancakes with your hands, placing them on the sheet as you go. Press with a spoon to flatten them and brush with olive oil. Bake for 12 minutes, flip and brush the other side with oil as well. Bake for another 8 minutes, flipping one more time and bake for additional 5 minutes.
Beet Salad with Avocado Mayonnaise
4 small to medium beet roots
2 ripe but firm avocados
juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper – to taste
1 garlic clove – minced
about 1/3 cup minced parsley and dill
handful walnuts – chopped
1. Bake, boil or steam the beets until fully cooked. Cool, peel and shred them, placing into a large mixing bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, mash flesh of 1 avocado with a fork. Squeeze the juice of 1/2 lemon over it. Add olive oil, mustard, salt and pepper and mix thoroughly.
3. Add the avocado ‘mayo’ into the shredded beets, along with the garlic, herbs and walnuts. Mix well to incorporate. Adjust salt and pepper.
4. Right before serving, cut another avocado into cubes, squeeze the juice of the remaining 1/2 lemon over it and add to the salad.
Tags: avocado, beets, latkes, mains, potato, recipe
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December 9th, 2013
Creating different falafel recipes has become a sort of hobby for me ever since I met my husband thirteen years ago. A falafel wrap is his favorite meal of all times, and he is definitely the person to ask about the best falafel in town – any town that he is familiar with. One of our favorite Lebanese restaurants serves falafel with fresh radishes and crunchy pickled vegetables, which are the perfect, refreshing addition to a Lebanese meal. After some research, I learned that those delicious pickles are turnips, which are traditionally pickled with beets to make for the most brilliant pink colour. In this recipe, I shredded the turnips with a spiralizer for a pretty presentation, but you can simply slice them before pickling.
I came up with the recipe for these colorful veggie falafel for cooking with Paloma, who loves to help out in the kitchen as long as bright colours and fun shapes are involved. Our market is full of fresh, bright, local varieties of vegetables (growing season here!), just in time for this colourful meal. But those of you in wintery weather can also enjoy this spicy, warming falafel, as flavours of sweet potato, beets and spinach are involved.
Colourful Veggie Falafel
for the falafel
4 tablespoons flax meal/ground flax seeds – divided
3 tablespoons sesame seeds
1/2 cup pecans
1 1/4 cups cooked or canned chickpeas – drained well and dried with paper towels
3 tablespoons sesame tahini
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons coconut sugar
1 garlic clove – minced
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt or more to taste
large handful each parsley and mint leaves (optional)
1/2 tablespoon cumin seeds
2 cardamom pods – crushed, green shells discarded (optional)
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds (optional)
2 cups loosely packed spinach leaves
1 small or 1/2 medium sweet potato – peeled and finely shredded
1 small or 1/2 medium beet – peeled and finely shredded
to prepare the falafel
1. Preheat oven to 375 F (190 C). Combine 3 tablespoons of flax meal with the sesame seeds and set aside for coating the falafel.
2. In a food processor, grind the pecans into a coarse meal. Add in the reserved 1 tablespoon of flax meal, chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, coconut sugar, garlic, red pepper flakes, salt and herbs (if using).
3. Grind the cumin, cardamom and mustard seeds in a mortar and pestle or a designated coffee grinder, then add to the food processor.
4. Process everything until well combined, scraping the walls of the food processor if needed. Take care not to puree, the mixture should remain somewhat chunky.
5. Divide the mixture into three even portions, leaving one in the food processor. Add the spinach to the food processor and combine well. Remove from the processor into a designated bowl and wipe the machine clean.
6. Put the second portion of the chickpea mixture into the food processor, along with the shredded sweet potato, and process to combine. Remove the sweet potato/chickpea mixture into a designated bowl, no need clean the food processor this time.
7. Repeat the same with the shredded beet and the last portion of the chickpea mixture.
8. Form falafel balls of three different colours, rolling each ball in the flax and sesame coating as you go. Place them on a parchment paper covered baking tray. If the spinach and/or beet mixture turned out too moist for handling, simply add about 1/4 cup of ground rolled oats to absorb the extra moisture.
9. Bake for 15 minutes, turning the falafel every 5 minutes to achieve even colour. Let cool.
10. Serve wrapped in any favorite green leaves (lettuce, collard greens or cabbage) or in pita bread pockets. Garnish with pink pickled turnips, fresh radish and cucumber slices, Greek style yogurt with lime juice to taste mixed in, herbs and/or hummus.
Pink Pickled Turnips
1 1/2 cup water
2 1/2 tablespoons sea salt
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 lb turnips – spiralized or peeled and sliced into sticks or any other way you prefer
1/2 small beet – peeled and sliced
1 bay leaf
1 garlic clove – thinly sliced
a few sprigs of fresh dill or dill flower (optional)
dash of red pepper flakes (optional)
1. In a small saucepan, heat 1/2 cup of water with the salt to dissolve. Let cool.
2. Place the turnips, beet, bay leaf, garlic, dill and pepper flakes into a clean glass jar.
3. Add the vinegar and the remaining 1 cup of water to the salty water, and pour the brine over the vegetables. Cover and let sit at room temperature to pickle for one week. Refrigerate until ready to serve and use within one month.
Tags: beets, falafel, recipe, spinach, sweet potato
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November 7th, 2013
Welcome to the new golubkakichen.com! We are so excited for this very overdue transformation and hope you like the site as much as we do. The blog was designed by Hannah of Little Light Creative and the logo is the work of Erin Ellis. We are ever grateful to these two talented ladies for making our visions and dreams become reality.
I’ve been all about soups these days and have tried out every single soup recipe from this book in the last couple of weeks. To be fair, I’m all about soup all the time – to me it’s the ultimate comfort food, as easy and satisfying as can be. As much as I love smooth, creamy ones, I often crave a chunky texture in my soups, thinking back to the ones I ate for lunch every day of my childhood. To most Russians, soup is a mandatory part of lunch – it’s served first, followed by a main, second course. My mother never had a shortage of soup ideas, and things like borsht, green borsht, solyanka, mushroom soup, and sturgeon uha were on the lunch table on any given day.
This soup is an interesting step away from the classic autumn squash soup – brilliant pink in colour, with plenty of textures and flavours to warm the soul and nourish the body. I adapted the recipe from Salatshop, a Russian wellness blog written by Olya Malysheva out of Moscow. Olya’s style is endlessly optimistic and she is great at coming up with vegetarian recipes that require no fuss. Her site and its popularity makes the Russian in me very proud – it’s great to see such an increasing interest in sites like Salatshop in the country of meat and potatoes. If you speak Russian, you should definitely pay it a visit.
Pink Soup with Roasted Onions and Broccoli
2-3 small to medium beets – peeled and cubed
2 garlic cloves – minced
sea salt
2 small to medium red onions – peeled and quartered or cut into eighths, depending on size
grape seed oil
1 head of broccoli – cut into bite-sized florets
2 cans Thai coconut milk
pinch of chili powder or a dash of cayenne
1/2 lemon – juiced
1-2 ripe but firm avocados
freshly ground black pepper
arugula leaves for garnish
1. Add beets to a medium-sized saucepan along with the garlic and a pinch of salt and barely cover with water. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer until beets are tender.
2. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350F (180 C). Place onions on an oiled baking sheet, lightly brush with oil and roast until golden, for about 20 minutes.
3. While waiting for the beets and onions to cook, bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil and blanch the broccoli for 3 minutes. Immediately transfer into an ice-water bath to stop the cooking.
4. When the beets are tender, add in coconut milk and a pinch of salt, bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 3 minutes. Add in the broccoli, stir to heat it through and then remove from the heat. Squeeze lemon juice over the soup and adjust salt if needed.
5. Cube the avocado. Ladle the soup into bowls and top with roasted onion wedges, avocado cubes and arugula leaves. Serve with sourdough and/or sprouted bread avocado toasts. Enjoy!
Tags: avocado, beets, broccoli, onion, soup
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