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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August 4th, 2013
This summer has been unusually mild for Florida, and we’ve been able to come out of our AC shelters and enjoy the outside. Evenings are almost cool, especially here on the island, with nice breeze coming through from the gulf. We even decided to celebrate Paloma’s fifth birthday outside, at our beach park this year and I’ve been busy making ice-cream and sorbets for the party. Paloma is very concerned about the menu and has me consulting her on every dish.
These veggie burgers will be one of the main dishes at the party. If I ever had to choose a favourite out of all the recipes I’ve come up with, these Asian flavored burgers will probably take the prize. I must admit that veggie burgers have always seemed boring to me, but after seeing these two, I became fascinated with the idea of creating my own.
Heirloom black Forbidden rice is a fairly recent culinary discovery for me. I love its purplish color and unique texture, especially when cooked in coconut milk with kaffir lime leaves. When first fava beans appeared at the market, I could not resist making a burger featuring the dramatic combination of black and purple rice with the spring green of fava. Since then, I’ve made a few variations of this burger using fresh fava, green peas and edamame – all to amazing results.
These burgers alone contain fireworks of bright flavors and will be delicious with any fixings that you use for your veggie burgers. I like to make asparagus fries to accompany the burger. Their spicy and zesty flavor can convert any asparagus hater.
Another serving idea for the burger are marinated beets. These are a variation of a very popular Russian-Korean salad, where thinly julienned carrots are marinated in a spicy vinaigrette. It’s a mandatory item at any food market in Russia and is often a welcomed dish among the many plates on a holiday table. In Russia we call this salad, literally, Korean Carrots.
Serve the burger on your favourite bread or burger bun, or wrapped into collard green leaves with a thick slice of juicy tomato.
Asian Flavored Veggie Burgers
(makes 8-9 patties)
for the rice
1 cup black Forbidden rice
1 3/4 cup full fat coconut milk
handful of kaffir lime leaves – bruised with the back of a knife
pinch of salt
to prepare the rice
Mix all the ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, covered, for 30 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool.
for the burgers
2 cups shelled edamame or fresh shelled fava beans or green peas
1 cup untoasted pistachio nuts or pumpkin seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
2 cups coconut black rice (from above)
1/4 cup ground chia or flax seeds
3 soft dates – pitted and mashed with a fork
2 tablespoons sesame tahini
1 shallot – minced
3 garlic cloves – minced
zest and juice of 1 lime
1 small red chili – seeded and minced
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Large handful fresh mint leaves – chopped
sea salt to taste
to make the veggie burgers
1. Blanch the edamame for 3-4 minutes in a large amount of well salted boiling water. Transfer into an ice water bath, drain when chilled. If using fresh fava beans, blanch them for 1-2 minutes, then shock in an ice water bath and squeeze each bean out of its outer skin when chilled. If using peas, blanch for 30 seconds, then shock.
2. Grind the pistachio nuts or pumpkin seeds into a coarse meal in a food processor. Grind the coriander, cumin and mustard seeds in a mortar with a pestle or in a designated coffee grinder.
3. In a large bowl, partially mash the edamame, fava or peas with potato masher or fork, leaving bigger pieces and some whole beans here and there.
4. Preheat oven to 475 F. Add rice, ground pistachio nuts, chia meal, dates, tahini, ground spices, shallot, garlic, lime zest and juice, chili, pepper flakes, mint and sea salt.
5. Mix thoroughly with your hands, form burger patties and place them on a parchment paper covered baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes.
5. Let cool and serve between slices of this bread with fresh lettuce leaves, marinated beets and a few mint leaves, or wrapped in a collard green leaf with a slice of tomato and marinated beets.
Asparagus Fries
2 tablespoons ground chia or flax seeds
4 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons purified water
1 asparagus bunch – about 25-30 pieces
1/4 cup ground pistachio or other nuts, or pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt, plus more for sprinkling (optional)
1 teaspoon coconut sugar
1/2 tablespoon cumin seeds – ground
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
to make the asparagus fries
1. Choose asparagus spears of medium thickness, they shouldn’t be too thin in order to hold their shape. Trim the hard ends of each asparagus spear and discard.
2. In a shallow dish, whisk together the lemon juice, water and chia meal. Set aside and let it form a thin gel.
2. Mix the rest of ingredients in a bowl or shake them in a ziplock bag to combine thoroughly. Pour about 1/3 cup of this mixture onto the large plate.
3. Preheat oven to 395 F. Dip the asparagus, one spear at a time into the lemon-chia mixture, then transfer it to a plate with the dry coating. Using a fork, generously cover it to coat, avoiding touching the spear and the coating with your hands in order to keep the coating on the asparagus and as dry as possible.
4. Carefully transfer coated asparagus spears onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet. Continue to add more of the coating mixture to the plate as it gets used up. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the coating is dry and golden.
5. Remove from the oven and serve immediately. The leftovers will get soggy in the fridge, nevertheless will be still delicious and great for placing between a slice of bread along with the burgers and vegetables.
Marinated Golden Beets
1/2 lb golden beets – thinly julienned
2 1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
3/4 tablespoon coconut sugar
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 small garlic clove – minced
1/8-1/4 teaspoon ground hot chili pepper
to marinate the beets
Combine all of the ingredients in a medium bowl, mix thoroughly, cover and let marinate for 4 to 24 hours in the refrigerator. Stir again and serve.
Tags: asparagus fries, beets, black rice, coconut milk, edamame, fava, kaffir lime, recipe, vegan, veggie burger
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October 2nd, 2012
This post is also available in: French
La Tartine Gourmande is a cookbook I’ve been spending a lot of time with ever since it came out in the spring. I’ve admired Béatrice Peltre’s blog for quite a while now, and it was the very thing that, almost three years ago, made me want to try my hand at writing about food. Béa’s vision is unmistakably hers, and her love for the ingredients and dishes that she prepares shows through in every photo and recipe. Out of all cookbooks on my shelf (editor’s note, the shelf is overloaded), this one has been the one I’ve read and reread most often and got an incredible amount of ideas from. Béa’s attention to detail and French approach to cooking is something I relate to very much. It’s no secret that us Russians are historically very drawn to anything French, like most of the world, really.
Out of the recipes I’ve tried from the cookbook, this beet mille-feuille was a favourite. It’s a pretty simple appetizer, which happens to be very tasty and impressive in appearance, a great idea for having friends over.
One thing I did here is make my own ricotta cheese, used to do it all the time when living in Russia. It is a surprisingly easy process that requires only two ingredients – milk and lemon juice. And the result is worlds away from the store-bought kind, so much richer and creamier. Since the original recipe calls for both goat and ricotta cheeses, I used raw goat’s milk from a local farm to make this ricotta.
Check out the book for more serious inspiration.
Beet Mille-Feuille
I slightly changed Béa’s recipe by adding radishes, basil oil, apple cider vinegar, and lemon zest to my homemade goat milk ricotta, eliminating goat cheese.
(makes 4)
1 1/2 cups freshly made goat milk ricotta cheese (good recipe here) or 1 cup ricotta cheese mixed with 1/2 cup soft goat cheese
3 radishes – chopped
3 tablespoons chopped chives
2 tablespoons basil oil (1/2 cup olive oil blended together with 1 cup basil leaves)
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
zest of 1 lemon
salt and freshly ground black pepper – to taste
3 red small to medium cooked beets – peeled
3 yellow small to medium cooked beets – peeled
handful of fresh greens or microgreens to serve
fresh basil for garnish (optional)
small handful of hazelnuts (optionally toasted)
In a bowl, mix cheese, radishes, chives, oil, vinegar, lemon zest, salt and pepper. Cut about 4 horizontal slices in each beet (you will have left over slices). You can use a ring mold about 2 3/4-inch wide by 2 1/4-inch tall to cut each slice with and then assemble the mille-feuille inside the ring mold. Or you can build the mille-feuille by simply placing a neat layer of cheese mixture on top of a beet slice, alternating colours. Use 4 beet slices per each mille-feuille, secure with a toothpick if needed. Refrigerate for a couple of hours before trimming. Use a very sharp knife to trim the mille-feuille to a square shape. Remove the toothpicks if using, optionally drizzle with olive oil and serve with microgreens or fresh greens and hazelnuts if you like. Garnish with basil leaves on top.
Tags: beets, golubka, la tartine gourmande, recipe, ricotta, vegetarian
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