Weekend food with Darina Allen
Students come from all over the world, this time there are 14 nationalities, so our little village of Shanagarry becomes even more cosmopolitan.
Among the May students is a Russian girl called Katya Pal who has taken a three month sabbatical from her job with the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature.)
She comes from a family that love to cook and eat together, and although they live in the heart of Moscow, they also have a ‘dacha’ (a little house in the country) where they can grow fruit and vegetables in their garden.
Katya surfed the internet to find a cookery school and came across Ballymaloe. She explained that she was at once taken with the idea of attending a cookery school on an organic farm, where she could learn about food production and hone her cooking techniques.
“Since I saw the Ballymaloe website, with its gardens and the farm and ecological approach to food, I could hardly think of anything else,” Katya said. Hitherto I was hard-pressed to name more than three or four Russian dishes.
So what do I know about Russian Food — I’m embarrassed to say very little.
Katya intrigued us with descriptions about the food of her homeland so I asked her to cook some of the dishes for a Slow Food event to raise money for the East Cork Slow Food Educational Project which teaches local children how to cook.
Katya made a list of 30 or 40 recipes that she desperately wanted to share with us.
We had to whittle the list down to seven or eight that could be squished into a two-hour cookery demonstration.
It was a totally inspirational evening and an eye opener to those who may have had a pre-conceived idea about Russian food.
Here are just a few of the recipes that she shared with us.
Blini (plural for “blin”) are traditional Russian very thin pancakes.
There are many ways to make blini and each household in Russia would use a different recipe.
Below is just one — it uses milk as a base, but you can experiment by adding buttermilk or yogurt or water instead of milk, or, if you have time and courage, making traditional yeast batter.
For 12-15 blini:
3 free range eggs, separated
700 ml (1¼ pints) of milk
1 tsp of salt
2 tbsp of sugar
1 tbsp non-scented oil
250 g (9 ozs) of white flour
To fry:
Oil
Half onion, chopped
To Cover:
100 ml (3½ fl ozs) cleared butter
Mix egg yolks, a cup of milk, salt, sugar, oil and flour – stir till smooth, add rest of the milk.
Beat the egg whites stiff and add to the mixture. Stir carefully so that some of the foam stays in the batter.
The mixture should be quite runny.
Put a saucepan with water on a low simmer and cover with a plate. As each blini is cooked place on the plate and cover with a lid — this will keep the blini hot while you are frying the rest of the blini.
Place half an onion on a fork, dip into some cooking oil and spread just enough oil to cover a heavy cast iron frying pan.
Using a large spoon pour some of the batter in a circular motion into the pan. Remember that blini should be thin.
My grandmother used to say that a real blin is the one you can read a newspaper through. If the batter is too thick — just add water.
Once fried, brush each blin with some clarified butter to prevent them from sticking to each other and place on the warming plate until ready to use.
Brushing the blini with clarified butter also gives a wonderful taste! Blini are served with smetana (sour cream), caviar, salmon eggs, herring, salmon, jams or coulis.
Once you have mastered blini it is easy (and very tempting) to make “blinchiky” — which are blini filled with different types of fillings, folded and refried.
Meat filling:
200 g (7 ozs) cooked minced beef
2 onions, finely chopped
2 tbsp oil
Salt
Black pepper
Heat some oil or clarified butter in a pan and fry the onions gently until they caramelize.
Add the cooked minced beef, season well. Put 2 generous tablespoons of the mince filling into each blin, fold into envelopes, fry on cleared butter or oil on two sides. Serve with sour cream.
Fried mushrooms and onion, “tvorog” (Russian curd cheese), apple and cinnamon, potatoes and mushrooms all make delicious blini fillings.
It is important that the fillings have a dry texture so that it does not run out of the blinchiky. All types of blinchiky as well as blini are served with smetana.
You may freeze your blinchiky after filling and then fry them later.
Soups are very important in Russian cuisine and one can’t really have a proper lunch or dinner without it.
This refreshing cold beetroot soup is excellent on a hot sunny day.
Bortsh is more usual in Winter.
300 g (11 ozs) beetroot peeled
Beetroot stalks chopped 1 cm (½ inch) long
1 litre (1¾ pints) of water
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp of sugar
2-3 tsp of lemon juice or vinegar
Accompaniments:
3 hard boiled eggs, free range and chopped
Bunch of parsley, dill, spring onions, mint — chopped
6-8 radishes chopped in cubes of ½ cm (¼ inch)
Half a large cucumber chopped into cubes of ½ cm
1 small onion, finely chopped with salt and lemon juice
Salt
100 g (3½ ozs) sour cream
Optional:
Boiled new potatoes — either whole and hot on the side, or cool and grated in the soup
Horseradish
Mustard
Boil peeled beetroot in 1 litre (1¾) unsalted water.
It is important not to add salt at this stage as this will spoil the colour.
Just before the beetroot is fully cooked add the beetroot stalks and continue cooking until the beetroot is ready.
Take off the heat and cool. Remove the beetroot from the saucepan and grate back into the cooking liquid.
Add salt, sugar and vinegar (or lemon juice). Adding vinegar enhances the colour of the soup.
Mix the chopped accompaniments together and allow the guests to add as much of these as they want into their bowls with soup.
Add a spoon of sour cream into each bowl.
You can also serve this soup with hot boiled new potatoes on the side, or add some cold grated potatoes to the soup (this way the soup will be more filling).
Adding some horseradish or mustard to the filling or mixing it with sour cream before serving is also delicious
Russian cakes are numerous and each family have their own secret recipes.
This Honey Cake is an easy and delicious cake to make.
This cake should be made one day in advance and kept refrigerated.
Pastry:
2 tbsp of unsalted butter
2 tbsp of honey
1 tsp of soda
½ tsp of vinegar or freshly squeezed lemon juice
320g (11 ozs) wheat flour
200g (7 ozs) sugar
2 free range eggs
Filling:
500g (18 ozs) sour cream — look carefully at labels to ensure it does not contain starch. (we used Glenilen)
100g (3½ ozs) castor sugar
Chocolate Icing (optional):
6 tsp of cocoa powder
6 tsp of sugar
1 tbsp of butter
70ml (2¾ fl ozs) milk
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4.
Melt butter in a small saucepan, add honey and soda (mix soda with lemon juice or vinegar — this will create a foam, add this to the butter and honey and stir.)
Beat the eggs with the sugar, add the flour then add the butter and honey mixture.
Split the dough in 5 equal parts.
Spread one part on the bottom of a round baking tray and bake for 5 minutes in the preheated.
Take the pan out; allow to cool, take the pastry out.
Bake all five layers one by one.
Beat sour cream with sugar until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is steady.
Put the first layer on a cake plate, cover with beaten sour cream, put next layer and so on.
If you wish to make chocolate icing leave last layer without sour cream.
To prepare icing melt the butter in milk in a small sauce pan, add the sugar and cocoa powder and stir continuously until it is rather thick but still liquid.
Pour the hot icing over the cake.
Cool and put into a fridge until tomorrow’s feast.
Experience the wonderful food and culture of Cork — with Alice Coyle of Fabulous Food Trails. Every Saturday morning they set out to discover the best local tastes of Cork, often veering off the beaten track to discover some little gems.
The Cork Trail is a relaxed but highly-focused two and half hour walking tour for enthusiastic foodies or those who are just interested in seeing and tasting the best of Cork. The tastings are generous and frequent.
The Food Trail meets in the city centre at 10am — contact Alice Coyle on 086-8090456 or visit www.fabulousfoodtrails.ie
Garden Workshop with Susan Turner — Designing Herbaceous Borders – good plant choices for a long season of interest with vibrant colour combinations and contrasts in texture and form. Half Day Course on Monday, July 18, 9am to 2pm €95.00 including lunch at Ballymaloe Cookery School, Shanagarry, Co Cork. 021-4646785
Chef Colm Falvey and his wife Cathy have run a few successful restaurants over the past 15 years — the latest was the Wisteria restaurant in Cloyne. In March he opened the Herring Gull restaurant at Inn by the Harbour in Ballycotton. The pan fried monkfish with garlic, chilli and ginger with braised fennel is really really good. To book phone 021-4646768.
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