Baking in Russia
Photo by Adrianne Jacobs.
It’s time for the Procrasticooking quarterly report (as in, I’ve posted once since I came back to Moscow and April is almost over). But it’s a good one, I promise!
I’ve been baking a lot of cakes lately, which, as I’ll get to in a moment, is something of a challenge in Russia. First, there was this Chocolate Guinness Cake, recipe courtesy of Nigella Lawson, for St. Patrick’s Day. Then, for a friend’s birthday, I made a combination of a basic vanilla birthday cake from Joy of Baking with a vanilla bean buttercream that I sort of came up with on the spot, involving beating the hell out of a massive amount of unsalted butter, powdered sugar, whipping cream, vanilla bean scrapings and a pinch of salt. That would be the cake you see in the picture above. Finally, yesterday, I made this blueberry cake from Simply Recipes, and served it heated with a giant dollop of plombir, a type of generic milk-flavored ice cream that often comes in a bag here in Russia. Not that I’m discrediting the joy of plombir, because it’s essentially frozen whipped cream when it comes to its milk and fat contents, but the bag-0-ice-cream presentation often seems a little lacking.
Anyway, this post is about the difficulties of reproducing North American recipes in Russia and some tips for how to do so. Because, while Russia definitely has an enormous sweet tooth, what counts as cake here is slightly different in texture, sweetness, and density. Part of this is a problem of basic ingredients, which are also slightly different in terms of grind, quantity, and chemical composition. Even when you go to a Starbucks, which essentially reproduces North American desserts, you will often see baked goods that are flatter and denser. This isn’t a comment about taste, since I have to admit that Russian Starbucks’ caramel pecan brownie (usually just called пирожное брауни) is a small guilty pleasure for me, alongside an Americano. Of course, you could buy dinner with you’d spend on that here, since Starbucks is ridiculously expensive in Moscow.
In any case, here are the main differences you are likely to encounter trying to bake here:
- Baking powder (разрыхлитель теста): This is probably the most problematic ingredient, although it’s relatively widely available. When you go to a grocery store look for a little package with a picture of a cake on it. It never seems to come in anything other than an incredibly small 10 g package, which should cost around 10 rubles, maybe less depending on where you are shopping. It’s definitely more expensive than a container of Clabber Girl, I’ll tell you that much. The most important difference is the chemical composition of it. From the list of ingredients in the German brand Dr. Oetker’s baking powder: pyrophosphate acidic soda (or my rough translation of that), sodium bicarbonate, and corn starch. Clabber Girl seems to also contain a combination of baking soda and acid ingredients, minus the corn starch. I’m not a chemist, so I can’t speak to how the ratios of these ingredients in each form of baking powder behave differently, but as a baker, I can tell you that they just do. The baking powder you get in Europe definitely does its job, but it just doesn’t puff up baked goods the same way. I tried to obtain cream of tartar so I could make a homemade version of baking powder, but it is impossible to find here.
- All-purpose flour (пшеничная мука хлебопекарная): Yet again, I can’t tell you why it behaves differently but it just does. My suspicion is that all-purpose flour here is actually closer to what we would consider bread flour in the United States or Canada. Bread flour has higher protein in it, which creates more gluten and a chewier end product (think ciabatta). Most all-purpose flour in North America, I would wager, is intended for making desserts, not bread products and tends toward a lower protein count. I’m considering buying pastry flour here and experimenting with a mixture to see if I can’t achieve a lighter effect.
- Powdered sugar (сахарная пудра): If you’re not interesting in making icing for cakes or cupcakes, this probably doesn’t affect you. Powdered sugar also comes in these tiny sachets, sometimes in a larger 250 g bag. Icing a cake can be extremely pricy as a result. The main issue, I think, is that powdered sugar is understood as a decorative ingredient, something to sprinkle in tiny amounts on top of a cake or croissant, for example. Iced cake isn’t really a thing here, surprisingly, considering Russians love overly saccharine things (ahem, шампанское).
- Brown sugar: That one doesn’t exist here. You can get brown-ish unrefined sugar crystals here, but it isn’t the same soft, malleable brown sugar that you need for making perfect chocolate chip cookies. I’ve given up on making cookies here as a result. What we think of as brown sugar has a high molasses content. Theoretically, you could make your own with a fine grind of sugar and molasses, but I haven’t seen the latter anywhere here. It’s possible that it exists, and in that case I’ll give it a shot.
- Temperature settings on Russian ovens: If you’re lucky, you have an oven with celcius settings and you can google the equivalents for recipes in Farenheit (there are a zillion sites telling you how to adjust). However, Russian ovens often just have numbers 1-5 (Soviet ovens often have only 1-3), which isn’t helpful at all in trying to figure out what to set it at. I am not sure about this, but I would guess you can buy an internal oven thermometer to alleviate this problem, or just bake a bunch of things and see what turns out! The one problem I have with my oven is that the heat all comes from the bottom, which is terrible for roasting and means that the bottom of everything I bake is always a little crunchier or denser. It makes roasting chicken a pain, but this is not a post about roast chicken!
All this being said, you can easily bake here if you have a functional oven, and the basic ingredients are widely available, even if that means having to go to a few shops to find everything. A good place to start is Ashan. Actually, when I bought things for the birthday cake, they had a big promotional display of baking-related materials for the holiday (we have about a week and half of state holidays now). They even had chocolate chips. Go bake a cake!
It’s been forever since I posted, I know. It’s an excuse I’ve given many times before, and I won’t justify it, aside from the obvious: I had an incredibly busy fall quarter with teaching and getting ready for my year-long trip to Russia. But here I am in Moscow! As I write this, the sun is going down (5:30 pm, ugh) over the snowy rooftops of my neighborhood in the Basmanny district of central Moscow. We have a lovely view of the city, which I’ll post another time.
I’ve resolved to rejuvenate my cooking blog by posting how I’m adapting, negotiating and, let’s be honest, sometimes failing to reproduce recipes that are in regular rotation in our kitchen at home, and things I’ve always wanted to try to make. When D. arrived this weekend, he declared that he wanted to eat smoked fish and caviar as soon as possible, so on Tuesday we made the trek to Ashan at the Gagarinskii mall (around the corner from that enormous statue of Gagarin that makes him look like Superman) to investigate our options, since Ashan is where you can find pretty much everything you are looking for in one place. As an aside, we also got venison pate (delicious on rye bread!) and extremely inexpensive lamb rump, which is going into spinach and lamb curry… I’ll report back tomorrow about that!
I decided to start out with a recipe that, more or less, called for ingredients that we could easily procure in Russia, smoked fish being one of them. Technically, this recipe is an adaptation of a Serious Eats adaptation of Thomas Keller’s salad, but who’s keeping score?
The smoked fish aisle at Ashan is downright intimidating. We didn’t recognize half of the names of the fish… lo and behold skumbriia (скумбрия) is the word for mackerel in Russian. But I did know the word for trout: forel’ (форель). We purchased the lovely piece of it you see at right for just over 4 USD. I’ve only ever had smoked trout in the States when it’s more cooked and flaky in texture. This smoked trout was more like the texture of smoked salmon and was bright pink-red, as you can see in the middle picture.
Fingerling potatoes are not so easy to find here, but you can get baby potatoes that will do the trick and have almost the same shape and texture as fingerlings. We didn’t have any endive at our local grocery store, although I have seen it there before. I meant to throw some ruccola/chard salad greens mix in as a substitute and just forgot. I didn’t miss it, to be honest. Instead of chives and tarragon, I got one of those packs of fresh herbs that can be found in every Russian grocery store, including parsley, green onions (nezhnii luk (нежный лук) or literally, “gentle onion”), and dill. I skipped out on shallots, because I used a fair amount of green onion. Capers and gherkins should be easy to find in any standard grocery store in the pickle aisle. There is always a pickle aisle, this is Russia! I really liked the sweetness of the cornichons amid the saltiness of the capers and the smokiness of the fish.
For the dressing, you should have no difficulty finding eggs, whole grain dijon, canola oil, and lemons. The recipe makes slightly too much dressing, and I regret dumping it all in, because it soaked through the herbs. So add the dressing sparingly, to your taste. I ended up adding maybe 1/4 tsp. of sea salt to the salad, because it was plenty salty enough from cooking the potatoes in salt water, and the capers, which were especially salty.
The verdict? An interesting mix of flavors and a bright potato salad. Neither D. nor I are big fans of mayonnaise-based potato salads, and using the egg yolk here was a good way to make the dressing creamy and comforting without it turning the overall salad into mayonnaise-laden mush. I’m not sure I could eat this regularly but it was highly enjoyable.
Yeah, I’m supposed to be grading papers. And yes, I haven’t posted in a while. What can I say?
Anyway, I decided to post this recipe tonight, mostly because I want to write it down for myself, since I cobbled it together from a bunch of different chicken pot pie recipes on the web. This was good. Really good. I don’t even particularly like chicken pot pie, if I’m being honest, probably because the only kind I had growing up was frozen and featured maybe one or two lonely peas in a sea of congealed light beige sauce encased in a dry crust. But both of us happily ate this and declared it a win.
I think this recipe is a keeper because it’s a great way to use up leftover chicken and it comes together relatively quickly, as a result. We like our roast chicken (partly for the delicious stock it produces) but I often find two lonely chicken legs at the back of the fridge weeks later, unloved and uneaten. We roasted a chicken on Friday night, slathered in moutarde violette and fresh herbs (delicious!). D. suggested that we use up our leftover chicken in whatever we had for dinner tonight, and I decided on chicken pot pie, albeit with two conditions: 1) it was going to be vegetable-heavy, and 2) it was going to have a lighter, less emphasized crust. This definitely fit the bill. Most importantly, we’ve already got tomorrow’s lunch covered. This is good, because I still have those damned papers to grade, essay questions to come up with, and a conference paper to write. I’m likely to be chained to my desk for the entire day with only a small break to microwave my lunch. Ugh.
Chicken Pot Pie(s)
Makes 4 individual servings in ramekins or mini glass Pyrex dishes. Recipe by me!
Ingredients:
- 2 cups of chopped cooked chicken, preferably from the legs and thighs (I think darker meat works better here)
- 1 carrot, peeled and diced
- 1 medium potato (I used a new Yukon potato), peeled and diced into 1 cm x 1 cm cubes
- 1 small white turnip, peeled and diced into 1 cm by 1 cm cubes
- 1 cup of frozen peas
- 1 shallot, finely diced
- 1/4 cup of butter
- 1/3 cup of flour
- 3 tablespoons of dry sherry
- 1 1/2 cups of chicken stock
- 1 cup of whole milk
- 2 teaspoons of salt
- 1 teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves
- freshly cracked black pepper
- 4 thawed frozen puff pastry shells OR a sheet of puff pastry cut into circles the size of your ramekins
- Egg wash (one beaten egg and a splash of water)
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a saucepan, boil the diced potato, turnip and carrot for about 5-7 minutes or until just tender. Drain and set aside. In the same saucepan, melt the butter and fry the shallots until translucent. Deglaze with the sherry. Sprinkle in the flour and cook for about 1 minute. Pour in the stock, stir until combined, and simmer for about 2-3 minutes or until the liquid thickens. Pour in the milk and simmer another couple of minutes until thickened. Remove from heat. Stir in the chopped chicken, cooked potato, carrot and turnip, frozen peas, thyme, salt and pepper. Divide the mixture between 4 ramekins.
If using the puff pastry shells, roll them out to size of the ramekins. Otherwise, place the cut puff pastry circles on top of the chicken and vegetable mixture, and brush with the egg wash. Place the ramekins on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until the puff pastry has browned and risen up, and the chicken and vegetable mixture underneath it is bubbling. Remove from the oven and allow it to rest for about 5 minutes before eating.
I served it with steamed broccoli, which was great for dipping into the sauce.
baked oatmeal with fruit
I’ve been back in Chicago for almost two weeks. I wanted to write something on this blog. I wanted to write about the stuff we put on the grill, in particular, these grilled scallops with nectarines, and about pluot pie. But, I couldn’t help but feel that my cooking game has been a bit off. I’m sad that pluots seem to have disappeared from the stores because I was really looking forward to re-making that pie… the filling just seemed a bit too runny, but the flavor was fantastic.
Anyway, I’m bringing you this baked oatmeal with fruit, which was so, so very good. Daniel had two servings of this before we went to bed last night. No need to post the recipe because you can find it here. The only slight modifications I made were to use nectarines instead of bananas on the bottom and to bake it about 5 minutes longer so the top was a bit more crunchy. A delicious and healthy breakfast recipe that tastes almost like a giant oatmeal cookie!
smaženice (fried wild mushrooms and eggs)
Apologies for a long absence from food blogging! The spring was super busy, then I was in Moscow for 2.5 months, and now am here in the Czech Republic until September. I promise more food blogging in the near future, now that I have a kitchen to work in again!
In the meantime, D. and I find ourselves on a much-needed, proper vacation… well, with a smattering of dissertation writing in the mix, as well as intellectual conversation fueled by ample Budvar (real Budweiser beer). As I write this, I’m sitting in the 16th century family home of our friend Petra, opposite the entrance to the castle in the medieval city of Český Krumlov in South Bohemia. A very appropriate locale for a post about a classic Czech dish and a classic Czech hobby.
In case you didn’t know, going mushroom picking (“jít na houby”) is a Czech national pass-time, up there with fishing, beer and pork consumption, and ice hockey. It’s a great excuse to spend time outside in the woods, of which this country has plenty, and it produces delicious results.
Petra, Katka, D. and I set out yesterday — admittedly, a little bit late in the morning to consider ourselves true houbaři, not to mention, we took a taxi up the hill to avoid the 40 minute walk upward in broad sunlight — to the woods beside the village of Slupenec, near Český Krumlov. We spent the next 4 hours or so tromping through the forest looking for mushrooms. I think our basket would not have been quite so full had we not had Petra along for the journey, since she not only knows her mushrooms (it is essential to know what is edible and what is not!), she has a keen eye for them disguised among the leaves, pine needles, and moss. I walked for about 2 hours before I found my first mushroom and had almost given up hope when I came across a large porcini! Eventually, you start to recognize them: usually the texture is a big give-away since the colors tend to blend in with the ground, even with the strikingly orange chanterelles and the red-stemmed babki.
The four of us collected an impressive amount of mushrooms, considering this has been a disappointing mushroom season so far, according to the local enthusiasts. We used about half in the smaženice, with enough left for several risottos! I don’t even want to think about how much those mushrooms would cost to buy in Whole Foods.
I decided not to write up the recipe in the typical way I write recipes on this blog, since smaženice is a very simple dish that doesn’t require a lot of explaining, so I made a “recipe in pictures” from the photographs of our exploits (click on the image of mushrooms below left).
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Basically, smaženice it consists of scrambled eggs with the flavor coming from almost-caramelized onions and the wild mushrooms. You can make it with any edible wild mushrooms, but Petra assured me that the chanterelles and porcini are the best for it and they keep a nice, toothy texture. One thing to add is that, traditionally, this would have been fried up in lard instead of butter, so if you have access to good lard, you should make sure to make use of it. Eating this dish here, you can pretend you are enjoying the lunch of a 16th century peasant, or a feudal lord, for that matter. |
slow cooker lamb curry with fresh curry leaves
The pictures of the end result turned out a little blurry, unfortunately... I was in a hurry to eat! And apologies to Christian for the belated posting of this recipe.
This curry was the result of uber-procrastination in the form of avoiding grading papers, the first freakishly warm day of the year, and a long overdue visit to Chicago’s Devon area. There, I purchased a whole leg of lamb for a whopping $12 (the butcher seemed taken aback that I was not fazed by the price, having told me apologetically what it would cost while I chuckled at the thought of what I would have paid at Whole Foods). I had it cut into 8 large pieces that were perfect for braising. A trip to two of the local grocery stores resulted in the acquisition of several new spices for our pantry that I’d never heard of before: amchoor powder? fenugreek leaves? asefetida hing? We now have enough to make curry to feed an army, since they seem to come only in bulk.
Even though the kitchen smelled delicious (and still smells a bit like it several days later), I was worried that this curry was going to be a total flop about midway through the cooking process. The spices really need the long hours in the crock pot to meld together, not to mention the fat from the lamb to turn the sauce into a wonderfully delicious gravy. Tasting the gravy as it went into the pot, all I could detect was a slight bitter undertone and tomatoes. Also, the heat level was intense! After about an hour in the crock pot, the sauce was still blazing hot, so spicy I worried it would be inedible. This stressed me out because we had invited our friends Christian and Heather over to share in our Indian feast, and Christian is something of a part-time chef by avocation, who regularly turns out Michelin star quality meals at home. And I don’t like to disappoint.
I shouldn’t have worried because after five hours in the crock pot, the flavors came together perfectly, the heat level dipped, and the end result was declared not only satisfying but possibly “out of this world” good.
If you live in Chicago, head over to Devon (I think the #36 bus goes all the way there, or you could red line it most of the way) and check out the unbelievable selection of spices, Halal meat, vegetables and fruits they have, even if you’re not cooking Indian. We found a place that slaughters live rabbits, ducks, and chickens, and I think that that will be our next Devon adventure. It’s a little pricey to get all the spices you need for an Indian dish, but think of it as an investment in your kitchen, because once purchased (and properly stored), they’ll last a long time!
Slow Cooker Lamb Curry with Fresh Curry Leaves
Hacked from India Curry. Serves 4.
I think it is definitely possible to cook this without the slow cooker, following the same steps and then braising it in a dutch oven, adjusting the cooking time and possibly the liquid levels. The slow cooker has the advantage of keeping the temperature consistent and allowing you to do other things while it’s bubbling away.
- 2 pounds of lamb meat, bone-in (I used leg of lamb because I was assured by the butcher that it was the best, but you could easily use shoulder or other stewing meat. I think the bones are necessary for flavor, even though you need to fish them out while you’re eating, and I feel like just cubed meat would fall apart quicker)
- about 1/4 cup of ghee for sauteeing, or as needed
- 1 large white onion, pulverized in the food processor until it is almost paste-like
- 1 inch piece of ginger, finely minced
- 6 cloves of garlic, finely minced
- 2 Serrano peppers, finely minced
- 1 teaspoon of cayenne
- 10 fresh curry leaves (you could use dried here, I suppose, but the fresh leaves just have an unbelievably unique aroma and really come through in the final product)
- 2 tablespoons of curry powder
- 1 1/2 cup of high quality diced tomatoes in their juice (I used San Marzano)
- 1 teaspoon of paprika
- 2 teaspoons of garam masala
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 2 bay leaves (I used dried, but fresh would probably work well)
- 1 cup of water
- salt as needed (I used approximately 1.5 teaspoons, but adjust to your tastes)
Put a substantial dollop of ghee in a frying pan and brown the meat on both sides. In the meantime, turn the slow cooker to low in order to speed up the cooking process. Set the browned meat aside. In the same pan, add some more ghee and the onions. Sautee the onions until the water is almost gone and the onions are beginning to brown, about 10 minutes. Add the ginger, garlic, serrano and cayenne and sautee for another 2-3 minutes, then add the curry powder and the curry leaves. You want this mixture to be slowly forming into a drier paste (see the images above). Sautee for another couple of minutes until the spices are fragrant. Add the tomatoes and cook for another 5 minutes until everything is well combined and the tomatoes are heated through. Transfer the browned lamb and the spice mixture to the crock pot. Add the paprika, garam masala, bay leaves, cinnamon stick, salt and water, and stir to combine. Cook for 5-6 hours on low. Adjust for salt before serving.
Notes: My curry was actually done at 4.5 hours but I let it sit until 5 hours and turned it on “warm” after that while we got the rest of dinner ready. The curry is done when the meat is tender and falling off the bone. You could remove the bones before serving, but we were a foodie, hands-on-eating kind of crowd who didn’t mind pulling the bones out and sucking the marrow out of them during the meal.
salmon en croûte
You need to make this. Seriously. For a meal that is actually incredibly simple to put together, this classic French dish ends up looking and tasting exceedingly sophisticated.
Okay, it wouldn’t be sooooo simple if I had made pastry dough from scratch. That’s one of the few ingredients I’m willing to take a shortcut on. I had a lonely sheet of pastry puff dough in the freezer, and this was the perfect use for it. I used half a Pepperidge farms pastry puff sheet, rolling it out to be more of a square shape rather than a rectangle. As for the filling: a half-pound Norwegian salmon fillet with the skin removed, sauteed leeks and carrots, butter, salt, pepper and fresh dill. A classic combination. I made dill sauce to go along with it, but I felt like it wasn’t strictly necessary (although it looks kind of nice in the picture, huh?).
Now I have all kinds of ideas about what I’m going to stuff into the remaining half of that pastry dough. Treasure Island has massive Portobello mushrooms on sale, so I suspect some of those are going to go in it. Maybe with some roasted red pepper and goat cheese? Caramelized onions? I have a feeling whatever you end up stuffing in a pastry pocket is going to be delicious.
Salmon en Croûte
Scaled down and adapted from Chow.com. Serves 2.
- 1/2 pound salmon fillet, skin removed
- 1 cup of chopped leeks (white and light green parts)
- 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
- 2 tablespoons of butter
- fresh dill, chopped
- kosher salt and pepper
- egg wash (beaten egg and a splash of milk, mixed together)
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Roll out your pastry dough to be approximately 10″ x 10″ (or however large you think you’ll need to be able to fold the dough over the piece of salmon plus your fillings, use your judgment). I leave it up to you to decide how you roll it out… most recipes will say “on a floured surface” but I have no luck with that. In the absence of a silpat (which I want!), I roll out pie crust and pastry dough between two sheets of plastic wrap. Sautee your leeks and carrots in one tablespoon of the butter with a fair sprinkle of kosher salt, approximately 5 minutes, until the leeks are wilted but the carrots are still crisp. Salt and pepper both sides of the salmon. Place the other tablespoon of butter on the pastry dough in thin slices and place the salmon on top it, to one side, then top it with the leeks and carrots and a generous sprinkle of fresh dill. Fold the pastry sheet over and press the edges together (I rolled the edges and pressed them with a fork). Using a pastry brush, coat the pastry with the egg wash, then place it on parchment paper on a baking sheet and put it in the freezer for 15 minutes (you could use the refrigerator, but my dough had gotten a bit warm from the heat of the kitchen so I wanted it to cool down significantly). Take it out of the freezer, and bake it in the oven for 22 minutes, or until the pastry is crispy and golden brown.
