Perfect thing as a light dinner with a salad or as an app/starter: Cucumber and Smoke Salmon Tart! Light, flavorful and can be made ahead (I baked the tart on Sunday and made the remainder on Monday for dinner). Fresh dill from my own urban garden!
Browsing Tag
appetizers
Today is National Pretzel Day (this should really fall on the same day as Beer day!) and these are a massive labor of love. Despite being German — and Southern German at that! — I am not a very good pretzel maker. My Opa, the Bäckermeister. wouldn’t be too terribly impressed with my shaping abilities. The dough is great — high protein flour from Kin Arthur is great — and these are sourdough, though if you search my site, you will also find the yeast version. The first batch, the “arms” kept on coming off the sides, so I started tucking them under and that worked better. The pretzel salt (also from KA) kept on falling off the bottom bit when I made the slits, so I put it on the side. Not traditional, but they’ll do.
Appetizers/Starters, Lunch, Savory Snacks, Sides
Kapustyanyy pyrih
Kapustyanyy pyrih
(Капустяний пиріг, Ukrainian-Style Cabbage Pie)
It’s Pi(e) Day on March 14, so I had to make a pie, right? Well, seeing I am still working on educating myself on all things Ukrainian, I decided to make Kapustyanyy pyrih — Ukrainian-Style Cabbage Pie. It’s sort of a cross between a souffle, a crust-less quiche and a savory pie like a potato-leek pie. It’s got a whole lot of cabbage of-course (not fermented cabbage / sauerkraut though, just raw cabbage that is baked), as well as herbs and onions and a light, super eggy crust. It’s not like anything that I have ever had before, but I do quite like it. I also could see making this in like a rectangular brownie pan and serving it as a side with a meat dish. Apparently, you can also make variations with other veggies included (i.e. carrot or potatoes) or add in some sauteed chicken or sausage or ham. Pleasantly pleased at the outcome.
First Sourdough of the year: Asiago + Rosemary Artisan Italian Loaf. Really nice crust on this one, great flavor, though I could see that one has to be careful with salt — the cheese is pretty salty. Great dipping bread with olive oil and garlic and would go great with some antipasti. Definitely one to repeat.
I made this absolutely fantastic soup the other day: I roasted a Kuri squash (sort of like a small pumpkin) and made a bisque with some other aromatics (onions, carrots and peppers) and lot and lots of curry. Its delicious and I’m seriously contemplating making another batch with my leftover squash (I bought a whole bunch and I still have two left). The one thing though, is that single color soups don’t photograph well, so the pictures aren’t all that great. Just pretend you have a whiff of the curry and that makes up for the photo. I need a scratch-and-sniff website.