Babushka! Babushka!, A Veselka Dinner.

New York City is home to a Ukrainian restaurant called Veselka. The New York Times had an article about Veselka the other day. This restaurant also happens to be a favorite of my friend, M, who lived in New York City for a while. He was recently given the Veselka cookbook. Somehow several of us came up with the idea to have a big dinner party using recipes from this book. Last night, my friends and I celebrated Ukrainian Christmas Eve. Have I mentioned how lucky I am to have friends that can cook? Assignments and recipes went out by email last week. I was assigned borscht. It's a special meatless beet broth in which mushroom dumplings are added. R & E were assigned the dumplings. It was agreed that Team Borscht did a smashing job!

The cookbook has information on the history of Ukrainian Christmas Eve and also included the order of the courses. We began with this little dish of wheatberries, honey, poppy seeds and toasted walnuts. It was pretty good. Wheatberries have an odd texture, chewy, springy and crunchy all rolled into one. Up next was Team Borscht. For those who don't know, I'm half Polish. Therefore I prefer a Polish borscht, hearty, chunky, a wee bit tart with lots of dill and sour cream. This was essentially a beet consomme seasoned with vinegar, sugar and allspice. It's a little sweet and sour. After a few bites, I got more used to the taste. It was especially good with the dumplings.

Course One:


The wheatberry poppy seed dish, kutya, traditionally served as the first and last courses. Since we had SO MUCH food, it was the first course only.


Borscht with vushka, mushroom filled dumplings. Very pretty!


I have to admit that by this point, I was getting full. We still had a ton of food. Oof. We moved on to the cabbage leaves stuffed with kasha and topped with tomato sauce, potato and onion pierogi, sauerkraut and peas, and mushrooms. We also had a couple loaves of challah.

My plate, clockwise from top right: sauerkraut with peas, kasha holubtsi, simmered mushrooms, pierogi with sour cream (I had to cheat on the no-dairy thing, sorry.) and a bit of challah.


The challah



Our final course was the uzvar, a dried fruit compote. My tummy was officially at critical mass by this point, so I had a few bites. I also brought some home to put on oatmeal. It was awesome. It tasted like Christmas.


Dinner was amazing. I think i actually have a food hangover this morning and may possibly still be too stuffed to drink my coffee. With any luck, my friends and I will make this a regular thing, with a different country each time (hint hint).

Cheesecake! Cranberries!

As you may or may not know, the latest season of Top Chef is coming to an end. Some friends had a few people over for dinner last night and to watch the episode. Naturally, I brought dessert. They made grilled sandwiches with cheddar, braised pulled beef short ribs and pickled onions. YUM! I brought a cheesecake. Just a plain vanilla bean cheesecake, the way the good lord intended it, and I made a spiced cranberry jam to go on top. It was a hit.

This is the New York cheese cake from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. It's a great book, I highly recommend it! Unfortunately, I thought I had more sugar than I did when I went to make it. It was also 7:00 AM and I had been to the grocery store one already (needed a cheap aluminum roaster for the water bath) and wasn't about to go back. Oh and it was raining like crazy. I still can't believe I ran out of sugar. I have four kinds of flour and malt syrup for pete's sake! Anyway, the recipe calls for 2 1/4 cups of granulated sugar. I used 1 1/4 cups of granulated sugar and 3/4 cup of brown sugar. It worked really well! It's not quite as snow white as the picture, but darn tasty. I also used cinnamon graham crackers as the crust. It worked really well. (Someone at the dinner thought I used teddy grahams. I like the idea of grinding up teddy bears to make cheesecake crust. I may have to try that.) Oh, I also used a half of a vanilla bean instead of the extract. The cheesecake baked for about 15 minutes longer than the book called for because my oven is a little slow.

The only problem with the recipe is that it made too much batter. I could have filled up the springform pan the whole way, but that would have been precarious to say the least. It just so happened that the left over batter filled 12 muffin cups perfectly. I baked these at 300 degrees, a little lower than the whole cake. I also didn't use a water bath. I wasn't so concerned with cracked tops like I was with the big one since I'll most likely be eating these in front of the fridge with the door open they are just for me. Next time I would cut the recipe in half.



This is the cranberry jam I made to go with it. It was the easiest thing in the world. Rinse a bag of fresh cranberries, place in large sauce pot. Add 1/2 cup of water, 2 cups powdered sugar, juice of three clementines, zest of one clementine, the left over half of vanilla bean, and a teaspoon of cinnamon. Simmer until the cranberries begin to break down and the juice thickens. It was, like, 10 minutes. For reals. Because there is a bit of cornstarch in powdered sugar, the sauce thickened quickly. Let it cool. It made about 24 ounces.

Murder She Baked

A few weeks ago, my friend, C., from high school sent me a message through Facebook. She had found an author she thought I'd like. The author's name is Joanne Fluke. She's a mystery writer. Her main character is named Hannah Swensen. She owns a bakery in a small Minnesota town and on the side, she solves murder mysteries. Now, I love a well written mystery. I am happy to say I had read and loved every Sherlock Holmes story Arthur Conan Doyle wrote. Most of the time, he'd leave out important clues so it was rare the reader could figure out who was the culprit. I also don't like a mystery writer who gives you so many clues that the reader figures out who did before they even did it!

The Hannah Swensen mysteries are very well written. There are enough clues so that you might figure out who was the murder, but maybe not why exactly, or she might give you enough information to second guess yourself too. There are 11 books to date, plus a mini-novela mystery, plus a 12th book on the way. So far I've read through the 9th book, Key Lime Pie Murder. Each of these books it titled with a baked good, Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, Cherry Cheesecake Murder, Blueberry Muffin Murder. The featured baked good is always involved in the murder somehow, ie. in the first one, the dead guy is holding a chocolate chip cookie, in another one, the dead guy is found face down in a strawberry shortcake. There's suspense and humor in the books. The stories are well written, including a cast of supporting characters and evolving story lines.

I think my favorite part of this series is the recipes. While reading, you'll find the characters talking about, for example, the Peanut Butter Melts a lot in a chapter. At the end of the chapter, there you go. A recipe for Peanut Butter Melts. I think it's cute! I also like it because as I'm reading I'm thinking, "wow, those Peanut Butter Melts sound really good!" Each book has an index of recipes in the back. The recipes sound great too! The website is Murder She Baked. I'm really enjoying these books that include two of my favorite things, a good mystery and pastries!

If you're in the mood for a good summer read, check them out. Your public library should have them, but beware! If it's anything like my public library, there's a crazy long waiting list for them! I highly recommend them! Thanks to C. for telling me about this too!