Plov is a rice pilaf with lamb or beef which is one of the signature dishes of Central Asia, served for example, at weddings. We had it at least twice on our recent trip to Central Asia. It is also popular in other parts of the former Soviet Union. As a sign of that, this Read More …
During World War II, large numbers of Koreans were deported to Soviet Central Asia. When we visited Central Asia last month, we saw lots of Korean women in the markets selling various salads, especially we saw heaps of carrot salads (in Russian Morkovcha). The carrot salads were invented as a substitute for kimchi, since the Read More …
Egg Foo Yung is a Chinese-American classic, an inexpensive and easily prepared dish. This version with shrimp is adapted from It’s All American Food by David Rosengarten and used up some small cooked shrimp I had in the freezer. This recipe will make 4 servings with steamed rice and will take less time to cook Read More …
True puff pasty starts with a block of butter encased in dough which is repeatedly rolled out and folded to create many thin layers of butter encased in many thin layers of dough. The result is a flaky pastry. A less time-consuming method of creating a flaky pasty is the “Rough Puff” in which small Read More …
This is a second attempt at Samsa in which I used rough puff pastry, which we liked better than version 1. Otherwise, we made it exactly the same way. Dough 1 lb. Rough Puff Pastry Filling 11 oz. (310 grams) 30% fat lamb or beef 2.5 Tbs. fish sauce 2 Tbs. chicken stock (or ¼ Read More …
We recently took a trip to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. A common dish on breakfast buffets and appetizer menus was a flaky savory pastry filled with lamb, beef, or pumpkin called samsa or somsa. Here is my first version of making it at home. I adapted a recipe from Food52.com in which the author went Read More …
Sally Lunn is a traditional bread from the American South. It is an enriched bread similar to brioche and is baked in a circular pan with a hole in the center. I baked it in an angel food cake pan. This version is adapted from The New York Times Heritage Cookbook by Jean Hewitt. This will Read More …
Anthony Bourdain’s cookbook Appetites mostly consists of his version of standard foods with advice on how to prepare them in home kitchens. This is an adaptation of his version of chicken salad. I started with a Costco rotisserie chicken, which we had most of in the refrigerator, instead of raw chicken breasts, and I added Read More …
We ate this Turkish dish for lunch in Khiva, Uzbekistan. It is a layered dish with the base being an eggplant puree similar to baba ghanoush, then a layer of lamb cooked with cumin, then yogurt, then butter, and last the garnishes of sumac and parsley. The only time-consuming part is charring and cooking the Read More …
One of the signature pizzas at California Pizza Kitchen is their BBQ chicken pizza. This pizza is a vegetarian version of that adapted from a recipe in Bon Appetit. It makes one 12-inch pizza which will serve about 3 people as a main course. The original recipe called for 16 oz. of store-bought pizza dough, Read More …