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Zakuski, Russian night in pictures

November 15, 2010 1 Comment Filed Under: Food, Recipes, Uncategorized

Zander with sour cherry sauce
 Home made blinis topped with Russian sour cream and real caviar
 Home made blinis topped with Russian sour cream and real caviar from Kings
My 'fabergé eggs'
My ‘fabergé eggs’
Russian salad
Russian salad
Borscht
Carmine coloured borscht soup made by Katrina
 Katrina Kollegaeva of the blog Gastronomical me.
Zander poaching in peppercorns, white wine and bay leaf
 Zander poaching in peppercorns, white wine and bay leaf
 Topped with a cherry sauce. I took the recipe from this book A taste of Russia by Dara Goldstein. It’s hard to get sour cherries in this country and, as I had never tasted this dish, I just had to guess what it should taste like. I used dried sour cherries and sour cherries in jam. For many guests this was their favourite dish. To define it is difficult: like describing a new colour. It was sweet and sour which contrasted nicely with the meaty pale fish. I couldn’t get hold of sturgeon which is rather boney and prehistoric looking, so I used another typical Russian fish..’pike’ or ‘zander’.
Wild mushrooms and onions fried in plenty of butter, the start of the stuffing for the cabbage
Wild mushrooms and onions fried in plenty of butter, the start of the stuffing for the cabbage

Another adapted recipe from A taste of Russia: whole stuffed baked cabbage. As the original recipe was with meat I made up my own recipe. 

Baked Stuffed cabbage recipe:

Serves 8
Whole white cabbage
200g buckwheat
100g of fresh dill 
100g or so of wild or fresh mushrooms
2 white onions, finely diced, fried in butter
1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin,
300ml of sour cream.
200g of grated cheddar cheese.
Salt 
Fresh ground pepper.
100g of butter
150ml sour cream
Fresh dill and cranberries
First boil or steam a white cabbage. Leave to cool
Boil about 200g of buckwheat until soft.
Preheat the oven to 180cº.
To this mixture, add the fresh dill, mushrooms and white onions, ground cumin, sour cream, grated cheddar cheese.
Then add salt and plenty of fresh ground pepper.
Leave to cool.
Take your cooled cabbage and carefully open out the leaves, at the end it looks like a flower.
Melt the butter. Brush all the leaves with the butter.
Using a tablespoon, pack a spoonful of mixture into the base of each leaf.
When finished, pull all of the leaves up, and close the cabbage.
I tied the cabbage with kitchen twine. Place in a buttered baking tray.
Pour any remaining butter over the top  of the cabbage and bake at 180C for 30 minutes.
Then take out the cabbage and cover it with sour cream.
Bake for another 20 minutes. 
Remove the whole thing to a plate. 
Snip off the strings.
Garnish with fresh dill and cranberries.
It can be sliced like a cake and would probably make a rather nice christmas vegetarian dish.
 Guest wearing Russian naval wear, the striped T shirt and Russian underwear.
 Guest wearing Russian naval wear, the striped T shirt and Russian underwear.
Russian sweets
 Beautifully wrapped Russian sweets
Russian foods
Russian chocolate,
 Russian chocolate
One guest came as a Russian ‘baddie’ from Austin Powers
Napoleon cake,
The Napoleon cake. Literally this was wolfed down so fast that there were only a few crumbs left. I also made a baked Russian apple Charlotte, named after Queen Charlotte, George III’s wife. It was also delicious but I forgot to photograph it! The recipe was very fiddly, required bread to be soaked in rum, sugar then baked for ten minutes then fried in butter then used to line a Charlotte tin leaving no gaps. The inside is an apple purée with various spices. It is then covered and sealed with the fried sugary bread and then baked for 40 minutes. 
People got very very drunk at this supper club, probably due to the shots of vodka between each bite. One couple went a bit odd towards the end: the woman bit the man on the chest, drawing blood. Oh well, that’s The Underground Restaurant for you.
Russian sunflower seeds
Russians like to snack on sunflower seeds

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  1. The Curious Cat

    November 15, 2010 at 3:59 pm

    All looks delicious! Great effort! xxx

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MsMarmiteLover aka Kerstin Rodgers.

Chef, photographer, author, journalist, blogger. Pioneer of the supperclub movement.

This is my food and travel blog, with recipes, reviews and travel stories. I also stray into politics, feminism, gardening.

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I wrote this long read for @scotnational about the I wrote this long read for @scotnational about the anti G8 camp in Stirling to protest against the G8 in Gleneagles. I partipated in the camp & protest along with my daughter @siennamarla playing in the samba band, part of the Pink Bloc. The camp was an incredible experience- the possibility of a different type of politics, of horizontal democracy. It was also a lot of fun. But our protest was tragically overshadowed by the 7/7 bombings in London. We wanted to create a new world but by the actions of a few disaffected British Muslim terrorists our positive movement for change was drowned out by hideous violence against normal ordinary people. Here is my account. 20 years anniversary #7/7 #londonbombings #scotland #antig8 #protest #gleneagles
Cheap stuff. Since the pandemic money has been tig Cheap stuff. Since the pandemic money has been tight. I shop at Lidl and aldi for food, Vinted, Portobello and Primark for clothes. The first pic is gazpacho with a banderilla from Lidl. They often have Spanish weeks and other nationality foods at a bargain price. I love those huge cartons of gazpacho- I glug it down like juice, especially in the heat. The banderillas are sold by the jar. Second pic is me in a primark vest, cardi, with an Anthropologie sale belt and old denim shorts from 10 years ago. Sorry about the mess behind, I sold a piece of furniture, a desk I found on the street, painted enamel green with ‘bamboo’brass handles which I sold on eBay for £225 #needsmust #thrift
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