Golubtsy is very popular Eastern dish. In original recipes it’s meat and rice stuffing into cabbage or grape leaves. I made it with collard greens and kale. This recipe is popular variation, it’s name mean lazy, easy goluptsy. Chopped cabbage is added in meat and rice mixture. Some make it really easy: they don’t make meatballs and just fry it as is.
This soup or stew is popular across Azerbaijan and some parts of exUSSR. Traditionally, piti is cooked in individual pots, but I made only two portion in a small saucepan. Original recipe says: first the juice from the stew is poured over pieces of old bread and they are eaten together with some raw onion and sumac. The meat, chestnuts and chickpeas are then tipped onto the plate, mashed together with more sumac and raw onion. We ate it like any other soup, maybe it’s not authentic but sure tasty. In modern recipes potato is used as well as chestnuts, so I used both.
Russian love herring. Maybe not as much as the Scandinavians, but the herring is a frequent guest at our table. Best herring – from the barrel, salted or spiced cured. Herring fillet with lots of onions and unrefined sunflower oil – one of the best appetizer (zakuska) to vodka. Another popular dish – herring under a fur coat, I was preparing to celebrate the New Year’s Day in Russian style. This version of the marinade for salted herring, I found the Russian-language blog, therefore I can not vouch for the authenticity, but this is great thing anyway.
Another childhood memory – vareniki. My grandma (babushka) made them often, and I loved to steal some cooked cold dumplings. This is a Ukrainian dish with various fillings. Reminiscent of the Polish pierogi, and can also be with potato filling. In contrast to the pelmeni, the dough for the dumplings often prepared with fermented milk products – kefir, sour milk or whey.
