Peckish Sister's Reviews
5 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 5Sort by: Title 
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Traditional Ukrainian Cookery ~ 1982 Thirteenth Edition
By Savella Stechishin
Trident Press, Ltd - 1982
Christmas Honey Cake : page 374
This is a delicious spice and dried fruit cake that needs to be aged one week for the flavor to be fully delevoped and also to not taste as dry. I substitute whatever dried fruits and nuts I have on hand where necessary and use a lighter honey rather than the recommended buckwheat honey. It is very nice to have at christmas and particularly appreciated by European palates that do not like the sweeter American desserts.
useful (1)
Kutya : page 233
This traditional Christmas Eve dish consists of whole wheat berries and I use half pearl barley. One cup of each grain before cooking will be enough to feed the entire church. Boiling, straining and grinding the poppy seed is an awful chore that will leave you finding poppy seeds in weird places for a long time, so I recommend that you use instead a can of poppy seed filling. Instead of the diluted honey syrup called for, use lots of full strength honey just before serving. A common mistake is to add the honey too early and it draws water out of the wheat, making it tough and the syrup unpleasantly running. A chopped mix of nuts on hand is best served on the side. Before serving add a few whole nuts in a decorative pattern. With the new emphasis on eating whole grains, I think this very different dish would make excellent breakfast fare and should be made more than once a year.
useful (0)
Standard Borsch : page 52
Yes, even if you do not like beets (like myself), you will love this soup. The first ingredient is soup meat with bone, this is the most essential ingredient to give the soup personality. We usually use the Thanksgiving turkey carcass, but I have made it very sucessfully with lamb, smoked turkey and goose. We leave out the carrot as we think it makes the soup too sweet; we also leave out the tomatoes as we think the flavor is wrong. A whole head of cabbage is good. We fight over adding potato and string beans, I like the complexity it adds. The cabbage should be hand sliced, not overprocessed in the food processor. The critical part at the end is to have the soup hot enough so that when you add enough sour cream to your bowl to turn it a dark pink, it will still be warm enough to eat. Chopped dill added at the very last is not an option to make this very delicious.
useful (2)
Traditional Easter Paska : page 332
This rich bread is traditional for Easter, but also for greeting visitors. It makes a huge batch. I make half a batch to bake one large loaf which turns out beautifully if you bake it in your dutch oven. I don't use the tradional coffee can, but use other smaller pots with high sides for smaller loaves. For my bread machine, I make one third the recipe. As the whole recipe takes 6 eggs, these recipe reductions work well. This basic recipe does not have dried fruit, but I add 2 cups to the whole recipe; yellow raisens are the tradition. I cannot tolerate sulfur dioxide used in yellow raisens, so I substitute craisens which are delicious and to make a statement that I am not using regular (black) raisens in error. The next time I make this for a special occasion I intend to use dried cherries.
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The name of this recipe intrigued me from the beginning. I have never met a Ukrainian who has heard of this before or who didn’t fall in love and demand the recipe after trying it. The meatball itself is formed from a meatloaf recipe which makes for the most tender and flavorful meatball ever. Everyone wants to know how to get the horseradish inside. The secret is mix it with mashed hard-cooked egg yolks, soft bread crumbs and melted butter which solidifies into a substance that is firm and can be easily molded. You have to cook them very carefully so they do not fall apart. A small amount of sour cream gravy is then made and poured over the meatballs before baking; this is so intensely flavored that it just completes the experience. My mother-in-law would not eat horseradish, yet loved this meatball. People argue about the horseradish – it isn’t there, there isn’t enough, there is too much, etc. I waited 15 years to make it a second time, and then made 4 batches in one weekend. I am not going to wait 15 years before making it again. I then tried doubling the sourcream gravy, but it did not taste quite as good, I suppose because the drippings are not as concentrated.
useful (2)