Revisiting Old Favorites

Ground Turkey Stroganoff

My tastes have changed.  I began to realize this when leafing through a collection of old recipes, looking for something different to cook. 

I stumbled on Hamburger Stroganoff, a dish I made regularly when I was first out of college.  When I read the list of ingredients, though, I began having second thoughts.  I don’t eat ground beef any more, and I stopped using canned cream of anything soup years ago.

When Someone Offers to Cook Me Dinner, What Do I Choose?

I choose blini, which are Russian yeast pancakes.  They remind me of all the traveling Bart and I did while we were living in London some years ago. We met our first blini in Moscow, when we were part of a package tour that included all our meals.  One night we escaped and went to a club filled with prosperous young Russians.  Everyone was eating blini, so we ordered them too.  We’ve been eating them ever since.

By now, the whole family likes them.  Instead of sulks and arguments at the table, everyone is filling their plates with little pancakes and covering them with sour cream, jam, smoked salmon or, on the rare occasion, a very inexpensive caviar.  Sometimes we play some Tchaikovsky to get us in the right mood.

How to Feel Like an Idiot in the Kitchen

Russian Vegetable Borscht (photo by Andy Mills)

I must be incompetent.  I found a recipe for a stuffed flatbread in a prestigious publication, and it caused my mouth to water.  It involved making dough and a filling and then frying the flatbreads on a hot griddle.  The whole process was supposed to take an hour. 

I’ve been making my own bread and pizza for years.  How hard could it be to make this dish?