Featured recipe

Sour cream dip

A simple, tangy dip made with thick home-made cottage cheese (hung yogurt) or ready-made sour cream, seasoned with garlic, chilli, black pepper and vinegar. Serve it cold with crisps, nachos and jacket potatoes. The book's other dips use this as their 'sour cream'.

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Sirene po shopski

Order 'cheese the Shop way' in a Sofia mehana and it arrives sizzling in its own little clay pot, the lid still on: cubes of white brined cheese softened in butter with tomato and roasted red pepper, an egg set on top and a chilli pepper standing upright in the middle. The cheese goes molten at the edges and salty-soft in the centre, the tomato juices bubble around it, and you mop it all up with warm bread. It is a classic of the Shop region around Sofia, eaten as a hot starter with a cold salad. Traditional sirene is made with animal rennet, so look for a vegetarian white cheese or a feta labelled vegetarian. The usual slip is cracking the egg in too early, which turns the yolk chalky; add it only for the last few minutes. Chef's tip: soak very salty cheese in cold water for 30 minutes first, or the dish will be too sharp to eat.

30 min

Bulgarian Vegetarian

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Cheremsha salad

Late April in Novosibirsk and Tomsk brings bunches of cheremsha to every market stall and roadside bucket: the first green vitamins after a long Siberian winter. The broad leaves and juicy stems of wild garlic taste of sweet, mild garlic with a peppery bite, and Siberians eat them simply, chopped with salt and fragrant unrefined sunflower oil, beside boiled potatoes and black bread. Some cooks add chopped egg or sour cream; this vegan version sticks to oil, with cucumber for crunch. Forage only with someone who knows the plant, or buy it: wild garlic has poisonous lookalikes such as lily of the valley, and real leaves smell strongly of garlic when crushed. Where most people go wrong is dressing it too early, so the leaves wilt and weep. Chef's tip: salt the chopped stems first and rub them for a few seconds; it softens their bite and draws out juice that becomes part of the dressing.

15 min

Russian Salads

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Patatnik

Up in the Rhodope Mountains around Smolyan and Chepelare, where potatoes grow better than almost anything else, patatnik is the dish every mountain inn puts on its menu. Grated potato is salted and squeezed, mixed with onion, crumbled white cheese, egg and plenty of dried spearmint (dzhodzhen), then cooked slowly in a heavy pan like a thick cake and turned once. The outside is a crisp, golden crust, the inside soft, salty and herby. Eat it hot in wedges with a bowl of thick sheep's yogurt and a tomato salad. Sirene is often made with animal rennet, so use a white cheese labelled vegetarian. The classic error is turning the heat up to hurry it, which burns the crust while the middle stays raw; it needs a low flame and patience. Chef's tip: slide the cake onto a plate, cover with a second plate and flip, then slide it back into the pan with a little more butter.

60 min

Bulgarian Vegetarian

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Salted saffron milk caps

Northern Russians rank ryzhiki, the orange saffron milk caps of the pine woods, above almost every other mushroom, and salted ones from around Arkhangelsk once travelled to the tsar's table. Salted, they keep their bright colour, turn firm and juicy with a clean, resinous taste, and are served with thin onion rings, sunflower oil and hot boiled potatoes; for non-vegans a spoon of sour cream is classic. Old cellars dry-salted them raw for months; this safer fridge version blanches the caps briefly and keeps them in a measured brine in the fridge, ready in about a week. Only use mushrooms identified by an experienced forager or bought from a trusted seller. Where most people go wrong is guessing the salt; too little lets spoilage start, so weigh it. Chef's tip: the caps bruise green where handled, which is normal, so don't worry when the edges darken.

30 min

Russian Basics

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Scrumbie la grătar

Every spring, when the shad swim up the Danube to spawn, the fish markets of Tulcea and Brăila fill with scrumbie, and the smell of it grilling drifts across the riverside terraces through April and May. The fish is oily and full of flavour, so it needs nothing more than salt, a hot grill and a bowl of mujdei, the raw garlic sauce, with soft mămăligă to calm the heat of the garlic. Shad has many fine bones; diners eat it slowly, lifting the flesh off in strips. If you cannot find shad, herring or mackerel are the closest substitutes. The usual slip is turning the fish too early, so the skin tears; wait until it lifts on its own. Chef's tip: slash the sides of the fish every 1.5 cm right down to the bone; the heat gets in and the tiny bones soften.

35 min

Romanian Fish

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Andijviestamppot

Stamppot, mashed potato stirred with vegetables, is the Dutch winter dinner, and the endive version is a little lighter: raw, finely shredded curly endive is stirred into piping-hot mash, so it wilts slightly but keeps a fresh, bitter crunch, then cubes of aged Gouda are folded in and start to melt. Dutch families eat it with gravy and a smoked sausage; this vegetarian version uses a pool of brown butter. Aged Gouda is usually made with animal rennet, so choose a vegetarian aged Gouda-style cheese. A common mistake is cooking the endive, which turns it soggy and grey. Chef's tip: stir the endive in off the heat at the very last moment.

30 min

Dutch Vegetarian

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Nasi rames

Nasi rames is a whole Indonesian rijsttafel on one plate, and it is a fixture of Indonesian takeaways (toko) in The Hague and Amsterdam, a legacy of the Indo-Dutch families who came to the Netherlands after 1945: a mound of rice surrounded by small portions of several dishes, such as sweet soy tempeh, vegetables in coconut, a boiled egg in sambal, serundeng and prawn crackers. This version is vegetarian. A common mistake is serving everything at the same temperature from one pan; the point is many small contrasting dishes. Chef's tip: make the serundeng and atjar a day ahead and the plate comes together in 40 minutes. Prawn crackers contain shellfish, so use cassava crackers for a vegetarian plate.

80 min

Dutch Rice & Grains

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Tsatsa

Beach kiosks from Varna to Sozopol sell tsatsa by the paper cone all summer: handfuls of tiny sprats fried so crisp that you eat them head, bones and all, with a squeeze of lemon and a cold glass of ayran. They taste sweet and briny and crunch like the best chips. At home, serve them with lemon wedges, a tomato and cucumber salad and bread. Buy fish that smell of the sea, with bright eyes and firm bodies; frozen sprats work once thawed in the fridge. Where most people go wrong is frying too many at once: the oil cools, the fish stick together and turn greasy. Chef's tip: shake the floured sprats in a sieve before they go in, so only a thin film of flour clings and they fry up lacy and light.

20 min

Bulgarian Fish

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Filets de perche

Filets de perche are the signature dish of the lakeside restaurants around Lake Geneva, from Geneva to Lausanne and Montreux: small, delicate perch fillets dusted with flour, fried quickly in butter until golden, and served with lemon, tartare sauce, a pile of fries and a green salad on a summer terrace. Lake perch is scarce today; ask for responsibly sourced perch or use small fillets of pike-perch or another delicate white fish. A common mistake is crowding the pan, which steams the thin fillets. Chef's tip: fry in batches in foaming butter for just a minute or so a side; the fish is done when opaque and it flakes.

25 min

Swiss Fish

by KrazyBadal 0 views

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