My Inner Ukranian

Last week we went for a dinner at the Holy Trinity Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral. The first Friday of every month you can find a block-long line up outside the church. These people are waiting for their monthly dose of comfort food, and they don't give a damn whose Baba has to make it - they are going to eat potato wrapped in dough! I thought the fare was tasty, but a little bland. I am however from a family whose very recent relatives lived in sod huts and cooked in outdoor ovens. It would take some kind of miracle holopchi to measure up to my Babas'. Of which I have had many (Babas that is). I have made cabbage rolls a couple of years in a row, and have yet to achieve cabbage success. My Aunty Chris' mother-in-law Audrey has told me that I have to freeze the cabbage first, and that's what I'm going to try next. I will let you know what happens. Meanwhile, does anyone have a good perogie dough recipe? Mine always comes out tough . I have to say, the perogie dough on Friday was so tender you could have used it to swaddle a baby. I get the feeling though, that every member of the cooking team is battling hyper-tension on the home front. Salt, SALT PEOPLE! 

Roast!

Here is an email I just got from my friend Ben.

Re: Roast.......

Well, going to Parkside put me in the mood for meat (don't laugh)....Anyway, I found this recipe for beef braised with onions at epicurious.com. It was ridiculously simple:

I bought a 4 lb chuck roast, and cut it in half so that each piece of meat was about 2 * inches thick ...I rubbed the meat with a mixture of 1 tsp allspice, * teaspoon cinnamon, a healthy dose of fresh nutmeg, 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper... apparently in French this mixture is called "quatre epices" it said to add cloves, but I didn't have ground cloves. Anyway, then I sliced 2 lbs of onions into rings and chopped 6 cloves of garlic. I placed half of the onions and garlic in the bottom of my cast iron pan and placed the meat on top, then topped it with the remaining onions and garlic. I then covered the pan with several layers of foil (this is the secret..if the steam escapes there will be no juice and it will burn) and baked it at 400 for about an hour. After an hour I turned over the meat and baked it for 1 * hours. When I took the meat out of the oven, it was very tender, and there was a lot of gravy....which was just the juices from the meat and the onions as there was no other liquid!. I then sliced the roast and let it sit in the juice........and it tasted pretty damn good. I think next time I will add some prunes. You could serve it with potatoes, or you could make a vegetable tagine and serve it with couscous ( and play around with the spices....) Or, you could shred the meat and add some tomato to the sauce and serve it with papardelle.

You can see how focused I am on my work here....

Anyway, that's the story of the roast.