Update

Has it really been a week since my last post?


I'm really behind...but I have good excuses, I promise!  Between my parents moving from Houston to Newfoundland, house guests over the weekend and an almost-four-year-old who seems to still be in the terrible twos (or is it the terrifying threes?), life has been a bit busy.


But I have a lot of recipes planned for the near future.  Stuffed mushrooms, red lentil kibbeh, cold yogurt soup (wonderful for hot Texas summers!), Ossetian pies and many more!


Also, I recently found an amazing cookbook at Half Price Books.  It's called Please To The Table: The Russian Cookbook by Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman.  They traveled all over the Soviet Union (this book was published in 1990) and compiled four hundred recipes from all of the soviet republics.  Also, because this book was written with a Western audience in mind, cultural notes and explanations are given for each republic or region.  This helps to clear up the misconception that all of the former USSR is Russia, or identical to Russia.


Anyway, this is possibly one of the best Russian (and republics) cookbooks I have come across (and no, I have not been paid to write this - the book is out of print, anyway).  So far, most of the recipes are accurate to what I remember eating and watching being prepared in the ten years that I lived in Russia.  And the recipes are good enough that, last week, I was able to torture make all of my friends hungry, just by letting them look through the book.  Needless to say, by lunchtime, we all had very large appetites.


I will post some of the recipes from this book (giving due credit, naturally).  If there is anything in particular that you have heard of from any of the former Soviet republics and want to see a tested recipe for, let me know!  I will be more than happy to find and test recipes and then post them on the blog for everybody.  


Starting next week, I should be back to being able to post every couple of days, so let me know what you want to see.  I already have one request for Ossetian pies with bean filling, and I am working on the dough part of that.  I should have a good recipe soon, but it's taking a little time because I do test each recipe until I'm sure it works.


Thanks for reading and checking back regularly to see what's new!  Also, if any of you try the recipes, please let me know how it turned out!  Let us know whether the dish turned out well, or if it flopped.  Feedback is wonderful.  I will be happy to answer any questions or tweak the recipes if need be.


Thanks again!


Liz