You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.
Pablo Neruda
Ingredients (for 2 servings): – 3 small avocado – 150g cream cheese (e.g., Almette cheese) – multigrain bread (at best, home-made but in any case multigrain!) – 6 cherry tomatoes – parsley/dill for serving – 1 tsp salt
Method: 1 Mash avocado pulp, cheese, black pepper and salt 2 Butter avocado-cheese mixture on multigrain bread 3 Decorate with parsley and cherry tomatoes
Patsuk opened his mouth, stared at the vareniki, and opened his mouth wider still. At that moment, a varenik jumped out of the bowl, splashed into the cream, flipped over and leapt straight up into his mouth. Patsuk opened his mouth again, and another varenik went through the same performance. The only trouble he took was to munch it up and swallow it.
Nikolai Gogol, Christmas Eve
Vareniki dough ingredients: – 260g wheat flour – 130ml water – 30ml olive oil – 1/2 tsp salt
Vareniki filling ingredients: – 250g potato – 1 large onion – 1/2 tsp salt
Method: 1 Add olive oil in the middle of flour heap and mix 2 Stir in boiled water into the oily flour 3 Let the dough rest for 15 minutes 4 Peel potatoes, cut into ~2x2x2cm pieces, boil for 20 minutes, and make a potatoes puree with one teaspoon salt 5 Fry chopped onion till gold and add to potatoes-puree 6 Boil whole peeled beet roots in 1l salted water for 20 minutes, remove the beet roots from the broth 7 Roll out the dough to ~2mm and make round circles out of it with a cup or a glass 7.1 repeat 7 with the rest dough until no dough is left 🙂 8 Put 1 teaspoon of potatoes-puree with onion in the middle of each circle 9 Fold the circles half in half and lock the ends of circles tightly with finger tips (I usually do it twice through the whole length) 10 Carefully put Vareniki into boiling salted water, boil for 4-5 minutes 11 Serve Vareniki in the beetroot broth with a vinegar (1 teaspoon vinegar per serving) 12 Enjoy Vareniki avec Bortsch comme a la table du Bon Roi Stanislas !
Далече от брегов Невы, Теперь я вижу пред собою Кавказа гордые главы. Над их вершинами крутыми, На скате каменных стремнин, Питаюсь чувствами немыми И чудной прелестью картин Природы дикой и угрюмой;
Method: 1 Wash aubergine, dry it and cut into 1cm width strips 2 Bake aubergine strips on a backing paper for 20 minutes at 180C 3 Mix in a bowl chopped garlic+chopped walnuts+cheese+chopped parsley+salt+pepper 4 Put a teaspoon of walnuts-cheese-etc. mixture on each aubergine strip and roll it [optionally in sesame] 5 Serve with cherry tomatoes and fresh parsley !