Ukrainian Easter Eggs

As you might have guessed from my icon, I make Ukrainian Easter eggs.  They're made with a batik process.  That is, part of the shell is protected from the dye with wax, and then the egg is dyed.  I may do this just once, or I may repeat the process with many colors, leaving the wax on the egg until the very end, as it will continue to protect the shell from each new dye.

The second picture shows blackened beeswax on the white shell, and this protected area will stay white, and eventually when the wax is taken off it will be the white areas on the finished egg at the top. Neat, huh? Notice that the black lines in the diamonds on the finished egg were waxed around to leave a space for the black dye.

To draw in a line of wax, a tool called a kistka is used (the Ukrainian word for writing), shown below.  It's a tiny funnel made of brass or copper.  When I made my very first Ukrainian egg I used a fountain pen and melted some beeswax and painstakingly drew the lines.  You could try that if you want to.  Chances are you may find the tools at an art supply store (locally at Artists' Mediums and Bouteliers).  They also sell beeswax that's been blackened, or you can blacken it with kiwi black paste shoe polish (if you're not eating the eggs). The dyes usually sold for Ukrainian eggs are not edible dyes.  If you're going to use this process for edible eggs, make sure you are using food dyes.

I wax and dye the designs on raw eggs, so the eggs will sink in the dye.  If you're only doing a few you might find it easier to blow them out first, and then be prepared to hold floating eggs under the dye. To remove the wax from raw eggs, preheat the oven to 180, stick three thumbtacks in a shirt cardboard to form a triangle, and place the board on a sheet pan.  Place the egg on the tacks horizontally, and heat for about 10 minutes, until the wax is softened but not runny.  Pick up the egg and wipe off the wax with a paper towel.  Turn the egg over and heat for another 7-8 minutes, removing the last of the wax at the end.  It's traditional to leave the raw egg like this, or to cover with a thin film of oil to protect the water-soluble dyes.  It needs to be turned every few weeks if it's in your corner cabinet, because it might explode otherwise.  sigh.  not nice. 

If you've blown out the egg first, the oven only needs to be heated to about 150 or your lowest setting, and only needs to sit in the oven for a couple of minutes before you wipe off the wax from the first side.  Be careful, because the shell will get very hot.

In either case, clean the remaining wax residue off with lighter fluid (naptha), if you plan to varnish it.  If you don't do this, the varnish will yellow pretty quickly from mixing with the wax.  To varnish the egg, put some polyurethane in your hand, and roll the egg around.  Put it back on your thumbtack tripod to dry.  Wipe off as much of the polyurethane as you can, then pour a little vegetable oil in your hands and wash thoroughly with the oil.  Wipe the oil off, and then wash your hands with dish detergent. Magic.  No polyurethane residue.

This shows some eggs drying on a board full of nail tripods (you can see just one of the three nails for each egg).  I dry them upright, so any imperfection from the nail will be at the bottom.  You can easily make a shirt board with several thumbtack tripods, which is what I used to use before I bought this board.

If you've left the egg raw, you can blow it out after you've varnished it (so the egg doesn't mess up the water-soluble dyes).

Many Eastern European countries have a tradition of waxing with a common pin stuck in a pencil eraser, and this is easier to do, if not as exacting (but then, I'm not as practiced.  I used a ball end common pin.  I think there might be control with a "regular" common pin).  You can use paraffin instead of beeswax, and melt a little in a can on the stovetop.  Dip the ball end into the wax, touch it to the egg and drag, and you'll have a little teardrop.  Here's a heart I drew on an egg I'd dyed blue with edible dyes.  After waxing I rinsed off some of the blue dye, so the egg is two shades of blue. You can still see the shiny wax on the egg.

On this next egg I dyed the egg several colors in succession, with edible dyes.  Because the paraffin is so transparent, you can see the colors through the egg really well.  If you were using this way of decorating your hard boiled eggs, you wouldn't even need to bother to remove the wax.  Or you can scrape most of it off with your thumbnail, or remove it in the oven as before.  Do NOT remove the remaining residue with lighter fluid if you're going to eat the egg.

On these two eggs I used white beeswax and a kistka, so the design is finer than with the teardrop and drag method.I drew the design in pencil first, which shows.  When I take the wax off the pencil will come off too.

You can use either of these methods with food dyes to decorate hard boiled eggs, or to decorate eggs for the Easter Egg Nests shown in the previous post.  Be sure to ask me any questions you have in comments, and I'll get back to you.

Easter Eggs in a Nest

Once you've decorated some Easter eggs (see the next post, on instructions for decorating Ukrainian Easter Eggs,  here), you can bake them in a ring of dough to give them their own little nest.

The decorating needs to be done while the eggs are RAW, because you're going to bake them in the dough, and they will otherwise be overdone.  As it is, they will be perfectly "boiled" eggs, but they will have been baked, not boiled.

EASTER EGG BREAD

3 1/2 to 4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 pkg yeast
1/4 cup canola oil
1 egg
grated zest of 1 lemon optional
water necessary to pull together the dough


I use a food processor, dump in the ingredients, add water as necessary for the dough to form a ball, knead for 45 seconds, remove and let rise in an oiled bowl. 

Let the dough rise, punch down, and let rise again.

It's very advisable for your raw eggs to be decorated already before you make the dough.  Life intervenes, and the dough won't wait for you to decorate eggs, but the decorated eggs can wait for the dough.  It's probably best not to refrigerate the eggs while the dough rises, as the condensation when the eggs come back out of the fridge could make the dyes run - but it's up to you.

When it's ready to make the nests, divide the dough into 10-12 balls. Punch a hole in the dough and enlarge it to form a bagel shape.  You could also make a dough snake and join the ends, but that didn't work very well for me.  The rich dough didn't want to join well, and I had a thin spot on one side and the eggs wanted to fall out of the nest.  not good. 

Place the nest on parchment paper on a pan (or a well-oiled or cornmealed pan), and place the egg into the nest.  It should be sitting up out of the nest about half way.

Preheat the oven to 375 while the dough is rising (for about 20-30 minutes).  Brush the nest with an egg wash of one egg mixed with a few drops of water, and add sprinkles if you'd like.

Bake for 15 minutes.  The egg, as you can see, will be perfectly done. (The interior of the yolk was a little underdone.  It could have used another minute or two.) If prepared ahead the nests need to be refrigerated. 

Spaghetti with breadcrumbs and mushrooms

This is as good as it gets.  I like this a lot as just spaghetti with breadcrumbs, but it pairs nicely with mushrooms, asparagus, cauliflower - you name it.

I first saw this on a Lidia Bastianich episode, without any vegetable.  It's a wonderful side dish, but I also like it for a light meal or snack - essentially the equivalent of a slice of toast with butter.  The critical element is good breadcrumbs, so use some decent bread to make fresh crumbs - or use panko (Japanese bread crumbs, now available everywhere) if you don't have bread on hand.

SPAGHETTI WITH BREADCRUMBS

Cook spaghetti according to directions

For each serving, use 1/2 - 1 slice of bread, turned into crumbs in the processor or blender.

Melt butter in your saute pan - about a half Tablespoon per slice of bread.  Add a little olive or canola oil if you feel you need more oil - but butter adds essential flavor.

Add some minced garlic - (or a little garlic powder).  You'll need to experiment to see what you like.  I use 1/2 clove garlic for a slice of bread.

Add your crumbs to the garlicky oil and saute until the crumbs are lightly browned, and crisp.
Add a Tablespoon or so of grated parmesan cheese just as you're removing from heat, if you'd like
Salt and black pepper to taste.
Stir in the well drained spaghetti.

To add the optional mushrooms, saute slices in butter until golden brown. Add salt and black pepper to taste.

Simple Pilaf

This is a very simple rice dish I can throw together with ingredients I almost always have on hand; in fact, it's basically as quick as using a boxed rice pilaf, but with more control of the ingredients, and it costs less.

I use a vegetarian chicken-flavored broth powder from the bulk section of City Market in Burlington, but you could use chicken bouilion or broth, or some combination.  The addition of a little curry powder heightens the flavor without giving it a noticeable curry flavor. I use dried minced onion just for convenience and speed, but you could certainly saute minced onions, and I do that when I want more onion than I put in this dish. Add garlic, fresh ginger, red pepper flakes if you want.  Or herbs - especially parsley and thyme. But it's not necessary for a basic pilaf.

I always have frozen petite green peas on hand to add to salads or rice dishes.  They only need to be thawed in the dish itself at the end of cooking.  For more onion and a little green I've used minced onion tops that I always have in the winter.

I usually add golden raisins to my curries or pilafs, but used craisins instead and liked them a lot.  I use short grain rice lately, but use the rice you want and adjust the water accordingly (long-grain converted generally takes 2 1/2 times as much water as rice, instead of 2 to 1)

I think sour cream is a separate food group, and so of course I look to use it where I can.

SIMPLE PILAF

2 cups water
1/4 cup vegetable broth powder, or can of chicken broth instead of equivalent water
2 Tablespoons dried minced onion
1/4 teaspoon curry powder
salt and pepper to taste (the broth powder does not have salt)

Bring to a boil and add
1 cup short grain rice

Stir a couple of times, adjust the heat to very low, and barely simmer until all the water is absorbed (generally 20-25 minutes or so).  Stir in frozen green peas.  Add minced onion tops or scallions.  Top with raisins or craisins, and optional sour cream, yogurt, or cottage cheese.

Aunt Esther's Fruit Salad

My cousin Alice had a great aunt named Esther. Alice never met her great aunt, but this salad that carries her name (we just call it "Aunt Esther's") has graced our Thanksgiving table for more than three decades.  Wouldn't be the same holiday without the salad, or without remembering generations past. With Alice's kind permission:

Sauce for Aunt Esther's

Drain the juice from one can of pineapple slices into a saucepan and heat.

While the juice is heating mix together
1/2 cup sugar
1 heaping tablespoon flour
1 egg

Add to the boiling pineapple juice, stirring constantly until it thickens.  Let cool.

Beat 1 cup heavy cream into whipped cream (no vanilla or sugar)

Fold the whipped cream into the pineapple mixture.
Spread on top of a bowl of diced fruit

Whipping the cream and adding it to the sauce is best done just before you serve it.  This recipe makes enough for a holiday meal, and is more than I otherwise want at one time -  so I keep the sauce in the fridge for 5-7 days and add some to freshly made whipped cream when I mix a bowl of fruit. The fruit in this salad was pineapple, clementine, grapefruit, bananas, melon, empire apple, and pomegranate seeds

This is wonderful in summer with watermelon, strawberries, blueberries or bing cherries as part of the mix.

Linguini with Peanut Sauce

This sauce is a staple for me in the summer, when I have fresh snow peas or sugar snaps, and new scallions or onion tops.  I add cucumbers as soon as they come in.  But it's a great winter dish too.  I save myself the expense of buying scallions unless it's a major component of a dish, and instead let some onions grow tops on the counter.  I take a green leaf from 2 or 3 onions and mince them for a little taste of summer.  In winter the peas to use are frozen petite pois, just thawed in warm water.  I keep them on hand to add to salads and stir fries, and always add them at the last minute without cooking them.

I don't usually measure ingredients for this sauce, but just start with a big spoon of peanut butter and add the other ingredients to taste.  I wanted to give you a recipe so I measured this time, and it came out just the way I like it.  Start with these amounts and adjust til it's to your liking too.   

Peanut sauce

1/2 cup creamy natural peanut butter
1/2 cup water
3 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1/8 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
>1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

Add julienned cukes,
sliced scallions,
fresh snow peas or sugar snaps, or frozen green peas

Enough for 8 ounces of linguini or more.  This sauce will keep in the fridge for at least a couple of weeks.  It's only the freshly grated ginger that would conceivably spoil.

I suppose this will work with processed peanut butter, but if you aren't using natural peanut butter (ground peanuts and salt) then you're missing out on a healthy treat. I use Hannaford's store brand. 

Add just a Tablespoon or two of water to the peanut butter to begin with, beating it with a fork.  The peanut butter will darken and seize up the way melted chocolate will if a drop of water hits it.  As you add the next water it will suddenly start to turn light and creamy.

I like Sushi Chef brand sesame oil best, and find there's quite a bit of difference in brands.  This is not a dish that needs a lot of soy sauce. If it's not salty enough for you then add salt separately.  Besides adding flavor the ginger adds heat.  Adjust the ginger, hot pepper, and garlic to your level of heat. You won't find these amounts I've given you to be too hot.  You can use fresh garlic of course, but it's harder to disperse evenly to flavor the whole dish, and fresh raw garlic can overwhelm in a way that garlic powder usually does not.

As the sauce sits it keeps getting thicker, and it will do this on the pasta, too.  I used to think the pasta was absorbing the water from the sauce, but I think it's mostly that the starch in the peanut butter is absorbing the water and jelling, so that as time goes on you need to add more water.  It should have the consistency of heavy cream when you add it to the pasta. If I dress this and don't eat it right away (as in my bento box, or if there are leftovers) it will usually need a few drops of water added before I eat it.  No problem.  Some people like it sticky though. Up to you.  I like this best when the linguini is just made and still warm.

The plate is Bennington Pottery blue agate stoneware

Resolution Mac and Cheese

It's New Year's Resolution time.  I may get mine posted soon, but of course I want to eat lighter for the new year - always do - and I'm especially using my bento boxes as a way to eat lighter lunches.

This macaroni and cheese is a modification of Laurel's Kitchen's Sandy's Macaroni, which uses toasted whole wheat flour and vegetables to develop flavor, and just 2 Tablespoons of parmesan for 8 ounces of macaroni.  Not enough cheese for me, so I added 4 ounces of cheddar - about half of it in the sauce, and half on top of the mac and cheese to brown. I also added 1 Tablespoon of neufchatel to add the merest tang. 

I toasted the topping separately so I could carry it in my lunch box and keep the topping crisp.  When I had this for supper last night I sprinkled a teaspoon of Cabot's cheddar cheese powder on top, and that really punched up the cheese flavor.  I'll probably add it to the sauce the next time I make this, and will update the recipe if I change it.

This doesn't have anywhere near the fat and calories of most macaroni and cheese, but then it doesn't have nearly as much cheese.  It's a great light recipe, and worthy of being made. The dish made 6 of these 3/4 cup servings.

Resolution Mac and Cheese

8 ounces macaroni of choice, boiled, and cooled if
  the dish is not to be eaten immediately

Saute together
  2-3T finely minced yellow onion
  1/4 cup minced mushrooms
  1/2 stalk finely minced celery
  1 clove finely minced garlic
  1 Tablespoon butter

1/4 cup flour (preferably some whole wheat) toasted in dry pan
     added to sauted veggies
2 cups 2% milk
1 Tablespoon grated parmesan
4 ounces grated sharp cheddar, divided in half after grating
Salt and pepper to taste
Optional 1 Tablespoon neufchatel or cream cheese
Optional 1 Tablespoon Cabot's Cheddar Shake (cheese powder)

The  crust topping
Coarse bread crumbs from 1 slice bread (or panko)
1 Tablespoon butter
1 Tablespoon grated parmesan cheese

Directions:  Boil the macaroni in salted water, and cool.  Adding the sauce to cooled macaroni keeps the macaroni from absorbing the sauce.  It's important to salt the water even if you usually don't, because cheese usually brings quite a bit of salt to the dish, and if you replace the salt you won't notice as much that the cheese isn't there.

You could skip the toasting of the flour, but it does deepen the flavor.  Saute the veggies (or whatever ones you want), adding the garlic only when the other aromatics are just about done.  Overcooked garlic is bitter.   Adding the flour to the veggies keeps the sauce from lumping when you add the milk, since you haven't made a flour/butter mix.  Add the parmesan, cream cheese if you're using it, and one half the grated cheddar.  Be sure to cook long enough for the flour to lose its raw taste.  Be sure you've added the salt necessary for this to taste like a cheese sauce.

Add the sauce to the macaroni.  (I portioned the mac and cheese into 6 muffin cups which could take broiler heat, and sprinkled with the remaining half of the grated cheddar.)  Put under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is pleasingly golden, brown, delicious.   When cool the mac and cheese will cohere and slip out of the pan.

Saute the coarse bread crumbs (or panko) and butter until you like the color, and add 1 Tablespoon grated parmesan.  Store this separately and it will be crisp when you eat your dish.

Of course, if you want to bake the mac and cheese to eat for a meal you can add the sauce to hot macaroni, add the topping with the grated cheddar when you bake it.  350 until brown on top.  And if you want to eat this as stovetop mac and cheese you can add all the grated cheddar when you make the sauce, and leave out the topping. 

(Laurel's Kitchen is one of my favorite Cookbooks - good simple vegetarian fare.  This Mother Earth News story from 1977 tells about the book and gives a few recipes.)

Sweet Scent of Summer Salad

I always think I'm going to like the corn and bean salads that appear in the deli case, but they usually have cilantro and I can only barely abide the stuff, and especially don't like the smell on my hands if I make something with it.  Besides that, I love the smell of celery, onion, green pepper, and cukes sitting in brine overnight before making relish.

So I decided to make a salad that smelled like summer to me, with no herbs either obscuring or complementing the vegetables. This tastes very bright and clean.  Best, I suppose, with freshly cooked black-eyed peas, but I use canned.  The fresher the vegetables the better it will all taste.  But one of the great things about this salad is that it tastes really good in the winter with store vegetables and canned or frozen corn and peas. The key is a good cucumber.

Once you mince the onion, rinsing it in cold water will remove the sulfur compounds that were released when you cut through the cells, and take away that harsh onion flavor you sometimes get when cut onion sits in a salad.

For a hot pepper I used a jalapeno which has long since turned red, from my garden.  The best looking cucumber was waxed, so I took the skin off - but even in the winter I usually leave the skin on a kirby or English cuke.

Sweet Scent of Summer Salad

1 minced cucumber or 1/2 English cuke. Peeled or not as you wish.
1 minced stalk of celery.
1/3 to 1/2 minced sweet onion,
1/2  minced green bell pepper,
1 small moderately hot pepper - jalapeno or hungarian wax, for example (or hot pepper flakes)
1 can black-eyed peas.
1 can extra sweet niblets, or about 1 and 1/4 cup frozen or fresh corn
2-3 Tablespoon lime juice
2-3 teaspoons canola or olive oil
Salt and a good amount of black pepper 

Optional: minced red bell pepper added for color, but don't skip the green pepper
Optional: 1/2 to 1 teaspoon sugar, if you don't use the extra sweet niblets.
Optional: diced avocado.

TOASTED CHEESE SANDWICH

Had a hankering for a toasted cheese sandwich and the only bread in the house was cinnamon raisin from La Panciata in Norwich.  So I figured I'd go ahead - how bad could it be?  I made it with mild Cabot cheddar [ sharp, actually, which is milder than some of the other cheddars. the one in the green box  Forgotten how good this is]. Best toasted cheese sandwich I've had in a long, long, time, and cinnamon raisin with cheddar will be my Go To cheese sandwich for quite a while.  So much fun to make a discovery this way.  The little dark spots on top are the raisins.