Dinner in the Yellow House

Unappetized !

I Don't Want to be Appetized !

.

Last Easter was a day of celebration at the Yellow House. Rebeca and her daughter were both baptized Easter morning at church.   Our church baptizes by immersion so it is quite a dramatic event.   The little guy did not like the "dunking" part.  He didn't like his mommy being all wet.   I explained it a bit for him and told him he could be baptized  also when he was older.  He shook his head and said,

"I don't ever want to be appetized."

"Appetized!" I think a lot of food vocabulary is spoken in this house.

After the "appetizing" the men of the church served  a pancake breakfast.  I  won't include the recipes for those here as I believe they came from a mix.  The fruit compote and several syrups made them quite tasty.

After church, we came home and witnessed the Easter Egg hunt.   

When the last egg had been found we sat down to fruit salad and Easter buns.  I used the left over dough from the Easter Paska to make buns the shape   of doves.  The Paska turned out well but the doves looked more like fat walruses with huge fins.  Deetman tried to make his fly before he ate it.

 
Later in the afternoon Rebeca made Nigella's Blini on which we spread creme fraise and caviar or smoked salmon.  We drank champagne with this delicacy. During Lent Rebeca had not had liquor or chocolate so she wanted to treat her palate .  Tobias got her a good champagne.  He uncorked it at the front door and the cork popped all the way to the street pavement.  It must have been good.  Rara joined the adults in this feast.

The little unappetized boy was supposed to be having his nap when we had the champagne and caviar.  At one point he came slinking down the hall and we watched him poke his head around the corner.  His father said if he didn't get back to bed he was going to have to eat some caviar.  The caviar threat was enough to make him scoot back under the covers.  

The last meal of the day was our Ukranian Easter meal.  We had made a very similar meal some years back and it was time to try again.  This year the cooking was my job.  I spent some time hunting down ideas and was rewarded with a couple of great recipes.  

This was the menu:

Perogies    

Mushroom sauce

Holubtsi  (cabbage rolls )

Ham 

Peas  

Red cabbage

Easter Paska

Dove bread

Chocolate Cake

The next couple of entries include some of the above recipes.

Perogies (Varenyki)

The Recipes:

Perogies

  Here is an excellent source for making Varenyky ( Perogies, Pyrohy, Pedehey, or as they refer to them on this site, heaven on a plate....)  You will find a secret recipe there . I can not tell you what the secret is because having read it and used it I feel obliged to keep the secret.  However, you can go and see the secret yourself at this site.   The recipe is there and so are good instructions on how to make this heaven on a plate.   The result was delicious.  

Mushroom Sauce

To these perogies, I added a delicious mushroom sauce .

Cabbage Rolls

The Recipes:

I made a very simple cabbage roll recipe from a book that was given to me by a dear old friend. This book has some good pictures,  information about holidays and step by step instructions to make authentic food.  You can check with the Ukrainian Women's association of Canada to get a copy of this book. This recipe is from their book.  Try it and you will want the book.

My friend also gave me the table cloth which we use when we have Ukrainian food.

Holubtsi (Cabbage Rolls)

Rice:
4  cups of water     1  t salt       1/2  t pepper 

2    cups of rice      4 T oil 

Cook rice in water according to package instructions, slightly underdone. Sauté the onion in the oil, until transparent.  Add the onion to the rice mixture.  Stir.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Remove from heat.

Browned Hamburger 

1/2  lb ground beef     1 medium onion chopped

4 T oil

Brown hamburger and onion in oil.  Add the browned hamburger to the rice, mix well and then make the rolls.

To prepare cabbage:

1 medium-sized cabbage     

1 T vinegar

boiling water

Remove core from cabbage.  Place cabbage in boiling water to cover.  Simmer the cabbage long enough for the leaves to become limp and be easily removed from the head itself.  Do not overcook.  Remove the leaves from the water, remove the hard center part of the leaf.  The cabbage leaves are now ready to use.  

Place a spoonful of rice and meat mixture on the leaf.   Roll tightly, closing the ends as you roll each cabbage roll.  Place cabbage rolls in a 2-quart casserole.

3/4 cup tomato juice   or    

3/4  - 1 cup  tomato soup, diluted with 1/2 cup water

When baking you may pour tomato juice, stewed tomatoes or tomato soup over the cabbage rolls.  Bake at 350 degrees F  for 1  1/2  to 2  hours.

Yield: 20  30 rolls.

Honey-Glazed Ham

Recipe for Honey-Glazed Ham: 

Another recipe from the Ukranian Daughters Cookbook.  To see instructions on cooking for Easter and other celebrations get your copy from the
Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada.

     

6 lb county-style ham      

2 T honey

whole cloves                    

3 T brown sugar

Put ham into large bowl, cover with water and let soak overnight.  Next day, drain the ham.  Place it in a large saucepan and cover with fresh water.  Bring to a boil. Remove any scum.  Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for  1 and  1/2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Remove ham from pan, allow to cool slightly, then cut off any rind.  Score fat in a lattice pattern and put a clove in the center of each "diamond".

 Gently heat brown sugar and honey in a small saucepan until melted.  Brush over the surface of the ham.  Put ham in a roasting  pan and cook in the oven for  30 minutes, basting from time to time.  Take care not to let the glaze burn. 

10 serving

Carpathian Red Cabbage, Paska and Dove Bread

The cabbage was delicious.  It had the sweetness of dried currants, cherries and apple and the punch of cider vinegar and burgundy wine.

Last year I found the recipe for this red cabbage at a site called "fooddownunder".  It was a site that grouped foods by food type or ingredients or countries of origin.  It was a great site but for some reason their site registration expired.  With some searching I found a Way Back Machine that archived the recipe. 

Paska Bread and Easter Doves

I've included a picture of the Paska bread that we made from the Ukrainian Daughters'  Cookook.

Easter doves represent the return of the larks in spring. I saved some   of the dough from the Paska bread to make the  doves.  Maybe if I make them every year for a while they may begin to look as good as the ones in the book. 

Our Easter day was a wonderful day.  We finished the day with a moist rich chocolate cake.  Rebeca had stopped eating chocolate for Lent and rewarded herself and us with a moist, rich chocolate cake at the end of Lent.