The main reason I'm posting is for the next person that searches google to try to find tvorog in Las Vegas. I searched for "Russian Market Vegas" and "Russian Market Las Vegas" and found nothing useful. Google's lies cost me $10 in wrong purchases and probably $20 more in gas. Hopefully Supercook can give me something to do with greek yogurt and bulgarian white cheese.
They don't have a web site, but their address is:
Jones Market & Deli aka Eastern European Market aka
3389 S Jones Blvd (Jones and Desert Inn, behind Winchell's)
Las Vegas, NV 89146
The girls that work there are all like hot spies.
Back to Russian night..
I made a Honey "Mousse" and Zapekanka iz Tvorog (Tangy Baked Lemon Pudding). The honey mouse was crap, so I won't even talk about it. I think maybe I needed to know something about making mousse to make it work. I blame the recipe. In fact, the recipe and the person that wrote it can assossee mayee yaitsa.
Everything everyone made was good except my honey crap. Of course mine was crap. That's right, laugh. Smekh smekhom, a pizda kverkhu mekhom, suka. Yup, fur.
Lisa's Borscht was especially surprising, because it wasn't the most disgusting thing I've ever had like I expected it to be. The kid seemed to love it.
Enough to mix with oatmeal:
My
Zapekanka iz Tvorog was really good. I'm not sure if the consistency was how it should be, but it was damn tasty...
300g tvorog
Juice of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 lemon
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Separate the egg yolks from the whites, and beat the whites until fluffy. Blend in the tvorog , lemon zest and juice, and sugar to taste.
Pour the mixture into a small- medium sized greased ceramic baking dish.
Bake for 20 minutes.
Serve drizzled with a sauce made from the juice of one orange and a teaspoon or two of honey, warmed together.
Here's how it looked:
The Queen of Tarts is always acting all high and mighty, baking bread and cookies and I think probably even people every night. She'll casually pull out some flour and other stuff, get a bowl or something, and in twenty minutes she'll be yanking a tray of golden brown tastiness out of the oven. Her demeanor seems to say, what, bread? Oh look, here it is. Easiest thing in the world.
So, for Russian night, I decided to make a mushroom pastry. I'd show her. I'd whip up a huge plate of tasty mushroom foods and then I'd be the one who shrugs modestly. Oh yeah, those pastries? Totally easy.
I started the night before with:
- 3 cups flour
- 1 cup sour cream
- 2 sticks of butter
The recipe I was following told me to cut the whole thing together with a wide knife. Not knowing what the heck it was talking about, I got a butter knife and cut the mixture together while watching Bob the Builder. By the end of it, my shoulders were totally and completely sore.
The next day, I sauteed:
- 1 lb minced mushrooms
- 1 minced large onion
I added some pepper and tarragon during the cooking process, then set it aside to cool down while I pulled out the dough.
Of course, the dough didn't look right. It kept falling apart. It was impossible to roll. So I got out the pastry knife (yeah, I didn't know we had one the night before) and cut in an additional half stick of softened butter. The dough formed a nifty ball immediately. Victory for me.
I started rolling the dough out, but it was pretty sticky, and it kept tearing in places. In fact, it took me an hour to roll out, but I learned one vital fact you'll need if you ever work with dough: flour is your friend. If your dough even begins to give you lip, cover it (and your rolling surface) with flour. You cannot have enough flour on hand. It's mathematically impossible.
Once I had the dough rolled out to about a quarter inch, I cut it into squares. I mixed a cup of grated parmesan into the mushroom mixture, put teaspoonfuls of it into the squares, and folded them diagonally. After all the little triangley things were made, they were brushed with egg yolk, sprinkled with caraway seeds, and put into a 350-degree oven for twenty minutes.
Were they good? Yeah. They were good. They were pretty darn good. But I couldn't shrug and be all modest, because my shoulders might have fallen off.
For this EU Night Russian Stuffed Eggs caught my eye as they are a twist from the common Deviled Egg, which is one of my favorite appetizers.
The recipe is easy to follow and the ingredients are all quite common. My only suggestion would be to chop the onion super fine, maybe even in a food processor or Magic Bullet. I hand chopped mine and they were a bit chunky.
Thanks to chef2mom and her professional chef skills I learned the proper way to Quenelle the egg mixture and place it in the egg. You could also use a small melon baller to fill the eggs.
This recipe was interesting as it has a mayo and sour cream sauce to go with it. I ate the eggs with and without the sauce and the sauce definitely adds to the whole flavor.
Another amazing EU Night down. Hawaiian Night will be coming next month. So, stay tuned!
