Tortilla is a unique ingredient: every dish you incorporate it in is simple, easy to cook , yet very delicious.

These 3 recipes are my favorites when I am on the run and the family needs to have a snack.

Fried tortillas with beef

It’s good to take with you if you decide to go camping or travel by car at the long distances.

You can also cook this dish with fruit, berries, I sometimes use bacon and cheese, whatever you want.

For this dish you will need

Meat ( in my case beef) for 4 tortillas I used ½ pound

1 small onion

1 egg

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper Read full recipe 

Apple hot pockets:

Apple hot pockets are a great fall breakfast for a weekday. with Tortillas you can cook them in minutes in the evening and reheat in the morning.

For the recipe you will need:

4 medium apples;

4 tortillas;

2 tablespoons of sugar;

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil Read more 

 Burrito with sausage, cheese, tomato and basil.

Burritos should be spicy and meaty, but as my family loves burritos and doesn’t loce them too spicy I decided to invent mine.

(Honetly there’s nothing to invent) Just throw in together the delicious vinnagraitte of saucage, tomato, cheese and onion with herbs. Read more

This recipe is very popular in European countries: in Austria it’s called schnitzel,  in the US it’s called a cutlet. We cook cutlets with beef and pork, even with fish and chicken. The main thing the fillet/ or loin has to be thin.

It’s a great dish for a weekday dinner, 5-10 minutes to cook if the meat is ready to work with (not frozen)

For the family of 4 you will need:

1 lb of thin sliced beef

1 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons of flour 

1 egg

 Wash  and tenderize the meat with meat tenderizer.

***Tip from Helen*** Cover the meat with the clear wrap and then use the smooth shaped side of the ”hammer” to tenderize the meat.***

Season the meat with salt and pepper, cut into medium sized slices 6-7 inch long and 2-4 inch wide. (Or if your meat was cut before then leave as it is)

Pour the flour in a disposable plate.

In a separate deep dish beat the egg. (you may add 1 tablespoon of water for it to be beaten better and evenly). Season the egg mix with salt and pepper.

Run the cutlet through the flour, then egg and then put on a hot frying pan (add the cooking oil just before putting your cutlets to fry).

Fry the cutlets on each side until golden brown.

Serve warm with mashed potato, rice or grilled vegetables.

Enjoy!

         This recipe is my Mom’s recipe; she invented it when we lived in Russian Far East. She had that awesome spiral potato cutter, so she was cutting potato and using it in two dishes, spirally cut potatoes from  the middle of potato were fried (Yummm) and the rest of the potato, (it looked like an empty potato when it was cut) was stuffed with minced meat.

       I was looking for this spiral cutter for quite some time, at last I found it on Ebay, so I hope to get it by mail soon:-)

       When preparing this dish, I was cutting potatoes without it. In order to get the potato shells, where you can put meat you have to cut out the potato inside, thus it will look like an empty shell. It’s a hard work, I shall say. So if you have this spiral potato cutter or if you will decide to be brave and cook this dish without it, this recipe is for you:

Ingredients:

12 medium potatoes

½ lb. minced beef (or pork)

1 medium carrot

1 egg

1 medium onion

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of black pepper

2 tablespoons of sour cream

Serves: 3 people

Step 1: Peel the potatoes

Step 2: Cut out the potato from inside, so that it would look like an empty shell. (It’s better to have spiral potato cutter) see the picture.

Step 3: Prepare your minced meat. Peel, wash and chop the onion, peel, shred and add carrots, add the egg, onion ( ½ of the onion you chopped) and season well.

Step 4:  Stuff the potato.

Step 5: Put the potato in a saucepan, add some water (1/3 of the saucepan, so that your potato wouldn’t drown). Simmer for 20 minutes.

Step 5: Braise your onion with sour-cream and add to the saucepan with potato.

Step 6: Simmer everything for 10 more minutes.

***Note from Helen*** Notice I don’t season the potato before stuffing it, because I like food with less salt. If you like your food to be very well salted, add salt when simmering your potato and/or season the raw potato before stuffing it.***

Serve the dish warm. I like to serve it with steamed broccoli and covered with cheese.

Enjoy!

It’s a very nice, comfort dish. It takes some effort to cook it, but if you have the potato cutter - life is easier. Plus you can stuff this potato with cottage cheese and herbs it should be nice. tell me what you think?

Normally when we cook pizza we think it should take an hour, I saw some recipes where cooking pizza took 4 hours. I bet it comes out as a delicous masterpiece, but… guess what… we normally don’t have 4 hours to fix the pizza. It’s good, when we have 30 minutes. That’s why I decided to share my recipe of fast pizza  with bacon, ham nad vegetables. The stuffing can be pretty much any… the dough here, that’s what important to know how to cook.

For the dough you will need:

2.5 cups of flour,

2 tablespoons of olive oil (vegetable will also be good),

0.25 oz dry yeast,

1 teaspoon of baking powder ,

1 cup of hot water,

1 teaspoon of salt and

1 teaspoon of sugar.

Mix flour, yeast, baking powder,salt & sugar.Add warm water and vegetable oil(olive oil). make a dough.

Put it in a stove for 5-10 min (put the bowl with hot water under the dough).

Cut everything you want for you stuffing :

I did ham, bacon, onion,red bell pepper,corn,tomato, 2 cheeses.

 Roll out the dough. Should be 1/4 inch thin. Add: tomato sauce+oregano+salt+black pepper->cheese (1 type) -. then all the ingredients. preheat the oven at 375F. Bake the pizza for 15 min.

Take it out add the second cheese -> bake for additional 5-7 min. DONE!

 This amount of dough should make you 3 pizzas. (or 1 pizza and a bread loaf).

Remember: you can’t store the dough in fridge so you have to use it in 1-2 days…

Enjoy!

 I was searching the internet for some time to find if this dish is prepared on North American continent, the closes I got was a recipe from allrecipes.com by Jana, but based on name I can say that the author is either from Europe of has roots from European countries. Please help me, if you know how this dish is cooked in North America. The potato baked with zucchini (squash), red bell pepper, onion, carrot, garlic and some meat is popular in Eastern Europe. (It’s cooked in Poland and Hungary, in Ukraine and Czech Republic) In each region it has different twist though. Even in my family it’s cooked differently. I like to experiment. I cook it with meatballs and sometimes with meat (beef, pork or chicken); I cook it even with bacon.

The beauty of this recipe that it’s impossible to spoil, seriously, if you aren’t the perfect cook or if you are just short of time (and guests are about to arrive) this dish will just save you.

For the recipe you’ll need:

6 big potatoes

1 red bell pepper

1 white onion

1 mid-sized zucchini

2 mid-sized carrots

2 cloves of garlic

½ cup of dill

1/3 cup of parsley (optional)

3 tablespoons of sour cream or mayo

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of pepper

¾ cup of sliced bacon

¾ cup of shredded cheese

1 cup of water

2 tablespoons of cooking oil.

Now: potatoes, red bell pepper, onion and carrots are the base of this recipe. Everything else – is a mix and match. You can substitute zucchini with squash or eggplant. You can put any meat or sausage in the pots, you can even cook it without any meat. It’s a win-win recipe.

Servings: 6 small pots. One pot for one person (It is one full plate of this summer deliciousness per each person)

Preparation time: 15 minutes.

Cooking time: 45 min -1 h (depending on your oven)

Preparation:

Peel potato, carrot, garlic and onion. Take the seeds out of pepper.

Wash all the veggies: carrot, onion, zucchini, potatoes, garlic and dill (parsley).

Shred the carrot, chop the onion and pepper, cut in mid-sized pieces potato, zucchini, chop the herbs

Set ½ of onion and carrot aside

Mix everything else: onion and potato, zucchini and carrot, herbs. Add salt and pepper.

Slice the bacon. (If you put the other meat: pork, chicken, beef- prepare it).

Take your baking pots: put bacon (or other meat on the bottom), then add your veggies.

Remember you set aside the onion and some carrot. Take it and braise it for 5 minutes in a frying pan. In 5 minutes add some sour cream / or mayo/ and add 1 cup of water, pinch of salt and pepper, braise for 2-3 min.

Pour the sauce you just cooked into the baking pots. (If you want to add the meatballs instead of bacon or any other meat put them on top of the veggies)

Preheat the oven at 375F. Set your pots to bake for 30-45 minutes. (Occasionally check the potato if it’s ready and check if there’s enough water in your pots).

15 minutes before taking the pots out- finely chop the garlic and put a little bit of garlic in each pot. When you turn the oven off add the cheese on top of your baked dish and close the lids let the cheese melt.

Be careful when taking the pots out as they are hot.

I serve the dish directly in the pots, but give the guests a spoon and a plate, if the guest wishes to eat from the plat and not the pot.

***Tip from Helen*** You can cook this dish in a baking dish, but I like separate small baking pots more, they are just more authentic and fun!

Enjoy your summer delicious baked veggies!

So this is my favorite Saturday morning breakfast/brunch meal.

It’s very fast to cook and you can add pretty much any vegetable you like and it will be gorgeous.

For this one I added:

3-4 slices of snow white squash you can use zucchini);

½ of white onion;

4 eggs;

½ tomato;

Lemon basil leaves;

Pinch of salt;

Pinch of pepper;

At first peel, wash and finely chop onion.

Wash and cut in slices, then chop squash (zucchini)

Preheat at medium heat and add cooking oil, start frying onion with squash, until soft, but still crunchy. Add the eggs and fry until cooked (5—7 min @ medium heat).

To all this beauty add tomato cut in slices (or chopped, you choose) and then add basil leaves. Fry for 2 min (so that tomatoes will be slightly soft, but not braised).

You can add cheese on top of your omelet.

And enjoy!

***Tip from Helen*** you can also add bacon or ham with squash, mushroom, it will be delicious***

This pie was invented some time ago it’s fast and simple to cook, and filling can be pretty much anything: mushrooms, braised cabbage, spinach, eggs and herbs, meat… you name it.

For the batter:

1 cup of cultured buttermilk;

1 teaspoon baking soda;

1, 5 cups of self-rising flour;

1 egg;

Pinch of salt.

Filling: anything you want /have in your kitchen, refrigerator

(BTW it’s not as good with sweet filling: fruit or berries. I don’t know why)

Mix buttermilk, baking soda, egg and salt. Add flour. Mix very well. There should be no flour balls (when the flour isn’t mixed properly). You should be able to pour the batter into the baking dish (it should be liquid, same consistency as my apricot and apple pie batter).

Preheat you oven at 350F. Put a baking dish inside for 5 min. Take it out, grease the dish with butter, so that your pie wouldn’t stick. Pour the batter into your baking dish; add your filling on top. I used: braised cabbage and 2 boiled eggs. When it was almost ready (2-5 min before taking it out) I added tomato and lemon basil.

Set to bake for 15-20 min. (or when ready, depends on the oven)

When the pie is ready it should have golden brown crust.

Enjoy!

The pie is good warm and cold!

Deep fried sirloin beef steak

In Ukraine we don’t have steaks, no seriously! Ukrainians just don’t have this dish; we eat braised meat and meatballs. So I had to learn how to cook steak, my own way.

For this deep fried steak you have to choose meat correctly, it should have some fat (not a lot), but it shouldn’t contain too much fat. (Sirloin meat is the best as you know:-), the thickness should be 2-3 inch)

Wash the meat, put it on a cutting desk and tenderize both sides with meat tenderizer (it will be more juicy)

Marinating the steak is simple: black pepper, salt and BBQ sauce (that you can prepare by yourself by the way).

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of BBQ sauce

1 lbs. sirloin meat (= 1 steak)

1 tablespoon of salt

1 tablespoon of pepper

When you marinated your steak leave it for 15 minutes to become tenderer.

Take a frying pan (it should be special frying pan 2-3 inch deep and 20-30 inch wide), preheat it a max heat then turn to medium and fry your steak  for 5-7 min on each side once, then second time.

***Tip from Helen*** when you just put your steak in frying pan don’t touch it , don’t look under it to check if there’s crust or not, leave it for 5-7 min untouched so that beautiful crust would form***

When your steak is cooked, put it on a plate and decorate with lemon basil leaves and lemon.

Enjoy!

This recipe is as simple as 1-2-3!

You can make it with pasta from a store but it’s more tender and delish if you cook it yourself. The detailed recipe for the homemade pasta may be found here.

The alternative brief recipe is here:

2-3 eggs;

1/3 melted butter;

1 cup of flour;

1/3 cup of lemon basil finely chopped;

Melt the butter, cool it off. Whisk the eggs and butter, then add lemon basil and flour.

Knead the dough for 10-15 min. Split your dough into two parts. Cover the table surface where you will roll out your dough with some flour. Using a dough roller roll out a thin layer of dough (don’t forget to cover the table surface with flour before rolling out your dough layer. Fold your thin sheet of dough 3-4 times into a roll (remember you should have enough flour inside the roll, so that your pasta wouldn’t stick)

Cut your dough into the thin pasta strips.  Aerate your pasta. Give it some air! See the pic here

Repeat with the second half of dough (don’t forget, the dough layer for your pasta should be thin);

Filling:

1/3 lbs. minced pork meat;

1/3 lbs. minced beef meat;

1 carrot;

½ white onion;

Pinch of salt;

Pinch of black pepper;

1 clove of garlic;

2 tablespoons of cooking oil;

1/3 cup of basil, lemon basil

Shred your carrot and finely chop the onion. Press the clove of garlic. Mix the meats with the carrot and onion; add the pinch of salt and black pepper.

Preheat the frying pan at medium heat. Add oil and the meat with veggies mix. Fry the meat for 5-10 minutes occasionally stirring.

***Tip from Helen*** you can also add the red bell pepper to you meat, it will be more flavorful ***

Set the 3-4 quart pan half full of water, when the water start boiling, add a pinch of salt and boil your pasta for 3-5 minutes.

When pasta is soft, drain the water and add your pasta to the frying pan with meat and veggies. Stir your pasta very well, so that it would mix with meat and all the juices.

Add herbs: lemon basil, Italian seasoning!

Your pasta is ready!

Enjoy!

 This dish is cooked in our country since the times of tsars and Kyiv Rus.

It’s delicious and mainly healthy, because the dish is steamed, not fried.

The recipe is quite simple but takes some time.

For this dish you will need:

1 cabbage (preferably with young, tender leaves)

½ pound of pork

½ pound of beef

½ cup of rice

1 carrot

2 onions (white)

1 egg

2 tablespoons of sour cream

Salt, ground pepper

At first let’s prepare the cabbage:

Take away the leaves off the top of the cabbage. (As they may be not presentable)

Not start cutting carefully the leaves off the cabbage. These leaves you will use for your rolls.

(Cut as many leaves as you want rolls, for the amount of stuffing I listed it will be about 10-15 rolls).

Wash the cabbage leaves.  At the medium heat set a 3-4 quart pan half full of water; wait until the water starts to boil. As soon as the water starts to boil add the cabbage leaves and steam them for 3-5 min.

Meanwhile take the ½ cup of rice, wash it and set to cook for 10-15 minutes.

As soon as your cabbage leaves are cooked, drain the water and let the leaves cool off

Let’s prepare the stuffing now:

Peel the carrot and onions. Finely chop the onion and shred the carrot.

Mix beef and pork, add an egg, carrot and half of the cut onions, add salt and pepper.

(You can use only beef for this recipe or only pork, or even minced chicken meat it will be still delicious)

If your rice is half cooked by this time, drain it and wash it with cold water. (The rice shouldn’t be 100% cooked, because it will get too soft in your stuffing then).

When the rice cooled off add it to your stuffing and mix well.

Now take your cabbage leaves.

***** Tip from Helen**** See the thick stems in the middle of the cabbage leaf? Cut them away like cutting triangle in the middle of the leaf, thus the cabbage leaf will stay intact and you will take away the thickest part of the stem. Sometimes I just cut the leaf in halves and take away the stem and make two rolls out of one leaf. You choose! ****

Now take your stuffing and roll it into your cabbage leaves.

Put the ready rolls in a saucepan (3-4 quart) and when you finished making your rolls add 1 cup of water into your saucepan (carefully) and set it on medium gas for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile we can cook the sauce:

Put the frying pan on medium heat; add the cooking oil and the rest of an onion. Fry until golden brown. Add 2 tablespoons of sour cream, salt, pepper and braise for 2-3 minutes.

Carefully add the sour cream sauce into your rolls, after they’ve been cooking for 10 min, and let them boil for another 15 minutes. (Set the gas on minimum).

When the rolls are cooked you may add the herbs (dill or parsley), as you wish!

Enjoy!