Dinner # 1: UKRAINE!

Our first challenge was to be in Eastern Europe- the Ukraine.

Per various internet sources, Ukrainian cuisine is defined by "a rich history and offers a wide variety of dishes. The cuisine of modern Ukraine is based on traditional Ukrainian recipes...bears influences from its neighbors' cuisines like Russian, German, Hungarian, Turkish and Polish, Lithuanian, and what can be called the Soviet cuisine (dishes of mixed origins popular in the USSR) [this is what would become the defining factor of our experience!!!]... Meat (especially pork), potatoes, vegetables, fruit, mushrooms, berries, and herbs play a major part. Ukrainian food is intended to be filling, and should be served in large quantities."

The Menu: (recipes can be found below, but I don't know why you would want to go there...)

Appetizer: Varenyky (Amaly)- Basic Ukrainian fried flour dumplings, filled with shredded carrot, sauerkraut and onions. Making them was more fun than eating them, however they were among the least heavy of the 3 different types of dumplings we made, along the lines of what a Chinese dumpling would be if it were stuffed with Eastern bloc ingredients...and yet still was not light- very heavy to eat.

Entre: (Will & Tara)- delicious and hearty stew, complemented by potato dumplings of hockey puck size and consistency. The stew was a very nice combination of meats and vegetables, but would have been more appropriate to eat during the winter season, not when it was still 110F outside.

Dessert: (Giuseppe)- Fried flour dumplings, served 
with sour creme, canned cherries, and lots of sugar. This was the part that broke the camel's back- in the end, too many dumplings for us! The recipe actually didn't even call for any sugar or cherries, but that was the part that was able to slightly save the recipe. 

***

As you can see, we had dumplings served three different ways for dinner that night. We had a guest with us that night, Giuseppe's friend Bronwen from London, who joined us in being absolutely horrified by the heaviness of the food, the amount of times dumplings were present in the menu, and the fact that we felt like we had lead blocks in our stomachs at the end of the evening.
Not even multiple bottles of wine could make it better.

We decided that we would like to have the next challenge be outside of the former Soviet Union bloc- and had Bronwen do the honors of picking out the next country: SERBIA!!!!!!

We are obviously not on a lucky streak right now, however there is hope- Serbian cuisine is more influenced by the Mediterranean than by the USSR.


Varenyky with sauerkraut: Recipe and making them! 

Ingredients:
3 glasses of flour
1 egg
2/3 glass of water
2-3 onions
2-3 carrots
500 g of sauerkraut


Pour out flour on the table. Form it like a volcano with a hole in the middle. Break an egg into this hole and add water and salt. Beat the dough until it become of plasticine consistence, then cover it and wait for 30-40 minutes.
Cut onions and grate carrots. Fry them. When ready add sauerkraut and stew the stuffing for 20-30 minutes.
Cut the dough to pieces and roll each piece so it gets thin. Then press it with a glass to have circle forms.

 Gather the rests and roll again. Put the stuffing inside the circles and press the edges.
Boil for 5-7 minutes. When serving, add fried onions.