[Russian] Olga's Potato Perushky / Perushki / Piroshki / Piroshki

*Phew*  For a minute there, I thought this was the last of the Great Olga Recipes (I pronounce it that way, to my friends).  I still have a couple left.

It's a hard call as to which of Baba's recipes are my favorite.  Which, honestly, is why I've been working on this for the past 5 years.  She's 95 now; I want to make sure these recipes are preserved for me, my family, and the rest of my family (shout-out to the cousins!).  We're extraordinarily lucky she's still around for my daughter.  And I'm extraordinarily lucky that I figured out that I needed to learn these recipes.

Anyhow - this is about as fine a fried potato food as it's possible to get.  Yes, it takes some time to make.  Holy heck, though, it's worth the time and effort.

Cook time: about an hour:
Prep time: 3-4 hours
0: Read completely before doing.  Just because the dough is "A" doesn't mean that's the first thing to do.  In fact, here's my order:
1) Cut & fry onions
2) Make dough, let rise
3) Cut and boil potatoes
4) assemble potato & onion mixture
5) cut/assemble
6) fry


A: The Dough
6 cups sifted Gold Medal All-Purpose flour.  Right around 2 pounds.
1/2 stick butter room temperature or melted
3 tbl Mazola oil
1.5 tsp salt
1.5 packages Active Dry yeast
1.5 cups warm milk ("little warm") - since it's for proofing, 100-110 F.
2 tbl sugar
3 Jumbo Eggs (4 Extra Large)

• Proof yeast: once your milk is up to temp, add yeast and stir well so that it's all wet.  Let sit 5-10 minutes (honestly, while you get everything else lined up is fine).
• Beat eggs with sugar and salt. Whisk or fork will work.
• Now mix all ingredients together in a large bowl until it comes together.  At this point, it'll probably be a bit wet. 
• Knead one minute.  As you do this, it will firm up.  It won't be tight, it won't be soft, and it WON'T be sticky.  My hands come out of this perfectly dry.  Texture-wise, a little plasticine.
• Put back in bowl, cover with a slightly-damp tea towel, and stick in the oven (which doesn't get turned on) with the light on inside.  This provides enough heat, the towel enough moisture.  Let rise until double

B: The filling

5-6 medium russet potatoes

3-4 medium size yellow onions. (Personally, I use 3-4 Texas 1015 onions - large and sweet).  

1/2 stick butter or 3 tbl Mazola.

1.5 teaspoons salt (for onions)

1.5 teaspoons salt (for potatoes)

• Chop onions fine and add salt.  I'd say a plain chop; cut the stem end off, cut the onion in half, straight down from pole to pole, remove peel, cut each half in 1/4ths from the root end (leaving connected), then slice perpendicular to those cuts, about 1/4" thick.  Here's a page, hopefully it stays up for a while: http://localfoods.about.com/od/preparationtips/ss/choponion_6.htm 
• Simmer onions in 1/2 stick butter, medium heat, until they turn golden brown or mahogany in color.  This can take a few hours on medium (4-5 on my stove).  You can get it down to an hour or so if you turn up the heat to 8 or so until they fry for a bit and the water comes out, then turn down to medium/medium-low.  This is, honestly, the part that takes longest.  Alton Brown does an episode about caramelizing onions for French Onion Soup; his have nothing on Olga's.  I also found this page which seems close.  http://allrecipes.com/howto/caramelizing-onions-step-by-step/ 
• Dice potatoes into 3/4" to 1" cubes. Boil in a large pot with 1.5 tsp salt.  Time is probably 20 minutes or until tender to the form; you will be mashing them.
• Once everything's cooked, mix together: onions with all the oil/butter, potatoes, and a healthy several teaspoons of black pepper.  
• Mash.  You want, honestly, like mashed potatoes. 
• Taste at this point, add salt and more pepper if necessary.

C: The assembling

• Take a hunk of dough out and roll into a 2" tube.  Cut into 1" pieces.  
• At this point you have two options.  One is to flatten them out into rounds, however thin you can get them (my notes say 1/8" thick, but that seems really thick).
• Alternatively, drop the 1" wide, 2" long piece of dough into a pasta maker.  My pasta maker goes from 1-7.  I use 6: 7 is too thick, and 5 winds up leaving holes in the dough.
• Once stretched out sufficiently (or as SOON as it comes out of the pasta maker - it shrinks!) put 1 tsp potato mixture (or 1 heaping table spoon, yes, the smallish spoon you use to eat with) in the center.  Alternatively, use a 60 or 70 disher.  I use the 60, but it's a little harder to seal them.  
• Fold the circle in half and crimp the edges.  Make sure the crimp is good.  The potato mixture should be a ball that fills up the center of your half-circle. That's fine.  Now place this half-circle perpendicular to the table, curved side down, and push gently on the table so that it flattens in the opposite direction.  Repeat 100 times or so.

C1: Alternative assembly directions

This is from my Meat Perushky, which is very similar.  Since I'm using the same filling amount, it should work just the same:

For each perushky, pull off 24-26 grams of dough. 
Two ways to make:
1) stretch out by hand
2) roll and cut
My grandmother stretches it out to a 3.25" circle, thinner at the edges. This is a little heavy on the bread for my taste, so I roll out with a rolling pin until about 3.5 - 4.0 inches around, then use the top of a 3.25" restaurant tumbler (do a Google image search - about 2.75 inches at the bottom and straight sides) to cut out a circle. When I weight it, it comes out to about 18g.

Now take this circle of dough, stretch it out a little, and immediately drop in a dollop of meat potato.  I use a #70 disher - Baba uses a heaping tablespoon. Put this in the middle, then bring the sides together, forming a half-circle. Pinch down repeatedly to seal, squeezing hard with your fingers. Now flatten - put perpendicular to table, round side facing down, and push. It'll wind up as a small round object. Check for seam splits and close them.

D: The Frying:
1 quart Wesson (probably less)

• In a frying pan, heat 1-1.5 inches of oil to about 300 Fahrenheit, or until you can toss in a piece of dough and have it "fry gently".  
• Add 6-10 perushky (depending on your pan), SEAM SIDE DOWN, and allow to fry for a minute or so, until the bottom is Golden Brown & Delicious (GBD).  Flip over.  Once cooked on both sides, pull out and add more.  We've found that adding one after you remove one is the best way to avoid over-heating the oil.  

Serve: with Borscht.  Or on a plate. Or as they come out of the frying pan.  Up to you.  They don't keep readily - stick em in a big container and they all go limp on the outside.  Still eminently edible, but a pale shadow of coming out of the fryer.  Oven will perk them up decently, though .

[Baking] Olga's 11-layer Cake (aka 7-layer Chocolate Cake) or Torte

(pictures forthcoming)
This is my Baba's famed Eleven Layer Cake.  Also known as the Seven Layer Cake (we'll get into that)

I have no idea where she found this.  She says she found it in a cookbook, probably in the 50s.  She said it was a German Chocolate Torte.  What it is, to be honest, is divine.  A royal pain to make, but worth it.

It's an all-afternoon affair.  Since I hadn't made it by myself, I split it into 3 nights.


On the first night, I baked the 7 layers.  As I got better at it I figured out why it used to be an 11 layer cake and is now a 7 layer cake - even with just 7 layers it's an amazing-looking cake, and you probably don't miss them.  If you practice on the first couple until you get it right, it'll easily spread into 7 layers.  Once I'd gotten the hang of it, I see how you could conserve frosting and wind up with 11 - but it'd be a beating.  Next time I do want to try 11, just to see if I can.

On the second night, I made and applied the filling.

On the third night, I "glazed" (iced/frosted/coated/etc) the cake.

On the fourth night, I rested.

On the fifth night, PARTY!

Here's the recipe.  Originally in high-altitude, low-humidity.  I didn't have to change anything.
The ONE tip I would give: weigh the intermediate steps.  If I knew exactly how much batter I had to work with on each layer, it would have gone MUCH more smoothly.

 

1 cup sugar

3 jumbo eggs

2 sticks butter

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon (mexican) vanilla

1/2 cup cornstarch

1 1/2 cup flour

 

In mixer, mix butter and sugar until smooth.  Add eggs and mix well.  Add baking powder, vanilla and cornstarch and mix well.  Add flour and mix well (getting the picture-mix well!).  This will make 6 layers in a 9-inch cake round.  Spread the batter in a thin layer (with a super old blunt butter knife) in the bottom of the cake pan and bake at 350 degrees about 7 minutes.  It should be brown all over when you pull it out.  Let cool in the pan a few minutes then put on a colling rack to finish cooling.

 

Filling:

3 egg yolks

3 cups milk

1/2 cup Nestle Quick (Nesquik) chocolate drink mix powder 

3 tablespoon Hershey's syrup

1/3 cup sugar

8 tablespoon flour

 

Mix yolk and sugar until smooth.  Add Nestle Quick and Hershey's syrup and mix well.  Add flour and 1/2 up milk.  Mix well.  In a 3 quart pot, boil the remaining milk and add the chocolate mix.  Blend well and stir until it starts to boil.  Simmer for 1 minute.  Shut off stove and let cool.

 

Soften 2 sticks unsalted butter.  Beat well with mixer and add to cooled chocolate mixture.  Mix well.

 

Take 1 layer and put it on the cake dish.  Frost the top portion and add layers until done.  Leave the top portion unfrosted.  You will use the "Glazing".

 

Glazing:

1 1/2 cup powder sugar

3/4 cup chocolate chips

OR  1 1/2 squares semi-sweet chocolate

1/2 tablespoon butter

1/4 cup hot water

 

In small pot, add butter and chocolate together and melt on stove.  Add sugar and water.  Mix well.  It should be thick like syrup.  If it is too thick, add water.  If it is too thin, add sugar.  Frost cake.

[Russian] Meat Perushky / Perushki / Piroshki / Piroshki

The classic Russian meat pie. Note similarities with Potato Perushki (she spells them piroshky), but definitely not the same recipes. This will take 3-4 hours total, but with some pauses. This version is meat, baked. You can fry them but they are very greasy. The potato variant excels when fried, so bake this and fry that.

Dough:
First, combine:
2 pk dry yeast (Active Dry is fine, Rapid Rise is not)
1.5-2.0 cups milk, at 95-100 degrees (too hot is BAD, you want roughly blood-temp)
1 tbl sugar
1 tbl flour
3/4 stick of butter or 1.5 stick margarine, room temp or melted.
Let sit 10-15 minutes, until bubbly or foamy or otherwise alive.

Beat together:
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk (save the white for the egg wash)
1.5 - 2.0 teaspoon salt (sorry, last time I made it it was flat, and that was either 1 or 1.5 tsp salt)

Sift 2 lb flour.

Mix yeast mixture, eggs, and 1 lb 13 oz of flour in mixer. Use the bread hook, low speed. Once it all comes together, add flour until slightly sticky (I used 1 cup).

Let rise until doubled.


Meat:
Cut a 2-3 lb chuck roast into several hunks, trimming fat. Cover with water. Bring to boil then turn down to simmer for 60-90 minutes (this is to tenderize and break down). The time depends on the quality of the meat - better takes less time. To tell if done, poke with a knife: should fall off knife easily.

Once done, we grind it. On my kitchenaid stand mixer, I use the small grinding wheel, set the mixer on 3, and grind. Note that you can't just buy ground meat and cook it - the texture is totally different.

Onions:
Dice 2-3 medium onions. Simmer in 2-3 tbl oil. On our electric stove we cook on 5-6 (out of 10), covereed, then turn down to 3.5 - 4.0. Stir occasionally - you're trying to clarify and brown. Cook about 60 minutes.

Now, combine the meat and onions. Add 1-2 tsp salt (very little), 1-2 tsp black pepper, and 1/2 cup (varies) of the broth from the meat. You want it to stick together a bit - when you scoop it you want it to clump.

Making the perushky:
For each perushky, pull off 24-26 grams of dough.
Two ways to make:
1) stretch out by hand
2) roll and cut
My grandmother stretches it out to a 3.25" circle, thinner at the edges. This is a little heavy on the bread for my taste, so I roll out with a rolling pin until about 3.5 - 4.0 inches around, then use the top of a 3.25" restaurant tumbler (do a Google image search - about 2.75 inches at the bottom and straight sides) to cut out a circle. When I weight it, it comes out to about 18g.

Now take this circle of dough, stretch it out a little, and immediately drop in a dollop of meat. I use a #70 disher - Baba uses a heaping tablespoon. Put this in the middle, then bring the sides together, forming a half-circle. Pinch down repeatedly to seal, squeezing hard with your fingers. Now flatten - put perpendicular to table, round side facing down, and push. It'll wind up as a small round object. Check for seam splits and close them.

Now do this about 100 times (takes about an hour). I wound up with extra meat & onion - add rice to this and you've got the filling for cabbage rolls (see recipe on this blog).

Now take the egg white you saved, whisk for 10-20 seconds with a fork. Using a brush, put this egg wash on the top - enhances browning. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. Let cool and enjoy!

Since I didn't have enough baking trays, I made a tray, put on egg wash (see below), put in the oven, and started the next tray. Overall it took about an hour to make them. Enjoy!

[Russian] Olga's Pork Stew

(yes, there's a lot of commentary in this recipe. You've never made this before, so you don't know how long or why things are done a certain way).

2 lb boneless country-style pork ribs
5-6 medium russet potatoes
1 large onion
2 medium carrots (can use baby carrots, though they take longer to cook than sliced carrots)
2-3 cups frozen/fresh green beans, cut or frenched. Or, one 1 can cut green beans
1-2 cups water

First, chop onion and simmer with 2-3 tablespoons butter. Let simmer until golden brown or mahogany. On my electric stove we put it on a 5 (out of 10) on a small burner and stir frequently. You're not trying to burn or blacken them. Let this cook while you prep everything else. Once brown turn off, though this usually happens about the time we're ready for them below.

Cut the meat into bite sized pieces, removing the big hunks of fat.

Fry the meat in a regular size pot (under 8 quarts) with 1 tablespoon oil, until light brown. You want color and browning to add flavor. We cook this on a 4-5 on the stove.

Add water so that the meat is just barely covered (let it at least hit the halfway point on the meat, better if it's just covered) and let simmer 30 minutes. If you're losing too much water, add some more - you're using the simmering to break down and tenderize the meat, as well as to put out flavor that'll go into the veggies.

While it's simmering, peel potatoes and cut into cubes (on a good-sized russet I usually quarter and slice about .5 inches thick). Peel & slice the carrots. Thaw the green beans.

After the 30 minutes, add the potatoes, onions, carrots, and fresh/frozen beans (if from a can, add when the potatoes have finished). Simmer and stir occasionally - the potatoes will break down, that's fine.

Once the potatoes are cooked, stir in 1 8-oz can of tomato sauce. At this point, cook 10-20 minutes further, stirring every 2-3 minutes. The potatoes will break down, and that's fine - that's our thickener that turns this into a stew.

After the 10-20 minutes, see if all the vegetables are cooked. Once they are, serve. If

Kulich - Russian Easter Bread

FINALLY, something baking related! It's been too long, I've been resting on my laurels.

I'll update this once I've made it myself. One other way to make it is inside a coffee can - I need to get details on that, since that's how I always had it - bullet-shaped, funnily enough, with a sprinkle-laden glaze on top.

6 cups sifted flour
3 egg yolks
1 whole egg
3/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 and a 1/2 packages yeast (come in a pack of 3)
1 and 1/4 cups WARM (not hot) milk
1 stick (1/4 pound) melted butter. 
 (Let cool off so it's not hot.)


Put yeast and milk in bowl and mix.
put eggs, sugar and salt in another bowl and mix on low speed.
Put milk and yeast together with the flour.
Add the eggs,sugar, salt mixture in.
Add melted butter.
Mix well with a wooden spoon.
Knead the dough mixture about 10 minutes (maybe more).
Dough needs to be soft.
Put a cover over the bowl so it can rise.
Dough needs to rise for an hour or more.
Needs to become twice its size.
Separate into 2 loaves.
Put 1 cup raisens for each loaf
Preheat oven to 350.
Use loaf pan sprayed with PAM or greased with butter.
Let dough rise again for 40-60 minutes.
If you want a shiny crust, use the whites from the 3 eggs.
Beat the whites for just a minute with a fork and brush the mixture
over the crust before you put in oven.
Bake 45-60 minutes.
Check dough with toothpick at 45 minutes to see if ready.
Pull the bread out and put on a towel.

[Russian] Olga's Haluski (halushki/helushki)

No baking on this one, but a really good Russian version of dumplings. This recipe includes all the stuff we serve it with; potatoes, kielbasa, onions. It's very simple, tastes really good, is very filling, and cheap. Russian poverty food, with some meat added.

Ingredients:

• Heluski


• 4 Cups AP flour
• 1.25 cup warm water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon oil


• 3 medium potatoes
• Vinegar (serve with food)
• 1-2 pounds of kielbasa/sausage
• 3 medium onions
  • 1 stick of butter

Onions:
First, we need to cook the onions down, since this takes longer than the other steps. Peel and slice 3 medium onions into rings. Put in a pan, add one stick butter, cover, and cook on medium until clarified. Once this occurs, turn it to medium-high (not high but close to it) and let them fry and caramellize. You want to fry the onions. Once you get them nice and brown, turn to low. Yes, there will be an oil slick of butter; that's fine

Meat:
In another pan, cook kielbasa or a sausage. Cut into whatever size you desire (4-5 inch-long pieces work best). Cook and brown to taste, and once cooked set on low. This step can be done at the same time as the boiling, but doing it ahead of time will make it easier if you're not a whiz in the kitchen.


Haluski:
To make the Haluski itself, mix all 4 ingredients together and knead on a floured board. When I did it, it initially was very dry, but as it was kneaded it came together and absorbed all the flour. The consistency when done was not sticky, and texture was almost plasticine. Now, take a hunk of the dough and roll it with your hand into what looks like a snake - a round, long strip of dough about 1 inch thick. Once you have that, take a butter knife or regular non-sharp knife and cut off slices about 1/4-1/2 inch thick. It will deform as you do it; that's fine. The end result looks like this:

Potatoes:
Peel 2-3 Medium potatoes. Add to pot of water, with about 2tbl salt, and boil until about mostly done. At this point, add haluski, all at once (yes, this'll drop the temperature) and boil approximately 4-5 minutes. The haluski will float to the top when done; you can either fish out the potatoes & haluski, or drain.

Serving:
Get a large serving bowl. Pour the haluski and potatoes into it, pour the onions & butter over them, then take the sausage and place it on top.

Eating:
In our family, we use a serving spoon to grab mass quantities of potatoes/heluski, and a piece or two of kielbasa. Pour a splash of vinegar over the potatoes/onions/heluski - even my wife the Southerner agrees on that. Eat.

[Russian] Olga's Cabbage Rolls (Holubtsi/Helutsi)

(apparently my original posting showed up with the original date I started - reposting so that it's at the top)

Let's see, we've done my Baba's borscht (which, honestly, you should make - calling it "beet soup" does it a disservice, especially when the beet slivers are white when done), but we still have several left to do:

• Piroshki (meat pies, baked)
  
• Piroshki (potato pies, fried)
  
• Vareniki
  
• Haluski (helushki?)
  
• Pork Stew (Goulash)
  

...and Cabbage Rolls (aka "pigs in a blanket", aka "heh-lute-see", which according to Wikipedia is probably spelled Holubtsi but I'm not positive of.)

Basically it's just beef, rice & onions wrapped in a cabbage leaf, fried in a tiny bit of oil, then baked with a sour cream & tomato sauce. So, it does count as baking! *laugh* I spent the better half of a day working with Baba on this, taking her recipe and adding footnotes.

And yes, it tastes much better than that description. Think spiced meat served with a pink sauce, and you're not far off.

Ingredients for the Cabbage Rolls themselves:
3 lb chuck meat (lean), OR 2 lb chuck meat (lean) and 1 pound boneless country ribs
1 1/2 cup rice, cooked as it directs
3 medium onions, diced and chopped
6+ tbl corn oil
5 tbl dried parsley
salt & pepper to taste
2-3 heads cabbage

Ingredients for the sauce:
15 oz can tomato sauce
8 oz can tomato sauce
10.5 oz beef buillion (we use the Campbell's double strength, but you can also use regular beef broth)
8 oz sour cream

Equipment needed:
Grinder (coarse blade)

Prepping the filling:
Take your meat and boil it in water, at least enough to cover. Save 1/2 cup broth. You can do either all beef, or beef and pork - she normally does beef & pork, but not everybody likes pork.
Take the cooked meat and grind on the coarse setting. Yes, you need to cook it then grind it - the texture is totally different if you do it the other way around.
Prepare the 1.5 cups rice as per package directions.
Take the 3 onions, dice and simmer over medium heat with 2-3 tbl oil until clarified.
Now, mix all together - the ground-up & cooked meat, rice, 1/2 cup broth, dried parsley, onions, and salt & pepper to taste. You definitely want this to taste good on its own, so don't be stingy with the pepper.

Prepping the rolls:
Take head of cabbage, score the base so that the leaves will be able to come off. Put in a pot bigger than needed to boil the cabbage. Add water, then heat to boiling. Turn off heat after it boils 30 seconds - we are trying to wilt the leaves and make them pliable. Don't use the whole cabbage - the inner leaves are just too small to hold enough meat.

Making the rolls:
Pull off the outer-most leaves and throw away.
Remove one leaf at a time. Cut away as much of the "vein" as possible on the leaves, so that they can be easily folded. Put 1-2 heaping serving spoon (1.25-2 oz total) of meat in the middle, then fold the sides in, overlapping, then fold over the "top" of the leaf, then fold over the base of the leaf. You now should have a small package. Cook this in 2-3 tbl oil on both sides until GBD (golden-brown and delicious), then set aside. At this point you can freeze them.

Making the sauce:
In a pot, add the tomato sauce, sour cream, beef bullion, 1-2 tsp black pepper and a SMALL pinch of salt (the beef bullion is a salt lick; if you go the low sodium route, you'll wind up having to add salt at the end. Sorry, this isn't healthy.) Heat on medium high heat, stirring frequently, until it comes to a boil. Boil for 30 seconds then take off heat.

Putting it all together:
Take a casserole dish (the deeper the better - we use an old corningware dish about 8 inches deep), and layer the rolls inside, open-side up. You want room between them for the sauce - don't just cram them together. I say open-side up because it's more forgiving when you're pulling them out, but be careful when pouring the sauce lest they open. Pour the sauce over until they're almost completely covered. Bake in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes - you want it to be bubbly. Use a cooking spoon to pull out 2-3 rolls per person, pouring over sauce as desired. You can either cut it up and eat it, or (for those that don't like cabbage) remove the leaves and pour the sauce over the meat. Enjoy!

[Cake] Olga's Jam Cake

Okay, here's another from my Baba's trove. I was starting to think I didn't have anything useful to add, cooking-wise - then I realized that, at the very least, I have all my Baba's recipes. Which, if nothing else, you should go make the Borscht. Trust me on this.

Anyhow, here's another of her recipes growing up. You might find it a bit dry - I don't. The combination of the crumbliness of the cake and the jam holding it together works really well. I used Raspberry Preserves this last time - go for seedless. Strawberry also works really well with this.

Baba's Jam Cake
Ingredients:
1 stick butter
1 stick margarine
1 cup sugar
3 cups AP flour
1.5 teaspoon baking powder (less if wanting a denser consistency)
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sour cream
18-24 Ounce jar of Fruit Preserves (your choice of flavor)

* Set butter & margarine out so they soften
* Cream butter/margarine & sugar (aka put them in the mixer, and let them mix for 3-5 minutes on medium. The color will lighten and it'll get a little fluffy)
* Mix everything but the flour together
* Mix in flour with a spoon (practically, I do everything in my kitchenaid, paddle attachment, then add the flower in small installments, on low.)
* Take 3/4 of the dough and put in a 9x12 pan (or cookie sheet, but it needs to be 1-1.5 inches deep). Make it even with a knife/spatula/etc.
* Pour your preserves over this (1.5 pounds, aka 18-24 ounce jar) Using a knife, spread it evenly over the cake
* Take that last 1/4 of dough, add flour, and roll it out into strips. Make a lattice, taking care to include all 4 sides of the pan.

This was the hardest part for me, never having made it before. What I did was to take the last 1/4 of dough, put it on a sheet of wax paper, fold the wax paper over (so it's covered) then roll out to about the right length. Stick in the freezer 20-30 minutes. Bring it out, and quickly cut the strips with a pizza cutter, and lay them out. I didn't do anything fancy - one strip on each edge (yes, some will be too long. Cut them short.), then lengthwise, then widthwise. You're making a crisscross pattern. If you want to get fancy do every other stripe in one direction, then the other, then finish the first direction, then the other.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes. Watch it starting at about 40 minutes. One thing you're also looking for, besides being Golden Brown on the lattice, is that the jam/preserves "crystallize". It winds up being just a little crunchy, probably due to the jam caramellizing (is that how it's spelled?). The first time I did it it came out perfectly. The second time it didn't gel, and so you didn't wind up with that wonderful texture. My only other thought, besides "I pulled it out too early", was that I used Jam instead of preserves. Ironic since it's called "Jam cake", so I bet I just pulled it early.
-- TBD

[Soup] Olga's Borscht

Yup. Not even a week in and already I'm posting non-baking, non-sql recipes. Trust me, this one's worth it. If you're good I'll also post the recipes for Vareniki and Perushky, which _do_ involve flour.

But here's my Baba's borscht recipe. This is not the vinegar style. Every person who's had it has enjoyed it, so I know it's not some weird cultural thing. Southerners have Chicken Fried Steak for comfort food - this is mine.

Olga's Borscht
Meat: purchase both bone-in (1.5lb) and boneless (1 lb) beef short ribs. (probably choice, but I don't think it matters). However, make sure it's not too fatty.
The boneless provides the meat, but you really need the bone to add substance.
Vegetables:
3 Beets, fresh. If you wind up with light-colored ones, don't cook as long.
1 leek
1 head cabbage
7 medium potatoes
3 stalks celery
4 big carrots
1 medium onion
1 green bell pepper

Cooking:
Cover beef with water in medium-large cookpot. Heat on med high. Let boil one minute then pour out. This gets rid of the "crud". Clean bowl, rinse off meat, then stick back in pot.

Peel beets, slice fairly thin (think thick potato chips) then into strips. Let sit in cold water for a few minutes, then pour out. Do this a few times. You're trying to get some of the red out.

Add water to meat (more than covering, probably 2/3 of pot - remember that this determines how much broth there is, but also that it will have to hold all the veggies), along with one onion (whole but "skinned") and beets. Simmer for 75-90 minutes (until a knife no longer holds onto a piece). Remove onion. (Use slotted spoon as the onion will fall apart). The soup will have acquired a reddish hue, and the beets should be pink instead of red, and possibly whiter than that.

Chill overnight to make it easy to skim the fat, as well as enhance the flavor.

Day 2:
Skim fat.

Remove meat.

Cut bell pepper in half, deseed, and add to pot.

Peel and chop four big carrots (cut end in half then slice - you want small pieces).

Add to pot, set on medium high (we need to get it to a boil so it can simmer with the vegetables)

Chop three stalks of celery (split in 3 to ensure small pieces) - add to pot.

Clean leek well, cut into quarters, then chop very fine. As you get to the end of the white, remove the outer leaves, since there's still some white to be had on the outer leaves, whereas the inner ones will already be brown.

Set pot to medium low to simmer for a while - you want to get all the vegetables cooked. Also important as the flavors are mixing from all the vegetables.

Peel seven medium potatoes - after peeled, soak in a separate bowl of water, to keep them from browning.

Cut meat into small, bite-sized bits, removing the excess fat and bones. You won't be able to get much meat off the bone-in.

Cut potatoes into small pieces (half, then strips, then dice)

Turn up heat to high then add potatoes and remove the green pepper. Leave on high until boiling then turn down.

Add 2 knorr vegetable buillion cubes

Slice cabbage in half along core, then again into quarters. Shred by cutting perpendicular to first cut, but cut around core (we don't want core). Cut strips in half - don't want them too long.

Check potatoes for doneness - this will only take a few minutes, since the pieces are so small.

Crank heat so that it's boiling again. High, since it has to recover from....
Add cabbage (about 1/2 cabbage) and beef

Add 1-2 beef bouillon cubes, crushing up then adding. If you need more salt, add more cubes.

Add 1 15oz can of tomato sauce (you can add more if the tomato sauce is watery, but that should be rare)

Cabbage boils for one minute, no more.

Remove from heat. Add 1-2 teaspoons of dill (optional). Serve with Sour Cream (optional).