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“Russian eggplant spread” is kind of a description I’m using here to really describe what this dish actually is. I know it as “baklazhannaya ikra”, or its direct translation would be “eggplant caviar”, but neither of those are super descriptive or particularly illuminating to the average reader.

Essentially, this dish is a very common appetizer made of pretty common vegetables like eggplant, bell peppers, onion, carrot, etc. In fact, it’s so common that I can’t remember one family gathering without it!

I never used to particularly like eggplant ikra, but was kind of forced to eat it by my grandparents when I would come over. You basically can’t refuse food at your relatives’ houses. Also, my family would sometimes buy this stuff in a jar from the Russian grocery store, and I was not super fond of that. Eventually, I grew to like this eggplant spread, especially when my dad would make it.

This recipe is pretty much my dad’s recipe and I make and eat this all the time now! It’s such a great snack. But nothing beats eating this eggplant spread with some warm black bread…

So give it a try! It’s super delicious, easy to make, and chances are you already have all the ingredients readily available. Need I say more?

These are perhaps my favorite food of all time -- I loved making and eating them as a child and I still do! Pirozhki (or пирожки) are quite stereotypical of Russian culture and are traditionally boat-shaped buns with different fillings. Another popular filling is with cabbage or beef, but I have always loved the chicken filling the most.

This recipe is my grandma’s and we’ve been making these pirozhki for years. Traditionally, pirozhki are made with a more chewy yeast-based dough, but I especially love the flaky puff pastry dough we use. They’re crunchy and are packed with flavors of home.

We also make them relatively small -- snack size! I think they’re super cute. I can eat like 10 of them at once and still want more. Pirozhki are normally made a bit larger.

But if you want to make these larger, you could probably use an entire puff pastry square for one pirozhok (singular for pirozhki!) instead of cutting it into four squares like we do. We’ve never made them this way and you would probably have to cook them for longer, but give it a try!

Another essential thing for this recipe is owning a meat grinder. It’s pretty hard to make Russian dishes without one anyway. In this case, we grind cooked chicken and mushrooms together to make the filling. It’s maybe possible to accomplish this without a meat grinder, but you’d have to get creative (chop really small? mash everything together?).

If you have a meat grinder attachment to your stand mixer, that is perfect. Whichever way you do it, make sure that you’re filling your pirozhki with COOKED meat. They will not do well if you fill them with raw meat and expect it to cook through in the oven and taste the same. Plus they might come out wet from the raw meat emitting moisture.

As a side note, I love eating these cold the second day but I’m kind of weird, so your best bet is probably to warm them up in the toaster to reheat, since the microwave will make them soft and soggy. I don’t need to tell you that the best time to eat them is fresh, right out of the oven though.

We hope you enjoy making and eating these as much as we do! :)

Another childhood favorite, here we go! I have to admit something here first, I kind of don’t like cake… At least the kind of cake everyone pictures when they think of cake, like birthday cake. Basically that fluffy “cake” part, which I like to refer to as “sweet bread” instead because I don’t really know how else to describe it. My friends all think I’m crazy. Anyway…

The reason I bring this up is because this “cake” is actually more of a torte, but some people don’t realize there’s a pretty big difference and have never even heard of the word “torte” before. So a traditional cake recipe is made from sugar, eggs, butter, and flour. A torte usually has no flour and uses nuts or crumbs (hence the oatmeal and nuts we use in this recipe).

Also tortes are much more dense, in taste and in texture. Which is why I love this torte so much! Absolutely delicious. And it’s a family recipe but I guess the secret is out now :)

We’ve tried to make it in several different shapes and forms now to see how it would look the best. The recipe below is for the traditional style, where you would build the torte on a plate. We realized pretty quickly that you can still achieve the same beautiful layers in a trifle pudding cup and the overall effect is much nicer, I’d say.

Whichever way you do it, as long as you achieve layers of oatmeal cookie and cognac buttercream, it really doesn’t matter what it looks like. Have fun!

My family is from Russia and Ukraine so naturally I grew up eating a lot of Russian food. Tvorog (or farmer’s cheese) is a dairy product made by warming soured milk or buttermilk until it curdles and then straining it. I used to eat it in a bowl mixed with sour cream with bread and jam and it’s soooo good! And most of my friends thought that was pretty strange and didn’t even want to try it. Especially when I told them it’s similar to cottage cheese!

BUT it’s way creamier and tastier than cottage cheese -- it’s actually sweetened a little. I would say it has a more complex flavor profile. No harm in trying it, right? If you’re game, you can eat it in a bowl like I did growing up, or you can use them to make Russian cheese pancakes (recipe up soon!) or cheese blintzes.

If you’ve ever eaten cheese blintzes, chances are you’ve already tried tvorog before! This is that special type of cheese that goes inside those blintzes.

This is one of those “cheeses” that’s super achievable to make it home -- it’s not like you’re making cheddar or gouda. I see some people make their own ricotta. I would say this is sort of like that. And we still need to try to make our own ricotta. So jump on that soft cheese train!

Do you ever feel like making a salad sounds like a pretty good idea, but you don't know what kind of salad to make? We struggle with that all. the. time. And then we usually revert to making this same salad over and over again. But not complaining, because this salad is really refreshing and it never gets old!

It makes all our grocery trips so much easier, too. We just keep on buying cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, and sweet onion, because those are the primary vegetables needed for this recipe. This recipe is actually a modification from a similar salad I used to eat with my family when I was growing up. I remember I would see this typical type of salad on the table at almost every lunch or dinner, whether it be at home or at my grandparents' house or some other relative. I just assumed this was another one of those Russian salads and it was my family's way of making me eat more vegetables.

I usually make this in about 10 minutes and eat it for dinner on most nights. And lately I've been making it to get Ryan to eat more vegetables as well. But it's okay because he actually really enjoys this salad too. And that's saying something since he hasn't always been a fan of eating just salad for dinner.

This version of the recipe packs in a little more flavor than my family's version. The original recipe does not use avocados or cheese and the dressing is made from a lot of sunflower oil and only a little salt and rice vinegar. And sometimes there's a little dillweed in there too. So I definitely had to upgrade this salad just a little bit!

The only part of this salad that makes it slightly different, is that there is non-refined sunflower oil in the dressing. Non-refined sunflower oil is actually pretty difficult to find in a grocery store like Safeway or Trader Joe's. My parents and grandmother would buy this oil from a nearby Russian store.

My family and I just love our sunflower oil and use it on pretty much everything: potatoes, halva (a dense sweet made from a type of pressed nut or seed), and salted herring. We've tried substituting sunflower oil with olive oil and it's still very good, but you don't get that distinct taste I remember so well from my childhood.