Week 3 - Russian

Week 3 of the 52 week cooking challenge brought something new into our kitchen - Russian cuisine! While we've had Russian food before at places like Teremok (sadly now closed) and Onegin (which I think is also closed) here in the city, we've never made it at home, so this was something completely new. After reading through lots of recipes for Russian dishes, the one that seemed to make the most sense for a challenge family dinner was a recipe for turkey stroganoff that I found on Simply Recipes. Although we had definitely heard of stroganoff before (mostly beef stroganoff), A and I weren't actually sure we'd ever eaten it before, so that made this one a little hard to judge in terms of whether my finished product came close to what a stroganoff should be.

According to Wikipedia, stroganoff as it has evolved today in many parts of the world consists of meat (usually beef), mushrooms, onions, and a sour cream sauce over pasta or rice. This recipe certainly seemed to classify as a stroganoff based on that description. In our adapted version, we used the following ingredients:

- 1 package of white mushrooms, sliced ($3.99)
- 1 onion, chopped ($0.35)
- 2 tbsp butter ($0.20)
- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.35)
- 1/8 tsp nutmeg ($0.10)
- 1 tbsp dried thyme ($0.20)
- 1/2 cup sour cream ($0.50)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- 1 package of pasta (brown rice fusilli) ($1.99)

While stroganoff is often accompanied by egg noodles, we obviously couldn't do that here for allergy reasons, so we just went with some brown rice fusilli since it would also be able to hold the sauce decently well. The original recipe was also targeted at Thanksgiving leftovers, using turkey and gravy, but since it was January, we opted for ground turkey. The estimated cost for the entire recipe was $11.73. It would have been under $10 if we got the mushrooms from Trader Joe's instead of our local Superfresh since the package there is slightly smaller and cheaper, but for dinner for three plus a little left over for lunch, that's really not a bad price.

After two very long cooking challenges that took more time than we anticipated, I am happy to say that this recipe took less than an hour from start to finish. (Finally!) The steps for making the stroganoff were:

1. Dry saute the mushrooms until they release water (about 5 min).

2. Add the butter and onions, and cook until onions are done.

3. Make pasta at some point while everything else is cooking.

4. Add ground turkey, nutmeg, black pepper, and thyme, and cook turkey, breaking it up as it cooks, until done.

5. Remove from heat and add sour cream. Mix well.

Pretty simple to execute, and probably could have been done faster if the turkey had completely finished thawing before we started cooking. It was nice to finally make something for a challenge meal that didn't take two hours.

So, how was the stroganoff? I liked it, but not as much as some other pasta dishes we've made before. It seemed relatively basic in flavor, and you couldn't really taste the thyme or the nutmeg, just the sour cream, turkey, and black pepper. A found it a little bit bland. B didn't seem to be a huge fan of it for dinner either, but he had had cheese and Cheerios for a snack not that much earlier, so that may have also played a role. He was willing to eat it for lunch another day, but nowhere near as enthusiastically as the fajita pasta bake we made another night (which was a bigger hit with the whole family). Also, we have no idea whether or not it was really representative of what stroganoff should be, since we don't think we have anything to compare it to, or how "Russian" it really tasted, given that that was the challenge. Conclusion - good dinner, glad we tried it, but don't think it'll make it into our regular rotation.

Teremok

Once upon a time, near Madison Square Garden, there existed one of NYC's few branches of Yogurtland. We had tried Yogurtland out in the LA area, really liked it, and were very excited when this branch opened close to us. They gave out samples all the time and the yogurt was good, but they never seemed particularly crowded so it was disappointing but no surprise when they closed down. That disappointment subsided somewhat when news broke that the location was going to be transformed into NYC's first branch of the Russian fast casual chain, Teremok, specializing in bliny and other casual Russian eats.

Teremok opened a little over a year ago, but we never made it there until this weekend. I was originally going to walk down on Inauguration Day for lunch, but decided that might not be the most fitting for a resistance meal. Anyway, we finally made it there when our original plan (hoping that the naked chicken chalupa was still at Taco Bell) fell through, and were confronted with tons of options for bliny, soup, kasha, and more.

The wind chill outside was in the teens all afternoon, so we really wanted soup. When we were looking at the menu earlier in the day before braving the cold, A was really intrigued by the salmon chowder, uha, so we lucked out that it was part of the daily 25% off special. Since we were up for trying just about anything, we also decided to go with the sunrise bliny that was also part of the daily special.

The salmon chowder was made with smoked salmon, carrots, chives, parsley and other herbs, and a cheesy, creamy broth, and came with thin housemade chips on the side. The soup was rich while still feeling light. It reminded me a little bit of a soup I had made previously (also a salmon chowder), but I didn't realize that until later when we were walking around and discussing the flavors of this soup. There wasn't a lot of smokiness from the smoked salmon, but that's because a lot of that flavor was stewed into the soup. The herbs gave the soup a nice freshness and tied everything together. The chips were delicious, but neither of us could figure out what they were made of. They were really light and crisp, and they were the perfect complement to the soup.

We've only had bliny a couple of times before, so we're not experts, but they're similar to crepes. (They actually have a sign in the restaurant talking about the differences between bliny and crepes, how texturally they're a little different, but it's probably the closest way to describe it for those unfamiliar with it, just like people call the Chinese jian bing a Chinese crepe.) The way they describe it on their website, they're like Russian pancakes made with flour batter, eggs, and milk, and stuffed with sweet or savory fillings.

We got the sunrise bliny, which was technically a breakfast bliny but served all day, which had eggs, Swiss cheese, and a choice of meat as the filling. The options were bacon, ham, and sausage, so we went with bacon, like a Russian version of a BEC. The eggs, bacon, and cheese were fine and well-flavored, not too salty which was nice, but the real star of it was the pancake exterior. Soft with just the right amount of chewiness, it was exactly what we were hoping for.

We really enjoyed our lunch at Teremok. It was more filling than we expected, even though we split both the soup and the bliny since our next stop was for doughnuts. Based on our first time there, we would definitely return to try more of the menu.