Baking

There are many dishes on the menus of the two restaurants I just reviewed – Omulyovaya Bochka and Chemodan – that most diners will have never encountered before, often prepared with Siberian…

Walnut rolls are common in many cuisines of Eastern Europe. Hungarians eat bejgli, Slovenians have potica, and Croatians make povitica, generally for Christmas and Easter. The dessert counts many variations: the layers can be…

Many Europeans countries share the tradition of preparing a kind of sweet bread, often with dried fruits, for religious holidays. Germany has Stollen and Italy eats panettone, while Russia makes kulich and Poland…

Several years ago, I blogged my very first Croatian dessert, the Dalmatian fritters, little balls of fried dough coated in flavored confectioner’s sugar. That’s not, however, the sweet dish you’ll come across the…

The island of Vis, the farthest inhabited off the Dalmatian coast, has long been known for its fishing and its fishermen. Some go so far as to claim that the inventions of these…

I know what some of you must be thinking after my reindeer tartare post: “He’s completely lost touch with reality! He expects us to take a plane to Scandinavia just to buy…

Everybody knows what a bagel is, but what about a bialy? “It’s like a bagel without a hole,” will say people who’ve had one. And these people have a point: bialys are generally…

When I blogged about the cheese debauchery that’s the Mingrelian khachapuri, some may have thought (hoped?) that I was finally putting the khachapuri topic to rest, having now covered the most popular variations at…

While Blini and Oladi, Russian Pancakes remains the most visited post on this blog, things are slowly changing. The top post for the past few months has been the Imeretian Khachapuri, followed by the Lángos (another greasy…

You might remember the story of the Nesselrode Pudding; or, how Paris’ best pastry chef created a dessert for the Russian occupants while working for that turncoat Talleyrand. But perhaps your senile great-grandparents have…