The dough is a puff pastry , but not a traditional multi layered type either. The crème that was used between layers is a combination of pastry cream and simple butter cream.  Mama also added a grated lemon for the middle layer to make it even fancier than it was.

No-egg yeast dough is a real savior during Great Lent that started about a week ago and will last until Orthodox Easter. During this time one cannot eat anything of animal origin - no milk, no eggs, no meat, no butter. They say it's the time of cleansing your body and soul, time of praying and re-evaluating yourself.

Food is abundant and copious: pelmeni, pirozhki, blini to name a few. Blini is the main dish since a  blin  (singular form of  blini ) symbolizes Sun. I cook different types of blini, but yeast blini I make once a year at the end of Pancake Week, and it is our family tradition here in America.

These small meat pies come from Tajik cuisine , but were traditionally cooked in Russia. In the Soviet era they used to sell hot belyashi from big pots right on the corners of busy streets, where hungry students immediately formed a line to buy a hot pie for about 15 kopecks each. It was not as good as homemade, but still a very popular food on-the-go.

5 hours to prepare (but ideally you'd want to keep it in the fridge for 4-5 hours more). It is summer, so I add berries. Blackberries, the most luscious of berries, are the best addition in my opinion, but you can go without if you like.

Mushrooms, ginger, and pork - a perfect combination of flavors with an Eastern twist. This recipe is inspired by Japanese cooking, but does not require any rare ingredients (because I was too lazy to travel to Manhattan for a visit to a Japanese grocery). And I don't regret it, because this pork dish lacks absolutely nothing.

This was a perfect occasion to seek out the imaginary pear tart that has been haunting me. I exploited my imagination and several cook books at once, and lo and behold - the tart of dreams rests on my plate. The idea here is a simple one: a pie shell is covered with a custard-like almond topping that prevents the liquid from the fruit from seeping into the dough.

Whatever it was, I invited beer to my kitchen, and it graciously accepted. Cooking with beer has a long tradition, but for some reason appears less often in the kitchen than wine. Just like wine, beer works well as a deglazing agent for a pan sauce and is also a great liquid for braising because it has a degree of acidity that helps tenderize the meat.

In practice, pickled cucumbers alone are sufficient to give the broth the tangy acidity and the peculiar flavor of pickles. When choosing pickles, brined cucumbers, kosher dill cucumbers, or any other pickled cucumbers not too high in acidity will work fine. Traditionally, this soup is made with chicken kidneys, but this requires quite a bit more patience on the part of the cook, and a lot less squeamishness on the part of the eater.

Dating back to the ancient Rome, where they were used as a non-perishable food carried by travelers, these crunchy dry cookies have since become widespread in Italy and throughout the world. In fact, the British biscuits take their name from Italian biscotti. Italians themselves use  biscotti  as a general term for a variety of cookies, and call the cookies we know in US as biscotti by the name cantucci.

I'm only guessing, of course, that my grandmother's cakes were a delicious nepenthe for her guests. But there is no doubt, that I have decades to cross, before I could possess a fraction of her undisputed mastery. Especially because it is such a challenge, I continue to bake.

A staple of East European kitchen, this bright beet soup is healthy, delicious, and worth every bit of trouble... If you know of Russian food, you've heard of Borsch. It is popular not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine - its motherland - and in a number of East European republics.

Finally I have broken my hiatus from cooking, which had begun to extend dangerously. It's fascinating what a staggering effect failure has on motivation (and I did have a few cooking failures recently, mostly gelatin-related). But when is it ever easy?

One of the prized dishes introduced to Americans by Julia Child, this rich beef stew is a French country classic. To this I add that my French co-worker referred to it contemptuously as "food for the old people", claiming that it's been cooked for so long to make the ingredients soft for the toothless that one can hardly taste a thing. This is of course far from truth, but one is always tempted to quote one frenchman's haughty opinions about food.

Today's recipe was not composed by me, but it comes from a book that I gave my mom for Christmas this winter: The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Brown. I have not tried many recipes from it, but I did cook this Fresh Berry Tart from it before I actually gave the book to my mom as a present. It came out so lovely that the four of us (Mama, Alex, Gary, me) nearly devoured the whole thing in one sitting.