This time it was used to sweeten sour cream for a quick creamy topping.  We often use sour cream whipped with sugar in desserts, and sour cream is always in my fridge. Substituting honey for sugar seemed like a good idea, especially if it was an unusual honey like the one I had.

Tonight I cooked dinner for the first time in my blissfully empty Swiss kitchen. As the name of this post suggests, the kitchen is inside my new and almost entirely empty apartment, just about a 15 minute walk away from Zurich's local mountain Uetliberg. The apartment is empty, because I only brought a suitcase with me from New York, but in the suitcase I brought a loyal stainless steel pan!

An advocate of minimalism in life, which unfortunately is possible mostly theoretically in our world of consumerism, I adore simple dishes that do not involve many ingredients. Some of those dishes come from my childhood in Russia, where minimalism was dictated by permanent deficit. Our memory carries on all our life impressions including food, and these simple things we experienced in early years are remembered as good.

They had mushroom noodle soup to die for, mouth watering beef stew in pottery pots, they also had beef in porcini sauce. The latter was my inspiration for today's recipe. What you need: 2 lb lean beef cut in thin 1"x2"slices Filtered water Mushrooms (2 big Portobello or 6 stuffing mushrooms), julienned or diced 1 big yellow onion, diced 2 tbsp butter 1 clove garlic, minced Salt Ground black pepper 2 tbsp sour cream 3 tsp flour in 1/2 cup water Method: Barely cover meat with water, put on high heat, and bring to boil.

Bœuf Stroganoff (Beef Stroganoff, or just Befstroganov) is one of Russian traditional and loved meat dishes. I remember my mother's kitchen and wonderful aroma of cooking meat, and sauce, and fried potatoes. It was an all-time favourite and never failed to be well prepared.