Saveur Magazine Best Food Blog Awards, Golubka in Special Interest

Dear friends, we are so honoured and excited to be among the finalists of Saveur Magazine's 2011 Best Food Blog Awards. Voting is now open and will continue until May 12th. We would so appreciate your support! You can vote here, Golubka is in the Special Interest category. You do have to register with your email. We know that is a bit of a bother, but it's a quick process, we promise. For readers outside of the U.S. and Canada, Saveur is having some trouble with international voters, so just select the USA or Canada as your place of origin for now. Thank you!

We just returned from a couple of days in Palm Beach, where we had our first family vacation since Paloma was born. It was there that I disovered an email from Saveur in my inbox.

I sat there stunned for a good ten minutes, rereading the text to make sure I understood it correctly. It is, afterall, the Saveur Magazine!

We are in amazing, humbling company. The nominees include many creative and talented individuals, whose cooking, photography, and writing inspire us on a daily basis.

Our main thanks go to you. If it wasn't for your readership and encouragement, we would still be dining alone! Special thanks to the lovely Lisa for nominating us.

Fruity Panna Cotta, Easter Style

Last week, I promised to make a savoury dish for the next post, but I'd completely forgotten that Easter is just around the corner. And Easter calls for dessert!

This time last year, we went all out for the holiday, and made lots of white chocolate quail eggs to share with friends and family.

This year's project came about much more spontaneously and is therefore less involved.

To me, Easter is all about custom. Although I grew up in a secular state (Soviet Union), we always celebrated the tradition of Easter by painting eggs, baking kulich and paskha, and sharing it all with close ones.

Sharing, that was always the most important part, for it's no fun to cook sweet and pretty things when there is no one to eat them with.

This resulted in a wonderful exchange of culinary ideas. Every family's kulich was always different. Some were tall, some short, with raisins or without, sprinkled or simply glazed. The same story applied to the eggs. Some dyed them with natural colours of beets and onion peel, some hand-painted them, and many of the eggs were so beautifully decorated, that peeling them was truly painful, like destroying artwork.

Perhaps that's why every Easter, no matter how busy I am, I feel obligated to cook and share some kind of treat. But it's a pleasant obligation, one that puts me in a festive mood.

This Panna Cotta is just as one would imagine it to be - creamy, silky, and delicate. It's speckled with vanilla seeds throughout and coloured with wonderful flavours of mango, blueberry, strawberry, and coconut.

Just a little health aside - the base of this panna cotta is Irish moss, which is a type of red seaweed loaded with nutritional benefits. Yes, here we have an algae-based dessert that tastes good! It just reinforces my love for raw cuisine, and I promise that there is nothing seaweed-like in the flavour.

I made a variety of sauces, but my favourite by far was a green kiwi sauce with fresh mint leaves. Its tartness complements the smooth panna cotta with a sweet and sour bite.

Please enjoy and have a happy Easter!

Panna Cotta

(adapted from Living Raw Food)

4 cups coconut milk (see below)
1/2 cup Irish moss - thoroughly rinsed and soaked in hot water for at least 10 minutes
1 cup meat of fresh young coconut
1/2 cup raw agave syrup OR another sweetener of choice
seeds from 2 vanilla beans
1/2 cup coconut oil

To make coconut milk, soak 2 cups of unsweetened shredded dry coconut in 4 1/2 cups of purified water for 30 minutes. In a high-speed blender, blend the coconut and water until smooth. Strain through a nut-milk bag or cheese cloth and discard the solids.
In a high-speed blender, combine all the ingredients with exception of coconut oil until very smooth. Add the coconut oil with the blender still running and continue to blend to emulsify.
I added fresh mango puree (blended mango), blueberries, and raw strawberry preserve to achieve the desired colours.
Cover your molds with a thin layer of agave or maple syrup. Pour the mixture into the molds. If you decide to make the eggs or other 3D shape panna cotta, give the mixture a few minutes to thicken. Spoon the thickened mixture into the molds and, if using a 3D mold, invert them on top of each other. Refrigerate for 6-8 hours. When removing, the panna cotta should slide right out.

Minty Kiwi Sauce
3-4 kiwis
3-4 fresh mint leaves
preferred sweetener to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a blender or food processor. Spoon some on a plate, and place Panna Cotta on top of the sauce. Garnish with sliced kiwi and fresh mint leaves.

Strawberry Shortcake and a Spring Cleaning

Last week, I decided to hop on the adventure that is the Master Cleanse and just recently completed the ten days. Fasting a couple of times a year works for me, it makes me feel lighter, more refreshed, and reminds me to be appreciative of food and its true purpose - to nourish the body and feed the soul. I like to do it during the warmer months of the year, and this time was a sort of Spring Cleaning.

I've been on other juice fasts and feasts before, but this was my first time on the Master Cleanse. I found this program to be much more manageable - it did not make me sleepy or drain all my energy like the aforementioned juice fasts often did. That's likely due to the fact that the cleanse drink consists of two tablespoons of lemon juice, the same amount of grade B maple syrup, and a generous pinch of cayenne pepper, all for a glass of water. Six cups is the minimum for a day. Maple syrup has plenty of sugar and calories, and cayenne pumps up the blood flow, so there are lots of reasons for energy.

Ten days later, I feel great, just like new. Now I just need to do the same kind of deep cleaning to my kitchen!

While I did not get any hunger pains during this program, I did get plenty of cravings. Cooking is my thing, what I think about all the time, so that was only natural. I found myself in silly daydreams about the first thing I'll eat after the cleanse, recollecting special culinary memories, composing new recipes, anything and everything food-related kept knocking on my mind's door. In addition, I had to continue feeding my family, packing lunches for Paloma and keeping it all interesting.

Also, I could not pass by the beautiful local strawberries we've been having at our markets. Pretty, plump ones, with vines still attached. That is when I bit my maple syrup-ed lips and started working on this recipe. A strawberry shortcake of sorts.

I utilized my favourite oat dough, combining it with strawberry puree to get a moist and fruity crust. I then topped it, simply, with the same puree, raw preserve and sliced fresh berries. After some time in the dehydrator, the dough happily hardened on the outside and stayed nicely moist in the middle. All the while, the topping thickened, concentrated, and turned into a ruby jam.

At first, we treated this "shortcake" as dessert and ate it after dinner, appropriately. The surviving cakes, however, became snacks and regulars in Paloma's lunchbox. Oh that lunchbox, I'm not exaggerating when I say that everything I cook ends up in there, our girl's appetite is no joke!

And even though I am now "easing out" of my cleanse with fresh juices and light meals, I let myself have a slice, and really enjoyed it.

I believe there's enough sweetness here to last us all a while. The next recipe will be a savoury, I promise.

Strawberry Shortcake

(Makes about two standard sized half-sheet pans)

Dough

Same as here

3 cups chunky fresh strawberry puree

To make the puree, pulse fresh strawberries in a food processor until you end up with a slightly chunky puree. Mix the oat dough with the puree. Divide it between two sheet pans covered with parchment paper (or you can use any smaller individual dishes if you'd like) and press into the pans to achieve a uniform layer.

Topping
For the top I used a combination of raw strawberry preserve and fresh chunky strawberry puree. The preserve makes the mixture a bit thicker, and less runny, but I believe that you can get away with using just the fresh puree. You can just dehydrate it by itself for a couple of hours to thicken it up more. You can sweeten the puree/preserve mix to your taste with your favourite sweetener, or just leave it as is. I didn't measure the proportion, or the combined amount. The more berry puree you use, the sweeter and more moist your cakes will be.

Assembly
Divide the strawberry puree between the two pans, or other dishes, and spread evenly on top. Sprinkle with oat flour or ground nuts and decorate with sliced fresh berries.

Dehydrate at 115F for about 20 hours. Remove from pans, peel away the parchment paper, and dehydrate on the mesh screens for another 6 hours or until your cakes are firm enough for you to cut them into desired shapes. Cut or leave as individual cakes, depending on the dishes you are using. After this step, dehydrate for another 2-3 hours or more. The time of dehydration depends on the thickness of your strawberry puree layer. It should be dry to touch, but moist and chewy on the inside.

I noticed that these cakes become increasingly tastier after some time in the refrigerator. Usually, they are the best at the end of a batch, when the crust becomes moist and full of the topping flavour throughout.