Editor’s Foreword:
This isn’t traditional “Russian cooking”… it’s how modern Russians cook! Hmm… Modernity seems to have infiltrated Russian life… they don’t live in izbas and they don’t ride in troikas anymore (save as novelties), so, why shouldn’t their attitude to food be contemporary, too? After all, things didn’t stagnate after Dede and Baba left the other side so many moons ago. So… here’s a page from real Russian life of today… enjoy!
BMD
******
Hi, again, everybody! There are a lot of wonderful recipes here, but most of them require extensive preparation and rather unusual ingredients. You can, of course, cook things beforehand, but what do you do if you wake up in the morning, after a holiday, hungry as all hell, but THERE’S NOTHING TO EAT? You can’t run off to the market… that’s not an option; it’s too early in the morning, you’re too lazy anyway, what with the mother of all hangovers and all that. However… as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. So… take a look in your fridge and grab what you can, they’ll be the protagonists of today’s presentation:
In order, from left to right:
- Salt and Pepper
- Unsalted butter (for frying) (hey, if do you use salted butter, just cut down on the salt at the end, bubbe)
- 30 ml Vegetable Oil (preferably sunflower oil, but any oil will do)
- 100 grammes/ml (about 1/3 cup) Milk
- 4 Eggs
- 200-400 grammes (8 ounces-1 pound) Cooked Chicken, boned and chopped. You can substitute whatever you have in the icebox… anything at all, actually, it’s all based on what you have (it would be a good use for some of that leftover Thanksgiving turkey, Virginia)
- 3 small tomatoes (or 2 large ones)
- Soy sauce
- 1 Onion
Here’s how you should shred the chicken:
I gave the bones to the cat, but I kept the meat for this. Oh yes, the starring role in our story goes to my lovely heavy-bottomed cast iron fry pan!
So, the first thing I did was to cut the onion up roughly:
Then, I put the skillet over low heat, melted a knob of butter, and sweated down the onions (stir them around a bit, OK?). Also, put another pot of water on medium-high heat to boil (that’s for the tomatoes):
Cook the onion until it becomes translucent (maybe 5-7 minutes), then, add the shredded chicken, and stir it well to mix it thoroughly:
Cut a shallow “X” into the stem of the tomatoes, and put them in the boiling water for about 10 seconds. Fish them out, drain them, and remove the skins!
In the meantime, remove the chicken and onions from the skillet, place them on a plate, sprinkle them with soy sauce, and lay it aside:
Place your skillet over medium-high heat, throw in another knob of butter and some vegetable oil (the oil will keep the butter from burning), and, then, observe the touching reunion of opposites:
So, what else do you need for your omelette? Yeah, milk! But, how much? Always, my biggest problem is with how much of something I need to add to the dish. So, I rummaged through the Internet, and I found out how much milk you needed for an omelette. So, I measured it, and I poured it in with the eggs. It turned out to be about one hundred grammes for four eggs:
Beat the milk and eggs together with a fork; beat it enough so that the eggs and egg milk form a uniform mixture:
Then, it’s time for the tomatoes… they seem to have forgotten about you and they’re just hanging out on the table. Well, show ‘em who’s boss! Shred them to pieces and add them to the eggs!
Now, it’s the turn of the chicken and onions, too! Salt it to taste, and don’t be stingy with the pepper!
By this time, the oil and butter in your skillet are heated right up, and you’re ready to roll. No wonder… the heat’s on a high setting!
Here’s a little digression… I have an electric stove, so, I set it to maximum heat, and reduced the heat to low when I threw the egg mixture in the pan. Because I use a heavy-bottomed cast iron skillet, the pan retains heat well, and loses heat very slowly. I don’t know how to pull off this trick with a gas stove… should you gradually diminish the temperature? {Actually, heat control is MORE precise with a gas stove, you’d do it the same way; start the heat at medium-high, and turn it down to low when the eggs are added: editor}
Well, dump the whole shooting match in all at once… right into the skillet!
Cover the pan, and set the timer for ten minutes. After seven minutes, it looks like this:
Here it is after ten minutes:
Make some toast, brew up some tea with lemon, and you’re ready to rock n’ roll! It turned out tastier than I expected it to. Приятного вам! Have a good one!
Пельмешки без спешки (Dumplings Without Haste)
http://nnm.ru/blogs/is20/omlet_iz_vcherashnego/
Voices from Russia 
You must be logged in to post a comment.