Thanks to Portland's large Slavic population, I've been able to readily buy sulguni cheese for the first time in my life. This has me wanting to make khachipuri, the famous "Georgian Pizza", frequently. However, while the cheese is readily available, dough is another thing entirely, until I found a shortcut for weeknight dinners.

Imeretian Khachipuri, which is a disk of dough, stuffed with cheese, with a small hole in the top, is my favorite kind, probably because that's the first type I had in Moscow. I have two dough recipes for it, one is a yeasted dough that takes 1.5 hours, and one is a yogurt-based dough that's faster, but finicky delicate and hard to work with. Neither was really suitable for a weeknight dinner of khachipuri and lobio, starting cooking at 7. And then, at Albertson's, I discovered this:

Thin-crust, prerolled pizza dough, like they sell in many parts of Europe. It's not a very good pizza dough, but it makes an excellent yeasted dough wrapper for empanadas, and for other things. Like khachipuri!

Since then, we've had more "weeknight khachipuri" than is really good for my chloresterol level.

Now, a note on the cheese: if you can get sulguni, do use it for this. Most folks can't, though, so a good substitute is 2-3 parts dry part-skim mozzarella (but not pre-shredded) to 1 part crumbled feta cheese. In the recipe below, that would be 3oz dry mozz, and 1-2 oz feta. In a pinch, just dry mozz or even Monterey Jack would work.

weeknight khachipuri

• 4-5oz sulguni cheese, or substitute
• 3 Tbs minced cilantro, parsley, or green onion
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander, unless using cilantro
• 1 egg
• 2-3 Tbs greek yogurt
• 1 thin-crust "European style" prerolled pizza dough

Place a baking stone, or inverted cookie sheet, into your oven and heat it to 475F.

Grate the cheese on the large holes of a grater. Mix with the egg, yogurt, minced herb, and coriander (if using).

Unwrap the pizza dough and unroll it, smoothing it out. Make a circular heap of the cheese mixture in the middle of the dough, and then press it into a compact disk. The cheese should only cover about the middle 1/2 of the dough.

Fold the dough over the cheese, turning it 1/8 with each fold, so eventually you have an octagon of folds. The edges should not quite meet in the center; you want to leave a hole that's 1-2" wide.

Trim the baking parchment the pizza dough comes on so that it's not a lot wider than the khachipuri. Slide the khachipuri onto the baking stone (or sheet). Switch the oven to convection (if you can). Cook for 11 to 15 minutes, until the dough is brown and the cheese is foaming and threatening to bubble out of the hole.

Take the khachipuri out of the oven and put it on a rack to cool for 5-10 minutes; you want it hot, but you don't want to destroy your mouth. Cut into 4-6 wedges and share.

Note: Pillsbury also sells "prerolled pizza dough" in a carboard cannister. This is not suitiable for this recipe, or much of anything else either; it has a texture like factory biscuits.

Once stuffed with the zakuski, the family retired while I finished cooking the main course. They were fine with the half-hour break, since there had been so many zakuski.

Of course, we had to have varnyky. Or is that pirogi? As far as I can tell, these dumplings are the same, even having mostly the same fillings. The name just changes depending on which country you're in (varnyky in the Ukraine, pirogi in Poland, and either in Russia). Regardless, they're delicious, and an absolute requirement for any serious Russian/Polish/Ukranian meal. The ones in the picture are filled with a potato, onion, and twaróg cheese mixture, and then tossed with butter and browned onions. The recipe was mostly from Please to the Table, but I made some modifications.

I'll do full instructions, with pictures, on how to make varnyky later.

We also needed some nutritional balance to the meal, so I included a beet, cucumber, and potato salad from Mamuska, with both red and golden beets. This was excellent, although I recommend adding the red beets in last or everything in the salad turns a muddy red.

To make it a festive meal, I wanted to have a fish dish, but nothing too complicated. A Pomeranian (the province, not the dog) flounder dish from Polska seemed perfect. However, the dish required a whole flounder, which was out of the question (actually, not, but see the footnote to this post), so I had to make it with about 1.5lbs of "Dover" sole filets. This let me adapt the dish to use more apples, and become kind of a fish casserole. See the recipe at the bottom of this post.

We served all of this with dark beer, rather than wine. I really don't care much for Russian taste in wine, which tends towards sweet reds. But Russian-style beers are terrific. These were Oregon beers, though: a porter and a dark lager.

Finally, dessert: a hazelnut layer-cake. This recipe comes from my sweetie's family friend Vera, who has it from her Russian family. It's a cake made from ground hazelnuts and egg whites, with "boiled" chocolate frosting. With a different frosting and a minor tweak, the cake could be gluten-free. Regardless, it was delicious and really rich ... the perfect finish to a Russian/Polish Thanksgiving!

Now, what cuisine should I do next year? Leave your ideas in the comments.

Pomeranian-style sole with apples

based on a recipe from Polska

• 1.5 lbs of flounder or "Dover" sole filets
• 4 medium apples, peeled and sliced about 3 cups
• About 8 Tbs butter
• 2 Tbs lemon juice
• 1/2 to 3/4 cup sliced raw almonds
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup minced parsley
• 8" x 10" baking pan

Heat the oven to 375F. Melt the butter. Toss the apple slices with 3 Tbs of butter and the lemon juice as soon as you've peeled and sliced them (otherwise they'll turn brown). Create a single layer of apple slices in the bottom of the baking pan; you'll have to place them with your fingers. Bake the apple slices for about 12 minutes, you want them to cook and maybe even sizzle a little.

Meanwhile, coat the fish filets with 3 Tbs butter. When the first layer of apples are done, take out the hot pan, and carefully create a layer of fish on top of the apple slices, overlapping the filets if they are thin. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Cover this with a single layer of apple slices, which should use most of the rest. Season with a little more salt and pepper. Pop this back in the oven for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, sprinkle the top of the casserole with the sliced almonds, covering about 40% of the apples. Push back in the oven and cook for another 10 minutes. If your oven has a convection function, use it for this portion of the cooking. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with parsley. Serve hot, and do not reheat. Serves 4 to 6.

Warning: do not make this dish, or anything, with the fish sold as "arrowtooth flounder". While legitimately a flounder, the arrowtooth has an enzyme which causes its flesh to disintegrate when cooked. This is also an important lesson in having backup fish in the freezer whenever you make recipes with a strange fish.

If you follow this blog, you know that we don't do "traditional" Thanksgiving food. It helps that everyone in my family has always hated turkey. Since it seems like America has become a vassal of Russia, this year we decided to do a Russian/Polish dinner.

So, I bought some cookbooks and checked another out from the library. Mamushka covers Ukraine, Eastern Russia, and some of the former Soviet states. Please To The Table is pan-Russian, from East to West and including many of the "stans". The Russian Heritage Cookbook covers old-school Russian-American dishes. Finally, Polska is a Polish cookbook which will change your perspective on Polish cooking. Besides, how can you not love a Polish cookbook written by a woman named "Zuza Zak"? After a weekend of reading, I was ready to go.

Of course, any festive Russian or Polish meal needs to start with zakuski and vodka. We went out to Great Harvest to get a big loaf of pumpernickel rye, heated it up, and then cut it into little toasts. Then I served toasts with three different toppings:

Russian egg salad and Riga sprats (per Russian Heritage)

Beet butter (from Polska) and boiled eggs

Tangy twaróg cheese and diced radishes (also Polska)

I had plans to also do caviar toasts, but couldn't pick up caviar in Portland in time.

We ate our zakuski with two vodkas, one a bottle I picked up in Moscow, and another a bottle I found in my in-law's cabinet, which dates back to 1970's Los Angeles. The Moscow vodka is really good, the "Kamchakta" a lot less so.

Since we were having vodka, we also had to have the easiest and most essential Moscow vodka bar snack: salt pickes. Here's a non-traditional, but quick and easy, recipe for those:

Quick Salt Pickles

• 5-8 "gherkin" sized cucumbers, about 12 oz
• 1-2 tbs kosher salt

Quarter the cucumbers lenghtwise, and put them in a single layer on a tray, skin side down. Sprinkle wtih salt, making sure to dust each slice. Then leave to "pickle" for at least one hour and preferably 3-4 hours. Serve with vodka.

According to my Russian friend Ilya Kosmodemiansky, the real recipe for salt pickles is more complex and takes longer. See the bottom of the post for a complete recipe

I'll also share my adaptation of this zakuski from Polska:

Bread with Twaróg and Radishes

• 4-6 slices rye or pumpernickel bread
• 1 cup twaróg cheese (see below)
• 1 Tbs sour cream
• 1 Tbs yogurt
• 6-8 salad radishes, diced 1/4", about 2/3 cup
• 2 Tbs minced chives

Mash together the cheese, sour cream, and yogurt. Spread this over the bread slices. Sprinkle with the diced radishes and the chives.

Twaróg is Polish or Russian farmer cheese, available at Eastern European groceries. It can range from dry to creamy; use additional sour cream if you have the dry kind. If you can't get it, then combine 1/2 cup ricotta with 1/2 cup small curd cottage cheese.

On to the main course next ...

Traditional Salt Pickles

This recipe courtesy of my Russian friend Ilya Kosmodemiansky

Take small to mid-size cucumbers, not soft, skin should look like the picture above ... it is better for ion penetration. Cut off the ends and put cucumbers into cold water for half an hour or so.

Brine up to my standards should be 7-10% NaCl solution (2-3tbs of salt per 1l of water, depends on salt). Russian way of pickling cucumbers is all about crunchiness, so avoid iodized purified salt (iodine and high concentration of Na+ destroys cell wall, no crunchiness), experiment with salt, which contains additions of Ca and Mg; both can stabilize cell walls. I even experimented with adding small amount of medicinal CaCl2 solution, works good. Heat your brine practically to boiling point, let it cool down to about 30-35C.

Meanwhile, put cucumbers into a pan or a pot - fit them standing, very tight (the idea is to not let them float when brine added). In between of cucumbers, put spices, pour the brine, put a lid on. In a day or two it would be so called "lightly salted" cucumbers: still bright green, but salty, after several days they turn to be "cask salted". I like both, some people prefer one or another kind.

As for spices, defaults are: dill (with flowers and seeds), black or white pepper (whole), and garlic (whole, not crushed), a bit of mustard grains. Good additions are cloves and fresh blackcurrant leaves. There are no single opinion, to add red hot pepper (fresh, whole one) or not. It is good for taste of cucumbers to add one, but not so good for one another important role of this brine in Russian culture: it is an ideal hangover isotonic.

Continued from Part I and Part II

According to what I've read and seen, tkemali, or Georgian sour plum sauce, is the "salsa" of Georgia, appearing on many dishes and in many, many variations. Since this had been the whole inspiration for this meal, I whipped some up. We served this over a simple roast chicken and salmon, in order to cover both the meat and fish eaters: just salt & pepper and butter as seasonings, since the plum sauce is potent enough on its own. Recipe follows.

Finally, we couldn't possibly have an Eastern European meal without dessert! My sweetie prepared dessert, like usual. Here she turned to the Russian Heritage Cookbook, and put together a cheesecake with a cookie dough crust. The original cheesecake recipe called for Tvarog, a fine-curd buttermilk cheese which we couldn't easily get in Oregon. But hey, it's easy, let's make it! We consulted an online recipe from Urban Cheesecraft, and tried to whip up a batch. Unfortunately, the recipe isn't so great; the cooking time and temperature are off, and the yield for the recipe is way lower than stated. So, we used the backup cottage cheese.

The cheesecake was excellent nevertheless. We served it topped with jam, as appropriate for a Russian meal.

Sour Red Plum Sauce (Tkemali)

1 quart sour red plum puree and juice
3-5 cloves garlic, mashed
2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 to 1 tsp hot paprika or Aleppo pepper (to taste)
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup finely chopped mint leaves
1/2 cup finely chopped cilantro (optional)
2-3 Tbs lemon juice (optional, see below)

Place all ingredients except the mint in a small pot, over medium-low heat. Simmer gently until reduced in volume by 1/3, about 30 minutes. Add the mint. Put away in a container to cool. Serve at room temperature as a sauce on meat, fish, or red beans.

Notes: If you can't get sour plums, add 2-3 Tbs lemon juice to the plum puree. To get the plum puree and juice, stew 2 to 3 lbs small red sour plums (use wild plums, or just underripe commercial ones) for 1/2 hour. Drain, mash, and push through a food mill. Traditionally, the mint used in this recipe would be pennyroyal, but regular spearamint works fine.