One of my favourite things to do is cook, so I thought I should share what it is like to cook here in Ukraine. There are so many things that I was taught to cook with that are hard or impossible to find. Peanut butter, brown sugar, canned cream soups, marshmallows and molasses are some of those hard to find products when found they come with a serious price tag. A small jar of peanut butter that may cost a dollar in the states can be found if you know what shop to ask at in the Asian section of the market but it will cost you $4-5. And when familiar products can be found, they often taste different than their American counter parts making cooking with them tricky. I really love to eat spaghetti, and so I've been determined to make it here in Ukraine. Now in the states, I’d brown some ground beef with onion and garlic and what ever other spices I felt like using and then add in tomatoes paste and canned stewed tomatoes. Here however, I can’t find stewed tomatoes and tomato past comes in a variety of flavors, none of which I like. I’d even go so far to say that most of the tomato past I've had here tastes more like fancy flavoured catsup than a base for a sauce. So instead, I must create my own sauce base from real tomatoes. Oh, and ground beef is also hard to get(especially since I don’t know how to order any at the store since it doesn't come in flats,) so instead I use regular beef, usually cheaper cuts. Here’s a recipe I cooked up the other day:
Spaghetti(feeds 3 collage-aged girls)
6 regular sized tomatoes
½ lbs of beef
½ lbs noodles
½ Onion
Garlic
Italian Spices
Brown the ground beef in Garlic and onion. While that’s cooking, set up a pot of boiling water. Put the tomatoes in the boiling water for about a minute. Carefully remove to tomatoes and peel them. Due to being boiled slightly, they skin should come off easily. Chop them into small pieces. Once meat in browned and spiced, add the tomatoes. Allow to simmer until excess liquids are gone.
Cook the noodles while the sauce is simmering. When finished serve all together.
At some point during the simmering I decided to put in some extra flavor and then added some summer squash (called Kabachoke in Russian) and some mushrooms.
