Hello, my dear friends! You probably guessed from my absence for a month that something was going on. Even the absence of events is an event when it is outside the norm. Oh how I twisted it!

I twisted it - I unwind it.

For several years I thought about moving my brainchild to a “new home”. There were many reasons for this, and at the end of last year I decided: New year - new beginnings. And this is not only symbolic. January is the ideal time for this: while you, I’m sure, were enjoying the holidays, pleasant meetings and delicious food, I dived into the wilds of a world unfamiliar to me and worked on creating a new website. I believe that you will love it!

With pure culinary mania

and sincerely delicious wishes,

Galina Artemenko

Source https://vku.life/zhizn-vkusnaja/

Hi Hi! I continue my series of pre-New Year selections, and today it’s time for... snacks! Again! There just can’t be too many of them...

So, today we are preparing the cutest mini muffins with cheese, a snack cake with olives, onions and nuts, as well as a deliciously served liver cake.

How to prepare a lot of snacks for the holiday table and not get wasted? Snack butters! This is one of my favorite table themes, and today we are preparing as many as six types!

Hi Hi! The crazy time continues when you want to manage everything at the same time and be able to relax. In December, the topic of finding balance is more relevant than ever: what you still want to do, but not at any cost, and what is better to leave (either for later, or in the past year).

Eventually the New Year will come! So I offer you two recipes to complete your snack table. Fish snacks are always a thing, right?

My definite top thing that I always leave (for later or in the past year, depending on the mood) is spring cleaning. Honestly, I never do spring cleaning! The traditional top time for this “joy” is either before the New Year or before Easter. The risk, as they say, is maximum! But it’s not for nothing that I put the word “joy” in quotes, since I don’t like to devote any long time to putting things in order, even if I do everything that needs to be done little by little over a period of time. So I’m not much of a “hostess” (one of my least favorite words, by the way!), and I try to maintain cleanliness with regular routine cleaning. But I still decide to do something rare at this time of year. For example, this year I washed the curtains.

You can judge me for this approach to housekeeping or not – in this matter, as in food, everything can be expressed in just one word: TASTE. Someone loves sparkling cleanliness and is ready to restore it, devoting time to this throughout the week. Someone is completely ready to live in complete chaos. Some people want to do everything themselves, but for others it is better to entrust the care of cleanliness to a professional. The main thing, in my subjective opinion, is the sanitary measures necessary for a normal life, peace of mind and a satisfied state at the end. I believe that if the lampshades are not washed, but the brain does not let it go, you need to either accept the reality and calm down, or wash the lampshades. The example about lampshades is not accidental - I just plan to accept them as they are.

Cleaning is cleaning, and the New Year will come, as I already said at the very beginning. The two recipes that I am sharing today are from my book (where these recipes are presented in a step-by-step version).

Homemade sprats

I'll start with them. This recipe was amazing for me: when I prepared them, I couldn’t believe that the capelin from which they are prepared in this case could actually taste exactly the same as sprats from a jar! And you can call sprats a thing of the past century, “you need to move forward, not back,” but in my head a sandwich made of black bread with sprats and pickled cucumber is something amazing!

800 g fresh frozen capelin
2 tbsp. l. black tea (medium or small leaf is better)
2 tbsp. l. vegetable oil
2 tbsp. l. soy sauce
1 tsp. natural liquid smoke
1 tsp. mustard seeds
1 tsp. salt
0.5 tsp. Sahara
5 black peppercorns
3 allspice peas
2 clove buds
1 bay leaf

Thaw the fish, remove the heads and entrails.

Pour 1 cup of boiling water over the tea leaves and leave for 10-15 minutes, then strain. Next, I will describe the process for a multicooker, but the same thing can be done simply on the stove, or in the oven! So...

Pour the tea leaves into the multicooker bowl, add salt, sugar, soy sauce, liquid smoke, vegetable oil and all the remaining spices. Place the capelin in the resulting marinade with their backs up, trying to position the fish tightly to each other.

Select the “Extinguishing” operating mode, time – 1 hour. At the end of the program, switch the multicooker to the “Simmering” mode, if your model has one, and cook for another hour. If there is no such mode, select the heating mode for 1 hour. When the multicooker is finished operating, turn it off and leave the capelin under the closed lid until it cools completely, and only then can the fish be transferred to a convenient container.

For cooking on the stove just simmer the capelin on the lowest possible heat for 2 hours and leave to cool under the lid.

For cooking in the oven send the container with the fish there and cook at 150° for 1 hour under a lid or foil, then turn off the oven and leave the capelin in it until it cools.

Mackerel rillette

This is a wonderful and very easy to prepare snack! Try replacing standard lightly salted or smoked mackerel with it on your holiday table - it’s much more interesting.

1 fresh frozen mackerel
1 onion
150 g dry white wine
80 g smoked fish (I used salmon)
2 tbsp. l. fish sauce (if you don’t have it, replace it with soy sauce)
1 tbsp. l. vegetable oil
2 bay leaves
6 green onions
salt, pepper - to taste

Thaw the mackerel and cut off the head, thoroughly clean the entrails and rinse the carcass. Cut the onion into rings and place into the multicooker bowl along with the bay leaf. Place mackerel on top. Season with salt and pepper. Pour in the wine, close the multicooker lid and cook in the “Baking” mode for 15 minutes.

Using forks, cut the fish carcass into small fiber pieces, removing the backbone and bones. Add smoked fish, cut into small cubes, to the mackerel. Chop the green onions and mix with the fish base. Season the rillette with salt and pepper, pour in vegetable oil and add fish sauce. Mix thoroughly.

This pate is best served on pieces of toasted bread.

***
Let me remind you about my book with recipes for a multicooker - this is a whole hundred of a wide variety of recipes, among which you will find simple and quick recipes for every day, as well as recipes for special occasions. Everything from soups to baked goods and drinks. You can buy it

Peanut butter cookies – recipe with photo:

First, beat the soft butter and peanut butter in a bowl for 1-2 minutes. The mixture should become homogeneous.

Add sugar and continue beating for a few more minutes. You need to ensure that the sugar dissolves as much as possible. By the way, the amount of sugar can be varied slightly depending on how sweet your peanut butter is.

Add a whole chicken egg and process our mixture with a mixer for another minute.

Pour in the flour, which must first be sifted together with soda, baking powder and fine salt. By the way, since peanut butter may differ slightly in consistency, a little more or less flour may be needed in each specific case, so first add 180 g of flour to the dough, and use the remaining 20 g if the dough turns out sticky to the touch.

Beat/mix the ingredients with a mixer until they turn into moist crumbs. We put them together to form a large ball of dough and you can form the products.

Form the peanut butter cookies by tearing off small portions of the dough and rolling them into balls. Place the balls loosely on a baking sheet as shown in the photo.

Next, if you follow the classics, press down each ball with the bottom of a glass and use a fork to make a lattice in the center of each cookie. But, if desired, when molding peanut butter cookies, you can use special stamps with different inscriptions and patterns.

Place the baking sheets with cookies in the oven and bake them at 170 C for about 10-15 minutes.

They should turn golden around the edges. Serve after cooling! Fragrant peanut butter cookies are ready!

Many people, having tried peanut butter once, fall in love with it once and for all. It is incredibly tasty, thick, with a bright, recognizable sweetish and unusually pure taste of roasted peanuts. Plus, it's incredibly useful. This delicacy is also favored by those who fast, as well as those who do not consume animal proteins at all.

Peanut butter lovers prepare a lot of dishes using it. As a very popular alternative to butter, it appears on the morning table - together with sweet jam or preserves you will get the most delicious sandwiches you have ever tried. Peanut butter can be the basis of sauces, gravies, and marinades. It can be used both during the preparation of sweet and main dishes, salads, and snacks. And a very popular recipe for making peanut butter cookies.

Peanut cookies are prepared very easily and quickly, and as a result you will get something very tender, light, airy, and very homely in appearance, with cute cracks on the surface. It seems to say: “Pour a glass of milk and take a cookie or two.”

You need quite a lot of peanut butter for these cookies, and therefore the product turns out to be very rich in taste. By the way, to emphasize this taste even more, you can add chopped peanuts to the dough, which will also add texture to this dessert.

Ingredients

160 grams peanut butter
120 grams of flour
80 grams of sugar
60 grams butter at room temperature
1 egg
½ teaspoon baking powder

Preparation

These cookies are prepared according to the principle of making classic shortbread cookies - by whipping butter.

So, combine peanut butter with softened butter. It's best if the peanut butter is at room temperature.

Using a mixer at medium speed, beat the mixture until fluffy and creamy.

Then add the egg to the mixture and beat lightly again.

After this, add sugar, beating the mixture at low speed.

Using a spoon or spatula, stir the flour into the butter base. The dough should be quite soft.

Roll this dough into balls 3-4 cm in diameter. Place the balls on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. These balls do not need to be flattened - they will spread out slightly in the oven, so leave space between the balls so that the cookies do not stick together during baking.

Bake the peanut cookies at 180 degrees until they begin to brown - this will take about 15-20 minutes.

Remove the finished fragrant cookies from the oven, carefully remove from the paper and let cool. When hot, the cookies are very soft and may break.

It is best to store finished cookies in a closed container. But, most likely, these peanut cookies will not last longer than a couple of days - they are so delicious.

1 So, make the dough: mix peanut butter with egg and sugar. You can see the peanut butter recipe here.

2 Mix the dough well until smooth. If the dough turns out to be liquid, you can add a little flour so that it sticks slightly to your hands. Cover the dough with film and put it in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to make it easier for us to form cookies in the future.

3 When the dough has cooled, pinch off pieces of the dough and roll them into balls. Place the cookies on a baking sheet lined with baking paper; I did not grease the paper. Using a fork, lightly crush the balls, making a small pattern on the cookies - a lattice. I advise you not to make the cookies completely flat.

4 Bake the cookies until ready in a preheated oven at 180C. I advise you not to overbake the cookies. It will darken a little around the edges and crack. Cool the finished cookies well and remove from the baking sheet. Without cooling, it will be very difficult to remove the cookies from the baking sheet.

5 Prepare the glaze: You can use any chocolate, I used milk chocolate. Break the chocolate into a plate and put it in the microwave.

6 Heat until the chocolate becomes liquid, being very careful to stir the chocolate every 10 seconds so it doesn’t burn. You can also melt the chocolate in a water bath.