Russian Food & Cuisine - Garnishes and Dressings

Garnishes are usually always eaten with a main course (vegetables or meat) and are served both at dinner and supper. Quite often garnishes are served with different sauces, like mustard and khren.

Garnishes & Dressings:
Fried potato - potatoes fried in saucepan, sometimes with onion, salt and pepper can be added. Unfortunately, most restaurants serve now french fries instead

Grechka (buckwheat)

Boiled potato in jackets - traditional meal, usually served with salads and sauces
Baked potato - there's a nice fast-food chain in Moscow, called "Kroshka-Kartoshka", they cook nice baked potatoes.
Buckwheat (grechka) - our favourite garnish, unfortunately it doesn't grow in Europe, because of its strange taste, but it's really nice.
Rice

Sauces —
Soured cream (smetana) – served with most of the soups and fresh vegetables
Ketchup – most popular sauce for the meat dishes
Mayonnaise – served with many salads
Mustard (gorchitsa)
Horseraddish (khren)


Garnish & Kasha (Porridge) Recipes:
Abbreviations: ea - Each, tb - Table spoon, sm - Small, c - Cup, ts - Tea spoon, lg - Large. Recipes coutesy of RusCuisine.Com

Semolina Kasha recipe
Ingredients : 1/2 c semolina , 3 c milk, 1 tb butter , 2 ts sugar, salt
Method:
Bring milk to boil, stir in semolina gradually. Add butter, sugar and salt. Bring to boil and cook on low heat for 10-15 minutes. Serve with jam, honey or fruits.

Rice Kasha with Cheese recipe
Ingredients : 1 1/2 c rice , 3 c water , 200 g grated cheese , 2 tb butter , salt
Method:
Wash rice under running water. Fry it in butter until light brown. Pour over water and bring to boil, salt and cook on low heat for 40 minutes. Before serving, sprinkle with grated cheese.

Buckwheat Kasha recipe
Ingredients :100 g buckwheat , 2/3 c water , 25 g butter
Method:
In the Rus kasha was always made in earthenware crockery. Fill 3/4 of a pot with buckwheat groats, add salt, butter. Pour over boiling water up to the top. Stir in carefully. And put into the well heated oven for 3-4 hours. One hour before finishing, cover the pot with a large pan and turn upside down. A half an hour before serving, put wet fabric round in order that kasha falls off from the pot sides. Serve with cold baked milk or butter.

Gouryevskaya Kasha recipe
Ingredients : 1 c semolina , 2 1/2 c milk , 2 tb butter , 2 tb sugar , 2 c dense cream , 2/3 c nuts, 2 c canned fruits, 1/2 c sugar, 1/2 ea lemon, vanilla, salt
Method:
Take a not very deep pan. Put cream (must be dense) into the
hot oven. As soon as there is a pink skin on the cream, take it
carefully away on the plate. Be careful not to tear. Do it until
you have 6-7 skins.
Boil a viscous kasha (mush) on milk. Add butter, sugar (2 tb),
vanilla, salt and mix very well. Put kasha into the oven to warm
up for 30 minutes. Add the rest of baked cream to kasha.
Nuts caramelizing: nuts must be caramelized otherwise kasha will
be grey and not have a very good taste. Nuts must be tempered
(fired) at first. Then put in a very hot water for 10 minutes.
After that take the skins off and dry and chop them. Put sugar
(1/2 c) in the pan on the heat, add lemon juice, wait until red
colour and add nuts. As soon as nuts are caramelized, take them
out and let cool down.
Prepare a baking form. Grease it with butter. Put a little kasha
as first layer, then a skin and nuts, chopped canned fruits.
Repeat it until all the skins are used. The last layer is made of
kasha. Decorate with sugar, fruits and nuts and put the form into
the hot oven for 10-20 minutes.
Gouryevskaya Kasha is served with apricot puree or any fruit
juice.

The recipes above are taken from the website RusCuisine.Com.