REAL JAM RECIPES!

From little up I’m a greatest sweeties lover: chocolate, buns, pastry, fancy cakes and of course cookies. Many tastes of mine have changed, but passion for sweeties remains permanent. It’s strange but I’m astonished at people who don’t like cookies or at worst any sweet – did they forget as they were kids and could eat up a whole ton of candies? When I enjoy my favorite chocolate chip cookies I get carried away into my childhood: my little brother and I sit in the shelter of branches on an old tree behind our house; it’s getting dark and we tell some terrifying stories by the light of a candle and drink milk with cookies…

In one encyclopedia I read that cookies appeared about 10 thousand years ago, at the same time as bread appeared. In other words, history of cookies is a culinary history of mankind. Certainly, they weren’t sweet from the very beginning and for a long time – sugar became a part of human ration much later. I myself used to think that cookies must be sweet, but in fact the taste of first cookies would seem objectionable for modern men.

Cookie was made from different sort of flour: Europeans used wheat flour, and people in the east – rice flour, what is quite clear. Later oatmeal and corn meal were used, just like other flour sorts.

Traveling and migrating, people shared with each other various cookie recipes for centuries. Today we have so many cookie kinds, that one man couldn’t try them for his whole life. They all differ in dough and filling components, icing, form and color. And here I’d like to publish my favorite cookie recipes, like girl scout cookies or christmas cookies (though christmas isn’t in the near future, you can practice a little to get a perfect dish by the time it comes).

Apricot jam is not only extra-tasty – doctors say that apricot seeds contain laetrile, an alternative treatment for cancer. In past centuries this fruit was used against tumors and ulcers.

1 kilo apricots
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
½ cup water
1 kilo sugar

1. Halve apricots and take out stones.
2. Combine apricots, water and lemon juice in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover with lid and cook about 15 minutes until apricots are tender.
3. Add sugar and stir. When sugar dissolves, bring to a boil and cook for 30 minutes, stirring. Don’t cover.
4. When jam thickens, allow it cool for 5 minutes, and then pour into jars and seal.

I’m not a fan of supermarket jelly, which needs only to be coated with water. home jelly requires much time and effort, but still I prefer its natural taste.

1-2 pears
2 cups pear juice
½ tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp pear liqueur
1 lemon juice
3 cups sugar
1/3 cup fluid gelatinizing agent

1. Combine cinnamon and pear liqueur and leave it for a night. Next day pass through a sieve and pour the extract in a small bowl.
2. Pour pear juice in a big saucepan, add extract and sugar.
3. Peel pears and slice. Sprinkle with lemon juice.
4. Constantly stirring, bring pear juice to a boil and add pear slices. Cook for 2 minutes. Then add gelatinizing agent.
5. Pour jelly into rummers or other ware. Put jelly into fridge to cool.

This easy jam recipe is based on a simple principle – “bring to a boil”. Blackberry turns to be very tender and palatable. Cook it yourself and make certain of that.

1 kilo blackberry
1 ½ kilos sugar
2 cups water

1. Bring water to a boil and add blackberry.
2. Bring blackberry to a boil and combine with sugar.
3. When sugar dissolves, bring jam to a boil once again. Cook over gentle heat 20-25 minutes.
4. Remove from heat and allow jam cool. Then pour into jars and seal.

These spice-cakes are cooked every year in autumn for Chinese Moon celebration. You can bake them any time you want to, but you should have special baking cups.

1 ½ cup treacle
½ tbsp baking soda
½ cup corn oil
1 ¼ pound flour
1 ½ tbsp alkaline water
some drops dark soy sauce

For filling:
4 ounces walnuts, sliced
3 ounces almonds
3 ounces melon seeds, sliced
2 ounces tangerine-peel
3 ounces sugared melon, diced
3 ounces sesame seeds
¾ cup sugar
2 tbsp brandy
¼ tbsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsp cold boiled water
¼ cup corn oil
2 ½ ounces rice flour

1. Combine soda, treacle, water and oil, whip with a spoon and leave for 4 hours.
2. Add soy sauce and flour, stir and make pastry. Leave for 6 hours.
3. Make balls weighing 2 ounces each.

4. Combine all filling ingredients except flour in a bowl. Then add flour and mix well. Make equal portions weighing 2 ½ ounces each to fill spice-cakes.
5. Put filling inside of cakes. Sprinkle with flour and place every cake into baking cup.
6. heat oven to 180 C and bake spice-cakes 8-10 minutes.

 Noodles impart a bit Italian relish to this exotic soup, but you can always add Chinese egg noodles.

1 pound chicken fillet, sliced in thin bands
2 pints chicken broth
½ cup cream
3 ½ ounces noodle
1 tbsp starch
3 tbsp milk
6 ounces corn
salt, pepper at taste

1. Place chicken fillet, chicken broth and cream in a large pan. Bring to a boil over a gentle heat. Boil for 15 minutes, add salt and pepper.
2. Cook noodles in another pan with boiling water.
3. Combine starch and milk in a small bowl. Add this mixture in soup and boil until it thickens.
4. combine with noodles and corn and cook for 5 minutes. Ladle into plates and decorate with sliced spring onion.

Artichokes have wonderful taste, but cooking of this dish is a quite laborious work. Still be sure your effort will be rewarded.

1 liter water
2 artichokes, peeled
6 ounces shrimps, shelled and cooked
4 tomatoes, diced
1 lemon peel and juice
1 big clove garlic, grated
3 leaves spring onion, sliced
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper at taste

1. Fill a big saucepan with water and add lemon juice. Bring to a boil and put artichokes inside. Cover and cook for 20 minutes, until the leaves are easily separated from the stalk.
2. Take artichokes from the pan, allow them cool and water flow down. Cut the top and remove inedible pith.
3. Heat olive oil in a deep pan, place garlic and cook for 2-3 minutes over a medium heat. Combine with onion and cook for 2 minutes more. Combine with shrimps, tomatoes, lemon peel, salt and pepper and fry for 2-3 minutes over a strong heat.
4. Stuff artichokes with shrimp mass, spot with olive oil and trim with lemon peel.

Chinese art of cookery was improving through the ages. It includes all knowledge and skills that make Chinese dishes ones of the most healthy and tasty in the world. The first detailed cookery book appeared in China about 1500 years ago, what can confirm the fact that Chinese art of cookery was a serious subject matter for ancient people.

Traveling through Peking I was watching oriental women: so slender, lissome and elegant. A fat Chinese is a rarity, though all Asiatic people are known as foodies, at times even gluttons. What is the reason of this contradiction? Chinese canons of cookery demand from a cook not only tasty food, but also health-giving one and sometimes medicinal. For example, some spicy dishes widespread in south regions are regarded as strong aphrodisiacs cheering up a person.

Talking to a polite and always smiling guide I got to know that Chinese believe the food was sent from heaven. They have no notion of taking a bite – mealing means joining to the culture of the nation. Among dishes prevail fluid and soft ones. The meal begins with putting food components on the plates. Green tea without milk or sugar is drank first; after that dishes with cold collations are served: usually they consist of liver, meat, fish or vegetables, finely sliced. Chinese never hasten while eating and enjoy the process. Then comes rice, which is eaten combined with sauce. And in the very end Chinese prefer broth or tea again – exactly these types of food and their order are considered to be the most auspicious for digestion.

I’ve made it sure from own experience that in most cases the originality of Chinese cuisine is the result of a skilful processing of the feedstock, and not the food itself. One of the main rules is that the course is to consist of small pieces, so that it doesn’t require additional effort to cut the food. A cook of the hotel where I lived, revealed me a secret of Chinese cuisine: to cut and fry properly. Small, equal in form and size pieces are cooked very fast in burning hot oil. But for all that dishes are never too fat or insipid. As regards the first question, a mistress from China spends three-quarters of the whole cooking time on preparing food: washing, slicing, bones removing and so on. As for frying – quick cooking in a large pan over a strong heat, each component is cooked separately from another. It helps getting top-quality foods.

If you’ve been in Chinese restaurant, you could note that dishes there contain of many components that frequently seem incompatible, like pork that smells like fish or sweet-sour cucumbers. It’s another characteristic property of Chinese cuisine, that has it’s own authentic relish if you pay enough attention to savouring.

Now let’s touch upon a subject of names of Chinese dishes – they often look like a rebus when you see them in a menu, for example “Ants clime up the tree”. I was perplexed for some minutes until I found out that it’s just fried rice with hot meat gravy. But “Battle of dragon and tiger” turned to be a soup with meat of a snake and a special well-fed cat. I denied myself at once this dish and was glad that I got to know the ingredients first.

The same way as in Indian cuisine (and I think any other oriental cuisine), Chinese dishes can’t do without spices, kitchen herbs and sauces. About 300 types of spices are of use in Chinese cuisine. Soy sauce is an essential part of serving: it’s a substitute for salt and vinegar.

Chinese cuisine is tightly bound not only to history, but to holidays as well. When it’s a birthday, Chinese cook long noodles – a symbol of longevity; main dish of the New Year table is dumplings; when it’s “Summer beginning”, they prefer sweet rice rolled into reed leaves. Every season has its special dishes, just like each province of China has its own cookery school. The most popular of them are: Cantonese cuisine, which fresh courses are very tasty and cooked with using rich fantasy; Szechuan cuisine with a lot of spices including red cayenne pepper; Fujian cuisine, that is notable for its “paradise” soups; Shandong cuisine, which has many dishes with crabs and garlic; Hunan cuisine – sour-sweet dishes with river fish.

But still, what are the main traditional components of Chinese cuisine? After rice it’s fish, and it’s nonrandom – Chinese know more than 10 thousand of fish and anthozoan species, the most of them are edible. They are usually served almost raw (sashimi). Besides, they use for food all kinds of vegetables, fruits, beans, beef, pork, noodles, which was spread in Japan as well, algae and even insects. In other words Chinese can be called omnivorous, the main thing is how to prepare and serve food.

I hope I’ve shed some light on unique features of Chinese cuisine and exited in you the interest to try cook something Chinese yourself.

Alupatra is a variety of samosa with potato filling. Once I’ve tasted it, I understood why it’s one of the most popular Indian dishes nowadays. You can add also some fresh panir cheese for diversity.

4 potatoes
2 tbsp grated coconut
2 tsp ginger, grated
2 pods hot pepper, sliced
1 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped
2 cups wheat flour
2 tsp sugar
1 ½ tsp salt
2 tsp sesame seeds
2 tsp garam-masala
½ tsp turmeric
¼ tsp red Cayenne pepper
½ cup water
2 tsp ghee butter
ghee or oil for flying-up in deep fat

1. First of all make a filling. Boil potatoes in their jackets and peel them. Mash potatoes together with grated coconut, all spices, hot pepper, sugar and 1 teaspoon salt.
2. Combine flour, turmeric, Cayenne pepper and ½ teaspoon salt in a big bowl. Rub ghee into flour. Pour in water and make dough. The dough must be tender and springy.
3. Roll out dough in shape of rectangular flat cake 3 mm thick. Place evenly potato blend on top. Collar dough.
4. Slice the roll: the slices should be ½ inch (1 cm) thick.
5. Heat ghee or oil in a deep-fryer or deep pan. Immerse slices into the fryer and cook 3-5 minutes until goldish color.

Today I want to say some words about Indian appetizers and snacks. They consist of many ingredients, such as potato, onion, spinach, chili, and can be called by right vegetarian dishes; they are cooked in rich spices and look very decorative. Indian appetizers can be served as a main dish or an addition to other courses. They will perfectly suit you if you want to snack between dinner and supper. I like to cook it for my children because they always want to filch something dainty from the kitchen. They are simply enraptured with these fragrant snacks; in my turn I’m glad to offer them more than a usual sandwich or even worse harmful chips.

A lot of Indian snacks are taken with chutney and tea. Some of them, for example pakora and seeval, can be cooked right away; samosa and kachori take more time, but no sooner you taste it than you forget a long cooking process at one stroke.

Many appetizers of Indian cuisine cannot be done without ghee, anyway I usually use it for frying-up. Once I tried to replace it with vegetable oil, but I’ve drawn a conclusion that snacks with ghee have much more exquisite taste.

Another component commonly used for Indian snacks is chickpea flour (also known as gram flour or besan). It has a special taste, and it’s easy to find in any oriental grocery.