Desperate Serbwife

Cooking in Cyrillic

This cyrillic story is more uplifting than the last one.

So last night I thought I would attempt to make my first non-pasta and sauce from a can meal - even though, as many a roommate can attest, that is my favorite meal which I could eat every night without complaint, but I don't think Mike shares in my adoration for pasta.

The ingredients I had to work with were; potatoes, red peppers, rice and something which I was pretty sure was a bullion cube - but hard to know since the label was written in cyrillic. I decided to make a version of a dish I made in the US using sweet potatoes and onions (I checked the market, no sweet pototoes that I could find). My first challenge was, of course, guessing that what looked and smelled like a bullion cube, must actually be a bullion cube. the next challenge was trying to guess how much water to throw this bullion cube into since, again, the directions were written in cyrillic. Using my extensive experience with bullion cubes (I think I've used them a total of 6 times in my life) I decided 4 cups would be the right amount. So I pulled out the measuring cup that came with our already furnished apartment and went to measure out 4 cups.......except, well, 4 cups is hard to measure when your measuring cup is marked in grams. Again, my extensive cooking experience came in handy (mom, you can laugh out loud at this part). I made my best guess at 4 cups and off I went. The cutting of vegetables was luckliy the same in Cyrillic as in English, so that was easy. And then came time to make the "Uncle Ben's" box of rice. I bought Uncle Bens brand because I was sure I knew how to make that rice - too bad this rice turned out to be 20 minute rice and not the 5 minute rice that I was used to - how was I supposed to know, it was written in cyrillic!!!! Alright, well, somehow I managed to guesstime the amount of rice vs. water using a measuring cup that was no more useful than using any other cup in my house. The rice ended up just perfect (although I think I burnt my toungue tasting it every 2 minutes to see if it was ready yet).

Anyway, long story short (too late), I made a realitively yummy rice with potatoes, red peppers and lots of spices. Mike was happy just to have something non-pasta and hot to eat when he got home at 9:30pm from a long day of presentations. I, on the other hand, have added a "real" measuring cup to my list of things to try to find somewhere in this city - not as easy as you might think!!!

In the end, I was more proud of my ability to make something edibile without the help of directions or measuring. Tonight, though, I think we'll have pasta.

posted by Brooke @ 9:40 AM