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January 5, 2006
Good, plain food.
Last night I made a Russian meal. (I like impromptu theme meals. Previous themes have included "1950s TV dinner" (stewed chicken, mashed potatoes, glazed carrots and buttered peas) and "Ashkenazi subsistence nouveau" (squash/veal/riesling stew with latkes/sour cream/applesauce). There was black bread, crab salad and my first-ever borsch. We drank beer and followed with tea and ginger cookies.
As I say, I'd never made borsch before. Borsch is a funny, mutable thing. I tried to make it how I had liked it best, at Me100 restaurant in Petersburg. Borsch is one of those foods people like to argue about - see the ongoing debate on soupsong.com's International Soups pages, with their five competing submitted versions, listed under both Russia and Ukraine. (Soup Song is just a wonderful set of pages in general, by the way.) Epicurious has a whole bunch of borsch recipes, with invariably cranky user comments ("My mother...", etc.) Whatever. I like it hearty, tart and meaty. This is no watery pink soup for summer. I made the winter version, a hot and nourishing beefed-up soup with bone-in shank, shredded at the last minute after surrendering its marrowy goodness to the cause.
I browned the shank in olive oil and then sweated onion, carrots and potatoes in the meaty fat. Beef broth and water; bay leaves; tomato paste. As long as it takes. Cider vinegar to taste, and sliced cooked beets at the last minute. Beet juice as you see fit. Dredge up the shank; shred; discard the bone. Serve with a fat dollop of sour cream and plenty of fresh dill.
Funnily enough, though the Russians and Ukrainians can fight over authenticity all they like, borsch is arguably the national soup of a quite unexpected little place - Hong Kong. "Loh-soong" soup, as it is known (Cantonese phonetic form of "Russian"), contains no beets at all, is heavy on the cabbage side of things, and is found in every cafe in the city, usually as the soupe du jour. It's popular enough that Campbells has recognised it with a special local flavour of tinned soup known as "Chinese Borsch" - see their website.
My crab salad I like a lot. I developed it when I was living in Russia, often encountering local versions of krabovyi salat that had, I thought, potential, but very little in the way of taste. When I first thought about making this in America I worried that imitation crab wouldn't be the budget food here that it is in Russia - its uses seem confined to California rolls. But hidden in the prepared seafood section I found a three-dollar offering of "Alaskan Pride", enough to serve 4-6.
I coarsely chop the imitation crab meat, and mix it with a couple of chopped hard-boiled eggs, a scattering of corn kernels, some cooked rice and very finely minced red onion. Throw a handful of dill in there, pepper furiously and bind the whole thing with just enough mayonnaise. The taste probably owes a lot to nostalgia, but I like it, it's very savoury and honest. In true Russian style I garnished it with a blanket of dill and some wholly extraneous olive halves. It's good chilled, piled on top of black bread and served with beer. Try it!
I foresee a renaissance of Russian flavours in my cooking, although one recipe I won't be replicating (or eating, or even thinking about) anytime soon is the (ig)noble Selyodka pod Shuboi, or Herring under a Fur Coat, a metaphor which only works if you happen to like your fur coats soaked in the blood of the clubbed seal they were skinned from...
Aren't familiar with this uniquely sweet/sour/boney/lurid delicacy? Be very glad.
Posted by michele at January 5, 2006 12:58 PM
Comments
You've reminded me of so much and I am both hungry and nostalgic now.
Posted by: RuKsaK at January 13, 2006 9:37 PM
Don't like Herring in a Fur Coat!. Our family would be amazed! I made it once, in the same sort of food nostalgia you seem to be in, and was surprised to find it popular. It is now regularly requested in the 12 dishes for Lithuanian Christmas Eve, which somehow seems to have become a set piece in our (English) family's Christmas celebrations.
I made mamaliga in Kosovo and found that was popular among Germans, so there is no telling!
Posted by: varske at January 27, 2006 8:02 PM