This week’s meal was from Russia. I wanted to find some traditional
Russia-specific recipes rather than to prepare a meal from one of the former Soviet
Socialist Republics. When I searched for
“Russian” cuisine, a lot of the recipes I found are attributed to Ukraine, Belarus,
Armenia, or one of the many “istan” locations.
In the future, we may move on to Asia, when I will include the former
SSRs.
I also discovered that in the late 18th
century, French chefs were invited to cook for the nobility of Russia, which is
where dishes such as Chicken Kiev and Beef Stroganoff originated, so not very
Russian indeed. I finally found a recipe
for Rassolnik, a (strange and)
classic soup made with barley, beef, potatoes, carrots, and pickles; meaning
the dill pickles in a jar. It’s hearty and the beef is tender and satisfying. Rassolnik has existed for more than 500
years and is definitely a comfort food to many Russians.
To accompany the soup, I made small blini that were topped with sour cream, smoked salmon and a tiny
dill sprig. Even if they are
traditionally topped with caviar, we opted not to go that route.
For dessert I found a recipe for a dessert that sounds
rather interesting: “Sharlotka would sound like it relates to
a dessert Charlotte, but Charlottes, with their mousse-like, Lady
Fingers-decked grandiosity, have little in common aside from the course in
which it is served. It can be referred to as a cake (but it contains no milk,
no butter), a Russian pie (but it has no crusts) and/or a pancake (but it’s not
very cakey). It’s almost like a clafoutis,
but no, that’s not right either, with no cream or milk and a proportion of
fruit to batter that is nothing short of staggering. It contains no butter,
save that which you need to grease the pan. Although it has sugar, it’s not
very sweet. Although it contains flour, it’s not a whole lot for the size of
the pan. Although it has eggs, it’s not very rich. Really, the whole structure
comes from apples. You fill the cake pan nearly to the brim with peeled and
chopped apples and you pour the batter over then smooth it to encourage it to
seep down. It fills the spaces between the apples and makes a torte of what was
a pile, and then you bake it until it’s done.”
Menu: Rassolnik (Beef, Barley and Pickle soup), Blini with smoked salmon, Apple Sharlotka
Outcome: We were in doubt of the soup – who
sautés dill pickles and adds them to soup?!
But oh, my goodness, this was just downright good. The beef was very tender and amazingly, the
dill pickles added just a bit of tartness and zing! Without them, the soup would have been on the
boring side. It was really, really tasty
and we all liked the addition of the barley, which looks like large oats. I found a box of it in Walmart, rice aisle,
top shelf, made by Quaker oats. Trivia: Russia is the world’s largest producer of
barley! The blini came out pretty well, after a couple of trial runs. The batter was so very thin that would have been perfect to make large, skillet-sized foldable blini. However, since I was wanting for these to be silver dollar size, I needed to add more flour so they could be a little thicker. The Sharlotka came out very nicely, and we all agreed that we want to make it the next time the kids come, but with some of the peaches that we picked last summer!
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| Rassolnik |
