1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (103 page)

Mail order:
For semolina,
russianfooddirect.com
(search semolina extra; semolina).
Further information and recipes:
The Horizon Cookbook
by William Harlan Hale (1968);
À La Russe
by Darra Goldstein (1983);
foodarts.com
(search guriev kasha).
Tip:
Don’t let the term
kasha
confuse you. In the U.S., it usually refers to buckwheat groats, but Russians also use the term for porridges made from any variety of grain—much in the way that the most traditional use of the word
polenta
in Italy means not only cornmeal but also any kind of porridge.

The notion of a chicken croquette might seem singularly unexciting, given the bland examples usually served at banquet lunches. But give the dish a romantic name and a history, prepare it with the snowiest of chicken breast meat, glistening with streams of melted butter and aromatic with nutmeg, and you have the beginnings of something special.

Beloved by Russians as a basic staple, much the way the Viennese dote and depend upon the schnitzel, the
kotlety Pozharskie
has such a history. It is said to be named for one Pozharskie, a tavern owner whose business was in the town of Torjok, a popular stopover for travelers halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. He made this sort of croquette out of beef, combining it with game meats and poultry and, fittingly enough, naming it after himself.

Although most often made of chicken now, the cutlet has even more body and flavor when ground raw veal is added to the mix. Formed into a slightly flattened oval (that is, a cutlet) from the smoothly blended mixture, it is veneered with a coating of only the freshest fine bread crumbs and fried in butter. It emerges crisp, golden, and ready to accommodate a rose-pink paprika sauce along with some noodles and creamed mushrooms or spinach.

Given how many fast-food chains offer chicken nuggets, one might almost credit the good tavern owner Pozharskie with being ahead of his time.

Where:
In New York
, Mari Vanna, tell 212-777-1955,
marivanna.ru/ny
;
in Chicago
, Russian Tea Time, tel 312-360-0000,
russianteatime.com
.
Further information and recipes:
À La Russe
by Darra Goldstein (1983);
Please to the Table
by Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman (1990);
nytimes.com
(search veal pojarski);
gourmet.com
(search pojarski).

A culinary tour de force, celebrated and rare.

The French may claim
coulibiac de saumon
(they certainly named it), but historians know that the epic fish pie was created in czarist St. Petersburg, by palace chefs seeking to please the royal Romanovs and their noble guests. The dish was co-opted by the great French chef Auguste Escoffier, who served coulibiacs for very special parties.

It’s no wonder the French wanted to own this haute-cuisine fish pie.
Kulebyaka
(KOOL-yabya-ka), as it was originally known, is by any measure one of the world’s most opulent and succulent dishes. A stupendous centerpiece of a
main course—a long fish wrapped in a golden crust of sunny brioche dough—it is made by lining the dough with crêpes and then layering it with cooked rice, onions, sliced hard-cooked eggs, and (usually) mushrooms. Finally, a coral slab of fresh, wild salmon is set in place before a second round of the ingredients is layered on in reverse. The dough is folded closed and then adorned with additional dough cut out in the shapes of leaves and flowers. Scented with white wine, hot butter, and dill mixed into the rice, the kulebyaka exudes an irresistibly mouth-watering aroma when it is cut into thick slices, which are further gilded with rivulets of hot melted butter.

The preparation is intricate, to say the least, and posing an additional challenge is the necessity of finding
visega
, the sticky dried spinal cord of a sturgeon. It’s added to the rice mixture and is the most authentic ingredient in the dish. Although it may be available outside Russia at a few luxury food shops catering to wealthy expatriates, the less fortunate might have to take the suggestion of food writer Darra Goldstein and substitute well-soaked Chinese bean thread noodles. These provide a similarly silky texture if not quite the same mysteriously ripe, sea-breeze taste. Daniel Boulud suggests soaked and mashed tapioca pearls or tapioca powder or agar-agar for the same sticky effect. Neither recommends gelatin.

For an idea of kulebyaka’s complexity, consider a 1973 recipe that took up two pages of
The New York Times.
Wisely—and teasingly—the legendary food editor Craig Claiborne suggested this might be a once-in-a-lifetime effort. Given its specialness, it is understandable that kulebyaka has been celebrated several times in Russian literature, most notably by Anton Chekhov, in a scene from his 1887 short story “The Siren.” As judges retired to their chambers for the day, a secretary speculated on what would be most desirable for their dinner: “The
kulebyaka
must be appetizing, shameless in its nakedness, voluptuous so to say in all its glory.… As you cut yourself a piece of it, you wink at it, and, your heart overflowing with delight, you make passes with your fingers over it.… Then you start eating it and the butter drips like large tears, and the stuffing is succulent, luscious; there are eggs in it and giblets and onions.” What he meant by
nakedness
was an absence of heavy sauce, excepting only the melted butter poured over the thick-cut slices of the fish-and rice-filled pastry and so dripping like tears, surely tears of joy.

In his novel
Dead Souls
, Nikolai Gogol expresses a preference for kulebyaka baked in a square shape and made not with salmon and rice but with sturgeon cheeks and kasha (buckwheat groats). There are also mushrooms, onions, eggs, and, for good measure, calves’ brains and milts (spleen). He specifies that kulebyaka should be baked so it’s browner on one side than on the other, and that it must “melt in the mouth like snow … and that one should not even feel it melting.”

In a simpler vein, there’s always Polish kulebyaka, made without any fish or meat at all. It combines cabbage sautéed with onions,
cooked dried mushrooms, and chopped hard-cooked eggs, enfolded in a long, crisp loaf of yeast and sour cream dough.

Where:
In New York
, DB Bistro Moderne, tel 212-391-2400,
dbbistro.com/nyc
.
Further information and recipes:
The Best of Craig Claiborne
by Craig Claiborne with Pierre Franey (1999);
Please to the Table
by Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman (1990);
À La Russe
by Darra Goldstein (1983);
The Art of Polish Cooking
by Alina Żerańska (1989);
jamesbeard.org
(search coulibiac);
nytimes.com
(search coulibiac world’s greatest dish);
easteuropeanfood.about.com
(search kulebiac).

A paskha decorated with candied fruits.

The Russian Orthodox celebration of Easter would not be complete without these twin treats, one a sweet yeast bread-cake shaped as a stately domed cylinder, the other a sunny pyramid formed of sweet cheese gilded with eggs and saffron and jeweled with candied fruits and nuts. The shapes of these treats are so iconic that the famous Troitskaya church in Saint Petersburg, Russia, is known as “Kulich and Paskha” because the rotunda of the church resembles kulich and the pyramidal form of its adjacent belfry suggests a paskha.

Kulich
is the name of the yeast cake, similar in texture and flavor to the Italian panettone. To achieve its unique shape, bakers pour the batter into large coffee or fruit juice cans. Once cooled, the cake is glazed with frosty white icing that is allowed to drizzle down its sides before being decorated with colorful icing flowers and the letters XB, short for the traditional Orthodox Easter greeting Xpиcтoc вocкpece, “Christ is risen.”

Paskha
, meaning Easter, is made from
tvorog
—a soft, white cheese resembling farmer’s or cottage cheese—blended with egg yolks, butter, sour cream or heavy sweet cream, and sugar. The mixture may be boiled, for longer keeping, or molded uncooked into a truncated pyramid symbolizing Christ’s tomb and imprinted with the letters XB. Either way, it has the texture and flavor of cheesecake and may be decorated with red fruit jam or festooned with various candied fruits.

The paskha and kulich are placed in an Easter basket with other festival foods and dyed eggs and then taken to the church for a blessing from the priest. Once back home, the blessed kulich’s impressive dome is delicately removed
and placed in the center of a serving plate before the remaining loaf is sliced horizontally and arranged around the crown. Slices are spread with creamy paskha for a double breakfast treat. This combination is enjoyed from Easter until Pentecost, fifty days later.

Where:
In San Francisco
, at Easter, Cinderella Russian Bakery & Café, tel 415-751-9690,
cinderellabakery.com
.
Retail and mail order:
In New York
, for kulich, Moscow on the Hudson, tel 212-740-7397,
moscowonhudson.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Bread Bible
by Beth Hensperger (2004);
Please to the Table
by Anya von Bremzen and John Welchman (1990);
cookstr.com
; (search kulich);
foodnetwork.com
(search pashka).
See also:
Panettone
;
Castagnaccio
;
Torta di Ricotta
;
Mazurek
.

The fruity, mildly fizzy drink has an ABV of less than 1 percent.

With its amber glow and fruity, ciderlike essence, the delicate and mildly alcoholic drink known as
kvass
is fermented with yeast, either alone or more traditionally along with a big cut of yeasty rye bread. Together with some flavorful apples, pears, prunes, or fresh stone fruits, the yeast lends a slight fizziness to the results, and the fermentation process produces a naturally sweet-and-sour flavor that is sometimes enhanced by caraway, mint, or blackcurrant leaves, all much improved by a good chilling.

In days when mead was the drink of nobility, kvass was the choice for commoners, easy enough (and cheap enough) to make from leftover black or rye bread. While it is still best made at home, it has long been sold from street stands and trucks in many Russian cities, including Moscow; a commercial kvass can also be purchased in many Russian food stores.

Where:
In New York
, Mari Vanna, tel 212-777-1955,
marivanna.ru/ny
;
in Brooklyn
, Café Volna, tel 718-332-0341;
in Indianapolis
, Babushka’s Deli, tel 317-843-1920,
babushkadeli.com
.
Retail and mail order:
In New York
, Moscow on the Hudson, tel 212-740-7397,
moscowonhudson.com
.
Mail order:
amazon.com (search kvas ochakovsky; kvas monastyrskiy).
Further information and recipes:
A Taste of Russia
by Darra Goldstein (1999);
Kvass
by Dan Woodske (2012);
kvas.lv/en
(click All About Kvass);
cooksinfo.com/kvass
;
natashaskitchen.com
(search angelina’s easy bread kvas recipe).