Forget the glitz and glamour and luxury connotations: The real reason you should serve caviar this season (and anytime) is that these little baubles of salt pop with big, fascinating flavor. Putting caviar on the table is a way to show hospitality in Russian culture, explains Bonnie Morales of Portland, Oregon’s Kachka. “There’s no snootiness,” she says, just enjoyment and nutrition. She even put it on her happy hour menu to encourage customers to stop worrying about the price or scarcity and really focus on enjoying the intense flavor and remarkable texture.

The best way to break out the caviar, thus, is any way that makes your guests comfortable. Worry less about the delicateness of the delicacy and more about making sure that you set up the kind of party where people feel no shame in letting their eyes roll into the back of their heads as the tiny explosions of brininess roll about in their mouths. Set yourself up for success ahead of time so that your laidback look influences your guests to dig into the caviar with aplomb and enthusiasm.

But if you need a little more preparation and concrete advice to embody that attitude, we have a guide on how and where to buy caviar, and some tips below on how best to serve it.

Go Big or Go Budget

Don’t be precious with the quantity. If you can’t afford enough of the high-end stuff, just ratchet down your caviar dreams to fancy fish egg fantasies. Caviar and caviar-like options exist across the price spectrum, so weigh your imported ambitions against your domestic paddlefish roe realities. More grams of a less expensive variety will make for more fun and festivity than watching all your guests worry if they took one or two beads more than their share. Getting the full flavor of caviar requires more than a sparse sprinkle, and if it looks plentiful, your guests will see that and serve themselves enough to truly enjoy.

Figure Out the Key to Opening Tins Ahead of Time

If you hate small fiddly tasks, buy your caviar from a place that uses small jars, like Tsar Nicoulai or Browne Trading Company, because copious amounts of caviar come in little vacuum-sealed tins that require a certain dexterity to open. The caviar companies will sell you a “key” to open them and it is absolutely the best tool, but you can use a short, wide flathead screwdriver or similarly shaped thin metal object—as long as you can get a decent grip on the handle. A butter knife works, just be careful. Press it up under the lip of the tin, then twist it, rotating the back of your hand toward yourself, much like you would when shucking an oyster.

Don’t Overthink the Spoon

If the dire-seeming warnings that you must use a mother-of-pearl spoon to serve your caviar give you anxiety, now you can relax. The idea is that you should avoid metal, as it will impart metallic taste into the fancy fish eggs. In reality, your stainless-steel home utensils probably won’t offer the same off flavors as somebody else’s silver. But if you are concerned, look around and remember all the other materials of utensil you have in your house: plastic takeout or kid spoons that say, “scoop some salty roe, we keep it casual,” elegant wooden chopsticks, or ceramic condiment spoons made for delicate dipping.

Go Beyond Bubbles

Champagne wishes don’t go with caviar dreams quite the way 1980s television led us to believe. Morales explains that she finds the fruitiness of even the driest sparkling wines to interfere in a way that the traditional Russian pairing of clean, neutral-flavored vodka does not. Her alt: Japanese sake. Seung Hee Lee, caviar connoisseur and author of Everyday Korean, loves Champagne, but also suggests the Korean spirit soju—especially some of the newly available premium versions coming into the U.S. For the non-alcoholic drinker, a nice sparkling water brings the fun bubbles of Champagne without any of the interfering flavors Morales dislikes.

Forget the Ice

It’s important to keep caviar as cold as possible before you eat it, but the colder a food is, the harder it is to taste the nuances. So store it in the very back of your fridge, maybe on ice packs, but also make sure that you let the caviar warm up a few minutes at room temperature before you serve it so that your guests get the full, buttery richness in every bite.

Fist Bumps Aren’t Just for Show

The extravagant-looking image of people eating lumps of caviar off the top of their hands seems to demonstrate a showy way to eat an expensive food, but the technique draws on solid reasoning about taste. “It’s to help warm it up a bit,” says Morales, who calls eating it off her own skin her preferred method. As the host, you may need to encourage others to get involved, but just spoon a “bump” of the eggs onto your hand and slurp them right off. Use a closed fist, held vertically, and drop the caviar on the expanse of skin between your thumb and the knuckle of your first finger. Your body temperature brings the caviar to the right temperature, and you get the purest taste of the delicacy.

Get Creative

Once you get a taste of it at its simplest, get creative! Lee says, “whatever needs crushed sea salt, you can put caviar on.” She likes it on Korean pancakes that she styles like pizza by slathering them with crème fraiche. Morales disagrees on the crème fraiche (she finds it too acidic), but does love cooking with caviar, like the caviar beurre blanc she uses to dress her potato dumplings. She looks for anything that matches the richness, like challah or white bread with butter. Similarly, caviar works great for simple, buttery pasta or soft-scrambled egg dishes, giving you more latitude to create a fun dish for your guests.

The post Skip the Fancy Pearl Spoon and Keep Your Caviar Spread Casual appeared first on Saveur.

This take on okroshka, a classic summer soup named after the Russian word kroshit, meaning “to crumble,” uses tangy kefir or buttermilk as a base and is filled with heaps of torn fresh herbs. Grated horseradish and spicy mustard add a gentle backnote to the soup. If you can’t find quail eggs or don’t have the patience to peel them, hard-boil chicken eggs and cut them into quarters.

Featured in: “The Brothers Berezutskiy and the New Russian Cuisine.”

Our Most Refreshing Cold Soup Recipes for Instant Air Conditioning

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The post Okroshka (Chilled Buttermilk Soup with Herbs) appeared first on Saveur.

Imagine arriving at a cocktail party and finding a table set with platters of Russian finger food. Caviar gleams on a bed of ice beside a pitcher of daffodils. There are hot blini with butter-filled nooks; little crimped turnovers with sundry savory stuffings; dilly cucumber finger sandwiches; and sweet-and-sour salads in layers of fuschia, orange, and gold. You notice the air smells like buttery pastry and cold-smoked fish as the host nudges a frosty shot glass between your fingers and fills it with homemade lemon vodka; then, a heartfelt toast to health and friendship, ushering in the spring.

 If this scene appeals, we suggest making it a reality in your home or backyard: A feast centered on zakuski—Russian small plates (singular: “zakuska”)—is as enjoyable to prepare as it is rewarding to serve. When done right, it’s the type of gathering that will linger in guests’ memories long after the final round of shots. 

Now, you’re probably already an armchair expert on tapas and mezes, thanks to the “small plates” craze of the 2010s, but zakuski are a world unto themselves: They revolve around their own set of flavors, reflecting deep-seated traditions and taboos. Yet perhaps due to stereotypes about Russian food that painted it as stodgy and bland, zakuski have never quite had their moment in the American culinary zeitgeist. That’s a shame, not only because of their sheer deliciousness, but also because they often require little more work than twisting open a jar.    

But it’s not too late for zakuski—especially if Anya von Bremzen has anything to say about it. Von Bremzen is the Moscow-born author of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking and Please to the Table (the current pick for the SAVEUR Cookbook Club) and an encyclopedia on all things zakuski. Here is her blueprint for the perfect zakuski spread. 

Smoked, Pickled, Cured 

Preserved meats and fish are the bedrock of any zakuski feast, and that’s no coincidence: These snacks were invented to withstand hours at room temperature. In the late 17th century, owners of Russian estates would set out tables of cold hors d’oeuvres ahead of the arrival of their weary—and often ravenous—visitors, who could stream in intermittently due to bad roads and unpredictable weather. But in the ensuing centuries, zakuski became more performative than practical as restaurants and households sought to prove their social status with elaborate, vodka-drenched buffets accompanied by all sorts of fancy snacks.   

Today, Russians have no qualms about plating prepared foods straight from the can or vacuum-sealed bag—so you shouldn’t either, especially if you’re pressed for time. Whether you wind up at your local Eastern European grocer or at an online retailer like Russian Food USA, it pays to think like a prepper: Nobody ever complained about a pantry filled with herring, oil-packed sprats, marinated mushrooms, pickled beets, sauerkraut, smoky pork sausages, and caviars of varying hues (e.g., yellow whitefish, red salmon, black osetra). 

Beyond the myriad plates, boards, and bowls filled with all of these ferments, von Bremzen also likes to have a “separate pickle station” at her zakuski gatherings.

Boiled, Sliced, Jellied 

Russian cooks like to offset the punchy, funky flavors of pickled and fermented foods with subtler cooked meats, boiled shrimp, and kholodets (aspics). At the deli counter, spring for a variety of cold cuts, and grab a couple of different mustards to spoon into little bowls on the side. All those meats fanned out on a bed of—sue us—curly parsley is a nostalgic flex that would make any babushka proud. Or go all-out retro with aspics and offal: von Bremzen suggests sliced tongue with horseradish sauce.

Sandwiched, Blended, Stuffed

Dainty open-faced sandwiches called buterbrodi are a perfect blank canvas for whatever you have in the fridge. Experiment with any combination of cheese, herbs, meats, fish, and crisp vegetables, and stack them on mayo-slicked half-slices of rye or black bread. 

Any leftover crusts can be dipped into mock “caviars”—spreadable salads made with boiled beets, eggplant, or whatever other vegetables you have on hand. These are usually enriched with a dollop of mayonnaise and pepped up with lemon juice. (A Georgian variant called pkhali adds ground walnuts and the fenugreek-y spice blend khmeli suneli.) Other stalwart zakuski salads include salat Olivye (potatoes with peas, carrots, and pickles), and vinegret, a tart, red mixture of chopped potatoes, beets, carrots, and pickled vegetables.

Though zakuski are usually a hearty first course before an even heartier main (see: weary travelers), these days many Russians make zakuski into a meal by supplementing cold appetizers with more elaborate, often hot, dishes like turnovers, pirozhki (fried buns), pierogi, and cabbage-stuffed coulibiac.

To Wash It All Down

Zakuski are often so ancillary to the main event—the booze—that in her memoir, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, von Bremzen translates the term not as “little bites,” as other authors have, but as “food chaser.” Historically, zakuski most often chased plain vodka, Armenian brandy, or beer, but von Bremzen recommends eschewing those for more intriguing infusions made with anything from aniseed to buffalo grass to bilberry. The flavoring process is easier than it sounds: To make lemon vodka, von Bremzen’s favorite, add the zest of 1½ lemons to one bottle of the clear spirit, let it infuse for six hours, strain, chill in the freezer, and voilà.

Russians don’t sip their vodka, of course—they toss it back in one gulp. Fear not, you’ve got a bevy of chasers to choose from.

The post For a Garden Party to Remember, Bring out the Zakuski appeared first on Saveur.

Ajika, the spicy, faintly smoky condiment native to the Caucasus, just hit the aisles of Trader Joe’s, and if you aren’t shaking it over scrambled eggs, swirling it into soups, and rubbing it deep into the crannies of a chicken before roasting it Georgian style, well, you deserve a good finger-wagging from a Georgian grandma.      

In Georgia, ajika takes countless forms: It can be saucy like jarred salsa, thick like tomato paste, or granulated like shichimi togarashi. Trader Joe’s version lands squarely in third camp, dusky red-orange and packed with loads of dried chiles, coriander, and garlic. Though perhaps not as potent as its fresh, perishable counterpart—nothing beats the heady aromas of just-pounded chiles, garlic, and herbs—the dried mixture lasts far longer, is shelf-stable, and comes with a shaker top for easy ad hoc sprinkling. 

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Anya von Bremzen, coauthor of Please to the Table, the current pick for the SAVEUR Cookbook Club, says she can’t live without dry ajika. “I do slow-roasted pork shoulder with it and it creates the most addictive juices,” she said. “Man, I’m literally the kind of person who sprinkles ajika on morning toast. It’s awesome with cold butter and on avocado toast.” She’s in good company: Reddit is currently abuzz with early adopters adding TJ’s ajika to everything from popcorn to pork chops to pizza.    

Once you’re sold on the sprinkle-able stuff, von Bremzen recommends dabbling with the wet ajika sold in jars at Eastern European groceries, the type she was weaned on in Moscow, which brims with vinegar, herbs, and tomatoes. “As kids we used to spread it on black sourdough bread and eat it with salo, which is basically Slavic lardo,” she said. 

In-between these two textural extremes is a third pastier ajika, which is common in Mingrelia and Abkhazia, the subtropical Black Sea regions where the condiment is said to originate. It’s perhaps the most complex of the bunch with ground coriander, blue fenugreek, marigold powder, garlic, salt, and red chiles smoked over hazelnut wood, plus other dried spices such as savory, dill, and black pepper. Locals scoop it by the heaped spoonful into stews like beef kharcho. And then there are the milder green ajikas, redolent of mint and cilantro, customarily spread between stretched-curd cheese layers and rolled up in a dish called gebzhalia that oozes fresh, cool cream like burrata.  

But for all you from-scratch diehards out there wondering if you can make your own ajika, the answer is a resounding yes, according to Georgian chef Meriko Gubeladze, who owns Shavi Lomi and the soon-to-open Ninias Baghi in Tbilisi. Whether you settle on a wet, pasty, or dry ajika recipe, “be sure to track down real Caucasian blue fenugreek and ground marigold,” she said, since together they are intoxicatingly floral. 

Special-ordering a couple of spices is one thing, but roasting red Georgian chiles over hazelnut embers, as is traditionally done in ajika production, is another entirely. Happily, Gubeladze has a hack for emulating that smoky undertone: a pinch of smoked Spanish paprika, or pimentón, thrown into the mix. “It’s amazing in ajika. I buy it whenever I’m in Europe and bring it back in my suitcase as contraband,” she said with a laugh. Gubeladze is also ruthless with the raw garlic, which she said is a much-needed counterpunch to the fiery chiles. “Oh, and one last tip,” she said. “Steer clear of ajika if you’re going on a date.”  

The post Georgian Ajika Goes Mainstream appeared first on Saveur.

Open Please to the Table to a random page, and you might land on a recipe for chicken Kiev, Armenian lamb dumplings, Uzbek cilantro buns, or Latvian cornmeal mush. Such dishes may appear to have nothing in common, but as this seminal cookbook on the cuisines of the Soviet Union reminds us, they once belonged to a rich culinary patchwork quilt that stretched 8.6 million square miles, from the Baltic Sea to Central Asia. 

That quilt came unstitched three decades ago with the collapse of the USSR, but the 400-some recipes in Please to the Table—the SAVEUR Cookbook Club pick for April and May—read as current as ever with dishes like rye cookies, tahdig, Georgian khachapuri, and foraged bitter-green salads in the mix. 

Georgian Cheese Bread (Adjaruli Khachapuri)

Shepherding us through the complex, variegated territories of the former Soviet Union is Anya von Bremzen, who was born in Moscow in 1963, and John Welchman, her coauthor. If von Bremzen’s name rings a bell, that’s because her byline has appeared in all the major food and travel magazines, as well as on award-winning books including The New Spanish Table and Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, her memoir. 

Almost as enticing as the recipes in Please to the Table are the essays and anecdotes peppered throughout, which offer colorful glimpses into topics ranging from geography and religion to the etymology of kasha (it originally meant “feast”) and the proper way to serve Uzbek pilaf (rice buried under the meat in serving bowls; tea and pickles on the side). Literature buffs will be pleased to find a bevy of food-related excerpts from greats like Pushkin, Dumas, and Chekhov interspersed among the recipes.  

Von Bremzen is a cookbook writer with an emphasis on the writer. Her prose is snappy and evocative, especially when she’s on a jag about gastro-cultural curiosities. In the chapter on Russian cuisine, for instance, she recounts the cross-cultural horror story of a Russian friend who was invited to an American’s apartment, only to be offered a bowl of ice cream. “It sometimes takes years for Soviet emigrés in the United States to understand that a casual invitation to someone’s home doesn’t necessarily mean a full-scale meal,” she writes. Later, in an explainer on Armenian cuisine (the book is organized by main ingredient with explainers interspersed throughout), she paints such a vivid picture of her first breakfast in Yerevan that you can almost smell it through the page: “We were greeted with eggs scrambled with ripe tomatoes and green peppers, local sheep’s cheese (chanakh), a delicious spicy sausage called sudjuk, and generous cupfuls of strong black coffee. And there were freshly prepared stuffed vegetables (dolma) awaiting us for later.” 

Even the sample menus in the margins manage to be transportive. You can keep your Pinterest moodboards and Instagram recipe reels—I’ll be getting my cooking inspo on page 452 with “A Rustic Luncheon for Eight,” which reads: “herring in sour cream sauce, my mother’s marinated mushrooms, beet caviar with walnuts and prunes, pumpernickel bread, vodka, schi, meat-filled pirog, Russian cranberry mousse.” 

Last week I had the privilege of chatting with von Bremzen about what it took to produce this 659-page behemoth and how the cuisines explored in the book have changed since its first print run.  

BK: You’ve lived a fascinating and rather peripatetic life. Tell me about it. 

AvB: I was born in Moscow in 1963 during the Brezhnev years. It was a time of Iron Curtain stagnation. Like every Soviet kid, I wanted jeans and foreign commodities and was obsessed with the idea of being abroad, being a foreigner. My mom and I immigrated to the U.S. in 1974 because she hated the regime and was Jewish. She felt trapped. Being Jewish in the USSR then, you weren’t persecuted but you were discriminated against.

We wound up in Philadelphia, but weirdly I wanted to be perceived as a foreigner still. This early fantasy of not belonging was very powerful to me, and immigration was hard. I felt homesick because our past was so complicated. We were cooped up in the Soviet Union under a terrible, repressive regime, and when we emigrated, it was without the right to return. We were traitors of the homeland. To our friends and family, it was like dying with a right to correspondence. 

BK: In Please to the Table, there are recipes for a staggering variety of dishes from across the former Soviet Union. Give me the lay of the land. 

AvB: When I was growing up, the mindset was, you can’t see Paris or Rome, so why don’t you have a holiday in Odessa or Uzbekistan or Georgia? For us, these were exotic destinations. As a child, you could call me a propagandist because I was obsessed with this idea of the Soviet Union and fascinated by its diversity. At the market in Moscow, you’d see Georgians with mustaches in hats and Uzbek ladies in braids that sold very expensive produce that could cost a month’s salary. 

BK: Were you always a cook? 

AvB: God, no! I trained to be a concert pianist and went to Juliard. It was rigorous. But I got a hand injury in my 20s that forced me to look for another career. I spoke Italian from spending some time in Italy, and I wound up translating a cookbook from Italian to English. It made me think—shit, maybe I should write my own cookbook. My boyfriend was a British travel writer and a sort of academic type, and he and I wrote the proposal together in 1988. It got a James Beard Award the year they had started giving them, and the book [was] one of Amazon’s top 100 cookbooks. 

BK: 1988 was right when the Soviet Union started to disintegrate. 

AvB: Yes, and everyone was saying, right, a book about bread lines and shortages and herring? But I wanted to explore the whole diversity of Soviet cuisine. There were these Cold War stereotypes of gray clothing and people starving. Many Americans imagined the whole Soviet Union as a gulag, but the truth was, some of the food there was actually amazing. I think I was one of the first people to write about Georgian or Uzbek cuisine in such detail. In the end, Workman Publishing, which had just come out with The Silver Palate, bought the proposal. 

BK: What surprised you most in researching the book? 

AvB: Driving through Ukraine on Christmas, our car broke down. We wound up sleeping in a kind stranger’s hut, and there was this amazing salad of white beets, cracklings, and wild mushrooms. 

It was a long time ago now, but I remember other little things as well, like how in Uzbekistan they made pilaf with yellow carrots and quince and steamed cilantro buns that tasted almost Chinese. Other discoveries were Tatar wedding pie and an Azerbaijani pilaf with a chestnut and pumpkin crust. 

BK: A little birdie told me you’re working on a book about food and national identity.  

AvB: Yes, but I don’t have a name for it yet. It will look at how national identity is a social construct. We assume cuisines are primordial like languages, but we forget that nation states basically didn’t exist before the 19th century. The idea of cultural appropriation in food assumes an essentialist vision of a national cuisine, which is in fact a hybrid construction that is fluid. Take the current gastro-nationalist fight about borscht, for example, between Russia and Ukraine—it says a lot more about the state of geopolitics than the provenance of a dish that has been eaten in a wide geographical region. Dishes often existed long before current national borders did. So arguments about “whose hummus” or “whose baklava” are really about other issues. 

BK: So, food played—and continues to play—a role in post-Soviet nation-building?

AvB: Yes, but even today, there’s a pan-Soviet cuisine enjoyed across the region: Everyone makes salade olivier and vinegret [pickled vegetable salad] and kotlety [beef and buckwheat patties]. In Uzbekistan, the old Soviet dishes—herring, etc.—are still prestigious.  

BK: How has the way people eat in the region changed since you wrote the book? 

AvB: There are more ingredients available now. Some old breeds of goats and cows and vegetables are being revived. That’s different from the Soviet way, which favored monoculture—Uzbekistan made cotton, Moldova made wine. It’s a long conversation. 

And there is a new national consciousness around food that is not dictated by Moscow. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, food became more proprietary and gastro-nationalistic. Suddenly there were arguments in Samarkand over whose pilaf was better—the Uzbeks’ or the Tajiks’. Georgians were going on about Abkhazians having no cuisine and no culture. In Armenia, there’s an NGO that goes into the mountains to find 19th-century recipes; ditto for Azerbaijan, where they’re writing books about how Armenians plagiarized their cuisine. The thing is, cuisines don’t stand still—well, maybe except for in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, where the food is still very 70s.   

BK: What Please to the Table recipes do you keep coming back to?

AvB: My mom’s borscht, of course, which is super quick and delicious. It’s the version she is teaching people to make in her new League of Kitchens online class. I also love the rice pilaf with almonds and orange zest—it’s my go-to side dish for everything. I make the Uzbek lamb and rice plov often. It’s a classic. Then there’s the beef stroganoff recipe, which is so good because it calls for filet mignon. 

BK: What are some popular springtime dishes or traditions? 

AvB: Winter was always so long, and the taste of the first dill or cucumber was always so special. People make cold borscht and soups this time of year. Maslenitsa, the blini and butter festival, just passed. There’s a whole section on Easter cooking in the book—we do a cheese mold that’s eaten with kulich coffee cake, but you can sub panettone. People love it. 

BK: For American food lovers planning post-pandemic travel, what country in the region should be at the top of the list? 

AvB: I was in Azerbaijan four years ago, and it has mind-boggling food. It’s sort of Persian with some Soviet influences. They have a million types of pilaf, some with tahdig. Many dishes are bright green with herbs—green stews and green meatballs and green omelets with green sauces. It all tastes so fresh. And because Azerbaijan has oil money, there’s a restaurant culture, and you can walk along the Caspian Sea and stop into tea houses where they serve teas with jams made from yellow cherries and figs.  

BK: Can I pick a bone? The title of the book is Please to the Table: The Russian Cookbook. That seems a bit narrow, right? 

AvB: It’s true: The book goes from Lithuania to Central Asia and gives you the full scope of the former empire. When I published it, I thought, I can’t call it a Soviet cookbook, so this was the next-best thing. But then I got angry letters from Ukranians and Armenians. Who knows, maybe you could put “USSR” in a cookbook title now and it would be a retro cool thing. 

The post This 1990s Cooking Bible is as Relevant as Ever appeared first on Saveur.

These raised pancakes are one of Russia’s most beloved foods. Thicker than crêpes but less dense than flapjacks, they’re wonderfully porous and perfect for soaking up butter. Many different types of blini exist, but cookbook author Darra Goldstein likes this version, which is adapted from her recipe in Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore, and made with an equal mix of buckwheat and all-purpose flours.

Look for buckwheat flour ground from whole groats (the hulled seeds of the buckwheat plant). If you can’t find it, you can finely grind some whole roasted buckwheat groats in a coffee grinder and either use a full cup of that flour for a hearty taste or mix it with pale buckwheat flour for a somewhat more subtle flavor. Don’t fret about the first pancake you make, which rarely turns out well. As the Russians say, “The first pancake’s a lump.” You’ll quickly get the hang of it. These blini can be topped with any of the classic accompaniments, but they are so good on their own that Goldstein often just adds melted butter and a sprinkling of tolokno (toasted oat flour).

Featured in: Russia’s Butter-Soaked Bacchanal

Equipment

• Large Bowl
• Medium Bowl
• Silicone Spatula
• 8-Inch Cast Iron Crêpe Pan or Nonstick Skillet
• Plate

The post Blini appeared first on Saveur.

These pancakes are drop-dead gorgeous, with a deep pink hue from the addition of beet juice. The great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin adored them, if we’re to believe his friend Alexandra Smirnova-Rosset, who recalled in her memoirs that he would eat 30 pancakes at one go, to no ill effect. Pushkin also adored gooseberry jam and kept a jar on his desk. Darra Goldstein, who developed these recipes for her book, Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore, suggests following Pushkin’s lead and serving these blini with gooseberry compote.

Featured in: Maslenitsa: Russia’s Butter-Soaked Bacchanal

Equipment

• Medium Bowls
• Silicone Spatula
• Medium Pot
• Paring Knife
• 8-Inch Cast-Iron Crêpe Pan or Nonstick Skillet
• Plate

The post Pink Blini with Gooseberry-Apple Compote appeared first on Saveur.

From borscht and dumpling soups to stews and hearty grilled meats, these recipes will keep your hearts warm and fuzzy.

Russian Sweet and Sour Beef Soup (Solyanka)

A Colorful Bright Pink Soup

Hungarian Goulash

Add Some Chicken and Vegetables…

Or Salmon for Your Omega-3s

Pelmeni Dumplings in Chicken Broth

Russian Chicken and Dumplings Soup

Duck Borscht with Fermented Tomato Sauce

Beef Stroganoff

Khashlama (Veal and Sour Plum Stew)

The post 11 Eastern European Soups to Keep You Warm All Winter appeared first on Saveur.

The following is an excerpt from the essay “Slava’s Guide to Drinking an the Pyanka” in Kachka: A Return to Russian Cooking. See more of our best cookbooks of 2017 here.

There is a Russian word that has no English equivalent: PYANKA (Пьянка)

A pyanka essentially translates as a party where drinking is the main objective. But it’s not really about the alcohol—it’s about the experience. About opening your heart when you open the bottle (and, of course, filling your plate as you fill your glass). At the center of a pyanka—of Russian drinking in general—are three guiding principles:

Never Drink Alone

This doesn’t just mean making sure you have a compatriot at your side (although that’s part of it)-it means literally drinking in unison. Everyone fills up their shot glasses together, and then drinks their measure in tandem. At a pyanka, a tamada (host) serves as a sort of ringmaster for the unfolding group drinks and toasts.

Always Drink for a Reason

Each shot requires a reason-laid out in a toast. And a simple “cheers” just doesn’t cut it. A drink requires some thoughtfulness. Raising a glass in honor of the host, reading a scrap of poetry for a loved one—this is why we drink.

RECOMMENDED: Our Full Interview with the Author of Kachka

Never Drink Without Eating

Eating means EATING. I’m talking breaking bread, not beer nuts. To a Russian, all parties are dinner parties-and having something in your stomach means you can keep toasting for the next several hours.

With these three guiding principles, a sort of cadence emerges. A toast to bring everyone together, the clinking of glasses, throwing back your drink, and eating a few zakusi. And this repeats itself over and over.

Toast, clink, drink, eat, repeat.

Toast, clink, drink, eat, repeat.

It’s such a beautiful way to spend time together. And that is what a pyanka really is.

Excerpted from the book Kachka by Bonnie Frumkin Morales. Copyright © 2017 by Bonnie Frumkin Morales. Reprinted with permission from Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. Photography by Leela Cyd.

The post How to Host a Proper Russian Drinking Party appeared first on Saveur.

Bonnie Frumkin Morales doesn’t pretend her book, Kachka: A Return to Russian Cooking, co-authored with Deena Prichep, is an encyclopedic or definitive guide to Russian cuisine. In fact, it’s not a Russian cookbook at all. In the introduction, in all caps, she writes: “THIS IS NOT A RUSSIAN COOKBOOK.” So what is it?

The seed of the cookbook and the eponymous Portland restaurant begins how so many first-generation American tales do: As a kid, Morales desperately wanted to be “American”—she was embarrassed by her mother’s Soviet-era cooking and all the pickles fermenting in the basement. Then as a culinary student, she decided Russian food was just broken, but that it could be fixed with a little French technique.

Ultimately though, with the help of her boyfriend-now-husband—and the questions he would ask her mother about what he was eating—Morales came to see that the food of her family was vivacious, important, and totally delicious. Though Morales has been eating her mother’s schavel, a cold green soup, for forever, she didn’t realized she’d never had the real thing. Her mother could never find sorrel in her 1980’s Chicago suburb, so she made do with a combination of spinach and lemon juice. Her mother still makes kotleti, a meat patty, every single week; it’s probably the result of Stalin’s food commissar impelling the dish to cult status after he became obsessed with hamburgers on an American scouting mission.

RECOMMENDED: How to Throw a Proper Russian Drinking Party

Morales’s recipes for both these staples can be found in Kachka, and while most would consider them Russian dishes, remember: This is not a Russian cookbook. Morales is actually Belarusian, though her family never lived in Belarus. (It’s a good long story best told by Morales in the introduction to her book.) The food she cooks could more accurately be called “foods of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” but that’s a mouthful—and even so, she’s cooking her iterations of that food, shaped by her Russian (insert big asterisk here) and American backgrounds, her experience as a chef and home cook, and as a champion for preserving and renewing the Russian way of eating.

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Though the cookbook has so many cookable dishes, they’re just one aspect of the book and any Russian feast. You’ve got to consider what to drink, how to drink it, how to cheers when you’re drinking, and the rounds of food you’ll eat in the meantime. Also, you’ll need to learn how to fit all those dishes on the table, and what music should accompany. (Morales teaches you all of it.) It’s at these convivial, raucous nights that Morales learned to love her family’s food. And it’s what she hopes her diners experience at her Portland restaurant. As she writes in the book: “We struck a chord because Kachka is the story of my family, but also the experience of millions—told through food that is intoxicating, rich, and varied.”

We chatted with Morales to learn more about prying recipes from her family, creative liberties, and what’s next for Russian food.

What was the process of recording your family recipes like? What challenges presented themselves?
Although I almost always start with family recipes, what we serve at Kachka (and what is published in the book) are my interpretations. So the biggest challenges I face are making sure to keep the integrity of the dish in doing this. Reverence is almost a mantra for me.

Any tips for people who are trying to pry and then accurately recreate oral recipes?
If you don’t have the opportunity to taste the recipe in question with the person you are getting it from, you’ll never know if what you’ve made is a true representation. I can taste something without getting a recipe and have more accurate results than if someone gives me a recipe and I’m flying blind not knowing what it tastes like.

Another thing to remember is ingredients vary greatly both over the years and across continents. For accurate results, you need to put yourself in the shoes of the person you got the recipe from. For example, when my mom references “vanilla” that means something very different to a 1960’s Soviet than it does to an American in 2017. It would be vanillin to the Soviet and vanilla extract to the modern day American. This is just one example of hundreds, so never take any ingredient or step for granted.

Your book makes it clear that Russian cuisine is as much about what you are eating as it is about how you are eating it: with company, with vodka, with music loud, and in rounds of many, many dishes. Do you think something is lost when the dishes are eaten in another format? I’m thinking about a restaurant setting when there are just two of you and you simply can’t order 25 dishes; sometimes I feel like I could miss the sparkle.
At Kachka, we do something that we lovingly call the “Ruskie Zakuski Experience” where you get a small bit of every zakuska [Russian mezze-like bites] we have on the menu. That’s how we try to resolve it. But if you aren’t at Kachka, the biggest thing you can do to celebrate more like a Russian is to make sure that you give toasts throughout your meal. It’s kinda like Thanksgiving where you all say what you are thankful for, but with more booze and less awkward family baggage (well, Russians have family baggage too but we just keep that bottled up inside).

What does your family think of your cookbook?
I think they like it? Reference my point about keeping feelings bottled up inside. I will say there was a bit of an incident over one of the recipe headnotes that involved my mother throwing the book across the room out of anger and my aunt almost cancelling a visit to Portland.

When you were getting your restaurant up and running, you had a lot of “doubting strangers” who weren’t sold on the idea of a Russian restaurant. Yet I tend to think soul food transcends cultures and cuisines; if it came from a handwritten recipe card, people will like the dish more. How do you think that you were cooking from your heritage contributed to Kachka’s success?
You can have soul and still make bad decisions—I think it’s more about having intention than being “soulful.” Having a real grounding and understanding of what you are embarking on means you will make more informed decisions. It’s not very romantic, but I think it’s more accurate.

Some of your mother’s recipes—her borscht, her golubtsi—appear as she makes them in your cookbook, but other recipes were tweaked by you. What aspects of traditional Russian dishes do you think of as avenues for tweaking? What parts yell at you, “oh, I have to change that”?
I often view recipe development as a design problem—I have a background in Industrial Design and find myself working in that framework when I am cooking and developing dishes. Basically, only change what needs changing based on a sort of problem identification. And then be respectful of the dish and only make changes that are appropriate to the form. But this is all highly subjective, obviously. I guess what matters is that you have a sound reasoning for why you are tweaking.

You write in the book: “Because this food, no matter how it’s defined, is a soulful celebration in the face of harshness…where all you can do is seize the bounty and the moment, look around at your nearest and dearest, and raise your glass.” It’s a beautiful way to sum up how Russian cooking was shaped, and also reminds me of the particular political harshness of right now and that Russia is in the news…all the time. Do you see or think about this connection?
What’s funny is I don’t think about Russia at all, but I do think a lot about how this is particularly topical to current sentiments in America. A lot of us have severe anxiety about what’s happening in our country and feel helpless. But we can take comfort in each other and the food on the table regardless of the political climate. As Americans it’s easy to lump all Russians in with Putin and call it a day. Just remember that there are people in other countries lumping us all in with our president, too. That’s not really fair, is it?

Russian cuisine shows off a lot of currently fashionable ingredients: cod liver, charcoal, birch water, fermented everything. What does it mean if Russian food gets trendy, besides that your kids will be the coolest ever?
First off, I need to go on a tangent rant about activated charcoal. I am seeing it being used as an ingredient in everything from soft serve to cocktails and it really needs to stop. With proper supervision it is an incredibly useful natural medicine but can do some serious damage to your stomach if used irresponsibly. Back to the question at hand, I hope that Russian food gets a serious seat at the grownup table. It deserves to be up there with Italian, French, and Japanese food. If it takes some trendy ingredients to get there, I am all for it. I just don’t want this food to disappear.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The post The Russian Cookbook That Isn’t Really a Russian Cookbook At All appeared first on Saveur.

If there’s one dictum that all of humanity can get behind, it’s hangovers suck. The throbbing headaches, the fluey shakes, the gut-churning bedspins—it doesn’t matter if you spent the night pounding Pabst Blue Ribbon or vintage Bordeaux; when you’re hungover, you want one thing: to make all the awful feelings stop.

Hangovers are a great equalizer, one so universally dreaded regardless of class, race, or religion that almost every culture boasts homespun “cures” to treat them. In Mexico, a favorite restorative is chilaquiles, flash-fried tortillas doused in chile sauce and topped with cheese and fried eggs. Brits, on the other hand, recharge with gargantuan English breakfasts complete with baked beans, grilled vegetables, and various porcine delights.

But not all of these “magic bullet” remedies are so innocuous, and some sound like they could do more harm than good if you’re unfamiliar. Here, we delve into a world of fascinating hangover cures, from morning-after offal soups to pickled eyeballs to raw-egg shooters.

Georgia: Khashi

Cow intestine, calves’ feet, and milk: these are the three main ingredients in khashi, the slippery white stew that Georgians (of the Caucasus, not the Peach State) swear by as a hangover panacea. Invented by peasants who couldn’t afford better cuts of meat, this proletariat dish eventually caught on with every echelon of Georgian society for its purported deliciousness and curative properties. Though boiled stomach might be the last thing you’d want to put in your stomach after a night out, the Georgians could be onto something, since collagen, a structural protein abundant in tripe, is said to reduce inflammation.

Where to get it: Khasheria, Tbilisi

Peru: Leche de tigre

If you’ve ever had ceviche, then chances are you’ve tried what the Peruvians call tiger’s milk. Leche de tigre is essentially ceviche’s nutrient-packed runoff, a puckering citrus marinade that pools in the bottom of the bowl when no seafood remains. Often spiked with spicy ají amarillo and sprinkled with cancha (corn nuts) and red onion for crunch, it’s said to jump-start your dulled, muzzy senses—that is, if you can get past the idea of slurping fishy fluids first thing in the morning.

Where to get it: Jiron Marino, Lima

Naples, Italy: Gassosa dall’acquafrescaio

A Neapolitan tonic on the brink of extinction, gassosa dall’acquafrescaio blends fresh-squeezed Sorrento lemon juice, sparkling volcanic water, and baking soda to create a frothy “eruption” in the glass (a wink to nearby Vesuvius). Supposedly the mineral water replenishes the body’s lost electrolytes, while the baking soda acts as an antacid to soothe the stomach. It all sounds refreshing until you get a whiff of the Telese-brand water, whose high sulfur content makes it reek of—let me be blunt here—farts. Adding insult to injury, tradition dictates that you must guzzle the liquid before it billows over the rim. (To see what I mean, watch the last 30 seconds of this video.) Grazie, but we hit our quota for unadvisable chugging last night.

Where to get it: An unnamed kiosk by Porta Nolana gate featured on the Culinary Secrets of Backstreet Naples walk

Mongolia: Mongolian Mary

In outer Mongolia, hangover nostrums can get pretty macabre. Locals carve out sheep’s eyes, pickle them to hard-boiled-egg consistency, and slurp them down in a glass of tomato juice (hence the “Mary” moniker). I’m all for nose-to-tail eating, but facing lamb eyeballs is a bit intimidating after a night of boozing.

Where to get it: Rural Mongolian homes and yurts

USA: Prairie Oyster

To make a prairie oyster—the 19th-century hangover remedy lauded in James Joyce’s Ulysses and P.G. Woodhouse’s Jeeves and Wooster series—start by cracking a raw egg into a glass. Splash in a few dashes of Worcestershire and Tabasco, add a grind or two of pepper, and tilt the whole mixture down your gullet. (For a hair-of-the-dog variation called an Amber, pour in a shot of whiskey.) In theory, the egg provides protein and other key nutrients, while the hot sauce acts as a gustatory alarm clock; in practice, unless you coddle the egg in boiling water before prepping this cocktail, you’re playing Russian roulette with your digestive system.

Where to get it: DIY, if you dare

Korean haejangguk (literally “hangover soup”) is the catch-all genre of beef-and-vegetable stews customarily devoured after soju-fueled bacchanals. It’s an umami bomb that starts with a seaweed-beef broth and can include any number of add-ins such as mushrooms, abalone, scallions, and sea cucumber. The catch? The most beloved variation, “sunji,” calls for congealed oxblood, a likely dealbreaker for squeamish eaters.

Where to get it: Chungjindong Haejangguk, Seoul

Norway: Lutefisk

Lutefisk, or “lye fish,” is such caustic stuff that it can irreparably damage sterling silver. Yet to many Norwegians and other Scandinavians (plus hordes of Midwesterners), this gelatinous, fetid fish is a bona fide delicacy, essential to the Christmas spread and an excellent antidote to aquavit-induced hangovers. To make it, air-dried cod is softened it in lye, a chemical commonly used soaps and oven cleaners. The fish is then soaked to lower the toxicity, and the result is one of the most pungent foods on earth.

Where to get it: Gamle Raadhus Restaurant, Oslo

South Africa: Ostrich-egg omelet

South Africans have a supersized solution when it comes to curing hangovers: ostrich-egg omelets. Weighing three pounds and holding the equivalent of two-dozen chicken eggs, a single ostrich egg can easily sate a crowd of spent partiers. The tricky part is cracking it open; for that, you’ll need a hammer and some elbow grease.

Where to get it: Belthazar Restaurant, Cape Town

Russia: Kvass

Kvass is a mildly alcoholic (0.5–1%) beverage made from stale rye bread that is sometimes infused with lemon, strawberries, or raisins. It’s simultaneously malty, bitter, and sweet, andi t’s one of Eastern Europe’s most widespread hair-of-the-dog restoratives. Once you get past its murky brown appearance, it can actually be quite refreshing. Kvass has been around for 1,000 years, and there’s no sign it’s going away anytime soon.

Where to get it: Roadside stands selling the brew in Russia and neighboring countries

Germany: Rollmops

Germans take their Katerfrühstück, “hangover breakfast,” almost as seriously as they take their drinking, and traditionalists will tell you that nothing exorcises a hangover better than the humble rollmop, pickled herring folded around shaved pickles and onions. Though an urban myth suggests that the brine may help replenish lost electrolytes, none of that matters if you can’t keep the little fishies down to begin with.

Where to get them: Brüecke10, Hamburg

The post These Are the World’s Most Fascinating Hangover Cures appeared first on Saveur.