Russian Herring in a Fur Coat

This is herring. This is beets. This is raw onion. I can feel a stampede of Americans heading for the hills. What you’ll be missing if you join them is your tastebuds doing a WWF-style throwdown of what you’d expect. What you really want to do is bring this beautiful dish to a friend’s house to celebrate something and eat it as an appetizer with a couple shots of great vodka. Still not convinced? Watch the video. I think what happens in it is truly amazing. Sure, the kids’ mom is a foodie. But still.

Click at right for the recipe, how-to-photos, and the story.

My Kids and Husband Try It

See How To Do It

Russian Herring in a Fur Coat

This is what a whole pickled herring looks like, the kind that real Russians use.

This is the easier version - already deboned, in oil and salt. Still authentic. (This is what Alla and Yulia used):

Yum.... (You just wait!) You can get all this authentic stuff at www.medeoeuropean.com in Westbrook, ME. I'll dare to ship the kind in the package to my dear hardy fans if you can't find this stuff (email me at lindsay@lindsaysterling.com and we'll work it out)

This is another brand they like:

Okay, boil beets and potatoes and peel.

Grate the beets

Cut the potatoes

Mix in a little mayo

cut some onion

They're laughing because the onions aren't making them cry for some reason. We all joke that American onions must be weak...

Cut the herring filets down the middle lengthwise and then across

That's potatoes mixed with mayo you're lookin' at, with a layer of herring and then a layer of onion w/mayo over the top:

Now cover with this gorgeous beet stuff!

Sprinkle with chopped hardboiled egg

Decorate edges with pickles or fresh cuke slices

Defy Expectation. It's fun.

The Recipe

Russian Herring in a Fur Coat

As Yulia Converse and Alla Zagoruyko, from Tver, Russia, taught Lindsay Sterling, in Yarmouth, ME, February 2010

Appetizer, 8 servings

Cooking time: 1 hr

2 eggs

4 potatoes

3 beets

½ yellow onion

8 oz herring in just salt and oil

3 Tbsp mayo 2 pickles or 1 fresh cucumber

Hardboil eggs. Boil potatoes and beets in separate pots until a fork goes easily into them. Discard water and let cool in separate dishes. Peel eggs.

Once potatoes and beets are cool enough to touch, peel skin off with a knife. Cut potatoes in 1/2 inch dice, grate beets on large holes of a box grater, and medium dice onion, putting each in a seperate small mixing bowl. Mix a Tablespoon of mayo into each. Cut herring fillets lengthwise and across into ½ thick segments.

On a small serving platter, make an even layer with the potatoes, keeping 1” along the edge of the dish open for decorating with cucumber slices at the end. Cover the potato layer with the herring. Cover the herring with the onion. Cover the onion and the sides of the salad with the beets. Chop the egg into yellow and white crumbles and sprinkle over the top. Slice cucumber or pickle halves (1/4” thick) and place around the edge like petals of a flower.

Please email me with comments or questions about this recipe! lindsay@lindsaysterling.com

copyright Lindsay Sterling 2010

The Story

Russian Herring in a Fur Coat

By Lindsay Sterling

This time of year I look at myself in the mirror and shrink. My face looks like it belongs on the canning shelf with the beans, asparagus and cukes. Sometimes I wear the same clothes the next day because I refuse to get undressed in the cold. I often leave my coat on all day long. So when my when my friend’s Russian sister-in-law suggests teaching me her favorite dish, “herring in a fur coat,” I blurt out a laugh. That’s exactly how I feel this time of year. Like a pickled herring (the light gray color is a perfect match) under three inches of insulation! I don’t think mocking frigidity with a Russian party dish is going to startle awake any hibernating Latin goddess, but at least it might lift my spirits until the neighborhood ice cream shacks open. Plus, it’ll be nice to have something new to do with local potatoes, onions, beets, and herring (better known around here as lobster bait!).

I drive Alla, a Russian grandmother, and her daughter, Yulia, to Medeo in Westbrook because it’s the only place that has the right style of herring: no creamy stuff, no wine, no sugar. Just salt and water. Lyubov Gorelov, one of the store owners, is inside, surrounded by colorful nesting Russian dolls, 15 kinds of kielbasa, headcheese, salame, jars of caviar, and her single most favorite food: a Russian brand of marinated tomatoes. Indeed, her longing for them in a glass jar with vinegar, oil, and herbs, inspired her to open the store. Lyubov was born in Kazakhstan. After the country become independent from Russia in 1991, Kazaks eyed her light skin because of the Russian ancestry it implied. They began pressuring her at the outdoor market where she sold flowers. “Go out from our land,” she recalls them saying. Her brother came first to the United States as a refugee, and she and six other siblings followed with their parents. Two sisters stayed.

Later Yulia and her mother work side by side in her kitchen, peeling boiled potatoes and beets, dicing raw yellow onion, and mixing them each in separate bowls with a touch of mayo. Then Yulia sculpts each layer neatly on an oval serving platter: potatoes first, then bite-size pieces of herring, then onion and beets. The dish’s presence is as impressive and shocking as it’s name. It’s bright magenta with white and yellow flecks of crumbled hardboiled egg. Green cucumber slices decorate the edge. That’s some fur coat!

We all sit around, eat, and laugh. They call the dish selyodka pod shuby. (Say “Silly Odka Pohd Shoeboy” really fast and you got it.) It’s creamy, slightly crunchy from the raw onions, pungent, salty, and pleasingly rich. All those who squirmed at the mention of herring should try it. Maybe this will inspire you: Alla says it’s a perfect appetizer for vodka. They drink in authentic Russian form, breathing all the air out, downing whole shots, then tilting their heads down and over as if inhaling the smell of their biceps. “Every single holiday in Russia you’ll have this [dish],” says Yulia. Both are smiling at fond memories: birthdays, guests, everyone coming together for 3-hour meals, dancing, drinking, and the upcoming International Women’s Day (March 8) when women enjoy gifts of flowers and magenta "fur coats” with pickle fringe.

Medeo European Food & Deli

www.medeoeuropean.com

529 Main St.

Westbrook, ME

207-854-4020

open M-Sat

copyright Lindsay Sterling 2010