Another more-than-two-week-old post for you! Anyway, back when Misha was in Thun, he made an interesting discovery in the supermarket, of something I think most Russians wouldn’t expect to find in the store: chanterelles. It’s not that they’ve never seen a chanterelle before–on the contrary, fried chanterelles and potatoes comprise one of the most delicious traditional Russian dishes–it’s just that in Russia, chanterelles are almost too pedestrian to appear in stores. Yes, believe it. You’re supposed to go to the woods and find them yourself, since they’re everywhere, or buy them in buckets from sweet old grandmothers with hands and clothes still dirty from finding them to sell. It’s so wonderful how a food that Europeans and Americans deem fancy is just another workday dinner for the Russians.
Needless to say, when Misha found chanterelles in the supermarket in Thun for the sale price of 7 Fr./500g, he was shocked by the price, but nevertheless, he wanted to show me some traditional Russian food in the middle of Switzerland. He was on vacation, after all. Fried potatoes and chanterelles it would be.
Since the baskets of mushrooms were so large and we had enough for two dinners, we decided to make a contest of it. His mother’s recipe of traditional Russian lisichki s kartoshkoi (chanterelles with potatoes) and no spices, cheeses, or anything except mushrooms, potatoes, and a half an onion–vs. my improvised version, where I threw in any spices we had in the refrigerator along with pepper, garlic and a bit more onion.
The results: Misha’s version was classic comfort food, with soft potatoes and nothing overpowering the chanterelles’ texture and flavor, which even seemed nicely to appear in the potatoes: simple and wonderful. Mine was a little different, where you could taste the garlic, onions, rosemary, thyme, and other fresh herbs in everything, but the chanterelles’ flavor came out only when you bit directly into one. Misha agrees with my evaluation: both are good, but they’re for completely different functions. Try both!
Misha’s Traditional Fried Potatoes and Chanterelles
200 g chanterelles, washed and chopped roughly
500 g potatoes, not too starchy, chopped into sticks
1 small or 1/2 medium onion, chopped coarsely
2 tbsp sunflower oil
On an oiled skillet over medium heat, sweat the onion for a few minutes until it becomes fragrant. Add the mushrooms:
Cook until the water is gone from the mushrooms, then add the potatoes:
Cover and cook until the potatoes are soft, stirring intermittently (burned stuff on the surface of the pan is very tasty, so scrape it up and keep trying to create more) :
Then enjoy!
Erin’s Non-Traditional Chanterelles and Potatoes
To make it vegan, skip the butter and cheese, and don’t serve with beef or anything.
200 g chanterelles, washed and roughly chopped
500 g potatoes, not too starchy, chopped into disks
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1 tbsp butter
1 medium onion, chopped coarsely
2 small cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves, chopped
2-3 leaves fresh basil, chopped
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
crushed red pepper to taste
grated hard cheese (Sbrinz!) to taste
Melt the butter in the oil, and saute the onion over low heat until it becomes fragrant; add the garlic, and cook for about 5 minutes before adding the potatoes and chanterelles together. Cover and cook about 30 minutes, scraping burned potato from the pan every 5-7 minutes.
Add the herbs, salt, and black pepper about five minutes before serving; stir and keep covered over the heat until done!
Serve with grated hard cheese and crushed red pepper.
Since the first time I visited Russia, I’ve been blown away by what I’ve seen as the customary Russian notion of salad. In contast to the American version, which more often than not features large intact leaves of iceberg lettuce and a small selection of coarsely-chopped or whole peeled vegetables, a Russian salad as I’ve come to know it, traditionally features anything you can imagine, including herbs, eggs, meat, and vegetables–most often cucumbers, carrots, beets, tomatoes–chopped up finely and mixed thoroughly with mayonnaise or sour cream. Notice the lack of lettuce. One of my favorite ‘Russian’ salads is this one, although when I make it, I usually leave the vegetables more coarsely chopped than I’ve seen most Russians do. Either way, I consider it a perfect and simple summer salad.
Simple Summer Salad
To make it vegan, nix the mayonnaise and replace with oil and vinegar or your favorite other vegan dressing.
2 small cucumbers, washed and diced finely
4-5 medium tomatoes, washed and diced
500 g radishes, washed and sliced thinly
1 bunch dill, chopped along with the stems
2 bunches parsley, chopped along with the stems
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup, more or less to taste, of mayonnaise
Mix all of it in a bowl, with or without the mayonnaise, and serve!
Serves 2-4 people, depending on how hungry those people are.
For his birthday breakfast this week, my true-to-his-culinary-culture Russian requested bliny, the very thin, very-Russian pancakes that are used here as a base for just about anything you could think of, sweet or savory. He was good enough to tell me exactly how his mother always made the bliny, since my pancake experience is limited to the thick, fluffy pillows that New Englanders like to scarf down on Sunday morning before jumping into their plaid flannel outer jackets and Bean Boots and tromping through the woods to collect maple sugar buckets. I mean, not all of us do that.
Anyway, since it was a special birthday weekend, I wasn’t going to just make the bliny and stuff them with plain tvorog or sour cream like most Russians do before getting into their huge fur hats, tying up their pet bears and trudging through the snow to buy vodka before heading to ballet practice. Not all of them do that. After finding a single whole vanilla bean (40 rubles!) at the store, I decided to dress the bliny up a bit with homemade creme anglaise, or vanilla sauce. One of the more interesting pieces I’ve read about vanilla sauce was done by Michael Ruhlman, and can be found here. I used his recipe exactly, and it came out just as beautifully as he describes it. For convenience, I’ll repost the recipe at the bottom.
The bliny were a raving success, paired not only with the vanilla sauce, but with a jar of his mother’s homemade wild blueberry preserves, a bottle of maple syrup I’d brought from New Hampshire, and–of course–sour cream and butter on a few of the Russian’s.
Bliny
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
2 cups water
1 egg
1 tbsp baking soda
butter
Combine all ingredients except butter, and use a hand mixer to liquefy. Pour thin batter onto a hot nonstick or oiled griddle, and cook for about 30 seconds on each side. Stack on a plate, with a swipe of butter between each, so that they don’t stick together.
Serve with absolutely anything. I’ve seen bliny with berries, creams, cheeses, different meats, mushrooms, potatoes, cabbage–whatever whets your appetite. Evidently, they’re particularly good with blueberry preserves and vanilla, both at the same time, and with maple syrup:
Creme anglaise
Recipe by Michael Ruhlman.
4 parts milk/cream : 1 part yolk : 1 part sugar
8 ounces (~250 mL) milk
8 ounces (~250 mL) cream
1 vanilla bean split down the middle
4 ounces sugar (~125 mL)
4 ounces egg yolk (about 7 large yolks)
Combine milk, cream, and vanilla bean in a sauce pan and bring up the heat until just before it simmers; remove from heat and allow the bean to steep while you prepare an ice bath (a large bowl of ice, with a small bowl set in the ice, with a strainer set in the bowl—you’ll be straining the hot sauce into the cold bowl to halt its cooking).
Combine the eggs and sugar and whisk to combine (some people add the sugar to the cream which is fine, too).
Scrape the vanilla beans out of the pod and into the cream (put the pod in some sugar for vanilla sugar).
Bring the cream just to a simmer, whisk some of it into the yolks to temper them, then add the remaining cream while whisking. Pour it all back into the pot, strirring with a heatproof rubber spatula over medium heat until it’s thick, a minute or two or more depending on your heat. Don’t boil it or you’ll harden the egg. Immediately strain the coats-the-back-of-a-spoon-thick sauce into the ice cold bowl and stir with the spatula until it’s chilled.
