The Russian food preference genes have kicked in again.

No, not more potatoes, cucumbers and beets. This time, it's a real budget-buster: smoked fish.

I happened to be in my friendly neighborhood Whole Foods store with my little guy the other day, and over by the fish counter they were having a tasting of smoked fish. There was a big platter of salmon and whitefish from Ducktrap River Fish Farm, just about at my younger son's eye level.

The store employee began to very earnestly explain about Ducktrap's production methods and why they make such great smoked fish. But as I listened, I noticed, out of the corner of one eye, a small hand reaching up to the platter. Again and again … and again. When the Whole Foods employee got to a pause in her presentation, I quickly said to my guy, "I think that's enough." "But I like it," came the impassioned reply.

Now this store employee had probably never read this blog, so she didn't know what many of you do, which is that my kids seem to gravitate towards foods that would have been common in the country of their birth, Russia. I tried to give her a quick recap, but she seemed somewhat stunned by how much smoked fish he had put away. As an act of contrition, I picked up a platter-sized package of Ducktrap River salmon and headed for the checkout counter. Suffice it to say I could have gotten many pounds of potatoes for that tab.

Smoked fish is another of those central elements in the Russian pantry. Go to a Russian grocery store and you'll find everything from salmon to pike and sturgeon --and probably more. Take some salmon home, dice it and toss with diced boiled potatoes and a dill vinaigrette sauce and you have a zakuski platter for appetizer time. My favorite Russian cookbook, "Please To The Table", even has a recipe for a smoked whitefish omelet.

My little guy said he never ate smoked fish when he was still on Sakhalin Island, but I sampled a few kinds from the neighborhood store in Yuzhno. And Conde Nast's travel Web site Concierge posted this piece on smoked salmon from Lake Baikal hawked to riders at one of the Trans-Siberian's stops earlier this year.

As food preservation methods go, smoking is pretty easy. So if you don't have a Russian grocery store in your neighborhood, you can follow these directions from the University of California and make your own.

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