Russian Food Monday: Rich Food

The countdown has begun to the start of Russia’s Lent, which begins this year on February 17.

Last year I wrote about the food served in the week immediately preceding Lent, the holiday known as Maslenitsa, or butter week. By making blini, and piling them high with things like herring and sour cream, Russian households purge their larders of the last rich foods and get body and soul ready for Lent.

But being an unabashed foodie, I would give some time in the days before Maslenitsa to other rich foods. Foods that get a good healthy kick from butter and sour cream. Foods like beef Stroganoff and chicken Kiev.

Though food history may not be able to identify the Charlotte of Charlotte Russe fame, there was a Stroganoff, or more properly, Stroganov. Actually a whole clan of them, which provided Russian with prominent businesspeople and statesmen for several hundred years.

According to “Please To The Table”, my Russian cookbook bible, beef Stroganoff might have been named for either Pavel or Alexander Stroganov. The former was a count, the latter a minister of the interior known for elaborate dinner parties. Wikipedia attributes the first recipe mention of beef Stroganoff to an 1861 Russian cookbook. There are several good recipes around on the Internet, like this one on Epicurious (the Web site for Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines) and this one on the Food Network. Please resist any temptation to substitute low-fat sour cream or turkey for the prime ingredients. It’s just one meal and there’s a tradition at stake.

The traditional Stroganoff recipe calls for beef tenderloin, and that’s puts me in something of a bind: To keep my kids in healthy beef, I bought a quarter of a completely grass-fed steer and the only part the farmer reserved for himself was the tenderloin. But I’ve got plenty of chicken, so it’s on to chicken Kiev.

My sons like helping to make this one, largely, I suspect, because they get to pound the chicken breasts flat with the meat mallet. There’s a bit of fussy work to get the herbs incorporated into the butter, and I’m the only one allowed to roll the cutlets. As for recipes, I like Sara Moulton’s over Alton Brown’s because hers is baked.

These aren’t dishes to make every night of the week. But on those occasions when you want to make a special connection to your child’s Russian heritage, they are well worth trying.

Image credit: Seabreeze at Morguefile.com

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