[Sca-cooks] Russian food
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Thu Jul 20 04:35:59 PDT 2006
On Jul 20, 2006, at 2:55 AM, Stefan li Rous wrote:
> Aislinn commented:
> <<< Ok Jadwiega, here is what I served at the Judge's Luncheon.
> Smoked
> whitefish, smoked salmon, kippered herring, >>>
>
> I think the only kippered herring I know of comes out of the little,
> ovalish cans. Did you get yours already kippered? Or kipper them
> yourself? What exactly is "kippering"? Is it simply pickling them in
> vinegar?
No, no vinegar in kippering, as a rule. It's a smoking process. It
seems, based on the examples I've seen, and since any hard-and-fast
rule I can find is rife with exceptions, to be a hot-smoking process,
i.e. where the product ends up being cooked in the heat of the
smoking process, except in the case of kippered herring (more or less
the Ur-kippering process, the one that first bore the name, I
believe), which are lightly salted and cold-smoked. You can get real,
freshly-smoked kippered herring in places like the UK and Canada, and
in the US you sometimes find them vacuum-sealed in plastic packets.
There's a rather distinctive splitting/butterflying method used for
kippers to prepare them for smoking (they're split along the back,
past the spine and into the abdominal cavity, and opened up like a
book).
Canned kippers are okay for what they are, but they aren't
necessarily a good way to understand or appreciate the glories of the
kippering process...
> Blini are the same as blintzes? A thin, firm pancake rolled with a
> filling?
Blini tend to be smallish, slightly spongy-textured, buckwheat-flour
pancakes, often raised with a combination of yeast and beaten egg
white (hence the sponginess). Frequently served with melted butter,
sour cream, and caviar.
Blintzes are more crepelike, although I assume there's an
etymological link.
Adamantius
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